Chapter Text
Jeongin, Seungmin, Felix, Jisung, Hyunjin and Changbin had gone missing two weeks ago.
The case was still open but the authorities already assumed they ran away. After all, six teenagers who happen to all be friends suddenly disappearing without a trace didn't exactly scream that they got kidnapped or anything of the sort. There was no evidence of foul play either. From the authorities’ perspective, it seemed more likely to be a group of immature high schoolers impulsively deciding to run away rather than a true emergency.
Chan sighed. They had questioned him and Minho. Dragged them aside the second they go out of their last period. Obviously, they didn't have a clue either. Just the day before he was on a call with Jisung who kept talking and talking about those new lyrics that came to him and the next he didn't even read his texts. It felt surreal and out of nowhere and Chan would be lying if he said he wasn't in denial of all this.
He couldn't focus in class anymore and had been missing lectures. Checking his phone every few seconds for news about the case had become a habit just like the nightmares he had at night. He already didn't sleep much to begin with. Chan kept getting lost in thoughts, trying to figure out where these six could have gone. He didn't even wonder why they would have gone missing, running away wasn't that far fetched for them considering how school was treating them. He wouldn't blame them for running away, honestly. He just didn't understand where they could have gone and why they didn't tell either him or Minho. They wouldn't have snitched.
Minho sighed next to him. They were both sitting on the stairs in front of their campus, the wind blowing in their face giving them a runny nose and red ears from the cold. Minho had also been worried sick about all of this. Compared to Chan the other usually slept at night but now he could see the bags under his eyes. He was a mess and could barely hold it in to just break down in front of Chan. Minho blamed himself for some reason that Chan didn't know. He kept saying that he should have known. That there were signs and he missed them. He kept saying that but whenever the police asked him if he was sure they didn't run away Minho stood firm in his beliefs: they couldn't have ran away.
The thing that bothered Chan was that Minho wouldn't tell him what he knew, either. Chan asked him once and he seemed to hesitate for a moment before shaking his head and saying “nevermind,” confusing Chan even more. He started to wonder if he didn't look desperate enough to look for the others or if he looked like he didn't care because he stayed composed despite all the stress this whole ordeal gave him. Chan would do anything to find them, it had been two weeks and at this point. He couldn't bear with Minho's silence anymore and was this fucking close to lashing out on him demanding an answer when Minho turned towards him, opening his mouth ready to speak.
“We need to find them,” he simply said and Chan blinked at him.
“Well, yeah, obviously we gotta find them-”
“No, Chan, I mean it, we need to find them. Not the police but us. The police stopped looking after the first week and are basically waiting for hints to fall from the sky but I know for a fact they haven't run away. Listen, Chan, I'm gonna need you to believe me because this is all very stupid.”
Chan kept blinking at him as if he grew a second head, “Okay…?”
“Felix told me during one of our Korean lessons this thing that they do where they go on sort of adventures. They hear a dumb rumor at school and go out of their way to figure out if it's true. I think last time it was about a cat that hid in the school gym during lunch and that's why Felix told me cause he promised me pictures but it's not important. And it sounds very stupid but I think they went on one of those adventures again.”
That didn't sound stupid to Chan. Maybe a little silly but not at all stupid.
“Do you think they got lost ?”
“Maybe. Felix started telling about their adventures after the cat one and the day before they went missing he told me Minnie found a book in their school library. It was written by a former student. There were some instructions to get to a certain location, a magic forest or something and even if they thought it was probably fake they still went cause, well, it was an adventure. Gosh, I should have stopped them.” Minho held his head in his hand, grasping at his hair as if tugging on it would make things magically better.
Well, Chan understood why it was stupid now. A magic forest was so far fetched and they fell for that? What did they expect? But now Chan couldn't understand why Minho didn't tell anyone about this information. It was crucial evidence. They probably could have been saved and brought home a week ago if he had just told that to the police instead of mumbling about it like a madman. So why…?
“We need to find this book and go to this “magical forest”,” Minho concluded before standing up.
“What?”
“We need to go there and find these six idiots.”
Chan sighed— he did that a lot lately— and got up in turn, “We could also let the police take care of it.”
“No.” Minho said firmly, “Just… Trust me on this one I have a feeling that we need to be the one going there. The police will probably think we've gone crazy if we start talking about a magic forest anyways so let's check it out and if we find evidence then we can bring it to the police. Deal?”
This all didn't make sense. Minho didn't make sense. Minho was acting weird most of all but Chan would put it on the grief and the stress until now. He was so adamant on going there themselves without telling the police a word. This could all be a trap for all they know! Minho was usually more careful, always making sure one person knew where he was if he were ever put in a potentially dangerous situation. But here he wanted to go where their friends had gone missing without anyone knowing where they were?
“Chan…?” he asked hesitantly, his eyes sparkling with some sort of hope.
“Ok but I'm gonna need you to be honest about one thing,” Minho nodded, “Do you believe this is all real? The forest. Do you think the kids are in this magic forest and that's why there's no trace of them?”
Minho pursed his lips, looking away for a second before meeting Chan's eyes and Chan had never seen him so sure of something until now, “Yes, I have a feeling that this is all true even if it's irrational. Felix looked far too enthusiastic about it last time I saw him for it to be false. Felix sounded so sure of himself when he said that if they went there they would be able to do whatever they wanted. I think that they had already experienced a bit of this forest already but hadn't entered it yet. I thought about it a lot this past week and now I'm convinced that it is real to some degree.”
It was a hard pill to swallow but Chan nodded. He could hardly believe this was true but if Minho was certain and this was their only hope they couldn't just let it go now.
“What’s the plan?”
Minho gave him a mischievous smirk that made Chan dread whatever words would come out of his mouth next.
°•●☆●•°
That was how they ended up breaking into their friend's high school at midnight with a giggling Minho having way too much fun roaming around a dark empty school.
“Was breaking in really necessary? “ Chan called out
“Did you want to explain why two men, who were not wearing the school uniform and are clearly not teachers, were roaming the school just to get to the library?”
Touché.
Chan still didn't like this idea and kept jumping at every little sound. Last thing he needed was a haunted school.
Neither of them knew the way around the school so Minho kept opening every door that he could, which was not a lot since they all were seemingly locked. The last thing they needed was for the library to also be locked but with their luck it would probably also be the case.
Chan used his flashlight to look for any map of the school which would tell them which way they needed to go but they really seemed to have run out of luck.
“What do we do if the library is locked too?” Chan broke the silence
“We force it open and hope the police won't find our prints and arrest us for that.”
“Sounds sound enough”
They were fucked.
Minho suddenly pointed at a room at the other side of the corridor, barely lit up by the light of his own phone. Through the glass pane on the door, they could make out tall shelves with various books on it and a few tables to sit at and read or work. Dust motes swirled lazily in the air, visible only when the light hit them just right. Looked like they found their library.
Without a word, Minho practically bolted toward the door, forcing Chan to pick up his pace, his hurried footsteps trailing close behind. Minho reached the door first, his hand gripping the handle firmly before sliding it open in one fluid, strangely almost impatient motion. The soft creak of the door echoed in the stillness. Chan skidded to a stop behind him, his breath catching as he glanced past Minho into the dimly lit room. Of fucking course this one would be open and not the others. Nothing made sense in this school.
Minho walked in with a clear goal, moving with confidence, as if an invisible force was guiding him. He stepped forward without hesitation, as though he already knew exactly where to go, his eyes fixed straight ahead, focused like he was in a trance. Chan stood frozen, watching in silent bewilderment as Minho navigated the space like it was his own, his fingers grazing the edges of the shelves with an unsettling familiarity.
What the heck?
Finally, Minho stopped in front of a specific shelf, his gaze tilting upward. Minho turned and gestured for him to come closer and Chan finally took a cautious step inside then another until he stood by Minho's side.
His eyes followed Minho’s outstretched hand to a single book tucked neatly between a well-worn copy of Peter Pan and an equally battered edition of Alice in Wonderland. The book’s spine was faded and cracked with age, its surface rough and weathered, as though it had sat untouched for decades. Well, not exactly, if as Minho said, their friends found it and read it. Minho carefully grabbed the book. He turned it over, inspecting both the front and back covers, which were completely blank. No title. Odd. On the spine was embossed in gold the initials “Choi Y.” beneath them, the year 1989.
Chan stole a quick glance at Minho, whose usually sharp expression now seemed clouded with confusion as he stared down at the aged book in his hands. Maybe he was disappointed that this simple old relic of a book hid the secret to where their friends were. He couldn’t blame him; it was all a bit anticlimactic. After all their searching, this didn’t exactly scream “answer”.
Minho exhaled sharply through his nose, before flipping through the pages. The pages were densely filled with slanted handwriting, each letter inked with care, though the strokes seemed hurried at times. Chan leaned in slightly, squinting to catch a glimpse of the text, but Minho’s fingers moved too quickly, flicking through the pages in an almost frantic rhythm. Whatever the story was, Chan doubted it mattered—it wasn’t the kind of thing that would tell them where their friends were.
Finally, Minho stopped on the last page, his hand freezing mid-turn. His posture stiffened, and Chan could feel the tension radiating off him like a physical force. There, scrawled in the same slanted handwriting, was a single riddle that seemed to mock them. Chan’s breath hitched as his eyes scanned the cryptic text.
Without looking up, Minho broke the silence, his voice low but steady.
“Direct your light towards the page please, hyung”
The words came out more like a command than a request, and Chan instinctively raised his phone, angling its weak beam toward the book.
When the sun casts gold upon the ground,
Look where quiet waters can be found.
Near the edge, something awaits,
A door beneath where the secret waits.
In the place where lessons are taught,
The secret lies where you least thought.
“When the sun casts gold…? The sun isn't gonna cast green.” Chan frowned. Minho, who had been silently reading beside him until then, immediately burst into laughter, his voice bouncing off the walls.
“Aren't you the great lyricist between us ?” Minho teased, still grinning, “This is obviously formulated in a weird way to tell us where to find the door to this forest mentioned in the book. Could it be a beach? Gold, sun, water…”
Chan shook his head, “No, it has to be in this school. It mentions lessons being taught. Water, lessons, sun… The pool…?”
“But what's up with the sun then? Does the sun filter in the pool?”
“I guess so? But a door at the pool leading to a magic forest just like that…?”
Minho pursed his lips. His eyes flicked back and forth, searching for any more details or hidden clues. Something about it felt too simple, almost too easy. He couldn't shake the nagging feeling that this couldn’t be the full answer. If it were this simple, someone would’ve discovered it already.
Suddenly, a gust of wind whipped past Chan, the cool air brushing against his skin and turning the last page of the book in Minho's hands to let appear some scribbles at the back.
Chan quickly turned his head to the right just to see a window left ajar, the breeze pushing against the frame. He hadn’t even noticed it earlier. Before Chan could say anything, Minho's voice cut through the air, full of excitement.
“Golden Hour, we need to go there during the golden hour, hyung. That's what's written on the back of the page.” he said excitedly while pointing at the pencil on the page.
Chan quickly whipped his phone out, fingers fumbling for the time as he checked the golden hour. 7:30 AM. That was the peak of it, when the sun would start to cast its golden light on the ground. His stomach dropped. By then, there would definitely be staff at the pool—cleaning, preparing, maybe even just hanging around. The last thing they needed was to be caught. They would question who they were and why they were here. This wasn't good.
His mind raced. They could always tie them up, keep them quiet, he thought, though the idea sounded far more fitting for Minho than him. He couldn’t help but picture Minho quickly taking charge, wrapping up the staff in a corner somehow, making sure they didn’t make a sound. It would be... effective, no doubt, but not exactly the way Chan would handle it.
All they could do was hope that this ‘door’ would appear before the staff showed up and they got caught roaming around the pool.
Another problem now was that they needed to find said pool. To think Chan thought getting around campus on the first day was a hassle. It turned out getting through this high school without a map was the real hassle.
°•●☆●•°
Minho and Chan both stood by the pool, waiting for something to happen. It had already been well past 1 AM when they finally deciphered the cryptic riddle and realized that the entrance to the forest was inside the pool. Since they had figured it out so late, they decided to stay at the school and head straight to the pool when the time came. It was a good thing they did since once they woke up it took them about 30 minutes to even find the pool, after wandering through what felt like endless hallways. On top of that, they had to spare some time to send emails to all their professors telling them they wouldn't be able to attend their classes due to a sudden illness during the night. How tragic.
Minho stood a few steps away, arms crossed tightly over his chest, tapping his foot rhythmically on the cold concrete of the pool deck. Chan could see the way his friend’s posture tightened with every passing minute. Chan knew that the boys’ disappearance had taken a toll on him and that he was very anxious and just wanted answers. Chan wanted them too and 7:30 couldn't come fast enough but he felt like Minho was much better at exteriorizing his anxiety than him.
Chan, on the other hand, was trying to stay still. His body was rigid, his muscles tight. His eyes flicked nervously around the pool, scanning every corner in search of the door they were certain would appear. The golden light of the rising sun slowly began to creep into the pool area, casting a soft, warm glow across the water and the concrete. It made the pool seem almost peaceful, despite the tension that gripped both of them. The light painted everything in hues of amber and rose, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet.
They waited a few more minutes, silently praying that staff wouldn't suddenly arrive and see them. Then the sun finally fully hit the pool's floor and within the span of a blink, the pool’s floor seemed to shift. The smooth surface cracked open, revealing a trap door hidden in plain sight. The two friends stared at the spot, dumbfounded, unable to fully process what had just happened.
“It actually…” Chan started, his voice barely a whisper, the disbelief hanging in his words.
Minho, his eyes wide and almost in awe, nodded slowly, a small smile curling at the corners of his lips. “Yeah.”
“They are…”
“Yeah!” Minho's smile widened before he crouched towards the trap door and opened it.
A gust of wind suddenly rushed out from the hole, whipping his hair back dramatically. For a split second, Minho’s messy hair seemed to defy gravity, blowing outwards as if the wind itself was trying to give him the look of a Saiyan.
Both Minho and Chan leaned in, their eyes fixed on the opening below them. The scene before them was far from what either of them expected. At first glance, it looked like the entrance to some sort of abandoned sewer: dark, damp, the stone edges slick with moisture. But upon closer inspection, there was something more... strange about it. In the corners of the dimly lit hole, plants had taken root, their vines curling up the walls. Flowers that Chan wouldn't be able to name, delicate and bright, bloomed in patches where sunlight never touched, their colors rich and almost out of place in the otherwise grim setting.
Chan gulped nervously and was about to ask if they should go down before Minho stopped him in his thoughts and jumped down, immediately adventuring further.
Minho landed with a soft thud, his figure vanishing from sight almost immediately as he moved further into the unknown. Chan was left standing at the edge of the trap door, staring into the darkness below. It felt like an eternity before Minho's voice broke the silence.
He called back, “You're coming?”
His heart hammered in his chest as he scanned the pool area, half-expecting someone—anyone—to appear. There was still a chance they could get caught. His gaze flicked nervously over the silent surroundings, but everything remained still. Without another second to waste, he jumped down, the cool air rushing past him as he descended into the darkness below.