You were dragging yourself home from work, that half-dead state where your brain felt like it was running on old printer ink. The moment you stepped through the front door, your bag hit the floor with a thud that echoed through the house. Shoes off. Jacket half-thrown somewhere questionable. Your body marched itself upstairs on muscle memory alone, and you collapsed onto your bed like gravity finally won.

A few minutes of scrolling your phone turned into boredom fast—nothing interesting, nothing new, nothing worth staring at. You rolled off the bed, wandered downstairs, and flopped onto the couch, letting yourself melt into the cushions like a tired ghost.

And then—like someone snapped their fingers—you felt the world pull out from under you. Your stomach dropped. The air shifted. The light changed.

You hit the ground hard enough to jolt your senses awake. When you looked up, the world around you blazed with neon—purples dripping into hot pinks, yellows glowing like streetlamps at dusk, electric blues outlining everything. A prison… but not the cold, gray kind. This place was vibrant, chaotic, unreal.

You weren’t alone.

There were people nearby—your age, maybe a bit younger or older—each one wrapped in the same surreal palette as the room. None of them noticed you at first. One was pacing and muttering, clearly seconds away from a breakdown. Another was intensely focused on something mechanical, fingers moving fast.

Then Na-hun spotted you. His eyes widened like someone had just pulled the curtain on a surprise gift.

Na-hun: “OOH! LOOK, YUN-WOO! WE’RE NOT ALONE!! There’s more humanity! I think.”

Yun-woo whipped around so fast his hair practically snapped with him. Relief washed across his face like a wave crashing after a long, loud storm.

Yun-woo: “Oh— oh thank god…”

Oki blankly turns to you, fidgeting with a knife.