Chapter Text
3rd P.O.V
Day 5, 11:47 pm
Another day of pointless charades goes on. Another day in the simulation.
Another day in Hell.
Today was many things, but boring certainly isn't one of them. Unfulfilling, sure, but it's anything but boring.
(Harvey would take boring over this hell he's trapped in.)
Can he even count this as a 'day'? The definition of a 'day' to him could be different. The passage of time affects him differently in here a bit, he's sure, since he was cut off from the outside world.
He was coaxed into going to sleep via a command input into the machine. He complies, but only for a bit.
He can't sleep. Not now. Not with everything that's going on. Not with everything that's happening to him. He pretends to lie down and sleep until he feels the 'eyes' of his wife off of him, leaving him alone in a pastel pink and light blue-covered digital world.
Eun-Mi.
His soul mate. Lover, partner. His other half. His special someone.
His wife.
So many words he could use to describe her, either to other people or quietly to himself. But right now…he’s starting to see her in a different light. Lately, it feels like they’ve been less of a husband and wife, less of a family, and more like colleagues. Coworkers.
Right before he stepped into this simulation, just a few days prior (he thinks, he can’t tell), Harvey voiced his concerns. Jumping into a project like this is not something he’d normally do.
Sure, their family hasn’t been doing the best financially speaking (part of that is his fault, he’s sure), but going into something like this completely blind, without safety precautions…well, to say he was worried is underselling it.
Her reassurances of her having everything “sorted out”, as he recalls, feel less like alleviating his fears and concerns and more of brushing him aside. He chalked it up at the time as her just being ambitious. This project, whatever it is, could make them enough money to be rid of their debts.
Nevertheless, he swallowed his pride, tried to trust her, and willingly stepped into the machine, which…where was it again?
Where is his body? WHERE IS HE!?
‘And where did it get you?’
The first few days brought him bad dreams…nightmares? Things he couldn’t fully remember. Apprehension. Anxiety. Dread.
He vaguely recalls asking her when he could get on out of here. (Not sure what day that was.) He misses his son, and wants to see him. Once again, he was dismissed.
“The simulation requires your full undivided attention”, she said.
Once again, he swallowed his pride and tried to agree with her. She knows best, after all. She wouldn’t actually hurt him, would she?
…would she?
In recent days, he’s started to not feel so sure.
He woke up one morning feeling like he had been hit by a truck, full force. Bruises all over his body. Small puncture-type injuries in his hands and face. They don't bleed too much, but they ache just enough.
He raised an achy hand to see a deep gash in the center of his palm. He screamed, watching the blood pool on the bedsheets.
(He's a digital entity. That much, he understands. How was he bleeding? Where did he get this injury?)
It was too big to be from a paper cut. Too deep, too wide. It's jagged, raw, and open. He closed his hand into a fist, trying to stifle the blood from flowing out of the wound.
It hurt.
To say it hurt was an understatement.
How did it hurt? He's not real, or at least, this version of himself in the simulation isn't real.
It's a digital copy of the real him, that's outside, probably hooked up to cables and wires to the machine.
How can he feel pain when his real body is outside? Will that pain transfer? Will he feel it when he wakes up? When he's out of here?
Those thoughts were pushed aside for hours, until the monitor was booted up again, and he was face to 'face’ with his wife.
(He can't see her true face from inside, but he's certain that she can see him just fine.)
He was honest with her. Honesty is the best policy, after all.
”I'm not feeling too well.”
He described what happened. How he woke up with it, felt like he was holding something sharp, and asked her to make the pain stop.
”It's just a…a glitch in the system. I can patch it up real quick, and you'll be as good as new.”
…weird, but fine. His hand was healed in a pinch, then it was off to another day.
He confessed to her again about having dreams again. Well, to say they were dreams is a lie. Nightmares.
Dreams he can barely remember exactly what. (Why couldn’t he remember?) All that he knew was that they felt real.
He told Eun-Mi that. And what did she say?
”Don't worry, love. It's probably just another side effect of the simulation. I'm sure it'll pass.”
He found himself agreeing with her. After all, he trusts her. Trusted her.
“I have no reason not to trust you…right?”
Well, now he’s starting to have a reason…well, several reasons, why he should be questioning her.
And it came from today. Oh God, today.
When he woke up this morning, he was in a whole lot more pain. Is in a lot more pain.
Half of his world is covered in darkness. His eye…something is wrong with his right eye. What’s wrong with it?
When he rubs his tongue against his dry mouth, it feels like there’s a gap in between his pearly whites. Is he missing a tooth?
If he was hurting before, then what he could describe now was pure agony. This can't be a normal glitch. Glitches don't cause severe injuries like this. Whatever is wrong with his eye wasn't caused by a simple glitch. Same with the reopened wound on his hand. Or the missing tooth.
When his wife opened up the monitor again, she screamed. And he told her the truth. He's hurting. He can't see.
WHAT'S HAPPENING TO HIM!?
She promised to fix him again. Told him it's just another glitch. A bug.
(Part of him didn't believe her.)
”Where is my eye? What's happening to me!?”
She tried to get him to calm down. Tell her that she'd patch him up. ’Everything will be fine’, he could almost hear her say.
He's not proud of himself for saying that he begged. Pleading, even, to be let out.
“I want to leave! I want to go home. I want to see Toby. Please. Please let me go home.”
To his dismay, she didn't do what he wanted. She didn't let him out.
(He's still trapped in here.)
But she had the nerve, the nerve to say to him that he was scaring her.
’Scaring her? You're the one who put me in here!’
His thoughts are loud. They keep him awake, preventing him from sleeping. After the days he's had, the wounds that are somehow being inflicted on him, he doesn't want to go back to sleep.
’She still told him a lie. It's a lie, she's not going to fix him. Fix anything.’
But what stuck with him the most was that she had the audacity to say that she'd let him out soon. Could they just continue playing instead?
He wanted to protest, words caught in his throat before he could speak them. He wanted to continue to voice his displeasure about being in here, being trapped inside here against his will. But he doesn't like to argue. Doesn't like to fight. He's a people pleaser, through and through, and that includes his family.
So he bit his tongue, relenting to his fate. But not wholeheartedly.
(Is it really worth being the ‘yes-man’ when it’s his own life that’s at stake? His entire LIFE is on the line here, but it doesn’t sound like she cares.)
It didn't take long for her to put him to sleep and leave him to, presumably, take care of other things outside of him.
But he's not sleeping.
He can't. The pain is too much for him. His thoughts are too much for him. He shivers, but he's not sure why. Is it from the pain? From his bleeding wounds? The cold?
(He hopes what he's feeling isn't transferring over to his body.)
He thinks of Toby, his son. His child. He hopes he's doing okay, without him being there. Even though he has mixed feelings about Eun-Mi right now, he will never feel that way about his son. He's a good kid, and he misses him dearly.
“I miss you..."
He speaks through clenched teeth, quietly, softly. As if afraid that she might hear him. He curls up into this ‘bed’, bringing bright pastel blue sheets over his bruised and battered body.
Though the bed is comfortable, it pales in comparison to his actual bed outside. It only makes him more heartsick.
“I'll see you soon…"
He murmurs to himself before closing his eyes, eye.
'I hope.'