Chapter Text
The first sign that something was wrong was at 7pm
They had just finished a long dance practice.
The main practice room still smelled of sweat and floor cleaner, but the mood was calm and light for the first time in days.
Schedules had been brutal, but tonight felt peaceful. Yunah had claimed the small kitchenette attached to their waiting room on their floor a quiet corner the staff sometimes used for late meals.
She stood at the induction stove, stirring a pot of tteokbokki.
The spicy gochujang sauce bubbled gently, filling the air with the comforting scent of rice cakes, fish cakes, and sesame oil.
She added extra to Wonhee’s portion to ensure she was eating well because she was complaining about being hungry earlier.
The rest of the members were scattered nearby, resting after practice.
"Wonhee-yah!" Yunah called out cheerfully, wiping her hands on a towel. "Food’s almost ready!
Silence.
She waited a few seconds, then called again, a little louder. "Wonhee! Come eat before it gets cold!"
Still nothing.
A small spark of annoyance flickered in Yunah’s chest. Wonhee was always losing things especially her headphones and wandering off.
Yunah turned down the stove and walked down the hallway toward the storage closet near the practice rooms.
The members often kept spare towels, extra cords, and random items in there.
She knocked firmly on the door. "Wonhee? You in there looking for your headphones again?"
No answer.
Yunah turned the handle. The door opened with a soft click.
Inside were stacks of neatly folded towels, rolled-up practice mats, shelves with spare light bulbs, extension cords, and cleaning supplies.
The small, windowless room had no other exits just concrete walls and a single overhead fluorescent light.
The closet was empty.
Yunah stood frozen in the doorway for nearly ten seconds, staring as if Wonhee might suddenly pop out with a laugh.
Then she closed the door, took a slow breath, and walked back to the kitchenette with measured steps, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Minju," she said, "have you seen Wonhee?"
Minju looked up from where she was stretching on the floor, tilting her head. "She went to the storage closet a while ago to find her headphones. Why?"
Moka and Iroha wandered over from the couch area, drawn by the shift in Yunah’s tone.
Yunah swallowed. "She’s not in there. She’s not anywhere nearby. Her phone is still charging on the table in the waiting room."
The silence that followed felt heavier than any of their recent grueling practices.
They started searching immediately.
Yunah took charge, her leader instincts kicking in even as worry gnawed at her. "Moka, check the bathrooms and all the nearby lounges on this floor. Iroha, go down to the ground floor café and convenience store area. Minju, check the other practice rooms and the stairwell. I’ll re-check every corner up here and alert the staff."
For the next hour, the entire Illit floor of HYBE echoed with their worried voices calling Wonhee’s name.
Doors slammed.
Closets were opened.
Staff members passing by were stopped and asked if they’d seen the older maknae.
Iroha returned from downstairs, breathing hard and shaking her head. "No one downstairs has seen her."
Minju came back from the practice rooms with trembling hands. "Her water bottle is still in Room 3… but she’s not."
By 8pm, the tteokbokki in the kitchenette had gone cold and congealed.
At 9 pm, A HYBE manager arrived quickly after Yunah’s urgent call. He looked stressed, still wearing his ID badge.
Within minutes, building security was involved.
At almost 10pm, two police officers were standing in the waiting room. They asked the standard questions:
Any recent arguments?
Did she seem stressed?
Any reason she might leave?
Yunah answered through gritted teeth. "She went into the storage closet right down the hall to find her headphones. She never came out. There is no other door. No windows. Check the security cameras, please."
The officers eventually agreed. At 11 pm, the group crowded around a security guard’s monitor in the control room. The CCTV footage played:
7pm Wonhee walking down the hallway after practice, humming softly, swinging her arms lightly. She reached the storage closet. She opened the door. She stepped inside.
The door closed.
And then later Yunah appearing and looking into the closet before closing it
And it stayed closed. For the next three and a half hours of footage, no one entered or exited that section of the hallway. The door never reopened.
The officers exchanged uneasy glances. HYBE staff looked equally confused.
"We’ll file a missing person report immediately," the older officer said. "We’ll also coordinate with building security for a full sweep. For now… try to stay calm."
As soon as the police and manager stepped out to make calls, the weight fully settled on the four remaining members.
…..
Hours had passed midnight
Minju refused to leave the area near the storage closet hallway. She dragged a chair over, wrapped herself in a spare hoodie, and sat with her back against the wall, eyes fixed on the closet door like she could will it to open.
"I told her to check the closet," she whispered again and again, voice hoarse. "I laughed and said it was probably in there. If I had gone with her… if I had just walked with her after practice…"
Moka sat beside her quietly for a long time, rubbing her back.
Minju’s eyes were red and swollen.
Silent tears kept falling as she replayed the last normal moment… Wonhee sprawled on the practice room floor complaining about her headphones.
It had been so ordinary.
So painfully, cruelly ordinary.
Wonhee had been sprawled on the practice floor complaining about her missing headphones.
"I swear I left them in the practice room," she'd said, pulling at her own hair in frustration. "Or maybe in the van? Or maybe Iroha stole them again?"
"I didn't steal them," Iroha had called from the other room.
"You have a history!"
Minju had laughed. She remembered laughing. She remembered saying, "Just check the storage closet. You put them there last week when you were helping Moka with the towels."
And Wonhee had sprung to her feet, grin already forming. "Right! You're so smart, Minju unnie!
Those were the last words Wonhee ever said to her.
Now Minju sat on the floor of the storage closet where Wonhee had vanished with her phone flashlight on, examining every spot. She ran her fingers over the walls. She tapped the floor. She pressed her to the walls.
Nothing. No secret passages. No trapdoors. No explanation.
She stayed there for an hour, until her knees ached and her tears had dried into tight tracks on her cheeks. When she finally emerged, Moka was waiting in the hallway with a glass of water.
"Drink," Moka said softly.
Minju drank. Then she whispered, "Moka, where is she?"
Moka didn't answer. She just took Minju's hand and led her back to the practice room, where Yunah was on the phone with Wonhee's mother, her voice low and steady even as her eyes glistened.
Moka became the quiet detective.
She went into the storage closet with a measuring tape, notepad, and flashlight.
She measured the dimensions twice.
She tapped every wall and the floor.
She checked the temperature.
Later, she reviewed the security footage frame by frame on her laptop in the waiting room, zooming in on the exact moment the door closed.
Around 1am she noticed something strange — the overhead light inside the closet flickered unnaturally for half a second on the video. She played it repeatedly, her expression growing more focused.
She started quietly searching on her phone for "sudden disappearance small room" and "liminal spaces," falling down rabbit holes she wasn’t ready to share yet. She had found an online forum the kind that discussed liminal spaces, reality glitches, and something called "the Backrooms." It sounded too absurd. But she bookmarked the page and kept it open.
Iroha tried to stay tough the longest.
For the first few hours she muttered, "She’s probably pulling a prank" and "Wonhee’s so bad at hide and seek."
But as midnight passed, she disappeared into a nearby practice room.
She blasted music and danced aggressively until sweat soaked her shirt sharp isolations, powerful footwork, anything to stop her mind from spiraling.
Iroha finally collapsed against the mirror at 2 am, she was breathing hard, staring at her exhausted reflection, "You idiot…" she whispered. "Don’t scare us like this right after practice."
Yunah held everything together the longest.
She spent hours on the phone, updating the manager, contacting higher ups at HYBE, reassuring Wonhee’s worried mother with a steady voice she didn’t fully feel. She made tea no one drank and kept all the lights on in the waiting room and hallway.
Later she locked herself in one of the bathrooms, turned the faucet on full blast, and cried hard for nearly fifteen minutes shoulders shaking, hand pressed over her mouth. When she came out, her eyes were puffy, but her expression was determined again.
At 3am she gathered the others in the waiting room.
"We’re not sleeping tonight," she said quietly. "Not until she comes back. We’ll take shifts watching the hallway. Moka, keep checking the footage. Minju, try to rest your eyes. Iroha… stay close."
The four of them stayed awake as the clock slowly dragged toward morning. The HYBE building felt too big, too quiet. The fluorescent lights in the hallway hummed steadily. a sound that now felt far more ominous than it ever had.
---~-`~-~-``-`-`.`-~-`~_~ Inside the Backrooms_`~-`_`~`.-`.`-`.`~~_``~``----
Wonhee sat on the damp carpet with her back against a yellow wall, knees pulled to her chest.
The fluorescent lights above buzzed endlessly, making her head throb. She had been walking for what felt like a long time, turning corner after corner, shouting until her throat hurt. She had seen something shift in the distance once and ran until her legs gave out.
She checked her phone again.
The screen showed only an hour and twelve minutes had passed since she stepped into the closet.
This is so weird… she thought, rubbing her tired eyes. It feels like forever, but it’s only been an hour? The door has to be around here somewhere. The unnies are probably waiting for me. Yunah unnie’s tteokbokki must be cold by now…
She stood up, brushed off her clothes, and kept walking, still convinced she was just horribly lost somewhere inside the HYBE building.
~
To Be Continued