WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES TO EAT YOU.

The Shadow That Never Follows

Everybody in the office was walking on ice, but nobody was brave enough to break it, and the more people that entered the room, the heavier was the silence in which even a calm breath could sound loud and disturbing. Supposedly the one who called was waiting with a hammer in his hand, to break the surface just when everybody is gathered, cause he didn't have faint in the other's desire to join the cold water afterwards.

Ga-Hyeon's eyes were wandering outside the building, she felt just as caged up as the sick - minded individuals that layed within the hospital. The gates were untouched, but she could feel the coldness embracing every iron bar, feeling the drops of water racing towards the end of the wall as if they were running down her spine. The sky looked like it was mourning for the moon that has been running since dawn, getting further away, only to allow the sun to set. The sun was not very much to the sky's liking, and it tried to extinguish it with his tears.

Or maybe she was just too consumed by the waiting for the meeting to start and she started drowning her mind in the entertaining tale in which the sky was a pathetic widow that couldn't accept changes. Detaching her attention from the window, she came to realize that the door was closed by now, two guards solemnly protecting the entrance, unmoved as if they had roots burried deep down through the floor.

She was seated close to the end of the U - shaped table, just close enough to hear the old man clearing his voice before his hand approached the  mic in front of him, pushing it's button to make it function, which it hopefully did, and in the disoriented room full of different breeds of human beings, all the heads turned to him as he spoke.

“Firstly I have to thank you for showing up to the meeting, considering your perhaps busy schedules.” and the brunette woman had to admit that hers was just as empty as her stomach now, but she would have chosen a pijama over the tight suit anytime. “I'm Yoo Ren-Jin, the manager of Dae-Sun Psychiatric Hospital. I'll guide you today through our high - secured facility. I'd like to talk about it more in case you skipped reading the emails. Your department requested visits in order to try and study the criminal mind, it's gonna be a two - weeks long experience, four days a week.”

“I have a question.” a shorter female asked, holding her left hand up, to catch his attention, and continued only once the older approved it with a slight nod of his head. “Are we - a twenty people team - able to roam around the hospital at once?” she asked, with a wording at which the manager scoffed for himself.

“If only you would have let my finish, you would have known by now that I'll divide the team in two. This table was a perfect choice!” he exclaimed, holding both his hands up, and the right side of the table was trembling under his palm as he smashed it against the wooden surface. “Right side and left side.” he continued the process with his other hand.

Nobody seemed to share his enthusiasm, a few playing with their water bottles, others spinning a Soju Bottle in an alternative reality in which they wished they were now. Yet, Ga-Hyeon carefully collected the information, and things didn't seem to add up, so she dared to interrupt the speech for the second time in a spawn of one minute, raising her voice to give her mic a break.

“Mr. Yoo?”

“Yes?”

“Four times a week for two sets of people means eight days, will we intersect in one of the days?”

He was moving his fingers along his forehead, massaging his dry skin, while looking through the pages that he was facing. No piece of information about this matter, so in order to not make a bad impression, he just begged his brain for a proper answer, coughing to cover up the pause.