The red blanket that everything was draped in from the lights had continued into the room behind the door, but a chilling breeze greeted us, giving us another reason to shudder as the heavy and intricately carved wooden door closed own its own behind us.

Hyunjin jumped at the creak as it slammed shut, spinning around to stare at what had been our only way out. "Who did that??"

I shrugged, used to this kind of stuff due to my mild interest in all things scary and paranormal, as I examined the space we had walked into. "Probably the cashier. Adds to the experience, you know?"

Hyunjin nodded uncertaintly. The room we had entered was bare compared to the lobby we had come from, and fake blood was splattered over the plain walls, which had been white before someone apparently got murdered against them.

A mannequin draped with a sheet stood behind the door, in between the left corner of the room and a desk pushed against the wall, which was equipped with ancient stationary like a feather pen and ink bottle and a few sheets of parchment.

To our right, slid flush against the opposite walls' corner, was a rusty file cabinet, and in between that and a wooden wardrobe on the other side of the room was an old bed as the centerpiece of this seemingly vintage hotel room.

The king-sized addition was taking up so much space in the small room that there was barely enough left to walk between the foot of the bed and the desk and reach the wardrobe on the other side.

Of course, we could just climb across the bed to get to the other side of the room, but something told me that climbing across the bare sheets of an old bed in a dimly lit vintage hotel room was not a good idea.

There could be bedbugs on that thing.

"So, we just find a way out? We need to unlock this door again, right?" Hyunjin nodded behind him at the heavy wooden door, which was apparently locked as soon as the unforseen force slammed it closed.

I nodded, making my way over to the desk against the left wall and pointing to the file cabinet, now behind me against the right wall. "I'll check the desks' drawers, you check the file cabinet."

I heard a small noise of affirmation from Hyunjin as he shuffled over to the file cabinet, trying to pull each rusty drawer open.

Glancing over the sheets of parchment spread across the surface over the desk, all the writing looked illegible, scrawled out in fancy cursive, as if we had not only walked into a bloody and creepy vintage hotel room, but had also stepped into a portal back to America in the 1700s.

Shuffling through all the sheets of parchment laid out before me, I sighed, seeing nothing of use. Seriously, this gibberish looked like the Founding Fathers' handwriting.

Piercing noises of rusted metal drawers refusing to open behind me puntcuated my annoyance.

"They're all locked," Hyunjin called before half-heartedly attempting to open the last drawer at the very bottom, which he assumed would be locked as well.

Suddenly hearing an ungodly screech from behind me, I glanced over my shoulder in time to glimpse Hyunjin stand up from where he was crouching at the bottom drawer and jump nearly five feet backwards, his eyes wide, his hands in front of his chest in defense.

Turning fully, I rushed towards him and the open bottom drawer, only halfway pulled out. "What? What is it?" I questioned, leaning over to peer into the half-open drawer.

Hyunjin bit his lip, shutting his eyes tightly and taking a deep breath to calm himself as I saw what had startled him. "...I think they're intestines," he stated through gritted teeth.

Peering into a rusted drawer full of long, thin, slimy... things in hues of reds, purples and blues, my jaw dropped open in shock and Hyunjin slapped a hand over his mouth, turning away. "Please, just close it, that's disgusting," he whispered, and I could hear him trying not to gag.

I obeyed and immediately closed the bottom drawer, trying to keep my own stomach down. "It's probably just slime," I said, but it was more for my own reassurance than it was for Hyunjin's.

I had expected a cute kid's horror house — definitely a family friendly experience — when Hyunjin and I signed up for this, but I realized that this place might be more hardcore than I thought. And Hyunjin realized that too, when I glanced over at him shrinking himself into the corner, regret etched into his face.

"Let's just figure out how to get out of here," I said, turning back to the desk and leaving the file cabinet alone for now. Hyunjin nodded, reluctantly squeezing past me, his body pressing against mine as he attempted to cross the small space and examine the wardrobe on the other side of the bed.

Beginning to open all the drawers of the desk, I pulled on the metal handles and was consistently greeted with an empty space. But nothing was better than intestines or something even more gross, possibly hiding in one of the drawers. I yanked each one open with baited breath, and was weirdly relieved when I only found a stash of obviously plastic eyeballs in the second-to-last one.

Kneeling down to open the last drawer near the floor, I called to Hyunjin as soon as I saw what was inside.

"Mmm?" He answered absent-mindedly, and glancing diagonally across the room, I saw that he was still stalling to open the wardrobe, instead brushing his fingers over the wood on the outside, searching for any useful carvings.

"I found something," I said, and his head snapped to look back at me.

"Is it...?" His brows furrowed with worry, but I shook my head at the unspoken question.

I pulled the object that I had found out of the bottom drawer and held it up so he could see. "I found a metal box, but it has a lock on it. We need a four-digit code."

"Hmm, I haven't seen any around," Hyunjin shrugged sympathetically, rounding the foot of the bed to crouch beside me and examine the box in my hands. "We could brute force it, though," he suggested.

I shook my head. "It wouldn't be that easy —"

Eager to get the hell out of there, Hyunjin snatched the box from my grasp with a smirk. "You'll never know until you try," he chimed, turning the little mechanical wheels on the lock to change the numbers.

Peeking over his arm as he swiped at the number wheels, I scoffed and shook my head. "1234 isn't gonna work, that's like the most basic thing."

Just like I had predicted, the lock didn't click open when Hyunjin tried the most obvious combination. He sighed. "What do you think it would be, then?"

I thought for a moment. "Maybe the date for Halloween?"

Hyunjin swiped again at the number wheels, trying my suggestion for 1031.

We both sighed again, our bodies sagging in dissapointment when that didn't work either.

"We have to check the wardrobe then, that's the only place we haven't looked," I stood up and Hyunjin pressed himself against the desk to let me pass between him and the foot of the bed, then stood up as well and followed me back to the wardrobe.

"There could be anything inside there," Hyunjin warned as he stood behind me in front of the huge and intricately carved wardrobe, a tremble making its way into his whispering voice.

I rolled my eyes, mocking his earlier statement. "You can tell me if you're scared," I teased, throwing him a look over my shoulder.

"I'm not," He stated confidently, but his body language betrayed him.

I stepped back so that I was to his left and we were both facing the wardrobe together. "You open it, then."

"No thank you," he squeaked quickly.

"I thought you weren't scared?"

"I'm not."

"Then open it."

"I — but — if 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 not scared, then 𝘺𝘰𝘶 open it!"

"If 𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 of us are scared, then 𝘺𝘰𝘶 just go ahead and do it!" I pressed.

"No!" Hyunjin stated firmly, his eyes darting back and forth between me standing beside him and the looming wardrobe in front of us.

"What happened to being a gentleman??"

"I am being a gentleman!" He insisted, shifting slightly away from the wardrobe to face me, his back now turned to the bed. "Ladies first!"

"That's not supposed to apply in this type of situation," I tried to explain while keeping my exasperation at bay, turning my body to face his as well. The wardrobe was now basically a third-wheel to an argument between just the two of us.

"So you don't want me to be a gentleman in this situation??" Hyunjin furrowed his brows, frustrated. "Make up your mind, Hana!"

My mouth opened and closed multiple times as I tried to counter his words, but all of this going back and forth was making me confused about what I had actually wanted in the first place.

"I... That's not—! You..." I tried to stutter out something, but I was caught off guard when Hyunjin's eyes snapped to the wardrobe and widened, his breath catching as he grabbed my arm and pulled me to himself without warning.

"WATCH OUT!!"

I stumbled forward into his chest, which sent us both toppling backwards onto the bed as the doors of the wardrobe swung open behind us, and I glanced back to watch a plastic skeleton fall forward and pile loosely onto the floor with a hollow but noisy crash.

I blinked at the skeleton laying on the floor, then raised my eyes to look at the now wide-open doors of the wardrobe. They must have been rigged to fly open and dump out the skeleton at some point. I sighed, trying to calm my heartbeat, which had started to race at the sudden scare.

"It was just a plastic —" I had started, turning my head back to face Hyunjin, but my heartbeat started to speed up again, and I couldn't control it.

My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't speak when I met his eyes, already intensely focused on mine, his body heaving with deep breaths on the bed under me and his lips, an even deeper shade of scarlet under the tinted lights, slightly parted.