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Sung Hyunjae doesn’t know when the days change anymore.
He used to. When he first woke in this white cube, he scoured the entire place for some means of escape. He’s Sung Hyunjae, for fuck’s sake. He can get out of anything, do just about everything.
The only issue with being so capable was that it took very little time for him to learn that the only deformity in these uniform walls is that one metal slot. It’s an opening that won’t break apart and that he can’t control. He has tried to put his hand through in a million different ways, and he couldn’t even fit that.
Of course, that doesn’t stop Sung Hyunjae. So, back in the days before he gave up—though giving up is kind of the wrong word for all of this, no?—he’d sit at the edge of the slot.
Of course, it doesn’t open outside of certain hours, but when he pressed his ear against it or the wall surrounding it, he could hear life outside.
In that way, he could tell how much time passed. After all, he gets his work in the morning—whatever all this is must be a part of some corporate environment—and that coincides with a great amount of sound behind the slot.
Then, when he submits his first batch of work, he can hear laughter and clinks of bottles and containers. Lunch, he presumes, since it certainly never feels long enough to be the end of the day.
And lastly, when he submits his final stack for the day, the slot makes a creaking sound like something awful and he hears the lock go on it. He never hears it open again, but he always hears it shut.
That, he determines, is night.
If Sung Hyunjae goes to press up against the walls, he’ll see the faint indents where he used to scratch out the days. It’d be much too tedious for him to count how long he kept the listening up before he just... stopped.
He hasn’t given up. Of course he hasn’t. Sung Hyunjae is a man who has done… well, he’s done a lot, he’s pretty sure. Sung Hyunjae was—no, is —a name that means something.
And so, he tells himself, a man like that won’t just give up.
In some ways, Sung Hyunjae is glad that no one else is around. After all, that means there’s no one to question why, if he hasn’t given up, he’s still in this white box of a room.
All is cyclical in this place, in Sung Hyunjae’s little, inescapable container, but despite that, there is no structure for anything. That is perhaps the detail that still bothers Sung Hyunjae, and it’s what he thinks blocks his easy escape.
He does not need to eat. He does not need to drink. He does not need to relieve himself in any capacity, though he knows humans need to do all these things. He doesn’t even need to sleep, but there’s only so many times he can stare into the blankness before it gets dull.
Other than his work, there is nothing to build a routine with here. And so, there is nothing to break through with except his work. If only his work were something he could gamble with.
As it is, he’s stuck with this monotonous life.
… He hates it when things get boring.
So he spices up his life, now and then. Sometimes he sits, sometimes he lies down. Sometimes, he even crawls onto the walls, because there have been times he’s pretty sure that he’s managed to roll this room over or at least, climb to the ceiling.
Of course, he still has to do his work. But he experiments with how to do it. One day, he may form patterns, like making a specific face every three papers. Another day, he’ll do little flourishes on the papers or twirl before putting the papers through the slot.
None of it is any great fun. But if he moves, if he changes, if he closes his eyes, then he can’t see those white walls, now can he?
Sung Hyunjae is an impressive man, he knows this very well, and in fact, his behavior reflects it. He may not be actively escaping, but that does not mean he’s not making progress. His quarterlies are, in fact, quite astounding and this he always knows because he hosts these meetings on his own.
He even sometimes hosts it for the people outside. He more often did it when he actually listened, and so he could say something about how Ms. I-Always-Decide-To-Get-Coffee is a bit too loud and that’s disruptive for her coworkers, no?
It’s been a while since he’s hosted a quarterly meeting with anyone other than himself. Perhaps he’ll do one for the person who feeds the paper through the slot and one for the person who receives it.
To be completely honest, Sung Hyunjae isn’t quite certain as to why he must do the job that he does. It must surely be something important because Sung Hyunjae has been entrusted with it and not only that, but he’s kept from everyone else.
That, right there, is a special privilege.
It does rankle Sung Hyunjae, the fact that someone else seems to be his boss. Someone commanded him to go in here, someone controls the papers sent to him, someone is not letting him out.
Of course, there is always the possibility that Sung Hyunjae is in charge of all of this. He’s not sure why he didn’t provide himself a good escape from this place, but he’s not a stupid man. He’s not someone to do something without a reason, even if the reason leads to what seem like spontaneous decisions.
Regardless of the person in charge, Sung Hyunjae will get out. And when he does, he will enjoy a nice cup of—
Sung Hyunjae blinks and there he is again, returning the papers through the slot. He moves across the room so quickly that he almost doesn’t hear the lock turn.
What was he thinking of? There was a train of thought, he is sure of that, but…
Sung Hyunjae frowns, staring at the white walls as outside, tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in the building go home.
He doesn’t sleep after that.
The walls in this room are quite curious. If Sung Hyunjae had any time in his infinitely busy schedule, he might investigate what these walls are made of, how they were constructed, things like that.
After failing to find another opening, the walls became his primary interest. To put it crudely, he had taken to seeing if the walls could be opened through brute strength.
Sung Hyunjae is a strong person. He thinks he is, at least.
And so, this is what he discovered: the walls, of course, can be modified. It’s how he put up so many tally marks in the first place.
But despite the tally marks, despite the times he’s thrown the stapler and papers and himself at them, the walls look untouched. It’s only when he is right up against them that he can see the blemishes.
He wonders exactly how many come from himself. There was a time…
He won’t think of that. It’s quite a bit embarrassing for a man like Sung Hyunjae to lose his mind in such an undignified and pathetic fashion.
Instead, he rolls his shoulders and begins on the new stack of papers.
Study of the wall can wait for later.
Sung Hyunjae doesn’t even really remember what came before this room.
He thinks that that’s perhaps the worst part of the situation, not that this situation is so bad that he can’t handle it. Not that this situation is bad at all. Sung Hyunjae can take care of anything and so nothing bothers him.
Nothing bothers him at all.
Regardless, he knows his name is Sung Hyunjae. There’s a range of numbers his age can be, but he’s not twenty nor ninety. There is no mirror in the room, but he has blond hair that never seems to grow.
He doesn’t remember the color of his eyes. Sometimes, he considered tearing his eye out, just to check, because how can a person not know this about themself?
There is always some last measure of self-restraint that stops him, though. His fingers will rest on the edges of his eye socket—his left, one day; his right, the other—and then pull back.
He has long fingers. Piano hands, he supposes someone said at some point.
Sung Hyunjae doesn’t even remember what a piano sounds like anymore.
He doesn’t count much anymore. Too structured. Too predictable. Why measure the days when he can pretend every time he wakes up it’s whatever time of day he wants? Perhaps that means he works through the night, but all-nighters add some flavor to life.
He doesn’t make patterns for himself. If he wants to scream at the papers until his throat hurts or just for the blink of an eye, that’s his decision.
It means nothing, really. Sung Hyunjae is not losing his mind in any meaningful way. He still does his work to perfection. He breaks mundanity with each second he breathes, because even now, right as he’s thinking all of this, he’ll run ragged breaths and then approach hyperventilation and then be so still he can almost trick himself into thinking he’s not breathing at all.
See? Sung Hyunjae can interest himself. He can make this a not-boring life. He can touch the ceiling and then the floor and then stand on the stack of papers and then do his work that way, using the ceiling as the ground for him to staple papers together.
And truly, Sung Hyunjae is still excelling, because no one ever comes to reprimand him. His quality of work is so high that even in unusual positions—it would be interesting, he thinks, if he could gain the skills of a contortionist—he is unaffected.
Sung Hyunjae has not given up. He is not going to waste away in this room forever. He has a life outside, that he is sure of.
This is prevention against total insanity, this is not giving up. It’s simply him thriving. That is important, even he can agree with that.
He’s not giving up, he’s not. He’s not and he’s not and did he mention that he’s not going to? Because he can say it again, he’ll say it for as long as he can, will say it as many times as possible.
He’s not
Sung Hyunjae isn’t quite certain as to why he must do the job that he does. Or no, that’s not a new question.
Sung Hyunjae isn’t quite certain as to what this job that he does is for.
Yes, yes. That’s better.
Now, the job that he does. He, in the simplest of words, in the most basic language, in an attempt to disregard all use of flourishes to aid in comprehension, staples sheets of paper to each other.
He knows people would laugh, but that’s just because they don’t understand. Putting something in simple language strips it of its mystique, of its meaning.
If this were all just stapling papers, he wouldn’t be here. Sung Hyunjae would not be the man called upon to do this job, because anyone can do that.
No, these papers are special. They are vital. Sung Hyunjae staples packets together, to be sure, but most importantly, when the first packets come through the slot with a stapler in what used to be the morning but now is whenever, he is entrusted with a very important task because the papers are special.
Perhaps that comes across as desperate. Sung Hyunjae is long past making up faces for people in his head, and so, he no longer really cares how he’s seen. If he speaks strangely, excuse him. The audience in his mind needs to be more understanding.
His mouth, he thinks, has forgotten how to shape words and this throat doesn’t remember how to modulate his voice.
Regardless, Sung Hyunjae does his job well.
Perhaps that is the reason why he can never leave. If his job is done so well, then no one can be found to replace him. Truly, Sung Hyunjae is a genius.
The thought is pleasing and with the edges of the stapler, he carves genius onto the white walls.
If he steps back, he can’t see it at all.
Nothing bothers him at all. Nothing bothers him and so there’s nothing that disrupts life here. If life is what this is.
Sung Hyunjae knows much about the meaning of words. He used to be surrounded by all of them. They used to be on all the papers and now they’re not.
See, Sung Hyunjae only sees that which is new. All those words, when he was young and just started at this job, were unfamiliar. But he has learned so much since then that none of the words register anymore.
Perhaps that’s why he can’t see anything on the walls when he’s not up close.
Perhaps that’s why he’s stopped hearing the sounds of life outside the slot.
… Perhaps there used to be other people in the room with him here.
He starts to hide his hands from his view, looks away whenever he catches some glimpse of a part of him.
Nothing bothers him at all. And he can ensure that such a life is…
Well, it is very quiet.
This is something that Sung Hyunjae won’t admit to anyone else. A man of his status cannot just reveal anything that can be perceived as a shortcoming. Sung Hyunjae is not an idiot.
But, Sung Hyunjae will confess that the matter of his memory does cause some issues.
Sung Hyunjae does not remember a life before waking up in the white box. That has not changed and he is starting to think it never will.
But sometimes, he gets glimpses of other worlds, other lives. He sees himself as strong and powerful, he sees men he doesn’t recognize but that he thinks he should.
That first fact doesn’t surprise him. It fits neatly into how he should be—no, how he is. Sung Hyunjae still means something.
So, when he sees a stranger that seems to have his frame, that has the blond hair he sees peeking at the edges of his perception, he knows that’s him.
(This version of him, his eyes are gold. He supposes it fits with his hair.)
But the other faces?
Sung Hyunjae doesn’t know what his face looks like, much less what any face should look like.
Perhaps what he looks at in these random impressions are not faces. Maybe he is even wrong with how he thinks faces are constructed. After all, he can feel his own face all that he likes, but that doesn’t make up for actually seeing it.
There are men and a woman who are built like him, who feel like him, though different in a key way or two. There’s one of these faces he holds with particular fondness, though he doesn’t know why he feels affectionate toward a man dressed in the plainest business clothes with a straightforward haircut and an incredibly still face.
There’s other faces he glimpses. Men and women following him. A man opposite of him, challenging him, as though he were more powerful than Sung Hyunjae, the Se—
He doesn’t know where that thought goes. Even now, he can’t fully remember that last man’s face.
He’s not bothered by any of it, of course. It is typical for him to use his imagination to fill in the blank walls.
The issue, one he’ll never tell anyone, even if there was someone to tell, is that these images come unprompted. He doesn’t mean to dream any of this up. An image comes and then it just goes and Sung Hyunjae is left standing or sitting or lying down, his eyes open staring or screwed shut.
It’s nothing, really. Just glimpses, after all.
The other thing that Sung Hyunjae will admit is that he perhaps lied.
In the beginning, he, yes, did read the packets of paper. And yes, no longer are there words that he sees.
But he doesn’t think it’s because he learned them so well that they disappeared. Or at least, none of that reading felt like learning. It was something to keep his mind occupied, though it usually made him feel worse, as the words were the dullest in the world. They would slip out of his mind as soon as he read them, and he could not comprehend the next word without the former, nor the former without the one before it or the one following it.
At least, he’s pretty certain there were words. He doesn’t confuse imagination with reality. He’s better than that.
The papers now are pure white. He dropped some a while ago and spent some time searching the floor, the walls, the ceiling to figure out where they went.
He’s still not sure he found them all but no punishment came, so he supposes what he turned in was good enough.
He doesn’t really flip through the packets anymore. He doesn’t do anything more than he has to in regards to his job.
This way, he gets those white sheets away as soon as possible. If he works quickly enough, shoving white packet after white packet through the slot, he can almost pretend that he’s ridding the room of its whiteness.
Though, whenever he returns the packets, there’s always a moment that the packet covers the slot and most everything is white.
In those moments, he wonders if it might not be so bad to be lost in that void of blankness.
Sometimes, alone in this room, in this box, in this prison, Sung Hyunjae dances.
He’s not really sure where the urge comes from. He doesn’t remember dancing with anyone but sometimes, if he closes his eyes, he can fool himself into believing that there’s someone in his arms.
Really, the thing that Sung Hyunjae should wonder about is how he doesn’t hit any of the walls.
Early on, he measured how much space he had. It’s not a lot. If he measures by his feet, ten by twelve. Or maybe it was fifteen by thirteen.
It’s been a long time. At any rate, it’s not large enough for the wide motions he does now—the way that he takes step after step after step, twirling that invisible person around, throwing himself and his imaginary partner through the air like there is no container around them.
It’s quite a nice delusion, one of the better ones he’s had. It’s even better than those glimpses of memories or dreams, whichever one is the one that has other people around.
He kicks the stack of papers around and they fly around. Those, Sung Hyunjae can pretend, are pale plum blossoms floating through the air. Or snow, which should cool the room but when dancing, Sung Hyunjae feels a fire building in him.
Of course it ends. Of course it does. And when it does, the fire doesn’t go out immediately. It smolders and Sung Hyunjae is left with smoke choking his throat.
There is a lot of paper scattered across the ground.
He should pick all of it up. He has a job to do.
Sung Hyunjae hates thinking of his job these days, but still, he bends over and feels for the paper, gets most of it into a stack, and then staples it and sends it off.
One of these days, he should try not to submit anything. One of these days, he’ll realize why it feels like he’s tried that before.
Instead of that, though, he sends in messily stapled packets of blank sheet after blank sheet. He’s not really sure where he’s getting the paper from these days. It feels a minute ago that he dropped them all onto the ground but he knows there’s been time since then.
One time, he staples a paper to itself and sends it in. There’s nothing that comes back except more paper. Another time, he folds two papers and then staples the two of them in the center, then crumples it.
Once again, nothing comes back except more paper.
He used to think that this job held some importance. Sung Hyunjae was a name that meant something. It’s why he’s always Sung Hyunjae to himself, not just Hyunjae, not anything else. Sung Hyunjae, that full name, has purpose and if he is here, then he must have some great job in this landscape of paper, no?
He is delusional at this point, he will gladly admit that. But even so, he’ll accept a single truth.
Sung Hyunjae is nothing here, and nothing is all that he’ll ever be.
Hyunjae looks up. The ceiling bleeds into the walls. Even the mail slot, which is usually such an anchor for Hyunjae, bleeds into the white and for a moment Hyunjae can pretend that he’s floating in nothingness.
Past Hyunjae was scared of this, he thinks. But truly, it’s relaxing. He’s weightless, he can’t move, and truly, he is only a speck in the void.
Hyunjae used to have a drive to do something, to be something. He thinks maybe he achieved that.
And now he’s here, in a place where he doesn’t have to do anything. The papers haven’t been stapled in days. Weeks? Perhaps longer? He’s not sure. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother him anymore.
He’s had the drive to escape from the same-old, same-old this entire time, which means that even becoming powerful—because of course he used to be powerful. Jury’s still out on if he still is—does nothing to chase away the dullness of living.
And so, perhaps this place isn’t a prison but a place to rest. Perhaps it’s an escape from living.
The vast expense will drive him insane, he knows, but at least here, there are no bounds. His voice will not echo back to him. His scratches on the walls are gone and the same paper is restored day after day. There is no impact he can make here, and thus, no disappointment at the fact that his actions, be they earth-shattering or minute, never inspire feelings.
Hyunjae doesn’t know how long he stays in this dream-world. This uniform, nothing world.
He wakes up, but only out of habit. That too will soon end but as it is, he drifts in and out of consciousness.
He… he used to have a name. Started with something. Ended with something. Meant something.
He supposes nothing really matters anymore.
In that case, he should probably continue this dreamlike feeling. If his mind never focuses on anything then this place can just be a soft embrace.
But there’s something of the old self here, and it makes him recount the facts.
He doesn’t know his name anymore, but he used to have one. There is an outside of this place. His name had a place in that outside. He had a life in that outside.
But, then comes the most important fact: that life will forevermore be in the past.
His greatest match has always been himself, he thinks, because while he keeps telling himself this (along with that it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t remember his name, what he looks like, anything like that), anytime he closes his eyes, images flash across his mind.
The images are too quick for him to actually discern details, but he sees color other than white and that’s bad enough.
He doesn’t need to be reminded of a world he’s no longer a part of, a world he’s certain he left on purpose (because why else would he have left? He did leave on purpose, right? That’s the only explanation, that’s the only reason he can think of, because otherwise—)
The man that he used to be is dead. He’s dead and gone and the room, white as funerals, just goes to show that.
He tells himself that and stares at the white until his eyes water. There’s only so long he can exist without closing his eyes, so in those moments of color, he seethes.
He doesn’t know what is and what isn’t anymore. There is what seems to be a hole in one part of the wall, but he doesn’t remember what it’s for. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out, which makes it difficult to find some supplies to cover the hole up with.
He tries to use his hands, but they’re not pale enough, contrasting starkly with the white walls. He looks at his clothes and winces at the color there.
He is a resourceful man. He thinks that he is, at least. He can find something in this empty room.
He brushes his hands against the surfaces, hand on the ground, hand on the wall, hands on the ceiling.
It’s in this pattern of movement that something sharp brushes against him, though he doesn’t even wince.
Instead, he pulls his hand in front of his eyes, squinting.
Across his fingertip, there is a red cut. Blood slowly drips out of it, falling onto the ground, causing something to curl up.
He reaches down, and picks up what he recognizes as a sheet of paper. It, except for the one red stain, is white enough.
He plasters it over the mail slot and nods to himself when it stays in place. He nods again when the red doesn’t even bother him in the same way.
After staring at that one red dot, if he closes his eyes, he doesn’t see anything. There are no flashes of images, nothing at all.
And so, he doesn’t do anything when his finger continues to drip red, on his shoes, on his clothing, across the floor like a flood. Red pulls at the edges of his vision, though when he turns to look, he sees no river, no vibrant stains.
He can’t help but feel that it’s a pity. The color is so close to another that it pulls at something in his mind.
But red is not the color he desires and there are no more memories to pull from, no more dreams to illustrate the world.
He slumps to the ground, eyes focused on that red stain. It imprints itself onto his retinas and now, the room, whether he wants it or not, is bloodied everywhere he looks.
The unconscious world is one crimson sea. He floats for now.
For now.
There’s nothing more for him to do here.
If he opens his eyes, then it is as if he is dreaming. If he closes his eyes, it is as if he is awake but only content to exist. The two states are similar enough that he doesn’t know which he’s in half the time.
He’ll get swallowed by all of this. There’s very few things that he knows anymore (he thinks he may have forgotten a lot) but he knows that, at least.
Even as there’s a part of him that’s screaming and raging and seeks to destroy everything—the part of him that he can’t just quite silence despite everything—the rest of him just relaxes as the divisions between walls blurs.
He—what is his name, again?
Well, no matter. There’s no one around to call it anyways.
He, whoever he was, falls, closes his eyes, and does not wake up.