Chapter Text
Four days before hostel life began. Living in dorms, making new friends and much more. Summer school programs were a big thing but given that the students wanted to enjoy their summer vacations, not many people enrolled. At least Donghae didn’t, until he got a call from Eunhyuk at 5 am. It was a conference call with Yesung.
“What?” Donghae mumbled, pressing his phone to his ear as he sank back in his bed.
“Guess what?” Eunhyuk said excitedly.
“What?”
“Guess!”
“I don’t knowww”
“Yesung and I were discussing how we did absolutely nothing all summer. We were supposed to go hiking and for a road trip but somehow none of that happened since we take 154967 business days to plan a trip-”
“Get to the point,” Yesung said groggily. “We don’t need a backstory at 5 am”
Yesung sounded as drowsy as Donghae. He believed Eunhyuk had woken them both up this early to share another one of his dreams where he's being chased by a flying donut.
“I enrolled in a philosophy workshop”
“Huh????” As far as Donghae knew, philosophy and Eunhyuk had no connection.
“For what?” asked Yesung in his deep bed voice.
“I was looking at the college website for like the 100th time and they had a notice for a four day philosophy workshop. It's most likely the last workshop before college starts. I’ve been begging you both to come with me to one of these workshops but y’all are lazy!”
“So you’re going alone?” asked Yesung.
“No. I just said I enrolled us in the workshop”
“Us?! You didn’t say us before!” Donghae sat up frowning. If there was anything he knew about philosophy, it was that it is boring as hell.
“I didn’t? Nevermind. I did now. We all are going. That’s why I called. Be ready at 10 am, I’ll come pick you both”
“You didn’t bother asking us even once!?” Yesung scolded.
“I knew you’d say no”
“You’ll refund me if its boring” Donghae huffed.
“Sure will”
“Me too,” chimed Yesung. He calmed down at the mention of refund.
“Cmon guys, there’s fun wherever I am”
It was at that moment, Yesung and Donghae hung up on him because their ears couldn’t handle so much lie.
------
Next morning; 10 am
Eunhyuk parked his car at the exact location shown on the gps.
“This is the building??” Donghae said, peering out of the window. There stood a dirty brown three storey building.
“This looks shady as hell,” Yesung remarked.
“You mean exciting?” Eunhyuk nudged his shoulder with a smile.
“I mean shady”
“Are you sure this is the building???” Donghae asked.
“Yes this is the exact address I got in the mail”
Eunhyuk pushed open the plastic door. It’s windows were coated with fine yellow-grey dust. The door creaked as they entered. It was dimly lit with a stairway that led up.
They stopped when they heard the door creak again.
“Um,,hi?”
Yesung, Eunhyuk and Donghae stared at the stranger blankly.
“Y’all are here for the workshop too?”
“You too?”
“Yeah! I’m Ryeowook” the boy smiled, his eyes thinning into slits behind his puffy cheeks.
They introduced themselves and started walking upstairs together. “I was afraid I’d be the only one to sign up for this workshop” said Ryeowook
“We didn’t have much choice to be honest,” said Yesung, glancing at Eunhyuk.
“Cmon now, we just need each other to have fun right”
“Right!” Donghae cheered.
Such moments made Yesung feel he was babysitting dumb and dumber.
They reached the top floor. It opened into a shabby room. Light poured in from the cracked windows, illuminating the graffitis on the walls. It was a shabby room yet it was much cleaner than the rest of the building. Like it had been cleaned up recently.
“Welcome boys!” said a man emerging from the shadows. “Take a seat” he said pointing at the foldable chairs that lay stacked in one end of the room. They pulled out one chair each and sat in a single row in front of the man.
“I am Siwon, your philosophy professor”
Siwon was dressed in black from head to toe. Black shoes, black trousers and a thin black turtleneck that hugged his lean figure. He had swept back neatly combed shiny black hair. He looked nothing like a philosophy professor. In fact, he looked too young to be teaching philosophy in the first place.
Two more people arrived and took seats behind Eunhyuk and Donghae. Few minutes later, two more boys came in. After waiting for some more time, Siwon figured there weren’t any more people coming in.
“Let me introduce myself. I am Siwon, your philosophy teacher. You all may introduce yourselves and the reason why you’re here”
When nobody else answered, Leeteuk did. “I am Leeteuk and I am here because I enjoy reading books on philosophy. Helps me understand the meaning of life better”
“Kim Heechul” said another boy lazily raising his hand. “I’ve always found philosophers pretentious so I am here to find out if they actually know more about life or its just some preachy bs”
“I’m Donghae and my friend enrolled me here at 4 am so I had to come”
“I’m Shindong and I was bored, so I’m here. Not that this seems any more interesting but at least it's better than watching Netflix all day”
“I am Cho Kyuhyun. My mum wanted me to get out of the house more so she made me sign up for this”
“I’m Eunhyuk and I am pumped for this workshop! My friends are here too, Yesung and Donghae. I enrolled them so we could spend some productive time together”
“My name is Ryeowook. Like Leeteuk, I read a lot about philosophy so I decided to give this a go”
“And I am Yesung.” he said, realizing that he was the last person. “I am promised a refund if this turns out to be boring, so here I am”
“I can promise you, you won’t be asking for a refund!” Siwon said with a broad smile “Let’s begin!”
"So,,,do any of you know about the trolley problem?” Siwon asked, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned on the table behind him.
Heechul raised his hand. Everyone turned their head towards him.
“What? Its famous”
“Would you like to explain it to everyone?” Siwon asked.
“Uh,,,okay…. It is a problem that tests who we choose to kill. If you pull the lever you save five and kill one but if you don’t you kill five”
There was dead silence. Nobody understood what Heechul said.
“Alright, I’ll take it from here,” Siwon said. “Imagine a trolley with failed brakes. It's speedily running down the tracks. At one point the track splits into two tracks. One has five people working on it while the other has one. Now, you are standing right next to a lever. If you pull the lever the trolley switches to the track that has one person on it. If you don’t pull the lever, the trolley continues on the track with five people on it. There is no way to stop the trolley so what do you do? Pull the lever and save five people by sacrificing one or not?”
The boys looked confident with the answer in their head. It took them hardly a second to decide.
“Raise your hand if you chose to pull the lever”
Everyone did, except Eunhyuk.
Siwon chuckled. “So there is someone who would let five people die, hmm, interesting” He said, making eye contact with Eunhyuk.
“I would just ask them to move away from the tracks,” Eunhyuk shrugged.
“You can’t do that”
“Why not?”
“Stick to the problem. Don’t think out of the box”
“Fine. I’ll pull the lever and let one man die then” Eunhyuk rolled his eyes.
“Good. There's nothing wrong with your choice. That’s what most people would do. If you have to choose between saving one and five lives, of course you will choose to save five” said Siwon. “Moving on, now imagine you are on a bridge over the same track and there is a man with you too. The same unstoppable trolley is coming towards the five workers. If you push the man off the bridge, it will be enough to block the trolley and make it stop. What do you do now?”
The responses were varied this time.
“Raise your hand if you would push the man off the bridge”
Leeteuk, Donghae and Eunhyuk did not raise their hands.
“You three. Would you like to explain why you wouldn’t push the man off?”
“I’ll be guilty of murder” said Donghae.
“But that’s exactly what you did in the previous situation”
“That was different,” said Leeteuk. “Pushing someone to their death with your own hands is different from letting them die by pulling a lever”
“Exactly. I save five people but what do I get? Imprisonment for murder. No thanks” added Eunhyuk.
“Eunhyuk, it’d be great if you don’t think beyond the problem,” Siwon said with a smile.
“Thinking of it rationally, anyone would choose to kill one person over five people,” said Kyuhyun matter-of-factly.
“Kyuhyun, why don’t you answer the next question”
“Sure”
“We are back to the lever and two tracks, except this time the one person is your mom. What do you do now?”
Without missing a beat Kyuhyun said, “save my mom, duh”
“You just said it's more important to save five lives over one”
“Not if that one is my family”
“Do all of you agree with this?” Siwon asked.
Everyone nodded, glancing at each other.
“So you’re saying it's okay to kill for family,” Siwon said with a faint smile and a sinister look in his eyes. His gaze gave Yesung chills. Yesung wondered if he was the only one who felt uncomfortable by that sentence. Siwon could’ve worded it better. Yesung raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I think what we mean is, it’s okay to let strangers die to save your family from fatality”
Yesung expected Siwon to get angry. Instead, he nodded in agreement with a rather amused expression. “And the difference between what you and I said, is?”
“The difference is sanity,” said Yesung confidently. He bet none of the others understood what he meant, but Siwon did and that was enough.
“Care to explain?” Heechul asked.
“When you say it's okay to kill for family, it could mean anything. A boy broke your sister’s heart? You shot him. Someone bullied your little brother at school? You stabbed him. Killing for your family could mean anything if you take it literally and that is not okay”
“Damn bro, you really think a lot,” Heechul chuckled.
“He’s not wrong though” said Siwon.
“Of course we know that. Only a crazy person would kill for such petty reasons” said Kyuhyun.
“Petty? Wouldn’t your blood boil if someone bullied your younger brother?” asked Siwon.
“I wouldn’t murder the bully for that! I get it, bullying is bad and whatever but there are less violent ways to settle it”
“Sometimes violence is the only option,” Siwon shrugged. “This brings me to the highlight of this workshop” Siwon distributed a blue file to each of the students. They flipped it open, comparing it to the file their neighbor had received. All the files had the exact same content. Lots of pictures, notes, handwritten pages etc.
“This is a cold case from 10 years ago. You all must be 8-9 years old then so I don’t know if you know about this. It was pretty heart wrenching. Girls disappeared. Only their fingers were found. The evidence was so less, police had to eventually give up”
The words cold case sparked everyone’s interest. They began looking into their files more keenly.
“Your college starts in three days, which means you have two days and counting today, you got three”
“For what?” asked Heechul.
“To solve the case”