Page 7 of Break Room
‘She simply cannot be a liar. I can tell from her face; she has the kind of face that can’t hide her true feelings,’ Tumbler replied casually.
So as well as being an environmental activist, Tumbler was also a self-proclaimed face-reader. I thought he must either be an expert at sizing up other people in ten seconds flat, or a gullible fool who was ready to accept anything at face value.
I caught Coffee Mix subtly shaking her head at Tumbler from behind. In that moment, it was clear to me – there was no chance of them forming any kind of alliance for the duration of the game.
One hundred minutes per day felt like far too short a period of time to truly observe much of anything. But the superficial small talk we’d shared had already offered some glimpses into people’s personalities. Monologue seemed determined to keep to himself, fitting his nickname perfectly, while Tumbler appeared content, convinced that Cake was all he needed.
That afternoon, I learned something new about Coffee Mix: she lacked patience. It showed not just in her words but in her actions. She admitted she preferred the taste of espresso from the machine but hated waiting for it to brew, so she always chose instant coffee mix with hot water from the tap instead, even though it tasted inferior.
By this point, it seemed everyone had already done a general scan of the space earlier in the morning. Now, in the afternoon, they opted for a strategy of breaking up the remaining time as efficiently as possible, focusing on the areas they had mentally marked to investigate quickly when no one else was around.
I found myself doing the same – listening closely for the sounds of doors opening and closing while working in my office room, waiting for the noise to fade before sneaking around to have a look in the break room. At one point, I ran into Monologue, who was meticulously wiping away ground coffee residue around the espresso machine with a kitchen cloth. He muttered something about despising powdered products as they leave such a mess, but the encounter yielded nothing remotely helpful.
I also noticed some of the small appliances were slightly out of place, as if Tumbler had picked them up again the way he had when we first came to the break room. I lifted them myself to check underneath, but, as expected, found nothing. In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t an escape room, and such problem-solving methods might not work here, but I couldn’t stop the ‘what-if’ scenarios from spiralling in my head.
Before I knew it, I was on my knees in a rather ridiculous, cat-like pose, craning to peer underneath the fridge. That’s when I came face to face with Cake. And in that instant, as our eyes locked, I realised just how outrageous I must have looked. Embarrassed, I jumped to my feet and brushed myself off, pretending that nothing had happened.
On the first day, I found myself going in and out of the break room nearly twenty times, which surprisingly helped me ease into the rhythm of this unfamiliar environment. The power of routine kicked in as I worked through my usual daily tasks, making it feel as though I was simply working from home. The strategically placed cameras, which initially felt intrusive, began to fade into the background. Still, whenever a camera zoomed close enough to catch my face, I couldn’t help but subtly tilt my head to highlight my left side, which I considered my better angle.
By 5pm, as the first day drew to a close, everyone looked visibly exhausted. I had skipped lunch but didn’t feel hungry at all; I was too preoccupied with hovering around the hallway, trying to save my precious break-room minutes. But all I managed to do was skim through leftover trash bags from late food deliveries that the other players had left out for the production crew to clear away. It seemed many of them had skipped lunch as well, only to cave to hunger and order meals later in the day.
‘No, that can’t be real. Okay, alright. I’ll head back to my flat.’
I heard the commotion from the break room as I stood up, having just finished sifting through the last remnants of the food delivery in front of Monologue’s room. It was Coffee Mix, arguing with one of the production staff.
‘You have already used up your hundred minutes. You’re not allowed in the break room any more today,’ the staff member said firmly.
Coffee Mix had been trying to break the only rule we all knew: No more than 100 minutes in the break room. When her time reached 101 minutes, the production crew stepped in and escorted her out.
‘How are we supposed to break the rules, then? Isn’t this the only rule we have?’ Coffee Mix sulked as the staff member dragged her back to her flat. She was right – it was the only explicit rule we’d been given. Or perhaps the hints weren’t meant to be earned by breaking such an obviously stated rule. I resolved to keep a close eye on the first player to successfully receive a hint. They would be my primary suspect as the mole. After all, if nobody figured out how to earn the hint, the production crew would probably have to intervene – and the easiest way for them to do that would be through the mole. Yet, as far as I could tell, none of the crew seemed to be taking any action. From other shows I’d watched, I knew production staff often hovered nearby, following the players or sometimes even conducting interviews. But here, they stayed entirely out of sight.
All I could do was focus on my work, working just as diligently as I normally did – if not more so, in order to make up for the extra time I was spending in the break room. At one point, I wondered if this entire show was an elaborate ruse, some bizarre work seminar or sophisticated corporate workshop disguised as a reality show by my company. What a cruel trick that would be!
What was Il-Kwon’s game, gathering all of us in this strange place? What exactly was he trying to achieve? I furrowed my brows, replaying his last words in my head, trying to decipher their meaning.
Then, it hit me – I suddenly remembered his response to our last question. Somebody had asked him what he would do if nobody managed to find a hint, and he had replied with calmconfidence, ‘We’re fairly certain that you’llallfind them,’ slightly emphasising the word ‘all’.
What did he mean by that?What made him so confident that all of us would inevitably get a hint card?
That got me thinking – what were the things we were all naturally inclined to do? The habits we defaulted to without even realising it? After all, weren’t we brought here because of our notoriously off-putting behaviours, the way we rubbed others the wrong way?
Then it clicked: Il-Kwon’s background in documentary filmmaking. Documentary directors went to great lengths to control situations, making them as realistic as possible. If those tendencies still lingered in him, it explained his minimal intervention on the set. Plus, if his goal was to reveal our most unfiltered, discomfiting behaviours, then we were the perfect cast.
So, fine. If that’s what he wanted, I’d give it to him.
I headed straight to the break room. My watch read 5.57pm, and the place was empty. I pulled open the heavy fridge door, and a gust of cold air wafted towards me.
Sitting there in the middle was a big, yellow cake box.
The fridge was already exploding with everyone’s leftover food from lunch, but the cake box hogged most of the space. The door shelves were crammed with an array of drinks and a chaotic collection of leftover sauce packets from delivery meals. The sheer messiness of it all felt suffocating, like a weight pressing down on my chest. I grabbed the Post-it note stuck on to the box – ‘Cake’s cake! Do not touch!’ – and crumpled it in my fist.
I opened the big yellow box and found, to my surprise, a comically trivial chocolate cake inside, barely the size of my palm. Without bothering to search for a fork, I picked up the cake knife included in the box, hacked off a large chunk, and shoved it straight into my mouth. The heavy chocolate cake –a flavour I didn’t usually enjoy – tasted like pure bliss. That’s when I knew without a doubt: this had to be it.
CHAPTER
Five
I devoured the cake in a frenzy, finishing it in just under three minutes. It was my way of showing total commitment to breaking the rules, knowing the staff were surely watching from somewhere. And like someone who had never even heard of manners, I left the empty box, smeared messily with cream, right where it was and walked out of the break room.
