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Chapter Text

Harsh lights against his eyelids. A steady beeping. Dull pain slowly coursed through his veins, lighting up his senses.

Gi-hun was alive.

He forced his eyes open, scanning his surroundings. A hospital room, barren and white. A singular get-well-soon card on his window sill and an IV hooked up to him. An oxygen tube filtering his breath. His body, wrapped in bloody linens and his left leg in a cast, logically, should have been erupting with pain by now, but he felt nothing. Maybe thanks to whatever the IV was pumping through his veins.

He was out of the games. Somehow. The last he remembered was…

Jun-hee, falling, falling, falling. The baby crying in his arms. And then, nothing.

He craned his head.

Before it all went fuzzy, he was holding the baby. He was looking down at her little scrunched-up face in fits of sleep and thinking of Ga-yeong and how he had failed her. How he would die in these games and she would never know.

But he was alive and the baby was not here. Had she…? Would the Frontman really be so cruel as to let her die? The thought itched at his brain, something below the surface begging to be set free, but it never materialized. The Frontman may have been a monster, but he was still human beneath the mask.

His eyes went to the card on the sill again. It was pure black with pink shapes etched into it.

Circle, triangle, square.

Gi-hun lifted his arm slowly, because his body wouldn’t cooperate any faster than that—God, what had happened to him?—trying to reach the window sill, but his fingers fell just an inch short.

Those bastards, still taunting him!

The door swung open, and a nurse hurried towards him.

“Sir, please lie still,” she said, gently guiding his arm back onto the bed. “You’ve experienced quite a bit of trauma, and you aren’t healed yet.”

“What…?” Gi-hun tried to say. His voice was weak from disuse. “What happened…?”

“You were admitted here three days ago, unconscious, with a head injury and a broken leg, as well as several other bone fractures. You had no identification on you.” The nurse picked up a clipboard. “Would you please tell me your name?”

That didn’t answer any of his questions. It only created a million more. But he wouldn’t get anywhere by being difficult. “Seong Gi-hun.”

She scribbled down his name. “Well, Seong Gi-hun, you are a very lucky man. If your friend hadn’t brought you in when he did, you may not be here right now.”

“My friend?”

His friends were dead. He had no friends left in the games after watching them be slaughtered. His heart raced, remembering Jun-ho and Woo-seok. Maybe they had found the island, found him, and taken him out of there. It all sounded too good to be true. But there was still that card…

“Yes, he was very kind,” the nurse said. “He didn’t want to leave your side, even when we had to operate.”

That didn’t sound like Jun-ho or Woo-seok. They were nice guys, sure, but not clingy or overbearing like that. “Can I see him?”

“You’re still in critical condition, sir. We can’t allow visitors until you’re stable.”

“I’m fine,” Gi-hun said, and flashed a smile to prove it.

But the nurse looked unconvinced. “Your mental health is also of concern to us,” she said. “We did a brain scan, but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of traumatic brain injury. We’ll need to proceed forward with psychological testing.”

“Fine, then. Get it over with.”

She smiled sympathetically. “It’s not just a one and done thing, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. I do have a few questions for you, though, if you don’t mind.”

Gi-hun nodded shortly.

“Do you know what year it is?”

“2024.”

“Good. And you remember your name, which is good. What city are we in?”

“Seoul. Right?”

“Right. What is the last thing you remember?”

“I remember…” Jun-hee, the baby crying, the jump rope halting to a stop and a loud buzzer. And then a gap. Like there was something that happened between then and now that was escaping him. He hadn’t just fallen forward, had he? No, the nurse would have mentioned the baby. He was holding her, and… he was holding her. Where had she gone? “The baby.”

“Your baby, sir? Do you have a child?”

“Yes, I have a child, but she… this baby wasn’t mine. She was Jun-hee’s, and now…”

His eyes darted around wildly, between the nurse, the door, and the card. He needed that card.

The nurse was writing more on the clipboard, her loud scrawls frantic. “Who’s Jun-hee?”

How did he even begin to explain without sounding crazy? It was no use. Even if she did believe him, what could she do to help? He needed to know who brought him here, the contents of that card, and where the baby was. All things that seemed impossibly out of reach right now.

“I… I need to see the baby. Was there a baby with me?”

“No, sir,” the nurse said. She smiled again, like she thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. “It was just you.”

“With my friend? Did he have a baby?”

She thought for a moment. “He mentioned needing to take care of a child at home,” she said. “Please take a deep breath, sir. You’re showing symptoms of a concussion, and I don’t wish to agitate you any further. I’ll leave you alone for a while.”

She stood, but Gi-hun said, “Wait.”

She looked back at him.

“Can you please hand me that card?”

He turned his chin towards the window sill, but the nurse’s eyes widened. An itching feeling told Gi-hun that she hadn’t authorized anyone to come in and leave behind a card, but the games had their own rules.

She picked it up and passed it into his hand.

Gi-hun inspected the outside. Circle, triangle, square. No writing. Just like the business card he’d received during ddakji. But the inside had three words printed in the center:

Thanks for playing.

Gi-hun burned, fingers tightening around the edge of the card. The game wasn’t over. They knew it. He knew it. Just another dead-end. Another 455 dead because he believed he could play the hero. The Frontman had been right. His actions had consequences, and he was feeling the awful sting of them at full-force.

But he had not won. There must have been a winner. One of the O voters, maybe, but it still didn’t make sense. None of them would go to this length. None of them cared if he lived or died, not even the ones he wasn’t directly opposed to. He hadn’t even learned the names of the two younger men who had survived jump rope, and he was sure they had not learned his.

Someone else was out there, someone other than the Frontman, who knew the truth.

“Maybe your friend gave it to one of the other nurses to pass along,” the nurse said, but it sounded more like she was trying to rationalize it to herself. “He was a really nice man.”

“Did he ever tell you his name?” Gi-hun asked.

She paused. “I believe his name was Young-il. Oh Young-il.”

Chapter Text

Young-il was dead.

There was no denying it—after his voice came crackling through the radio, the words that haunted Gi-hun’s mind in the space between breaths, the last breath that Young-il took.

I’m so sorry.

He lived in the voids on the underside of his eyelids where all the friends he’d failed lived. Sang-woo. Sae-byeok. Jung-bae. Their faces came to him as he tried to rest, never leaving him alone. Never letting him forget what he was supposed to do. Young-il chimed into their chorus of voices, a reminder that he had failed. He hadn’t just gotten a dozen innocent people killed, he had failed to stop the games, and now he was back to square one.

Gi-hun was the one who should be sorry.

But here was this nurse, so confidently claiming that a friend was visiting by the same name of his dead ally. He wanted to believe it more than anything, that he had escaped that wretched place with his life, but it was impossible.

The Frontman didn’t leave loose ends. Loose ends were put in coffins, tied up nicely with a pink bow.

Still, he couldn’t help but question her further. “Oh Young-il? Are you sure?”

“I can look in the visitor log to be certain,” she said. “For now, you need food and rest. One of the nursing assistants will stop by shortly to bring you dinner.”

Even as he ate, the food tasteless on his tongue, his mind wandered back to Young-il. If he truly was alive, Gi-hun would drop to the floor and send his gratitude to all the gods he didn’t believe in. Young-il was the one who had stood by him unequivocally, without question. Defended him from the players who wished him harm. Rushed into a hopeless battle because Gi-hun believed it could work. And even though he had only known the other man for a few days, he felt something stronger. An innate sense that the two would be great friends who fell into the step of a push and pull that came with years of camaraderie.

There was just something different about him. Something that drew Gi-hun into his orbit. Maybe it was that Young-il believed he was special. No one had ever made him feel that way before. No one had ever looked at him that way.

His cheeks flushed from fever, and he laid back, fixing his eyes on the ceiling.

The next few days passed without fanfare, but with enough anticipation to keep him from sleeping through the daylight. He had started a physical therapy program, relearning how to walk and to strengthen his spine, which, the doctor told him, had somehow been perfectly intact after his injury, but significantly weakened. His nurse had promised to try to get into contact with Young-il, though she raised her eyebrow skeptically at Gi-hun when he’d said he wasn’t sure how to reach him.

“You don’t have his phone number? Or his email?”

“It’s… complicated.”

It wasn’t exactly easy to explain that he had met him in a death competition playing children’s games. Or that he had won his first games and come back for more. Or that Young-il was supposed to be dead.

“Can’t you look him up in the directory?”

“Not everyone opts into the yellow pages these days, but I’ll look.” The nurse sighed, patting his shoulder. “He seemed to care for you an awful lot, sir. He’ll show up.”

He did, however, manage to get into contact with Jun-ho and Woo-seok, and after a lot of back-and-forth with the nurse and a couple of white lies on Jun-ho’s part about needing to interrogate Gi-hun, the two were allowed into his hospital room.

“Ah, Mr. Seong! You look terrible!” Woo-seok exclaimed, sinking into the chair beside his bed. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

Gi-hun managed a pained smile. “I don’t know how I am.”

“Nothing short of a miracle, I’ll bet.” He glanced over at Jun-ho, whose eyebrows were furrowed together in thought. Woo-seok elbowed him. “Right?”

“Tell me what happened,” Jun-ho said. “From the beginning.”

So Gi-hun did. He regaled the moment when he realized that the tracker in his tooth had been removed. The votes. The rebellion. His voice cracked around Jung-bae’s name, but he continued on, explaining up until the end of the jump rope game. Holding Jun-hee’s baby, the last he could remember. Jun-ho and Woo-seok listened intently—Woo-seok interjecting every so often and Jun-ho just nodding along—as he spoke.

“And then I woke up here. The nurse told me one of the other players brought me to the hospital, but… he died in the rebellion. So he must have survived somehow, but I won’t believe it until I see him. I can’t get my hopes up.”

“We rescued a player,” said Jun-ho. “He escaped in a boat. Park Gyeong-seok is his name.”

“No, no, that’s not him…” Gi-hun said, though he was glad someone else escaped. “But if he could get out of the games, then so could Young-il.”

“It’s possible. But I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the games anymore. Once we found the island, everything self-destructed. We barely got out with our lives.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell of that story?” Woo-seok said. “What about the Captain being a spy?! That was a very important part.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Jun-ho said. “It’s over.”

“Is it?” Gi-hun said. “They’ll just find another island. Another four hundred people to slaughter. It won’t be over until we confront them face-to-face.”

Jun-ho’s face was grim. “I saw him.”

“The Frontman?”

Woo-seok’s head swiveled towards him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“He wasn’t wearing his mask,” said Jun-ho, tone taut. “He was just a man. A human being, like everyone else.”

Gi-hun tried to imagine the face beneath the mask. Strangely, he felt as if he should know him. That the face should be familiar to him.

He straightened, blood running cold. “I’m going to find him. I’m going to kill him myself.”

Jun-ho reached forward, tapping Gi-hun’s hand. “Maybe it’s time to give this up, Gi-hun.”

“What?”

“Look at you. You almost didn’t make it. What makes you think you’ll be so lucky a third time?”

“My life isn’t important. Not as important as the innocent people who’ll be killed if the games continue. How can you say that we should give up when they took your brother from you?”

Jun-ho fell quiet, looking to the side. He had nothing more to say, but Gi-hun got the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. There was something he wasn’t saying about his encounter with the Frontman.

Another question in the pile of never-ending questions. Maybe Jun-ho had the semblance of a point. There would never be answers for some of those questions, and maybe there would never be a ‘why.’ But Gi-hun didn’t need a why. He needed it to end, and once he recovered, he would be back in the ring, ready to go.

“I should go,” Jun-ho said. “I’ll look into finding the baby, as well as that Young-il guy. Give me a call when you get out of here. We all deserve a drink.”

The two shuffled out of the room, and Gi-hun was left feeling less content than he should have been. He should have felt a sense of relief, that a chapter in the book of his life had ended, but that didn’t feel any further from the truth.

At the very least, there was hope that Young-il really could be alive, and he wouldn’t give up hope that they would find the baby. If Young-il was the one who rescued him, then he would surely know where she was.

But Young-il also had a sick wife and a baby of his own to worry about… Gi-hun accepted that he was not his first priority, though if it was money that he needed to pay off the hospital debts, Gi-hun would gladly hand over as much as Young-il needed.

Another quiet day went by.

Gi-hun stared at the card.

Circle, triangle, square.

Thanks for playing.

“I’ll find you, Frontman,” Gi-hun whispered into the open air. “However well you think you can hide, I’ll find you.”

Then there was a knock at the door. Gi-hun turned his head, expecting to see his nurse, but standing in the door was—

“Young-il?”

Dark hair swept over his forehead, dressed in a casual outfit that suited him far better than the tracksuit, and wide eyes. It certainly was him. He looked surprisingly well for a man who was supposed to be dead.

“Gi-hun!”

Young-il rushed to his bedside, a smile on his face. He reached out to Gi-hun’s hand but hesitated before they made contact. Gi-hun gave a slight nod, and Young-il took his hand. His heart raced, like all the life was returning to him after seeing his friend.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see you earlier. I was so worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” said Gi-hun. “You’re supposed to be dead, and here you are, looking better than ever!”

Young-il’s smile softened into a line. “I thought I was supposed to be dead, too, but at the last minute, one of the guards told me to follow them. I don’t know why, but they managed to keep me safe until the end of the games, disguised as a guard. I wanted to help you, Gi-hun, but it wasn’t safe to do so. Not until the end.”

“Then you know what happened to me,” Gi-hun said. “It’s like I have a gap in my brain from the end of the fifth game to when I woke up here.”

Young-il grimaced. “The doctors said amnesia would be a possibility,” he said. “I saw it all.”

“Tell me,” Gi-hun said.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“You and the other players returned to the dormitory for the feast,” Young-il began. “They gave the rest of them spoons and forks. But they gave you a knife.”

A wave of sickness rushed over him. Suddenly, he did not want to know where this story was going with the way Young-il’s tone wavered.

“What… What did I do?”

“You killed them all as they slept. To protect yourself and the baby.”

Gi-hun’s heart dropped. It was like he was watching himself from the outside, picturing the knife plunging through the chests of the others. Had he truly done it? Killed eight other people? He couldn’t believe it. After he had killed Dae-ho, he had sworn to himself that he would never go that low again.

All he could feel was Young-il’s thumb gently rubbing over the back of his hand, a tender comfort that kept him grounded in reality, but it wasn’t enough.

“I swore I would protect them,” he whispered.

“They were going to kill you, Gi-hun. They were going to mercilessly kill the baby. You did what you had to do.”

“And that meant I had to mercilessly kill them?”

“They weren’t going to stop the games.”

Gi-hun’s anger blossomed in his chest. No matter how terrible the other players were, he had not imagined himself capable of doing such a deed. Not just that, but it felt like letting the Frontman win. It was what he wanted, to see Gi-hun stoop as low as the rest of what he believed humanity was. But humanity wasn’t that awful. He was not that awful.

He wanted to believe that he was a good person, but after Dae-ho, after this… how could he be good? He was selfish, willing to kill for his own gain. But not just for his own gain. He was saving the baby. It was for her, wasn’t it? But did that make it right?

“The next morning, the next game commenced,” Young-il said. “It was called sky squid game, played on towers. All you had to do was call a stop to the game and both you and the baby would have made it out of there, but you tried to kill yourself instead. You threw yourself off the tower.”

Then he felt the sensation of falling, of being cradled by the air as he dropped. But he never hit the ground, just floating, floating, and he was reminded of Sang-woo, killing himself so Gi-hun would get the money. A promise to his mother.

A promise to Geum-ja. A promise to Jun-hee.

“It was at that time that the staff were told to evacuate the island, and that’s when I saw my chance. I knew I had to save you, but on my way, I ran into the Frontman.”

Gi-hun set his jaw. “Did he hurt you?”

Young-il paused, and then shook his head, his eyes nothing but dark voids. “I killed him.”

He exhaled, squeezing Young-il’s hand. Over. It was over. Gi-hun only wished he had been there to see it. Maybe that didn’t make him any better than the Frontman, but he didn’t care. “Good. The bastard got what he deserved. And the baby?”

“She’s safe with me,” Young-il said.

“What does your wife think of that?” Gi-hun asked with a breathless laugh. “One baby already on the way, and now you’re bringing another home.”

Young-il looked down, silent, as if he was considering his next words carefully. For a moment, Gi-hun worried that he had said the wrong thing, something that offended him. “My wife is dead. Our child, too.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry, Young-il. No wonder you haven’t been to visit me!”

“She’s been dead for nearly ten years.” He thought he saw a tear trickle on his lower eyelid. He remembered how Young-il cried when he told the story the first time. That was when Gi-hun realized that there might actually be someone else who understood him.

“But in the games, you said…”

“What I said was true, but it all happened in 2015. The truth is, Gi-hun, that I won before, too. The sole survivor among 456.”

Gi-hun stared at him, mouth agape. Another winner? He suddenly felt a deep sense of both pity and intimacy. Young-il was just like him. “Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t have to keep it to yourself, you know. I would have understood.”

“People are always listening,” said Young-il. “It was better to keep it quiet. Besides… I’m not as brave as you. That’s what I admired about you.”

“I couldn’t feel further from brave right now,” Gi-hun muttered. He had slaughtered eight people. How was that brave? That was running away from fate. That was playing god in a place where he was a victim of the wills of those above him, tossed around and played with and gambled on like a horse. He was not a brave man. Just a very, very stubborn one, but even that part of him seemed to be waning now.

He did not know who he was anymore, and that terrified him.

“You are,” Young-il said. “May I be honest with you, Gi-hun?”

Gi-hun nodded. “You always have been.”

“From the moment I saw you, I felt like it was always meant to be the two of us.”

His heart quickened, cheeks warming. That was a bold statement.

“That’s why I approached you after the first game, when you said you had won before. I never thought I’d find someone that could possibly understand me. What we had gone through. And while we were the same in that regard, you were different from me. You are different. Honestly, when I re-entered the games, it wasn’t my intention to help the others survive.”

“Why did you rejoin, then?” Gi-hun asked.

“Why did you?”

“To stop the games. To stop the Frontman.”

Young-il’s lips quirked up. “There’s your answer. You wanted to help the rest of them, to ensure that they made it out of there alive, but I… I am not as selfless. I was willing to do whatever it took to stop the games. Even if it meant sacrificing innocent people along the way.”

“I remember that about you,” said Gi-hun. “Sacrificing a few for the greater good.”

“It’s not right, but it’s necessary.” Young-il shook his head, like he was trying to rid himself of whatever thought was in there. “You’re so good, Gi-hun, and I’m not. And seeing that goodness… well, it made me want to try to be good, too.”

“I’m not good,” Gi-hun said, despairing and turning onto his side, away from Young-il. “Not anymore. You shouldn’t want to even be near me with the blood I have on my hands.”

But Young-il gently grasped his shoulder and rolled him back over. Those eyes that always seemed to be on him were poring into his soul now, closer than ever. “But I do. That’s what I hoped, that you might wish to be friends with me outside of the games. Is that something you want, Gi-hun?”

“I… of course I do,” he said. How could he ever deny Young-il, so earnest and so kind? “I’m just afraid that I’ll lose you, too. I already did once.”

“You won’t lose me,” Young-il assured him. “The games are over. The Frontman is dead. I’m not going to disappear.”

For the first time since waking up, Gi-hun felt a sincere sense of hope. That he might be able to live, that he wouldn’t be so alone, that he was finally free.

But he glanced over at the card on the window sill once again.

Circle, triangle, square.

No, no, he did not need to think of that now. It probably meant nothing. Everything was over, and he had Young-il by his side. He was free.

Chapter Text

At the end of his hospital stay, Young-il offered for Gi-hun to stay in his apartment with him until he was back on his feet.

Gi-hun accepted.

How could he not? He was tired of living alone, and he was still in a leg cast and using crutches for the time being. Besides, Young-il seemed eager to help. They both needed someone to fill in the spaces of their lives.

He was mostly healed physically, but his mind was still working against itself. He had not yet remembered the missing pieces of the games, and he feared it would never come back. But would that be so bad? He would rather not remember what it felt like to kill, if he didn’t have to. That could remain in the recesses of his mind, never to be brought to light. Still, there was a strange part of him that wanted to know, as if knowing the gory details could help him justify the act to himself. That it was out of self defense. That they were going to hurt the baby. But Young-il had said they were asleep when he turned the knife on them. Defenseless. Not innocent, but helpless either way.

There was no justifying it. There was only forgetting.

He took the card with him, because there was something telling him to not leave it behind, but he hid it from Young-il. All of that was in the past, and he didn’t need to dredge it back up because of his own stupid mind being unable to let it go.

Young-il’s apartment was not anything overly fancy, not for someone who had won 45.6 billion won, but Gi-hun could not judge when his own money had got untouched. He was just grateful to Young-il for everything he had done for him. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that while this place was meant for two, he wasn’t the second person Young-il had imagined. It was supposed to be him and his wife. Young-il, his wife, and their child. He was never a part of that plan.

Gi-hun shifted his weight, making his way to the closed door at the end of the hall. “Is this the guest bedroom?” he asked.

Young-il glanced past him, towards the door. For a moment, Gi-hun thought he saw a frown form. “No. It’s the nursery.”

“Ah.” Then Gi-hun realized. The nursery he had never used. The nursery that was meant for his unborn child. “Oh! I’m so sorry, Young-il. I really don’t think before I speak.”

Young-il just shrugged it off, opening the door to reveal a nursery, painted a pale yellow. In the center, a crib, decorated with a mobile and many toys. “My wife insisted,” he said. “She wanted the baby to live so badly. She wanted to know that they would have a good life without her.”

“Maybe we can put it to use now,” said Gi-hun. “I promised Jun-hee that her baby would be safe.”

“Truthfully, I didn’t think of raising her myself,” Young-il said. He stared into the empty room, and Gi-hun wished now that he could read his mind, understand what he was thinking. “I’m… afraid that I won’t be able to provide everything that she needs, so I hired a nanny to take care of her.”

“The two of us combined have billions of won. She’d have everything she wanted.”

He turned to face Gi-hun. “You must know that providing a child with only their material needs and wants isn’t all it takes to raise them. They need someone to provide them with emotional stability.”

“Of course I know that,” Gi-hun said, a bit flustered. “My own daughter, even when I had nothing to give her… I loved her. I love her.”

But it wasn’t enough. His heart stung. Young-il didn’t know what a failure of a father he was, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted him to know.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Young-il. “Having enough to give her, but not enough love.”

Gi-hun faltered. He wanted to ensure the baby’s safety, but he also wanted to respect Young-il’s wishes, to not force him back into that dark time in his life where he had lost everything. Besides, Gi-hun had his own daughter to worry about, even if she was across an ocean. “Maybe Jun-hee has a living relative who can care for her.”

“I’ll look into it. I used to be a detective, so they shouldn’t be hard to find.”

Gi-hun raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything, watching Young-il’s neutral face. There was something more behind his eyes. Something like remorse or regret. Something that Gi-hun was all too familiar with.

“Do you have a phone?” he asked.

“You can borrow mine,” Young-il said, fishing it out of his pocket and handing it over. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Once Young-il was down the hall, Gi-hun stepped inside the nursery and dialed a number that he had committed to memory.

The phone rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four—

“Hello?”

Ga-yeong’s voice echoed through the phone, a bit tinny but unmistakably his daughter. Tears sprung to his eyes, but he urged them back. Last time he had called her, he had not been brave enough to speak, but he would be now.

“Hi, Ga-yeong.”

“Dad?” she said. When he hesitated for just a beat, she continued on, “Was it you who called a few weeks ago?”

“It was,” he said. “I-I’m sorry about that. I was in a bad way, and I just got out of the hospital and—”

“Hospital? Did you get in another fight?”

He heard Eun-ji’s distant voice in the background and silently cursed himself. He hadn’t meant to worry either of them, but there was no good way to explain anything to them, even with a lie. “I’m fine. It was an accident. I’m okay now, I promise. I’m going to visit you as soon as I can, okay?”

“Soon?” Ga-yeong asked, hopeful.

“Soon,” he said, eyes fixed on the crib in the center of the room. “Soon, I swear. How’s school? Are you making friends?”

“Yeah, school’s good. I have a few friends. But I miss Korea, and my friends here just don’t get it…”

Eun-ji’s voice again, and a male voice he didn’t recognize.

“Sorry, that’s Mom.”

“Ah, no, it’s probably early for you. You should go to sleep, Ga-yeong, I’ll call you another time when it’s not so inconvenient.”

There was a hesitance on the other line. “Okay. Goodbye, Dad.”

“Bye, sweetheart.”

The line went dead, and Gi-hun stared down at the phone screen. This was a new beginning for him, a time to make amends. So why did he feel so shameful and guilty? The call had gone well. That’s what he needed to focus on. He had a friend and a roof over his head. The Frontman was dead and the games were over.

He forced the tension from his shoulders and went to find Young-il in the kitchen, who was putting away dishes.

Gi-hun slid the phone across the countertop. “Thank you.”

Young-il glanced up at him, a small smile appearing on his face. “Everything went well?”

“Well enough,” he said, leaning back against the counter to shift the weight from his crutches. “It’s just hard… to feel that part of my life has ended. I should be dead, really, but I’m here.”

Young-il knocked his shoulder against Gi-hun’s, then reached into a cupboard. “Do you drink?”

Gi-hun blinked a few times, processing his sudden mood change. “Not really, but I seem to remember owing you soju.”

“Don’t worry about that. We don’t need that cheap stuff.” Young-il retrieved a bottle of expensive-looking whiskey and set it on the counter. “Hm?”

“You don’t have to waste your whiskey on me, really, Young-il. You’ve been so generous to me already—!”

“I insist,” said Young-il, already pouring two glasses before Gi-hun could stop him. “Otherwise I’ll feel like a selfish host.”

“Oh, alright,” he acquiesced, taking a seat at the table and propping his crutches up against it.

Young-il slid the glass over to him, sitting across from him. He traced his finger over the rim of his own glass before taking a sip. “I only have one bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the couch while you heal.”

“Young-il—”

“I’m not conceding on this. It’s best for your recovery that you get a good night’s sleep, and you’re not getting that on my old couch.”

Gi-hun shut his mouth, lifting his glass to his mouth and taking a few short sips. The whiskey burned his throat, but he schooled his expression. Young-il was right; he shouldn’t argue so much when he was being welcomed so graciously into his life. Young-il didn’t have to do any of this for a man he met less than a month ago, but he did anyway. The least Gi-hun could do was accept it, but he would find a way to repay him eventually.

The two sat in silence for a while, each nursing their own drinks. Gi-hun felt his limbs begin to go weightless, all the swirling thoughts in his brain slimming out to a singular question that had been on his mind for a while: “Your first games,” he began. “How did they go, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Young-il considered for a long moment, staring at him with that look that Gi-hun could never decipher. Had he pried too far? Should he recant his question now before they both slipped down a path that they didn’t want to relive? “It was… difficult,” he said. “I’ve buried a lot of those memories. I can hardly remember the faces of those who I considered to be friends in the game.”

Gi-hun wished he could do the same, but it felt like a betrayal to his friends if he forgot them. He was the only one who would remember some of them, and now that the island was gone, there was nothing left, not even their ashes. He owed them that much, to keep their memories burning bright.

“I’m sorry,” he said, unable to come up with anything comforting enough to say.

“You didn’t put me in there, did you?” Young-il said. “No? So it’s not your fault.”

“The people who are responsible won’t be held accountable for it, so I have to.” Another silence. Another gulp of whiskey. “How did you win?”

“The same way you did. I was given a choice.”

The implications of Young-il’s words hung heavy in the air. It was another thing that made them similar. He’d known Young-il was intense, but he’d never considered what had made him so hardened was one and the same as his own strife.

“I killed them, and Mi-yeong died anyway. Six souls for hers, and it wasn’t enough. At the very least, I’m glad she didn’t have to see the way I turned out. She’d be disgusted with me.”

“Young-il…”

Young-il stood suddenly, chair squealing against the floor, and Gi-hun flinched. “It’s late.”

Now he felt terrible for upsetting Young-il, but it was clear he didn’t want to be comforted or dissuaded from the mindset he was in. He blamed himself for what happened, and Gi-hun was all too familiar with it. At the core of it, comfort did nothing for a conscience that was utterly broken.

Young-il retreated down the hallway and into the bathroom, and Gi-hun let him, the empty glass on his side of the table reflecting in the light.

He made his way to the bedroom, crutches beneath his arms. The bed was made up nice, a book on the nightstand. The Theory of Desire by Jacques Lacan. Gi-hun couldn’t say that he had heard of it before, or that it sounded like light bedtime reading, but he was intrigued by it nonetheless. He decided he would ask Young-il about it in the morning. That was what normal people talked about: books and casual conversation topics, not death games.

Still, what did they have in common outside of the games? He knew next to nothing about Young-il besides the fact that he had a wife and unborn child, and that Young-il knew nothing about him. He hoped they could bond over the mundane matters as well as the abstract.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he realized he had no nighttime clothes. Really, he had nothing of his own at all, and he didn’t want to dirty Young-il’s neat bed with his outside clothes.

Gi-hun knocked on the bathroom door. “Young-il?”

The door swung open, and Gi-hun instantly felt the urge to avert his gaze. There was Young-il, shirtless, hair wet, a towel wrapped around his waist. Clearly fresh from the shower. But he couldn’t force himself to look away. Heat rushed to his cheeks.

“Yes?”

“I… uh…” He nearly forgot what he had come to ask about in the first place. “I don’t have any clothes.”

“Take some of mine from the closet,” Young-il said nonchalantly. “We’re probably around the same size.”

“…Right.”

Gi-hun padded back to the bedroom, feeling a twinge of embarrassment curl in his stomach. What was that? Why had he been so flustered? It was just Young-il without a shirt, and he had seen other men shirtless before without such a reaction.

Deciding it was nothing, he carefully looked through the closet, full of dress shirts and far nicer clothing than Gi-hun had ever owned, before finally finding a t-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in. Getting undressed and dressed again without jostling any of his injuries was enough of a hassle that Gi-hun was exhausted. He laid down and fell asleep with little struggle, and, for the first time in a while, slept a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, Gi-hun woke to a knock at the bedroom door. He rolled over onto his other side, glancing at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 9:38.

“Gi-hun? Are you awake?”

“Yeah, I’m getting up.”

The door cracked open, and Young-il stuck his head inside. He didn’t comment on the fact that Gi-gun was decidedly not getting up. “I made breakfast. I can bring it to you, if you’d like.”

Gi-hun considered, sitting up as his bad leg stung with pain. Likely from disuse. He brushed it off, addressing Young-il. “If you wouldn’t mind… my leg isn’t great.”

“Of course.”

He disappeared and reappeared within a minute, two dishes of kimchi and rice in hand. He handed one to Gi-hun and settled on the edge of the bed with his own.

“You’re making me miss my mom’s cooking,” Gi-hun said lightheartedly.

A faint smile crossed Young-il’s face, but he said nothing.

As Gi-hun ate, his eyes drifted back to the book at the bedside. “What’s The Theory of Desire all about?” he asked.

Young-il followed his gaze to the book. “Ah. I wanted to study philosophy in school, but it’s not exactly a moneymaker, is it?” He chuckled humorlessly. “Just an old book that I’ve been sifting through recently. Why? Have you read Lacan before?”

“I can’t say I’ve heard of the guy,” Gi-hun admitted. “What does he say about desire?”

“In simple terms, desire is about lack. We lack something, so we desire it.”

“Like if you’re hungry, you desire food? That seems simple enough. Don’t need a fancy book to figure it out.”

“That’s more need than desire,” said Young-il. “Once our demands are fulfilled, we desire more.” He lifted his bowl. “Once I finish my breakfast, I want soup and eggs, even though I’m full. Desire is never satisfied.”

“But why not?” asked Gi-hun. Maybe it was a phantom stomach pang of hunger from all the meals he’d ever skipped to save food, but he couldn’t imagine eating so much more than was necessary. “Why would you eat more if you’re full? That’s wasteful.”

“To show that we can. The world is full of waste, and we show it off. We want the things that everyone else can’t have.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Don’t you? Weren’t you just saying last night that you would give Jun-hee’s baby everything she wanted?” Gi-hun shifted uncomfortably, feeling like that was a slight on his character. A contradiction of his own beliefs. Young-il’s dark eyes bored into him, his lips parted slightly, tongue darting out to pass over them. “What do you desire, Gi-hun?”

To see his daughter. For no one else to die so senselessly as in the games. For his old friends to return from the dead. That was all. It wasn’t more than he needed, or more than he could take.

“Something that I can’t have.”

Young-il nodded. “That’s Lacanianism. The pursuit of something unattainable. So we do everything in our power to attain it. Gamble for more money, exploit the most vulnerable members of society, fill our thoughts with distractions, all while we’re never truly satisfied with our most base desires.”

“So you just agree with whatever this guy says?” Gi-hun said, feeling the need to prove his point now. “Not all people are like that. Not all of us want to be the richest person in the world. Some of us just want enough to be content.”

“You say that,” Young-il said, “but how much of your winnings have you spent? How much of it have you used to help those who don’t have enough?”

“That’s not fair—”

“No, it’s not. None of it is fair, so I can’t blame you for the choices you make. And I don’t agree with everything Lacan says. He was off the mark on certain things. For example, he says that desire is unconscious, that it’s nearly impossible to fully realize what your desires are. But I believe that’s untrue. I know exactly what I want.”

“And what is that, since you’re so noble?” Gi-hun said, a touch of flattened anger in his voice.

“What we all want, deep down. Someone to love me. Someone to understand me. Someone to recognize that I’m a person.”

Seeing the earnest look on Young-il’s face caused whatever retort that formed on Gi-hun’s tongue to die instantly. All of this philosophical nonsense was getting in the way of looking at Young-il as he truly was, a human being with a heart full of hurt, who just needed someone to fill the profound lack he felt.

“You do have that,” Gi-hun said quietly. “You do.”

Chapter Text

There was a certain lightness to the next couple of days. After so long moping around and lying in a hospital bed, Gi-hun appreciated his ability to actually do something other than stare at a wall. Of course, he was in some ways restricted by his slow-healing leg, but he was still able to get around well enough with his crutches.

He went grocery shopping for Young-il and picked out some chocolates that he’d mentioned he liked, smiling to himself the whole way to the checkout at the thought of Young-il’s reaction.

There was Young-il, too, that had changed, something that opened up in him. Their conversations weren’t leaded with the heavy weight of death hanging over them, and Gi-hun felt like he could talk to him about anything. And Young-il was generous as ever, providing him with anything he could possibly need. It was almost stifling, his persistence to ensure Gi-hun was satisfied, but he appreciated it nonetheless. The two of them needed each other to stay sane.

And he hadn’t forgotten about his strange reaction to seeing Young-il shirtless, rather the opposite. The image kept jumping to the front of his mind, but he brushed it off as just a coincidence. He hadn’t seen anyone in a state of undress in a while, that was it. But it was… nice to feel something normal for once, even if that something was a repressed attraction.

When he arrived at Young-il’s apartment, he found him lounging on the couch, but there was something in his arms.

No, not something. Someone.

Jun-hee’s baby.

Gi-hun nearly dropped the grocery bags he was holding at the sight, but managed to calm himself enough to place them on the kitchen table before rushing over to Young-il and the baby.

“What’s going on—?”

Young-il just smiled down at the baby cradled in his arms. He looked so natural holding her, and she looked at peace, eyes shut. “I found an aunt and uncle of Jun-hee who are still alive. We should give their great-niece a proper home.”

Gi-hun sat down next to him, unable to help a smile of his own. “Can I hold her?”

Young-il passed the baby into his arms, and Gi-hun shifted her weight against his chest as her eyes fluttered open.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he whispered to her. “You’ve gotten so big, haven’t you?”

Holding her like this, Gi-hun’s mind flashed with the briefest image—standing atop a platform hundreds of feet in the air. It was gone as soon as it appeared, and he exhaled, unsure of if that was real or imagined. It felt like a memory, like reverse deja vu. There was probably a term for that; Young-il probably knew it. Was that part of the missing gap in his mind? The final game? Young-il had mentioned that it was played atop towers, and that he had thrown himself off to save her, but…

“Gi-hun? Are you alright?”

He blinked back to reality to see Young-il staring at him, concern creasing his eyebrows. “I’m okay,” he said. “Just… drifted into my mind for a second. You hold her again.”

He gave the baby back to Young-il, who wordlessly accepted her, trying to reconcile with what he had just seen.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence, or something his mind made up. He saw it too vividly, the square platform, the large open room. He even smelled the coppery scent of blood, tasted it in his mouth. A memory.

Gi-hun didn’t know why he didn’t tell Young-il at that very moment. Perhaps for the same reason he hadn’t shown him the card. He was afraid to get him involved again, to drag him down the dark spiral of his own mind when he was perfectly capable of handling it by himself.

He watched Young-il, so gentle with the baby, brushing his fingers over her newly grown tufts of hair. She smiled, mirroring Young-il’s own expression. He couldn’t help himself:

“You would be a good father.”

Young-il looked up at him, his face somehow relaxing even further. Gi-hun liked seeing him like this, happy. “I appreciate you saying that,” he said. “Though at this point, I’d probably be a grandfather.”

“Don’t say that,” Gi-hun complained. “If you’re old, that means I’m old, too.”

Young-il laughed, the sound resonating in Gi-hun’s ears.

“Oh, hey,” he said, getting to his feet but having to use the couch as an aid to stand. “I got you your favorite chocolates.” He went over to the table and retrieved the chocolates from the grocery bag, then tossed them on the couch next to Young-il.

Glancing down at the packaging, Young-il grinned. “You didn’t have to do that. They’re expensive chocolates.”

“I did, though. This is only step one in my plan to repay you,” said Gi-hun. “You’re not prepared for steps two and three.”

Young-il arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Do I get a hint for steps two and three?”

“No,” Gi-hun said, mostly because he didn’t have those planned out yet. “It’s a surprise.”

“Hmm.” Young-il glanced down at the baby, then back up at him. He was always hard to read, but Gi-hun thought he was genuinely pleased. “Thank you, Gi-hun. But you know you don’t have to repay me for anything.”

Later that day, the two of them found themselves in front of the door of Kim Jun-hee’s aunt, Hye-jin, and uncle, Jae-wook. Young-il held the baby, who slept soundly in his arms, while Gi-hun knocked on the door, nervous energy burning through his veins.

“What if they don’t want to take care of the baby?” Gi-hun said. “I mean, it’s kind of a lot to throw on a person, right?”

“It is,” said Young-il, “but we should at least give them the option. They’re Jun-hee’s family. And if they can’t take care of her, they can at least find someone who will. We’ve done our part.”

Young-il was right, but Gi-hun still felt the urge to turn back. Jun-hee had told him to protect her baby, and he had done so to the best of his ability. She would have a good life. A life that wasn’t tainted by the evil of the games, and that was the best form of protection he could ever give her.

The door slowly opened to reveal a short woman with greying hairs dressed in a robe and slippers. Her face was suspicious at first, but as she examined Gi-hun and Young-il, who probably looked quite an odd pair, her expression softened. “Can I help you?”

“Are you Park Hye-jin?” asked Young-il.

“I am.”

“We’re friends of your niece, Jun-hee.”

“Oh, how is she?” Hye-jin asked. “I haven’t heard from her in a couple months, and she was…” Her eyes drifted down to the baby, seemingly piecing everything together. “She’s not…”

“She passed away shortly after giving birth,” Young-il said apologetically. “We knew she had no parents or siblings, so we brought her daughter to the only other living relative we could find.”

Hye-jin’s eyes filled with tears, and she gripped the doorframe, bracing herself. Gi-hun could only sympathize with her, the pain at losing a family member too great to bear.

A second later, a man appeared in the doorway behind her. Gi-hun assumed this was her husband, Jae-wook. “Hye-jin, what’s going on?” he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Who are these guys?”

Hye-jin stifled a sob with her hand. “They’re friends of Jun-hee… oh, poor Jun-hee. She’s dead, Jae-wook.”

Jae-wook’s expression was stoic as he brought his wife in for an embrace. After a few moments, he turned to Gi-hun and Young-il. “What about her boyfriend? Where’s he in all of this?”

“He’s dead, too,” said Young-il.

Killed by Gi-hun. Slaughtered as he slept. Gi-hun had watched from the sidelines as he tried to appeal to Jun-hee, only to be shot down every single time. There was a reason that Jun-hee didn’t want him in her life, and while Gi-hun wasn’t convinced that he would be a good father to his child, he had very little room to talk.

“The truth is,” Gi-hun said before he could stop himself, “that Jun-hee died in a death game.” Young-il’s gaze darted over to him immediately, and Hye-jin’s eyes widened. Jae-wook froze. “They rounded up 456 of us and forced us to play children’s games, and the punishment for losing was death. And Jun-hee…”

He didn’t have to finish his thought for Hye-jin and Jae-wook to understand. They were the lucky ones, not having to relive her death behind their eyes every time they closed them. Gi-hun saw her now, Jun-hee’s pained face as she stared at him from across the bridge. Her choice, but not really a choice. None of it was willed by them, it was willed by the ones who put them in that horrid place. They were not the guardians of their own fates, even if they wished they were.

“Who’s ‘they?’” asked Jae-wook.

“We don’t know,” said Gi-hun.

“And you two…” Hye-jin looked back and forth between Gi-hun and Young-il, as if seeing something that she didn’t see before. “You were the winners?”

“No,” Gi-hun said. “She was.”

All eyes turned to the baby. Gi-hun pulled the credit card from his pocket and handed it over to Hye-jin. “These are her winnings,” he said. “The PIN is 0222. Please, take care of her. She deserves a better life than she’s been given.”

“I… I don’t know what to say,” Hye-jin said. “This is all so much, but… if you two gentlemen are telling the truth, then thank you for being friends with Jun-hee. She needed that kindness; there’s so little of it left in this world.” She took the baby from Young-il’s arms, smiling down at her. “You look just like your mother, little one.”

Gi-hun trembled, tears beginning to form in his eyes. He could have done more to save her. He should have done more. Jun-hee deserved to see her daughter, to raise her. She deserved to live out the rest of her life in peace.

Young-il seemed to recognize his state of incoming distress and squeezed his shoulder. “We should go,” he said, then bowed shortly towards the couple. “Thank you for taking her.”

“Wait,” Jae-wook said. “We need to talk more—you say all of this about a death game. Shouldn’t the police be involved in an investigation?”

“The police know, and they don’t care,” Young-il said curtly. “Why would they? It’s 400 pieces of trash taken off the streets for them. And when the trash like us who made it out of there try to say anything about it, we’re laughed off and ignored.”

“And what about justice for my niece? The ones who killed her should be locked up!”

“The overseer of the games is dead,” said Young-il. “The island the games were played on was blown up. There’s nothing left. No evidence left even if we wanted justice. The best thing we can do is move on. I’m sorry about Jun-hee.”

Then Young-il was off down the pavement without another word. Gi-hun bowed apologetically towards both Hye-jin and Jae-wook. “I’m sorry. And thank you. My name is Seong Gi-hun. If you need anything, please find me.”

He hurried after Young-il, which was a hassle on his crutches, but eventually caught up to him by the car.

“You should have given them your phone number or something,” Gi-hun said as he got into the passenger seat, shoving his crutches into the back. “In case they wanted to talk more.”

Young-il was expressionless as he started up the car, but Gi-hun could feel his anger radiating off of him in waves. “I don’t want to talk more.” He glanced over at Gi-hun. “You shouldn’t have told them about the games.”

“Why not? They deserve to know.”

“So they can spend the rest of their lives despairing about the terrible way their niece died without even a body to bury?”

“It’s better than not knowing at all!” Gi-hun exclaimed. “It’s better than thinking she disappeared without a trace!”

“They would have gone the rest of their lives feeling a little bit sad about their missing niece, but they would move on eventually. Now, every time they look down at that baby, they’ll see her. They’ll see her and think of her death.” Young-il dragged a hand down his face. “This was a bad idea.”

“It was your idea,” said Gi-hun as the car started down the road.

Young-il said nothing, and Gi-hun felt more justified in telling Jun-hee’s family than he had before. And there were more people who deserved that truth, too. People who didn’t deserve to live in the unknown for the rest of their lives.

“I want to tell Jung-bae’s family what happened, too,” he said in the quiet.

“Do you really need to go on a whole apology tour?” Young-il said. “You’ve done enough damage.”

“Jung-bae’s ex-wife was my friend, Young-il. I babysat their daughter. I have to tell them.”

Young-il frowned. “I’ll say again that it’s a terrible idea.”

Gi-hun folded his hands together, pursing his lips as he remembered Jung-bae’s cryptic attitude towards Young-il. He had never made sense of it, his suspicion. “You two were always weird.”

“Were we?”

“After you went together in that room in mingle, he said he was worried about you, and that there was something he needed to tell me.” But he never got the chance. “I thought the paranoia was just getting to his head, but I never considered there may be something more to it.”

“Ah,” Young-il said. “I think I know what it was. When we got to the room, there was already someone inside. There was no time left to find another room, and so… you can surmise what happened next. I took no pleasure in what I did, and Jung-bae was justified in feeling unsure about me.”

Gi-hun huffed out a breath. “Oh.” He shook his head. “And here, this whole time, I thought he was jealous.”

“Jealous?” Young-il asked, amused.

“Yeah, jealous. You and I had grown close so fast, and, really, in a strange way, I felt closer to you than I did to him, even though I’d known him for over twenty years.”

Young-il stared straight ahead, and Gi-hun tilted his head, unable to get a read on what he was thinking. “That’s ironic, considering how when you chose him to go with you during the rebellion, I was jealous.”

Something burned in Gi-hun’s chest at the thought that Young-il was jealous because of him, had wanted to be chosen over Jung-bae. It was wrong, so wrong, to Jung-bae’s memory to feel that way, but he couldn’t help it. Still, “Some choice that turned out to be. You should be glad it wasn’t you.”

“The choice you made was the only one you could,” Young-il said. “You trusted him. You knew he was just as dedicated to the cause and capable of holding his own. And I was just someone you met three days ago. How could you know that I wouldn’t betray you? That I wouldn’t get the both of us killed?”

“Because you’re not that kind of guy, Young-il. You’re good.”

Young-il turned a corner, entering the neighborhood of his—their—apartment. He didn’t seem to want to argue that point again, so deadset on believing that he was a terrible person. Gi-hun wished he could make him see what he saw, the man who’d trusted him even when he was wrong about dalgona, the man who had saved his life during the pentathalon, the man who stood by his side unwavering no matter what. How could that man not be good? How could he be so convinced that he was bad?

The same way Gi-hun believed he himself was bad, he supposed. It wasn’t easy to unravel that.

“I still think we should tell his ex-wife. She has to know that Jung-bae didn’t just disappear. He was murdered.”

“He gambled his life away. And he voted to stay.”

“So did you!” Gi-hun said. “We would’ve been out of there after the first round if you hadn’t…” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. If Jung-bae was here, he would tell them to stop fighting. To stop placing blame where there was none. But the truth was that there was blame to be placed. “It’s my fault that he’s dead. It should’ve been me who died, not him. So I owe his ex-wife an explanation.”

“Are you going to track down the families of all of those who died in the games?” Young-il asked. “What about your previous games? Did you tell them all about what happened?”

Gi-hun thought of Sang-woo. Thought of his mother, who would never know the truth about her son, and suddenly felt ashamed.

“Where do you draw the line? Who’s the most deserving of that knowledge? Do they deserve to know at all?”

“Stop,” Gi-hun said. “I get it.”

“Are you going to tell Dae-ho’s parents that you killed him? Are you going to tell his sisters that you choked the life from their baby brother?”

Gi-hun’s heart thumped painfully in his chest. There was nowhere to escape to, not from his own mind, from the painful reminder of what he had done. Before he could stop himself, he was scrabbling for something to say, something he could use to stoop down to Young-il’s level. “Do you really think that everyone just moves on from the people they love?” he shouted. “Do you think that if you died in your games, that Mi-yeong would just… move on?”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. The air turned cold. Young-il’s fingers gripped tightly around the steering wheel. “Don’t fucking say her name,” he said, voice low. “You have no right to talk about her.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Gi-hun stammered. Young-il could be scary when he wanted to be, and he had never been on the receiving end of it before. It had always been in defense of him, aimed towards others, but now the sharp angles of his face looked like they would cut like blades. “I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Young-il said, deflating against the seat in an instant, like he’d never been angry at all, like he was no longer keeping his hand in some bet with himself. “No, you didn’t mean it. You’re just passionate about what you believe. Stand by what you believe, or don’t say it at all if you don’t mean it. I meant what I said, so don’t tell me you didn’t mean it.”

But the worst part was that he did mean it. He wanted Young-il to see the way he thought, the greys hidden between the black and white. No one just forgot about the people they cared about, even if the pain eventually shrunk into something small enough to ignore. They were always there to haunt them.

That’s why he thought of Sang-woo so often. Jung-bae. His old friends who had seen him through the rough patches in his life. And Sae-byeok. Jun-hee. Those he had only known for less than a week, and yet felt haunted by anyway. They’d worked their ways into the fabric of his soul and stayed stitched in there. Even the ones who had died at his hand. Dae-ho. Myung-gi. The ones he didn’t know the names of. He remembered the details of their faces too vividly, and they would never leave him.

“I didn’t mean it, Young-il,” he said, guilt swirling in his stomach.. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought her up.”

But he couldn’t take it back. He had crossed a line, and there was no toeing over the other way.

Young-il didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. He parked the car in front of the apartment, and then got out, slamming the door. He didn’t wait for Gi-hun to follow after him, disappearing inside the building.

Gi-hun leaned his head against the car window, sighing. He had fucked up, plain and simple, yet he had forgiven Young-il the instant he brought up Dae-ho. He had deserved that blow, but Young-il didn’t deserve any of this.

Young-il deserved so much better than him and the hand he’d been dealt. Desire, desire. All he desired was someone to understand him, someone to be there for him, and Gi-hun was doing a terrible job at making him feel understood. Making him feel wanted.

Somehow, outside the death game, everything felt so much more complicated than inside of it.

Chapter Text

Two days passed in silence.

Young-il did not speak to him at all, hardly even looked at him. It was like they were in their own separate worlds—Gi-hun confined to the bedroom and Young-il to the living room.

There would be times when Young-il left the apartment for hours on end, and only then would Gi-hun exit the bedroom. Fix himself an easy meal if he felt like eating at all, but the gnawing in his stomach was growing to something that couldn’t be sated. Use the bathroom when he was able to drag himself out of bed.

For the other twenty-three hours of the day, all he could do was lie there and think. Think himself into circles remembering the games, remembering his dead friends, his mother, his daughter…

He thought about Mi-yeong, Young-il’s late wife. He had seen pictures of the two of them, younger, happier. Young-il had life in his eyes in those pictures, before everything went wrong, and Gi-hun thought he had seen the semblance of that life once again when he had smiled at him, but it was gone now.

All my fault, was the only thing Gi-hun could think. It’s all my fault.

And the worse his mind got, the worse his body felt.

His leg ached for hours on end. His brain pounded against his skull. He didn’t even want to move. All the problems he was supposed to be healing from came back at full force, and he was helpless against it.

Then there was the card that he kept tucked away beneath his pillow.

Thanks for playing.

Circle, triangle, square.

The games were over; Jun-ho and Young-il had said as much, and while he trusted what they said, they didn’t have the knowledge he did. They weren’t being taunted by… whoever had managed to make it out of there.

Because someone had. Someone survived and wanted him to know it. Wanted him to know that he was still a pawn being moved around the board against his will. He had played their game, through and through, even when he’d believed he was breaking away. The rebellion, too, was part of the game, another source of entertainment for the ones who watched.

He was probably being watched right now. Laughed at. Bet on.

Gi-hun stood, groaning when his leg flared up in pain, and surveyed the room, as if he would find any cameras hidden in plain sight. No, if they were watching him, he would never know, and Young-il was too eagle-eyed to let anything like that go under his nose.

And if anyone was watching him, who? Oh Il-nam was long dead. The Frontman was dead. The VIPs had likely moved on to newer, shinier toys, and surely the masked workers weren’t so invested in him that they would follow him off the island. But someone had a vested interest in making sure he survived during the games. He’d been stopped from killing himself during hide and seek, and he had been given a knife during the feast.

The only one with that kind of power was the Frontman. The only one who had shown any recognition that he was an individual, not just one of the 456 ants they stepped on each year, was the Frontman.

Who was dead.

Gi-hun scrubbed at his closed eyes with his palms. None of this made a single ounce of sense. Every lead led to a dead end. He had to talk to Young-il, get every single detail from him about the Frontman’s death. Perhaps there was a chance he hadn’t died. A non-lethal shot, or a secret escape, or something that could explain why he was still being tormented. Except Young-il wasn’t talking to him right now, and Gi-hun decided in return that he wouldn’t talk to him, either.

But Jun-ho had seen the Frontman, too, likely not long before his death. Maybe there was something he had seen that Young-il didn’t. Still, Jun-ho seemed determined to put the games behind him, just like Young-il.

Ugh, the both of them frustrated him. He knew they weren’t moving on—there was no moving on from something like that. They were trying to bottle it all up like it didn’t even exist.

Gi-hun glanced out the window, which overlooked the parking lot. Young-il’s car was gone. So, he secured his crutches under his arms, left the apartment, and hailed a taxi.

He needed to return to the Pink Motel.

When the taxi pulled up in front of the building and let him out, a strange feeling settled in his stomach. Seeing his old base of operations after abandoning it for a month felt… wrong. He had settled in so easily to life with Young-il that he’d nearly forgotten how it had been before. The loneliness, the paranoia, and the nightmares all came rushing back to him in one fell swoop.

Unlocking the door, he ambled through the dark hallways until he found the room he was looking for.

All of his money sat on the bed, untouched, right where he had left it.

Gi-hun pocketed a few handfuls, not more than he would need, then ventured into the bathroom. Guns still there. Further, into the shooting range. Everything was just as it had been.

It was just a reminder of how so much had changed inside the games, but outside, life went on as usual. He could walk past a thousand people and not one of them would know what he had been through. It was utterly isolating.

He turned on his heel and left, heading for the street. A couple blocks down, there was a convenience store that could supply him with what he needed: a disposable phone.

Once he had picked one out, Gi-hun found himself in the snack aisle, needing something to stave off his growing hunger. His fingers passed over the chocolates that Young-il liked, but he suddenly withdrew his hand.

“No,” he reminded himself under his breath. “I’m mad at you right now.”

He felt like a teenager again, caught in some drama between friends that would only be resolved with distance. Even with Eun-ji, it hadn’t been so terrible that they couldn’t talk. Sometimes all it felt like they did was talk, and nothing was ever solved. But Young-il could be so hot and cold, sane one moment and off the handle the next, and Gi-hun didn’t want to be caught on the receiving end of it again. Better to wait until they were both level-headed, because Gi-hun certainly was not.

The more he thought about it, the more upset he became with Young-il’s comments about Dae-ho, not just with him, but with himself.

He hadn’t been in his right mind during the fourth game, hadn’t even been in his body. It was a manifestation of all his pent-up guilt and rage that had taken over the steering wheel in his brain, guiding his limbs like a puppeteer. And Dae-ho… he had convinced himself that it was his fault. That he was to blame for Jung-bae and for Young-il and for the others who placed their misguided faith in Gi-hun’s delusions. It was easier than blaming himself, because blaming himself meant confronting the fact that he had gotten his friends killed, and that he was the reason the remaining players in the dormitory wouldn’t get out of the games alive.

But now the guilt curled around his heart like a knife, stabbing in at him from every direction. He hated himself. Dae-ho’s family would never forgive him if they found out what he did. They would never understand, and they didn’t have to. Young-il was right about that; not everyone needed to know the truth. Not because they didn’t deserve it, but because it would break them.

So maybe Gi-hun was a hypocrite, but so was Young-il.

People didn’t just forget, as much as Young-il wanted to. Ghosts lived on in the dark corners where no one wanted to cast a light. And Gi-hun was right, he knew it, that Mi-yeong wouldn’t move on, because Young-il hadn’t moved on ten years later.

After staring at the chocolates for far too long, Gi-hun finally grabbed a couple bars from the shelf. An olive branch. A conversation starter, at the very least.

He made his way back to the Pink Motel once he had checked out, sitting down in the lounge chair in his suite. He fiddled with the burner phone for a few minutes after activating it, thumb hesitating over the final number that he was about to dial.

Was this really a good idea? Was he letting his paranoia get the better of him again? And what happened if he did find who he was looking for?

The phone rang once before a voice greeted him on the other side. “Hello?”

“Hey, Jun-ho, it’s me. Gi-hun.”

There was rustling on the other end, like Jun-ho was shifting the phone closer to his ear. “Gi-hun? What’s going on?”

“I need to talk to you. Meet me at the Pink Motel in an hour.”

Then he hung up, leaving no room for argument, no clue as to what he intended to talk about.

Gi-hun thought about calling Ga-yeong again, but decided against it. They would have plenty to talk about when he saw her in America, and he would keep his promise. It would be soon, once he figured out who was after him, and he couldn’t risk Ga-yeong being in danger because of him. The fact that she was far away from all of this relieved him. No one would hurt her.

Jun-ho was fifteen minutes early. Gi-hun let him in and led him to his suite. The last time they were here, Gi-hun had him tied up in the bathtub. He was glad they could move past that now.

“You’re looking better,” Jun-ho said with a small nod, settling into the seat across from Gi-hun.

“I don’t feel much better,” he despaired. “But let’s not beat around the bush. I have some important questions for you.”

Jun-ho leaned back. “I have important answers for you. They might solve your questions before you ask them.”

“Alright, you go first, then.”

Reaching into his front pocket, Jun-ho pulled out a folded-up piece of paper. “I found your guy. Oh Young-il. Born in Seoul in 1976, making him 48.” Gi-hun nodded along. That sounded about right; Young-il was around the same age as him. “But, Gi-hun, he was reported missing nearly ten years ago, and is considered legally dead at this point. I haven’t been able to find anything on him since October of 2015.”

“His games were in 2015,” Gi-hun said.

“His games? You mean he’s played more than once?”

“He came back, like me, to stop them. But we both made it out. Thank you for looking into him for my sake, but he ended up visiting the hospital. I’m living with him now in his apartment.”

Jun-ho frowned. “Something doesn’t add up. He’s had no financial records since 2015, and he left a wife and two children behind in significant debt. Two billion won. You’d think after winning, what, 40 billion won, you’d lend some to your struggling family.”

Now that didn’t make sense. “Young-il doesn’t have two kids,” Gi-hun said, shoulders tensing. With the way Young-il talked about Mi-yeong and their child, Gi-hun seriously hoped he wasn’t lying about that, hadn’t abandoned his family, or he would have some explaining to do. “You must have mistaken him with someone else.”

Jun-ho unfolded the paper, sliding it across the table. On it was a printed picture of a man Gi-hun didn’t recognize. “Is this not him?”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. Jun-ho was mistaken after all. Of course Young-il wouldn’t do that. He was a good guy, cared about the people he loved with everything he had. “No. I don’t know who that is.”

But then who was this? Another Oh Young-il, who Gi-hun had no doubt played in the games. He was a prime candidate, being in as much debt as he was, and most would just assume the sharks got fed up with him not paying back his loans.

Gi-hun stared down at the picture. This Young-il’s hair was grown out just above his shoulders, a slight curl drooping over his forehead, and he was smiling. In a way, this man reminded him of himself before he had entered the games, a naive glow to his demeanor. His heart hurt for him, feeling the loss of a person he didn’t even know, someone who had a family, children, a life that he wanted to return to.

Gi-hun pushed the paper back towards Jun-ho. The names and dates must’ve been a bizarre coincidence. That was all.

“Ah, I was so sure…” Jun-ho muttered, then shook his head. “Oh, well. If you’ve found him, then good for you.”

“My turn,” Gi-hun said. “You said you saw the Frontman on the island. Did you see him die?”

Jun-ho’s eyes went a bit wide, then his expression neutralized. “No. I only saw him for a moment, just a glimpse of his face, and then he was gone, and I had to go.”

“Did you see anyone else? Any guards?”

“I didn’t. The whole place was empty, except for him. Why?”

“I have reason to believe the Frontman isn’t dead. Young-il said that he killed him, but… there’s a possibility that he survived somehow. There has to be.”

“Not this again, Gi-hun,” Jun-ho said. “It’s over, can’t you see that?”

“No, it’s not!” Gi-hun explained. “And I’m not crazy—I’m not. I’m not paranoid. I’m being completely serious when I say that someone is watching me. Even right now, they could be.” He pulled the card out of his pocket, thrusting it towards Jun-ho. “Look! This was in my hospital room when I woke up. Someone made it out of there, and the only one who would do something like that is the Frontman.”

Jun-ho squinted at the card. “‘Thanks for playing.’ That’s creepy.”

“Isn’t it?!” Gi-hun was getting worked up now. He took a deep breath to calm himself down. “It’s not over. I know why you think it is after everything you’ve seen, but I just can’t accept that.”

“Okay. Say there is someone from the games keeping an eye on you. Then what? Are they going to kidnap you? Kill you?”

“They’d probably want me alive. It’s entertainment for them. Watching. Bunch of voyeurs. The Frontman is the worst of them all.”

Jun-ho didn’t say anything for several moments, and once again Gi-hun felt like he was keeping something from him. He didn’t trust him fully, and he was sure that Jun-ho didn’t trust him either, an alliance formed from a common enemy, but Gi-hun was baring his soul to him, showing him something he hadn’t even shown Young-il. He wanted a little trust in return.

“You know something,” he said. “You saw something that you aren’t saying. Why? Who are you protecting?”

“There’s nothing else to know, Gi-hun. It’s exactly as I told you. Even if the Frontman did survive, there’s nothing he can do anymore. He has no power outside of the games.” Jun-ho stood. “I joined the search to find my brother and take down the games. Not to chase down conspiracy theories.”

“And did you find him? Your brother?”

“If he miraculously made it out of the games, he doesn’t want me in his life anymore,” Jun-ho said. “Maybe it’s time for me to accept that.”

Jun-ho gave a solemn nod to Gi-hun, then left, and Gi-hun couldn’t find it in him to go after him.

He looked back down at the picture of ‘Oh Young-il.’ A dead man with a resurrected ghost’s name. A coincidence, he told himself. A coincidence that left him with uneasiness and discomfort.

Gi-hun returned to the apartment at half past one. The lights were off, so he closed the door behind him as quietly as he possibly could.

On the couch, Young-il was sleeping in a t-shirt and boxers, mouth hanging half-open as he snored. Even as he slept, his face looked troubled, but Gi-hun found himself endeared nonetheless.

“Nope,” he whispered to himself. “Still mad at you.”

But against his mind’s will, he took one of his—one of Young-il’s—blankets from the bedroom and draped it over Young-il, hoping he might find a little more comfort with the warmth.

He didn’t know why he felt this way. Young-il was beginning to seem more and more like a wild card, a puzzle he couldn’t solve, and every confession he made held ten more secrets. Maybe that’s why he was drawn to him, because he wanted to figure him out. And yet he had seen Young-il at his most vulnerable, admitting the things he desired most, admitting the hard truths about what terrible deeds he’d committed in the name of survival. What could be more intimate than that? What was there left to figure out?

Gi-hun went into the bedroom and laid down, but was unable to keep his eyes closed for more than a minute. It must have been his intuition that kept him awake, because ten minutes after he got into bed, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Gi-hun said, shifting to sit up on the edge of the bed.

The door cracked open just enough for Young-il to slip in, an apologetic look on his face cast by the reflected moonlight. He sat down on the opposite end of the bed, back facing Gi-hun. “Hey,” he said. A beat of hesitation, then, “I’m sorry.”

Gi-hun didn’t know whether to scream at him or break down crying. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he stayed silent.

“It wasn’t right of me to say the things I did about Dae-ho. It wasn’t your fault.”

And Gi-hun believed him, of course he did, sounding as sincere as he did. Young-il craned his head to look at Gi-hun, pressing his lips together in an awkward half-smile.

“You were there,” Gi-hun said. “You were one of those guards. Why didn’t you stop me from killing him?”

“You had to pass the game, Gi-hun. You were running out of time. I couldn’t just let you throw away your life for…” He stopped himself. “I couldn’t let you throw away your life for nothing. And… maybe I was selfish. Maybe I just care for you more than I should.”

Young-il’s hand pressed into the mattress, centimeters from Gi-hun’s own fingers. If they were any closer right now, they’d be touching.

“Maybe? Or do you?”

“I do.”

“What makes me so special?” Gi-hun asked. “Why me and no one else? I don’t deserve to live more than anyone else!”

And then they were touching, Young-il’s hand on top of Gi-hun’s, sending a spark up his body, but he couldn’t pull away.

“You fascinate me.”

The two of them were looking at each other now, though still not face-to-face, separated by the bed between them. A chasm that could not be crossed, except for their fingers gently joined together.

“I fascinate you,” Gi-hun repeated slowly.

“Yes,” Young-il breathed. His gaze flickered down for a second, but just as soon went back to Gi-hun’s eyes. “Let’s forget about our disagreements.”

“But I didn’t get a chance to apologize—”

“Bygones,” Young-il said. “Let’s not be dishonest with each other anymore. I’ve forgiven you, and I know you’ve forgiven me, too.”

Gi-hun looked down, unable to deny it. “I bought your chocolates.”

Young-il’s smug expression made Gi-hun exhale a laugh. “You gave me a blanket.”

“You looked cold.”

“You gave me your last magazine.”

“I trusted you.”

Young-il tilted his head. “Do you trust me now?”

Gi-hun gave the slightest imperceptible nod, and suddenly Young-il was across the bed, hands still interlocked, lips on Gi-hun’s.

Gi-hun let out a muffled sound of surprise, but twisted his body to ease the angle of the kiss, heart pounding. In some way, he had been expecting this, wanting it, but never had he believed that Young-il would be the one to take the leap, to be so bold.

Young-il’s free hand came up to cradle Gi-hun’s face, but his cold fingers against his cheek shocked Gi-hun into reality, and he leaned back, wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” Young-il said, drawing back. “Did I misread the situation?”

Gi-hun shook his head. “No, I… I just… you said we shouldn’t be dishonest with each other. So don’t be dishonest with me now. Is this only part of your fascination with me?”

“No.” Young-il’s eyes were only on him. Only burning into his soul. Only giving him the truth. “It’s much more than that, Gi-hun. It’s understanding. It’s connection. It’s desire. It’s all of this combined that made me act so impulsively.”

Staring back at Young-il, Gi-hun couldn’t think straight, could hardly breathe. This was all a lot, and processing it seemed like a later problem. He climbed across the bed, halfway in Young-il’s lap before their lips connected again. If Young-il was impulsive, then so was Gi-hun, just another trait that made them so alike, two mirrors reflecting back and back and back…

Chapter Text

Pressing Young-il into the mattress, Gi-hun stared down at this vision below him. How was any of this real? He felt every single emotion that he had tried to suppress bubble to the surface: excitement, sympathy, and most of all, the desire that he had tried to deny.

In the end, he couldn’t cast it out and pretend that it didn’t exist. He wanted Young-il so much that it made his heart squeeze in on itself.

And Young-il wanted him, too, pupils blown wide, lips slightly parted as he looked up at Gi-hun.

His stomach fluttered, and he leaned down to close the gap between them once more. He hadn’t kissed anyone for a long time, and now the spark ignited into a flame, drawing him into Young-il’s orbit as Young-il circled his arms around Gi-hun’s waist.

Fingers crept under Gi-hun’s shirt, teasing at the fabric.

“Off,” Young-il gasped between kisses. “Take it off.”

So he did, because he would do anything Young-il asked. Slowly, he pulled his shirt off, and bare like this, Gi-hun felt more exposed than ever, more than when he knew he was being watched.

Young-il’s eyes drank him in, as if trying to memorize every detail of his body. “Beautiful.”

Gi-hun blushed. “Your turn,” he said, trying to escape his attention, but he was already half-hard.

Young-il took his time with his shirt before finally pulling it off and flinging it to the side, laughing at Gi-hun’s impatience. Then, before he could process it, their positions had been flipped and Young-il was suddenly on top of him, pinning his biceps in place.

But Gi-hun, in the quick switch, had jostled his leg too fast, causing him to groan. The pain stabbed at his muscles, and he curled his leg up.

“Are you alright?” asked Young-il, easing his hold on him and sitting up.

“I’m fine,” said Gi-hun, rubbing at the flesh of his lower leg. “Pulled a muscle, I think. But I don’t want to stop. Just… go slow, or something.”

“No, Gi-hun.” Young-il fully extricated himself from Gi-hun, settling at his side. “We shouldn’t risk hurting you further.”

He grimaced. He didn’t want to stop now that they had started, afraid that Young-il might somehow disappear if he let him go. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“Alright,” he said slowly. “But… just say the word, and we’ll stop, okay?”

“Okay,” Gi-hun said. “Now touch me. Please.”

“You’re awfully demanding,” Young-il chided, not mean-spirited.

His hand brushed over the bulge in Gi-hun’s pants, barely a touch but enough to cause him to twitch. Then Young-il squeezed, and Gi-hun bit back a moan. “Fuck,” he gasped.

“I’ve hardly even touched you,” said Young-il.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been touched by someone else in a while, so forgive me if I’m a bit sensitive.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Gi-hun.” Young-il smiled, continuing to stroke him through the fabric of his pants, unrelenting. Gi-hun threw his head back against the pillow, clutching at the sheets. “How long has it been since anyone touched you?”

“Mm…” Gi-hun struggled to think straight, arousal swirling in his brain. “Five years, at least. Never… Never really found anyone else since Eun-ji…”

“Until me.”

“Until you,” Gi-hun agreed.

Young-il seemed pleased with that answer, humming. His fingers plunged below Gi-hun’s waistband, ghosting his dick, and this time he couldn’t suppress his cry.

Young-il’s hand moved torturously slow as it wrapped around him, up and down in a steady rhythm that had Gi-hun writhing under his touch. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been touched so tenderly, been cherished like he mattered. Young-il thought he mattered. Young-il believed he was something worth gentleness and love. Just the thought of Young-il’s kindness nearly had him coming there and then.

It only took a few more strokes, and Gi-hun was coming with an open-mouthed moan, one that Young-il swallowed with his lips.

Gi-hun panted heavily, coming down from his high and glancing over at Young-il. “I should return the favor,” he said, reaching for him.

“Don’t exert yourself,” said Young-il, gently batting his hand away. “Just watch for now.”

Grumbling a complaint beneath his breath, Gi-hun watched as Young-il dropped his boxers, fist curling around his hardened cock. He couldn’t complain now with such a sight, but he couldn’t help wanting more.

“Look at what you did to me.” Young-il pumped his fingers a few times, then fell into a quicker pace, but his eyes were on Gi-hun the whole time. Never looked away. Like the room had shrunk down to just the two of them and the space between them. There was nothing else that mattered in this moment. “You’re so special, Gi-hun,” he said between breaths, continuing to jerk himself off. “So brave, so strong, so good.”

Gi-hun’s stomach felt tight. He wasn’t sure he could get hard again so fast, but Young-il’s words went straight to his bloodstream, pumping faster, heart racing. He wanted to touch him, wanted to bring him to his peak, but Young-il choked around a gasp, coming over his hand and stomach.

“Feel better?” Young-il asked, eyes half-lidded.

“Much,” Gi-hun said, pain in his leg long forgotten.

Young-il just smiled at him, then got out of bed to fetch a few wipes to clean up their mess, swiping away at their bodies and pulling on his boxers before heading towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Gi-hun asked.

“To the couch,” Young-il answered plainly.

“Don’t go.”

It felt like a plea. It came out as a whisper. Both ways, he felt ashamed at his desperation.

But Young-il laid back down beside him without a word, gaze fixed on the ceiling. Maybe he was ashamed, too.

Had they really just done that? Had he really just…? Well, it wasn’t quite sex, but it was close enough, frantic, rushed, and almost what they both needed. He felt that he was more connected with Young-il than ever before. Gi-hun leaned into his side. He could hear the thrum of his heartbeat, strong and steady, and found himself questioning if he loved Young-il.

It was all so fast, and if he really did love Young-il, then he’d never fallen so quickly before. And there was still something lingering in his mind that urged him not to give in so easily, but he wanted to barrel past every warning sign and throw himself into the deep end. He could see a life like this for him and Young-il: lazy mornings, conversations about everything and nothing, growing old in their small space. It was simple, and it was good.

Gi-hun traced his finger along Young-il’s bare chest, past moles and freckles, until he came across a scar on the skin of his shoulder, small and jagged but noticeable enough to anyone who paid attention. His finger hesitated over it, glancing up at Young-il. Like a movie where the character traces their lover’s scars and asks how they got it, leading to a confession of vulnerability. But that was a question for another time. Their story was not like that, one that led to a happy ending and saving the world. Their story was carved out by loss, by pain, by finding solace in the only other person who might possibly understand them.

Yet he wanted to know everything there was to know about Young-il; sometimes it felt like he knew nothing at all. Bits and fragmented pieces, scattered through time, and Young-il knew everything about Gi-hun, knew him inside and out, maybe better than he knew himself.

Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was what Young-il called it: fascination. Understanding. Connection. Desire. What degree of those emotions denoted love? And what about the reverse? Frustration. Anger. Guilt. What if he felt all of those, too, with the same intensity as the positive emotions he felt? Did they all cancel each other out, or did they combine into one?

“Why do I feel…” Gi-hun started quietly, not wanting to disrupt the tranquility. “…that I’m drawn to you, even when I’m upset with you?”

Young-il didn’t answer for a few moments, turning his head to look at Gi-hun. “Have you heard of mesmerism?”

Gi-hun shook his head. All of Young-il’s theory talk tended to make him feel a bit stupid, but he tried to keep up regardless. He knew that was the way he navigated the world, with theories and logic and observation.

“A German doctor named Mesmer posited that all living beings had a force inside of them, something that connects us all innately. He called it animal magnetism. He, as many men did, believed that this was something that could be controlled. That it could be used to control others.”

“Like hypnotism?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you hypnotizing me right now? Because I think it’s working.”

Young-il laughed. “It’s like hypnotism in a way. People believed it could be used for healing the body and the spirit. But I think it’s a lot simpler than any of these physicians claim. There is something that draws certain people together, for better or for worse. We both felt it, didn’t we? We felt that there was a magnetism pulling us to each other, though we couldn’t explain it at the time.”

“I still can’t explain it,” Gi-hun said quietly.

“Not everything has a reason, even if we want it to. Especially if we want it to. Trying to find one will just drive you crazy.”

Gi-hun considered this, watching the side of Young-il’s face. He thought of his search for the Frontman, for an answer to who was watching him. Was it possible that there was no reason for it at all? There was no answer that would satisfy him. He would just spin out in circles until he destroyed himself. And there was the other Oh Young-il, the one who disappeared almost ten years ago.

What did it all mean?

“Who is Oh Young-il?” he asked, not sure what answer he was expecting. Maybe he expected Young-il to tell him that it was a coincidence, to affirm him in thinking that it was nothing. Or maybe he expected him to tell him who he was, the ins and the outs and what made him tick.

He felt the muscles in Young-il’s arm tense ever-so-slightly, just enough to be noticeable.

“Who is he to you?” asked Young-il.

“He’s… someone who has cared for me,” Gi-hun answered honestly. “Someone who has challenged me, made me think of life in an entirely different way. He scares me a little bit, and he makes me scared of myself and the capacity of my own feelings. Who is he to you?”

“He’s someone who has challenged me, too. Scared me. Some days it’s hard to be him. He’s lived with the weight of a lot of different people from his past pressing down on him, and sometimes he doesn’t know if he should be himself or the person that everyone expects him to be. He’s someone who wants so much. Too much.” He paused, looking away. “I’m sorry.”

Gi-hun placed a soft kiss on the side of Young-il’s neck. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“Nothing that I could ever make up for.”

He wrapped Gi-hun in an embrace, like his very presence was comfort enough, and Gi-hun realized that he liked being that for someone. Being enough. So he pressed himself into Young-il, determined to make himself known. He wasn’t meant to be here, but Young-il wanted him. Wanted him to take the place of a ghost. Not just to take her place, but to make up for the pain that came after her loss, too. It was intimidating, now that they had crossed the line of no return.

“Whoever Oh Young-il is, he doesn’t have to hide from me,” Gi-hun murmured, then frowned. “Was that cheesy? Because it sounded cheesy coming from my mouth.”

The smile returned to Young-il’s face like the sun returning to melt the ice in winter, its easy warmth lightening the mood. “It was a little cheesy, but the best things are.”

“Ah, yeah, you love your cheesy jokes, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“‘Seong literally means last name.’”

“That doesn’t ring any bells,” Young-il said, feigning ignorance and tapping his chin. “Are you sure it wasn't you who said that?”

“I seem to remember you being the only one laughing.”

“I suppose my sense of humor is just more advanced.”

“We’ll go with that.” Gi-hun couldn’t help his own lips upturning, swallowing back a smile. Then, he snuggled up closer against Young-il, drawing the sheets over the two of them. “Now that’s enough deep philosophical talk for today. I’m tired.”

He fell asleep in Young-il’s arms minutes later, hoping that when he woke, he would still be there, the two of them entangled like they belonged there.

Chapter Text

Young-il was still in bed when Gi-hun woke up, already awake but sitting up against the headboard, a book open in his hands. It looked like another one of his dense philosophy books, but this one Gi-hun actually recognized: Crime and Punishment, though he had never read it. That was one of those long nonsensical Russian novels that university students read in front of other people to look smarter. Asking about it seemed like more than a simple question, so he merely studied Young-il’s face. For a moment, Gi-hun was back in the games, remembering the two of them, player 001 and player 456, in their bunks, sharing their secrets.

Then he was hearing Young-il’s voice over the radio, the whispers of what he thought were his last words. Impossibly, impossibly, he was here, they both were here, and Gi-hun had forgotten that he should be grateful that they were alive. Of course, he was always grateful that Young-il miraculously made it out, but sometimes it seemed like so much of a miracle that it couldn’t be real. That at some moment he would wake up and realize it was all a very long dream that had finally ended, and he would be alone, like he deserved.

And last night… it certainly couldn’t have been real. The way Young-il touched him, kissed him, the way they had moved together in complete understanding. If that was a dream, then he was clearly out of his mind. But Young-il was still without a shirt, which Gi-hun couldn’t help but observe.

“Good morning.”

Gi-hun blinked, not realizing how long he had been staring at Young-il and how long ago Young-il had taken notice, heat rising to his cheeks. “Morning.”

“Still feeling alright?” Young-il asked him, closing his book and setting it on the bedside table.

He shifted to sit up, rubbing his forehead with the flesh of his palm. “Yeah. All alright.”

Physically, he was fine. Not fine fine, but fine enough to go about his life without too much hassle. Mentally was another story.

Being with Young-il made him feel so normal, made him forget about all the things that pained him, and now that all the hurt came rushing back to him, he wasn’t so sure that the normalcy was impenetrable. The past would always find its way back in the crevices of his mind.

Except for that one piece. The piece that nagged at him, pressed at him to remember. And he couldn’t. Would he ever remember it fully? All he had was that one snapshot, the platform and the smell of blood, but the more he tried to envision it again, the less real it felt, like it was slipping away.

He wanted to remember. He had to remember. Curiosity was a killer, but he was being killed every second it escaped him. Gi-hun trusted Young-il’s account of what had happened, but it was different filtered through someone else’s eyes. Young-il was convinced that people did what they had to in order to survive, even when that meant slaughtering their fellow players, and while Gi-hun understood that on a fundamental level, he had to know for himself that he was justified in what he did, that it wasn’t all for nothing.

“Actually,” he said, drawing Young-il’s attention again. “I’ve been thinking of going to therapy.”

“Oh?” said Young-il. “I thought your physical therapy regime was over. If your leg was acting up again, you should’ve said something sooner, Gi-hun.”

“No, I mean, something like a psychiatrist or a counselor. Someone who can help me not be stuck inside my own head so much.” He watched Young-il’s face twitch like he was about to speak and quickly remedied his words. “Not that you haven’t been a great help to me, but… I thought it might be beneficial to talk to someone else. Someone who isn’t involved in…” He gestured vaguely. “…all of this.”

Searching for Young-il’s reaction, for some reason, made Gi-hun nervous. Like he would be judgmental, think of him as weak because he wasn’t able to compartmentalize it the way he had.

“Are you going to tell them about the games, then?” Young-il asked.

“I should,” Gi-hun said. “It would probably be the most effective that way. I just… I can’t keep feeling the way I do.”

But there was no judgment on his face. He just nodded slightly. “If you think it will help, then you should do it.”

Gi-hun almost felt bad about omitting his desire to remember that missing gap in his memory, to work on it with the therapist. It just seemed like such a small thing in the scale of everything. Mi-yeong and Dae-ho and the baby and Ga-yeong and Jun-ho and them. How could his memory matter at all?

“Have you gone to therapy before?” Gi-hun asked. “I’m not sure what I should expect.”

“I haven’t,” said Young-il. “Honestly, I’m not convinced it’s a great idea. A lot of therapists just tell you what you want to hear in order to keep you coming back.”

“You haven’t been to a therapist, but you already have your mind made up about them.”

“Most people are out for money, Gi-hun. That’s just the truth.”

He did not want to talk about the games again, not at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of their fresh start. “Aish, does everything have to be an argument with you?”

Young-il shrugged. “You asked for my opinion. I gave it. But I meant what I said. You can make your own choices. If you think it’ll help you, then go for it. Find someone who will really listen to you.” He touched Gi-hun’s hand with his fingertips, a far cry from the intimacy they had shared before. “There’s no one more than me who wants you to be happy. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself further in the process.”

Gi-hun’s shoulders relaxed at his sincerity. Young-il wanted what was best for him, of course he did. “I’ll think about that,” he said. “And I appreciate you looking out for me.”

“Always.”

The rest of the day passed in relative bliss. The two of them fixed breakfast together and watched television, some drama that was, admittedly, stupid, but Gi-hun couldn’t help but get invested in.

And they didn’t talk about it.

They didn’t talk about the desire, the kisses, the sex. It was almost like it didn’t happen. Young-il sat close to him but didn’t touch him, didn’t breach his space, and Gi-hun didn’t touch him either. He wanted to, but he didn’t.

Maybe it had been nothing more than a one night stand. A release of pent-up tension that ultimately meant nothing, and Young-il just wanted to forget about it. Gi-hun wouldn’t blame him for it. He loved Mi-yeong, and he didn’t think he would ever stop, especially not for someone as broken as Gi-hun.

But now that he had that, a confession of love, he didn’t want to go back to what they were before. Yet Young-il hadn’t said anything of love. He had spoken of desire and fascination and understanding and an amalgamation of it all but never love. He was content to believe that it was something more innate than that, something that was out of their control, but that didn’t seem right to him. Love wasn’t something that just happened. It was a choice. It was fought for. It was hard-won.

They had chosen each other, hadn’t they? Over and over again. More times than Gi-hun could count. If that wasn’t love, then he wasn’t sure he ever had loved anyone before.

He was sure of his convictions, but not of Young-il’s, so he wouldn’t be the first to bring it up. He would let the truth come out when he was ready, if it was the truth at all.

After lunch, Young-il let Gi-hun use his laptop to research therapists in the area, though he really had no clue what he was looking for. Was there even anyone out there who would be capable of handling a case like him? They would surely be horrified at hearing his tale, if they even believed it. That settled wrong in his stomach, the thought that they would think he was making up stories because there was something wrong with him. But if he wanted to remember, he had to tell the whole story. He couldn’t leave any detail out.

He was back to the thought that Young-il was the only one who truly understood him.

Gi-hun bookmarked a promising-looking page for later, not ready to commit to the idea just yet, then closed the laptop, glancing over at Young-il.

He was engrossed again in Crime and Punishment, and Gi-hun couldn’t help but read over his shoulder.

And where had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart. A gloomy sensation of agonizing, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul… If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly have heard the sentence to end. Something was happening to him entirely new, sudden and unknown… He had never experienced such a strange and awful sensation. And what was most agonizing—it was more a sensation than a conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonizing of all the sensations he had known in his life.

Gi-hun had no basis for what this character, Raskolnikov, was experiencing, but he felt it deeply in himself. The guilt, that strange and awful sensation, that refused to be named. But he had given it a name: Dae-ho. And when he was gone, it had turned back to himself.

Suddenly, he no longer wanted to read this, turning his head away. He pushed himself to his feet, using the couch as support.

Young-il looked up. “Are you okay?”

“Just… need to lie down, I think,” Gi-hun said, half-lie, half-truth. It was easier than confronting another hard conversation topic. “My leg is killing me.”

“Let’s get you to bed, then.” Young-il stood, placing a steadying hand on his arm and helping him to the bedroom. Once Gi-hun was laid down, he asked, “Would massaging it help you at all?”

“Maybe,” he said, unable to reject Young-il’s kindness. He moved to unstrap his leg brace, sliding it off with a wince. “What, you used to be a masseuse or something?”

Young-il gave a small smile, sitting down on the bed beside him and pulling Gi-hun’s leg into his lap. “No. Mi-yeong got sore often from work, and she swore my massages were the only thing that made her feel better.”

Gi-hun lifted his head to squint at him conspiratorially. “You must be a pro.”

“Guess we’ll see.” Young-il rolled up his pant leg. “Where does it hurt the most?”

“My calf,” he said, feeling a little bad that Young-il was doing all this for him when his leg didn’t really hurt terribly at the moment. And he couldn’t help the flush that spread over his face as Young-il gently began to work his thumbs into the flesh of his leg, reminded of the night before.

“Let me know if I’m hurting you at all,” said Young-il.

Gi-hun squeezed his eyes shut at the pressure of Young-il massaging his leg, leaning his head back. “Mm, no,” he said. “Feels good.”

Young-il continued to work his magic, and Gi-hun had to admit that he was far too good at this. Somehow, the massaging of his legs muscles took effect on his mind, too, easing his thoughts into a streamlined front, temporarily able to forget about the guilt that plagued him.

“What did Mi-yeong do for work?” Gi-hun asked, curious, hoping he wasn’t prodding too far.

Young-il lifted his gaze. “She was a painter. She spent hours hunched over, working on her art. I always told her that her posture was terrible.” He smiled to himself, looking to the wall. “She never listened to me, though. Said art took suffering.”

“Oh.” As far as Gi-hun knew, there were no paintings in the apartment. Whatever traces of Mi-yeong were left in Young-il, they weren’t here. “Where are her paintings?”

“There’s a few in the nursery,” Young-il said. His smile went slanted. “After her death, I took them down from the walls. I couldn’t bear to look at them, and I… guess I just never put them back up. The rest I gave to her parents. Is the massage helping any?”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re doing great,” said Gi-hun. After a few more minutes, he pulled his leg from Young-il’s lap, putting his brace back on. “Think I’m good for now. Thank you, Young-il.”

Neither of them made a move, caught in a deadlock. Young-il was just staring at him, and Gi-hun could do nothing but stare right back, and what he saw was something terribly, painfully human.

He wondered which of the two would be the first to break the tension, to snap it in half and fold. He would kiss Young-il again, if only he knew he had the right. Young-il might want to forget, to put it all behind him, but Gi-hun couldn’t, now that he knew the taste of him.

Eventually, Young-il stood, scratching the back of his neck. “Right. Well. I have to run a few errands. So.”

“Right.”

When Young-il left, Gi-hun collapsed against the bed with a sigh. Why couldn’t this be the simplest part of life after the games? Why did it have to be the part that made his stomach wind up in knots? He welcomed the idea of love, but was frustrated that it had to be tangled up in their mess, but perhaps that was just the thing that made it so special. A love like theirs couldn’t exist in mundanity. And Young-il, maybe, was like Raskolnikov. He could name the symptoms but not the feeling, because confronting that meant confronting uncertainty, navigating something he hadn’t in years.

After a while of moping, Gi-hun forced himself up and out of the bedroom, finding himself in front of the closed door to the nursery.

He hadn’t been in there since the first day at Young-il’s apartment, avoiding it ever since he realized why the door always stayed shut. It was a capsule of the past, and it wasn’t his right to unlock it. But, selfishly, he wanted to know about Mi-yeong. Young-il hardly ever talked about her, and the rare times he did were vague and brief. Knowing Mi-yeong felt like knowing himself. If she were still alive, Gi-hun got the feeling that they would have gotten along well.

Creeping into the room, Gi-hun saw a few large paintings, some up to four feet tall, leaning against the back wall. He hadn’t noticed them before, but he had not taken a good look at the room the first time. He hadn’t known that he was looking for them.

He pulled the first of the paintings away from the bunch. A light blue backdrop with several flat white clouds in the sky. Below, a lighthouse shone into the daytime off a rocky shore, small but bright. Inexplicably, Gi-hun was reminded of the games, because what didn’t remind him of the games these days? The claustrophobic walls, like a child’s drawing of the sky, splattered red with blood.

In the corner, Mi-yeong’s signature stood out in stark black. Gi-hun’s fingers brushed over it, as if touching a living piece of her.

Gi-hun had never really been artistically inclined, but he could tell that her technique was advanced, like something he’d see in a museum and try to extract the meaning from. But it felt personal. A portrait without a face.

He kept looking through the paintings, as if absorbing each one of them into himself. Each of them were unique, depicting different landscapes, but in each, he found that lighthouse. The loneliest lighthouse that kept making its way back into the painting. Was it a real lighthouse that she had seen before, or one that only existed in her dreams?

And then Gi-hun pulled back the last painting.

Hiding behind it was a small cardboard box. He couldn’t help it. He had to know what was in it.

He crouched down, lifting the flaps. A few wilted flower petals fell loose. Below them, a necklace with a gemstone that looked like an opal or pearl. And at the bottom of the box, a stack of three DVDs.

Gi-hun’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. His hands shook. On the case of each were three familiar symbols.

Circle, triangle, square.

The number 28 was beneath the shapes.

There was an explanation for this, surely, a perfectly reasonable one.

An explanation that he had to find out for himself.

He stumbled out to the living room, DVDs in hand, finding Young-il’s laptop where he left it on the coffee table. Flipping it open, he opened up the DVD player, taking a deep breath.

Did he really want to do this? This felt like crossing a line, breaching a boundary that he could never go back on, but he would never forgive himself if these DVDs had a piece of information that could help him, that could point him in the right direction of who the Frontman really was, and if he was really dead.

He didn’t even know what was on the disks, if they had anything at all on them. Maybe this all meant nothing and he was just losing it for real this time. But he would never know if he pretended that it didn’t exist.

Gi-hun placed the first disk into the player, then pressed play.

Chapter Text

He had no choice.

He had no choice, In-ho told himself, as he clutched Mi-yeong’s frail hand in his. She had noticed the blossoming bruise on his cheekbone, of course she had, nothing went unnoticed with her, especially when she only had the four walls of her hospital room to go stir-crazy in.

I’ll be gone for a few days, he’d said. I promise I’ll return to you soon. I’m going to get us some money, and then you’ll get better, and we’ll go wherever you want. Do whatever you want.

And Mi-yeong, stubborn as she was, wouldn’t let him go so easily. How are you getting the money, In-ho? I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret, not after you lost your job. Promise me you’ll be safe.

So In-ho promised. Promised for her and their unborn child. Promised when he didn’t know what he was getting himself into, only that he had to do it.

While he waited on the street, he thought of calling Jun-ho and telling him, too, that he would be gone for a little while. But Jun-ho had just landed a job in the police force, and telling him what he had told Mi-yeong would just worry him, and the last thing he needed was more worry.

He had even opened up his phone, drafting a text to Mal-soon, but the van had pulled up before he could send it. He shoved his phone into his pocket and got in without a second thought.

Now he was here—a large dormitory with several dozen beds. He hadn’t even remembered falling unconscious, but he must have at some point. In-ho reached into his pocket to grab his phone, only to find that he had been changed into a teal tracksuit. Shit. The bastards must have stolen it. Glancing around, he saw the people in the beds around him were waking up as well, dressed similarly to him and equally disoriented by the classical music blaring over the speakers.

On each of their tracksuits, a number was printed. In-ho looked down at his own. 132. Those around him had numbers all the way up into the 400s. That didn’t bode well; if these were his competitors, his chances were automatically diminished if he had to face off against four hundred.

As players began to gather in the center of the room, In-ho’s attention was drawn to the large digital sign on the far wall.

456 players.

455 people he had to beat.

A buzzer blared, and the doors slid open, revealing masked guards dressed in bright pink. In-ho stayed back, wary. He didn’t have to be a detective to know that a game played with some sketchy salesman in a subway station and guards who hid their identity weren’t to immediately be trusted.

The leader of the guards, donning a square mask, explained that the players would partake in a series of six games over the course of six days, and the winner would take home 45.6 billion won.

That was more than enough to help Mi-yeong. It was more than enough to start a new life. He had to win. There was no other option.

“Six days?” One of the other players who had hung back stepped out onto the staircase next to In-ho as the players down on the floor began to ask questions of the guards. “My daughter’s choir performance is in three days!” He gave In-ho a nudge with his elbow. “My wife is going to kill me.”

In-ho gave a slight nod of acknowledgment, then turned his attention back to the guards. If he could gain any advantage from their information, he would do well to listen to anything that might give him a leg up. But the screen switched to a showcase of a few of the players and how much debt they had acquired. A room full of desperate people, and he was no different, no matter how hard he tried to pretend like he wasn’t.

“Guess we’re all hard-pressed for cash, huh?” The man next to him, player 153, continued to speak. “What’re you in for?”

“It’s not like we’re in prison,” In-ho said, although it wasn’t far off. Uniforms, guards, brick walls. There was some sort of design painted on the walls, but he couldn’t make out what it was meant to be with the beds stacked in the way. And he wasn’t exactly eager to tell a stranger his life story, so he left it at that.

“You’re right. No prison just gives out 45 billion won,” 153 said.

“That’s why I’m suspicious.” In-ho jerked his head in the direction of the guards and the other players. “Everyone else just believes that they’ll play fair. There’s always a catch.”

“We ought to stick together, then.” 153 stuck his hand out. “I’m Oh Young-il.”

In-ho stared at his hand. A teammate wasn’t on his list of priorities, but it might be nice to have one to get through the first few games. And this man, Young-il, seemed nice enough, but if he had to abandon him later on, then he would. He would do whatever he had to for Mi-yeong.

“Hwang In-ho,” he said, shaking his hand.

“You’ve got a firm shake!” Young-il said, grinning. “I can already tell I like you.”

After signing a consent form and having their pictures taken, the guards led the players through a winding maze of pink and yellow staircases that reminded In-ho of building blocks from his childhood. He and Young-il stayed in the back of the line, not wanting to be the first on the scene as they assessed their surroundings.

All the while, Young-il chatted his ear off about some nonsense with his job as a construction worker laying him off and his boss not giving him his severance pay. In-ho was tempted to snap at him and tell him to keep it to himself, not out of meanness, but out of skepticism. They didn’t know who was listening in here, what kind of information they were trying to gather. Admittedly, he was a bit paranoid after being knocked out and having his phone and wallet taken from him, but he had learned quickly to keep his mouth shut, and old habits died hard.

The doors opened, and the players stepped out onto a field surrounded by painted walls that reminded In-ho of one of Mi-yeong’s paintings, the type of surreal feeling that came with something being realistic but not picture perfect.

“Welcome to the first game,” announced a voice over the speakers. “All players, please wait a moment on the field.”

“Hey, what’s that?” Young-il pointed to the far end of the field, where a large mechanical doll in a yellow and orange dress was standing. “It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

“Looks like some sort of robot,” In-ho agreed.

As Young-il stepped forward to take a closer look, In-ho pressed an arm to his chest, holding him back. “We should stay back. We don’t know what game we’re playing.”

“But if it’s a race, we’ll have an advantage at the front of the pack.”

“If it’s a race, we’re more likely to be sabotaged from the front. We’ll have a better chance of overtaking someone from behind.”

Young-il raised his eyebrows. “You’re serious about this.”

“Aren’t you?”

In-ho felt a hint of annoyance with his new teammate’s attitude. What could be more serious than money? It was the root of all evil, as so many said, but this wasn’t for his own greed. This was to save the most important person in his life, and he didn’t expect Young-il to understand that when the only hardship he’d faced was losing his job. He wasn’t at rock bottom, not like In-ho was.

“I suppose,” Young-il said with a shrug. He patted In-ho on the shoulder. “But it’s good to keep things light-hearted. Now let’s win!”

“The first game is red light, green light,” the woman over the speaker said, and a murmur rippled through the crowd. “Cross the finish line without getting caught in five minutes.”

In-ho scoffed. A child’s game. It was too easy, and that was exactly why there had to be a catch. Perhaps they would introduce some impossible rule they had to follow, or count even the slightest shake of the eye as movement. But no such announcement came. In-ho glanced over at Young-il to gauge his reaction. Clearly, this had only emboldened his confidence, and the confidence of those around them. The other players expressed similar sentiments, how easy this was going to be, how it was too good to be true.

It was better if they believed that.

“Let the game begin.”

The doll’s mechanical head swiveled around, and the players at the front of the pack darted forward in a sprint.

In-ho and Young-il slowly moved forward, a few rows of people from the back. If they were playing children’s games, then using the philosophy he had learned as a child made sense—slow and steady wins the race.

Red light!

In-ho froze in place, refusing to even breathe. A few of the players at the front skidded forward, but managed to stop themselves in time before the doll turned her head. She scanned the field for a few moments, then turned back around.

Green light!

“Piece of cake,” Young-il said, smiling over at In-ho as they continued to move.

Red light!

From the corner of his eye, In-ho saw one of the players trip and fall. There goes one unlucky bastard, he thought. Just as he saw the player try to get back up, he suddenly convulsed and dropped back to the ground with a resounding bang.

Unmistakably a gunshot.

There was the catch he’d been waiting for.

“Player 058, eliminated.”

“What was that?” Young-il asked.

“Don’t panic,” In-ho gritted through his teeth, unsure if talking was considered moving. “Just stay still.”

The other players who had witnessed the death didn’t get the memo. Dozens of people began turning and running towards the doors. Gunshot after gunshot sounded out, and all around him, people were being shot down. Every instinct in his body told him he should run, too, try to get to safety, but there was no way out. The only way out was through.

He was playing with his life, and there was no losing.

After a minute, the carnage died down. In-ho was grateful he could only see a few of the dead players, the rest having been shot behind him. Next to him, he could see Young-il shaking. Not enough to be eliminated, but enough to be noticeable.

“Pull yourself together,” In-ho said. “You don’t want to be the next one eliminated.”

Young-il swallowed hard, clenching his fists.

“Let me repeat the rules,” said the voice over the speaker. “You can only move when it says green light. Players caught moving during a red light will be eliminated.”

Green light!

In-ho took a few steps forward, but turned his head when he realized Young-il wasn’t keeping up with him, frozen in place. They weren’t even halfway across the field yet, and there were only two and a half minutes remaining. “Come on,” he called. “You’ve got to move.”

“I don’t want to die,” Young-il said.

“You’ll die if you don’t make it to the other side.”

Young-il took a couple hesitant steps forward until he was in line with In-ho. The remaining players also moved at a slower pace, not as sure as they had been before.

The next couple of turns got them closer to the end, and about twenty players were taken out. A woman about ten feet from In-ho was shot, her blood splattering on the ground next to his feet.

Green light!

In-ho, spurred on by the ticking clock and his own agility, moved a little faster, a couple steps ahead of Young-il, but just as he was about to slow down, he was suddenly shoulder-checked by a player passing by, twisting his ankle on a rock as he was knocked to the ground.

Red light!

Shit. His ankle screamed in pain, but he willed his muscles to freeze. One minute remaining, and he still had a significant amount of ground to cover. Maybe this was it. This was where he went out, in the first round with nothing to show for himself, all because of a bit of bad luck.

Green light!

In-ho pushed himself to his feet, his ankle tender, and just as he was about to step forward, an arm came around his shoulder, holding up his weight.

Young-il.

As they stumbled along, In-ho glanced over at Young-il. This man hardly knew him, and yet he had saved his life. There was no reason to do that, and In-ho wasn’t sure that he would do the same for him if their situations were reversed. But Young-il did it anyway.

The two made it across the finish line with thirty seconds to spare, collapsing to the ground.

“Thank you,” In-ho managed between pants. He lifted his knee, prodding at his ankle gently, careful not to aggravate the tender skin.

“Are you alright?” Young-il asked, leaning down to inspect his injured foot.

“I’ll be okay,” he said, and he mostly believed it. If he was able to rest it for a while, then it would heal properly. “It’s just a little sore.”

Young-il rubbed his forehead, eyebrows creasing together as he looked out onto the field painted with blood and spotted with dead bodies. Akeldama. “What kind of crazy mess did we get ourselves into? How are we going to survive five more games? I have to go home…”

“The consent form said we could vote to leave,” In-ho said. “But a majority has to vote in favor.”

“Surely after all that, no one wants to stay!”

In-ho frowned. Of course he didn’t want to die—if he didn’t get home to Mi-yeong, he wouldn’t be able to help her. But if he got home to her without the money, what was the purpose of leaving her at all? He had nothing to offer, nothing to help her, and this was the only shot at a miracle he had. He needed something to show for himself, and he wouldn’t get that by bowing out.

The players were escorted back to the dormitory, now much more somber than before. No one talked, not even Young-il, who had been so chatty before. Now he just seemed sullen.

In-ho limped, refusing any more of Young-il’s help, to a staircase by the beds so he could sit down, and Young-il plopped down beside him. He really wasn’t getting rid of him, then. He didn’t mind so much, but at some point, he would have to draw a line. For now, his presence was welcome.

The pink guards entered the room, the same one with a square on his mask leading them. Before they even got a word out, several players fell to their knees and began begging the guards to let them go home. In-ho lowered his head, not wanting to watch. He was sure Young-il would join their ranks, seeing how badly he wanted to leave, but he stayed put.

The guards interrupted the chaos by pressing a remote, which cast a golden light over the room, and a giant glass piggy bank was lowered from the ceiling.

“In the first game, 249 players were eliminated. 100 million won is at stake for each player, bringing the prize total to 24.9 billion won.”

Around him, In-ho saw the faces of the players shift as they took in the bills funneling into the bank. The transformation from fear to desire, now that their goal was visualized. He, too, could not avoid the allure, drawn in by the golden glow. It was nearly enough to make him forget that he had just witnessed the deaths of over two hundred people. Two hundred people who were now represented by those bills. It was sickening, and it was hypnotizing.

“You said,” Young-il started, finally finding his voice and stepping forward into the crowd, “that we could vote if we wanted to leave.” He looked around at the players around him. “Well, let’s do that! Give us the choice to not gamble with our lives!”

Several other players started pitching in their agreements, until the lead guard said, “We respect your right to choose, so we will proceed with a vote.” A few of the circle guards wheeled out a podium with two buttons: X and O. “If you wish to continue playing, please press O. If you wish to terminate the games, press X. Voting will be done in reverse order of the numbers on your chest. Player 455, please cast your vote.”

As the first few players stepped up to vote, Young-il dropped back towards In-ho, answering the unspoken question that hung in the air: “I want to go home.”

The votes came in on the screen above the doors. 3 X’s to 2 O’s, and it continued a steady stream of back and forths for a while. 11 to 12. 29 to 27. 36 to 39. 44 to 42. 68 to 67.

“Player 153, please cast your vote.”

Young-il nodded at In-ho, then walked to the voting box. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pressed X. 68 to 68.

A couple more players cast their votes. 70 to 70.

“Player 132, please cast your vote.”

In-ho slowly walked to the box, staring down at the buttons. His hand floated over the X. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t leave Mi-yeong on her own in all of this. Then his hand shifted over to O. But he was nothing if he had nothing. Nothing would change if he returned to her now.

He pressed his hand down.

72 to 71.

He didn’t look at Young-il as he stepped into the crowd of the players who already voted. He couldn’t. It felt like a betrayal somehow.

In the end, the vote came down to 107 in favor of staying and 100 in favor of leaving. A cheer erupted among the O voters, but In-ho only felt a growing pit in his stomach. He couldn’t regret it, though. His vote wouldn’t have changed the results either way.

“Since the majority has voted to stay, the games will proceed as normal tomorrow morning. Thank you for participating in the vote.”

The guards handed out a ton of food, and the players returned to hang around the beds, some forming groups and some staying solo. In-ho sat down on the staircase next to Young-il, who had claimed a bed a few rows from the bottom. The two picked at their food in silence until—

“How’s your ankle?”

“A little better. Walking helps, I think.”

In-ho stared pointedly at his food tin. He wasn’t hungry, but he needed to eat to keep his strength for the next game.

The next game. He exhaled a humorless laugh. How quickly he had accepted this as his new normal, slotting himself into a schedule and expectations. Like this wasn’t all some twisted joke.

“Why did you vote to stay?” Young-il asked.

“Does it matter so much?” In-ho said, gazing up at the piggy bank. Almost half full. “My vote means nothing.”

“I just think if you’re going to screw the rest of us over, then you should have a good reason. Not just because you thought your life was so worthless, or whatever.”

In-ho’s gaze turned to Young-il, and for the first time, he really saw him. Saw the desperation lined in his face. The fear in his dark eyes. Saw a man who truly did not want to die. He had a point. He should have a reason for wanting to continue in this insane game. “My wife is very sick,” he admitted, dropping his shoulders. “She has cirrhosis. And During the tests, the doctors discovered that she was pregnant. They suggested she terminate, but… once she has her mind set on something, I can’t convince her otherwise. No one can. So, you see… I need that money. To save my wife and our child.”

Young-il didn’t say anything for a long time. “I’m sorry.”

“Is that a good enough reason for you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You think the other hundred and six players who voted to stay didn’t have a good enough reason? We all have reasons.”

Young-il held his hands up. “Jeez, man, I… I didn’t know, okay?”

“Excuse me?”

Both men looked up to see a woman who looked to be in her thirties with long hair dyed auburn standing in front of them, the number 077 on her chest.

Her eyes were locked on Young-il, and she bowed to him. “Young-il, it really is you!” she said. “I thought it was you who spoke up about the vote, but I couldn’t be sure… what are you doing in a place like this?”

“You know exactly why!” Young-il said, standing. Now it seemed it was his turn to be angry. In-ho glanced between the two of them. They knew each other somehow. Ex-boyfriend and girlfriend, maybe? “You didn’t even try to stand up for me when I got fired! You knew I didn’t deserve it, Soo-min!”

Ah. Former coworkers, then.

“You weren’t the only one who had it hard,” 077—Soo-min—defended herself. “The boss fired me, too, a week later. I promise you, I tried to tell him that it wasn’t true, but he doesn’t listen to me…”

Young-il’s face softened. “You got fired, too?”

Soo-min nodded. “He didn’t want a scandal. I’m sorry, Young-il. I wish we hadn’t gotten into this mess.”

He sat back down. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. The truth is, that’s not the whole reason I’m in here. I have some medical debt that I haven’t been able to pay off.”

“Thank you for your forgiveness,” Soo-min said, bowing again. Then she bowed towards In-ho. “I’m sorry for interrupting like that.”

In-ho shrugged. “We were having our own melodrama, so it’s not a total mood shift.”

“Stick with us, Soo-min,” Young-il said, patting the empty spot beside him. “This is Hwang In-ho. We’ve been looking out for each other.”

In-ho nodded towards her in acknowledgment.

“In-ho, this is Moon Soo-min. We used to work together. To make a long story short, we became friends outside of work, and some of our coworkers took that the wrong way… especially the boss. He thought we were having an affair.”

“Well, were you?” In-ho asked.

“No!” Both Young-il and Soo-min exclaimed at the same time.

“No,” repeated Young-il. “No, I’m happily married. And Soo-min doesn’t…” He didn’t finish his thought, shaking his head. “I’m not her type, so to speak. Well, I guess none of that matters anymore. We’re all screwed in here, aren’t we?”

“We’ll make it out,” In-ho said.

“I feel better having a team,” Soo-min said. “When they started shooting people during red light, green light, I nearly fainted.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got each other’s backs,” said Young-il. “Maybe we could have another vote tomorrow and get out of here after the next game.”

“Even with all your medical debt?” In-ho asked. “You’re okay with going home with nothing?”

“I’d rather have nothing than blood money. The people who died deserve it, don’t they?”

In-ho didn’t want to argue, so he set aside his tin and climbed into the bed under Young-il’s. “I guess,” he said. “I should get some rest. We all should.”

The next morning, spirits were as low as they had been the day before. The prospect of participating in another game where they could die was not inviting to anyone, even those who wanted the money. In-ho had been restless, hardly able to sleep a wink as he tossed and turned.

When In-ho got out of bed, Soo-min was already up, stretching. She smiled at him, but said nothing. He lifted his head to check on Young-il, who was still half-asleep, even through the blaring music.

In-ho shook his shoulder. “Come on, time to get up.”

Young-il groaned, clutching his stomach. “Hurts…”

“Are you okay?” asked Soo-min. “What’s wrong?”

“I need… my medication,” Young-il said. “I take pills every day for my kidney disease. I can’t go without them.”

Kidney disease. In-ho’s heart dropped. The days of watching over Jun-ho in the hospital, the pain he had been in… making sure he took his medication every morning, even though he hated it. In-ho always hid the pill in a spoonful of chocolate pudding because it was the only thing Jun-ho would have.

In-ho started down the staircase, not caring that his ankle was still tender, and walked right up to one of the guards. “Sir,” he said. “My friend needs medication for his kidneys. Will you please get it for him?”

The guard was silent, as if considering. “We maintain the virtue of equality. We cannot allow one player to have an advantage.”

“Damn your equality!” In-ho said, grabbing the fabric of the guard’s uniform and yanking him forward until they were eye to eye. He could almost see through the material of his mask. “How is it ‘fair’ for him to go without his medication? If anything, it puts him at a disadvantage!”

A click and the barrel of a gun at his back.

“Player 132, please step back,” another guard said.

He obeyed, letting go. Suddenly, Soo-min was there at his side. “Please, sir,” she said. “He meant no disrespect. Our friend just needs his medication, if you could be so kind. I’ll give up my meal for today, if that will make up for it.”

“Me, too,” said In-ho. “The consent form said that a player cannot stop playing. Young-il—player 153—can’t keep playing if he doesn’t have it.”

Both guards looked at each other. Finally, one said, “Please wait here.”

They walked through the doors, leaving In-ho and Soo-min behind. The outburst had drawn some curious onlookers, though none said a word as In-ho glared in their direction.

“Did you know about his kidney disease?” In-ho asked Soo-min.

“Not really, no,” she said. “He never talked about that kind of thing. He’s always so upbeat.”

“I can tell that much,” said In-ho.

A few minutes later, the guards returned with a small bottle, handing it to In-ho, and the two took it back to Young-il’s bed. He had managed to sit up, though he was still holding his stomach.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the pill bottle from In-ho and swallowing a pill dry. “You didn’t have to cause a scene for me, but I appreciate it.”

“You said you didn’t want to die,” In-ho said. “So don’t.”

Not long after, the players were led through the maze of staircases. Young-il seemed to be faring better after having his medication, and In-ho’s own ankle was well enough that he thought he could get through another game on it.

The second battlefield was a smaller enclosed field, walls painted blue with white clouds. Nothing indicated what the game would be at first glance.

“Welcome to the second game. This round will be played in teams of three. You will have ten minutes to form teams.”

“Ah, we have a perfect number!” Young-il said, grinning. “We don’t even have to find another member. You came at a good time, Soo-min.”

“I only hope I can help,” Soo-min said. “I’m faster than I am strong.”

“Whatever the challenge is, it might be better to have different skill sets than all strong guys,” In-ho pointed out.

“That’s right,” Young-il said. “Soo-min’s fast, In-ho’s our brains, and obviously, I’m the brawn.”

Soo-min laughed, and In-ho couldn’t help a smile.

Once the teams were formed, the players were separated to two sides of the room, and the guards brought out large canisters filled with long sticks. “The game you will be playing is tuho. Two teams will face off against each other, and each player from the team will take turns throwing three arrows into the canisters. The team with the highest cumulative amount of arrows in the canister will advance to the next game. The team that has less will be eliminated. In the event of a tie, teams will nominate a player from each team to represent them, and those players will take turns throwing arrows until one player misses.”

Young-il turned to his teammates. “Have you guys played tuho before?”

In-ho shook his head.

“I was on the archery team in school,” Soo-min said. “So I’ve got good aim with a bow. But I don’t know how well that will translate in this game.”

“That’s better than I have to say for myself,” Young-il said. “But the chances are most other teams won’t be very good at it, either. If we can score one each, I’m willing to bet that we can beat whoever we’re against.”

The first teams took position about ten feet back from the canister. In-ho watched them carefully, trying to see if he could gather any strategy from them, but the first team only managed to score two, while their opponents scored four. The losers were gunned down before In-ho had a chance to blink.

“Players 094, 211, and 406, eliminated.”

The crowd cowered. Young-il covered his ears. But In-ho was feeling better than before. This game didn’t rely on their skills for survival. All they had to do was hope the team they were up against wasn’t great at the game. Of course, it felt wrong to wish against other people, but it was either him or them, and he wouldn’t die in a game where their odds were so high.

The game proceeded on, trio after trio slaughtered senselessly. The barrage of gunfire assaulted his ears, and he could only imagine how Young-il and Soo-min, who didn’t have extensive gun training like him, were faring. At the very least, they could look away, but they couldn’t block out the sound.

Finally, there were three teams left, including In-ho’s team. His heart raced as the guards approached.

“Since there is an odd number of teams, you will draw chips from this bag.” One of the guards held out a velvet bag in front of Young-il. “The team that draws the number 3 will automatically advance to the next round.”

Young-il reached into the bag, swirling his hand around before drawing a chip and holding it up. 2. They weren’t safe just yet. They still had to fight for their lives.

The team that had been unlucky enough to draw 1 stood. It was three fit-looking men who seemed like they would bite In-ho’s head off if he so much as looked at them the wrong way. But his attention wasn’t on them. He was solely focused on his goal: getting the arrows in the canister.

“First players from each team, please step up to the line.”

Young-il stepped forward to the white line painted on the ground. “I’ll go first,” he said. “Might as well get it out of the way.”

He retrieved an arrow from the vase beside him, slowly charting out the arrow’s velocity as he practiced his aim, muttering something to himself that almost sounded like a prayer.

Soo-min gripped In-ho’s arm. “I can’t watch,” she murmured, turning her head away.

In-ho said nothing, unable to find words of comfort at the moment. Did he have faith in his team? Did he have faith in himself? These were strangers that fate had tossed at him to entrust his life with, and he must be crazy if he believed at all that he was fortunate enough to land a team that could save him. Fate didn’t work like that. It didn’t reward people who deserved good things, but maybe this once it could.

Young-il missed the first arrow by a foot. His opponent landed it.

“Don’t worry,” Soo-min said, but In-ho could feel her shaking beside him. “Just focus. Hold the arrow closer to the tip.”

Young-il’s hand slipped further down the arrow, heeding her advice. The second arrow bounced off the rim of the canister, but fell flat to the floor. His body deflated, visibly despairing. He threw the third one, but it missed as well.

Thankfully, the man on the other team had missed his second and third shots, but Young-il still apologized profusely to his teammates for missing.

“It’s okay,” Soo-min muttered. “I have to get two, then we’re back in the game. I can do that. Easy.”

She approached the line, sliding the arrow between her fingers in a grip that looked like she was holding a pen. Taking a deep breath, she threw the arrow, only for it to miss by an inch or so.

Her opponent had already thrown his first two shots and missed, clearly prioritizing speed over accuracy.

Soo-min’s second arrow clanked against the rim but wasn’t quite high enough to make it in. Just as she was lifting her second arrow, the other team began to cheer loudly.

His third arrow landed in the canister.

“Take your time,” Young-il said.

Soo-min stared down at the arrow. “This is easy,” she said to herself. “I can do this. I have good aim. I just have to line my arm up…”

She lifted her arm, squinting one eye and squeezing the other shut. As if in slow motion, the arrow jutted through the air as she released it and landed in the canister.

Young-il grabbed In-ho’s sleeve, jumping up and down and screaming incoherent nonsense in his ear, something like we’re not dead yet! We have a chance! Soo-min ran over and hugged Young-il, tears in her eyes.

Then In-ho stepped forward. “We haven’t won yet,” he said to himself. He lined his toes up with the boundary, eyeing the canister. It was deceptively easy, as these games seemed to be, like a carnival game that’s always rigged to lose. It was all dependent on him now, the lives of these two people. The lives of Mi-yeong and their child. Everything was on the line.

The man on the other team looked at him, a smug smile on his face, but In-ho didn’t let it shake him. He watched as he threw his arrow, clattering as it fell into the canister.

Three to one.

In-ho had to get two to tie. Three to win.

He flexed his arm back and forth, lining his aim up with the target. The arrow launched out of his hand and flew right over the canister.

In-ho released his breath. He couldn’t fail. He couldn’t. He closed his eyes and saw Mi-yeong. Her face was the vision of an angel protecting him, her lighthouse guiding him closer to shore.

Opening his eyes again, he saw that his opponent missed his second shot.

Three to one.

He glanced over at Young-il and Soo-min, mere feet away, staring at him, a silent plea not to let them die. In-ho lifted his arm, and the arrow shuttled off against his will. It spun around the rim of the canister and fell in.

Distantly, ringing in his ears, Young-il and Soo-min cheered, but In-ho could hardly hear it. He had just been revived, a second chance at life. His knees wobbled, but he maintained his composure.

Three to two.

If his opponent, player 412, made this shot, it was over. It was all out of his control. Nothing he could do would change anything, like so many parts of his life. Helpless, floundering, grasping for any semblance of control he could find, but it was nowhere to be seen.

412 was sweating, his teammates egging him on. Even from a distance, In-ho could see his hands tremoring, the pressure to keep them all alive growing. He threw the arrow.

It clattered to the ground.

“You can do it, In-ho,” Young-il said.

“Yeah, don’t stress about it,” Soo-min added. “No pressure at all.”

“Quiet,” In-ho snapped. “I need to concentrate.”

The two fell silent as In-ho picked up his final arrow. There was no room for error. The control that he had been longing for suddenly sparked under his fingertips. He could save them.

He positioned it between his fingers, eyes fixed on the canister. At some point, he must have released it, because it went spiraling through the air and—

It seemed to go on forever, the distance between him and the canister, an endless stretch of space that would never be reached.

—landed in the canister.

In-ho stumbled back towards his team, breathless as they embraced him in a hug.

“You did it, you did it,” Young-il cried. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it.”

Three to three.

“Since this round has ended in a tie, each team will need to elect someone to represent them in the sudden death round.”

“You should do it, In-ho,” Soo-min said. “You scored two.”

In-ho nodded. It was the only choice. He had to be the one in charge of his own destiny. The other team sent 412 right back up, and In-ho felt confident that he could beat him. Guys like him acted tough, but when the pressure started cooking, they cracked under it. If he could win the mental game, then he could win the physical, too.

“Player 412, please step up to the line.”

His hands were still shaking. Fail.

“Player 132.”

In-ho could end this in one shot. Fail.

Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Back and forth. It felt like it would never end. 412’s teammates were getting more and more riled up as they took turns throwing, shouting at 412 to get the arrow in the damn vase.

Daring to break his concentration, In-ho looked over at 412. Shaking harder than ever now, he picked up another arrow. And then dropped it right in front of him.

Fail.

In-ho threw his arrow.

Pass.

He didn’t have time to process before the gunshots rang off, causing him to flinch. 412 and his team were shot dead, collapsing in the dirt.

“Players 205, 392, and 412, eliminated.”

In-ho couldn’t celebrate, not after that display of violence. Numbly, his feet carried him over to his teammates, who brought him into another hug, thanking him for saving their lives. He didn’t feel like a savior. How could he when innocent people were dying? And yet that was the only way to get to 45.6 billion won.

Back in the dormitory, the remaining players stared at In-ho’s team as they shuffled in and took their places on the staircase. Already, the crowd was thinning after that game had taken out nearly half of the players, and the dormitory felt much larger than before. 105 players left. 35.1 billion won at stake.

“We should vote again,” Young-il said quietly. “I don’t think many people will want to carry on after that.”

“I don’t,” Soo-min agreed. “But I don’t want to go out there with nothing. It was tough enough to find a job that wanted women in our line of work, and after the scandal…”

“I’m voting to stay,” In-ho said resolutely. “I’m sorry, Young-il, but Soo-min is right. How are you going to pay off your debt if you go back with nothing?”

“I-I don’t know.” Young-il shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll do odd jobs. Do something honest. Not whatever this is.” He gestured around the room. “This isn’t right, and you both know it. We’re watching people die!”

“It’s not as if we’re the ones killing them.” In-ho pointed at the guards at the front of the room. “It’s them. We just happen to be the unfortunate ones who have to play against everyone else. Don’t put their blood on your hands. It’ll only hurt you.”

“We’ll probably die here ourselves!” Young-il exclaimed. “Then what? How will your wife survive if no one can pay for her treatment? Do you really want your child to live without a father?”

In-ho’s gaze dropped to the floor. It wasn’t like he hadn’t considered it. It’s all he thought about, how he couldn’t die for Mi-yeong’s sake, and Young-il had the audacity to think that he was so selfish. “That’s why I have to win,” he said. “I didn’t do any of this for myself. I did it for them, out there. Maybe you can put off your payments for a few months or so. I can’t. I need that money now, and this is the only chance I’ve got!”

“Alright, alright,” Soo-min interjected. “We shouldn’t fight. We’re a team, yeah?”

Young-il nodded. “Yeah.”

“Come on, In-ho, you, too.”

In-ho sighed. “Yeah. We’re a team.”

“Exactly. And I don’t think we should put it to a vote right now.” She nodded towards the other players, congregating in small groups and clearly sizing up the others. “It’ll just upset people, and we don’t need a reason for them to kill us. Besides, after that game, I think most of the survivors will want to stay. It’s one step closer to the prize, after all.”

In-ho watched the other players, curious. There was nothing stopping the players from killing each other now. Just how desperate were they for money? How desperate was he?

Not enough to kill someone with his bare hands.

Not when there was a way to win with his conscience mostly clean.

The guards wheeled in carts for meal time, what looked to be eggs and bottled soda. In-ho got in line behind Young-il, but when he reached the cart, the guard didn’t make a move.

“Players 132 and 077,” he said. Soo-min, who was behind In-ho, leaned forward. “In exchange for player 153’s medication, you gave up your meals today. Please step out of line.”

“They were serious about that?” Soo-min whispered to In-ho.

“It’s a fair trade,” said In-ho. “We’ll be okay. Let’s not cause another scene.”

Soo-min grumbled under her breath but followed In-ho back over to Young-il. Immediately, he offered his bottle to In-ho. “Here. Carbonation is bad for my kidneys.”

But In-ho shook his head, pawning it off to Soo-min, who wordlessly accepted it. “I shouldn’t have it either, then.”

“You’ve got kidney problems, too?” Young-il asked.

“My brother did, when he was younger,” In-ho said. “I gave him one of my kidneys. Probably should save the one I have left, huh?” He huffed out a laugh.

“No wonder you made such a fuss about the meds,” Young-il said. He handed his egg over to In-ho. “You should have this, since you were the one who saved me in the first place. And saved our lives in the game. I can’t thank you enough.”

In-ho held up his hand. “Keep it. You’ll need your strength.”

“Fine, then.” Young-il began to peel the egg, shrugging. “But I’m keeping watch tonight. I have a bad feeling.”

After lights out, In-ho couldn’t fall asleep. His stomach ached, the hunger pangs of not eating properly rattling at him. It was a constant presence that stopped him from even closing his eyes for more than a minute.

So, he sat up and stared at Young-il’s back. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, though from behind In-ho couldn’t tell if he was awake or had fallen asleep sitting up. He didn’t move except for his deep breaths.

Young-il was better than him, In-ho knew this innately, that he was a good person and In-ho was not. He was so good that he would go home with nothing rather than have other people die for his benefit. He was so good that he would share his soda with Soo-min, and offer up his egg to In-ho, even if it meant he had nothing else to eat.

And In-ho wasn’t good. He had come to terms with this long ago, when his father screamed at him that it was his fault his mother was dead. When he began to distance himself from Jun-ho and Mal-soon, and only felt a little bit bad about it. When he holed himself up in hotels and drank himself half to death and intended to never wake up from his stupor. It was Mi-yeong that saved him, his guiding light, his angel, and now he was trapped again.

There wasn’t any good here, not in him. There was fairness, that much he could maintain, but he couldn’t pretend that he wouldn’t do what he had to in order to win. And Young-il was a beacon. He could steer him in the right direction, but it was In-ho who was at the wheel, and he was heading straight for the rocky shore.

“You still up?”

Young-il had shifted, realizing In-ho was awake.

“Yeah.” In-ho dragged his half-willing hand down his face. “I can’t seem to get much sleep here.”

Young-il folded his legs, facing In-ho now. “I just wanted to say sorry. About our disagreements. I don’t think you’re wrong, you know. If I return with nothing, this has all been for nothing, too.”

In-ho nodded. “I’m sorry, too. I feel like I went too far to prove a point. We’re both a little stubborn, huh?”

“Suppose so. I just really want to get home to my wife and kids, and… I realized after this game that if I don’t get out on a vote, I probably won’t make it out of here alive.”

“You have just as much of a chance as anyone,” In-ho said. “You said you’re a construction worker, right? You’ve got the strength, and with me and Soo-min, we’re a good team.”

But Young-il looked visibly shaken, like he’d seen a ghost. There was something in his eyes that frightened In-ho. “But what about when we can’t be a team anymore? If it was just the three of us left, I couldn’t… I couldn’t go against you or Soo-min. Especially not Soo-min.”

He broke down into sobs, and In-ho did the only thing he could think of. He wrapped his arms around him, letting Young-il cry into his shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone other than Mi-yeong was this close, and even moments of intimacy with her had become fleetingly rare. Even with Jun-ho, physical touch was not the way they communicated, but with Young-il, it felt right, like it was making up for what they couldn’t agree on with words.

“If it comes down to us,” Young-il whispered in his ear, voice still wet, “promise me you’ll kill me. Get out of here with the money and save your family.”

“I can’t do that,” In-ho said.

“Then promise me that you’ll help my family. Don’t let them suffer because of my stupid decision.”

“I’ll do what I can.” In-ho rubbed his back, though his hand felt like it was being puppeteered by some external force, someone who was not him. “I promise.”

The next day was a blur.

In-ho was surviving off only a couple hours of sleep and his meal from two days ago. He persuaded one of the guards to let him in the bathroom before the next game started and gulped down a few handfuls of the metallic-tasting sink water to get his growling stomach to stop.

Looking up, he noticed the blinking camera fixed on the wall. Someone was watching him. Of course they were out there in the dormitory, in the games, because why would all of this be happening if not for someone’s entertainment—but even in here?

His stomach twisted in knots. Who? He stared down the lens, as if that would send a message to whoever was watching. I’m different from those people out there. I won’t let you watch me die for your own pleasure.

Even the guard outside the bathroom, too, seemed to be watching him as he reunited with his team.

“You okay?” Soo-min asked him. “You look kind of freaked out.”

“I just…” In-ho scrubbed at his eyes with his balled-up fists. “Those guards are watching me, I think.”

“I mean, they don’t have eyes,” she said. “It’s creepy, sure, but how can you know that they’re watching you specifically?”

“I don’t know,” In-ho said, realizing how crazy he sounded at the sight of Soo-min’s and Young-il’s confused faces. “I must be losing it.”

They shrugged it off as they were led to the next game room: a large carousel surrounded by 50 doors. Mingle.

In-ho was blindly led through by his teammates, forming groups of 3, 6, 10, like his legs were made of bricks that refused to move of his own volition. There were cameras in these small rooms, too, in each and every one. His gaze fixed on them, trying to look into the soul of whoever was watching him.

“They must be counting us,” Young-il said, following In-ho’s gaze. “So we can’t get away with having too many or too few people in a room.”

A gunshot outside the door made them all jump. One of the guards peered in the slit in the door, then sauntered away.

After the victims of the latest round were removed from the carousel, the survivors made their way back to the center of the room for the final round. A few stragglers from their last room stuck with In-ho’s team, players 439 and 051, both of whom looked terrified. Young-il and Soo-min were managing to keep it together, but In-ho knew they were just as scared, deep down.

As the platform began to spin, he looked at the display with the remaining number of players. 73.

“What do you think the next number is going to be?” asked Soo-min.

“It could be one,” In-ho said. “There’s 50 rooms and 73 of us, so 23 will be picked off no matter what. But we still have three more games to play, and that might be too few people.”

“You’re thinking about this like one of them,” Young-il said, and In-ho grimaced at the word. Them. The watchers. He might be different from the other players, but he was not like the people who put them in here.

“It makes sense, though,” Soo-min said. “We should be thinking about it from that perspective. It might help us.”

The platform jolted to a stop.

Two.

“You two go!” In-ho shouted, pushing Young-il and Soo-min forward. Both of them looked back at him with faces full of worry, but they knew that they had to go without him in order to survive. 73. There would be an odd one out. It couldn’t be him.

439 and 051 had already clutched onto each other, running to the nearest room, and In-ho scanned his surroundings as the clock ticked down. Everyone else was pairing up and making a quick dash for a room, except for one lone woman about twenty feet away, looking around aimlessly.

In-ho ran over to her, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her towards one of the doors.

Ten seconds left.

Just as they were about to reach the room, another person sprinted past, knocking down the woman and sending In-ho tumbling against the door. Barely able to get back on his feet after losing his wind, he pried the door open and hurried inside, but when he looked back, the woman was nowhere to be seen.

He stuck his head out the door, realizing that the player who had knocked her down had picked her up and pulled her into the room to his left.

Three seconds.

There was another person on the other side of the arena banging on doors, still hopelessly trying to find a team, but there wasn’t enough time to get to him.

In-ho pulled the door shut, hearing the familiar click of the lock, and sank down to the floor.

“I’m sorry, Mi-yeong,” he whispered, folding his hands together and squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Jun-ho. I’m so sorry.”

This was the end. There would be nothing for him, only a black coffin with a pink bow for eternity. His fate—all he had suffered through, his troubled youth, his mother’s death, losing his job, these games—was to be forgotten. A blip in history who would die here, and no one would ever know. Jun-ho would live with the fleeting memories of an older brother who had disappeared without a trace. Mi-yeong would spend the rest of her life believing that In-ho had abandoned her in her time of need. And they would move on eventually, like he had never existed.

The barrel of a rifle pointed into the small window.

In-ho looked up, staring straight into the mask of the pink guard and watching his finger curl around the trigger. There was no running or hiding from his death. All he could do to maintain his dignity was to face it head on, without fear.

Then the guard turned his head, as if hearing something.

“Look at me,” In-ho gritted. “Fucking look at me.”

The guard looked back at him, then suddenly withdrew his gun and walked away.

Confused, In-ho shot to his feet, but was instantly thrown off-kilter by a wave of nausea. He held himself up against the wall, peering out the door. The guard was just gone. And In-ho wasn’t dead. How wasn’t he dead?

He kept waiting for someone to come back and shoot him, but no one ever did. The soldiers collected the two bodies of the deceased, and the doors unlocked, releasing the herd of terrified, traumatized players.

He stumbled out, feet moving on their own. He wasn’t sure when Young-il and Soo-min found him, but they did, stabilizing him when his legs threatened to give in. Half of what they said, In-ho didn’t hear, except for Soo-min’s question: “How did you survive?”

The truth didn’t feel like the right answer. How was he supposed to explain that? On one hand, he was justified in his suspicion that he was being watched, and for some reason, it was him specifically. What was it that made him so special that he didn’t die when he should have? On the other hand, he realized how crazy it all sounded, and he was another obstacle in the way of 45.6 billion won that shouldn’t even be there. They had every right to abandon and outcast him.

“I don’t know,” he said. A truth. “Someone found me at the last second.” A lie.

In the dormitory, Young-il pestered the guards for another vote. He really was stubborn, still persisting on this point. He had a reason to go home, too, and he pleaded his case to the other players, the remaining 71, but very few seemed interested in listening.

So they voted again, this time starting from the lowest number. By the time it was In-ho’s turn, the vote was 9 to 5 in favor of continuing the games.

His hand hovered over the buttons for a long time, then finally fell on X.

9 to 6.

Young-il smiled at him as he took his place among the players who had already voted, and it only made him feel worse. But there was an unspoken question on Soo-min’s lips when he stood beside her. In-ho already knew it. He had been so adamant about voting O before. He didn’t know why he did it either.

The final vote was 52 to 19.

“We’re never getting out of here,” Young-il said, voice fraught. Even he was being worn thin.

A few of the O voters shouted at Young-il for wasting their time with a vote when they could have been eating instead, and Young-il shouted right back. In-ho didn’t hear the words they were saying.

Back by their beds, Soo-min opened In-ho’s food tin for him and thrust it and the complimentary fork towards him. “You have to eat, In-ho.”

“I’m not hungry,” he murmured.

“You haven’t eaten since the first day. You’ll die if you don’t eat.”

“I’ll die anyway.”

But he ended up eating, scraping away at his tin, only so she would leave him alone. She didn’t leave him, however. She stayed by his side even through lights out as he kept watch and Young-il slept soundly.

She dangled her legs off the edge of the bed, squinting at him in the dark like she was trying to get a good look at him. “You’ve been quiet since we got back.”

In-ho barely lifted his gaze. “I’m just tired.”

“Then sleep. I’ll keep watch tonight.”

He just turned away from her.

“I saw what happened during the last round,” she continued when he said nothing. “I was watching through that window, trying to make sure you were okay. I saw you go into that room by yourself. I was about to cry, I was so scared for you. And then they didn’t kill you.”

He still was silent. He didn’t have an answer for her. There were no answers to this impossible question.

“In-ho. Why didn’t they kill you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why they wanted me to live. It’s someone up there.” He tilted his head up. “I don’t deserve to eat. I don’t deserve to sleep. I don’t deserve any of this when I should be in a six foot grave by now, if we even get that.”

Soo-min stopped him, placing her hands on his. Her skin was warm, making him realize just how cold he was. “It’s not about deserving or not deserving,” she said. “None of this is fair, and none of it makes sense. But I’m grateful it’s you that survived, even if that makes me selfish.”

In-ho frowned, not comprehending. He was still stuck on her touch, the gentleness of it.

“I know you think you don’t deserve that kindness,” she said. “I thought I didn’t deserve it either when I was younger. My family turned on me when they found out I was a lesbian, even my own brother, and I spent years believing I was a terrible person, that there was something wrong with me. But Young-il… he was one of the only people who ever truly accepted me for who I am. He made me realize that there was someone on my side, and we need those people to make it through. You have people on your side, too. Young-il’s on your side, and, even though we barely know each other, I am, too. I’m on your side. So please don’t give up on everything yet. There’s still good here.”

But how could there be good when this place was full of selfish men and women who voted in their own interest to stay here and win, when it meant others would die? He was included in that number. Young-il and Soo-min were outliers. The exception to the rule. Their kindnesses were just drops in an ocean of blood.

After a few minutes of silence, Soo-min suddenly shrieked.

In-ho’s head snapped in her direction, and he quickly realized what had alarmed her. At the bottom of the staircase leading up to the beds were three men who In-ho recognized as three of the O voters who’d been giving Young-il grief, quietly making their way up the stairs.

Soo-min hurriedly crawled over to Young-il’s bed, shaking him to wake him up, while In-ho rummaged through his own bed to find his meal tin. Once in his shaky hands, he pried it open and pulled out the fork.

He wasn’t fully in control of his body as he launched himself at one of the men, wildly swinging his arms, and they both went tumbling back against one of the beds, the man’s—238, In-ho could barely make out in the darkness—head smacking against a pole.

238 quickly recovered, hands coming up to press against In-ho’s throat.

Distantly, he heard Young-il groan and the sounds of another fight taking place only a few feet away, but he stared down the man in front of him, vision tunneling.

“Asshole,” 238 muttered, squeezing his throat, but In-ho couldn’t even feel it. “You fuckers keep screwing with the games. If you wanna leave so badly, then just die!”

He gasped for air, left hand lifting the fork. A squelch pierced the air as the metal tines disappeared into 238’s neck, rivulets of blood falling. 238 stumbled, then fell back on the bed, but In-ho didn’t let up. He was on top of him in an instant, bringing the fork down again and again and again in a daze. 238’s eyes widened. He tried to fight back with what little strength he had left, but there was no way to win.

238 gurgled one final time, then fell limp against the bed.

In-ho panted, removing the fork from the bloody mess that was 238’s throat and wiping away the blood that had spattered on his cheek, but it only smeared, mixing with the sweat running down his face.

He had killed someone. He had taken a life. And he didn’t regret it.

Some time later, he felt hands at his shoulders. Young-il. He dragged him away from 238’s body, back to his bed, and In-ho looked up to see that the lights had turned on and there were guards approaching.

They used some sort of scanner on 238’s neck, then carried him away to the center of the dormitory, where five coffins were waiting.

“They stopped the fight just in time,” Young-il said, breathless. “Those guys were gonna kill us.” And it seemed, for the first time, that he was seeing In-ho. “Oh, shit. Are you hurt?”

In-ho shook his head, despondent. His throat ached. “I didn’t… mean to kill him.”

“You were trying to protect us,” Soo-min said. “And yourself. Those bastards attacked us first.”

But empty platitudes wouldn’t change what he had done. Young-il seemed to understand as much. He settled in beside In-ho and stroked his bloody hair away from his face, then gently maneuvered his arms to pull his jacket from his body. That had been covered in blood, too, everything was soaked in the stuff. His blood. 238’s blood, because he was just a number in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t a person. In-ho was sure that’s how they justified it to themselves.

And In-ho, he wasn’t a person either. He was a number. So even if he was special or someone’s favorite something, it didn’t matter. He was just a pawn.

He didn’t remember the fourth day—

Fucking piece of shit! Would’ve been better if you were never born. At least she’d still be here.

The lighthouse isn’t alone, dear. She has the stars. And maybe they’re far away, but she knows they’re always there.

It’s Jun-ho. Call me back when you get a chance. Please? I just want to know that you’re alive.

—at all.

The fifth game was prefaced in a room with a giant gumball machine in the center, full of red and blue balls. In-ho patiently waited in line behind Young-il and Soo-min and the other 11 remaining players.

When it came to Young-il’s turn to receive a ball, there were two blue and one red remaining. He received blue. Soo-min got blue as well.

Which left red for In-ho.

Both of their eyes were on him as he stood next to the other red players and the rules of the game were explained. The red team would hunt down and kill one member of the blue team to pass. They would be able to use knives as weapons. The blue team had to survive for one hour or find an exit. They each had a key that could unlock doors. In-ho locked eyes with Soo-min and realized she was shaking.

She was terrified.

The guards announced that they could switch teams with another player if they wished and gave them 10 minutes to negotiate.

“Switch with me,” Young-il said, already taking off his blue vest.

Inho simply turned away from him. Young-il was too good. His own conscience was already tainted.

He saw his mother’s coffin in his mind’s eye—saw her pale face, unmoving. He had been scared to look at her and see her for the last time. He wanted to remember her the way she was, her smile, her voice, the things he would never have again. It was his fault. You killed her, his father screamed. She got sick because of you.

“If this is your way of protecting me, that’s not the way to go about it,” Young-il said. “The red team can’t kill other red players. I should be red so you can fend the others off.”

Would it even matter if he killed someone on his team? Would the guards once again turn a blind eye to his blatant disregard for the rules? Testing his luck—or his lack thereof—wouldn’t confirm to him anything he wanted to know.

But Young-il seemed determined on this point.

In-ho pulled his vest off and handed his knife over to Young-il. In return, he was given a blue vest and a key. He fastened the key around his neck, tucking it beneath his shirt.

“I guess it’s the two of us, then,” said Soo-min. “Unless you don’t want to stick together anymore. I know after last game—”

“Stay close to me,” In-ho interrupted.

Soo-min nodded. “So that’s that.”

The blue players were led into the game room, what appeared to be a large maze with walls painted blue and glowing stars decorating them. In-ho squinted at them. Certain stars leading to the right seemed to twinkle and shimmer at him.

“Which way should we go?” Soo-min whispered as the other players began to scatter.

The stars. Mi-yeong had always mentioned the stars. A form of navigation that would lead him to her coast. If he could find the lighthouse…

He took off to the right, following the stars that seemed to be calling to him, forging a path. Soo-min followed behind, her footsteps pounding against the ground.

“This is a big maze for so few people,” she said when they had created enough distance between them and the entrance. In-ho was still wandering, but he had slowed down to a walk, eyes still on the stars. “It unsettles me. I’m glad you’re here.”

In-ho’s eyes darted over to her.

“I’m just worried about Young-il… I don’t think he’ll be able to do it. Kill someone, I mean. It would break him, even if it was one of those assholes who tried to attack us, and I don’t want him to fall apart.”

“Not like I have,” In-ho muttered.

“This game makes us into something we aren’t,” Soo-min said, turning a corner.

“Or it shows us who we truly are.”

“Who are you, then?”

In-ho couldn’t answer, but he felt as if Soo-min knew without him saying a word who he was. She had seen him kill a man, and though she tried to assuage his guilt by saying he had no choice, she had every right to be afraid of him. Because the truth was he did have a choice. He could have let 238 go, but he chose to use that fork to drain the life from him.

And now Young-il had a choice. Die innocent or live a sinner.

“Player 005, eliminated. Player 171, pass.”

“We have to keep moving,” In-ho said. “We have to find the lighthouse.”

“The lighthouse?”

“I don’t get why you draw those lighthouses in every painting,” In-ho said, massaging Mi-yeong’s hand in his, gently working her sore joints. “They’re beautiful, but I don’t understand the significance.”

She smiled, turning over his hand and interlacing their fingers. “Lighthouses have guided sailors to harbor for hundreds of years. Once you see one, you know you’ve made it to safety. I keep seeing them in my dreams, and I think it’s a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“I don’t know. A sign that we should move out of the apartment and buy a lighthouse on some remote island.”

In-ho lifted Mi-yeong’s hand, brushing his lips against her knuckles before pressing a kiss to them. “If that’s what you want, then we’ll do it. Once I get the money, we’ll buy a lighthouse.”

In-ho stopped in front of a locked door, fishing out the key from beneath his shirt and trying it in the lock, but it didn’t fit. The end of his key was a circle, and the lock appeared to be shaped like a square.

“Let me see your key,” he said to Soo-min.

She handed hers over. Triangle.

“We have to find a key that fits,” he said. “This is the right way.”

“How do you know?” Soo-min asked.

In-ho looked up. “The stars.”

As he began walking the other way, he heard Soo-min murmur something beneath her breath, surely about how crazy he was, but he didn’t care. He knew where he was going, and she didn’t have to follow him.

He wondered where Young-il was, how he was doing. Only one player had passed so far, which left four other blue players for him to kill and 45 minutes for them to kill. It was better for him to be on the red team anyway, so he could be in charge of his own fate. The hunter and not the hunted. It was vulnerable in this position, and In-ho hated every second of it. He didn’t want to kill, but he didn’t want to die, either, and he knew which of his needs would win out in the end.

Glancing up at the cameras on the walls, In-ho continued through the labyrinth.

After a few more minutes of walking, a red player suddenly barreled around a corner, straight towards them, knife gripped tightly in his hand.

Thinking fast, In-ho grabbed Soo-min by the arm and started running back the way they came. “Go ahead of me and hide,” he panted, pushing her forward. “I’ll hold him off.”

She started to protest, but ran forward as In-ho skidded to a stop, turning on the red player.

The red player gritted his teeth, lunging forward with his knife raised, but In-ho dodged his attack, leaping to the side, but the man was on him again. The two wrestled for the knife, centimeters away from piercing In-ho’s chest, until In-ho managed to trip him and send him tumbling to the ground.

The knife clattered to the ground a few feet away, and both men scrambled for it. In-ho kicked him away, fingers curling around the hilt and turning it on the red player.

The red player raised his hands in surrender. “Please don’t kill me.”

“You were ready to kill me just a second ago,” In-ho said. “Now that your luck has changed, you want me to spare you?”

“Just… Just let me kill that girl,” he said. “The one you were with. I’ll leave you alone. But I-I can’t die. Please, sir.”

In-ho held the point of the knife at the player’s throat. “If I see you again in this game, I will kill you,” he said. “I suggest running now.”

The player turned on his heel and ran, gone before In-ho could blink. He exhaled, dropping his arm to his side as his heart continued to race, adrenaline fizzing out. Soo-min had run off somewhere in the other direction, so In-ho tried to follow her invisible footsteps.

But wherever she had gone, he couldn’t find her. He hadn’t heard her number over the speakers. She wasn’t dead.

Distantly, someone screamed. Soo-min. In-ho ran in the direction of the sound, finding Soo-min fighting off another red player, 171. She was holding her own, but 171 still had the advantage of his knife, and he had her on the ground, about to stab her.

But In-ho had the element of surprise. He lifted his knife, bringing it down in 171’s back. 171 let out a cry and stumbled back, blood spilling from the stab wound. In-ho stabbed him again, this time in the heart, ensuring that he would not rise again.

“Player 171, eliminated.”

In-ho knelt down next to Soo-min, helping her sit up when he noticed the blood blossoming around her abdomen. Tears fell down her cheeks as she clutched where she had been stabbed.

Immediately, In-ho shimmied his jacket off, pressing it against her wound. “Keep pressure applied,” he said. “You’ll bleed out. Just hold on for…” He looked up at the countdown. “40 minutes. You can do that. 40 minutes, Soo-min.”

Soo-min shook her head. “And after the game is over? I won’t…” She shifted, trying to ease her pain. “I won’t make it through the night. Leave me.”

“Hyung, I think I’m dying.” Jun-ho had looked so scared, clutching his stomach, so pale, sweat glistening on his forehead. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You’re not going to die. I’ll find the exit.”

“Find Young-il,” she said, not listening to him. “Bring him back here. Please, In-ho.”

But In-ho couldn’t just leave her out here in the open. He bolted to the nearest door. Another square lock.

“There.” Soo-min pointed at 171’s dead body, and In-ho noticed a key hanging from his neck, which he must have robbed from his first victim. He unlatched it from 171’s neck and unlocked the door before hurrying back to Soo-mom’s side, helping her up and into the room. Before he could turn and leave, she grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “You’re a good person, In-ho. You are. Thank you for being on my side.”

In-ho didn’t trust himself to speak. He didn’t want to argue with her now, tell her that she and Young-il were the only good people left in this place. All he could do was respect her wishes. He had to find Young-il.

The stars seemed to have abandoned him, leading him in circles and to dead ends. As he dashed through the halls, up stairs and down stairs and through doors, another two blue players were eliminated, but none by Young-il. He only had thirty minutes left, and the time was slipping by quickly.

Losing his wind, In-ho slowed as he opened an already unlocked door, only to see Young-il inside the room, pacing back and forth.

Hearing the door open, Young-il raised his knife, but lowered it when he saw who it was. “In-ho! Where’s Soo-min?”

“She’s injured. Come with me.”

The two of them ran through the halls, and In-ho could only think of the guilt that was weighing him down. None of this would’ve happened if they would have just stuck together. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t switched with Young-il. And worst of all, the ones who watched were probably on the edge of their seats.

What would player 132 do when one of his allies was hurt? Would he put her out of her misery? Would his humanity be lost for good? After all, he’s killed two. What’s one more?

When they made it back to the room, Soo-min’s head had lolled to the side, eyes shut. Young-il dropped to his knees beside her, shaking her. “Wake up, Soo-min. Please wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open, smiling when she saw Young-il. “You made it,” she said, voice strained. “You haven’t killed anyone yet, have you?”

“N-No,” Young-il said. He pressed In-ho’s jacket against her stomach, trying to stop the bleeding, but even In-ho, standing back from a distance, could see that it was too late to save her without any medical intervention.

There was only one way that she could live.

In-ho stared at the camera in the corner of the room, watching its blinking eye. “Help her,” he said to whoever was listening on the other side. “You saved me, now save her.”

But no answer came. No guards burst in the room. The stillness permeated the air, and Soo-min’s fate was sealed.

Looking back down at Young-il and Soo-min, In-ho saw that Young-il was holding the knife, hands trembling, Soo-min’s hands encircling his, guiding him.

“You have to,” she whispered. “You have to live.”

“I can’t,” Young-il said.

“No one is coming to save me. There’s no winning this game. It’s a cycle that never ends. In here and out there,” she said, voice growing weaker. In-ho had to strain to hear her. “I’ll never escape it.”

Then she brought the knife down, piercing her chest, eyes fixing on the star-painted ceiling as she breathed her last breath.

“Player 077, eliminated. Player 153, pass.”

Young-il sobbed, dropping the knife and pulling Soo-min into his arms, his tears staining her tracksuit.

In-ho looked away. It was as if every sensation that had been dulled over the past few days returned to him all at once. The throbbing of his ankle, the gnawing hunger of his stomach, the exhaustion in every muscle sinking deep in his bones.

Even after killing his best friend, Young-il had retained his innocence. Soo-min had chosen the way she died, and Young-il was simply the weapon that carried it out. In a way, In-ho envied him for that. Envied that Young-il could cry and cry over her body, and no tears would spring to his own eyes. He felt empty and everything all at once.

He knew Young-il would die in this place. There was no living after this.

He knew that he would win, because he had to. Mi-yeong was still out there, waiting for him.

He saw the beginning and the end of the cycle all at once. It had never been fair. There had never been a chance for anyone else. The distant thought of determinism, of Laplace and Nietzsche and all the other men who soothed themselves with the idea that they had no control over their actions, that everything was fixed, felt like a very nice idea to lose himself in now.

Young-il refused to leave Soo-min’s body when the game ended. The guards pointed their guns at him, and In-ho dragged him away. He wouldn’t die like this. That wasn’t what he wanted.

The seven remaining players were given fancy suits to wear when they were back in the dormitory. The last time In-ho had worn a suit this nice was on his wedding day. This one would soon be stained with blood. They laid out a feast of bloody rare steak and wine.

In-ho gorged himself, swallowing down larger bites than he should, taking gulps of wine that coated his throat with sweetness.

To the right of him, the men did the same. Starving for what they thought was a scrap of mercy, when they had shown none at all. They had all killed to get through the last game. To survive. The illusion of control held strong.

To his left, Young-il picked at his food, wine glass untouched. He looked out of place in this portrait of greed, drowning himself in his own misery. In-ho knew that he could not shake him out of it, that there was no point. Young-il deserved to live, to get back to his wife and children. He was supposed to win this.

In-ho sat on the edge of Young-il’s bed after the meal. Young-il curled up like he was a child again, laying his head on In-ho’s lap. In-ho didn’t stop him. “I’m tired,” he whispered. “I want to go home.”

“It’s almost over,” In-ho said, looking out at the now-empty dormitory. To think that there had been over 400 of them here four days ago, thinking that they would play a few games and then go home, only to call this place their grave.

Young-il eventually fell asleep, and In-ho positioned him properly in his bed so he would at least get a good night’s sleep. He was almost angelic like this.

The room was silent for a long time.

Then, a guard approached.

“Player 132. He wants to see you.”

There was a man under the glittering gold owl mask. In-ho could just barely make out his eyes from across the table.

“Hwang In-ho.”

The sound of his own name startled him, like it no longer belonged to him. Hwang In-ho was someone else, someone who had died long ago. And this man, a stranger, the conductor of his fate, using it so freely made his stomach turn.

“You have made this game an entertaining one. You are a caliber above the rest.”

“You were the one who saved me in the third game, weren’t you?” In-ho asked.

The man laughed, a noise that sounded like it was rattling against his ribcage. “It wasn’t your time.”

“What about Soo-min? You were watching me when I was begging you for help, and you did nothing!” In-ho stood, heart racing. “You could have saved her!”

“Sit down, In-ho.”

In-ho did.

“Player 077 had to die. You know as well as I do that she did. She had to die for Mi-yeong to live.”

His heart dropped to the pit of his chest at the mention of Mi-yeong. “How—?”

“She’s very sick, isn’t she? She’s been at Seoul National University Hospital for three months now. And pregnant, on top of that. Have you picked out a name for your child?”

“I-I don’t understand,” In-ho stammered. “What do you want from me? If you hurt her, I swear to god, I’ll kill you.”

“Hurting your wife is not my intention,” said the man with the owl mask. “I want you to win, In-ho. I truly do. That’s all.”

“You can’t just pick and choose people you want to live and die,” In-ho argued. “I should’ve died in the third round. It’s not fair.”

“Fair’s not the name of the game.” He heard the supercilious smile in the man’s voice. “You talk of fairness, but when have you been fair? You killed that man during light’s out, and another during hide and seek. Why did they deserve to die over your friends? They had lives, too. Families to return to.”

“You killed them,” he said. “You put them in here.”

“They chose to be here. They chose to stay.”

For a beat, they simply watched each other, as if waiting for the other to make the first move. In-ho couldn’t understand his viewpoint—no, he understood it perfectly—he just couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t.

“I have an offer for you,” the man said. “Tomorrow, the other players will come after you. They will try to stop you from returning to Mi-yeong. Don’t let them.” He leaned forward, placing a knife on the table between them. “Kill the trash.”

In-ho’s gaze fixed on the knife. He thought of the other six players. Five of whom he didn’t know the names of, the stories of, only that they were his opponents. The sixth was Young-il. Young-il, who had only ever wanted to leave and see his daughter’s recital. Young-il, who had pleaded with him to kill him if it came down to them. Young-il, who had killed his own friend and would surely not make it long out there.

“What’s holding you back?” The owl mask sparkled in the glowing lights. “Is it that you care for him?”

“If nothing is fair, then let him live, too,” In-ho said.

“He will die no matter what you do,” said the man. “Would you rather give him a peaceful death, blissfully unaware that the man who he trusted most in this game was the one who killed him, or would you rather have him look into your eyes when you do it? I will say, the second option would make a good show, but I’m looking out for you, In-ho. I want this to be as painless as possible.”

Like hell he did.

“I won’t be your winner,” he said.

“You know the consequences of not winning.”

Then his thoughts turned to Soo-min’s final words of a never-ending cycle. Would he ever escape? Or was there only complacency in it forever spinning?

He reached for the knife, hesitating as he looked at the man.

“You could kill me here,” he acknowledged, as if reading his thoughts. “But that wouldn’t change a thing. I’m on your side. I’m the only one up here who is.”

In-ho slumped back against the seat. He had come full circle from where he began.

Returning to the dormitory, his footsteps echoed against the tile as he approached the first bed on the right. The knife glimmered as he lifted it, then stabbed the man as he slept. Blood spattered against his face and suit, trickling down.

One by one, he took the lives of the other players, robbed them of what chance they had left of winning, only they never knew it was rigged from the start. Drops of blood became bills of money.

He silently approached Young-il’s bed. For just a moment, he watched him sleep. Watched his chest rise and fall. He would keep his promise.

“I’m sorry.”

Those words cursed him. Young-il’s eyes suddenly opened, meeting In-ho’s in realization. But there was no anger, no hostility, no tears. In-ho wished he would fight back.

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was too good.

The knife plunged into his heart, again and again, until there was no doubt that he was dead.

He had no choice.

Chapter Text

The screen fizzed into static. Gi-hun closed the laptop, tears forming at the edges of his eyes.

All that he had seen—the games, the deaths of Young-il’s friends, the bloody finale—only reminded him that this was all so much bigger than him. That people had been dying for years before he even knew the games existed. Senseless suffering that he understood too well.

Young-il had been carrying it with him for so long.

But he wasn’t Young-il. That was another man on the screen, player 153, one and the same as the man Jun-ho had found in his efforts to search for who Gi-hun thought he knew.

No, the person Gi-hun thought he knew was Hwang In-ho. That name haunted his nightmares. He’d heard it in his first games, when a masked guard had asked if he knew someone by that name. Then once more, when Jun-ho revealed that it was his brother he was looking for. A brother who had the same card as him. A brother who had played in the games, too.

Gi-hun resigned himself to believing that Hwang In-ho was another loose end that would never be wrapped up. Another mystery that wasn’t his to solve. It was Jun-ho’s, and he had given up. It seemed that was what In-ho wanted.

How would Gi-hun explain that he was cohabiting with his brother, only he hadn’t known it? Was it his place to say?

And there was the question of Young-il. Hwang In-ho had stolen his name and had led Gi-hun to believe, for reasons he didn’t understand, that he was someone he wasn’t. If his name wasn’t his, how much of the rest of his story was a lie?

A deep anger started in his heart and spread through him, to his throat, his hands, his legs, unwilling to move. Yet there was sympathy, too. Understanding. He saw himself in Young-il—In-ho—whoever he was, watching him on the screen. He saw Sae-byeok in Soo-min. He saw Sang-woo in the other Young-il. The real Young-il. They were nothing alike, but the motions played out the same. Mercy killings and promises.

In-ho may have lied about his name, but the rest of his story was the truth. He had played the games nearly ten years ago. He had slain the remaining finalists in order to win. Gi-hun just couldn’t understand why his name was the one thing he hadn’t told the truth about. He understood lying at first when he hadn’t known who he could trust, but now, when Gi-hun had laid so much trust in him, had crossed bridges with him that he never would have crossed with anyone else, when he had saved his life countless times, there was no reason to, unless he had something else to hide.

And the contents of the DVDs… In-ho’s miraculous survival during mingle, the entire fourth day being omitted, the strange cuts during the last night from In-ho with the other Young-il to In-ho back in the dormitory with a knife. It wasn’t the knife he had during the feast. Not like when Gi-hun had been given the knife.

He had the favor of someone up there. Oh Il-nam, maybe, or the Frontman. He must have seen them when the cameras were cut. And Gi-hun, his own fractured memory, started to fill in the gaps. Did he see the Frontman after the fifth game? He may have been closer to the truth than he initially thought, and In-ho knew that. He must have known, because he knew about everything else. Gi-hun had never questioned it at first, content to accept that he had been keeping a close eye on him as a faux-guard. Or maybe he was just going crazy. Maybe he was finding patterns where there weren’t any, trying to piece together clues that didn’t add up. It wasn’t like a mystery movie, where breadcrumbs were neatly laid out for the audience to find. This was real life, where things happened for no reason at all.

There may have been no particular reason that Gi-hun and In-ho were chosen as pawns in a game of chess they didn’t know they were playing. They very well may have been any other person strung along for the ride.

But Gi-hun couldn’t shake the feeling that Young-il—In-ho knew something more than what he was saying. There was a reason he had these discs. Someone had given them to him, and In-ho knew exactly who it was.

He wanted the truth, the whole thing, not half-truths that In-ho decided he deserved to know.

Gi-hun lifted his head, realizing how late it was. Darkness spilled in through the windows, only the streetlights casting a sliver of illumination into the apartment. In-ho still hadn’t returned from wherever he had gone.

He thought of what he would say to him when he walked in the door.

Maybe he should yell at him, demand an explanation. Or maybe he should mention Jun-ho, or his true name, and note how he reacted. That would certainly throw him off guard and allowed him to slip into the moment of hesitation.

No, no, that wasn’t right. If he loved In-ho, then he shouldn’t test him. That wouldn’t get him into anything but trouble. He should be straightforward, but he should not shy away when In-ho got dodgy as he usually did. He had to follow through on his interrogation until there was nothing left between them, just understanding.

That was what he wanted.

Gi-hun ejected the disc from the laptop, running his finger over the smooth surface of it. This could be the only surviving piece of evidence that the games happened at all. But even if he showed it to the cops, what would that do? There was nothing left for them to find until the games were rebuilt, as they inevitably would be, and Gi-hun was just as clueless as when he started. All he had was that card and these discs to point him in a pointless direction.

The hopelessness of his situation weighed down on him, and he let out a scream that came from the depths of his soul.

He was stuck—that’s what he was. Moving forward seemed impossible now. He couldn’t forget the games. He couldn’t hide them behind a stack of paintings and take on a new name. That wasn’t who he was. And if he gave up, he didn’t know who he was.

Who was he without the games? They had come to define the past three years of his life, carving out his morals, his relationships, his everything.

There’s no winning this game. I’ll never escape it.

Gi-hun stumbled over to the kitchen, opening In-ho’s cabinets, eyes landing on a bottle of vodka. He’d never been a huge drinker, but tonight his liver wouldn’t know it. He poured himself a shot, relishing the burn as the liquid slid down his throat.

Then another, and another, feeling his limbs grow heavy as lead. He wanted to forget it all, just for a little while. His mind swam, head lolling forward against the kitchen table as a wave of nausea rolled over him.

He couldn’t help the bile rising in the back of his throat, but miraculously managed to keep it down.

Fuck. He needed to get to the bathroom before he made a mess of the apartment. He stood, pushing the chair back with a loud squeal against the floor, and belatedly realized he’d left his crutches by the couch.

Gi-hun limped towards the couch, but his foot must have missed the ground, because he went tumbling to the floor, vision blinking with stars.

I’m going to die, he thought. I’m going to choke on my own vomit and die on the floor. That’s so embarrassing.

He had not survived the games just to…

He blinked, and suddenly there was a face in his field of vision. Young-il, crouched over him, saying something that he couldn’t quite make out.

“Come on,” Young-il said, sounding underwater, pulling him up to his feet by his armpits. Gi-hun leaned against him for support as Young-il led him to the bathroom. “Keep your eyes open for me.”

Gi-hun couldn’t do anything but keep his eyes on Young-il, tired lines beneath his eyes, mouth wrinkled into a frown. He tried to form words, but his tongue was uncooperative. He was angry, he knew that much, and he couldn’t voice it. And Young-il looked so human in that moment that he couldn’t say anything at all.

Young-il sat Gi-hun down next to the toilet. At some point he had procured a cup of water, passing it off to Gi-hun and guiding it to his lips.

Gi-hun took small sips, still reeling from the vertigo of losing his balance and falling, as Young-il rubbed gentle circles over his back. It was more comforting than he’d have liked to admit.

“What happened?” Young-il asked. “I come back and you’ve collapsed.”

“You,” Gi-hun slurred, pointing a finger at Young-il’s chest, “You’re a liar.”

Young-il’s face twisted like he was trying to think of something to say. Another lie, another lie on top of his mountain of lies. But what he settled on is, “I am.”

“You’re not Young-il,” he continued. Tears sprung to his eyes as the image of the true Young-il lying in his bed, covered in his own blood, lifeless, invaded his mind. “You’re not him.”

“No, I’m not,” said Young-il.

“Fuck!” Gi-hun tried to push him away, tried to stand up and get out of here, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. “Can’t you just… Can’t you just lie to me? Do you have to be so self-righteous all the time? Why can’t I just hate you?”

Young-il said nothing. Gi-hun stared at him. Hwang In-ho, Oh Young-il. Oh Young-il, Hwang In-ho. One and the same, but not the same at all.

Hwang In-ho was a stranger. Gi-hun had never known him. He had died in the 28th games, died with his wife and his child, and he had become someone else. He had become the man who Gi-hun felt safest with. The man Gi-hun was afraid of. The man he couldn’t understand but wanted to and still didn’t even when he had gone prying into the deepest depths of his life, the parts of him he had tried to hide. Young-il was the habit he couldn’t quit, the addiction he couldn’t break, and he kept gambling on him like one of these times he’d win.

“I love you,” he said.

“You’re drunk,” Young-il said. “You don’t mean that.”

“Shut up. Don’t tell me what I mean.”

Just as Young-il was about to respond, the bile rose to his throat again, and this time, Gi-hun was not able to stop it, throwing up in the toilet. He was humiliated that Young-il was seeing him this way, so vulnerable and so out of control, but Young-il, impassive as ever, did not look at him any differently than he had before.

Gi-hun wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, lightheaded. “That didn’t make me feel any better,” he muttered.

“No, it usually doesn’t,” said Young-il. “Do you want to lie down?”

“Don’t distract me,” he said. “I know that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“We’ll talk when you’re sober. I promise. I know I owe you some answers, but it shouldn’t be like this.”

“Fine,” Gi-hun said. “I want to lie down.”

Young-il wrapped an arm around his shoulder and helped him walk to the bedroom, lying him down in the bed. For a moment, Gi-hun thought he might lie down beside him, join him in bed again, but he didn’t. He walked out of the room, and Gi-hun, too ashamed after being inadvertently rejected, didn’t call after him this time.

He rolled over onto his side, temples pounding. Distantly, he could hear Young-il moving around outside the room, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, and finally, he returned to the bedroom, having filled up the glass of water once more and handing it to Gi-hun.

“You should try to get some rest,” Young-il said.

Gi-hun took a large gulp of water and moved to set the glass on the bedside table on top of the copy of The Theory of Desire. However, at the same time, Young-il reached to grab the glass at the same time, and their fingers touched.

The cold touch of his fingers jolted Gi-hun, and he seized their closeness to take Young-il’s hand. “My face is hot.”

Young-il ran his fingers over Gi-hun’s forehead, brushing his grown-out bangs away from his eyes, and for a brief second, Gi-hun felt relief, letting his eyes fall shut.

“You’re too good to me,” he murmured.

“If you knew who I really was, you’d hate me,” Young-il said, so quiet that Gi-hun almost didn’t hear it.

“I do know who you are,” Gi-hun argued, opening his eyes again. His arm flopped to the side, trying to point in the direction of the living room. “I saw it on those discs. I… I saw it all. And I don’t hate you. But I’m mad at you right now for lying to me.”

Young-il just smiled sadly. Gi-hun didn’t think he’d ever seen him look so sad before.

All he could see was Young-il’s face as he fell into unconsciousness.

When he woke up, sunlight was spilling into the room and Gi-hun’s head ached like it had been split in half. Last night rushed back to him in a tidal wave of unwanted memories.

The games. Young-il’s gentle touch. The swell of anger.

Hwang In-ho.

He was nowhere to be seen, but the bedroom door was slightly ajar and his crutches had been leaned up against the bed.

Gi-hun didn’t want to move, but he couldn’t stay in bed forever, not when he needed answers. He pushed himself up, even when his body complained, positioning his crutches under his arms and standing.

In-ho was in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea. He lifted his eyes when he heard Gi-hun enter the room, looking like he hadn’t slept at all. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by a bus,” Gi-hun said.

“I can bring you breakfast if you want to go back to bed.”

“No,” he said firmly. He wasn’t going to back down this time or let himself be distracted. He needed the truth. “We should talk. You promised me answers.”

“I did.” He didn’t look rattled in the slightest. “And I don’t intend to go back on that promise. Sit down, Gi-hun.”

Gi-hun did, leaning forward over the table. “Where’d you get that footage?” he asked.

“You’re not the only one who’s been followed outside of the games,” said In-ho blankly.

“Did Oh Il-nam give it to you? Or was it the Frontman?”

“Il-nam, I presume. I don’t know. It was at my doorstep when I returned home from the games. And… I hid it away. I never watched it. I didn’t want to remember it.”

“Oh Il-nam gave you that knife, didn’t he?”

In-ho’s fingers curled around the handle of his cup. He stared into the liquid like he was trying to read the tea leaves at the bottom. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yes. He thought I was special. Different from the rest.”

Gi-hun let his words absorb into his bloodstream. Il-nam had believed he was special because he had hope for humanity, that not everyone was as bad as he thought. And Il-nam thought In-ho was special for the exact opposite reason. Because he spoke of fairness and still killed the ones who went against him. In that regard, they weren’t so different. How many soldiers had Gi-hun killed to exact the justice he believed was necessary? How many people had died in the rebellion and during lights out because of his foolish death wish? And the finalists, slaughtered by him in their beds… Gi-hun and In-ho carried twin guilts, wrought by the same man.

“Hwang In-ho,” Gi-hun said. “Who is he?”

“That’s my true name. I apologize for lying to you.”

“Why did you lie?”

“Initially, I wasn’t sure who I could trust,” he said. “But after we got out… I continued the lie because I was afraid. Afraid of you knowing the real me, and I suppose I still am. Knowing you’ve watched my games and seen me at one of the lowest points in my life doesn’t particularly help that feeling in any way.” In-ho seemed to understand the unspoken question on Gi-hun’s lips: Why Young-il? “I chose Oh Young-il’s name because I thought that if I carried his name…” He trailed off.

“You didn’t want to forget him,” Gi-hun finished for him.

“Something like that.”

“What about your brother? Are you just going to forget about him?”

In-ho frowned, tracing the rim of his cup with his finger. “I should have figured that you were in contact with him.”

“He never stopped trying to find you,” Gi-hun said. “Don’t let him give up.”

“Don’t involve yourself in things you don’t understand,” In-ho said. “It’s for the best if Jun-ho spends the rest of his life thinking I’m dead.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Gi-hun said, catching the hesitance in his voice. But the truth was that In-ho might believe it. He believed everyone else would just move on from the hurt and grief of losing a loved one, so what made his own brother any different? What made Gi-hun different?

In-ho passed something small across the table towards Gi-hun. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We should end this.”

He looked down at what In-ho had slid towards him, picking it up. A plane ticket to Los Angeles. A one-way trip. Gi-hun’s heart sank, heavier than ever before. This was what In-ho wanted? Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that this was the same thing the Frontman had offered to him three years ago. “No,” he said, stumbling back, barely catching himself from falling to the ground again. “No, you’re not allowed to do this to me.”

“You should see your daughter, Gi-hun. It’s for the best,” said In-ho. Gi-hun thought he saw a tear in his eye, but his face was cold and composed. He’d always been that way. “You should stay far away from me.”

Chapter Text

Gi-hun pushed the plane ticket back across the table. “You-You can’t make me go,” he stammered. “I won’t.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” In-ho said, from his chair. “You wanted to see your daughter. Be a part of her life again. I overheard your phone call with her. You promised her you’d visit soon.”

“That was before you turned my whole life upside down!” Gi-hun said. “You can’t just make me feel alive again and then tell me to go. And I do want to see Ga-yeong, of course I do, but I thought we could do it together.”

In-ho’s eyebrow twitched up. Gi-hun wanted to throttle him, wanted to get it through his head that he meant everything he said. That he did love In-ho, whoever In-ho turned out to be. He would be there for him no matter what, through every hardship. “Together,” he repeated, more a question than a statement.

“You said it was meant to be the two of us. You said it was more than fascination. You kissed me. You…” Gi-hun’s face flushed, remembering the intimate moment they had shared. How much of that was the truth? “I don’t understand your end goal, doing all of that just to kick me out.”

“I’m not kicking you out,” In-ho said, crossing to Gi-hun’s side and taking his hand, but he pulled it away like he’d been burned. In-ho got the message. “Gi-hun, I’m trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Gi-hun wheeled on him, now so close he could smell his breath, the earthy warmth of him. “The same way you’ve protected your brother? He risked his life trying to find you on the island, you know! The Frontman shot him, nearly killed him!”

In-ho was silent, looking down, and Gi-hun felt in one moment gratification at proving a point and in the next remorse. This wasn’t easy for In-ho, either, he knew that, but it didn’t have to be like this. “You have to trust me when I say that it’s better this way.”

“What have you done to prove I can trust you?” Gi-hun laughed wetly, but he held back his tears this time. “I’ve been trying so hard to understand you, and I don’t. You’re the kindest man I’ve ever met, but you can be so selfish! I can’t tell if this is for me or for your own ego trip.”

“If I were selfish,” In-ho started, “I would get down on my knees this minute and beg you never to leave me. I do want you. I do. But I see the way this is going to end, and… I can’t do that to you.”

Gi-hun inhaled, watching the way In-ho’s eyes didn’t so much as flicker away from him. He meant it, he could tell that much, and all at once, he understood why. In-ho was afraid of this, of losing this the way he lost Mi-yeong, Soo-min, Young-il. He didn’t want to set himself up for failure with Jun-ho or with Gi-hun. It was easier for him to push everyone away than to let himself have something that could be lost.

In-ho’s gaze still didn’t leave him, but he didn’t say anything. It was the two of them, not at odds but in complete cognizance of where they stood.

When it became clear that the conversation was over, Gi-hun retreated to the bedroom, taking the plane ticket with him. He still had a raging hangover, and laying down and staring at the wall was his only remedy.

Maybe he should just take the plane ticket and leave. Disappear from In-ho’s life like he wanted, do them both some good. And then what? He goes to Los Angeles, sees Ga-yeong, and… well, Eun-ji and her rich husband made it very clear that they didn’t want him anywhere near Ga-yeong. Once they found out that he was there, it wouldn’t be seen as a clean slate. It wouldn’t be trying to be there for his daughter, because she was his daughter. No, he’d be the clingy ex who just can’t fucking get over anything. The absent father who finally showed up for his daughter once he realized what he’d lost. That would certainly go over well.

Besides, he had been enough of a burden to In-ho, and if he wanted him gone so badly, then he would vanish. But there was still the fact that In-ho might know something. He’d gotten so distracted by everything else that he had forgotten what he was searching for in the first place, and that was an answer. An answer to the missing gap in his memory, an answer to who had given him that knife, an answer to who was the one keeping a close eye on him. All of it seemed more of a mystery than it ever had. Jun-ho was a glacial wall and In-ho was even worse. He could make Gi-hun think he was being honest while never really digging deep enough for his satisfaction. And the lies, the hiding, the disappearing, Gi-hun could hardly take it anymore. It all felt like one big joke with him as the punchline for whoever was watching.

The worst part of it all was that he loved In-ho in spite of all the spite. He couldn’t not love him. The contradictions, the hypocrisy, the dishonesty were the things that made him, in a way, so alluring, so human, and Gi-hun didn’t quite understand why. Maybe it was the fact that In-ho only saw the bad parts of himself, and Gi-hun saw the good.

But he was still angry with him, terribly, terribly angry. The fact that In-ho seemed to want him to stay just as much as Gi-hun wanted to made it all the more frustrating.

Finally, Gi-hun pushed himself out of bed, going to pack his things.

Quickly, he realized he had very little of his own. Nearly all of his clothes were In-ho’s, or clothes In-ho had bought for him. All of his personal belongings were stowed away at the Pink Motel, and he hadn’t been ready to bring them here. Wasn’t ready to reconcile that life with this one.

Well, I’m ready now, he wanted to scream in In-ho’s face. He was ready to be something more than the sad, lonely man he was turning out to be, and now In-ho wanted to throw it all to the wind.

It stung.

All he had left was the card.

Thanks for playing.

Circle, triangle, square.

The only thing that really belonged to him was this, and he wanted to set it ablaze in a funeral pyre.

He wouldn’t, though, not until he solved the mystery of the Frontman and the games. He couldn’t leave when there was something tethering him here.

Gi-hun sat on the foot of the bed, tracing over the plane ticket with his blunt nail. He had this, too. A parting gift.

There was a knock at the door. Gi-hun said nothing. If In-ho wanted to come in, then he would. And he did, predictable as he was, sticking his head in the door.

“I made lunch.”

“Okay,” Gi-hun said.

Then he was fully in the room, shutting the door behind him, apologetic look on his face. Lunch was just an excuse to get inside. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Then take your plane ticket back,” Gi-hun said, thrusting it towards him. “Or buy another one.”

But In-ho didn’t take it. “I can’t.”

“So what good is sorry?”

“I know it doesn’t mean much to say that and stand by what I did,” In-ho said cautiously. “But I—”

“I don’t want to talk,” Gi-hun said.

In-ho sat down beside him, looking forward. “Alright.”

The tension in the room grew taut. He didn’t want to give In-ho the satisfaction of looking in his direction, and it seemed In-ho felt the same way. Gi-hun fixed his attention on the hole in In-ho’s sock, thread unwinding and unwinding. He couldn’t imagine a man who kept every other part of his life so neat would be careless with his socks, but maybe that was the one thing he kept out of control, just to let it happen. To prove that one thing going wrong wasn’t the unraveling of his entire life.

In his peripheral, he could see that In-ho was staring at the hole in his sock, too. Perhaps thinking the same thing he was, and Gi-hun slipped. His gaze flicked up, meeting In-ho’s for only a moment. That moment was all it took.

Gi-hun’s mouth was on his before he could stop himself. In-ho, initially surprised by the boldness of his move, melted into the kiss, but soon pulled back.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk,” In-ho said smugly.

“I don’t.”

“Let’s not talk, then.”

They connected once again, this time more by instinct than anything else. It felt natural, a hand on the back of In-ho’s neck, weaving into the scruff of hair at his nape, In-ho’s hand on Gi-hun’s hip, thumb tracing over the bony skin that jutted out.

He dipped his fingers beneath the fabric of Gi-hun’s pants. “Is this—”

“Yes,” Gi-hun breathed, nodding rapidly. “Yes, yes.”

But In-ho just kept his hand there, teasing over his bare skin, as he kissed featherlight kisses along Gi-hun’s jawline and down his neck, just enough to tickle and make him laugh.

He wanted to live in this moment, remember every smell and touch and sound, because it might be the last time he would see In-ho like this. This fleeting glimpse made it all the more intimate, the more valuable.

“I want to make you feel good,” Gi-hun said. “Let me do that.”

In-ho tilted his chin in understanding. “I want to see you first.”

Gi-hun went to remove his belt, but In-ho’s fingers wrapped around his, stopping him. Slowly, he undid the buckle and slid it off. Then, he moved down and dropped to his knees, carefully unstrapping his leg brace and pulling it off. “Are you sure your leg is healed enough?”

“It’s fine,” Gi-hun said.

In-ho fixed him with a skeptical look but continued by pulling off Gi-hun’s socks, then made quick work of his pants, tossing them to the side. He nosed against Gi-hun’s thigh, and Gi-hun squirmed, feeling himself hardening in his boxers. It was almost embarrassing how quickly In-ho could turn him on by barely even touching him, and In-ho was so composed, his demeanor betraying nothing.

In-ho nipped at the flesh of his thighs, canines scraping over just enough to have Gi-hun whimpering at the pressure. In-ho only seemed emboldened by the sounds escaping him, pulling down his boxers and moving in to press his mouth against the sensitive skin around his cock.

Realizing his intentions, Gi-hun gently pushed him back by his shoulder. “I said I’d make you feel good.”

In-ho’s gaze flickered up, staring at him under his eyelashes. God, Gi-hun wanted him so bad, wanted to give in and let him have his way with him. “Do you think I deserve that?”

Gi-hun’s mouth went dry. He swallowed. “You can’t just say things like that.” Then he added, “And you do deserve it. I-I don’t care about whatever you think you’ve done wrong. I just want you.”

“That’s exactly like you,” said In-ho, climbing back up onto the bed, laying back against the pillow, propped up on one elbow. Gi-hun followed his movements, eyes never leaving him. “Putting others before yourself. You were right earlier. Maybe I am selfish. Maybe I want you, too.”

“But not selfish enough to want me to stay,” Gi-hun murmured.

“Gi-hun—”

“No, don’t tell me that this is for my own good because you are the only good thing about waking up from the games.” He felt his eyes begin to well up again. He didn’t want to cry again, not now when he was already ruining the mood, but he was helpless and he was a hypocrite. “I failed to protect everyone. I got my best friend killed. My daughter is halfway across the world. And you… when I woke up and you were there, I was happy. I fell in love with you, and you don’t want me. I don’t know whatever this—” He gestured between the two of them. “—is for you, but it’s not… it’s not love.”

In-ho absorbed the words in silence, letting Gi-hun spin himself out until he had said everything on his mind. Gi-hun wished he would just say it—that he loved him or he didn’t, no more half-promises or riddles dressed in fancy words or theories or philosophical ideas. It would be easier, but nothing was ever that easy.

“Sorry,” Gi-hun said, wiping his eyes. “That was… pretty un-sexy of me. Can we go back to not talking now?”

“I don’t know if we should continue,” In-ho said. “Would it be alright if I just held you for a while?”

“Yeah.” Gi-hun grabbed his discarded boxers, but In-ho beat him to it, helping ease them up his legs and around his hips, and Gi-hun rolled his eyes in irritation. He had to be such a gentleman even now. He couldn’t just be an asshole when Gi-hun was upset with him.

The two of them laid down on top of the sheets, Gi-hun facing the wall and In-ho’s arms wrapped around him from behind, chest nearly pressed against his back, leaving only centimeters of space between them.

Eventually, Gi-hun shifted, turning around in his arms to face him. The corners of In-ho’s lips turned up for the briefest moment, repositioning his arms further down around his waist. He held him so tight, so possessive, that Gi-hun couldn’t believe this was the same man who was willing to let him go. But that was the old saying, wasn’t it? ‘If you love someone, let them go?’ It sounded so stupid now. If you love someone, you hold on to them as tight as you can because losing them hurts more than anything else. And In-ho of all people, who had gone out of his way to keep Gi-hun alive during the games, to seek him out afterwards, to invite him into his life… it didn’t make an ounce of sense. He should have ended this long ago if he was so scared to love him.

Still, Gi-hun burrowed into his arms, letting himself be held. “I can’t go,” he said after a while. “The games—they’re not over.”

In-ho frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

Gi-hun resisted the urge to roll over onto his back and stare at the ceiling. “I tried to explain it to Jun-ho, and he thought I was crazy, but… when I woke up in the hospital, there was a card from someone in the games. Someone else made it out of there, In-ho. Someone who has probably been watching us this whole time.”

“I saw it,” In-ho said. “In your things one day. I wasn’t snooping, I just saw it sitting out and got curious.” He ran a hand over Gi-hun’s lower back. “For the record, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“No, of course not, you went through the same thing,” Gi-hun said. “But you said you killed the Frontman. Is there any possible way he could have survived?”

In-ho thought for a minute. Gi-hun held his breath, unsure of what he would say. If the Frontman really was alive, all of his worst fears would come true at once. Everything he had done would be for nothing. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Everything about the games seems impossible.”

His words only confirmed to Gi-hun what he needed to know. That he couldn’t get on that plane. That he couldn’t give up on his search just yet. But In-ho didn’t want to hear that—yet he might be right. A break from everything could be what he needed, a chance to reset and look at things with a new perspective. He’d been so fixated on it that he had gotten lost in the maze, and all the confusion with In-ho only made it worse.

So, he sat up and said five words he never thought he’d say: “I’m going to Los Angeles.”

Chapter Text

The phone rang three times before she picked up.

“Hello?”

“Eun-ji, hey,” Gi-hun slid the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he wove between the passersby trying to get to their gates, suitcase dragging behind him.

Eun-ji didn’t hang up immediately, which was a good sign. “Gi-hun? It’s almost midnight here, what are you doing calling so late?”

“Sorry, sorry. I know this is sort of last minute, but I’m catching a flight to Los Angeles, and I… I wanted to see Ga-yeong. I promised her I would visit as soon as possible.” Before she could say anything else, he continued, “You don’t have to worry about a hotel or transportation or anything, I’ve got that all taken care of. And I’ll pay back all the money I owe you. Every single cent, okay?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Gi-hun checked the phone screen to make sure she was still on the call. “We don’t need your money, Gi-hun,” Eun-ji said finally. The word we stung, a reminder of a family he wasn’t a part of. “Where’d you get it, anyway? Are you gambling again?”

“No,” he said. “No, no gambling. I got a job, a good one. It pays me more than enough, so…”

He felt a little bad about lying to her, but the truth wasn’t something she wanted to hear. She’d think he was even more crazy than she already believed, and that would only hurt his chances of seeing Ga-yeong. And he was turning his life around, he was, so it wasn’t a complete lie.

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad for you,” Eun-ji said. Her voice sounded genuine, and Gi-hun was reminded of the time that he loved her. He still loved her, of course he did, because that feeling didn’t go away so easily, but they were two different people now, diverging in two separate directions. “Were you able to pay for your mom’s medical bills?”

“She… passed a few years back. Not long after I last saw you,” Gi-hun admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault. There was nothing anyone could have done.”

Another silence, like she was considering. “How long are you in L.A.?”

Gi-hun settled in a seat at the far end of the row when he reached his gate. “Indefinitely,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll talk to my husband and Ga-yeong, but you can see her over the weekend,” Eun-ji said. “If that’s what she wants, then I shouldn’t deny her. Just… be normal, okay?”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Gi-hun rambled, and his phone suddenly started ringing again. He checked the screen. In-ho. “I’m getting another call. I’ll call you on Friday. Thank you again, Eun-ji. I really do appreciate it.”

He hung up her call and stared at In-ho’s incoming call. He didn’t understand why he was calling—they had seen each other only two hours ago when In-ho had dropped him off at the airport. They had said their goodbyes, and that was that. No tearful conversation, no regrets. It was surreal, the ease with which he could turn from him and walk away, almost like he knew that they wouldn’t be apart forever.

Finally, he answered. “Are you going to tell me to get on this plane, In-ho?”

There was a beat of silence on the other end. “What?”

“Sorry. It’s an inside joke.” Between himself and a dead man who might not actually be dead. “It’s… not really funny now that I say it out loud.”

“Will you be coming back?” In-ho asked.

To me went unspoken. Will you be coming back to me?

“I don’t know,” Gi-hun answered honestly. “Everywhere I go, every inch of every street reminds me of the past. My friends from the first game. My mom. Jung-bae. All of them. And if I go back, I’ll just be reminded of you, too.”

It felt like an eternity before In-ho spoke again, an entirely too long gap that nearly made Gi-hun turn back and run out of the airport. “You’ve never called me In-ho before.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Gi-hun.

“I was just going to wish you a safe flight, since I didn’t say it before you left,” In-ho said. Gi-hun could hear the choked-up breath he took. “And goodbye.”

“Goodbye, In-ho.”

He hung up. He got on the plane, watching as the city grew smaller and smaller below him, but he didn’t feel the pain lessen the further away he was. It was still there, weighing on his heart.

Was that really it? Was that the last they heard from each other? In-ho had slipped into Gi-hun’s life so easily, and it was just as easy for him to slip out of it. It didn’t have to be the way it was—but it did. It was always meant to be like this, one way or another. And now that In-ho was another dot down there in the shrinking rows of buildings, it was just like he said. He didn’t have him, and he wanted him more than ever. His presence, whether bringing happiness or anger or grief or love, was a constant, and Gi-hun felt lost without that.

But he couldn’t turn back this time. He had made that mistake once before, and look at what it led to. It kept him from what he really wanted. To see his daughter. To have a family again. Maybe he would never get those things, but he had to try to want something. That was the constant—desire.

The truth was that he was terrified to see Ga-yeong again. She said she wanted to see him, but she wanted what she didn’t have, too. Once she had him, would she decide that he was still the same screw-up as before? There was an infinite number of ways he could fail, and he was damn good at failing. He opened up his phone and went to the photo app, only to be reminded that there was nothing there. All the photos he had of Ga-yeong were gone with the island. Just another thing the games had taken from him, another part of his life that was not left untouched.

Gi-hun managed to nod off during the flight, falling in and out of consciousness when the plane hit turbulence and when the flight attendants came by with food. Still, he was caught in his head, remembering and regretting every misstep he’d taken in his life.

If he had gotten on that plane three years ago, he would have saved himself a lifetime of heartache. But he wouldn’t have saved anyone from their fates. Sang-woo and Sae-byeok were already gone, and he could at the very least take care of their families. But Jung-bae… he would have gone into the games anyway. Like Gi-hun, he didn’t have anyone or anything to fall back on. Life and death would play out the way it always had, and he was helpless to those forces.

And if he had gotten on the plane, he never would have met In-ho. Gi-hun wasn’t sure if that was a curse or a blessing. In-ho had given him hope and struck it down at the same time, had built him up just to abandon any notion of love or a life they could have together—it never ended as good as it began.

No, no, he couldn’t think about In-ho right now. He was now a part of the past that he was leaving behind.

When the plane landed, Gi-hun picked up his rental car and drove to his hotel to check in, watching the landscape pass by in the window. It was his first time out of Korea. He should be mesmerized by the beauty of this new place, but he couldn’t feel anything but melancholy and a heavy loneliness that seeped into his bones.

He settled in at the hotel, realizing he still had an entire day to waste before the weekend and seeing Ga-yeong, but he was jet-lagged and exhausted, so he flopped on the bed and sent a quick text to Eun-ji, letting her know that he had landed safely. Not that she particularly wanted to know, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Then his finger hovered over In-ho’s contact, and he was typing out a text message before he could stop himself.

Landed in LA. At the hotel now.

Gi-hun groaned, smacking himself in the forehead. In-ho definitely didn’t need to know.

The three dots indicating that In-ho was typing popped up on the screen, and stayed there for a solid minute. Gi-hun stared the whole time, anticipating his response.

Finally, the text came in:

In-ho: 👍

That was it? All that time just to send a measly thumbs-up?

Then the three dots appeared again—

…

…

…

—and disappeared.

Whatever In-ho was going to send, he decided against it. Maybe that was for the better. They had said goodbye to each other. Usually, that meant something, but Gi-hun just couldn’t let go, like most things in his life.

He tossed his phone to the side, rolling over on the uncomfortable mattress. He could have shelled out the cash for a better quality hotel, but he didn’t want to spend money that didn’t belong to him. He could survive stiff mattresses and shitty air conditioning for the sake of not betraying the memories of his friends. Gi-hun knew he would have trouble sleeping either way.

The next morning, Gi-hun drove to Eun-ji’s place, pulling up in the driveway but not yet getting out of the car. His heart raced in his chest at how real everything had suddenly become in a matter of seconds. For the first time in three years, he’d see his daughter again. He might remember what it was like to have a real life again, even if just for a few days, and that was terrifying.

He got out of the car, walking up the steps to the door and knocking.

Maybe he should just turn back now. He hadn’t gotten a gift for Ga-yeong anyway, but that hadn’t gone very well the last time—no, he couldn’t buy her love, and he couldn’t chicken out. He had come all this way for a reason, and it wasn’t to back down at the last second.

The door opened. Eun-ji’s husband, smiling a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hello,” Gi-hun said, nodding his head slightly. “I’m here to pick up Ga-yeong.”

He eyed Gi-hun for a moment, clearly still hesitant about letting him back into their lives. Which Gi-hun supposed was warranted, considering the last time he had seen this man he had punched him in the face. Then he called into the house, and Ga-yeong appeared in the doorway.

For a second, it was just the two of them staring at each other. Should he make the first move to hug her? Or did kids not like hugs nowadays? Maybe he should say something. But in the middle of his thoughts, Ga-yeong wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him, like nothing had changed at all.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, hugging her back. He tried not to tear up, but he was helpless against the wave of emotion that rushed through him. “You’ve gotten so tall.”

“I missed you,” she murmured.

“I missed you, too. I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.”

“What happened to your leg?” Ga-yeong asked, looking down at his leg brace.

“Remember when I told you I had an accident and was in the hospital? It’s that. I’m almost completely healed, though.”

Eun-ji stuck her head out the door. “Have her back before five, okay?” she said. “Text me if anything comes up.”

Gi-hun nodded as Ga-yeong extricated herself from him. The two walked to the car, Ga-yeong getting in the passenger side and buckling herself in. He couldn’t believe how much he had missed in these three years, so much time wasted between them.

“Where do you want to go?” Gi-hun asked. “It’s your day, so you choose.”

“Can we go to Griffith Observatory?” she asked. He didn’t miss the American accent tinging her voice. “Mom barely ever takes me there.”

“You like the stars?” he said, handing his phone over to her so she could type the location in.

She shrugged. “They’re cool, I guess. I like the planetarium shows.”

“So do you want to be an astronomer when you’re older?” Asking questions like this sounded so detached, like he was talking to a stranger instead of his daughter. He hardly knew anything about her anymore.

“I don’t know,” said Ga-yeong, turning her head towards the window as Gi-hun started to drive. “My step-dad wants me to be a doctor like him, but… I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be,” Gi-hun said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “You should follow your heart. You have a lot more opportunities than I did when I was your age.”

Ga-yeong didn’t say anything for a little bit, checking her phone a couple times before putting it back in her pocket. “Mom said you have a new job.”

Gi-hun nodded. “I do.”

“So are you staying in America forever?”

“For the time being,” he answered. “I don’t know when I’m going back, but as long as I’m here, we can hang out, yeah?”

“Okay,” Ga-yeong said quietly.

The car fell into silence for the rest of the ride. He couldn’t gauge her emotions, whether she was upset with him or happy, but she was a teenager. That’s how teenagers were. Aloofness was a staple of that age. All he could do was follow his instincts and hope he didn’t screw it up.

When they arrived at the observatory, Gi-hun followed Ga-yeong’s lead. Her English was far better than his own limited vocabulary, and she managed to get them in and get tickets for the planetarium show. During the show, he barely understood what was being said, but he watched Ga-yeong, how engaged she was and how interested she looked, and he smiled.

He was beyond lucky to be with her now—he understood why In-ho did what he did. He was a man who lost his child before he ever got to know them, and pushing Gi-hun to spend the precious time he had on this earth watching his daughter grow up was more important than anything else.

Once the show was done, she led him around the observatory, explaining the exhibits to him and a bunch of scientific concepts that went way over his head, and he was only along for the ride.

After a couple hours looking at everything they possibly could and 50 dollars spent at the gift shop later, they found themselves outside the observatory sitting on the grass, overlooking the city below them as the sun rose high in the sky.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Gi-hun said after a quell of silence, staring forward. “You deserved a father who’s always there, and I wasn’t.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ga-yeong said. “I know that Mom and my step-dad told you to stay away.”

“They did that for your own sake,” he said. “So don’t go resenting them for that. I wasn’t a good influence on you. The truth is that I lost sight of what was important to me, and I didn’t realize how much I had lost until it was too late. But I want to try again. I want to be the dad you deserve.”

Ga-yeong wrapped her arms around him. “Just don’t disappear again,” she said into his shoulder. “We… I thought you were never coming back.”

“I’m here now,” he said, hugging her tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And for once, that felt like a promise he could keep.

Later, Gi-hun and Ga-yeong drove back down into the neighborhood Eun-ji lived in, as it was approaching five and Ga-yeong needed to get home soon, but Gi-hun decided to stop for ice cream before he took her back to Eun-ji’s place.

Ga-yeong got a large bowl of chocolate ice cream, while Gi-hun was content with nothing. “I guess you didn’t inherit my lactose intolerance,” he said as they took their seats at a table outside.

Ga-yeong just laughed.

They made casual conversation as she ate her ice cream, watching the people pass by on the street. It was a lot nicer here in the wintertime than it was in Seoul, nice enough to have ice cream in the middle of January, and Gi-hun was glad for that. The cold weather had been getting him down.

Distantly, he wondered how In-ho was doing. He was probably sleeping or just waking up. Did he miss Gi-hun the way Gi-hun missed him? Was he even thinking of him?

His thoughts were cut off by Ga-yeong. “Do you hear that?”

He lifted his head. “Hear what?”

“Listen.”

So he did. Gi-hun strained his ears, and he finally heard it. It sounded like something hitting the ground repeatedly, about a hundred feet away. His heart fell to the pit of his stomach—it was familiar.

“Stay here,” Gi-hun said, standing up. “I’ll check it out.”

“Be careful,” Ga-yeong warned.

Gi-hun approached the source of the sound, coming from a nearby alleyway. When he reached the alleyway, he saw two Americans, but the one who caught his eye was the blonde woman in a suit, hair slicked back in a tight ponytail, carrying a briefcase. Just like the salesman in Korea. The other American, a younger man, slammed his red ddakji tile into the ground, successfully turning the blue tile over.

Gi-hun’s first gut reaction was to laugh. Did Americans even play ddakji? The sight of it would be bizarre if he didn’t understand the implications innately. He was right. The games weren’t over, and they weren’t restricted to Korea, either.

His stomach turned over. What could he do? He glanced over at Ga-yeong, who was watching him curiously. If he intervened, he would cause a scene and he’d be right back to square one with her and Eun-ji. Besides, he didn’t speak English well enough to explain to the man that he would die if he played the games. If he didn’t intervene, the man would die. But then someone else would die in his place on the revolving carousel.

All he could do was let it happen. He had wasted three years of his life chasing down a clue, three years that his daughter believed he was dead. He couldn’t waste another three. That knowledge was agonizing, tearing at him from the inside out. He’d never escape the games.

The woman handed over a stack of cash and a card, and the man fanned through it, a grin forming on his reddened face as he left the alley, casting a strange glance at Gi-hun as he walked by.

The saleswoman met Gi-hun’s eyes, then smiled. Almost like she knew him, daring him to say something, to do something.

But he didn’t. He walked away, back to Ga-yeong, and sat down.

“What happened?” Ga-yeong asked, looking at him with concern.

“Nothing,” Gi-hun answered numbly. “Nothing. They were just playing a game.”

Chapter Text

At the hotel, Gi-hun stared at the last text conversation between him and In-ho. An untouched pack of cigarettes sat on the bedside table.

He still couldn’t believe what he had seen in the alley. Another game in another country. He wasn’t shocked that this wasn’t an isolated sickness from his home—it had spread across borders, across the earth, to anyone who was depraved enough to keep the games going. But confronting it face to face was another story, and he had not been brave enough to stop it. Or, more realistically, he had no power to stop it, and that weighed on him most of all.

He retrieved the card from his suitcase, scanning over the words.

Thanks for playing.

He wasn’t crazy. There was someone out there continuing it all, whether or not the American games were connected to the Korean ones.

However, he had made a promise to Ga-yeong. He wouldn’t disappear again. He wouldn’t fall into a rabbit hole of obsession that he couldn’t dig himself back out of. But what kind of person was he if he was aware of the disease of the world and pretended he didn’t see it? No better than the ones who watched, the ones who orchestrated it, that was for certain.

Gi-hun picked up his phone again, still open to the same screen.

So, hypothetically, if I saw someone playing ddakji in America…

He deleted the message before he could press send. He couldn’t think of a good way to word it without sounding out of his mind, never mind that he felt out of his mind to begin with. But In-ho had assured him… had touched him so tenderly and spoken so softly that Gi-hun believed him.

He dialed his number.

In-ho picked up within seconds. “Gi-hun? Are you alright?”

It was reassuring to know that he had someone on his side, someone who understood him halfway across the world. Even when they were on a break, In-ho was there for him.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just… needed to hear your voice.”

As he said it, Gi-hun realized how true it was. In-ho was one of the only things keeping him from going off the deep end, and he needed him. In-ho seemed to realize that, too, so why was he so adamant on keeping him out of his life?

“Homesick already?” In-ho asked, chuckling.

“No, no, it’s not that,” he said. “I don’t know how to say this, but I saw something today. In an alleyway, there was this man and woman… and they were playing ddakji.”

The other end of the line was silent, like In-ho was carefully considering his next words, but Gi-hun filled the quiet.

“I know what I saw, before you say anything. And the saleswoman, she seemed to know who I was. Fuck, I knew it! I knew it wasn’t over, and… I didn’t stop it. I just let it happen, let that man go to his death. I swore I would never let anyone die in the games again, and I failed. I failed so many times.”

Gi-hun’s eyes were filled with tears before his brain caught up with the words spilling from his mouth. He bit down on his lip, his throat feeling tight. He didn’t trust himself to speak anymore.

“Listen to me, Gi-hun,” said In-ho, his tone low over the static of the phone, the same voice that had comforted him during the games, during the toughest parts of recovery. “Take a deep breath.”

He did, inhaling shakily. Truthfully, it did make him feel better, or at the very least evened out his breath.

“You can’t go after them. You can’t get involved. It’s too dangerous.”

“I know that,” Gi-hun murmured. “The only reason I didn’t do anything was because my daughter was there. I can’t lose her again.”

“Good. Hold on to that. We survived the games, and now we have to live our lives. We can’t spend the rest of it wallowing in misery and guilt.”

Gi-hun was silent. He still didn’t agree with In-ho, but he understood. While he was stuck on the games, he wasn’t moving forward. He was in a sort of stasis, a limbo where he was tunnel-visioned on one thing, and he was blind to the world around him. And if he stayed in that stasis, Ga-yeong would slip from his fingers. Maybe In-ho’s tactic of pushing it all down and hiding it away wasn’t the right answer, but

“Hearing your voice like this, through the phone…” Gi-hun said. “You remind me of the Frontman.”

“Hm?”

Gi-hun laid down, staring up at the ceiling. He replayed that day over and over in his head, the day he had made the choice not to get on the plane. It wasn’t just his obsession with the games. Part of it was his obsession with him. With a man whose name he didn’t even know, a face he had never seen. Maybe that was part of it, the mystery, that kept him in the chase.

“He wanted me to get on a plane to Los Angeles, too. He told me to leave the games behind.”

“Well,” In-ho said, “we both have a vested interest in your safety, then.”

“And I don’t understand why. For both of you.”

Gi-hun heard some rustling on the other end of the phone, like In-ho was shifting in his seat. “If you saw the Frontman right now, would you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“How would you do it?”

“I’d take his mask off first so he can’t hide behind it anymore,” Gi-hun said. “And I’d look him in the eyes and wrap my hands around his neck.”

“You wouldn’t question him first? Ask him why?”

“I don’t think there is a why. Not one beyond the fact that he sees all of us as pawns in a game of human chess, even though he’s a pawn, too. Men like him just follow the orders of others to convince themselves they have more power than they actually do.”

“But he’s dead,” In-ho reminded him.

He was dead, but the games weren’t. Maybe they would never die, as long as there were people like the Frontman willing to exploit others for their own benefit. People who could so easily fall to believing that those in the same situation as them were their enemies.

Even he was keeping the games alive like this, holding onto that card, his fixation on the Frontman.

“Come to L.A.,” said Gi-hun impulsively, before he could stop himself. When In-ho said nothing, he continued, “I know we’ve only been apart for a couple days, but I… I don’t know if I can do this alone.”

“Gi-hun—”

“I know, you want to ‘protect’ me, but you want to be with me just as much as I want to be with you. Just because you believe you don’t deserve me doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself.”

In-ho hesitated, then the sound of him laughing rattled through the static.

“What’s so funny?” Gi-hun said, heart stinging after he’d been so vulnerable, only to be laughed at.

“You’re just so… you. You’re so good,” said In-ho. “No one has ever seen me the way you do, not since Mi-yeong.”

“They would if you let them,” Gi-hun said. “You push people away. Let me be selfish for once and just ask you to be here. I don’t know why I depend on you so much, but I do, and I’m not allowing you to keep me at arm’s length. It’s like you said, we survived the games, and we did it together. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Of course it does,” In-ho said, softer than Gi-hun could recall him ever being. Maybe he was finally getting through to him.

“Then come to L.A.,” Gi-hun said. “Just… for a little bit. Don’t be a stranger.”

The prolonged silence on the other end seemed to stretch on for ages. Gi-hun could almost imagine In-ho now, perhaps sitting in his own bed—the bed that had become Gi-hun’s, the bed that had become theirs—staring down at his own hands, contemplating the right thing to do. But he knew it just as well as Gi-hun did, that they couldn’t be apart for too long. It wasn’t right, one without the other, when their souls had become so intertwined like they were a part of each other now.

He would win this battle, because he knew In-ho’s heart.

“Fine,” said In-ho, though Gi-hun didn’t miss the tender tone in his voice. “But no games talk while I’m there.”

That didn’t sound half-bad, pretending that it all didn’t exist for a while. Pretending that they were two normal people living normal lives. But Gi-hun frowned, thinking of the two of them and their pasts. What were they to each other if not for the games? They never would have crossed paths. Their bond was carved out by the games, forged from its hellish depths. What did they have if not for that? Would In-ho really even like the Gi-hun that existed outside of the games and their grasp? Gi-hun wasn’t even sure who he was without them.

He was a father, sure, but he didn’t feel proud enough to wear that title just yet. He was an ex-husband, a pretty shitty one. A gambler, who’d lost everything over and over again. A sick man who couldn’t seem to get better. A grieving man with a graveyard full of ghosts following him around.

In-ho’s voice jolted him from his thoughts. “What are you doing right now?”

Gi-hun groaned. “Really? You want to do this now?”

“You were the one who called me,” said In-ho. “Besides, I thought you were lonely.”

“I am lonely.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Nothing. It’s just good to hear your voice like this,” said Gi-hun. “You’re right, I don’t want to talk about the games. I just want to talk like nothing is wrong, have a conversation like two regular people.”

“We can do that.”

Gi-hun closed his eyes as In-ho began to tell him about the goldfish he’d gotten a few years ago, and how he was never really good at taking care of them. Gi-hun listened along, contributing to the conversation where he could, but he was really just savoring the dulcet tones of his voice, the ups and downs, when his voice got higher when he was passionate and the rumbles when he was complaining, and eventually, he slipped away into sleep.

Waking up a few hours later, he wasn’t surprised to find that In-ho had ended the call, and he shot off a quick text to let him know that he had fallen asleep.

Then he remembered their conversation, how In-ho would visit him in L.A., and how it seemed like Gi-hun was forgetting about the games for good. It still didn’t settle right in his stomach, the idea of abandoning what he had dedicated the last three years of his life towards. He had thought he would live and die in the games, and maybe he was meant to die there. He was never meant to make it out, but fate had strung him along and kept him going with nothing other than the pure stubbornness of humanity, of the innate desire to live. And he couldn’t just stop living, that was for certain, but if he had been granted another chance, he had to do something.

But he had none of the information and none of the power. All he had was a broken memory and a broken body to remember it by. A card taunting him and an American recruiter who he would likely never see again. What could he do? Nothing, nothing at all. His avowals that he would stop the games meant very little now, and he was sure that the higher-ups, the ones who controlled the games, were laughing at him. This is what they wanted, for him to lose all hope.

The only answer that existed, he was sure, was in his memory. In the gap between jump rope and waking up, that nebulous space in his life. Of course he trusted In-ho and his recollection of the tale, but he wasn’t there for all of it. There must have been something more there, a reason why he felt the aching in his heart that told him this wasn’t over.

He had planned to go to therapy, but that had been upended by the revelations of In-ho’s games and the subsequent move to America. Maybe he should try to find someone here who would listen, who could help him unearth that lost time. In-ho surely wouldn’t approve, but he didn’t understand what it was like to have a hole like that in his head.

That was what he had to do. He had to remember.

Chapter Text

Jun-ho knew going to the Pink Motel was a mistake.

But he was trying to be a good—friend? Well, he and Seong Gi-hun weren’t really friends. They were allies, at most, ostensibly tethered by their hunt for the games, and that was over now. Maybe he was just trying to be a good person, make up for the lies he’d told to protect the brother who had no interest in being a part of his life. God, this was all so screwed up.

So he would be a good person and get what he needed this one time. It happened to be a keepsake that he forgot, a book he needed shipped to America. The news about his moving came as a surprise, considering how adamant Gi-hun had been about stopping the games. Something was wrong here, and Jun-ho didn’t know what, but it wasn’t his business. Still, true to his nature, he couldn’t help wondering.

He entered the empty motel, the eerie silence permeating the rooms that he passed through, entering Gi-hun’s former suite.

However, as he scanned the room, a noise came from down the hall—in the direction of the shooting range Gi-hun had once shown him.

His hand went to the gun on his hip, slowly withdrawing it as he moved towards the shooting range. A trap was his first thought. But Gi-hun wouldn’t do that, but Jun-ho didn’t really know him at all.

Entering the shooting range, his body was moving of its own accord before he could truly process what he was seeing. He had the stranger pinned to the wall, gun pointed at his chest, in a second.

Then he saw.

“In-ho?”

His older brother wasn’t the intimidating masked figure Jun-ho had known him as for the past three years. He was just his brother, dressed in normal clothes and looking normal and acting too casual, like all of this was normal when it fucking wasn’t.

In-ho’s eyes flickered down to the gun, then back up. “Jun-ho.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same,” In-ho said. “Will you put the gun down?”

“You shot me,” Jun-ho said, his brain still racing to catch up with his reality. He pressed the barrel of the gun against In-ho, affirming he wasn’t going anywhere. He had a million questions and he wasn’t sure if the answers to any of them would be satisfactory. In-ho had a way of dodging the truth, and he had been dodging his family for years. That was what made Jun-ho believe this was truly a surprise for him—if he didn’t want to be seen, he wouldn’t be here, so that meant that he either wanted to talk to Jun-ho, or that he had not been planning it. Jun-ho figured it wasn’t the former.

“You shot me first.”

“You’re in charge of the games! You are responsible for all—all of those people dying. And you were going to kill me, too, just because I got in your way.”

In-ho’s cool demeanor seemed to waver at Jun-ho’s words. His shoulders loosened. “I did everything in my power to make sure you survived. You know that.”

It was true that, once his betrayal was revealed, Jun-ho had surmised the captain was sent by In-ho to rescue him from the island. But that same captain sent him on a wild goose chase and killed his allies. How could he ever believe that In-ho had his best interest in mind? Survival was the bare minimum.

“You never answered my question,” Jun-ho said, trying to shift gears. He wasn’t going to get answers out of In-ho about the games, and he wasn’t sure he wanted them. “Why are you here?”

“Gi-hun sent me to pick something up for him.”

“Gi-hun?” Jun-ho’s mind whirled. In what scenario would his brother be in contact with Gi-hun? Unless… that Oh Young-il that Gi-hun had mentioned he was living with was one and the same as Hwang In-ho. How had he managed to deceive Gi-hun like that? “Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

In-ho looked to the side, something like shame crossing his face, and all at once, Jun-ho understood. The gun dropped to his side. “You’re in love with him.”

He had only seen that look in his youth, when In-ho was with Mi-yeong. He’d looked at her like she hung the moon and the stars. He had devoted everything to her, and when it all went wrong… Jun-ho, barely an adult, had watched his brother fall apart, unable to do anything to help.

In-ho wouldn’t let him in. All these years, In-ho had shut him out and he had been doing that. Been running these fucking death games because for some goddamn reason that was more important than the boy he had raised. And now he was ruining another man’s life for what? For no good reason, that was certain.

And In-ho didn’t deny it. He only took a deep breath.

“And he doesn’t know who you are,” Jun-ho realized. “He thinks you’re Oh Young-il, whoever that is. How long are you going to keep lying to him?”

That got a reaction out of him. “You’re not so innocent,” In-ho said. “You lied to him, too.”

“To protect you.”

“I never asked you to do that.”

Jun-ho tore himself away from In-ho, anger rising in the pit of his stomach. “You don’t ask your brother to do something like that. You just do it. We’re supposed to protect each other. Well, great job you did with that!”

He looked to the far end of the shooting range, remembering what he had come here for, but that seemed so insignificant now. He had imagined what he would say to In-ho if he ever saw him again, replayed it all in his head a million times over and rehearsed it like he was in a play, but any words he had were mechanical and stiff, and they fell away into nothing. He had nothing more to say.

“Are you going to tell him?” In-ho asked finally, as if afraid to break the silence.

“No,” Jun-ho said miserably. “He should hear it from you, if you ever decide to tell him the truth.”

In-ho was quiet. Maybe he was waiting for Jun-ho to yell at him some more, to accuse him of being a terrible person. Maybe that was what he wanted. Jun-ho didn’t care. In-ho hesitated, then moved towards his brother—and Jun-ho couldn’t stop himself, he was wrapping his arms around him. He was taller than In-ho, only by a couple inches, but the difference felt more pronounced now. He wasn’t a child anymore, and In-ho was no longer the man he looked up to.

In-ho’s arms came to wrap around him, too, his heartbeat pounding against Jun-ho. It was just another painful reminder that he was still human.

Jun-ho couldn’t help the tears that formed at the edges of his eyes, and he tried to blink them away. He wanted to hate In-ho. He wanted to feel something other than contrition.

When Jun-ho stepped back, In-ho was studying his face, like he was trying to memorize every detail. “You look like your mother,” he said quietly.

Your mother. Not ours. There had always been that degree of separation that Jun-ho hadn’t understood until recently, part of why In-ho had pulled away—but that hadn’t been the whole reason. Of course it wasn’t.

“You look like Dad,” Jun-ho said. He didn’t remember much of their father, but as In-ho grew older, he began to resemble the pictures of him more and more. He’d never said it before because In-ho always went quiet at the mention of him, and Jun-ho never knew why. But now seemed like the only chance he’d have to get everything out in the open.

In-ho’s stare went cold, and he moved to the door. “I have to go. I’m leaving for America in the morning.”

“What about the games?” Jun-ho asked.

“I don’t know what will become of them,” said In-ho. “Eventually, I’m sure they will continue without me. I couldn’t stop it, Jun-ho. No one ever could.”

“Will we ever see each other again?”

In-ho smiled a bittersweet smile, the sadness returning to his eyes all at once, and Jun-ho was sure that was when he looked most like their father. “It’s for the best that we don’t. All I’ve done is hurt you.”

“That’s probably the most honest you’ve been in a long time,” Jun-ho said, sniffing. “Doesn’t what I want matter? I want you to be here. I want you to be my brother again. So don’t go. Please.”

“You have your whole life ahead of you,” In-ho said. “Don’t spend the rest of it chasing me down, not when you can do some real good.”

Jun-ho could only watch as he disappeared through the door. He couldn’t will his legs to run after him, couldn’t force his vocal cords to yell after him. He knew then, somehow, that this was the last time he would see his brother. That for all his searching, Hwang In-ho would remain a ghost to him, a specter that haunted his every waking hour. There would be no tearful family reunion where everything suddenly turned out right.

And In-ho was wrong about one thing.

Jun-ho had nothing before him.

Chapter Text

You sent Jun-ho to the motel so I’d be forced to talk to him.

The text from In-ho caused his phone to vibrate against the table, and Gi-hun couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his lips. So his scheming had worked.

Sure, it really wasn’t any of his business, but the two brothers had made it his business when he had gotten roped into the games in the first place. Besides, it was only fair that since he was reconnecting with Ga-yeong, In-ho should reconnect with Jun-ho.

Gi-hun simply sent him a shrugging emoji, figuring that was enough payback for the thumbs-up from last week.

“You’re smiling at your phone a lot,” Ga-yeong said from across the table. Gi-hun looked up. He had taken her out to eat at her favorite restaurant, and he had gotten momentarily distracted. He turned his phone over so the screen was facing down. He was going to be present for her. “Do you have a new girlfriend?”

“No, no new girlfriend,” Gi-hun said.

“New boyfriend?”

“It’s not really… like that.”

“But there is someone! Do I get to meet him?”

If he was really going to be a part of Ga-yeong’s life, then there was no point in hiding it. She was going to find out about In-ho eventually, and it was better to be honest upfront than to lie. “He’s flying in this week. If your mom lets you, then sure.”

Ga-yeong grinned. “Where’d you meet him?”

Ah. That was when the lies began. He couldn’t tell her that, couldn’t trouble her. It wasn’t right for her to get involved in something she didn’t understand, and the further away from it she was, the safer she’d be. Only now the games were here, in her neighborhood. How could he protect her from that? “We… met through work,” he said. A simple enough lie. One that didn’t require much explanation, and could be left open-ended. “And he isn’t my boyfriend, so please don’t embarrass me in front of him by calling him that.”

“But you want him to be your boyfriend, right?” Ga-yeong asked.

Gi-hun scratched his chin. “Yeah. I do.”

He’d never quite verbalized that before, never put a label on what he and In-ho had. It felt too final, too official, when at most they were friends-with-benefits. Friends who kissed and had sex and never really talked about it. What did that make them? Certainly not boyfriends. Besides, In-ho was still grieving his wife, as much as he tried to hide it. Gi-hun couldn’t take her place, perfectly slotting into his life like nothing was wrong at all. They were bound by something like fate, or something like tragedy. He didn’t know what to do with that.

In-ho’s plane came in at six in the evening.

The car ride back to Gi-hun’s hotel was filled with taut silence—Gi-hun’s hands gripped tightly around the steering wheel, In-ho in the passenger seat beside him, staring forward—until:

“I’m sorry.”

The words fell out of Gi-hun’s mouth before he could stop them.

“I didn’t intend to hurt you when I sent you to the motel. I just…”

“Just wanted to meddle in something you know nothing about?” In-ho said coldly.

Gi-hun glanced over at him. “I know enough,” he said. “I know that it was tearing him apart to not know what happened to you. Did you tell him the truth?”

“He had figured it out,” said In-ho. “So I told him the truth he didn’t want to hear. That it was better for us to never see each other again. I know you’ll never agree that it’s easier to protect someone by staying away from them, but it’s the only thing I can do for him.”

“That’s why you can’t stay away from me.”

“You were the one who wanted me here, were you not?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Gi-hun hesitated. He looked back at the road, suddenly unable to reconcile his own feelings. “I always want you.”

And that was that. There was nothing more to say, no way to lay it out any more clearly than he had, and he couldn’t help feeling disappointed when In-ho had nothing to say in return. Gi-hun knew he must love some part of him, at the very least. It was why he had looked after him at the hospital, had welcomed him into his home, had taken care of him when no one else would. That was why he was here. It wasn’t some illusion that would slip through his fingers if he didn’t hold on tight enough. In-ho’s way of showing love was his own, and Gi-hun was slowly learning to navigate it.

When the two arrived at the hotel, Gi-hun had barely closed the door behind them and taken off his jacket when he noticed In-ho staring at him, head tilted.

“What?” asked Gi-hun, looking at him over his shoulder.

In-ho’s expression remained neutral. “It’s good to see you.”

The corners of Gi-hun’s lips quirked up. The beginning of forgiveness, maybe. “Yeah?”

“You look healthier. Happier.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re here.”

“No, it’s…” In-ho crossed the room, standing in front of Gi-hun. He reached up to brush a stray strand of hair from his face. “It’s you. You’re yourself again.”

“You never knew the real me,” Gi-hun said, casting his gaze to the side. “The man you met in the games was a shell of who I was.”

“Then let me get to know him,” In-ho said.

There was a moment where it was just their breaths between them, the hushed tension of the space they shared. And then, tentatively, Gi-hun was kissing him, and then pressing In-ho back and back until he was against the wall.

He could feel In-ho smile into the kiss, mouths opening as they ventured to explore every inch of each other. It was messy, but it felt more right than anything he had done before.

“I missed you,” Gi-hun gasped when he came up for air. “I missed you, I missed you. Don’t leave me again.”

In-ho, cheeks flushed and lips swollen, just continued to grin at him. “I’m yours, aren’t I?”

Gi-hun felt breathless. Of course, he had always been aware of how attractive In-ho was—it was impossible not to notice—but seeing him like this, so affected because of Gi-hun, was intoxicating. He could stay drunk on that feeling forever. He just nodded, unable to form words.

Their reconciliation never seemed to end, each of them giving and taking pleasure from one another. Gi-hun had never known it could be like this, bare skin pressed against In-ho’s, absorbing his warmth. Sex had never been something he really craved before, something he lost himself in, but with In-ho, it was something new. It was rediscovering himself, rediscovering In-ho, and the both of them together. Any sort of disagreement between them dissipated into the air like smoke, and they moved together in what could only be harmony.

Finally, though, when they had worn each other out, they laid on the bed, Gi-hun holding In-ho in his arms. His attention was once again drawn to the scar on his shoulder, the marred skin that was still a mystery. “You didn’t get this from the games,” he said quietly.

“No,” In-ho admitted, shifting in his arms. But he didn’t elaborate. Gi-hun didn’t expect him to. They trusted each other, didn’t they? And that was the most valuable thing a person could give, even more valuable than love, and still they had not admitted the latter.

“My daughter asked if you were my boyfriend,” Gi-hun said.

In-ho laughed. “What did you tell her?”

“I said… I’d like you to be. I just—you know, I want you to want that, too. I do love you, and I’m not drunk this time around, so that should prove to you that I mean it.”

“Well, then. I love you, too.”

Gi-hun watched the way In-ho’s eyes remained fixed on him, the way his lips moved when he said it, the slight crinkle of his crow’s feet, and he told himself he would remember that forever. He may forget everything else in the world, but that would be the one part of his mind that remained: the way In-ho said ‘I love you.’

“But,” Gi-hun said, “boyfriends sounds like we’re teenagers again. You know?”

“Then we don’t have to be that. We can just be two people who love each other.”

He barreled on, “And I don’t want to replace Mi-yeong, I hope you know that I’m not trying to do that. I would never want to do that.”

“Gi-hun,” said In-ho, threading an arm around Gi-hun’s waist, hand settling on the small of his back. It made him feel safe, protected, somehow. “You’re getting in your head about this.”

“Sorry. I’m just afraid.”

“I am, too. Terrified. I… haven’t thought about what it might mean to let myself love you, but I do anyway. But we can’t stay trapped in the past forever. Moving forward means letting myself be in love with you, in whatever way you want. I only want what you want.”

Gi-hun pulled himself impossibly closer to In-ho, so close that he could hear his heartbeat pounding. Proof of his fear, but also proof of his desire. In-ho wanted what he wanted. They were practically one now, the same hearts, the same minds, the same needs.

“Then that means you’ll stay,” Gi-hun said.

“I… want to stay,” said In-ho.

“I’m waiting for a ‘but.’”

“But we can’t stay in this dingy hotel. We can do better than that, can’t we?”

Gi-hun grinned, pressing kisses along In-ho’s face. Above his eyebrow, on his cheeks, below his nose, along his jawline, any inch of open space his lips could reach. “No running away this time?”

In-ho couldn’t seem to hide his happiness, forcing back a smile. “No. Absolutely no running away. I’m here to stay. I’m yours.”

“I want to stay close to Ga-yeong,” Gi-hun said. “I promised her—and myself—that I would be here for her, and I intend to keep that promise. I think she’d like to meet you, too, if you want that.”

“I’d be honored,” said In-ho. “I made a promise, too. To Mi-yeong, years ago. She wanted to buy a lighthouse. Of course, I never was able to fulfill that promise, but… maybe now I can.”

“Can you even live in a lighthouse?” Gi-hun asked. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.”

“We’re disgustingly rich, Gi-hun. We can practically do whatever we want. If we wanted to live in a lighthouse, we could.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, and living in a lighthouse sounded like a new adventure. He’d never had a place that overlooked the ocean before. “It’s a beautiful way to honor her, and we can both get what we want.”

For the rest of the night, they ordered takeout and watched some shitty American show that was on the television, but Gi-hun was stuck in his own head.

His plan to reunite In-ho and Jun-ho hadn’t exactly gone the way he expected, and he didn’t understand In-ho’s cruelty towards him, even if he believed he was protecting his younger brother. Maybe he just wanted to believe in happy endings—where brothers could put aside their differences and their pasts for long enough to understand one another. But he didn’t live in that world, and the longer it went on, the worse he felt. Why was he the only one who was cut a break in life? Even if he had lost nearly everything, had watched the deaths of his best friends, there was still some light at the end of the tunnel. There was In-ho and there was Ga-yeong, reasons not to give up on it all yet.

Jun-ho, for all he frustrated Gi-hun, deserved a resolution at the very least, and that’s what he was trying to provide. But maybe he had only made it worse by trying to help.

In-ho was probably right. He had to move on. He hadn’t wanted to accept it. He wanted to believe that there was an answer in the past. That there was closure in what he was missing. But the only way he could get to the end of the book was by moving on to the next chapter, not by flipping back and forth between past pages trying to find the missing words.

If there was an answer, then it would come to him organically. It would come to him because someone else willed it, not because of any action of his own. Even if it felt like a betrayal to himself, he was only hurting himself further by continuing to put himself in harm’s way, and if he was gone, who would be left to remember the ones that died?

In-ho would remember Jung-bae, Dae-ho, Jun-hee… but he was the only one who carried Sang-woo and Sae-byeok and the truths about what happened to them. He couldn’t let them die a second death that way. It was his responsibility to remember them, and he could not do that if he was dead.

In-ho seemed to sense the thunderstorm that had rolled over his head and paused the television. Gi-hun couldn’t understand it anyway. “Are you alright?”

“Just thinking,” he said.

“About what?”

“My friends who died in the first games,” Gi-hun admitted. If In-ho knew, too, he wouldn’t be the only one to carry this responsibility. But the thought of talking about them out loud made his throat pinch up and tears spring to his eyes. “It feels like it was a long time ago, but it still hurts.”

“Even longer for me,” In-ho said. “But I remember them, too. It doesn’t go away.”

“Young-il and Soo-min,” Gi-hun remembered. “What were they like?”

“You watched the tapes.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“Soo-min was a kindness I didn’t deserve. And Young-il… I don’t know. I believed he was so good, and maybe that’s why I chose his name to bear. I wanted to be that kind of good, the one who wants the best for everyone. The kind of good that isn’t so hardened by death.”

“You are good,” Gi-hun said, thinking inexplicably of Sae-byeok and Sang-woo once again. Somehow, his brain was drawing similarities between them and In-ho’s friends. Some things were never really new, they just took new forms.

In-ho said nothing at first. Still unbelieving of that truth. “They never stood a chance in the games. People like that, the kind ones, the optimistic ones… they never really win.”

“I won,” said Gi-hun.

In-ho’s mouth creased into a line. “Did you?”

Did he win? He became something he swore he wouldn’t. He killed the remaining finalists. He was still stuck in the games, whether he was off the island or on it, and couldn’t seem to get out of that endless feedback loop, repeating back and back.

Gi-hun just wanted to prove him wrong for once, maybe. Prove that all his stupid theories and pessimistic outlooks on life were just that. But the odds were stacked in In-ho’s favor, and he wasn’t a lucky man.

He was only chasing something that couldn’t be caught, a dog in a race running after the mechanical rabbit, and knowing that it wasn’t a part of the race at all didn’t stop him—it only pushed him forward onto the track.