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Ga-on hasn’t been going out much, not since he left the Kang manor; for all it is a ghost-filled mansion with just the seedlings of hope sewn inside. He wishes Soo-Hyun would answer her phone, since he’s starting to wonder if leaving was even worth it. Was she serious about never wanting to see Ga-on again? She couldn’t have been – she would never cut him out forever. Just like he couldn’t cut her out forever. But he knows it’s not the same thing… He hasn’t been including her, or telling her what he’s been up to.
He has so many regrets, but one is not that he helped Kang Yo-han in the first place. It’s that he had to do it alone. Had to protect Soo-Hyun from the underbelly of the truth he discovered about himself through Yo-han. Now she thought the worst without even knowing all he’s clawed through to maintain what is left of his humanity, his morals. Being a factor in the reason someone killed themselves, then worrying strictly about a strategic weapon her corpse may have carried, has whittled away at that humanity all the more, and he wants to see himself again. Soo-Hyun would help him… but she’s not around.
So he does the most human thing he can think to do. He waters his plants, prunes them where needed and talks to them about how he’s sorry he had to leave them, then he goes to the store to shop for food. On his way, he feels eyes watching him. He thinks he even sees a wisp of black. It must be K, sent by Yo-han… or it is a stranger, sent by someone else, and that would be far worse of a possibility. But he feels in his instincts that it’s K, and on his way out, he spots a glimpse of the man. It seems as though he doesn’t care that Ga-on knows he’s watching. He might even want that.
K follows him on his journey back, a long ways off, but visible here and there. It is one of those moments that it all goes odd… K’s form tilts and vanishes. Gone in a flash. K wouldn’t just abandon his post without reason – not without taking a call, and he would have paused to receive the order, not just… disappeared. Right? Ga-on must be thinking too far into it, but it continues to bother him even as he sets his bags out on the table in his own haunted home.
Everything in Ga-on prickles, and then he gets a call. “Min Jung-Ho is in danger…”
But Ga-on knows that voice. He watched enough hours of morbid videos of the man cooing on crowds of delinquents and shouting vitriol to remember who it is. Choonsik, the leader of the Bamboo Spears; President Heo Joong-Se’s man. The man who has started targeting Yo-han, publicly and certainly privately. Whether he has his mentor or not, he’s telling him to go into a warzone. It feels wrong.
He stares off, connecting all the dots and realizing it’s a trap at the same time he recognizes he needs to listen to his instincts. He grabs for his phone, calling Yo-han first and foremost. There’s no answer. So he calls Elijah next.
“Ga-on?” her voice is edging on petulant, the justified but no less teenage angst in her probably too much to deny, but the overall flourish is hopeful. Tentatively so.
“Elijah,” he sighs, “I’m sorry to call like this. I’m sorry I left it like that but I… I need your help. No questions asked. Where’s Yo-han? If he’s not in the mansion, can you trace his phone?”
He’s already on the way out while Elijah does some investigating. Unfortunately it takes her a while to confirm Yo-han is not on the grounds, so Ga-on just drives around until she confirms Yo-han is gone. She then makes quick work of tracking him down – “He has an android phone! His gps is more secured than most, but it’s still far too connected to google for its own good.”
Elijah is explaining as a way to tone down the tension, another sign of her nerves even if it’s intended to draw attention away from it. She ruins her own illusion when she follows it up with – “Is Yo-han okay? Is he in trouble?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll find him, Elijah, promise.”
He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he finds him. Rage at him, maybe punch him if he’s allowed to get that close, but he has to find him first. He doesn’t even really have a right to be angry – Ga-on needed space to make a choice, and in doing so he left Yo-han to his own devices. His own fate. And yet, the thought of him getting hurt so shortly after Ga-on left stings in a way he doesn’t want to analyze.
Yo-han’s phone is traced to a warehouse, so very conspicuous – at least it is close to where Ga-on happens to be. He speeds off as fast as he can, but it doesn’t help that the place is a bit of a labyrinth to get into. Eventually he worms his way in, and he figures out where he needs to be by following the plaintive sounds of a man begging Judge Kang to “not come”, to “you can’t... It’s dangerous.” The screams are shrill and desperate, cracked through with sobs, as though belonging to a scared child more than a man. They vibrate off the concrete with the portend of a ghostly cry; made all the worse by the man Ga-on knows Judge Kang to be – an indiscriminate, vengeful god, being told to stay away.
Ga-on’s heart races from the pitch of a voice he has only recently accepted to be familiar – K panicking like this doesn’t bode well. This is bad. This is very very bad. Withal his building dread making Ga-on’s ears pop from the pressure, it doesn’t compare to the tantamount awe that overcomes him when he enters a copper-spattered stone room and looks up to see K dangling by his wrists, kicking and pleading. Doesn’t compare to the utter plummet of his heart when he realizes the chain has loosened and that K is falling, falling, falling…
It all happens so quickly, the sudden recognition of what he has to do and the kick of his legs as Ga-on throws himself in K’s direction.
It’s a wonder that he makes it, drawing from some sort of instinct that says to push his legs out and fall onto his ass – there’s no good way to do this, but if he’d just flown forward the way he wanted, his elbows would have cracked against cement and who is to say he’d even have use of his arms after that. Nevertheless, his still destined-to-be-bruised arms are full of another’s body, one that then crunches against Ga-on’s torso and drives him into the unyielding ground below.
It’s a surprisingly finite thud of a sound, and it seems as though the descent has torn the wind from K’s previously tormented lungs. Ga-on, too, has very little air reserved for gasps or whines, but even if he did, he knows better. K was dropped by someone, someone Ga-on cannot see, and it’s best they think K’s been squashed like a bug. He can only pray they do not check over the railing to see Ga-on sprawled on his back with a stunned K laid overtop him quite awkwardly.
He thinks he hears the clicking sound of high heels over the rush of blood in his ears, but it could be his imagination. He focuses mostly on cataloguing his soreness, including a terrible pinching in his back. He’s not even sure he could get up even if he tried… That is proven true when K very meticulously rolls himself over and up, and Ga-on releases an involuntary gasp. His body feels flattened, as though he were dough on Christmas eve.
Although his vision is bleary with pressure-triggered tears, he sees K in a frenzy trying to get his wrists free. His focus is all gnashed teeth and rumbling concern, but it doesn’t seem like he’s worried about himself.
“What…” Ga-on can barely talk, the wind still taken from his chest.
“Yo-han.” K says as a response, the tenor of alarm in his voice stating everything that needs to be said. Yo-han is in trouble. Ga-on looks up, just in time to see the devil himself staring down in shock. He is so taken aback that he visibly wavers, back and forth, holding the railing to keep himself steady. Yo-han disappears, the sound of clopping footsteps on metal making it clear he’s attempting to walk down.
“What happened to him?” Ga-on groans as he tries to get himself up, but he finds he just cannot move. K reaches for him, smoothing down his arms and stomach, “You… You wait here. I’ll get him. I’ll come back for you, okay?”
He can barely even nod in response before K is gone – there’s a tilt to his retreat, and it’s then Ga-on realizes he’s favoring his leg. He must have sprained an ankle, or god forbid, broken his leg considering his clipped wheezes. Ga-on puts more energy into getting up from the floor regardless of his promises to wait. There’s the combined sound of clearly unwell people clamoring up and down the stairs, trying to meet each other in the middle to reduce the effort of the other, and it’s only after a minute that Ga-on can follow.
He tugs himself step by step, panting but somehow managing to get to where K and Yo-han have collided. They are crumpled in a corner of the metal spiral. K has his phone in hand, holding Yo-han in his lap. He doesn’t quite comprehend what’s going on until he recognizes K’s jacket wound up and shoved into Yo-han’s side as K holds it tight with a trembling, bloody hand.
“Oh no,” punches out of him like a prayer, and Ga-on rushes forward, falling to his knees on the painful grated floor. He pushes his hand where K’s is, replacing his shaking grip. He stares at Yo-han’s pallid, blinking face, but Yo-han has eyes only for K.
“I thought you were dead.” He repeats this not once, but twice, his voice a hollow wisp but there’s a smile on his lips regardless. Ga-on looks between the two, suddenly recalling the conversation he’d had with K just days earlier. He draws in a breath.
“You do not have nothing to lose.”
K blinks and looks at him, the phone dropping from his ear, which Ga-on only now realizes has blood pouring out from his ear drum all the way down to his collar. K’s eyes narrow quizzically, tiredly, and Ga-on says it again – this time more firmly. “You were wrong. You do not have nothing to lose.”
The slow realization of the reference Ga-on is making dawns on K like fog over a lake in the early morning, a brightness returning to his dark eyes as he glances down at Yo-han – returning the stare with full dedication before Yo-han’s eyes slip shut; as though he’s content in the knowledge that K is alive. It’s a rare burst of selflessness from the man, and Ga-on almost feels like he’s trespassing.
“See?” Ga-on says, “He counts on you. You have him. And he has you.”