Chapter Text
August 1st.
Seungmin had nothing except the tears on his face. And he wanted them to drown him, to choke all of the blackening grief out of his heart until there was nothing left.
He was alone. But Seungmin wasn’t crying because he had the privacy to do so. It was the loneliness that made him cry more, because he had never meant to wander off alone. He had wanted to blend into the city of smiles and chatter, to laugh humourlessly and sink into the crowd. But no matter how hard he tried, the minute he turned the corner, he was alone.
Alone. Always. Four years of absolute bliss and this was where the final whirlwind threw him. Except he was sick of it. Sick of being responsible for his own survival, of waiting for a helping hand that never bothered to reach out. When he had stumbled across a miracle all those years ago, it had been supposed to last. But no, even miracles betrayed Seungmin and left him gasping for air. Left him to drown.
And so, he drowned. He sobbed so loudly, he thought for sure he would attract the attention of the entire city. That was if enough crying could bring the city to start caring.
That was when someone did come.
Hearing footsteps, Seungmin remembered why he was alone again. Because nobody else could walk into this alley and make him feel safe again. He could no longer cry freely. That realization only made him want to cry more but it was because of that realization that he had to swallow his tears, his throat burning with saltwater and his heart breaking with storms.
He scooted away when the footsteps came closer, in horror that the person was not walking past him. They came to a full stop, standing uncomfortably close to Seungmin.
“Excuse me, sir-”
“Not interested,” Seungmin said in a whisper, too exhausted to speak any louder. Read the room. Please go away!
The person sat down on the spare curb space next to Seungmin.
Seungmin looked up in shock, finally facing the person. It was a man. He had a shining smile, flashing pearly white teeth. He was decked in a full business suit, complete with his hands resting on top of a briefcase. He looked straight out of the rich business districts of Seoul.
“What… the hell do you want?” Seungmin rasped, hot anger building up his chest. He had been drowning before but now, an inferno was engulfing every remaining bit of his patience.
“I am speaking with you to introduce a proposition I think you will be interested-”
“ No, I’m not. I’m not buying anything and I want you to leave me the hell alone.” Seungmin feared for the safety of this man. Any longer and he would be facing a brick through the head.
“Well, that’s an interesting way to talk to your elders-”
Seungmin didn’t reach for a brick. He reached into his pocket, metal of a combat dagger shining under the afternoon light. Except what good was the weapon when it had been useless . Seungmin had saved no lives with it. But now, nothing could stop him from ending one.
“ I said, leave me alone.” Seungmin clenched his teeth, audibly hearing the grinding of bones. He was usually the logical thinker but right now, all logic be damned, he wanted to see blood .
YOUR blood, District 9. I swear to god, I’m not resting until this entire damn alley is bathed in it.
Seungmin didn’t play around when he was holding a weapon. He either meant violence or didn’t take one at all. Yet despite that, the man did not step away. In fact, the only reaction he showed of the threat was slightly backing up and holding his hands up in a sheepish surrender. But the smile never left his face.
“Your confidence does not match your skill, Kim Seungmin. I don’t imagine anyone who isn’t much of a fighter can do something as bold as you are threatening. You are handier with a gun anyways, as I’ve seen.”
Seungmin nearly dropped the knife. He never realized until now how sweaty his hands were. His jaw immediately slackened and he despised how vulnerable he was probably looking right now. Because take away the knife and threatening speech and all there was was poor Kim Seungmin, all alone once again, mistakenly chosen to survive.
“H- how do you know my name?” Seungmin felt desperation creep into his words. He had been a wild card in Miroh. No other gangs had known of his name and those who'd seen his face got silenced with a bullet seconds later. Had someone figured it out? Did authorities know? If they did, he had to run , not spend any longer with this mysterious man who knew his name .
The man must have seen his feet ready to take off. “I assure you, no one else knows this information.”
“What information !?” Seungmin spat out. “You know my name, my fighting style and… you know more.” The realization struck him, new shadows spreading over his face as he stared at the man, who still wore his damn smile of secrets. “ Who are you?”
“Someone who can make you a lot of money.”
Seungmin scoffed. It came out as more of a crack. That was when he remembered he still had tears streaming down his face and a voice coming out weak and throaty. No wonder this man spoke to him like he had nothing to lose. “As I said, I’m not interested. This is not a good time.”
“Oh, really? I assume this is the perfect time, Kim Seungmin.”
Before Seungmin could say anything more, the man placed his briefcase on the curb and lifted up the clasps.
Staring back at Seungmin was something that made his jaw drop.
This man finally had something that gave him credit, the justification to approach Seungmin when he was at his worst and speak pretty words to a person who had given up on everything.
Money. The last time Seungmin had ever seen that much cash was when Miroh had attempted a bank job a year ago. They had never attempted one again.
Miroh. With that money, Seungmin could properly mourn them. He could retrieve their bodies before the clean-up came in to toss them away as if they had never mattered. He could bury them and pray for their safe arrival in the afterlife, because Miroh had been Seungmin’s only faith his entire life. He could, piece by piece, put his heart together with that small service.
The man saw Seungmin’s awe. He gave a cunning smile. “Would you like to play a game?”
“A… game?”
“Yes. With these.”
The man pulled something out of his pocket. Two folded squares. They looked like origami to Seungmin, a blue tile and red tile each in one hand
“Have you ever heard of a game called ddakji ?”
Seungmin shook his head. Before, his cheeks would have heated up in embarrassment at not knowing a name that rolled off people’s tongues expertly and naturally. But now, he was used to it. A robbed childhood meant being robbed of many things.
“Ah, I see. Well, the rules are simple. You get your pick of a tile. Then, we each take turns trying to flip over the opponent’s tile by throwing ours onto the ground where the other tile will be resting. Every time you flip over my tile, you will receive $10.”
Seungmin froze. He looked over to the briefcase. “You… are going to give me money… if I beat you in a game ? What’s the catch?”
“Well, every time I manage to flip over your tile, you must give me $10.”
Seungmin raised a brow at that. Any idiot or drunk could take one look at him and know he had no money to spare. This man was neither. What was the real game he was playing?
“Do I have a choice?”
“Well… if you are up to it, of course.” The man eyed Seungmin quizzically. “Though you seem to be in no state to gamble on a child’s game.”
Where was that realization when I was crying my eyes out and proceeded to threaten your life? Suddenly, Seungmin so badly wanted to prove something to this man, he felt the remaining of his tears dry up.
Of course, still remained the white flashes of pain, all too recent memories digging into his head and threatening to break him down once again. Maybe that was why Seungmin badly wanted this distraction.
“Okay, I’ll play.”
The man smirked. Almost as if he had predicted the outcome. Seungmin didn’t like that, didn’t like the idea that the future was a controlled thing. After all, nothing that had happened in the past 24 hours had been in his control.
Oh, you're going DOWN.
“Pick a tile.” The man held out the options towards Seungmin. Blue and red.
Seungmin had been born into the world armed with a stone-cold rule when it came to making decisions. Be unpredictable. Because choices weren’t really a choice. There would always be an option people pushed others towards, whether it was through biased words or sugary smiles.
Seungmin did not let himself be pushed. He took expectations and flipped them around. When his father had expected Seungmin to wait at the house like a lost puppy every time he left and never said when he would return, Seungmin had stopped coming home, claiming the city as his new home. When the rent had stopped being paid and a furious landlord kicked him out without a single consideration, Seungmin took to the streets with only a laptop in hand when others would have tried to grab as much cash as they could find. When others would have sold the laptop to get money, Seungmin had used it to delve into the dark territories of the internet and break through the red tapes of security. When beginner thieves would run as fast as they could after triggering a convenience store’s metal detector, Seungmin disabled the metal detector.
When others would hesitate at the offer to join a gang and throw themselves into a new world, Seungmin fell into it face first, deciding to wait for the regrets to come later. They never did.
So Seungmin was good at picking up signs. He revelled in dashing the hopes of people with too many expectations. He could see it clearly. The clear bias towards the blue tile, the mental safety that came in choosing a mild colour, one that wasn’t quite so bold and screaming for attention.
So that was precisely why Seungmin didn’t reach out for the blue tile. He didn’t hesitate before taking the red.
The man was clearly trying his best not to react. But his slight tip of a brow said it all, his eyes studying Seungmin in a way that was, for the first time since he had arrived in this alley, uncertain.
Seungmin smirked at that. He waved the red tile in the air. “Colour theory. Red is associated with strength and passion. And I’m passionate that you’re going down .”
Something else lit up the man’s face. Excitement, but different. It was unlike the pride the man had carried before, in his confidence and ability to seemingly predict all of Seungmin’s moves. Quite the opposite actually. Everything in the man’s expression showed excitement of the unknown . Seungmin knew that feeling all too well. It was the giddy anticipation he got whenever things took an unexpected turn on the battlefield; an anticipation that allowed him to steer Miroh confidently from behind the scenes. Excitement replacing fear did wonders for the outcome.
This man saw something in Seungmin. But it was the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that seemed to be what was fueling the new fire in his gaze. That dampened Seungmin’s spirits. Every move he made felt like a test, every word being carefully recorded and put to use.
“You go first,” the man said, placing his blue tile on the floor.
Seungmin raised his red tile hesitantly. Even his silence seemed to be ticking off a box in the man’s head. I just have to flip over the blue tile, right? Shouldn’t be too hard…
He threw his tile down with as much force as he could muster.
The blue tile flipped so violently, Seungmin thought he had broken it.
But no, the man only stared at the flipped tile, then wordlessly turned to his briefcase. With a brief hint of a smile, he had a $10 dollar bill in his hand outstretched to Seungmin.
Seungmin blinked numerous times. That’s it? I get money?
But he couldn’t hesitate again. Seungmin had come to terms that this was some sort of test. He didn’t know what the stakes were, but against a man with a briefcase filled to the brim with money, good impressions were now vital. The $10 bill had cemented that.
So Seungmin took it quickly and stuffed it into his pocket. “Your turn.” He placed his tile on the floor.
The man picked up his own, an intense glare in his eyes that was unlike anything he had shown before, all directed onto the tile. He threw it at lighting speed.
But Seungmin’s tile did not budge.
Seungmin barely had time to gawk before the man calmly picked his tile up and turned to Seungmin. “Your turn.”
Succeeding once was a fluke. Succeeding twice was pure luck. Succeeding three times was fortune’s favourite. Succeeding a fourth time was a miracle.
Succeeding every single time was when the confusion began to settle in.
Succeeding every single time while the man failed to flip over Seungmin’s tile even once was what Seungmin began to call something else. A trick. The real dangers of the unknown weren’t when tasks were proving to be too difficult. It was when they were becoming too easy to be real.
Seungmin’s pockets were stuffed with bills yet the man’s smile never wavered. Was Seungmin passing this test? If so, what was his prize, because Seungmin knew for sure it wasn’t only the money.
It was the man’s turn. His stance, his lightning motion, nothing changed on any turn. He did the same thing every time, expecting a different result.
But this time, it was different. Seungmin’s tile finally flipped.
That spun Seungmin out of sync, unsure what to call this new development. He had gotten too comfortable with the repeated motions of this game that he had failed to look for the trick he had been suspecting from countless turns ago.
Seungmin must have looked frightened because the man looked up and slightly backed away. “You do not need to pay me with cash if you don’t want to.”
“... why?”
“You can pay in another way.” The man lifted his hand up. “With your body.”
Seungmin’s forehead furrowed in confusion, trying to connect the words and actions being implied. “Instead of me giving you money… you’ll slap me?”
“You’re a quick learner,” the man said, an observation that must have also been recorded. “Many have accepted the deal to hold on to their precious money.”
Seungmin scoffed, a proper one this time. “Uh, no thank you, creep . I have enough to spare.” He fished out a crumpled bill and held it out, practically pushing it into the man's hands to get away as soon as possible, just in case his consent didn’t matter after all. “How long are we playing? Finished your report ?”
The man didn’t even appear to look surprised at Seungmin’s assumption. “Yes, I seem to have everything I need.”
“Then how do you know my name!?” Seungmin snapped. “What do you want?”
The man filed away the tiles. He then put his hand into his pocket and fished something out. A… business card. “You have been a person of interest for quite some time, Mr. Kim.”
“Kim Seungmin, I would like to offer you a job.”
If there wasn’t so much Seungmin was trying to absorb in so little time, his eyes would have widened to encompass galaxies. Instead, he was left standing numb.
“From… a game? How is that enough to assess my qualifications for whatever this… job is?”
The man smirked. “You’ll be surprised by how even the smallest of traits give away a person’s aptitude. In the real world, your qualifications are the least of your employer's worries. We only need to know how you hold yourself, and how you react to the situations we craft accordingly.”
Seungmin felt the bulge of money in his pocket. “I… won every time. How did you rig this?”
The man frowned. “Curiosity is one of your less desired traits. I would suggest you keep a limit on that to continue being considered.”
“What am I being hired for?” Another question. So much for good impressions.
The man held his card out. “Call this number. An address will be given to you to report to tonight. More information will be given then.”
Seungmin took the card, reluctantly. He studied it. It had gold ridges, a square, circle and triangle taking up the entire space. No name, nothing Seungmin could recognize. “But-”
The man was gone. Seungmin was alone once again.
Desperately needing to distract his mind for just a minute longer, Seungmin sat back down on the curb, proceeding to count his money. He wouldn’t hold on for long. But just for the moment, his tears were trapped and would continue to pound on his chest until he decided to let them out again.
The money would be enough to feed him for maybe a week. Book a cheap hotel room for a few nights. That was it. Maybe Seungmin could use that much of a head start to build a new life. But would it be the life he wanted?
Seungmin didn’t know why those questions remained. The life he wanted was already gone. He didn’t want anything else. He never would again.
But maybe the unknown would bring him to something close.
That afternoon, Kim Seungmin found himself buying cheap noodles from a convenience store, slowly slurping them as he turned the change around in his hands. He gingerly inserted them into a payphone, typing in foreign numbers given to him by a foreign name.
Maybe Seungmin was tired of throwing himself into the unknown. Maybe he was tired of losing so much, was still losing so much as every moment ticked by. Maybe he would never be whole again.
But the only thing he knew for sure was that ever since he had stumbled across a modest home of gangsters, taking the cautious hand of escape from a childish mistake, he could never go back to living a normal life again.
He had gone out for ice cream.
Ice cream. That’s it. Not even to test the tech of a new headquarters or check out the layout to see which routes the getaway car could take. Seungmin had not been home that day, solely for the reason that his sweet tooth had been acting out and the house had been out of mint ice cream. Survivor’s guilt grasped at the slimmest of straws to seek its vengeance and for Seungmin, it was the fact that it was his taste buds that had saved him from a massacre, that tossed and turned his body every night. His last mission had been for himself, not even a final act of service for Miroh.
That too, the convenience store had run out. Seungmin couldn’t even succeed at that. The only good it did him was that the minute he saw the red tape and police sirens surrounding his home, he had nothing to drop. He only ran, slipping under the tape and into the house without attracting any eyes. What had happened!? Why were the police here!? Where were the members-
When Seungmin saw the scene in front of him when he opened the door, he felt a lifetime crumble. He saw everything that kept him going, kept him fighting, kept him alive , shatter before his eyes.
“HYUNG!” Seungmin didn’t know who he was calling out to. He was calling out for all of them. He realized how badly he needed all of them, and it scared him.
But no, instead, blood painted the floor more than concrete. Blood pooling from slumped bodies, making no sound, no movement. Torn of any soul and life. Eyes that were wide open but couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t see him .
That had to be the most terrifying moment of Seungmin’s life. Yet, running from body to body, trying to shake someone, anyone , awake, it wasn’t the possibility of finding them all dead that terrified him.
It was knowing, deep in the shadows of his heart, that they were all dead no matter how frantically he searched for a pulse. They would not be shaken awake and they would not heal with a bandaid. They were gone.
“S- Seungmin?”
Seungmin could recognize the airy voice in his sleep. Jun. The youngest after Seungmin, Lee Know and Hwan. Puddles of sweat shook his hair over his face, skin already pale.
“Hyung- hyung, what happened- we, we need to get out of here-”
With the strength of Jun’s grip on his arm, Seungmin almost forgot Jun was dying.
“M- min, get… out !” That final word took the life out of him. “It… isn’t sa- not safe… please…”
“... who did it?”
That was the final thing Seungmin asked in the end. He wasn’t going to beg for life, wasn’t going to hope against all hope. Living with Miroh had given him miracles but Seungmin had grown up in reality. And he knew nothing would bring back Jun. Nothing would bring back Miroh. Seungmin had left for ice cream and the gang had broken while he was gone.
But he would not be leaving without knowing who had broken them.
“District 9…” Jun said it in a whisper, almost as if trying to make Seungmin forget. But Seungmin would never forget. “They- they knew our-... our- oath.”
Jun gave a small smile, blood trickling from his mouth in pain. But he still held onto Seungmin’s hand. “Don’t… be alone.”
The hand let go and fell limp to the floor.
And once Seungmin snuck out of what had used to be his home, tiptoeing across the streets which had used to be his territory, he also fell limp to the ground and cried until his throat went raw.
Don’t be alone. This is Miroh’s blessing. Our happiness comes from those who care. We say this to each other whenever we part ways because, just in case, we don’t return, we promise to find others. Promise to be happy with those who also don’t want to be alone. Promise to never be alone even if our new happiness can’t be with Miroh.
Seungmin was alone.
Seungmin didn’t think himself of being a scared person. It was usually because he couldn’t afford to be. The minute he let fear settle in, he hesitated too much and didn’t make decisions quick enough. Miroh had always needed him on alert during missions. So Seungmin simply made decisions with his head and didn’t think twice. It was only after missions when he would buckle to his knees, his head swimming in how many risks he had taken, how many close calls they had encountered.
But nevertheless, nothing stopped the bout of nerves that hit him when the black van pulled to the sidewalk that night. When the door opened, Seungmin had to make sure his contacts were in properly.
The driver had no face. As in, it was completely covered. They were decked up in a red suit, complete with a black mask engraved with a circle. They didn’t look human.
The back door opened, revealing a lump of material on the seat. Seungmin squinted forward to see that it was the exact same suit the driver was wearing.
What the…
A stack of papers were shoved into his hands so suddenly, Seungmin almost dropped them.
“You have ten minutes to read over the terms and agreements. You may not ask any questions as you study the clauses. If you agree with them, sign the form confirming your employment and get into the car for further instruction. You may ask questions on the drive. If you decide to opt-out, sign the secrecy clause and you may leave.”
Employment Form of X Games: Certification for XT Division
Under the bolded title, paragraphs crowded the paper and Seungmin had a sinking feeling that this wasn’t a terms and agreement he could simply skip. Plus, a secrecy clause ?
“Why all these precautions?” Seungmin asked seconds before he remembered he wasn’t allowed to ask questions. No thinking twice.
The driver gave a heavy sigh and though their face was not visible, their emotions were clear as day, as if they certainly weren’t getting paid enough to go through this whole ordeal (though Seungmin definitely hoped that wasn’t actually the case, because that was a deal-breaker to what already had many red flags.)
Then, the driver actually answered.
“Let’s just say this new employment you are seeking… isn’t exactly legal.”
Silence.
Seungmin darted his eyes back and forth towards the driver and the papers, gripping the pages hard as he considered his options.
“... okay.”
Satisfied with the answers he had for now, Seungmin began to read.