Chapter Text
Throughout his forty-six years alive, Sang-woo believed himself to be a good man deep inside, but that faith fell apart the day a stranger saved his old friend from death.
He hadn’t wanted his friend to die. Seong Gi-hun, despite their lack of contact for twenty years, had been the older brother figure who’d cared for Sang-woo as a child. He’d been the son their mothers doted on reluctantly, the classmate he had no need to compete with, the teammate he could rely on to pick his side during an ojingeo game with the neighbourhood kids. The last memory Sang-woo had of this boy had been of him seeing Sang-woo off at the subway station of their decaying district. Sang-woo had looked up from his seat in time to see Gi-hun peel away from their mothers and press his face against the closed glass doors, smiling and waving as though Sang-woo were on his way to school, instead of disappearing into a different part of Seoul, a different world altogether.
Meeting him again was awkward. Sang-woo had heard about his friend on occasion from his mother’s calls. Gi-hun met someone, a real studious girl. Gi-hun is a father now– Son, when’s your turn? Gi-hun gambled again, oh, poor Mal-soon! They had been like postcards delivered from afar, delightful to receive but ultimately, set aside in favour of the conversations he really had with his mother, of his problems with his manager, his clients, then the stock market itself. Gi-hun had become a figment of his childhood. So when he reappeared in the fray between the gangster and the young woman, in this real, disturbing world of gassed and kidnapped adults, of debt collectors and cops closing in, it struck Sang-woo dumb. Gi-hun was older. Taller. Heavier. But his quick feet and smile were the same.
They were so reminiscent of their youth, Sang-woo saw Ssangmun-dong in him and the reminder of where he was now, compared to where he was supposed to be. He didn’t want to talk to him, until the game revealed its nature, then it became only natural that Sang-woo had to save him.
He thought he’d done his part, telling Gi-hun about the motion sensors. When he reached the finish line, relieved his hunch about the doll had been right, heady from outsmarting the insanity boxed inside these walls, he swivelled around and searched for the familiar face. Gi-hun was mere metres away; Gi-hun would live, too. Sang-woo was so certain he would, even as he gasped for air and shook with lingering terror, fading thrill, that he didn’t flinch away from the line like the other winners did when the lullaby started again.
But when their eyes met, Gi-hun tripped.
The look in the man’s eyes was fear. A split-second realisation, as the doll’s tune trailed off, of what this meant. A plea, even.
It was a lot of emotions in one look, and Sang-woo took it in, safe and sound where he stood – and nothing.
Sang-woo felt nothing.
Gi-hun was going to die. He was going to join the bodies red and ruined on playground sand and stacked up against closed metal gates, among the hundreds already crossed out from this 456-men game.
And the prize money –
Sang-woo stopped his thoughts short, just as another player he had never seen before saved Gi-hun instead. They threw themselves before him, fingers digging into the ground and breaths harsh, jarring Sang-woo’s senses. They were curling into themselves as if they couldn’t believe they had won, that they were alive.
Sang-woo could. He knelt to check on them. And as he did so, he realised he did feel something after all: a hollowness expanding in his chest, alongside an epiphany unfurling in his mind. They were scraping away vestiges of his love – for his friend, for the innocence of children’s games.