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The face of the other player is crystal clear, eyes shining and familiar and young. So young. She’s shaking from head to toe, covered in blood from a previous attack from the late third place winner. The sky is a bright blue like every other day.
It is a game. An easy game where little boys would draw circles and triangles and squares. He picks up the knife and he points it towards her. She does not move. Her feet are staggering. She is already half dead. It’s not her fault. The game started in his favor, but she should know life is hardly ever fair.
He runs forward and he doesn’t trip. Skin is stabbed like a piece of bread from his favorite bakery when he was young. For a fleeting moment, he thinks of his little brother. He realizes why she looks so familiar—her and Jun-ho are the same age.
Gravel and sand are underneath his feet. The other player staggers back. She stares at her bloody stomach with pale, shaking fear on her face before crumpling to the ground. He watches the light fade from the eyes of her cooling body, sees the way her muscles relax and sleep forever. There is not a single drop of rain, only the beating sun atop his head. He has 45.6 billion won, and there is a ringing in his ear telling him something is very, very wrong.
By the time he gets to the hospital they are already dead. His wife’s face is still beautiful even in death, a hazy moonlight glow against her sunken cheekbones and chapped lips. Their unnamed child is still in her body. What once was life is now just festering, rotting.
A child cries from somewhere far away. He suddenly has the urge to throw up, when men and women with white outfits filter into the room. He doesn’t remember what kind of looks they had on their faces, what words were spoken to him, or what documents he signed. He doesn’t remember the funeral very well either, what he said or what he heard.
He remembers watching the cremation. He remembers the flames. Smell. Taste. All gone. For a brief moment, thought comes back to him like a dewdrop of rain.
I will never hear her voice ever again.
When his wife died three bodies were burned. Two of them went somewhere bright and clean. The other is staring straight back at him in the mirror with sunken eyes and pointless neat hair. A black mask is in his hands. Il-nam is in the corner of the room, putting on that ridiculous golden thing, and In-ho does the same.
The games. The killing. When did he first notice it? Perhaps bits and here, where he would see a mop of black hair that seemed to be close to Il-nam. Player 456 was the sort of horse you took a second glance at, nothing more. Maybe the horse had a birthmark that made it stand out. Perhaps the way it walked was a bit more discoordinated from the rest.
“Player 456 wants to stop the game.”
Or maybe it was then. That afternoon in the rain with the smell of alcohol and thick American laughter by his ear. He sees a thing with unkempt hair standing above player 218 with an outstretched hand. The rest of the story doesn’t matter. It is always the same. But still, he figured he would congratulate this horse with the funny walk. Give a toast, perhaps even offer it a drink in the car if he was feeling extra nice.
Who are you?
The questions. So many of the wrong questions. He watches player 456 fall asleep in the car and lets the dirty body be thrown out. He really thought it was going to be the last time he saw that mop of hair, but life always likes to make him rethink what he knows.
“Player 456.”
He hears 456’s shaky breath on the other end of the phone.
“Get on that plane. It is for your own good.”
What did 456 say again? For the life of him he can’t remember. He just knows that 456 didn’t take the plane, and the action confused him.
He has seen the feces of humanity dying on the ground, and he’s seen the old sags of flesh and bone in gold masks laughing like gods. In the crowd of it all stands a weary figure, holding out its hand to player 218. In between the large cracks of scum and more scum there’s a piece of something living there.
What is it like , he wonders, to be loved like that? Not lust or envy or romance. To be loved like a person, unadulterated and pure. What is it like, to take and take again, yet still have someone hold out their hand to save you? He can’t understand it.
He knows, at the very least, 218 couldn’t accept it. Had he been the one to survive the game, In-ho thinks, 218 would have become just like him; hungering, constantly, for something he doesn’t know the name of. 218 is dead, In-ho is not. So he searches.
Seong Gi-hun. 47 years old, divorced and having one child. His mother died while he was in the games. The story is familiar enough to make him laugh.
Get on the plane.
He thinks maybe that was the start of it. Who was this person, this horse , to throw away something precious? In-ho had no child to love. He came back to white sheets and empty promises. Gi-hun still had that, at the very end. He had the goddamn chance. Yet like a fool, he came back.
He should’ve known it would happen. Gambling is a hard habit to break.
But still In-ho wants to know more, so he joins the games. He looks and looks and looks and the worst part is that he still only ever sees a 51 year old thing trying to prove he is a man.
He’s doing something that In-ho ran away from. It troubles him to no end. Perhaps that’s what brings him to Gi-hun’s bed at night, sitting next to him with a sullen face. For the first time in a long while, he dredges up memories from a time where he was still alive.
“My wife is sick.” My wife is dead.
Gi-hun is looking at him with pity, with a sort of affection that you know can blossom into a friendship. It’s almost laughable, really, how easy this man can fall back into old habits. He finds it so funny how Gi-hun survived. He had bet a lot of money on 218.
They continue playing the games. He uses his right hand during six-legs and slaps himself in the face to put up an act. It’s a sort of dry amusement he gets, watching the other players on his team look at him with pale faces. It’s only Gi-hun who grabs his arm and shakes him.
No one’s blaming you, play the game.
No one is blaming you. It’s said in such a panicked and worried voice that the affirmation and comfort is lost, but the words ring a few more times in his ear that night. He listens to Jung-bae and Gi-hun talk. They laugh, as though they’re just out drinking soju on a Tuesday night.
And for a moment, he thinks, he understands.
Gi-hun is someone who was made to play games. He makes so many different connections and he remembers them. He is kind in that he doesn’t betray his friends, but he is no saint that he would try to save every being on the planet. He’s not a savior or a demon–he is simply human.
It’s a species that’s dying out fast, but between the monsters and the ghosts, he stands there in In-ho’s mind. 456 is not looking at In-hun, or 067’s coffin, or the marbles in his hand. He is not looking at his mother or player 218, rain in his hair.
But he’s reaching out his hand, mottled and rough around the edges. He is giving In-ho that last canister of bullets.
Are you sure?
Dae-ho will be back with more bullets.
In the end it is not his wife who brings In-ho back to the world of the living. How could she? She’s dead.
But isn’t it funny? To find that it’s instead Gi-hun with his hands behind his head, staring up at him with pure hatred in his eyes.
It’s a bitter taste in his mouth, this feeling, but it is different. For so long all he’s known is the bite of rage and loss. But now there’s something new. There’s a curiosity. In-ho has played many, many games. He thinks he’s found one he finally likes.
So the trigger is pulled and a man he was speaking to like a friend yesterday is dead at his feet. Gi-hun’s yells are loud and just like that fateful day three years ago, full of loss and anger and grief.
It’s another game, although there’s no more little boys and girls playing anymore. They’re all grown up, and appa and eommawa long gone. There’s no more snacks to eat or shining suns to beat down on their dirty faces. The games are over but they’re still there. It’s something that only the two of them know.
How much nostalgia burns.