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They call him the Voice of Ireum-nim, as though the syllables that fall from his lips are not his own but divine echoes. Sometimes, he believes them. Sometimes, he wonders if he is merely a vessel—porcelain and hollow—through which the will of god, or something like it, finds passage.
On most days, he does not feel like Kim Soleum. The name tastes foreign in his mouth, a borrowed melody from a song he once knew by heart but now can’t quite hum. His skin clings to him like a misfitted coat, stitched for someone else and draped over his bones. His thoughts—too large, too loud—twitch and coil like worms buried under the fervent prayers of Ireum-nim's followers, desperate to escape the confines of his skull, wanting to be heard.
He feels most like himself only when the world has gone to sleep. In those ungodly hours, where no footsteps echo down temple halls, where the stars themselves seem to hold their breath, he writes.
It began as the simple act of organizing his mind — facts about the dark exploration records, important named characters, his plans for escape — written, erased, and written again. Now, his pages bleed with frantic ink, with cracked handwriting and half-formed prayers. With messages. Pleas. Scratches. The word “help” written over and over again.
He used to think of escape often.
Prophecy of the Apocalypse: Dark Exploration Records, was a world he studied and loved enough to buy its merchandise despite the flush of embarrassment it brought to his cheeks. He wore that love quietly, like a bruise under long sleeves — always felt if not seen. His knowledge of the story would surely be useful in helping him escape.
But even those fantasies of fleeing—those once-bright threads—slip now from his fingers like mist. He tries to grab hold of them and finds only smoke curling through his grasp, vanishing.
He had only a moment to wonder if this was what contamination felt like. Before that too fades away, buried under the relentless cries of Ireum-nim’s followers.
Death had always held him in a kind of reverent terror—a fear so intrinsic it etched itself into the marrow of his bones. It was the solemn drumbeat beneath every word he read, every line he penned for the Dark Exploration Records. He doesn’t think he would ever be able to survive meeting the ghosts recorded on the pages he helped contribute to.
But here he is.
There is no real fear of death here. Death, at least, would offer an ending. A release. But here? Here they crown him with laurels of devotion, they anoint his footsteps, they fill his chambers with offerings and songs. He is the most protected man in the compound, swaddled in comfort, each of his needs anticipated and met before they can even be named.
And yet, Kim Soleum knows with an aching certainty: there is no fate worse than this.
Because what he fears now is not, dying.
What he fears, here in this very place, is fading away.
To fade, slowly, into the role they’ve built for him. To become less and less Kim Soleum and more and more the Voice, the Avatar, the Saint. Until there is nothing left of the boy who once whispered his name in the dark like a secret, like a spell.
And perhaps—if he dared to sit with the thought long enough—he would realize that this is a kind of death, too. A quieter one. A gentler one. But no less total.
He pries from the ravenous maws of the greedy what little control he can, snatching it like a flame sheltered from a storm. He will only speak to those he chooses. They will only get one question, one answer. As his price, he must be allowed to ask a question in return. 'It is Ireum-nim’s will that it be that way.' he lies. And the priests allow it. For of course it must be so—how could it be otherwise? The time of Ireum-nim is not to be wasted. Revelation is not a gift for the masses. Only the chosen may be granted the privilege of knowing.
In the moments of quiet, between questions asked and answered and asked again in return, he imagines what it could have been like if things were different. He imagines himself in another story. One where he worked at the Disaster Management Bureau, clad in worn uniforms and burdened by real fear. Or even Daydream Inc., where employees wore masks like badges and miracles were mined like precious ore.
It would be terrifying, of course. He would want to run with every heartbeat. But in all the ways that mattered he would be free.
(He remembers the day his fate was sealed—the day the wheel spun and stopped, cold and final like a judge’s gavel. That name—his name—spoken aloud, given form.
Kim Soleum.
Names are dangerous. Names are power. One should never speak them in a darkness, for fear of who might take it and seize control over you.
He had won first place. The prize: a scroll, freshly printed in warm plastic, still smelling faintly of ozone. A scripture. A sentence.
“Do you like it? You’ll treasure it, right?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
…?
An unnatural grin spread across the employee’s face. “But you’ll learn to.”)
He thinks that there are moments—fragile, crystalline moments—when lucidity pierces the fog like sunlight through cathedral glass. When the cacophony of whispering voices recedes, and he no longer drifts like a feather caught in some cruel celestial wind, but stands—if only barely—anchored to the trembling earth beneath his feet.
Yet these moments are as rare and dazzling as the gemstones woven into the folds of his robes. They do not merely shimmer—they glare, like dying stars desperate to distract the eye, to obscure the festering rot that lies beneath the gilded sanctum of the Church of the Luminous Unknown.
And in those fleeting glimmers of awareness, he mourns—not with the wail of the broken, but with the aching silence of a man who has seen his time stolen, the chaining of his very will, and can do nothing to stop it.
And so he waits.
He sits beneath the quiet hum of ancient lights, surrounded by golden offerings and eyes that do not blink. He prays—not to Ireum-nim—but to anything beyond the veil. To the reader. To the dreamer. To the one who might be listening. He prays and he begs:
Come find me. Come take me away. Because I don’t know if have the strength to save myself.