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Gihun doesn’t second-guess himself.
It’s one of the things Jungbae never fails to call him an idiot for. Actually, everyone calls him an idiot for it, but Gihun persists anyway, charging forward without much thought, because thinking too hard tends to get people stuck, and Gihun can't ever stand still.
He's just not that kind of person. No matter what happens, Gihun knows he can get through it.
This time, though, he hesitates.
The plastic bag taps against his knee, the cheap ramen and piss-poor beer suddenly weightless, insufficient. Insulting, even. He should’ve brought soju. Should’ve swiped tteokbokki from his mom’s fridge. She wouldn't even have been angry if she knew he did it for Sangwoo.
“Hyung, seriously.”
Sangwoo’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. Gihun glances over his shoulder, at the younger man trailing behind him, his wrist still caught in Gihun’s grip, puffy fingers curled inward, clammed from the cold. His face is red, probably from the wind, or maybe from being dragged along, but he hasn’t actually tried to pull away.
Gihun takes that as a win.
“Shh, Sangwoo,” he grins, tugging him forward. “We need to celebrate.”
Sangwoo sighs but doesn’t argue, letting himself be pulled up the last few steps. Gihun turns to face their destination, the rooftop he’d visited two days ago, its view stretching out far beyond clustered buildings.
Except—
It’s not as he recalls. The skyline is duller, the cityscape grayer, the air heavier with something that wasn’t there before.
Damn it.
It had been beautiful. What the hell happened?
Still, he doesn’t let his disappointment show. He turns with a flourish to Sangwoo’s raised eyebrow.
The snow is falling in slow, fat flakes, the kind that catch in your eyelashes and melt before you can blink them away. Gihun watches them dissolve against the dark wool of Sangwoo’s coat, the fabric damp and glistening under the streetlights.
“It’s only my first semester ending,” Sangwoo tells him, unimpressed and haughty. What a brat. “There are more to go.”
Gihun waves him off, kneeling to unpack the food. Fuck, did he forget the food Sangwoo’s mother packed on the train? No way.
“Only the best for Ssangmun-dong’s genius.”
“This is the best you can do?”
Gihun scowls. “You brat! Be nicer to your hyung. I ditched Jungbae for this, you know!”
Sangwoo turns his face. Gihun swears he hears something like fucking Jungbae, but that doesn’t make sense, so he ignores it.
“Besides, you need a break anyway,” he continues. “Do you eat at all, Sangwoo?”
Sangwoo rolls his eyes. “Yes, hyung. I eat.”
“You’ve gotten so thin!”
“Honestly, you’re worse than my mom.”
Gihun grins, pulling him down to sit beside him. The conversation flows like it always has, easily, effortlessly, like water slipping between fingers. Gihun had meant to ask Sangwoo about school, about the exams he never stops stressing over, but somewhere along the way, he loses track and starts rambling about his latest job instead.
This one will stick, he’s sure of it.
Sangwoo’s eyes are on him, quietly attentive, and something about that makes Gihun certain.
It really will be fine. There is so much that Gihun can do.
He’s so caught up in it that he almost forgets.
Gihun curses, jumps up, almost trips over himself. No, he still has time. He checks. Two minutes to go.
He turns to Sangwoo with a bright grin. Sangwoo eyes him, suspicious.
“Close your eyes."
“What? Why, wait, hyung—”
Too late. Gihun clamps his hands over Sangwoo’s eyes, pressing close. Sangwoo exhales sharply, but doesn’t resist, though Gihun can feel his breath hitch.
One minute.
Gihun frowns. “Are you cold?”
Sangwoo says nothing. His pulse flutters against Gihun’s fingers.
Thirty seconds.
Gihun lets go, only to pull the scarf from his own neck and wrap it around Sangwoo’s instead. “Keep them closed,” he warns.
Three.
Sangwoo swallows audibly.
Two.
Does he really think Gihun’s about to do something stupid?
The lack of faith would almost be offensive if it wasn't so well-earned.
One.
“You can open them now.”
Sangwoo blinks, his eyes adjusting as the fireworks crack through the night.
They explode across the sky, red, blue, green, gold, flashing over his face, reflecting in his tired eyes, washing away the exhaustion Gihun is used to seeing there.
Gihun watches him, breath caught in his throat.
“Well?” he bursts out, unable to hold back. “What do you think? A friend of my coworker’s sister lives around here, and he told me it’s a yearly tradition! Do you like it?”
The last of the fireworks sputter out, their glow fading from his face.
Sangwoo exhales, his breath curling into mist.
“Hyung.”
Gihun perks up. “Did you like them?”
Sangwoo’s fingers curl into the scarf. His gaze flickers downward.
“Thank you.”
Gi-hun thinks he’s supposed to confess now.
A crime, a sin, or whatever the fuck it is that makes him want to lick cheap beer off of Sangwoo's tongue.
He doesn’t.
They are happy now, aren't they? It’s best not to ruin it. Best not to open his loud mouth and let the wrong thing slip out.
The first thing Gihun notices is the light.
It’s too bright. Wrong, somehow. The kind of gold that doesn’t exist in South Korea anymore, not like this, thick and honeyed, dripping slow over Sangwoo’s shoulders. The fireworks are long gone, moonlight isn't supposed to look like this, and Gihun can't remember this ever happening.
It smells like lies. Nostalgia twisted with desperation. He's reminded of dalgona for some reason, with such ferocity that he can almost taste it.
Maybe he has dreamed it so many times his mind has stitched the seams together, a patchwork of longing.
It takes Gihun a moment to realize he’s holding his own breath.
Some part of him is bracing, recoiling, mourning something he doesn’t yet have. Something he never will have.
He's on the edge of somewhere high. He's about to fall.
No, that’s not—
In one blink, Gihun is standing in the rain-slick arena of a ruined game, and Sangwoo is flat on his back, bloodied and broken, knife trembling in his hand before it slips into his neck, quick and precise, with a finality Gihun hasn’t been able to outrun since.
That’s not right. That can't be.
Because Sangwoo is here, right here. He's younger, bright-eyed, scarf still wrapped around his neck. He leans back on his hands, looking up at the sky like he can count the stars behind the clouds. Gihun has no doubt he could. He thinks Sangwoo could even burn the stars out if he wanted. He thinks he would do it himself if Sangwoo just asked.
He's within an arm's reach. Gihun can still save him.
Then, that same voice, blunt but with that familiar, teasing curl at the end, the one Gihun’s always known how to hear, “Why are you treating me like I’m a child? Are you going to break my leg again?”
Gihun startles. The moment slips. Just for a second, just enough to see.
Sangwoo. Seven, maybe eight. Sitting on the curb with scabbed knees and tear-tracks down his cheeks, hiccuping through a glare.
Gi-hun stammers. “Break your—that was just a skinned knee! Every child gets that!”
“I almost died, hyung.”
It's a lie. Sangwoo hadn't even got a proper bruise or anything.
It's the truth. Sangwoo is dead.
“Cho Sangwoo, is this what SNU is teaching you? To drive your poor hyung to death?”
And Sangwoo laughs again. It spills out of him without hesitation, that same quiet, low sound that he saves only for Gihun. Like a secret. Like a gift.
He tilts his head, the smile still tugging at his lips, eyes crinkled and ancient.
“I miss you, hyung,” Sangwoo says.
“I’m here.”
But something twists. Something in the air. In the way the skyline dims too quickly, in the way the rooftop tilts just slightly off-balance.
Because Gihun doesn’t remember it this way.
“I miss you, Gihun hyung,” Sangwoo repeats. His voice isn’t teasing now. It’s quiet, flat, tinged with something Gihun can't quite name but can feel all too well.
It doesn’t belong in the mouth of a boy or a student or a corpse. It lives in between them all.
Gihun reels. No, no, they were happy. Just now, they were laughing. Just now, it was ramen and fireworks and teasing and Gihun’s scarf and Sangwoo’s fingers tightening in it and his eyes lit up like something precious and not yet gone.
But Sangwoo’s eyes are—
Gihun stares.
It's all he can do.
He’s frozen, suspended in this nightmare where time doesn’t flow right, where Sangwoo is every age at once and none of them are the way he remembers.
Not young. Not old. Not alive. Just watching. Just waiting.
The snow keeps falling.
It coats Sangwoo’s shoulders, dusts his hair, settles in the hollow of his collarbones, over the school uniform. Gihun wants to brush it away. But there’s red on his palm. He doesn’t know how it got there, doesn't want to mar Sangwoo’s chubby face with blood.
This version, five years old, doesn't yet know pain. Gihun wishes he never has to. Gihun knows he will.
The cold is in his chest now, a stone lodged somewhere behind his ribs. A grief with no beginning, no shape. Something far older than their debt and their luck and their war against the world, against themselves, against each other.
And Sangwoo asks, through a broken tooth and a whine he's years away from outgrowing.
“Do you miss me too?”
For as long as he can remember, there has existed a door between Sangwoo and Gihun.
There is Eunji. There are a few others, inconsequential. In the future, although Gihun does not know it, there can be another.
It has never bothered him, its existence. Because the door has been ajar, wide open, and even closed shut at times.
But it has never been locked.
Throughout them all, there is Sangwoo. Unrecognizable at times, familiar as Gihun's own heartbeat, even in death and everything beyond; there is Sangwoo.
Sangwoo has always been there.
Gihun is running.
Through the cold. Through fog. Through time itself, or whatever broken semblance of it still exists in this liminal space. His shoulder screams, a white-hot brand of pain radiating down to his fingertips, but he doesn’t stop. Can’t stop.
If he stops, everything will catch him.
His lungs burn. His vision swims. He doesn’t remember when he started crying.
Or if he ever stopped.
The hallway stretches before him, endless and warped, walls pulsing like living flesh. The floor tilts beneath his feet, slick with something dark and glistening—oil? Blood? He doesn’t look down. Doesn’t dare.
It smells entirely too much like his mother's rotting body.
He's sure he saw her yesterday though. She was chiding him, swatting a hand to push him away as he hugged her from behind, smiling despite all her protests.
A staircase winds before him like a fever dream, those endless candy-colored nightmares, stretching and turning and looping on themselves like a painting dipped in blood.
He’s running up. Or maybe down. Or maybe both. He can’t tell. The walls breathe like lungs. The fluorescent lights blink like warning signs.
Gihun stumbles. His palm slams against a doorframe, the wood biting into his skin. For a second, he’s in a hospital, the scent of disinfectant so strong it stings his eyes. He was supposed to be here. When.. when—
The memory fractures.
He’s in an alley, breath ragged, hands fumbling for a lighter that isn’t there. Shadows move at the edges of his vision, loan sharks, maybe, or just more ghosts. He ducks into a doorway, his back pressed to rotting wood, and tries to remember how to breathe.
His hand is on a doorknob. It’s small. Smooth. Gihun knows everything is all distorted, torturous, but this tiny detail can't be made any worse.
He knows that on the other side is a beautiful little being who doesn’t deserve him. Not as a father. Not as anything. And still, Gihun presses his forehead to the door, useless fingers curled around the knob, breath shallow.
His sweet girl. Smart Gayeong, who isn't anything like him.
He doesn’t open it.
He never does, he never will get to.
His shoulder throbs. The world tilts.
There’s another door.
Gihun doesn’t think, he can't think, not when his pulse is a trapped bird slamming against his ribs, not when every nerve in his body is screaming that this matters, that this is the one door in all the world he was meant to break. He doesn’t know what’s on the other side. A miracle. A massacre. Something worse than both. It doesn’t matter.
All that matters is the need, primal and consuming, to get through.
His shoulder collides with the wood first—a splintering crack that reverberates up his spine. The pain is distant, irrelevant. He rams into it again, and this time the door gives way with a sound like a skull snapping. Light floods his vision, blinding and brutal.
For a fractured second, he’s weightless.
Sangwoo is in the bathtub.
Still. Slumped. His head lolls to the side like a marionette with cut strings, eyes half-lidded and glazed, the shadows beneath them so deep they look like fresh bruises. The water is too still, the surface unbroken, reflecting the ceiling in jagged fragments.
Gihun’s breath stops.
For one terrible, suspended moment, he thinks he’s too late. Again. Always.
Then Sangwoo blinks.
Water drips from his lashes, tracing slow paths down his cheeks like tears. His lips part, chapped and bloodless and dead, in the initial shape of Gihun's name.
Reality shifts in nauseatingly familiar shades, the pink of Gayeong’s baby blanket and his motel and masked soldiers.
“Player 456.”
His back faces the door now. For the first time in three years, Gihun feels nothing.
None of the guilt, the heaviness, the gnawing ache. He supposes that's what heartbreak does, leave no distinction between numbness and freedom.
“Do you still have faith in people?”
Gihun steps forward, knees barely holding as he kneels, and leaves the final act of love on the ground. His hands tremble as he does so. There’s nothing to run from now, but his body hasn't caught up.
His mind has, though. Gihun realizes it only now.
He keeps his eyes open as he lets himself go.
It is an eternally slow descent.
But he's at his end now. Rock bottom. Where he's always been his entire fucking life.
There's a light he sees far off, distant.
Beautiful. Like fireworks.
Sangwoo's knee is bleeding.
Not a dramatic gush, just a sluggish trickle down his shin, mixing with dust and faded chalk lines from games other kids had drawn on the pavement days ago.
"You're such a baby," Gihun laughs, already shrugging off his school jacket to press against the wound. The fabric soaks through immediately. Sangwoo's face does that thing, bottom lip trembling while his eyebrows stay furrowed. At seven, he hasn't learned to hide the contradiction yet.
"Am not."
"Are too. Hold this." Gihun guides his hand to the makeshift bandage. Their fingers stick together, from the heat or the blood or the way kids' hands just do, without hesitation, without consequence.
A voice calls out. Gihun hasn’t heard it in years.
Not like this, not so clear. Not so tender.
His mother’s voice, warm and exasperated, telling them to come in before dinner gets cold.
He blinks. The sky has deepened to that soft, washed-out blue it only turns in early spring, like it’s still remembering winter but trying its best to forget.
Sangwoo stands over him now, backlit by the dying sun, a halo of gold framing his face. He’s older, not the child from moments ago, not the corpse from nightmares, but something in between.
Gihun's scarf is still wrapped around his neck, protecting him.
He reaches down, hand outstretched.
"Come on, hyung," Sangwoo says. "Let’s go home."
Gihun’s breath catches. He doesn’t remember lying down in the grass. Doesn’t remember closing his eyes. But when he lifts his hand, when Sangwoo's fingers brush his palm, he realizes it's over.
There's nothing more left to do.
Somewhere, impossibly, his mother calls again.
Gihun takes Sangwoo’s hand.