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In-ho wasn’t the kind of man who let himself be ruled by panic; that was an emotional reaction the Squid Game had stripped from him long ago. However, after giving the order to go find Gi-hun so they could speak face-to-face before the final round, a suffocating anxiety took over him. It would be the first time they’d see each other since the catastrophic suicide mission.
Had he really thought about reaching him and killing him when he had him right there beside him? Ridiculous. Even though he knew it was necessary to talk to him, he kept trying to carefully prepare his words before doing so.
He had spent the last days, the last weeks, the last three years trying to understand Gi-hun’s behavior both inside and outside the games. It confused and intrigued him how someone like him, who had watched hundreds of people kill each other for prize money, still clung to the idea that he could stop it all.
"Do you still believe in humans?" he had asked him more than once, and the answer always seemed to be the same.
Even during his recent days of infiltration, when they had been able to open up (just a little) emotionally to one another, he still felt light-years away from truly understanding him.
Gi-hun had won his games and still had faith in humanity; In-ho had won his and had lost that faith completely.
In-ho constantly remembered his own games. It didn’t keep him up at night—not anymore—since his now important role in the games kept his mind busy most of the time. But he still remembered the desperation, the struggle, the hopelessness, and, finally, the victory. He remembered when he had been the one on the other side of the table and Oh Il-Nam was sitting in the chair he now occupied. He remembered how Il-Nam had handed him the knife and told him to kill them all before they killed him.
In reality, he had been very much like Gi-hun at the beginning. He made alliances, built connections; the other players followed him like some sort of leader. He had been a great detective before he was fired over that damned misunderstanding, and when he was little, he was the best at children's games—so it was easy to team up with him.
Of course, not everyone followed him. Of course, there were greedy players—players who wanted to eliminate others as quickly as possible and watch the money pile up in that cursed piggy bank. But he managed to find a few people who followed him and trusted him to get through each round.
They even agreed among their group that they didn’t all have to die—that they could be the last ones standing and split the money. He needed the money to save his wife and son, but by that point, the amount he'd receive would have been more than enough to pay for the liver transplant and save them both. Besides, he had never liked the idea of a life of luxury or spending money just for the sake of it; he was fine with just getting out of there as soon as possible to save them.
His own games had also included the rope jump as the second-to-last trial. He had come up with a great strategy so that everyone could go first and survive. He predicted that the most selfish players would end up pushing each other or fighting on the bridge, but not all of them would die. That would leave enough players to sacrifice in whatever the final game was and allow him to walk away with the money he needed to complete his mission.
They just had to cross, let some of them stumble and fall, and wait for the last game.
Everything fell apart when his teammates started throwing off everyone who crossed. He tried to stop them, told them it wasn’t necessary, that they needed to leave some players for the final game, that they didn’t have to kill them themselves.
Strictly speaking, he had never killed any other player. He beat them to a pulp when necessary, watched them die before his eyes—many times he allowed it to preserve his own life and that of his team—but it had never been his hands that took someone’s life. Not even as a police officer had he killed anyone. Why should he start now?
One of his first allies grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him, just like he had done to the other players. It was in that moment that he realized they were never going to leave together with a share of the money.
He realized they had stayed by his side because he made good strategies and offered a certain kind of protection, but that was over now. That he had been wrong to trust in the context they were in—and maybe, wrong throughout his entire life.
He didn’t fall. His hands clung to the edge as if holding on to life in the most literal way possible. His former teammates kept pushing anyone who reached the other side. They were just waiting for him to give up and fall, but he didn’t. He thought of his wife, of how much he loved her, of how she needed the money—how she needed him. He thought of his brother, that brat Jun-ho, whom he loved despite not sharing the same mother. He thought of his son, still in his wife’s womb. He thought about how beautiful that child would be once he grew up, and with the three people he loved most in the world in his mind, somehow, he found the strength to climb back up.
He looked at them. Not in disbelief, not in anger—just disappointment. He knew those men’s stories. He knew they also had families and reasons to be there, that outside that place they weren’t bad people, but inside, they had revealed their true human nature: savages who would kill for a little more money.
They approached him, cursing, ready to push him again—but time ran out. Since they had killed almost everyone who wasn’t part of their group, they had to keep someone around to get rid of in the final game (after that, they would kill each other—but one thing at a time).
Dinner came before the final game, and then it was time to sleep. He lay in bed, tossing and turning, wondering how the hell he was going to survive with the massive disadvantage he now had after being betrayed—when one of the masked men entered and said the leader of the games wanted to see him. At first, he thought he’d misheard out of exhaustion, but he had no choice but to follow him.
And that was how he ended up in that very same office, with Il-Nam handing him the knife. In hindsight, it hadn’t been because Il-Nam wanted to help him selflessly. Yes, he was at a disadvantage—but it wasn’t really an unfair situation, at least not more unfair than other moments before and after in the history of the games. No, what Il-Nam wanted was to bring out his true nature—to push him to go in there and kill them in cold blood before they killed him the next day. He wanted to shatter the last trace of humanity he had shown throughout the games, which he had followed closely, wondering why player 132 still hadn’t killed anyone with his own hands.
He knew his story, knew his motivations, knew he didn’t even want the money for himself—but still, he wasn’t capable of killing. Not yet. So, when the betrayal inevitably happened, Il-Nam dragged him toward the only option he had left to win: either kill them in a scenario clearly in his favor, or let them kill him in the next game and let all his efforts be in vain.
In-ho never knew—and would never know—but by that point, Il-Nam already knew his wife and child had died. What he wanted was to break him. He wanted to prove to him that empathy got you nowhere—that he had to kill those people, who would’ve killed him anyway, in hopes of reuniting with a family that no longer existed.
Il-Nam was no longer young—he was dying slowly, and one day he’d need a worthy successor, someone ruthless and with nothing left (at least not in Korea). He only needed to corrupt the last speck of humanity In-ho still had. And when he watched through the cameras how the man stabbed each of the remaining players without mercy, over and over, declaring himself the winner of the 28th Squid Game, he knew he had made the right decision.
Was it really fair? No—but sometimes that’s just how things were. So he made a promise to himself: to maintain equality among the players in future editions. And he kept that promise. With In-ho, who—though he survived—was dead inside.
He won all the money, but soon realized he had nothing left outside those games. He went back. And now, after Il-Nam’s death, he was the one in charge of everything.
Did he want to corrupt Gi-hun the same way they had corrupted him? No. Not this time. This time, he just wanted to help him.
Things had gotten complicated: he hadn’t expected Jun-Hee to give birth inside the games. And though part of him wanted to get that baby out of there immediately (in some way, she reminded him of his own unborn child), with the VIPs’ arrival during the hide-and-seek game, it became impossible to find a way to keep her out of it—especially now that she was participating in place of her deceased mother. So, despite his questionable morality, he wanted to keep that baby safe.
And maybe Gi-hun, too…
He gave a small jolt when the elevator bell rang and the doors opened, revealing Gi-hun and the guard who had guided him there. A knot of anxiety tightened in his chest—until he remembered he was still wearing the mask, and (for now) Gi-hun didn’t know who he really was. He watched him walk toward him as the elevator doors closed behind, under the dim lights of his office, studying every new detail of his exhausted face he could find, the blood staining his forehead. In that moment, they were not In-ho and Gi-hun; they were the Leader of the Games and one of his players.
Gi-hun sat across from him, and In-ho wondered if he had looked the same back then. But then he dismissed the thought—because the feeling was different.
“I have a proposition for you,” he said, wanting to be direct. No response. “It’s about your future—and the baby’s too.”
“About our futures?” Gi-hun questioned him. “Did we ever really stand a chance?”
“As you’ve probably guessed, the other players have formed a team and will target you and the baby in the next game."
“Isn’t that what you planned to amuse your masters until the dead?” No, that wasn’t what he wanted, but how could they know that from his previous actions? “Isn´t that the whole reason you added a newborn to the game after all? Because you want to watch those tragedy, stupid men tear that poor baby apart”
“That's not true. I’m trying to help you and the baby.” And this time, he meant it.
Gi-hun laughed, but he knew he was on the verge of tears. “You want me to the believe you'll help us?”
In-ho said nothing; he just leaned forward and placed the knife on the table that separated them.
“You can take this knife to your quarters and kill them. Kill anyone who wants to kill you or harm the baby.” He didn’t even want to think about what Il-Nam would say about this if he were still alive. He didn’t care. He wanted Gi-hun to go and kill every one of those idiots, to save the baby and himself. “After all the eating and drinking, they're surely fast asleep. If you slit their throats one by one, no one will notice.”
And you’ll win with the baby, take the money, and leave this crap behind, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t.
“Why are you saying all this to me now” Gi-hun exclaimed, leaning slightly toward him, trembling—not from fear, not from anguish. It was a much more complex feeling that only they understood.
It didn’t matter if he tried to explain: with that mask and suit, he was still the leader of the games. So he breathed heavily and decided to make a decision—the only viable one to finally get Gi-hun to listen.
He lowered his hood and slowly slid his hand to his face, trembling. The mask gave way beneath his fingers, dragging as if it was hard to remove because once he took it off completely, the truth—his truth—would be fully revealed.
When Gi-hun saw his face, he felt a merciless wave of panic invade him. No, it couldn’t be. Young-il was dead. He had died during the rebellion attempt. It was true he hadn’t seen his corpse hanging alongside Jung-Bae and the other players, but he also hadn’t seen player 246’s body. And, for God’s sake, under the pressure of the last few days, he hadn’t even allowed himself to break down again over the death of his best friend. How could he have had time to grieve for Young-il’s death? He couldn’t afford it. The last time, he had killed Dae-ho in search of blaming someone for his own mistakes, so although it killed him inside, he couldn’t allow himself to suffer for both.
But now he was there, in front of him, dressed as the leader of the games he had known since the first time he won. What the hell?
“Young-il…” he uttered weakly. The air didn’t reach him, as if the world suddenly shrank. He didn’t understand anything; it felt like his brain was about to explode, with blood boiling inside. All this time, the first days of the game, number 1, the final vote to stay, “Gi-hun,” the rebellion…
He grabbed the knife from the table and stood up quickly, but his body wouldn’t stop trembling. He had spent time with that man, played with that man, survived with that man, and… it had all been a mockery. An infiltration. A simple amusement, he even dared to think. During the rebellion, he looked so hard for the damn leader of the games—and it turned out he was there, beside him, killing his own soldiers with the weapons he himself provided. Following his plan. Following the damn plan. Looking at him with a stupid face.
Gi-hun wasn’t one to kill; whenever he could avoid it, he did. He didn’t always succeed, but he tried. But at that moment, he wanted to cut the throat of… who the hell, really? The leader? Young-il? Who was the damn man in front of him who had ruined his and his friends’ lives? He remembered not only those who had fallen in these games but also Ali, Sae-byeok, Sang-woo. He hadn’t killed them with his own hands, but he was responsible for each of their deaths.
He felt weak tears run down his bruised cheeks, mixing with some of the blood on his face. In-ho watched him, apparently impassive but with a mix of feelings inside, so he decided to speak again.
“You can kill me right now, but you won’t change anything.” He wasn’t trying to manipulate him into not killing him; he wasn’t afraid of death at this point, but he had to make that clear if he was going to do it. “Someone else will take my place, and tomorrow’s game will continue.”
And that was the truth. Gi-hun could massacre him right then, in his office, without the guards being able to stop him. But someone would replace him immediately because that’s how the damn game worked. And he knew it, because despite everything, he wasn’t stupid. In-ho knew he wanted answers, and he was going to give them to him.
He watched him sit down slowly again, still gripping the knife, as if afraid that he might kill him. Didn’t he understand? He called him there because he needed to protect the baby. Protect him.
“It was all a lie” Gi-hun growled, and he knew exactly what he meant.
“No, not all of it.” He wanted to be honest. If Gi-hun killed the players, he would return him along with the baby, and that would be the last time they saw each other. Maybe, with that, he would give up. He would accept that the games weren’t going to stop no matter how much he tried and stop looking for them, so why not tell him the truth? “My real name isn’t Young-il; it’s In-ho… Hwang In-ho.”
He knew Gi-hun knew his brother. He knew he was trying to process it and didn’t pressure him. He watched Gi-hun connect the dots in his head. Understand why Jun-ho suddenly started helping him. Hate him too because that meant he had hidden that information from him before when it might have helped, that if Jun-ho had shown him even one photo of him, his whole lie would have collapsed instantly.
But he said nothing, and In-ho decided to continue.
“The story I told you was true. I entered the games to pay for my wife’s treatment…”
“You never entered the games,” he interrupted him with hatred. Hatred. That was a strong word, but it described well what he felt at that moment.
“I didn’t enter those, but I did participate in some games.” Gi-hun looked him straight in the eyes, trying to understand what he meant by that. “More specifically, the ones in 2015.”
He paused and took a sip of his drink, trying to calm down. The atmosphere was tense for obvious reasons and neither knew well how to react. He opened his mouth to break the silence, but Gi-hun beat him to it,
“So you won your games?” he asked slowly, as if the very idea that one of the leaders had been a participant like him and all the people he had killed was a bad joke.
“Yes,” In-ho answered without scruples. Not because he didn’t understand Gi-hun’s disbelief, but because he needed him to understand what he wanted to reveal by telling him all this. “Winning didn’t do me any good, my wife died before I got out of here, so I became a billionaire, with nothing left to live for.”
Gi-hun looked at him with a mix of impossible-to-define emotions. Rage, anguish, disappointment, fury… sadness? He didn’t even know. But that last part reminded him of himself, when he won the prize money only to find out his mother had already died. That sadness.
“If you knew how the games were, why did you become the leader?” he questioned, unable to understand it. It was true that everyone stayed here knowing they could die. It was true that most of them had done inhuman things to win. But these were the games, the games were inhuman, and that’s why they dragged them into becoming like that. That’s why they had to end, to stop hurting them and their families. That was his thought. So he couldn’t accept the idea that someone who had gone through those games and won (just like him) would consent to continue that horror.
And that made him even angrier because he thought he knew In-ho “Young-il,” and it turned out that all this time he had been this kind of monster. Someone who just had fun playing with them for a while, just like Il-nam did, and then went back to his throne to keep running the games. The difference was that Il-nam was a rich old man without morals and nothing else to do; In-ho had lost his morals after going through the games that man created and now was there running them again.
“The games give a chance.” He had heard that before, and it was not the answer he wanted. He didn’t want to understand the sick logic that the games gave everyone the chance to be rich at the cost of hundreds of deaths. He needed to know why In-ho was there.
And what In-ho wanted was to understand why Gi-hun didn’t give up and accept the reality of human nature. To accept that the games weren’t going to stop no matter how hard he tried. There were other venues, hundreds of filthy rich sponsoring this, watching this, delighting in this. They wanted to see people tear each other apart, lose the last trace of humanity, all for an amount of money they considered nothing compared to their fortunes.
And what troubled him the most was that he had already been in two games, had seen the kind of people inside, and still he didn’t give up. He kept clinging to a hope that In-ho had lost long ago.
And that was exactly what fascinated him about Seong Gi-hun: he was a dumb, impulsive guy who didn’t plan things well. He believed he was the hero in a story where a winner and a hero can’t coexist, because in the Squid Game there are no heroes: only winners. But there he was, protecting that baby from all those men, even the baby’s father. He was reckless. He could never win under normal circumstances, and that’s why he was there, handing him the damn knife—to end that farce, accept reality, and not be anyone’s hero, just the winner.
They looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word because they didn’t have to. They had very different visions: they were survivors, they were winners, but one gave in to hatred and despair; the other still believed there was salvation.
“Seong Gi-hun,” he pronounced slowly. “Just give up. You’re not going to win this time. If you kill them all right now, you and the baby will be the winners.”
He remembered how he killed his former companions, how he had killed so many people without thinking until now.
And that’s when Gi-hun went crazy.
“Is it really that easy?!” he shouted desperately, standing up again and approaching him. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to blame him for everything, and in a way he was right, but he knew he couldn’t. There was no point in killing him or anyone else because the game would continue. And the only person who didn’t deserve that was the baby. He had promised Jun-hee he would protect her, and that’s what he would do.
Even though In-ho’s face remained completely expressionless since the man entered the room, his hands were trembling. “It’s the best and only option you have.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Silence again. Somehow, both were trembling.
“You can’t pigeonhole humans however you want. Humans are more than that. All people are more than that. Everyone who has been here deserved to live. You and all that mafia of idiots dragged them into this, and you keep doing it,” Gi-hun exclaimed forcefully, desperately. As he shouted, his neck tensed; In-ho noticed. “I never wanted money stained with the blood of the people who died here. I don’t want it now either. I just want this to end.”
Gi-hun remembered how before his first games, he used to bet on horse races. He had a big gambling problem and liked to bet on which horse would reach the finish line first. Now he realized that’s what they did with the players: they bet, they had fun with their misery, with the pain of people who had no chance, no option but to end up there. Not everyone who entered was innocent, but neither were they evil. Many were gray people who just wanted a better life. Others who would sacrifice anyone to get it.
There was a strange way in which In-ho seemed able to read his thoughts. Not to understand them, but to know them. Gi-hun wasn’t analytical enough to do the same. But the reality was simple:
Both knew things didn’t turn out the way they wanted.
Both knew they would never see the world the same way again.
But they were in the damn Squid Game.
And someone had to make a decision.
So Gi-hun turned around and headed toward the elevator without looking back. It might be the last time they saw each other, but he didn’t want to see his face. He didn’t want to think about how the damn system worked. He didn’t want to remember how he trusted him inside the games only to end up being cruelly deceived. He didn’t want to see the death of his best friend reflected in his eyes. And above all, he didn’t want to see his indifferent face, with not a trace of reaction to his screams, empty: as if he had no soul.
In-ho didn’t take his eyes off him for a second until the elevator doors closed. Only then, when he was alone, did his lower lip tremble. “Sign of weakness,” his police partners used to tell him. To hell with them all. His heart was beating so hard he felt it would burst out of his chest. Gi-hun’s was too. But they would never know.
When Gi-hun at the last moment didn’t kill the remaining players, In-ho wasn’t surprised, not even disappointed. He was frustrated with himself because Gi-hun was much better than him, and with that action he proved it. He blamed himself, as if saying “I won’t give in to your game.”
The thing was, this time it wasn’t a game. It wasn’t a way to manipulate him and punish him. It wasn’t a trap or a way to make him understand that “he would let the system consummate him.” This time he just wanted to help them. But he would never admit it, not even to himself.
“We’re not horses. We’re humans. And humans are…”
Watching Gi-hun’s corpse paralyzed him completely. The last hour felt like a dream, as if it wasn’t really happening, as if they didn’t have to evacuate the island, as if a baby hadn’t won the games.
As if he hadn’t seen Gi-hun throw himself into the void, just to save her.
He took off the mask, which lately had become unbearably heavy. He looked at it carefully. He wasn’t thinking whether his sacrifice was a stupid act or not. Whether he should really consider that a victory. He simply looked and thought:
“You’ll never know, but you won, Gi-hun.”
The games weren’t going to stop, maybe never. Maybe in one or two generations, someone like Gi-hun would rise again. Someone stubborn, impulsive, idiot, but with the biggest heart and unbreakable morality trying to change things. Maybe that someone would prepare better and finally end the games. Maybe that would never happen.
But Gi-hun won, because In-ho was questioning things for the first time.
And for the first time since the death of his wife and child, he was crying. Not desperately. Not lamenting. Just shedding a couple of silent tears. A couple of human tears.
Humans are rational. We are impulsive. We are intelligent. We are stupid. We are good. We are bad. We are civilized. We are wild. We are everything. We are nothing.
We are like Gi-hun. We are like In-ho.
Or a combination of both.
That’s humanity. A mix of all the good and bad that exists.
Maybe, someday, In-ho will accept that completely.
Maybe he will accept that Gi-hun inevitably changed his life.
For better or for worse.
And he would miss him.