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Player 333 got the upper hand in their scuffle rather quickly. It wasn’t surprising, but it made Gi-hun’s heart race with terror. This was the man that almost threw his own baby off a cliff… and now he was going to get to raise it? Gi-hun couldn’t imagine how a child could grow up with a father like that.
He fought back with everything he had, but he was knocked off his feet when he took his eyes off of the other player to glance at the baby and make sure she wasn’t rolling closer to the edge.
It was at that moment he saw it. The button to start the round, burning a bright crimson red.
Gi-hun landed on his knees, and player 333 kicked him over the side. Gi-hun’s hands desperately grasped for anything to hold on to, latching on to a piece of rebar sticking out of the concrete. He had to at least warn the other man. If Gi-hun was going to die, then it needed to count for something.
He looked up and saw the other man staring down at him.
“Wait!” Gi-hun hollered. “You have to listen to me, you have to press the-“
He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. Player 333 stomped on his fingers, causing Gi-hun to yelp in pain as he lost his grip.
With that, he was falling, down, down, down.
He landed feet first onto the pavement, and cried out as he felt the bones in his feet, his ankles, and his legs fracture. They crunched in on themselves under his weight, absorbing all the force of his fall. He tipped backwards, landing on his tail bone and bruising that as well. He dropped fully to the ground, laying back on his back to take the weight off his bottom half.
The pain was excruciating. Tears welled up in his eyes. He looked up at the pillar above.
“Player 456, eliminated.”
Gi-hun stared up, hoping against all reason that the round could end there. That just this once, the rules could be bent. Maybe it would be for the best. He would die, but at least the baby would get to grow up with a father, right?
The silence in the air let him know that his prayers were in vain.
“The round’s over, isn’t it?” He heard player 333 scream above him. “Let me out! Let me leave, damnit!” The man’s voice shook with the force of his sobs.
“The round begins when the players press the button.” The recording of that cheerful woman’s voice echoed around the walls.
Dead silence. Gi-hun’s eyes welled up with tears. The soft ding of the button being pressed fell onto his ears.
Maybe the baby could still live, even after all of this, Gi-hun let himself hope. Maybe because the last player was the baby’s father, he would do the right thing and sacrifice himself for-
SPLAT.
Gi-hun numbly, slowly looked to the side.
There was the jackets the baby had been wrapped in. Blood coated the green fabric. Twisted little limbs stuck out of the cloth, and red spilled out onto the floor.
Gi-hun had failed in every way. He wished he had landed on his head. He wished the guards had shot him when he didn’t die right away. He wished he didn’t have to be alive to know how thoroughly his foolish hope had ruined everything.
“Player 333, pass.”
Gi-hun kept staring numbly at the bundle of cloth. This was all his fault. The front man was right. He should have slit their throats when he had the chance. The other players could not even be considered human. Every single one of them was trash. They chose to stay here. They chose to stay knowing they would have to kill a child, all for just a little bit more won.
But it was his fault. He was too stubborn to accept a lost cause when everyone knew the obvious outcome. The front man had told him. The players were trash. Child killing trash.
That was all he could think, as he stared at the pool of blood, barely blinking. It was his fault. He put his faith in trash. It was his fault. He hoped he would bleed out soon from the shards of bone that had pierced his own skin. It was his fault. He wanted to die. It was his fault.
Distantly, he heard alarms blaring. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore. He couldn’t save a single player. He couldn’t even save a child that didn’t even get to live long enough to be given a name. It was his fault. He was wrong.
The sound of footsteps crunching in the dirt close to his head made him flinch. He looked up to see the hard, unforgiving edges of the front man’s mask staring down at him.
He held his gaze for a moment. It gave him something to look at other than the pile of dead baby flesh and cloth that sat a couple yards from his head.
It was his fault, too. The front man let this happen. He had faith in Gi-hun to stop it. Either he was just as much of a fool as Gi-him himself, or he was just as much of a monster as the players who wanted to kill the child for actually letting it happen.
Maybe it was both. He hoped his glare conveyed at least an ounce of the contempt he felt. He wanted to die. He wanted the front man to die. He wanted player 333 to die.
“Player 456. Do you still have faith in people?” The front man asked, tilting his head. Gi-hun said nothing. He just let the cold hatred wash over him and stared.
The front man finally broke eye contact.
“In less than thirty minutes, this facility will be blown to pieces. I suppose you could take comfort in that, at least, if you still care,” he pointed up at the top of the tower. “Player 333 will be evacuated with the rest of us if I go get him. But you see, the VIPs are already gone. The game is over. No one is watching anymore.”
The front man’s arm came to rest at his side again, and he turned to look down at Gi-hun.
“Do you think I should? Should I escort him out and give him the prize money?” The front man asked. “Or should I leave him there, and let him burn?”
The front man kneeled down in front of Gi-hun. “What do you think, player 456? Does he deserve to be saved?”
Gi-hun stared at him for a long moment. He felt empty. He realized that he genuinely, truly did not care whether player 333 lived or died. The realization felt like it should shock him more than it did. After making it his life’s mission to stop the games, to save every player he could from this horrible place, this hell…
He no longer cared anymore. He finally looked away from the front man’s mask.
Behind the front man, the baby’s blood glinted in the light.
Numbly, Gi-hun shook his head.
He felt the front man’s gaze drilling into the side of his head.
“Alright.” The front man said. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Gi-hun, placing one arm around his shoulders and the other under his mangled legs. His heart felt so numb that every the pain of his broken bones grinding against each other didn’t earn more than a sharp intake of breath. Gi-hun let himself be picked up, pressed tightly against the front man’s coat. He should push away. He should thrash and beat his hands against him with every last drop of strength he had. The front man was the one actually responsible for all of this. He specialized in setting up situations that brought out the worst in people.
He done so to Gi-hun, clearly. Because Gi-hun no longer cared. He just closed his eyes and let himself be carried out, ignoring the screams of the player on the pillar left to die.
When Gi-hun came to, he became furious with the front man all over again. Because unlike every other player, Gi-hun had been denied what he failed to realize was a privilege all this time: Gi-hun was not allowed to die.
He awoke in a hospital with his legs amputated below the thighs. He didn’t care, except that his inability to walk kept him from retrieving something with which he could slit his throat.
The first time he woke up, Young-il was there, staring at him. Gi-hun didn’t say a word to him, barely gave him a glance before he looked down in the IV in his arm, pulling it out and attempted to stab it into the meat of his throat.
Young-il was on him in an instant, pinning his arms to the bed.
“No.” Young-il said firmly. “None of that.”
Gi-hun didn’t speak, just slowly brought his gaze up to look Young-il in the eyes. He thought that Young-il would realize, if he stared into Gi-hun’s eyes for long enough, that there was no life to save either way. Because Gi-hun was already dead in every way that mattered.
But when Gi-hun looked into Young-il’s eyes, he had a revelation himself. Young-il was already dead, too.
Whatever he hoped to get out of keeping Gi-hun breathing, Gi-hun didn’t care. He just wanted it to end. This world was rotten. There was nothing he could do to change that. He didn’t want to be here anymore. There was no point.
But Young-il, for whatever reason, didn’t want to let him. He didn’t want to let him to the point that he hand cuffed his hands to the bed, keeping him from pulling a stunt like that again. Gi-hun pulled at them as hard as he could when Young-il wasn’t around. There was little else to do, after all, other than listen to the heart monitor beep beside his bed.
Young-il must have had him on painkillers, because he found it rather easy to pull hard enough to make the metal cut into the skin. He had a new idea. Perhaps if he cut deep enough, he wouldn’t even need to get his hands free to kill himself.
Young-il must have had cameras in the room, because he didn’t get very far with that plan either. Young-il swept into the room not long after he had broken the skin, a nurse in tow. She brought a needle to his neck, something that kept him from thrashing when they unlocked his cuffs to dress his wounds. He was left laying there, awake but useless, numb enough that it felt almost as though he was paralyzed.
“I could cut off your arms to, you know,” Young-il said to him as the nurse worked. “We cut your legs off out of necessity, with all those fragments of bone having torn the flesh beyond repair, and your spine broken in a way so you could never walk again anyway. But it would be easy to do the same to your arms if you don’t behave. One could even argue that that would be a medical necessity too, if all you intend to use your hands for is to hurt yourself.”
It didn’t scare Gi-hun, really. Young-il sounded much more afraid than Gi-hun felt. Gi-hun blinked at him slowly. Young-il’s face twisted in pain, and he turned on his heel to stomp out of the room, leaving the nurse to work on her own. But Gi-hun knew better than to think he was alone with her. He was certain now that Young-il was watching.
He let her work and let sleep wash over him. When he next woke up, he found he had padded cuffs this time. They were soft like pillows pressed on his wrists, and all he could accomplish by pulling at them was a bit of rug burn.
So, there was nothing to do but lay back and rot in bed. It was a slower death than he wanted, but he supposed he didn’t deserve a swift end after all that he had done.
Young-il came by to feed him. Gi-hun refused to open his mouth at first.
“If you continue to be difficult, we could always force a feeding tube through your nasal cavity and down your throat. Would you prefer that?”
Gi-hun seriously considered it for a moment. It was no more humiliating than being hand fed by Young-il. He had no autonomy in this situation anyway. Did it matter?
He also genuinely didn’t feel as though he could bring himself to eat. The act of swallowing, even just thinking about it, made him feel nauseous.
So he just slid his eyes shut. Young-il would do whatever he wanted anyway. It didn’t matter.
If what Gi-hun wanted mattered, he would be dead already.
He heard slow movement, the clatter of the bowl being set aside and Young-il rising from his chair, presumably to leave the room. Gi-hun didn’t care.
Until suddenly he felt the soft sensation of lips being pressed against his temple. At that, Gi-hun flinched back into the bed, his eyes widening. He looked up at Young-il, who was staring back at him, much closer than before. There was not a trace of shame in his expression. He was just blankly staring at Gi-hun, as if waiting for a reaction.
“What the hell was that for?” Gi-hun shouted. His voice cracked a little from lack of use. “Why would you do that?”
Young-il smiled. “You’re talking again.”
Gi-hun scowled at him. “So you kissed me just for that?” He groused.
“Not just for that, but yes,” Young-il said. He sat back down in the chair beside Gi-hun’s bed, and Gi-hun internally sighed. He apparently wasn’t leaving anytime soon.
“Now that you’re talking,” Young-il started again, “is there anything you would like to ask?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Gi-hun felt the fight draining out of him already. “Leave.”
He felt Young-il’s fingers grasp his chin, pulling Gi-hun’s attention back to Young-il by force. Gi-hun glared at him. Young-il didn’t say anything.
After a full minute or so of staring into each other’s eyes, Gi-hun finally snapped.
“What do you want from me?” He spat out.
“I want you to live,” Young-il replied.
“Why?” Gi-hun asked immediately. His voice wavered. “Why do you want me to live so badly? To torture me? You’ve already broken me. What more could you hope to gain? What do you want?”
“I want you,” Young-il said.
Gi-hun was left speechless. Young-il leaned in closer, and Gi-hun was paralyzed, too shocked to move as Young-il softly planted a kiss on Gi-hun’s lips.
In the back of Gi-hun’s mind, it kind of makes sense. Of course Young-il wants this from him, too. He’s already taken everything else Gi-hun had to give.
He started to slowly pull back and break the kiss, but Young-il just leaned in further and followed him until his head hits the bed and there is nowhere else to go.
He can’t shove him off, not with his hands cuffed. He can’t really find the desire to, though, even if he could. He just doesn’t care. So he lets his eyes slide shut and melts into the kiss, letting Young-il take the lead. When Young-il feels the tension leaving his body, he of course sees that as his signal to take, take, take some more and slips his tongue past Gi-hun’s lips.
His tongue is dead in his mouth, but Young-il seems to have enough passion for both of them as he explores every inch with his tongue.
Gi-hun blinks. Distantly, he feels something wet drip down over his cheek and realizes he’s crying. He doesn’t really know why.
Once he’s realized it, his breath hitches. He feels a lump form in his throat, and his shoulders shake.
There’s no other way he can express whatever emotion he’s feeling at the moment, chained up and trapped as he is. So he leans forward and finally starts kissing back.
He tries to communicate every feeling he cannot name through the kiss. He bites, he pushes, he fights with every muscle in his mouth to communicate to Young-il... Something.
He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. Maybe Young-il will.
After a long time, Young-il finally breaks the kiss. He looks at Gi-hun adoringly, and Gi-hun feels his cheeks flush. Gi-hun is panting, like he’s just run a marathon, but Young-il is just calmly looking down at him, fully composed. He reaches forward and rubs a finger along the tear tracks on his cheek. Gi-hun leans into the touch and feels like crying again.
When he breaks, Young-il is there to catch him. He wraps his arms around Gi-hun’s shoulders and holds him while he sobs uncontrollably.
“Let it out,” Young-il says. “You don’t have to hold anything back. Not from me.”
“Why?” It’s the only word Gi-hun can manage to say. Why me, why did it have to be this way, why the games, why, why, why?
Young-il kisses his temple and doesn’t speak, just listens to Gi-hun as he falls apart.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” Gi-hun said, his voice breaking. “Why did he do that? His own daughter…”
“He was human,” Young-il said. “And humans are rotten.”
Gi-hun shakes his head, but he can’t come up with any argument to deny it. Not after everything he’s seen.
“Every single one of them,” Young-il muttered into his hair. “Everyone but you.”
Gi-hun’s sobs reached a crescendo and he started wailing. The things he said barely even counted as words. “But it’s my fault!” He choked out between breaths. “I could have stopped him!”
Young-il stroked his hair soothingly and shushed him.
“You could have,” Young-il said. “But you didn’t.”
“Then-“ Gi-hun hiccuped, sobbing so hard he could barely get the words out, “how can you say that? That I’m not rotten? I’m just as bad as he is- as you are!”
“You could never be,” Young-il whispered, his grip tightening. “You’re too pure. That’s why you couldn’t do it. Because stupidly, beautifully, you had hope that someone else could be as good as you.”
Gi-hun’s face was soaked in tears by now.
“But no one ever will be,” Young-il said. “You’re the exception in every way. You aren’t like the rest of humanity. You’re better.”
Gi-hun squirmed under the weight of the worship in his gaze.
“I’ve killed before, too.” Gi-hun said softly. He was back to weeping. “I killed Dae-ho. I’m just like the rest of them.”
“You’re not,” Young-il insisted. “The blood on your hands just makes the purity of your soul shine through even brighter.”
Gi-hun cringed at that. It was so… intense. Almost corny, even. How could Young-il say something like that with a straight face? It made Gi-hun feel almost like he was being mocked, if Young-il didn’t sound so sincere.
“I wanted to rid you of that, once,” Young-il said. “But now I see it’s something to be protected and cherished. You could never fall as hard as someone like me could.”
Gi-hun unconsciously looked at his legs, or lack thereof. He slowly turned his head to look back at Young-il, his tears forgotten for a moment.
“Well,” Young-il, the bastard, was smirking, like he was laughing at his own joke. “I suppose you can fall pretty hard, though.”
Gi-hun was, not for the first time, left speechless. He gasped at Young-il in disbelief for a moment, struck silent by the absurdity of it all.
Unconsciously, he scoffed. And that scoff quickly turned into chuckles, just on the edge of manic. Young-il laughed too. It was a fun moment, if Gi-hun allowed himself to forget he was giggling while he was wrapped in the arms of a murderer.
After a brief moment, Gi-hun calmed down. His face was still wet with tears, but he felt numb- not the kind of numb that came with an ache in his chest, but actually numb to the pain for now.
“I don’t know how to live after all of this,” Gi-hun confessed quietly.
“I know,” Young-il said. “But you’re going to anyway. I won’t let you die.”
“Why?” Gi-hun repeated. “I don’t want to do this anymore. You’ve let so many other people die, why do I have to be the exception?”
“I know. But, like every human other than you,” Young-il replied, “I am selfish. And you are the exception in every way, to me.”
Young-il held him tighter. Tears spilled out of Gi-hun’s eyes again, and Young-il tenderly kissed their path on his cheek.
“Young-il… Please. Let me go,” Gi-hun begged. “I can’t bear this.”
“My name is Hwang In-ho.”
“What?” Gi-hun looked up, confused.
“My real name,” In-ho said.
“In-ho…” Gi-hun tested the word in his mouth. He should be angrier about that, that even that was a lie. But he couldn’t bring himself to care. It suited the other man better, anyway. His subconscious instantly accepted it.
“And I am never letting you go,” In-ho finished.
In-ho was not bluffing about the feeding tube. Though he looked at Gi-hun like he had hung the moon, he didn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to keep Gi-hun alive, regardless of Gi-hun’s comfort or wants.
But he was never openly cruel to Gi-hun. Even though Gi-hun resented being kept alive, he couldn’t help but feel his resentment for In-ho gradually melting away.
It was hard to hold onto it, when In-ho was the only person he had to talk to. The nurses didn’t speak to him, on the rare occasion he was awake when they visited- Gi-hun had started to suspect In-ho had him sedated any time he couldn’t be by his side. Probably to make sure Gi-hun couldn’t find some new and creative way to maim himself while he was gone.
Gi-hun had become resigned to his fate, though. He would not be permitted to die for as long as In-ho lived. He was aware that he shouldn’t be accepting In-ho so readily. There was a term he had heard on a crime tv show once, ‘Stockholm syndrome,’ or whatever it was called. When a victim starts to sympathize with their kidnapper. He knew he was developing it, but he couldn’t care anymore.
When In-ho was around, after a few days, he started letting Gi-hun have his hands free. Time melted together, but eventually, he even got Gi-hun a wheelchair so he could wheel himself around the room. There was very little in the room to do, but when Gi-hun was awake and In-ho wasn’t around, sometimes he would pull himself into it and just push himself in circles around the room to have something to do, anything to break the routine of nothingness. The feeding tube was eventually removed, and Gi-hun allowed In-ho to feed him- the tube had been annoying, and if that’s what it took to avoid going through that again, Gi-hun decided he wouldn’t bother trying to fight it.
Once, Gi-hun had gotten the idea to wheel himself into the bathroom and try to drown himself in the toilet. He failed, of course. His foolish survival instincts just wouldn’t let him stop breathing, and he couldn’t stop himself from pulling his head above the water. When In-ho found him (almost immediately, of course; Gi-hun was aware there had to be cameras in the room) he was rewarded for his efforts by having the chair taken away and the catheter reinserted.
After that, he lost the will to make any real effort towards offing himself anymore. In-ho had even started testing him. He let him feed himself at dinner, even gave him real utensils like a knife. Gi-hun thought about slitting his wrists, but was shocked to find he didn’t even feel like trying anymore. It would have been pointless anyway. In-ho would only give him something like that if he was fully certain Gi-hun couldn’t actually do any serious damage.
In the mirror, he saw himself healing against his will. He gained his weight back, and his skin cleared up. In-ho was keeping him alive, whether he liked it or not. And deep down, after three long years of being alone, left to his own self destructive habits… He hated himself for it, but he did start to like the feeling of being cared for.
With the island blown up, In-ho seemed to have little else to do all day than spend time with Gi-hun. He talked about plans for the future. Plans that sometimes even made Gi-hun feel… hopeful. He talked about helping Gi-hun study English, taking him to America to see his daughter. He started bringing philosophy books for Gi-hun to read. He told Gi-hun they had helped him after he learned the truth of human nature, and he thought they might help Gi-hun as well. Gi-hun had nothing else to do, so he read them, though they were much denser than anything he would normally go for.
As Gi-hun got healthier, he started to get a little bit of a spark back. At first, when he and In-ho spoke about the books he read, it was more like In-ho was giving him lectures. But eventually, their conversations became more like actual back and forth discussions that Gi-hun actually started to look forward to.
“I’m surprised this one was one you liked, honestly,” Gi-hun said as he flipped through the pages of Emmanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
“Why would I have brought it to you if I didn’t think it had anything valuable to say?” In-ho asked.
Gi-hun couldn’t help but smile, just a little. This was the least subtle entry in their little informal book club that In-ho had presented him with.
“You’re trying to say it wasn’t my fault,” Gi-hun said softly. “And I disagree- it was. I failed to act, I hesitated, and… that innocent baby paid the price. But I appreciate the effort.”
“You had good intentions,” In-ho states. “I think that counts for something, regardless of the end.”
Gi-hun felt tears well up in his eyes, but he held them back. “Well, what about you?”
“Me?” In-ho smiled fondly at him and tilted his head. “I don’t disguise my intentions, and I haven’t aspired to let morals guide my actions for a long time.”
“Yes, but… even if you have bad intentions…” Gi-hun reached out to rest his hand on In-ho’s knee. “You still do good things, sometimes. Like…”
In-ho scoffed, disbelieving. “Like?”
“Like saving me,” Gi-hun said softly. “You insisted it was selfish, but the end result is that you saved my life. I think that counts for something, too.”
The smile dropped from In-ho’s face. Gi-hun watched his lip tremble, just a bit.
“I thought you resented me for that.”
“I did at first,” Gi-hun admitted. “But… the games have taken enough from me. So I’m glad, now, that you’ve given me back my life.”
It was In-ho’s turn to cry now. He didn’t sob, just silently wept as tears spilled over his cheeks. He was usually so stone faced and stoic, but it seemed Gi-hun’s words had cut deep, regardless of Gi-hun’s intention.
Gi-hun reached out to hold him, and for once, In-ho was the one crying on his shoulder, instead of the reverse.
Gi-hun knew neither of them really deserved to move on, after everything. But if he had to live, he would allow himself this much.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Gi-hun had never dared to hope for this. In-ho had pushed him to finally reach out to his daughter, and now they were in the streets of a city in California for a stroll to get ice cream together.
She was shocked to see him in a wheelchair. Gi-hun felt bad that her pity for him made her feel the need to bury the very much justified resentment she felt. When she saw him, he watched the barriers she had prepared crumble behind her eyes. He should feel guilty, like he was manipulating her somehow. But when she threw herself at him to give him a hug, he could only manage to feel grateful for her forgiveness.
She took to In-ho quickly too, when she learned In-ho was the one who nursed Gi-hun back to health after his “car accident.” It was dishonest, but passing on his trauma to Ga-yeong was the very last thing he wanted to do. Some distant part of him felt guilty for forgiving In-ho, let alone growing to trust him enough to let him near his daughter… But he was the only reason he was even able to see her now. When he saw her smile again, there was just no way for him to hold on to his resentment after that.
On the second day of his and In-ho’s visit in America, she met them at the bottom of the stairs. They were going to walk (or, roll, in Gi-hun’s case) a couple blocks down to the closest ice cream store for a treat.
As they made their way through the suburb, Gi-hun heard the distinct sound of someone being slapped, and he stopped rolling for a moment. In-ho grabbed the handles of his chair and started forcing him forward, but not before he saw it. A woman in a suit, playing ddajki with a homeless man.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he let every complicated feeling he had buried these past months wash over him. The impotence, the righteous fury, the depths of his sorrow.
He clenched his fists in the fabric of his pant legs, took a deep breath, and let go. His fingers trailed the end of his thighs, the stump where his legs used to be.
He had given all he could. He had ran as far as he could. There was nothing more he could do. Not now.
He willed the tension in his shoulders to dissipate and looked up at In-ho, who was watching him warily. His jaw was tensed. He looked like he wanted to lock Gi-hun away again so he wouldn’t have to worry about him chasing after her.
He then looked at his daughter. She was confused, not understanding why In-ho and Gi-hun had suddenly grown so tense.
“…appa?” She said softly. “Are you alright?”
“…Yeah, baby girl. I’m fine.” Gi-hun said. “Let’s go get that ice cream, okay?”
END