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Every so often, Choi took a block of time off. He'd taken it for the first time when he'd become a senior, not a junior, to the others at the bureau, and then he'd taken it again when he'd changed desks into a nicer, emptier, not-at-all full one, and he'd taken it again, here and there, depending on how some missions went, depending on how his personal life went. It mostly went unnoticed, for what it was worth, or at least unremarked on: the bureau was used to absences, those temporary and those not, and it was widely understood that agents would do what was needed to keep them going — or not.
"Don't worry," said Choi, ruffling Bronze's hair as he swept by. He'd handed him the time-off form (paper, although he'd submitted an e-mail request too — the bureau was just old-fashioned like that, requiring a hard copy) and told him to pass it on for him. "I'll come back. I'm a responsible guy, you know? I wouldn't just leave knowing that I had such cute juniors waiting for me."
"A responsible guy," Bronze repeated with extreme prejudice for someone with such a flat voice, brushing his hair back into submission with his knuckles.
"Aren't I?" said Choi. He grinned. "I'm the oldest son, you know."
"You told me you were the youngest of your family before," Bronze said, hands held protectively over the crown of his head when Choi tried to sneak his hand closer again.
Choi drew his hand back, sighing performatively, and cast him a glance, slightly sly; his mouth twisted in something that wasn't quite amusement, but it drew close. His eyes were shaded by his fringe.
"I was then," Choi said breezily. He rapped his knuckles against Jaekwan's, a gentle, almost-silent knock, and smiled. "Keep an eye on the place for me, will you? I won't be long."
Jaekwan's hands never trembled when he was handed the knife. The metaphorical knife, that was — he was a better shot than he was with a blade, which Choi used, which was fine; they made up for each other's weaknesses, this way, and it wasn't that Jaekwan was bad with the more traditional weapons, he wasn't, but he had a preference. Guns were good with Jaekwan. They suited each other. Clean, efficient, easy to transport, and there was so little that came through with it — not that Jaekwan was unfeeling — but that Choi, arguably, felt too much, through his hands, the gristle, the feedback of the blade; whenever Choi cleaved through something with his jakdu he could feel the tension of the blade meeting something with force, the resistance and the refusal to split, and then the inevitability of separation that signalled his success. The proximity left his own hands bloodied, while Jaekwan, for the most part, walked home with his hands clean — which was why Jaekwan biked, and most of the time Choi didn't: smeared less on the handlebars that way.
"You really don't get nervous," Choi had remarked of Jaekwan, watching him on one of his early missions. Jaekwan had been younger then — really young, the way that mammals like deer or horses were, the ones that came out of their mothers fully-formed and gawkish, awkward, their limbs too large for the them of now. Jaekwan, younger, had a face like it was just waiting for him to grow into it; he'd been spindly and not clumsy, but deliberate in a way that had suggested that he was conscious of how to manipulate his limbs because he'd had to learn how to. Choi had put an elbow on his shoulder, watching him stagger slightly under Choi's weight. "Your hands don't shake at all."
"Should they?" Jaekwan had said. He'd flexed his fingers slightly. It wasn't a combative question. He was just curious.
"It's a heavy thing," Choi had told him. He'd been smiling, his expression only slightly absent. "Killing."
There was no should or shouldn't. It was just that most people trembled, facing down the inevitability of death, which was far scarier in its simplicity than most of the strange phenomena they dealt with; there were no frills or fanfare necessary to make them afraid of something so pervasive and real. His superior had told Choi that the shaking just meant that they respected life. Fear meant bravery. And so on, and so on; you could have heard it a million times, the moral justification; Choi had heard it enough, in those early years, watching the tremors in his hands at the bathroom mirror.
"I know," said Jaekwan simply. His fingers had curled into a fist, and then unfurled. His hand dropped down to his side. "That's why I'll stop if I ever start."
"Killing?"
"Shaking," Jaekwan had said, and then shook his head. "Both." He'd tilted his head back, meeting Choi's gaze; just a hair shorter than him, back then. His mouth had been drawn into a long, straight line. "Once I start to doubt whether what I'm doing is the right thing or not — then I'll stop," he'd said, and lifted his chin, all plain, straightforward precision. His eyes were clearer than glass, darker than coal. "All of it."
He'd never possessed a particular aptitude for something. Nothing that his teachers could pinpoint, anyway: they'd give him bland recommendations in counseling appointments about how he could pursue a physical education major, he was athletic, but he probably couldn't get a scholarship, he wasn't that athletic, and he hadn't been on any teams, or won any awards, what about going to a university, but not a university that was too nice in Seoul, his grades weren't that good? Was he thinking of working for a company or becoming a civil servant? No matter what he'd pursued, he'd have to work hard — and that was the thing that Choi was good at, when it came to it, and the thing that had made his teachers not worry about him, no matter how unclear his path was: the working hard.
They'd used to tell him that he would be a good prosecutor. Because you love arguing so much, exasperatedly fond, fingers over his eyebrows, light lines drawn by the tips. Or a president — wouldn't he be good at it? Or an engineer, because he was solution-oriented and good with his hands, or a doctor, because nothing was more praiseworthy than having a career as a doctor, or a civil servant, because civil servants were government-employed and their jobs were secure and their salaries weren't bad, and honestly, it was working for the government, which was better than working for a nondescript start-up or whatever they had said, Choi couldn't quite remember.
Life as as a civil servant at the bureau wasn't that bad. They'd been right, after all, though they hadn't been around to see it; it was good employment. It was the type of job people had for their whole lives.
Choi tended to eat wherever he could eat, and he wasn't picky about it, either, although some people were. Some people back at the office had allergies to this or that, or they had hangups about specific foods or textures or cooking methods, and some didn't like it when they were prepared in certain environments — anything really high-class and fancy, for example, or anything really dingy and suspicious-looking, or anything that featured environments where there might be a lot of families and children. Choi didn't mind anything, really, as long as he had it, and ate it, and sometimes he went without having or eating anything if he was in one of his moods — but he wasn't, not right now, so he ate well while the employee brought out his food and told him to just let her know if he needed anything else.
A couple of people had texted him since he'd left on his trip. Jaekwan, with brief messages here and there — he sent Choi a picture of the sky, his lunch, the smiley face that Choi had defaced Jaekwan's desk with. Agent Mint asked Choi if he knew who she should consult about the recent case report references. A notification here and there. Choi answered a couple, tapping on his phone screen, and shut it off.
The food was warm and salty, slightly sweet from whatever they'd put in it — sugar or honey, something that crystallized and caramelized when brought into contact with heat. He ate with his chopsticks, sticks of silver in his fingers, and then with his hands, whatever was left, and then wiped them clean and washed them in the bathroom before he left, shaking the droplets off of his hands before he counted out the bills to pay for the meal.
The woman behind the counter smiled when he paid, her weathered hands passing over the bills. She shook her head. "I wish my grandson would eat half as heartily as you do," she said, and pinched his cheek; Choi leaned forward and let her with a grin. "Young people — they're too skinny nowadays! But you look like you know how to take care of yourself."
"I do, auntie," said Choi. His gaze lingered on the beckoning cat figurine on the counter, waving him closer. He looked away and back at her, thumbing over the metal seam of his wallet. He laughed. "I'm really good at looking after myself."
"Do you believe in heaven?" Choi had asked Jaekwan. It'd been the middle of spring, their faces shadowed as they leaned back into the shade of a tree: outside, in the parking lot, under a metal awning and dressed in all-black. Choi was smoking. Jaekwan was just standing there. He'd tipped his head back, exhaled slow.
"No," Jaekwan had said.
Choi'd smiled faintly. "You don't think that's where our coworkers are going?" But there'd been no bite to it, no malice; he'd only been asking, and even then, he'd already known the answer. The edge of the cigarette had folded slightly between his fingers, crinkling soundlessly — he made his grip loosen with a low laugh. "That's cruel, Jaekwan-ah. What do you believe in, then? That there's nothing—"
"No," Jaekwan'd said. It'd been a rare interruption. Choi's eyebrows had raised despite himself. "I don't believe in anything."
Not that life ended with death — that there was a perpetual darkness waiting ahead of them — or that there was a paradise; not hell or purgatory, just no belief at all. Was that possible? If it had been anyone else Choi would have thought they were lying: it would have been impossible for others, Choi thought, to know of something and have no opinion of it, no matter how many people convinced themselves that this was the case with this matter or that matter — in the end, most people had an instinctive leaning towards some version of their truth. If it had been anyone else — if it were anyone else — to not think about something was the same about thinking about it; to not believe in something was the same as believing in something else.
But Jaekwan, Choi had thought. He had watched him: his smooth forehead, his straight nose; the way that he looked over at Choi, expectant, waiting for an answer, the rounded curl of where his throat carved outward.
Choi reached out, touched his shoulder; his thumb pressed just above Jaekwan's covered collarbone. "A real goodbye, huh?"
There were more churches than you'd think, by the road — it was a good thing, Choi thought, or maybe just a matter of convenience: people tended to turn to religion in times of desperation, so it was probably better for them to choose a place by the road.
A dark thought, maybe. But it was more of an occupational hazard, if you asked him: pattern recognition and data analysis, the basic observational skills that any agent that worked at the Disaster Management Bureau needed. You had to have a decent grasp on human psychology to work there, although they weren't profilers or anything like that, the type of doctors that you saw on T.V. — you just had to go through a lot, and understand a lot, and at some point down the line the two synthesized into something that people just termed as experience.
No one asked him what he was doing there. He had a way of looking busy, or looking like he was supposed to be there, that had made him eerily good at slacking off at the office. He had gotten so good at it that he could spend half of his time there just listening to other people's conversations and rummaging through drawers that he wasn't supposed to be rummaging in, if he wanted — and it came in handy in times like this, just Choi in the morning, his head tilted forward as if in prayers, hands folded in front of him as he rested his elbows on his knees, knuckles to his forehead.
He was listening to the sound of footsteps. Someone was laughing, someone whispering. The air was heavy and warm with the scent of paper and food and wax and sunlight. After a few minutes, someone started humming along to a hymn; his eyes were already closed, but he felt them slipping deeper shut still.
Sunset came quick. Choi had pulled up next to a rickety-looking motel that looked haunted enough that it contradictorily reassured Choi that it wasn't haunted — too authentic-looking to be authentic — and he leaned against the side of his car in the parking lot watching the sky turn red, thinking about smoking, not moving to pull out his lighter just yet. His phone was pressed against his cheek, the ringtone vibrating once, twice.
Jaekwan picked up. It was quiet, wherever he was: he must've gotten off work already, holed up in the dorms like he always was. They talked about trivial things — Choi about the purple car that he'd seen today, the fried-chicken van with a rubber chicken taped to the roof, the delinquent kids he'd seen skipping school, and Jaekwan about what had happened at work, the stir-fry that he'd attempted to make, the broken air-conditioning in the meeting room. The sky turned purple, then blue.
The streetlights flickered on.
"I should be going," said Choi. It was beginning to get cold. The blue fabric of his jacket had done enough to keep the chill out, but he could feel it, on his face, the way that it was beginning to seize, and then tingle; he blinked like it would keep imaginary frost out of his eyes. His voice came slow and warm. "I'll call you tomorrow. Alright?"
"Alright," said Jaekwan. And then, faintly curious: "Where are you?"
It was a good question. Choi's fingers tapped against the edge of his car door. He hummed. "I'll tell you when I get there."