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“Because I know I’m not going to have as much fun watching as playing,” Il-nam says.
But he can sense In-ho’s slight hesitation, borne of skepticism.
So, even though he shouldn’t--he owes nothing to Hwang In-ho--he still feels obliged to add: “And I don’t want to hear what they say about him.”
In-ho’s head drops into something obedient, or at least understanding, because the VIPs always are so disgusting towards the things participating here.
(And if it was anyone else—anyone else save Il-nam’s sweet omega son, so long parted from him—he wouldn’t care. They’re trash. His son’s husband is trash—an investment banker, educated at Seoul National University. Gi-hun had bragged so proudly about it, despite Sang-woo still being a fuck-up at the job he’d so thoroughly been trained for, embezzling from clients left and right.
It makes Il-nam despise him, because this man had promised Il-nam’s son and granddaughter so much, but what can the little bespectacled shit still offer now?)
In-ho still hesitates, unusual for him. He’s obviously considering his words carefully. “You’ve . . . gotten very close to this omega.”
Il-nam grins. “And you haven’t? I’ve felt your eyes even through the cameras. When he—reunited—with that worthless ex-husband in the bathroom, I even sensed your rage in the dorm.” He chuckles. “Made me realize I needed to check up on him.” The sheer awkwardness when he’d walked in on them—however disgusting the display he’d witnessed—had been quite fun.
The Front Man is not currently wearing his mask, but even then, usually he would be more controlled than to perform the quick turn away from Il-nam that he does, going with briskness over to the bar to pour a whiskey.
“But I approve of you,” Il-nam calls out. “After all, it’s a father’s right to give his omega child to an alpha he chooses. And I certainly didn’t choose Player 218.”
In-ho freezes like a statue, hand halfway to the liquor bottle, halted in midair.
“I’m—I’m sorry?” he finally asks, voice fainter than usual, more in line from when he’d been a contestant.
“456—Gi-hun—is my child. Mine. Why do you think I wanted to participate in these games in particular? Why do you think he was always on my team, and that I ‘sacrificed’ myself during Marbles?”
In-ho finally manages to pour some whiskey into his tumbler. His hands are visibly shaky, if only just a bit.
“His mother didn’t like my association with the kkangpae when I was just starting out. I was a loan shark back then. And she didn’t understand you have to break some eggs to do business. She was so soft. But Gi-hun inherited that, and I can’t dislike it in him.”
Il-nam takes a long drag on his oxygen, sighing and lying back in his chair. “So, when I was still lower-mid level, when I’d only made a pittance, my wife tossed me out. She threw things at me to get me out the door and she took my little omega son from me, to raise in a hovel. The bitch’s only income was from selling food at a stall, and that’s what my Gi-hun grew up with.”
In-ho knows about 456—that he’s a gambling addict, and his mother’s situation is increasingly bad due to diabetes, though she still works herself, given 456 is all but unemployed. A part time chauffeur, as if that would earn anything.
Il-nam gets up and starts pacing, even nibbling at his nail as he looks through the windows overlooking the island (the first time In-ho has ever witnessed that). Finally, he sighs heavily.
“If Gi-hun fails, just have 218 shot,” Il-nam says.
But the fight between 218 and 456, which enthralls the VIPs—it’s rare for an omega to even make it to the final game, after all, much less with his mate being his opponent—ends with 456’s genuine victory.
All 456—Gi-hun—needs to do is walk into the squid’s head, but he’s too good-natured of a thing to actually do that. Instead, he begs his alpha to just let it go and let them both forfeit. But In-ho is only mildly surprised when Cho, backed into a corner, commits suicide. Self-absorbed as the little fucker is, In-ho’s seen similar things happen before.
Gi-hun screams.
He screams, he weeps, he vomits, and he tries to prevent the alpha’s body being taken by the guards, eventually resorting to throwing himself over it and refusing to budge. He has to be forcefully ripped away by three of them.
But he’s the winner. He’s leapt out of the trash heap, while everyone else has piled up like a landfill. There wasn’t even any cheating—he beat that ex of his completely under his own power, fighting like a rabid wild animal.
In-ho knows that in a luxurious bedroom adjacent to the main control room, Oh Il-nam is smiling. And the Front Man is, too, just a bit, behind his mask, even as the VIPs scowl and bitch, all of them having bet on 218.
It’s a father’s right to give his omega child to an alpha he chooses.
And In-ho doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy to have been chosen.