Chapter Text
The first time In-ho saw him, it was in a dream.
A demon with his own voice.
I am Gwi-ma, said the demon. In the dream. In In-ho's own voice. I can feel your pain, In-ho. The guilt you carry.
What do you want? his voice shook — his voice, from his own mouth, not the demon's. The fear was something In-ho was ashamed of, but he figured... even the strongest man tended to be frightened in the face of an enormous demonic entity who sounded precisely like him, the enormous demonic entity who was engulfed in flames. No... not engulfed in flames, the flames were him, In-ho realized. The giant flames with a gaping mouth — from which his own voice came (if only lower and more hoarse, but still In-ho's own voice), threatening to swallow him whole — were the demon, Gwi-ma.
Let me help you, Gwi-ma continued, still in In-ho's voice. I can bring him back.
The dream ended there.
The room was dark when In-ho opened his eyes. There were no pink flames, no demon talking to him in his own voice. No Gi-hun.
Gi-hun remained dead.
Your fault, In-ho. It's your fault that Gi-hun is dead.
He'd banished the lingering thoughts of the dream, brushing it off as his own mind being cruel to him, nothing more than trauma coupled with grief and guilt, resulting in an absurd nightmare, an evidence of shameful longing and forbidden feelings.
It didn't matter anyway. Not anymore.
Gi-hun is dead. Nothing can bring him back.
Then In-ho met him again.
Not Gi-hun. Of course.
The demon. Gwi-ma. The next time he slept, Gwi-ma was there, already waiting for In-ho in the midst of his conscience and looming tall over his head, like a burning mountain. All fire and want.
"Leave me alone."
"I can help you, In-ho. I see your shame. Your grief. I can help with that."
"Stay away from me."
"Let me in. I can bring him back."
The dream, again, ended there. It always ended there.
______________________________
He thought he was losing his mind.
He'd been through grief before. His wife's death was still a gaping wound, throbbing and bleeding in the part behind his ribs where he usually shielded from the world, with the geometric mask and a matching grey coat — as harsh and lifeless... as numb as everything else. In-ho remembered coming home to an empty house and having his first thought being not sorrow or pain but emptiness, which was in its own right cruller than sorrow, cruller than pain.
He'd been through guilt before. Guilt and remorse. The type of shame that was suffocating. In-ho first got a taste of it for the first time when he realized what he'd done, failing to save her life and letting her die alone when he'd made his vow on their wedding night. To always protect. To always be there. You didn't protect her. She still died, and you weren't even there for her when she took her last breath with your child in her womb. He felt it again when he shot Jun-ho. His baby brother. Retreating back to his quarters, while on the island, and seeing Jun-ho's face staring back at him in the reflection. Hyung, why? The guilt and the shame were just as suffocating then, if not more.
The bottom line, In-ho supposed, Gi-hun's death was not the first time he grieved, not the first time guilt devoured him alive.
Not the first time he saw himself descending into that endless pit of despair and insanity.
Yet it was Gi-hun's death that... did it.
A part of In-ho suspected he did in fact die with his wife a long time ago. A part of him looked at the mirror and saw a breathing corpse that was shot and stabbed when he sent Jun-ho off the edge of the cliff four years ago.
Then Gi-hun came, and with Gi-hun that strange sparks somewhere in In-ho's chest, the void that remained still and cold — dead — ever since the mother of his unborn child took her last breath.
Until Gi-hun came and made him feel something again. Humanity, a will to live, an urge to protect, longing, friendship. Love. All combined and mingled and danced together in the swirls of forbidden things In-ho was too scared to touch, too lost to acknowledge.
In-ho died again when Gi-hun chose to go down the noble way. His life for someone else's child. Maybe Gi-hun really was a savior and a fool who never actually stood a chance in the rot that was this world. Or maybe Gi-hun had just been looking for a heroic excuse for suicide. Self-sacrifice always gained false respect from pretenders before they moved on with their corrupt way of lives. Self-sacrifice was a more righteous way than suicide.
But you just killed yourself, didn't you? You tried before. The only difference was that I was powerless to stop you when you were alone with the baby on the pillar.
Congratulations, Gi-hun. You really did it in the end.
"Let me help you."
In-ho jumped, the razor slipped from his hand just before he could slit his own wrist with it, before he could follow Gi-hun into the afterlife. That he was certain Gi-hun's ghost never wanted to see him there did not mean In-ho had to honor his wish. He'd been hurting Gi-hun since the first time he laid eyes on Player 456. He feared he no longer knew how to stop hurting people he cared about, people he —
"You love him, don't you." The voice came from within. Inside his head. It was... In-ho's own voice, yes. Only that In-ho knew this time it was not his own mind taunting him. This was...
The dreams.
Only that In-ho was awake. Awake and alert and on the vert of suicide. Until...
Gwi-ma.
Gwi-ma's voice that was In-ho's own. And Gwi-ma was talking to him.
"Let me in, and I will bring him back," said In-ho's voice. No. Gwi-ma's. It's the same. Except that it's not. In-ho shut his eyes tight, pulling his knees close to his chest and burying his face between them until he looked small and pathetic (he knew that), a failure, a sad excuse of a man breaking down on the bathroom tiles. Covering his ears with his hands didn't help keep away the voice — his own, Gwi-ma's — not when it came from inside.
"This is your chance to do what you were too much of a coward to do in the game," Gwi-ma said. "You let him die once. Are you going to turn your back on him again."
"You're not real," In-ho said out loud, with his eyes still shut tight and his face between his knees.
"It's your fault," said Gi-hun's voice. All of a sudden.
In-ho flinched like a dog zapped by a shock collar, jerking his head up and realizing how trapped he really was. Eyes wide and mouth hung open, he couldn't breathe. Gi-hun... Gi-hun crouched in front of him.
"All your fault," Gi-hun said.
"No," In-ho shook his head. No what? Everything is your fault, In-ho. You know this, this time the voice was his own. Not Gwi-ma's. Or maybe they had now become one. In-ho wouldn't know. The only thing he did know... Gi-hun was right; everything was his fault, his wife's death, his child's death, Jun-ho's pain. Gi-hun.
"Gi-hun..." the voice — his own — left In-ho's mouth. He didn't mean to... say it, Gi-hun's name. He hadn't said Gi-hun's name out loud since Gi-hun died. Since you let him die. Maybe it was his guilt that said it. Maybe it was Gwi-ma. It didn't actually matter, did it. Who said what. It was the truth and In-ho knew that.
"You can still save me," Gi-hun looked at him. Gi-hun was wearing the same shirt he wore in his final moments. Covered in blood and dirt, with the same look he gave In-ho the last time they met face to face like this. Hurt. Betrayed. Disgusted.
"Why didn't you save me, In-ho?"
In-ho. Gi-hun was calling him In-ho. Not Young-il. He never had a chance to introduce his real name to Gi-hun when Gi-hun was alive.
As far as In-ho knew, Gi-hun died thinking Young-il laughed at what they had. The lie. Or, it was supposed to be a lie when In-ho first ordered his guard to bring him the teal tracksuit with the same set of numbers Il-nam wore. 001. When did it stop being a lie...
It didn't matter. Not anymore. Gi-hun. Gi-hun's ghost was here and he was calling him In-ho.
Why didn't you save me, In-ho?
"I tried," In-ho choked on the words, a sob tearing through his lungs. "I — I really tried, Gi-hun."
"You didn't," Gi-hun's ghost said. "You didn't even try. You stood there and watched me die. Just like what you did to your wife and your kid. You let them die too."
"No," In-ho shook his head, his voice a whisper, a plea. Eyes covered in tears. Lost and terrified.
"You let them die," Gi-hun's voice grew lower, harsher and darker until it became someone else's. Something else's. A monster. A demon. Gi-hun's eyes — In-ho watched as fear spread through his bones — were glowing a deep shade of gold. Gold and orange. Like fire. Like the sky after sunset. Something demonic and unholy that was as alluring as it was deadly. "You let me die," a hoarse, inhuman voice dragged its way past Gi-hun's lips.
In-ho didn't remember crying, didn't remember saying he was sorry over and over again, didn't remember closing his eyes and curling in on himself on the floor until everything was quiet and he was lying on his side. On the bathroom tiles. Trembling and sobbing.
"I'm sorry," he said, a faint whisper this time, with his eyes shut tight, head tucked in with his chin against his chest, and both hands on his ears. "I'm sorry, please — I'm —"
Gi-hun's ghost was gone the next time In-ho opened his eyes. Once he cooled down and felt like he'd been run over. Exhausted and bled out.
Everything was quiet. Too quiet.
He's here. In-ho knew that. Not necessarily Gi-hun but the other one. Gwi-ma. In-ho could feel his presence looming over his head, like death that'd taken his wife and child from him. The same death that took Gi-hun away.
"Let me help you," Gwi-ma's voice — sounding precisely like his own, so precise that it was In-ho's own voice — cut through the thick, sharp silence. Like a knife. Cold and unyielding.
In-ho lay still and didn't try to block it out this time. No point when it came from within, anyway.
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The next time he met Gwi-ma, In-ho was more desperate than terrified.
He knew what he wanted. What he needed. Gi-hun. Gi-hun is out there. In-ho failed before. With his wife. Then Gi-hun, and —
He wouldn't fail Gi-hun again.
"Are you ready to let me help you?" Gwi-ma asked.
In-ho stood before him, before his gaping mouth, either in a dream or a trance-like state. Doesn't matter. "Bring him back," he said, tilting his head backward to hold eye contact with the gigantic burning fire that could very well swallow him whole with one sudden gulp. (To In-ho's surprise, the heat didn't get to him. Not even when he was this close. He supposed he would have been curious if reaching out his hand and touching Gwi-ma would burn him, like normal fire would. He couldn't care about that, or anything else, right now.)
"You will accept my help," Gwi-ma leaned closer until the fire nearly reached him. In-ho didn't take a step back.
"What do I have to give?"
"Your soul," said the demon.
In-ho stood there and swallowed. He knew he must give something up, a part of himself. No, not just a part of himself. His soul. And suddenly the question became is Gi-hun worth it? He knew the answer to that without having to think, the way he knew in which direction the sun rose, the way he knew why ocean waves crashed against the shore. He already failed one too many times. Not again. Never again.
"Bring him back," In-ho said, "and you can have what you want."