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Ryu Jaekwan watched his seonbae, grimacing for all the world to see. World, meaning the empty, soulless office of Hyeonmu-1 that was littered with bottles of alcohol and the smoky haze of cigarettes.
It was just Agent Bronze and Agent Choi now. Elder was not in the office, just as they hadn’t attended in-person for months. Agent Grapes wasn’t even considered an agent any longer, so Hyeonmu-1 seemed desolate and lonely in all the ways that previous seonbaes had warned.
Kim Soleum, why the hell did you have to do this?
Part of him wanted to scream, to shout. To demand answers. Why? Why? was the base of it. The root of all of his questions. He needed to know why he had been abandoned. Betrayed in the worst of ways by someone he had grown to care for and trust.
“I’m interviewing him again in half an hour,” Agent Bronze said to the air. To his seonbae. To Agent Choi, who had just stared at an abandoned desk for the good part of the morning.
Kim Soleum was in the Glass Prison, with limited outside access allowed. If he was being truthful, Agent Bronze didn’t want to know what had happened to Kim Soleum during this time. He preferred remaining ignorant of what other agents and civil servants had done.
He knew that Kim Soleum had betrayed them. Not just on a personal level—they were friends, comrades, allies—but in the larger name of things. Kim Soleum was on an undercover mission for Baekilmong, the bureau’s enemy, because it was a twisted company whose employees died for no good reason.
He couldn’t imagine what he would have done if he hadn't already known that Kim Soleum had a past of working under Baekilmong. Theoretically, Agent Bronze knew that Kim Soleum was Roe Deer, just another nameless field agent who was trying to get paid. On the other hand, he had met Kim Soleum outside of his field mask, and seen those eyes and those lips twist and narrow at the sight of injustice.
He had seen Kim Soleum fight for his life, and those around him, to survive. It was so much unlike the other field agents of Baekilmong. It made Agent Bronze believe in something, for once. He wanted to have hope that not everyone who worked for Baekilmong was corrupt. He had hope that there was something more to the average person who just so happened to fall on bad luck.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He hated Kim Soleum, just a tinge. He hated Kim Soleum in the way one hated a scab. It was irritating to look at. He wanted to pick it away, but then it might bleed, so he left it as is. He left it to heal slowly, the skin piling against itself, trying to smooth the wound until it was healed.
He hated Kim Soleum because of what he had done to this office. Agent Bronze detested how the curtains were pulled shut because it was Kim Soleum who liked having the sun’s rays shine in on them. He would curl up on the couch by the windows and do his paperwork from there. It was an event that Agent Bronze used to smile about, sometimes wondering if he could ask to sit down next to the man.
He hated Kim Soleum because the residents of the office were no longer the same. Agent Bronze, himself, wasn’t doing too badly. He could cope with this. He had good experience with leaving those he grew close to behind. The orphanage did well at severing any bonds he had formed.
It was Agent Choi who was much worse at this. His coping habits had never been healthy. He smoked. He drank. He covered his neck with bandages or scarves or towels. He wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat. It was all mostly physical. Sometimes he’d even start taking on more assignments than agents were recommended to go on.
This was different from before, though. Kim Soleum seemed to shatter Agent Choi’s psyche. He chainsmoked at his desk, ignoring the bureau’s regulation of doing so off-campus. The haze of the smoke was almost welcoming, a reminder that Agent Bronze should stop believing in people. It would only cause more harm in the end.
It was the scent of the beer bottles that lingered in his nose. It was pungent and low, dark and festering. Agent Bronze couldn’t escape it. The bottles were stacked. Sometimes Agent Choi would rearrange the way they looked, smile to himself, and murmur, “We could have made a game of this.”
It was almost worse when Agent Choi smiled, because it felt completely fake. It was a mirror image of what his smile should have been. Warped at the edges, too thin and too sharp. His teeth shouldn’t show that much, the corners of his mouth shouldn’t be tugged so far, and his eyes held none of the same emotion.
Agent Choi was terrifying like this. Agent Bronze hated Kim Soleum for it. He wanted to drag the man out of his prison and demand retribution. Answers. All just to get the chance to comprehend why he would do this to them. They had done nothing but treat Kim Soleum like a friend, so why—
“Take me with you,” Agent Choi said, breaking the silence.
He looked away from Kim Soleum’s abandoned desk, some of his hand-written sticky notes still attached to his monitor. Agent Choi looked away from the thing he had stared at all morning, all so that he could ask to come visit Kim Soleum in the Glass Prison.
Of course, Agent Bronze already had a prepared answer. It was one he had already said. They both knew this information. “You are not authorized to interrogate him,” he reminded, voice gentle as possible.
“Let me go in,” Agent Choi said, unrelenting and stubborn as always.
“I can’t.”
Agent Choi knitted his lips together, forming a straight line of his mouth. Those lips parted to say, “Then, let me listen in, at least.” He was grasping at straws, and for what?
“You’re not allowed at all,” he replied, voice turning more stern, less gentle. Agent Bronze was tired. He was scared. He was fighting his emotions every single step of the way.
Agent Choi gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “I… I know.” He lifted a hand and brushed back his hair, tugging it behind his ear, only for it to flop out again. “I just– Do you think he’s expecting me?”
Agent Bronze paused, just for a moment. He frowned at his seonbae, trying not to seem like he was judging, even though he totally was. He wanted to think that Agent Choi had good intentions, but this… This wasn’t that.
There was hope in Agent Choi’s tone. A flicker of devotion.
Agent Choi asked again, catching Agent Bronze’s gaze, “Do you think I’m letting him down by not going?”
How was he supposed to respond to such a question? “I don’t…” Agent Bronze didn’t believe Kim Soleum knew what to do. Kim Soleum seemed startled to see him there, after all. He’d probably be surprised to see Agent Bronze today, too.
Agent Bronze could see it in Kim Soleum’s dark eyes. The way that Kim Soleum expected to be treated harshly. The way he steeled himself for every conversation. Every time Agent Bronze so much as twitched, Kim Soleum would suddenly cut off any emotion from his face as he prepared to just take it.
It did awful things to Agent Bronze’s mind. It made him no longer hate Kim Soleum. It made his heart squeeze and yank, pulling to the side, folding in on itself. It was a reminder that Kim Soleum was still Agent Grapes, and just a little more.
“It's always hard to accept this, I know that,” Agent Bronze began in trepidation, locking his gaze with Choi’s, “but you also know that Agent Grapes didn’t talk to me yesterday. I don’t think he wants to speak at all, not even with us.”
Instead of accepting it with a sigh and leaning back in his chair, Agent Choi remained sitting up, chewing on his bottom lip. “I know that,” he said, “but I could help.”
Help with what? Agent Bronze wanted to ask. Driving yourself insane?
Agent Choi did not stop. “I can do it, Jaekwan-ah. I can get him to confess everything.” He licked his lips, sounding both confident and hesitant at the same time as he went on to add, “We have a different bond, y’know.”
Agent Bronze knew that Agent Choi wanted more from his relationship with Kim Soleum. He didn’t think, however, that Kim Soleum knew of that. But he was too scared to say so in front of Agent Choi, who looked as if a strong breeze could push him over.
“I still can’t take you with me.” Agent Bronze couldn’t even if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to.
Agent Choi looked away for the first time, and then said in a rush, “I took a keycard. As long as you’re with me… I can go in.”
This fucking idiot. This lovesick fool was going to drive himself into a grave, willingly and with unshed tears.