Archive of Our Own

The mansion rose high in the dark snow-pelted sky, a foreboding and ominous ode to its infamous master within. For the most part, it remained encased in an antiquated and medieval shell, but hints of anachronism peeked through—Roman pillars, Islamic arches, even Victorian embellishments.

“Because why would these authors research properly?” Baek Saheon had commented when their carriage first emerged through the wintry forest and caught sight of where they would perhaps be spending the rest of their lives together. “It’s ridiculous to expect research from a webnovel.”

Go Yeongeun made a polite noise in the back of her throat. “Still, it does look very nice.”

Kim Soleum had to agree with that assessment, though he didn’t make any outward indication. It was the place he knew best from his memories, the main setting of the story they found themselves in. 

They were now approaching the front of the mansion in the desolate winter afternoon, which was to say it was as dark as night. The entire route had been filled with ghost towns and sparse settlements, and even the beautiful and magnificent mansion seemed to be utterly devoid of life.

Not a single servant came to greet them as the carriage came to a stop. Go Yeongeun was the first to step out, Baek Saheon following only when he saw nothing bad had happened to her besides a quickly reddening nose, and then Kim Soleum stepped out when neither were injured. 

“There’s no one coming?” Go Yeongeun asked, before she sneezed and began rubbing her hands together. “Should we just—”

“You’re here.” The three of them jumped, although in Kim Soleum’s case he held back a yelp after having mastered the art of stoicism, and came face to face with an old man wearing a butler’s uniform and a scowl. “Master Lee Jaheon has been awaiting your arrival.”

Before Go Yeongeun could ask where the servants or the hired help or the hired muscle were, the old butler was already stepping through the snow with light feet. “Excuse me, sir!” she called, breaking into a sprint after him, kicking up the snowflakes.

Kim Soleum stole a glance behind him, where his luggage was piled high. The coachman was already disappearing, and Go Yeongeun’s voice was growing fainter. He hid a smile and stepped onto the packed snow from Go Yeongeun’s footsteps while Baek Saheon shouted, “Are you serious, Kim Soleum? Do you want to die? Do you expect me to carry your things for you?”

Baek Saheon’s voice grew fainter as Kim Soleum continued to walk without a care, and then exploded beside his ear as Baek Saheon caught up, hands piled with suitcases and baggage. 

Kim Soleum could not resist offering in a brief aside, “Is it too heavy for you?”

“Fuck off,” Baek Saheon spat back with a twitching left eye, but his curses merely tickled. As expected, it was only natural for Kim Soleum to feel most comfortable among other Koreans who could curse so vividly. He reflected fondly on this fact as he crossed the threshold of the mansion, the bitter cold on his cheeks melting away.

Go Yeongeun was engaged in a passionate discussion with the butler while leaning in, and Kim Soleum barely caught the tail end of her thinly-veiled demand for more servants before the butler scoffed and walked away. She turned to Kim Soleum a moment later, eyebrows drawn helplessly. 

“I believe we’re on the second floor,” she said, tilting her head towards the staircase. “The rooms have been prepared. We’ll have the ones next to yours as your personal servants, and, uh… your fiancé appears to be preoccupied for the rest of the day today.”

Kim Soleum took the chance to glance around the interior, so sparsely decorated that he felt almost bad for his fiancé. As expected of a Duke of the North known for nothing but fighting, who was so lacking in romance scenes that the tag was removed at the end of season one. “Do we at least get something to light the way?” he asked.

“Oh, good thing I packed that!” Go Yeongeun hurried over to one of the bags Baek Saheon was carrying, rummaging around inside as he griped at her, before she procured one of her own candles. With a little more digging she procured a candlestick too, and then a matchbox while Baek Saheon continued to complain that she ought to carry her own things. She struck a flame and set her candle ablaze, and then she gestured for them to follow as she stepped through the halls.

Kim Soleum hurried after her, and Baek Saheon continued to juggle all their suitcases. “Meals will be provided,” Go Yeongeun continued, “but we shouldn’t expect much help since they’re understaffed. Don’t go outside your room at night. Don’t bother the Duke. Don’t touch anything.”

“Typical northern duke,” Baek Saheon muttered. “They let the fancy titles get to their head.”

“Something you know a lot about?” 

That shut Baek Saheon up fast as he turned away with a scowl, but here he was still diligently carrying their things. Go Yeongeun was ascending the staircase, the light of her candle flickering across the walls and bannister. At the very top, Kim Soleum paused while Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon were preoccupied with walking—for a moment he saw something red glimmering in his periphery.

The painting was uncovered, framed with curtains drawn carefully to the side. He saw white first, white hair and faint skin painted orange by firelight. The glinting came from red eyes set in an austere, sullen face. For a moment, Kim Soleum could swear the portrait of his fiancé, the Duke of the North, was watching him.

“What are you spacing out for?” Baek Saheon hissed. 

Kim Soleum averted his gaze, looked straight ahead, and continued to walk.

Well before his journey to the north or his dealings as the only son of a noble family that had fallen on hard times, Kim Soleum was reading a webnovel on his way home from work. He had been lucky enough to grab a seat that day, and on days like these he’d take out his phone and engage in some light reading.

The subway jerked back and forth, but he kept his eyes on his phone. It wasn’t as if he made a habit out of reading romance fantasy webnovels, but all the buzz surrounding a piece supposedly too terrifying and dark for its normal audience had first garnered his interest, then his loyal readership.

All to say he was busy taking in the details of the season finale; the baron’s daughter was making the deal with the devil, the very one the entire season had been building up to. Here she was speaking with her faceless and nameless devil while Duke Jaheon was who knows where, her wish censored out in the text. Censored? Kim Soleum squinted and tried to guess what it could possibly be—and it was then that the subway screamed a single mourning cry.

What happened after that was beyond his cognition. He only remembered flesh being rendered through the mangled carcass of the subway, his own breaths slowing as he lay on the floor with his phone clutched tightly in his hand.

It was hard to say that Kim Soleum was completely surprised when he next woke in a body that wasn’t his, a body he faintly recognized the name of. But when he recalled that day in the subway, the last glimpses of the novel that would become his new life, he would privately think to himself how fortunate it was that he had read that webnovel at the time he did.

After all, it meant he knew what was at stake—a wish, one granted by the devil. He already knew where to find it and what to ask.

It was as good as his.

Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon were all too happy to retire to their quarters, and while Kim Soleum liked to think he practiced a healthy distance in his relationships, he also knew that the first rule in horror was to not split up.

Complacency was a dangerous game to play. They hadn’t come all the way up north for no reason. People like them—that is, people from another world—were well documented in the original webnovel.

The female protagonist herself was the prime example they were working off of during the stolen moments where they put together a shabby plan. She intended to live a simple life, but little by little she began losing her senses. Her sight and her hearing both began to dull as she scrambled to understand why.

She was told that this was the way of things for those unaccustomed to this world. Her body was borrowed, and sooner or later the parts would be demanded back. If she wished to escape this fate, she needed the key, which some shaman or another told her lay in the north. A figurehead of ice and steel would await her. She followed that trail to a tee, trekked northward, and ended up at the Duke’s mansion—where she was told to never leave her room at night. When she failed, she was then told to carefully obey the instructions given to her.

Baek Saheon’s eyesight was dimming and Go Yeongeun’s hearing was starting to fade when Kim Soleum told them that he’d become the Duke’s fiancé. They had reacted in the expected manner, but then again, they couldn’t change his mind.

So here he was, curled up in bed, ignoring the thought of the dark hallways outside the room. Just because he had come to pursue a possible cure didn’t mean that he had the nerve to actually go and follow up on those leads. But it wasn’t his fault. He had told Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon in the vaguest of ways that it would be nice if they stayed with him instead of in the servant’s quarters. They replied that impropriety was probably against the rules.

What hogwash. Two people defined by their impropriety worrying about it all of a sudden.

Well, Kim Soleum knew better than to risk his luck. If he was told to stay in his room, he’d stay in his room. And if he had trouble sleeping, he’d stay in his room anyway. He kept this resolve for an admirable few minutes. But as it was often prone to do, trouble came seeking him out.

A soft voice was calling for him down the hallway, just audible enough to pass through the doors. “Kim Soleum,” someone’s soft voice whispered, gentle and beckoning. “Come here, help me for a moment. I need your help.”

Kim Soleum was intelligent and sound of mind, thank you very much, and did not make a habit of following unknown voices out the door when the sole rule of this Duke of the North’s mansion was to stay indoors. 

But he hadn’t yet drifted back off into sleep before he heard the voice again, only it was clearly Go Yeongeun this time. “Kim Soleum, help me.”

No way, he thought to himself. That’s such an obvious trick.

“Roe Deer,” Go Yeongeun’s voice whispered, “help me.”

Was he supposed to be Roe Deer? He turned to the side, burrowing his head into his pillow. There was a chill in the room that couldn’t have been purely his imagination. He tried not to think about what sort of creepy mist could’ve crept under the door, but he heard it again—

“Roe Deer!”

This time her voice was more clear, more panicked. Whatever mimic was borrowing her voice was learning it needed to be more realistic, and Kim Soleum could already feel the tug of something called empathy.

He didn’t like this feeling, the need to go and make sure it wasn’t really Go Yeongeun. Because it couldn’t have been, but despite that, he was already slowly crawling out of bed, reaching for the candlestick Go Yeongeun had left him before she and Baek Saheon left for the servants’ quarters.

Because if there was even the slightest chance that she needed him, he didn’t know if he could stay behind. He paced around outside the door, the candlelight warming his face, before he ultimately decided that the female lead had survived this much so surely he could too and he stepped out into the cool, dark hallways.

The whisper beckoned him down the hallway, calling him names that continued to change. “Grapes-ie,” he swore he heard once, but that too was wholly unfamiliar. “Good Friend,” crooned the same voice, Go Yeongeun and something else mixed within. It was loud and quiet, familiar and unfamiliar.

He shrank further into himself as he turned the corners, jumping at the marble busts which shifted closer towards him and the paintings whose eyes followed him. His imagination, definitely. The movements in the dark, those were imaginary too.

Man, he thought after he swore he heard footsteps in the empty hallway, how did the female lead survive this? His heart was ready to burst, pounding at his ribcage for release. It was close to crawling out of his throat and flopping on the ground.

Something rustled behind him, and this time he managed to turn his stiff head around. Definitely, this time it was real—oh, for sure, it was real this time, it was a hundred-percent completely and utterly real. That was absolutely a shadowy lump of a thing right behind him and he couldn’t tell if the yelp was him or the shadow—scratch that, it was him and he was already running.

His footsteps echoed down the halls and he worried that the candle would threaten to put itself out, but Kim Soleum was not a very fast runner so the candle merely flickered in protest. He rounded the corner again, saw the darkness descend upon him, and realized he never should have felt bad for Go Yeongeun. He never should have walked out of his safe and warm room for her, because she could handle herself and he couldn’t handle even the barest of scares.

The hallways were still unrecognizable, and he realized he had been running on pure instinct. He didn’t have the hallways memorized like Go Yeongeun probably did—it was all the same to him, and now he fully regretted not paying more attention. He heard the footsteps behind him draw closer and pushed himself to run faster, but he was losing steam and his own heart was squeezing him tight. 

He wouldn’t die here. He couldn’t die here, because dying was the most terrifying thing in the world. His eyes were squeezed shut. He took another step forward, and only then did he finally hit a wall. 

This wall, while as solid as a real one, felt more like fabric than marble. Kim Soleum jerked backwards and opened his eyes, looking up to see something—no, someone that he didn’t expect.

White hair and faint skin glowing orange with the light of his candle. Kim Soleum whirled around to see if that shadowy figure giving chase was still there, but it was gone. He was alone with the man he was now recognizing to be his legal fiancé. 

“Oh,” said Kim Soleum, turning back to a face carved of ice. Red eyes, as all Dukes of the North had, and cropped hair. He was far taller than Kim Soleum and cut a dashing figure in white. Was that all he knew how to wear? White hair, white skin, white clothes, a breeze from beside them tousling a few strands of his fiancé’s hair from its wax. 

His fiancé didn’t speak at first, only turning to the open window. Kim Soleum followed his gaze out the window to the white moon above. “It’s late,” his fiancé spoke first, voice deep and solemn. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was lost,” Kim Soleum said stupidly, wincing when the wind picked up and blew the sheer curtains towards him. Lee Jaheon, Duke of the North, caught it with one hand as he continued to look down at Kim Soleum.

“I’ll walk you back,” his fiancé said, before he lifted the crook of his arm expectantly. How chivalrous, Kim Soleum thought to himself. Do they teach this at groom school or something? The joke felt funny to him, but it didn’t make much sense. He swallowed his apprehension and took the arm.

Their walk back was utterly quiet and devoid of conversation, all the while Kim Soleum stared daggers into the paintings and busts to see if they would dare move while the master of the house was around. When he was finally escorted to his room, he stopped and cleared his throat, looking up at Lee Jaheon.

“Will I… see you at breakfast?” This was not flirting at all. He wanted to make that clear, even though Lee Jaheon was very handsome and very strongly built. Kim Soleum was not that kind of shallow idiot. No, he needed to find a way to get answers, and he clearly wouldn’t be going out at night anymore.

“Are you expecting me?” Lee Jaheon asked.

“Uh… yes?”

“Then I will be there,” he said, turning slightly so that only half his face was visible in the warm light of Kim Soleum’s room. “Have a good night.”

The darkness swallowed him whole, leaving not a trace of white behind. He was gone just like that, the duke that he spent the entire trip wondering about. For someone so defined by the absence of color, Kim Soleum couldn’t help but remember how red his eyes were and how intently they looked into his, as if there were something he was looking for within.

When he first woke up in a body that was not his, in the world of a novel he had been reading just a little while ago, Kim Soleum had resigned himself to solitude. It was wishful thinking to imagine there could be someone else in his situation. Besides, he was self-sufficient enough to make it on his own.

He did what most in his position would do, which was to reform his behavior from an evil villain to a pure and misunderstood saint, and then he promptly kicked out that no-good thieving maid who had been mistreating him. 

The maid’s replacement was polite, well-mannered, and trailed behind him all the time. She was diligent about bringing him his meals on time and supplying him with whatever he asked for. Often she would come into conflict with the footman when Kim Soleum deigned to leave the mansion.

Anyway, to make a long story short, he didn’t think too much about either his new maid or the footman until he absentmindedly exited the carriage on one occasion, bowed to Baek Saheon without thinking much, received a bow back, and turned to see Go Yeongeun squinting at them. 

Weeks later—after they discovered one another to be Korean, commiserated over the lack of Korean food, and cursed each other out a few times in that order—Baek Saheon would bemoan this moment. “Fuck,” he said, “to think I bowed to someone like him!”

But even for all Baek Saheon’s complaints about Kim Soleum and Go Yeongeun, it was undeniable that the three of them had formed a bond only possible between three people who knew they were the only ones of their kind. The female lead was nowhere to be found. Baek Saheon suggested that maybe there was no need for her to transmigrate if they were here, and Go Yeongeun wondered why. Kim Soleum suggested an alternate universe they found themselves in, but then that made their head hurt; an alternate world of an alternate world? They decided to believe in each other as the only ones who could understand what it meant to be this far away from home.

They were, in the end, the only ones who knew about Korea and about the world outside of this story. It was only a matter of time before they began to break down the way transmigrated individuals in this world did, and the north was beckoning its greedy, thieving hand the way it always did in these kinds of stories.

They sat down in Kim Soleum’s room to discuss what came next. Kim Soleum had read the webnovel thoroughly, Go Yeongeun had only seen an advertisement of the manhwa adaptation in the subway, and Baek Saheon insisted he had only heard of it through word of mouth from his sister—though Kim Soleum and Go Yeongeun privately agreed otherwise.

“Are you kidding me?” Baek Saheon demanded, when Kim Soleum broached even the subject of the north. “It’s freezing up there, and who knows if we’ll even find anything in the Duke’s mansion? I say we stay the fuck away from that stupid plot altogether since we don’t even know what the female lead saw in the end.”

“I thought you didn’t read the novel?” Go Yeongeun asked.

“I got this entirely from hearing Kim Soleum talk,” Baek Saheon added. 

She placated him with an absentminded, “Yes, yes.” Go Yeongeun hesitated for a moment, hands twisting in her lap. “But, you know, didn’t Kim Soleum say that the longer we stay here, the more we’ll deteriorate?”

Baek Saheon bristled. “Who says it’ll happen?” he demanded. “Just because it happened in the original—”

“I notice you squinting when you think no one’s looking,” Go Yeongeun said. “It’s your eyes, isn’t it?”

“I’m just tired,” Baek Saheon argued. “It has nothing to do with the curse or whatever it is.”

But Kim Soleum knew otherwise. Just a few days back, Go Yeongeun had been asking him to repeat his words. Sight and hearing, the two things the female lead lost in the novel. 

“However, I do agree with you,” Go Yeongeun continued. “We have no way of going to the north. There’s no reason for us to go.”

Kim Soleum said, “I can send an engagement request.”

“No,” Baek Saheon and Go Yeongeun said at the same time. They looked at one another.

Go Yeongeun said, “I’m not making you do that just for someone we’re not sure about.”

Baek Saheon said, “I’m not trying to go to that frozen wasteland for you.”

Or so they said, but Kim Soleum knew more about the novel than the Go Yeongeun who only saw an advertisement and the Baek Saheon who clearly read the webtoon. The loss of their senses was only a symptom, and there were worse things that would happen once their senses were gone.

Kim Soleum, who had grown to feel something approaching fondness for these two, shook his head and silenced them both. “I’ll send the engagement request and we’ll head north.”

“Kim Soleum—”

He raised his hand. “We’re going,” he told them. “No matter what.”

Go Yeongeun held her tongue and Baek Saheon glared but did not say anything. He took that as their assent; they knew what the correct choice was, even if they didn’t like it.

One could say many things about Koreans, but not that they were the type to sit back. They would reach for whatever they could. Even if their salvation came at a price, it was one they would be willing to pay. 

Go Yeongeun came to fetch him for breakfast as she always did. Baek Saheon, who had shifted into more of a butler role now that the roads were getting snowed in and he was out of his primary job, was already waiting awkwardly by his chair as Go Yeongeun took her own place behind him.

The dining table was long and empty. One of probably two maids belonging to Duke Jaheon took her time wheeling out the dining cart, serving him breakfast. He pretended that Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon weren’t staring at the back of his head. Before his engagement, he had all his meals in his room. The three of them ate together and described how they would’ve eaten rice and banchan if given the choice.

He was just about to pick up his fork and start on his salad when footsteps echoed down the hallway and into the room, and the doors opened to a figure clad in white. That mysterious fiancé of his had finally come like he said he would.

In the light of day, Lee Jaheon was just as much of a marble statue as he was at night. Even with the veil of darkness lifted, he seemed no less inscrutable. He took a seat across from Kim Soleum as Go Yeongeun made a muted noise of surprise and Baek Saheon shifted a little. 

“Good morning,” Kim Soleum offered awkwardly as Lee Jaheon waved a hand and had his steak brought to him. He had impeccable manners picking up his fork and knife as he cut, the task menially simple for him. 

“Good morning,” Lee Jaheon replied. “Is the food to your liking?”

Kim Soleum, who had not had a bite yet, said, “Yes, it is.”

“That is good to hear.” Lee Jaheon didn’t say anything else, staring intently at Kim Soleum until he got the hint and started eating. Only then did Lee Jaheon begin eating too, and if Kim Soleum wasn’t going crazy, he swore he saw a forked tongue for a moment.

They passed breakfast in silence, with Lee Jaheon perhaps merely happy to fulfill the bare minimum of coming to see his fiancé in the daytime. He wiped his spotless mouth delicately and set down his napkin, put down his utensils, and rose to his feet. He was two steps away from the table before Kim Soleum jumped up, saying, “Wait.”

Lee Jaheon waited.

“Are you busy today?” Kim Soleum asked.

“Not more than usual.”

Despite the seizing of Go Yeongeun and the stiffness of Baek Saheon, Kim Soleum continued, “Then would you mind giving me a tour of the place? I only just arrived.”

“That is acceptable.” Lee Jaheon paused in place and again offered his arm. 

“What are you doing?” Baek Saheon hissed. “Are you fucking crazy, you psycho? That’s the cursed Duke of the North!”

Go Yeongeun hissed right beside him, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

He ignored them both and hurried over to Lee Jaheon’s side, quickly grabbing onto his arm. They were out the door in a flash as he did his best to keep pace with Lee Jaheon’s long strides. They combed through the front entrance, the expansive staircase upstairs, and the countless rooms that served no purpose besides decoration.

He learned as much from the owner of these rooms. Each could be described in three words maximum, often just one. Library. Parlor. Guest. Ballroom. 

Then, they reached a wing somehow even quieter than the rest of the mansion. There was a coolness that couldn’t merely be his imagination, though it might’ve also been the location—somewhere at the very back, right beside the stretch of forest enshrouding the property. 

“What’s this wing?” he asked, peering around Lee Jaheon’s sturdy figure to look out the window where the snow continued to fall.

He replied, “My quarters.”

“All of this is for you?”

“Mm.”

Kim Soleum looked again at the sparseness of it all, the desolation and the emptiness. “You don’t have much decor,” he commented, which meant it was utterly devoid of decor since it wasn’t like the rest of the mansion had that much more to look at.

“Don’t need it,” Lee Jaheon said. And then, “This is my room.”

“Your room?” Kim Soleum looked at the door.

“Yes.”

“Is the room next door your study?”

“Yes.”

“Am I allowed to go inside?”

“Yes.”

“Are my servants allowed to go in?”

“No.” The novelty of receiving a no was at first exciting, but soon wore off. Kim Soleum had toured essentially the whole place, and was still nowhere close to discovering anything about this mysterious room where the devil could be found…. That was, until he looked to the other side of the hallway and saw another door at the very back, with a simple pattern and an elaborate lock.

His entire body, his entire spirit, both pointed him towards that door. He felt a draw to it that he could only attribute to his transmigrator status. That door, he thought to himself. That one.

“What about this room?” Kim Soleum asked. Though Lee Jaheon didn’t shift and didn’t betray his thoughts in any physical way, the silence that ensued was enough of an answer. 

Lee Jaheon slowly said, “That is the one room you should not casually enter.”

Kim Soleum looked up at him, meeting his eyes and avoiding a shudder. Carefully, he asked, “What’s inside?”

There were no open windows, no leaks in the walls, but even then there was a cool breeze that brushed his cheeks. He could feel the tension thick in the air. He wasn’t in danger, his instincts didn’t ring any alarms, but there was something else that hung there. Kim Soleum didn’t know what it was, but he had a feeling Lee Jaheon did.

“Kim Soleum,” Lee Jaheon said, “is this something you really want to know?”

He did, badly, but at the same time the part of him that valued self-preservation took a step back. He needed to know if this was the room he needed to find and what exactly was inside, but his instincts screamed that he ought to calm down and think about it again.

So he thought about it, and so he decided to keep his cards close to his chest. “No,” Kim Soleum said. “On second thought, maybe not.”

When the engagement went through and he was set to head north with his two loyal servants, Baek Saheon shoved him as Go Yeongeun shouted for him to stop. Above her pleas, Baek Saheon demanded, “And what the hell do you think you can do, Kim Soleum?”

What the hell do you think you can do, Kim Soleum?

Often, he wondered this too.

As night approached, Kim Soleum gathered his companions and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they had to do some snooping around at night. They groaned and complained, but it took no effort at all to wrestle an agreement out of them, and this time the two actually came by to pick him up when night fell.

With these two in tow, the mansion was far less ominious—though the busts still moved and the paintings still watched them, which spooked Baek Saheon more than it startled Go Yeongeun, but then they remembered this was the world of a rofan webnovel then promptly sobered up and said it was only natural.

Kim Soleum also expressed, in no uncertain terms, that they ought to break into that secret room Lee Jaheon was protecting. 

“Shouldn’t we go to the library first? That’s where the female lead went,” Baek Saheon said.

Go Yeongeun added, “I thought you didn’t read—”

“—is what I assume happened,” Baek Saheon quickly added. “But unlike Kim Soleum, I wouldn’t know.”

Kim Soleum would then confirm that the female lead had indeed gone to the library, had indeed hunted down some basis of understanding on how to summon the devil, and then had gone through about three or four different events to build suspense before she actually broke into the hidden room.

Luckily, they were not the female lead and didn’t need to pace things out. Baek Saheon’s vision was blurring and Go Yeongeun’s hearing was diminishing, and the worse these got the worse they would fare in matters of health and consciousness. The clock was ticking.

They visited the library first, each splitting off to scale ladders and dig through piles of books. It wasn’t necessarily a game of searching the spines and reading deeply, but rather a game of imagining where a plot relevant book might be hidden.

Naturally, it was Kim Soleum who won this game by pinpointing the forbidden books section, finding the oldest and most worn-in novel, flipping it open, and having a great big dust cloud emerge as he coughed and the others came over to see what he had found.

“Wow,” Go Yeongeun was the first to comment. “It looks very old.”

“Shut up and start reading,” Baek Saheon helpfully suggested. So Kim Soleum put his eyes to the page and began to take in the details obscured from him through the webnovel.

A long, long time ago, there was a girl who…

“Nevermind,” Baek Saheon said, “skip to the end.”

They flipped to the last page, where it ended on a much more confusing note. Thus, the evil was sealed away forever, not to be awakened until the next visitor.

“You skipped too much,” Go Yeongeun complained. So they compromised and flipped to the middle, then read all the way through to the end.

What they got was essentially this: the girl had been a visitor—transmigrator, really—and in order to return home, made her way to the devil terrorizing the land. She contained him in an ancient artifact, sealed him within a room, and that room was an area passed down from generation to generation up north.

The room itself was more supernatural than it seemed. Described as a location of pure darkness and isolation, one could not leave until they made a deal. Only the owner was privy to entering and exiting, but could never make a wish for himself.

“This thing sounds useless,” Baek Saheon commented. “Okay, so we go in one by one and wish to go back.”

“Except we don’t have the key,” Go Yeongeun chided him. “Did you forget? Only the lord of the house has the key.”

The two turned to Kim Soleum, who could only accept his fate. 

When they were done with the book, they returned it to its place and stepped out together, intent on getting some sleep—but as soon as they were about to split ways, something cold snaked through the hallway and made itself known.

“Fuck, you weren’t lying about the dark thing chasing you!” Baek Saheon exclaimed before he ducked down the hall, clearly intent on making it out himself. Go Yeongeun was at least kind enough to stay with Kim Soleum until they too were split up.

This was only par for the course. It meant Kim Soleum, once again, was running through the hallways. But this time, he remembered where he was going.

He sprinted across the length of Lee Jaheon’s private wing, hurling himself into Lee Jaheon’s study. The Duke himself looked up from the stack of papers he was penning, hardly startled. Kim Soleum, for his part, kept his back pressed against the door as he caught his breath.

“Are you alright?” Lee Jaheon asked. He set his pen down, giving Kim Soleum his undivided attention. Kim Soleum wasn’t sure how to feel about this kind of favor, this kind of kindness. How strange to receive it from a man so cold to the female lead, how strange to have it given to him when he didn’t have that same kind of worldly charm.

“I’ll be fine,” Kim Soleum finally said. “Just… just give me a second to catch my breath.” He was already starting to warm up, feeling the blood rush back into his limbs. The chill was fading the longer he remained in Lee Jaheon’s radius, which was ironic considering he felt that Lee Jaheon was probably the coldest person in the entire mansion.

Lee Jaheon didn’t return to his paperwork, merely staring over at Kim Soleum.

“I sleep very little,” his fiancé finally said. “If you have any issues, you can find me here.”

Was he the bait, or was he baiting Lee Jaheon? Either way, Kim Soleum took the offer. For the next few days and the next few weeks he continued to stop by Lee Jaheon’s study at night, darting through the dark hallways until he saw the light shining from under the door.

Lee Jaheon welcomed him without reservation each time, setting his pen down. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes he worked in silence as Kim Soleum read a book and caught up on the stories of this world. Those might have been his happiest days at the mansion, but peace was never meant to last long. The clock was ticking, the minutes and hours passing by, and sooner or later reality would come back to bite him.

Kim Soleum had always gotten along better with Go Yeongeun in the warm initial months before they went north, mostly because her personality was so affable and agreeable anyone would prefer her to the annoying, aggravating, and abrasive Baek Saheon.

They had been waiting for her to escape from her duties so they could start eating breakfast. She had been caught by the head maid for falling behind on some duties, and though Kim Soleum offered to speak on her behalf, she had refused and said she was more than capable of handling things herself.

Kim Soleum was a personable and friendly guy, so of course he waited to eat. He hadn’t expected Baek Saheon to be as polite and adherent to Confucian values, but here he was, twiddling his thumbs while he waited.

He didn’t often think this, but it was a little cute how Baek Saheon was like one of those small barking dogs. Always yapping at you, but still went to bat for you in the end. He would never express this, however, or he’d find his fingers chewed off.

“She’s taking a while, isn’t she?” Kim Soleum commented. “You better watch out for bad employers.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Baek Saheon deadpanned. Kim Soleum replied, nothing much, although the thought was a little funny to him. He couldn’t figure out why. It really wasn’t much of anything at all.

Across the weeks, Kim Soleum had gotten into the habit of seeking out Lee Jaheon to begin bringing up his theories and such. They started small and innocuous. Perhaps the girl-slash-saintess-slash transmigrator—the big, scary word he threw in to see if Lee Jaheon would react but he didn’t—had ties to the north, perhaps it was the key and not the curse passed down through this family line, perhaps his family was related to the devil in some way?

Lee Jaheon was a delight to ramble to because he often had very clear-cut answers to these theories.

Yes, he said, the girl spent most of her time in this mansion. It has been remodeled over the ages, but the location has not changed.

No, he said, the key is not passed down. Neither is the curse.

No, he said, my family is not related to the devil.

The answers yielded more questions, which yielded more answers that left Kim Soleum constantly wondering. For everything he learned, he came back with two more points of confusion. Nothing was adding up about the room, which was beginning to frustrate him.

On days like these, Lee Jaheon would offer the crook of his arm and lead him to the gardens, which were often covered in snow. Though, he could still spy the camellias through the white. When Lee Jaheon saw Kim Soleum lost in thought in the hallways, he would place a hand on his shoulder and steer him away from crashing into the wall.

These small mercies were appreciated, noted, and remembered, but they didn’t help him arrive closer to the answer. By now, Baek Saheon couldn’t see further than an armspan away and Go Yeongeun had to lean in to hear him speak. They were growing slower and lethargic, their energy sapped away. The clock was ticking, and every night as he muddled around in Lee Jaheon’s study he could hear it.

When Baek Saheon and Go Yeongeun were no longer well enough to meet him for breakfast, he had enough. That night he hurried to Lee Jaheon’s study, shut the door behind him, and walked up to his desk. 

“Please,” he said. “Please tell me what the key is. If there is a key. I would do anything for it.”

Lee Jaheon only regarded him coolly, with the same wide berth of allowance and tolerance he applied towards anything Kim Soleum did. Maybe he was going crazy, but Kim Soleum was starting to recognize something about the look in Lee Jaheon’s eyes.

Lee Jaheon said, in that slow and measured voice of his, “Kim Soleum, you are the key.”

The day they left for the north, Go Yeongeun pulled him aside. “I’m worried about you,” she told him, arms crossed as she faced him in all seriousness. “You’re always shouldering everything all by yourself, Kim Soleum. You have us. Don’t you know that?”

Outside, Baek Saheon was grumbling to himself as he hauled the luggage onto the carriage, tossing Kim Soleum’s without much care for the contents. He found the sight endearing, even though he knew he’d probably find his items in disarray when he eventually opened the suitcase.

Go Yeongeun’s gaze followed his, and for a moment they watched Baek Saheon struggle to carry everything onto the carriage. The stubborn man would complain later, but they both knew if they offered to help, he’d say something about being emasculated and insist on doing it on his own.

Kim Soleum continued watching Baek Saheon. “I know,” he said. Then, softer, “I know.”

The time had come for the wish to be made. He couldn’t delay it any further—he rounded up Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon, had them get on their feet, and pushed them towards the forbidden wing known as Lee Jaheon’s lair.

“You got the key?” Go Yeongeun asked warily, still tilting her head towards Kim Soleum so she wouldn’t miss a word. “When did you find it?” Baek Saheon, right beside her, continued squinting helplessly.

Kim Soleum said, “The truth is, we don’t need a key. Look.”

The fear that once defined him was markedly absent now. He already knew, vaguely, what was lying in wait for him. Kim Soleum set his hand on the handle of the door, felt the coolness of the doorknob beneath his palm. 

With only a small push from him, the door swung in. Darkness engulfed the room, so that nothing was visible but the sparkle of something in the center.

“Is he coming too?” Baek Saheon muttered, gesturing in the general direction of Lee Jaheon who was also standing there. It was a miracle Baek Saheon could see him, but then again, Kim Soleum guessed what he saw was a blur of white.

“Be nice, that’s my fiancé,” Kim Soleum called, before he stepped forward. “Come, walk with me. Let’s get this over with.”

Kim Soleum hadn’t prepared a candle this time, but he didn’t need it. He was front and center, the only key they needed. The four of them traversed the darkness and stepped towards the sparkle a few paces away. Kim Soleum knew what it was before he even reached it. A mirror, glinting on its own, rested in the center of the darkness. His own reflection was a nebulous cloud of smoke, unrecognizable as him.

“That’s it?” Baek Saheon asked incredulously, after he leaned in to get a better look. “That’s the devil we’re wishing on?”

“What else would it be?” Kim Soleum stepped up to the mirror, watching the smoke within it ripple.

“What do we do?” Go Yeongeun asked nervously, eyes darting around the room.

Kim Soleum turned to her, turned to Baek Saheon, and drank in their faces one last time. His vision was clear, his hearing completely fine. He could take in the contours of their cheeks and the lilt of their voices without impedance. Maybe that was his role.

“I’ll make the wish for us,” Kim Soleum said. It was the least he could do. From beside him, Lee Jaheon shifted. Not quite uncomfortable, but not quite comfortable either, Lee Jaheon regarded him with those sharp red eyes as if he was still wondering what Kim Soleum would choose to do, even though it was quite obvious.

“Go ahead,” Lee Jaheon said, though no one’s permission was really needed.

Kim Soleum followed suit, touched the mirror, and asked, “Please return the visitors to their original place.”

The smoke reflecting back at him seemed to hold still, its wisps and curls ceasing their twisting. Are you okay with this? it asked, in a voice that echoed through the darkness.

“I am,” Kim Soleum said. He ignored the confused looks of Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon, facing only the mirror. 

Then it will happen, his reflection spoke, and then the mirror shattered—smoke poured from within and embraced Go Yeongeun and Baek Saheon. Color returned to their cheeks and their senses were restored. They looked up to see Kim Soleum wholly unaffected and untouched.

The sort of understanding that only arises with hindsight came across them. “Wait,” Go Yeongeun began, “Wait a minute, Soleum, are you not going to—”

“The only people who can return are visitors,” Kim Soleum began. “Those who don’t belong here. You don’t have to stay here anymore.”

“What about you?” Baek Saheon insisted. “Why the fuck aren’t you affected?”

“Visitors,” Kim Soleum continued, “are those who were previously from another world. That’s why their bodies reject their stay here and break down the longer they remain. I never lost a thing here.”

“Kim Soleum,” Go Yeongeun said, “I don’t understand, why aren’t you coming with us?”

Kim Soleum ignored her pressing question. “I hope you two get to meet each other again in Korea,” he said, “and get to eat well every day. Good luck.”

Go Yeongeun reached for him, but her fingers were the first to disappear. He watched, still, as she and Baek Saheon dissipated into motes of light, leaving nothing behind but the memories Kim Soleum carried. Kim Soleum briefly felt a deep pang of longing. He felt that he might miss them. They were something like friends, a bond built over the course of their year together. They were from the same country, bound by nationalistic pride and common language. Only sometime between then and now, he had passed through something else and emerged as someone new.

There were memories itching to be realized in his vessel that were only now breaking through their shell. He would not remember them instantly, but they would come to him in bits and pieces. The darkness was starting to become less frightening the hazier he got, the more smoke he inhaled and took in.

“Kim Soleum.” Here with him in the darkness was his only spot of light; Lee Jaheon remained stoically and steadfastly at his side, an immovable wall between him and the endless night. “Let’s leave this room.”

The room would be here for as long as he needed. He was starting to etch out an inkling that the world constructed outside of this room was less real than the dark of the room itself, but he didn’t argue. He took Lee Jaheon’s outstretched arm and walked with him, step by step, to where the door opened into the mansion.

If one were to summarize Kim Soleum’s life into a novel for inquisitive little children, it might look something like this.

A long, long time ago, there was a man who worked for a no-good capitalist pharmaceutical company who longed to go home. But through some twist of fate, home had been taken away from him, and he could only stay where he was, twisted into a new form.

He did his best with what he had, but he was unravelling slowly. He could no longer be contained by the shell of something cobbled together so hastily. It was then that he was offered a new wish: What if he could go somewhere else?

The thing with Wish Tickets was that they were omnipotent for one person only. A world where Kim Soleum could be human—that is, not a visitor—wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be great if that existed?

And if such a world existed, where Kim Soleum could take on the role of ‘someone who had always been there’, wouldn’t his unravelling be solved?

Another world that would be inaccessible to everyone he knew from that pharmaceutical company or that government agency, but perhaps that restriction didn’t include those who were not from that world in the first place. 

Whether the people he met or would meet came from his memories or were alternate world versions of those from his memories, he did not know. He did not know if it mattered, either.

So, couldn’t his life be summarized in this way? Didn’t it make sense to put it this way?

A long, long time ago, Kim Soleum had to throw away all notions of going home. Thus, the problem was sealed away forever.

“And now, it’s just you and me,” Kim Soleum said, speaking both to Lee Jaheon and the empty mansion bereft of all visitors and guests.

“Yes,” Lee Jaheon replied. He still kept Kim Soleum’s hand in the crook of his arm. Gratitude and guilt were both equivalent now, but Kim Soleum believed that one day it would even out.

The Duke’s mansion had once again fallen to silence. “What do we do now?” Kim Soleum wondered out loud.

“Anything you want,” Lee Jaheon replied.

Kim Soleum smiled. “Is that so?” How open-ended this ending was, how vague it was. As a reader, he might have been moved to frustration. What will happen next? What will they do now? But as the character within, he could only close his eyes and breathe in the cold, biting breeze that permeated the hall.

So this was meant to be his happily ever after, his ending after everything. It was fine; he could accept it. It seemed like it was over, though in truth it was anything but. Here was only the start of something new.