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Kim Soleum stared at his phone, trying to make sense of what this K.LEE guy was saying.
What sort of scam was this? The initial link to the Salmon Market seemed interesting, but then the guy wouldn't stop talking.
[Do you think you can handle this alone?]
[This—『 Darkness 』.]
Who wrote like that in KakaoTalk messages?
Also, wasn't he the guy who recommended the website to him in the first place?
[Not what daydream calls ‘darkness’.]
[The 『 Darkness 』.]
[That which is forever in battle with the forces of light—]
[—do you think you can handle it, Kim Soleum-ssi?]
What the fuck.
‘Goodbye,’ thought Kim Soleum, and blocked him.
Kim Soleum opened his eyes.
Thank god, he wasn’t in Looky Mart anymore. Instead he seemed to be in what looked like a hospital room.
There was a man sitting by his side.
A man with a big square sword.
A man with a big square sword, using the sword to… peel apples?
Kim Soleum stared.
“Apples,” said the man suddenly, without raising his face to look at him. “They’re different from humans, aren't they?”
“What?” said Kim Soleum.
“You see, humans, they scream when they are cut by the blade of my Jakdu,” said the man. “It senses the evil in their hearts. But apples… they're pure.”
Here the man pointedly ran a finger on the blade of the sword, drawing droplets of blood.
“They're not unlike me, kufufu…”
“What?” said Kim Soleum again.
As if reading his mind, the man finally looked up from the apple to meet his eyes.
“So—‘Agent Grape’,” he said. “Are you ready… to join the fight against the Darkness? To purge yourself of the Darkness that resides within you?”
“...”
Was it too late to pretend that he was still asleep?
“Once again, it is ‘that time’—to perform my duties as the Chosen…” said Agent Choi ominously.
By now Kim Soleum had learned his lesson and pointedly did not ask him what those duties were. After a moment, Agent Choi spoke anyway.
“My duty towards the Great Spirit of the Eastern Mountains… You could say… the fate of this nation depends on it? Kufufu….”
While this seemed like Agent Choi being Agent Choi as usual, Kim Soleum could not rule out there being a kernel of truth here. He sent a questioning look at Agent Bronze.
“Agent Choi speaks of one of the Bureau’s spirit aides,” said Agent Bronze. “The tiger general of Seoraksan. It is his assigned duty to placate the spirit.”
Well, that was normal. The senior agents all had assigned duties. That didn’t make this guy special.
“Hah… of course, the spirit’s demands are… not quite normal, kufufu…”
“The general is vegan,” said Agent Bronze.
“This suncatcher… sees the ‘hidden truth’,” said Agent Choi, dramatically holding the suncatcher in front of his now tiny face. “Beyond what mere bare eyes can see, kufufu…”
Curiously, seeing a little child act this way was much less annoying than seeing an adult do the same. Perhaps because it felt less out of place.
Even as the giant centipede raged, Ryu Jaekwan’s voice was calm.
“‘In this supernatural disaster, two agents are dispatched to answer the call of the rescuee.’”
Just as Ryu Jaekwan said this, Kim Soleum heard a faint, familiar sound behind him.
“Kufufu….”
He turned around.
A tall, dark figure with a flowing cape and a sword stood on the distance.
Right on cue, a thunderbolt struck behind the figure, backlighting his dramatic pose.
Through the fogs of depression, numbness and passive suicidality that was Kim Soleum’s current state of mind, a familiar emotion rose up sharply.
Exasperation.
Being 130666 had given him unexpected powers. Who could have known that he’d be able to change the wiki?
Now that he was free to think his own thoughts, Kim Soleum couldn’t help thinking that it was an immense amount of power that he had at his disposal.
‘I could do anything with this,’ he thought to himself. ‘I alone could change the fate of this doomed world—’
Kim Soleum startled.
What had he been thinking?
At this rate, he might as well be laughing in ‘kufufu’s. And saying that the power of the great black flame dragon resided in his right arm.
…Okay, so he did have the scale holding the power of the great blue water dragon residing inside his left wrist. But that was besides the point.
He refused to go down this road.
Kim Soleum vowed to cling on to his sense of human self with renewed resolve.
“Kufufu… I see that ‘the sacrifice’ worked,” said Agent Choi, his face pale. “It’s been a while, Grapes—293 days, in fact…”
Sacrifice?
Out of habit, Kim Soleum did not ask.
Then he realized Agent Choi had just saved his life, so maybe he ought to make this small concession.
“Sacrifice?” he asked simply.
“It is better that I bear this burden alone,” said Agent Choi even as his eyes sparkled at the fact that someone had asked.
“You could say… I made an offer that the general could not refuse, kufufu…”
Kim Soleum desperately wished he had Ryu Jaekwan around to tell him if this guy was being serious.
“I thought the tiger general was vegan,” he said for the lack of anything else to say.
“Is that what they told you?” said Agent Choi, even though he had been in the room when Agent Bronze said that. “How innocent they all are…”
“Wait, wait,” said Kim Soleum as his brain slowly caught up with him. “How long did you say it's been?”
Apparently a lot had happened while he was gone.
Probably.
Maybe not.
It was kind of hard to tell, with Agent Choi as the narrator.
“The world is on the verge of apocalypse,” he’d say.
“Really? Is it really happening?” Kim Soleum would say, tensing. Had the day finally come?
“Just as it always is, kufufu…Every day, people walk the streets in the light, unaware of the sacrifices made by those who fight the Darkness on their behalf…”
Kim Soleum would relax.
“Who could have known that fragile peace would soon be on the brink of destruction….”
Kim Soleum would tense again.
Fortunately, eventually Agent Haegeum joined them and cleared up the situation.
Unfortunately, Agent Choi had been pretty much telling the unembellished truth. The world really was about to face a disaster the scales of which had never been seen before.
“And now we have just seven days to save the world,” said Agent Choi. He blew out a smoke. “Apocalypse dawns…”
The infuriating thing was that Kim Soleum couldn’t even be mad at him. Not when apocalypse literally was dawning.
If anything he was mad at the world for validating this madman’s worldview.
The worst thing about this, Kim Soleum thought, was how badly Agent Choi was hiding his excitement at his plan.
Okay. So maybe not the worst thing. Definitely not the worst thing. But it was up there.
“Are you, perhaps—worried about me?” said Agent Choi, turning a weary smile towards him. “Kufufu…”
Infuriatingly, he was.
“There’s no need to worry, Grapes,” said Agent Choi. “I’ll never die. We— the『 Flamecarriers』—it is not in our fate to perish, as long as the burning flame continues to live inside us.”
“You just said your plan involved continuously dying on behalf of six hundred thousand people,” said Kim Soleum.
“It is a burden that only this Chosen one can bear,” said Agent Choi, looking into the distance. “Kufufu…”
Kim Soleum wanted to punch him.
“Darkness lost this day,” said Agent Choi.
The black liquid inside the tank did not answer back.
“It may have thought it swallowed you, but it didn’t,” continued Agent Choi. “Your flame still burns bright.”
“Darkness lost this day,” he repeated. “As it always does.”
“As long as we— the『 Flamecarriers』—are here to protect the innocents…”
“What the fuck is he on about,” muttered Baek Saheon, feeling uneasy. Was this all just some bullshit or did it actually mean something?
To his surprise, the burly agent standing next to him gave him a sympathetic look
“‘So—you return to your impossible 『 Paradise』,’” Agent Haegeum recited dutifully. “‘Farewell, citizen—your battle ends here, even as our war continues—"
A familiar exasperation arose within Kim Soleum.
This time, however, he found it in himself to be able to smile about it.
He was going home, after all.
“Goodbye,” he replied quietly to the unseen presence.
Then he turned back to walk down the stairs.
A few months after returning home, Kim Soleum found himself at another pop-up store. (This time, he wouldn’t do the roulette, he told himself.)
By now, the character designs for the popular characters were out. He was tickled to see that Employee D had white hair and red eyes, just as his lizard head had. And Baek Saheon looked as deceivingly innocent as he always had.
Then there was another beloved, “Named” character.
Maybe time had healed all wounds, because he found himself almost nostalgic as he looked down at the adorable figurine of Agent Choi.
“Kufufu,” he said to himself as he stared at the sample.
‘Even if I get this from the random box, I might not hate it…’
Then he noticed that a group of kids nearby were giving him a weird look.
Keeping a calm face but internally dying of embarassment, Kim Soleum quickly left the figurine corner.
…But not before quietly grabbing a box.