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“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Baek Saheon says, the moment that Go Yeongeun turns up at his door.
He’s frowning, a little haggard, grip tight on the door as he holds it open for her. It’s her first time seeing him in casual clothes, the eyepatch that he wears to work replaced with softer gauze.
“He won’t mind, Baek Saheon-ssi,” Go Yeoungeun says. “He’ll know we have his best interests in mind.”
“We?” Baek Saheon says incredulously. “No, no, that psychopath can never know I was a part of this. If he asks, you forced your way in and looked through his things, alright?”
“Alright.”
A little mollified, Baek Saheon opens the door wider and lets her in.
He isn’t a great host. He doesn’t take her coat for her, he doesn’t ask her if she’d like to sit down, he doesn’t even offer her a glass of water. He seems unsettled, gaze still darting around as if he expects Kim Soleum to suddenly break in.
But Kim Soleum has been missing for two weeks now.
The company is getting dangerously close to writing him off as dead.
“That’s his room,” Baek Saheon says, pointing in the direction of one of the bedrooms. “Touch as little as possible. Who knows what sort of traps that guy has set up in there.”
Baek Saheon’s image of Kim Soleum has always been a little strange. But Go Yeoungeun doesn’t have time for his weirdness right now.
She presses the dusty handle of Soleum’s door down and pushes it open.
Baek Saheon doesn’t follow her.
/
Kim Soleum’s room hasn’t been touched since he’s been gone.
It’s strange, because from what she knew of Baek Saheon, she’d assumed he’d have dug through his things and stolen whatever helpful items he could find. But apparently his fear of his roommate had stopped him, leaving behind a room with dust on every corner.
It’s neat, though. The bed has been made, all of his things put away. There’s a stack of books on his desk and a couple of stationary items, but for the most part the room looks empty.
Baek Saheon had told her not to touch anything, but Go Yeoungeun doesn’t have a choice.
If there’s a hint as to where Kim Soleum might have been taken—there’s a good chance that it might be here.
Kim Soleum had disappeared without a trace—but he hadn’t been taken by the darkness. That’s the worrying part. The victims of the Tamra Express had all returned safely. Kim Soleum alone was lost, taken by something else, or, what she worries about the most—he’d chosen to run away.
It would make sense if he had.
If the pressure had finally gotten to him, if the fear of constant death had made him collapse, it would make perfect sense for him to have run away. Especially after a moment as traumatic as the Tamra Express.
But where would he go, all alone?
What would he do, with Daydream searching for him endlessly?
Kim Soleum didn’t appear to have a family. At least, not one that he could still go home to.
If Go Yeoungeun could find him, if she could help him in any way, as he had helped her all these months—
Maybe it would make things a little easier for him.
/
Baek Saheon is right about one thing. Kim Soleum does have a lot of strange things.
The strangest thing by far is the small bath tub tucked under his bed.
There’s cloth folded on his bedside table in the shape of a mattress and pillow, almost like it’s meant for a miniature person. There’s a box inside his cupboard with empty food wrappers that don’t look like any normal kind of food. Worse still, empty syringes that Go Yeoungeun quickly tucks into her pockets, in case someone else finds them and stories get passed around.
But there isn’t much of anything else.
Kim Soleum’s room has no personality to it. She understands that. No one feels like decorating a room that you might not live to see the next day. But the emptiness of it is jarring, as if rather than being afraid of dying here, he was more terrified of the thought of living here enough to call it his own place.
She digs around as much as he can, but there isn’t anything in here that could tell her where he might have gone. There are no journals, no notebooks, no suspicious looking pamphlets or SD cards that just might have information on the places that he’d always dreamed of going. There isn’t even a calendar.
He’d left with no evidence behind.
There isn’t even anything here that he might consider coming back for.
/
At a loss, finally, Go Yeoungeun checks under his pillow.
His pillow is surprisingly soft. It must have been expensive. There are tiny stains on them that she doesn’t want to think could be tears, so she doesn’t let herself think about it any longer.
But under the pillow is a visiting card.
The card is worn. The text is starting to fade in several places, as if he’d held it too tightly and too often in his sleep. Or while he was awake. Go Yeoungeun doesn’t know.
She picks the card up.
RYU JAEKWAN
HYUNMOO TEAM 1, DISPATCH & RESCUE UNIT
SUPERNATURAL DISASTER MANAGEMENT BUREAU
xxx-xxxx-xxxx
The Disaster Management Bureau.
Go Yeoungeun doesn’t know a lot about them, except that their relationship with Daydream employees is completely terrible.
For Kim Soleum to not only have this card, but to have held it almost as a hope—surely it has to mean something.
She flips it over in her hands. There’s nothing else on the card. Just a simple name, a phone number, and the logo of the bureau.
Baek Saheon knocks on the open door behind her.
“How much longer are you going to take?” he asks, voice tense. “I swear to god, if he finds out I’ve let you in here—”
“I’m done,” Go Yeoungeun says, pocketing the card quickly. “He doesn’t have much here.”
Baek Saheon looks surprised by that. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“I thought—” he shakes his head. “Never mind.”
He looks troubled, as if realizing for the first time that his roommate truly might not return, and that he isn’t quite sure how that makes him feel.
Go Yeoungeun leaves him to it.
The worn out card seems to burn in her pocket.
The Disaster Management Bureau.
It’s her only hint. It’ll have to do.
She heads back out, leaving the empty room where her friend had once been behind.
/
