Archive of Our Own

There’s something wrong with Kim Soleum.

Choi can’t put his finger on it.

He doesn’t say it out loud. He’s learned not to, after the dark looks that Jaekwan gives him. How could there not be, the looks say. When you did this to him.

Two weeks in the glass prison, a drawn out confession, and the slow process of burning every single bridge that Kim Soleum had left to his wish potion—

Of course there was something wrong with him.

Choi glances at his junior from over his computer. 

Kim Soleum doesn’t look up. He’s focused on his screen—they’ve been having him edit outdated manuals for a few weeks now, with the information he’s learned from working at Daydream. Choi hadn’t expected the work to take longer than a few days, but Kim Soleum knows so much that it seems like it might take another week at least.

It’s fine. He’s been confined to desk duty for at least a couple of months, after all.

Kim Soleum might have been a star employee, but it’ll still take a while to shake off the reputation of being a spy. He won’t be able to join them on missions until the bureau officially decides to trust him.

Everyone wants to trust him, of course. But the little doubts still add up, and the people who used to give Kim Soleum wide smiles and sling an arm over his shoulder now nod at him in the hallway and bite their lips, as if they aren’t sure if they’re allowed to do more.

Kim Soleum doesn’t seem to care.

Choi can’t tell if he even notices.

He keeps his head down, he sits at his desk, and he works. When Choi leaves a drink at his table and jokes that he shouldn’t work so hard, he nods, thanks him, and doesn’t touch the drink at all.

He turns down their offers to meet up for dinner after work. He turns down the bureau’s insistence that he stop living in motels and move into their dormitory.

He’s never rude. He’s never unkind.

He never messes up his work.

But there isn’t anything in his eyes except the exhaustion of being alive. There isn’t anything of the Kim Soleum from Choi’s memories, who used to look at both him and Jaekwan like they were singlehandedly protecting the world.

Now, he looks at them like they’re people he has no choice but to work with, like he’ll nod politely and get through it if that’s what he has to do.

Since he hasn’t been cleared to come with them on missions, instead he gives them briefings of all the information he has before every dispatch. The amount of data that Soleum has is phenomenal. A lot of the things that he says have even prevented fatal mistakes. But there is never any emotion in his voice during these briefings, never any acknowledgement of why he knows all of this, of what must have happened to him before to be so certain of these things.

“You have to take three turns,” Kim Soleum says. “And then go through the door you see at the end.”

“But the paths keep changing,” Jaekwan points out.

“Yes. But the photographs on the walls are arranged in chronological order. If you figure out which path doesn’t have any strange jumps in the ages of the occupants, you can figure out which way to go.”

“Ah,” Choi says. “That does seem the better way.”

“It’ll be shorter than the alternative,” Kim Soleum says. “When you go through the door, there’ll be three pathways again—”

He stops.

His diagram is cut off awkwardly at the side, with no space to expand it, because of the words that he’d scrawled in the corner of the board all those weeks ago.

People worthy of respect.

Choi thinks about those words every day.

He thinks about it every time Kim Soleum doesn’t meet his eyes, every time he clocks out of work without having said a single word to him that wasn’t just a polite response.

“You won’t be able to tell the difference between the three of them,” Soleum says, looking at the words like they’re in his way. “You’ll have to look at—”

He picks up the duster and wipes the words away easily.

As if they mean nothing to him at all.

Then he keeps writing, his neat scrawl covering up the empty space where Choi’s last hopes had been.

He keeps explaining about where they need to go, what they need to do, how much time they can afford to spend before things go south. He doesn’t bother to meet either of their eyes while he does it, or even turn around to check if they’re listening.

He doesn’t turn around even once.

He wipes away the words that Choi had carefully protected for weeks, fills them with work, puts the cap back on his marker and turns away.

There’s an ugly feeling in Choi’s chest that only keeps growing bigger.

/

Kim Soleum tells them that he’s tired.

It’s fair. He’s had a rather long, terrible year. Nothing in his life has gone the way he wanted it to, and his betrayal was returned with another betrayal by the very team that he’s still being forced to work with.

Do you resent us? Choi overhears Jaekwan asking him once. I understand if you do.

Why would I resent you? Soleum had said, and had ended the conversation just like that.

He… didn’t seem to be lying.

Kim Soleum doesn’t act like he hates them. There is no anger in his eyes when he greets them in the morning. There is nothing in his countenance to suggest that being around them is hard. He treats them the way someone would treat any other coworker—with a polite, respectful distance.

He comes to work, he works, he clocks out, he leaves.

There are no attempts to make conversation in between, nothing but polite refusals of any attempts that Choi makes to close this ugly distance between them.

The strange, lonely kid that Agent Grapes had once been—a disguise created to hide the strange and lonely spy—is long gone. Now all that’s left in his place is an empty man who works because he is paid for it, and needs pay because he must live, and lives because he hasn’t yet died.

There is no anger in him, but there is nothing else in him either. And that feels even worse.

“Grapes,” Choi tries, for the third time that week. “You haven’t eaten anything all day. Want to go out for dinner?”

Kim Soleum glances at the clock. It’s 6PM.

He turns back to his screen.

“It’s alright, sunbae,” he says. “I’ll cook at home.”

He says that word easily, now.

Home.

The Kim Soleum from before had danced around it. He’d say I’ll head back. I’ll go to my apartment. I’ll leave. I’ll go get some rest.

He’d never let the word home leave his mouth, for fear that if he did, it might have to mean something to him.

But now there’s no fear of that. Not when Choi has burned away his last chance at reaching the only place he’d ever wanted to go. Now home is just another word that he throws around, without meaning, without life.

“Oh? Want to come over to my place then?” Choi tries again. “We can call Jaekwan over, too. I can cook for both of you.”

“It’s alright,” Soleum says again. “I’ll just go home.”

“You sure? You aren’t hungry?”

“I’m sure.”

He keeps typing, not looking up from his reports.

Choi finished his work long ago, but he stays, staring at the blank screen in front of him. 

The clock ticks past his work hours. Soleum glances at it intermittently, but he doesn’t stop working.

An hour passes.

Another.

Soleum doesn’t get paid for overtime. But that doesn’t stop him from working, because there’s nothing else for him to do.

When Soleum finally stands to leave, Choi rushes to grab his own jacket as well. 

“I’ll walk you back?” he asks, aware that he’s coming across as desperate.

But what else can he do?

Choi doesn’t know how to fix what he’s broken here.

“I’m fine, sunbae,” Soleum says simply. “It’s not far.”

If this was before, Choi wouldn’t have listened to any of his refusals. He would have forced him to eat with him, he would have followed him home—he would have done whatever he wanted easily without waiting for permission.

He would have slung an arm around Kim Soleum’s shoulders and dragged him out, spouting bullshit about how they have to hang out together to build morale.

But back then—he hadn’t done any of that out of care.

He’d done it because he’d known that Soleum was a spy. He’d done it solely to keep an eye on him.

Perhaps it makes sense that Soleum doesn’t want him around anymore. Choi had never approached him without an ulterior motive, after all.

Now he doesn’t have one.

Now the only thing that keeps him reaching out to Kim Soleum is the fact that it breaks his heart every time he turns away.

But that isn’t enough reason to force his presence on someone who doesn’t want anything to do with him.

So Choi lets him go.

/

The first time that Kim Soleum comes out to dinner with them is a full two months later.

It’s not a friendly invitation that time—it’s a mandatory one. One of the dull dinners where management takes them out to ‘reward them for success,’ which is a polite way of saying that too many agents were injured in too short a span of time and management has been forced to try to cheer them up for fear that they’ll all get depressed and quit.

Hyunmoo Team 1 sits together. Choi grills meat for his junior for the first time in too long.

Kim Soleum picks at his food, listless, barely responding to anyone’s attempts to make conversation.

“Aigoo, our junior should learn more from Bronze. Look at how much he eats in comparison,” Choi says. He gestures towards Jaekwan’s nearly empty plate, before he places some more meat on it.

Jaekwan doesn’t even bother to look up from where he’s been staring at the side of Soleum’s profile. His brows are furrowed, a slight frown on his face as he takes Soleum’s features in slowly. He nods at Choi’s words, but doesn’t speak further.

“You’re not hungry?” Choi asks.

Soleum shakes his head.

He never has an appetite. It’s starting to show in the dullness of his complexion.

“Young people these days,” Choi says breezily, reaching over to place the meat he’s just grilled on Soleum’s plate. “Always watching their figures, hm? You should really eat more, Grapes. You’re already too skinny. Aren’t you worried about your health?”

“I eat well, sunbae,” Soleum says listlessly, still picking at his food.

“When did you last eat?” Jaekwan asks. 

“This morning.” Soleum pauses awkwardly, as if just realizing he’d missed a meal before dinner. “But I had a large breakfast, so I’m not too—” 

Choi watches the way his eyes flick to the side when he says it. 

“What did you have?” Choi presses. “A full spread? Rice, soup—what else? Or just a cup of coffee you grabbed from the breakroom again—”

Soleum’s jaw tightens. “I ate enough.”

“Agent Choi,” Jaekwan says sternly, before turning to Soleum, his voice warmer, softer, almost apologetic, “Agent Grapes, you don’t have to—”

“What? I’m just worried about him. Aren’t you worried about him?”

Jaekwan gives him a sharp look.

Choi stares back, unwilling to back down—but Soleum has gone very still.

He looks paler than usual. He always does these days—like all the blood has drained out of his features and left behind a hollow spectre in its place. Something vaguely human but with no signs of life.

He isn’t looking at either of them now, eyes darting between his food and the table.

Choi could keep pushing him.

It’s what he’s best at, after all. Pushing until he gives in, until something breaks.

But the sight of his junior makes him hold back.

“Don’t force yourself,” he relents. “Don’t eat more than you’re able to.”

Soleum nods stiffly.

He keeps picking at the food on his plate. Choi talks about other things, about their recent missions, their fellow agents, a new show that he’s never watched but has heard enough about that it feels like he’s watched it himself.

Kim Soleum doesn’t respond unless someone addresses him directly. Halfway through the meal, he stands up.

Jaekwan looks up in alarm.

“Is everything alright?” he asks.

“I’m just going to the restroom,” Soleum says quietly. He excuses himself, and then he disappears.

The moment he’s gone Jaekwan narrows his eyes at Choi.

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what?”

“He’s finally out here with us, but you keep trying to force him to tell you things that he doesn’t want to talk about—”

“He doesn’t want to tell me that he had breakfast? Is that really so personal a topic?”

“You know what I mean. Stop pushing him. Just let him be.”

“We always let him be,” Choi says quietly. 

He’s starting to wonder if that’s the problem.

If they’ve let him fall too far into himself, if they haven’t tried hard enough to draw him back out of his shell…

His trail of thought is cut off when Soleum returns to the table.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” he says. “Did I miss something?”

The question is so baffling to hear from someone who has zero interest in either of their lives that both Choi and Jaekwan just stare at him.

Soleum doesn’t notice anything odd about their stare. He picks his chopsticks up and turns back to his food. One bite in, his eyes go wide.

“This is really good,” he says, a strange emotion in his voice.

Like he’s remembering something long forgotten.

He starts to eat with renowned vigour, a sudden life in his expression that Choi hasn’t seen in too long. 

Choi glances at Jaekwan in confusion.

Jaekwan looks just as lost, but he shakes his head. Let him be, he’d said. Stop pushing him.

So Choi stops.

He places more meat on Soleum’s plate. Soleum bows his head.

“Thank you, sunbae,” he says, sincerely, quite unlike the man who’d just drawn in and retreated because Choi had asked him to eat more.

“Of course. Our youngest, you really were hungry, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Soleum says easily.

Choi glances at Jaekwan again.

He forces himself to look away.

/

In the days after that, Kim Soleum seems better than usual.

He’s less withdrawn. Less tense. When Choi glances at him from over his computer, he always looks up. Sometimes he even smiles, hesitant, like it’s been so long that he’s forgotten how to do it. 

Choi doesn’t know what’s changed. It’s a welcome change for sure. The empty husk of a man is slowly, slowly starting to resemble the junior that he had learned to care for.

The junior that he used to know.

The switch is so startling that even the other teams start to notice. The agents who used to give Soleum a wide berth now smile at him tentatively. He no longer turns down offers to meet up after work, he no longer looks like the life has been sucked out of him.

He’s just like how Kim Soleum used to be.

As if the weeks in between had never happened at all.

When Choi leaves his usual drink on his desk, he doesn’t think twice before he brings it to his lips.

“Thank you, sunbae,” he says.

Choi reaches out to ruffle his hair. Soleum leans into the touch, almost imperceptibly, and Choi holds his breath.

It’s another change—the way he no longer shies away from physical contact.

If anything, he welcomes it.

“You should take a break,” Choi says lightly. “How long have you been staring at that screen?”

He’s almost done with editing the manuals, working incredible hours and barely sleeping at all. He doesn’t appear to need sleep anymore, too drawn in by the work to remember that he might be tired.

The level of insane efficiency that he had had back when he was a rookie.

Choi cards his fingers through Soleum’s hair. It’s softer than he remembers. His fingers slip through easily, without getting caught on tangles—almost as if Soleum has been taking care of himself for once.

“I’m almost done,” Soleum says.

“Take a break.”

“But—”

“Aish. Since when has our youngest been this sincere?”

It doesn’t mean anything when he says it. Kim Soleum has never been anything but sincere. 

But Soleum stops under his touch. He looks up at Choi, curious.

“Shouldn’t I be…?” he asks carefully.

There’s honest confusion in his eyes. Like he genuinely can’t tell what he’s supposed to be.

Choi frowns at the look.

It’s unsettling, the way he looks at him. Like he’s waiting for Choi to tell him who he is. 

“You should be sincere to an extent,” he says. “But at this point you’re overworking yourself, yeah?”

“Oh,” Kim Soleum says. “I’m not, though?”

Choi stops stroking his hair and puts him in a headlock instead. Soleum complains, but there’s no real resistance in him. He’s easy to push around now, to touch, to hold—any form of warmth is something that he reaches out towards.

“You are,” Choi says. “Your eyes are going to blow up if you stare at that screen any longer. Let’s go have dinner together, okay?”

“Okay.”

Choi smiles at him.

It doesn’t reach his eyes.

/

“There’s something wrong with him,” Choi says. “I know it.”

He’s on his fifth cigarette of the day.

“Stop saying that,” Jaekwan says, voice tense. His face is contorted—he really hates the smell of smoke. On a usual day he wouldn’t even be out here if he knew that Choi was smoking—he’d be inside the waiting room, in the quiet with Kim Soleum, while they each scrolled on their respective phones.

The very fact that he isn’t in there tells Choi that he feels the same as him.

“You know it too,” he says. “He was—he was acting like he didn’t even want to be alive. And now he suddenly loves this job? He—”

He cuts himself off, before he can say he suddenly loves us?

Because Kim Soleum looks at them now like he can’t believe either of them are real. Like he’s spent his whole life hoping to be a part of this team.

When just a few weeks ago he’d wiped those awful words off the whiteboard without a second glance.

“Because he feels better,” Jaekwan says, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Not because of anything else.”

“He feels better? Haha. You think he just woke up one day and thought I’ve had enough of being miserable, let me start smiling again for no fucking reason—”

“Sunbae,” Jaekwan cuts him off sharply.

“What.”

“You can’t keep doing this to him.”

Choi stops, lowering the cigarette from his lips. “What do you mean?”

“No matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries—you still keep suspecting him, don’t you?”

“What? No—”

“Just let him live,” Jaekwan says, sounding more tired than Choi has ever heard. “He’s sad sometimes, he’s happy sometimes, he’s—sometimes I don’t even know if he’s real anymore, but. Let’s stop trying to turn him into someone else. Let’s just let him be.”

“...You’ve noticed, then, haven’t you?”

“What?”

“You’ve noticed he isn’t the same.”

Jaekwan doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

“Yes,” he says at last. “But I don’t want him to know that we think that.”

“...”

“It took long enough for him to warm up to us again. If he finds out we think there’s something off about him… it’s not going to go well.”

It’s true. 

The worst thing they can do to Kim Soleum right now is make him feel like they don’t think that he should be happy.

“We’ve put him through too much already,” Jaekwan says. “We have to leave him alone.”

/

The day that Agent Grapes is cleared to work is one that Choi wasn’t looking forward to at all.

Honestly, they haven’t been doing great without him. He and Jaekwan have been doing their best but the workload is just too much for two people to handle on their own, despite Soleum’s briefings and assistance with paperwork. Soleum being cleared for dispatch means that their workload becomes considerably lighter, and they’ll be able to handle more disasters on the whole—but it also means that this man, who seems too perfectly alright, will once again be thrust into the horrors that he was trying so hard to run from.

“How are you feeling, Grapes?” Choi asks, patting him on the shoulder. “Excited?”

He shouldn’t be, of course.

Kim Soleum is terrified of things like things. Subjecting him to desk duty was unintentionally the kindest thing that they could do for him.

Kim Soleum frowns. “Should I be?”

“Haha. Maybe not.”

The disaster isn’t a particularly dangerous one.

It would have been cruel to toss him into an absolute crisis after a break as long as this one. There won’t be any anomalies today, nor any need to stray from the manual. It’s a simple in and out job, albeit one with a considerable number of ghosts—but it’s nothing that Kim Soleum hasn’t handled before.

The only worry is that the nerves might get to him, after staying safely on the sidelines for too long.

But it turns out that Choi’s worries are for nothing. The disaster goes as well as it could possibly go.

They get through it fairly quickly. It’s even exciting, in a strange way. Sure, there are horrors at every corner, but it’s been so long since the three of them had the chance to work together like this that the horrors don’t really affect him.

It’s been too long since he could look over his shoulder and find the two people he trusted with his life.

Far too long.

Everything feels right now. Like a return to how their lives should be.

But at the same time—

“Grapes. You want to step back? I can handle this part.”

The method to clear the disaster is a little gory.

Choi has the stomach for it, but Soleum gets queasy at times like this. He hides it well, but both Choi and Jaekwan have figured it out, and they have an unspoken tendency to let him step aside whenever they can.

He nudges Soleum with the back of his hand.

Soleum blinks. “No, it’s fine.”

“Aish. You’ll have to reach into its guts. I can do it, just don’t look, okay?”

Choi squats down next to the corpse of the strange creature that’s been cut open. It won’t take more than a couple of seconds, but it’s best to get it right on the first try to avoid an absolute mess.

But Kim Soleum, for some strange reason, still isn’t having it. He kneels down in the dirt next to him, gently pushing Choi’s hand aside.

“I’ll do it,” he insists. 

Choi gives him an incredulous look.

Jaekwan, too, seems a little confused. “Agent Grapes, it isn’t a big deal,” he says. “Let Agent Choi do it.”

“It’s going to be messy,” Soleum argues. “Let me.”

It’s such a baffling hill to want to die on. 

“Fine,” Choi says, moving aside after an awkward silence. “Go ahead.”

Kim Soleum nods and gets to work.

He doesn’t wince even once.

There is no tension in his shoulders as he reaches into the flesh, as he casually does things that he would have to grit his teeth and force himself to do before.

“Our Grapes is getting used to this job, hm?” Choi asks lightly, but his eyes are sharp as he watches Kim Soleum’s hands, which don’t shake at all.

Kim Soleum looks up at him, with that confused expression that he wears all too often.

“Shouldn’t I be?” he asks.

A question that Choi is starting to hate.

That unsettling stare, like he’s waiting for Choi to tell him how to be.

“It’s good if nothing bothers you, of course,” Choi tells him, patting him on the head. “But don’t force yourself, alright? There’s nothing wrong with stepping back and letting your seniors handle things. I’m used to blood, haha.”

Soleum nods.

But he genuinely doesn’t seem to be forcing himself.

He digs out the key with ease, and hands the dripping, disgusting item to Choi.

“Good job,” Choi says, and pretends he doesn’t see how Soleum lights up at the words.

There is a lot he tends to look away from, these days.

“Let’s keep going,” Jaekwan says, cutting in before Choi has the chance to want to push further.

It’s fine. He wasn’t going to.

If Kim Soleum is different, that just means that he’s different.

Choi won’t ask anything more.

/

When Choi comes back after a meeting with management, it’s already pretty late.

His team would have most likely gone home. It’s been a long day after all, with two awful disasters stacked back to back. Luckily none of them sustained any major injuries, but the guilt of the lives that Choi couldn’t save is going to keep him awake for the next week.

Jaekwan tends to pull through somehow, by pretending that all he cares about is the rules in the manual. A life lost is a life that had to be lost for the greater good. Choi knows him well enough to know that he’s still haunted by what he does, but he doesn’t call him out on it. If pretending keeps him stable, then he can pretend.

It’s Kim Soleum that he’s more worried about.

Their youngest barely sleeps on a good day, and on days like this, when there’s too much blood on their hands and too many haunting images seared into their eyes, he doesn’t sleep at all.

Choi pushes the door to the waiting room open. The lights are predictably off. He switches them on, blinking while his vision adjusts.

To his surprise, the room isn’t empty.

Kim Soleum is fast asleep on the couch.

He’s curled up, tucked into his jacket, not even stirring at the sudden brightness. 

Choi turns the lights back off.

It’s a miracle that Kim Soleum is asleep. He shouldn’t risk waking him up. He makes sure to stay quiet as he makes his way towards his own desk. Kim Soleum wakes up at the slightest noise—Choi will have to be extra careful to make sure he doesn’t.

On second thought, maybe he’ll stay a little longer.

He settles at his desk, crossing his arms and leaning back into his chair. It’s not a comfortable position to sleep in but Choi is used to it. He spends more nights here than he does in his apartment.

The minutes tick past. Kim Soleum doesn’t wake up.

Choi starts to drift off himself. 

He doesn’t sleep well. He can’t, after the day that they’ve had. He drifts in and out of consciousness, always making sure to keep an eye on his junior in case he’s woken by nightmares. But Kim Soleum sleeps like the dead. 

Hours later, when the room is lit up by the warmth of the sun, and Choi has barely slept a wink, Soleum finally starts to stir.

He blinks slowly. “Agent Choi?” his voice is surprised, confused. “You didn’t go home?”

“You were here alone,” Choi says. “I couldn’t leave you like that, could I?”

“You could have woken me up.”

“It was a miracle you were asleep. I wasn’t going to ruin that.”

Soleum blinks. “I sleep fine though,” he says. He pauses briefly, and then corrects his words. “These days, I mean.”

He seems to mean it.

Choi considers him quietly.

“That’s good,” he says at last. “Our youngest should always rest well.”

He wouldn’t push.

It’s no longer his place.

/

Kim Soleum is even more of a monster on the field than he used to be.

“Maybe we should throw all of our agents in glass prison for a while,” another agent joked once, without really thinking through who he was talking to. “If this is how they come back out—”

He’d suddenly realized who was in front of him, averted his eyes, and laughed out an awkward apology.

“Sorry, Agent Choi.”

He’d left immediately. He hasn’t dared to show his face to Choi ever since.

The only thing that had held Kim Soleum back before was his fear of the supernatural. He’d hidden it like a professional, gritting his teeth and bearing any burden that he was forced to carry, but it had always been too easy to see the fear that he’d learned to swallow back. The shake in his fingers that he tried so hard to keep steady.

But now, he is no longer afraid.

There’s no hesitation in his steps as he tackles every disaster he’s thrown into. No rapid excuses to get him out of a situation under the guise of rationality when Choi can easily tell that he’s just scared.

It makes him appear colder, in those moments. Like Roe Deer had been, on the one day that Choi had seen him face to face.

But when he looks back at him and Jaekwan and smiles, he’s still the Grapes that Choi had learned to love.

It shows up when he interacts with victims of a disaster as well. Whatever mutual fear that Kim Soleum had always shared with civilians seems to have disappeared. He’s still perfectly polite, and does his job well, but he comes off more like—more like Jaekwan does. Like someone who is here to help, but will never share in the sheer terror of the situation, and might be forced to kill everyone if that’s what the disaster demands.

“Our Grapes,” Choi says, ruffling his hair. He’s finally used to how the man leans into the touch. “You’ve really grown, haven’t you?”

“Stop treating him like a child,” Jaekwan says.

“He used to run away kicking and screaming at the sight of a ghost—”

“That literally never happened,” Soleum says dryly.

“I’m just saying,” Choi continues, ignoring them both entirely. “As… someone who isn’t the team leader, shouldn’t I give my employees praise when it’s due?”

“What part of this was praise?”

“Aish. Is it so wrong to say that my juniors did a good job?”

Soleum acts just like he used to, in moments like these.

He acts so much like himself that Choi can pretend that the few months in between never even happened.

He can pretend that he isn’t seeing what he’s quite obviously seeing.

That everything is alright, that everything is as it should be—

That the three of them are together, just like they were before.

/

There aren’t many places where Choi feels safe.

There are places he goes because his work at the Bureau needs him there. Places he occupies not because he wants to, but because he needs to.

There’s a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Jaekwan that nags at him and tells him everyone needs a home—even if he’s not sure if he’s allowed to be a part of that category. Some days he doesn’t feel particularly human. He'd already nearly died once. It makes sense that there's a part of him that broke off and died that day. The scar on his neck is a reminder of it, after all.

There aren’t many places where Choi feels safe, but there are places he can go to to be alone.

The bathroom is one of them.

The water from the tap runs cold, gathering in the divots of his palm. The handwash smells pleasant—faintly floral with an underbite of antiseptic—enough for him to lose himself in the sensation of it. Choi keeps the water running for too long, lost in thought, and only snaps back to reality when he hears the sound of footsteps approaching.

They’re light, hesitant. Unsteady, as though half limping.

Choi turns the tap off.

He glances up at the mirror just as the door swings open. Only to find—

No one.

Choi turns around sharply, and sees Kim Soleum. His silhouette framed by the doorway, absolute terror in his expression.

Soleum slams the door shut immediately.

Choi turns back to the mirror.

The mirror that had been empty, when Kim Soleum had come in. 

No reflection in sight.

/

It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s gone wrong.

A part of Choi had always known it, after all.

It was hoping for too much to expect that Kim Soleum woke up one day and decided to be happy. The change had been too abrupt, too telling, but Choi had forced himself to look away, for fear of being wrong—for fear of dragging his junior’s trust through the mud once more, when he never deserved it.

But he can’t hide from the truth any longer.

Not when he’d seen the empty mirror right in front of his eyes.

It’s too easy to pinpoint the exact moment that the real Kim Soleum had disappeared in front of him. That day at the restaurant, when he’d wanted nothing to do with them, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, started wolfing down his food. 

This is really good, he’d said, as if he hadn’t been picking at it for an hour.

Did I miss anything? he’d asked, as if he’d ever cared before.

The irregularities had only grown from that moment. His complete lack of fear. The ease with which he dealt with gore. The fact that he slept through the night, without being startled awake by nightmares.

The fact that he looked at Choi like he still respected him.

Like he still cared about him.

… That had been the worst of the discrepancies. The real Kim Soleum would have never looked at him like that, and Choi knew it better than anyone.

The switch had to have happened on that day at the restaurant. So that’s where Choi returns.

To the scene of the crime.

The place isn’t crowded when he arrives. He’s been here so often on so many team outings that the staff greet him by his agent name. Choi doesn’t really have the time for small talk, but he does have to make sure that no one gets caught up in what he’s about to do, so he makes sure to warn the staff ahead of time.

“Don’t let anyone into the bathroom,” he tells them quietly. “You might hear strange crashes, but no matter what you hear, don’t come in to investigate. Alright?”

The staff member he’s talking with seems nervous, but agrees. They’re used to this sort of thing, after all, when the bureau agents frequent this place so often.

Choi turns towards the bathroom, but stops.

“Also,” he says, with a sheepish smile. “Could I order some galbitang for when me and my junior are back?”

The staff member glances to the side, to Choi’s conspicuous lack of a junior, but agrees.

Galbitang had been Kim Soleum’s favourite food.

It seems to be the favourite food of whatever took his place as well—but that doesn’t mean anything to him.

With his order placed, and all interruptions removed, Choi steps inside the bathroom.

The lights flicker once he enters. Choi scans the area quickly, but all the stalls appear to be unoccupied. He has the place to himself then.

He locks the door behind him.

The place is dingy, unkept. One of the taps is leaking into the sink, the steady drip, drip, drip the only sound aside from Choi’s unsteady heartbeat.

He glances at his own dull reflection in the dirty mirror.

It’s smudged enough that he can barely make out his face. 

“Kim Soleum,” he calls out. His voice is too loud in the empty room.

There’s no response. 

“I know you’re in there.”

Still no response.

Choi didn’t expect one.

He places one hand on the mirror, staring straight at his own reflection. There is no sign of anything else. No sign of the person that he knows exists in the world behind this barrier.

Choi raises his fist.

And then he brings it down on the mirror hard.

The glass cracks, but doesn’t shatter. Tiny shards of glass cut into his skin, but it’s nothing to him, when he deals with far worse on a regular basis.

“It’s alright, Soleum-ah,” Choi says, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’ll get you out of there, okay?”

He raises his elbow instead and brings it down again.

Another awful crack. Pain shoots up his arm, but he ignores it.

“Grapes. You are in there, aren’t you? Give me a sign. Let me know how you’re doing.”

Still, there’s no response.

Choi raises his fist again—

But something stops him.

A hand shoots out from the mirror, a hand that’s terribly familiar. Veins that he would recognize anywhere. They grab his fist before it has the chance to hit the mirror, and it pushes, trying to force him back.

Choi grabs the hand immediately with his other hand, holding onto it as tightly as he can.

His own hands are sweaty, from the anxiousness that he could be wrong, that Soleum might not be in here, that he might never get back out. That Choi might not be able to save him. That he’s let him down, once again.

The relief and the fear shoot through him at the same time.

He grips Kim Soleum’s hand tighter.

“I’ll get you out, okay?” he says, more to himself than to Soleum. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out.”

The hand in his jerks in panic.

Kim Soleum pulls his hand away, suddenly desperate, suddenly afraid. Choi tries to grab him again but Soleum is impossible to hold on to.

He digs his fingers into Soleum’s skin, desperate to not let go. 

His nails leave red tracks on his wrists.

But Kim Soleum slips away.

Just like he always does.

In a moment, he’s gone—back into the mirror, back where Choi can never reach him again.

Choi slams the mirror with his fist. The sharp pain does nothing to dull the frustration.

“Kim Soleum,” he hisses. “What are you trying to do? Where are you trying to go?”

There’s an awful silence.

And then slowly, slowly, words appear on the mirror. Words made of tiny drops of condensation, plastered over Choi’s own reflection.

Words that break what was left of him.

I don’t want to come back.

/

Choi tells himself a lot of things. 

He tells himself that the Kim Soleum that has lost himself in the mirror is contaminated. The darkness of the mirror got to him. He’s definitely being held in there against his will, he definitely wants to be back outside, he definitely didn’t want a fucking ghost wandering around wearing his face instead of him—

But these are all just things that Choi wants to believe.

In truth, there’s no way for him to know.

The Kim Soleum who had been by his side, before he’d been taken by the entity in the mirror, hadn’t seemed like he wanted to be alive either.

But Choi has to believe he does, right?

He has to try to bring him back, right?

There’s no way that he wants to stay in the mirror. There’s no way…

He glances over the screen of his computer, at where the entity that had dared to take Kim Soleum’s place sits diligently at his own desk, working without a complaint.

“Grapes,” he calls out.

It tastes wrong on his tongue, now that he knows for certain that this is not Kim Soleum.

The entity looks up immediately. “Yes?”

“Do you want to have dinner together?”

The creature looks relieved. “Sure, sunbae.”

He’s been nervous around Choi, ever since that moment in the bathroom. He hasn’t said anything about it, and Choi hasn’t brought it up either, letting him live in this stasis of not knowing if Choi had spotted his lack of a reflection or not.

“Where do you want to go?” Choi asks, as if he doesn’t have it all planned out in his head. 

“I don’t know. Is there somewhere you want to go?”

“Hm. How about the usual place, then?”

He doesn’t extend the invitation to Jaekwan.

It comes off odd, he’s sure, but the ghost doesn’t seem to realize anything. Jaekwan presses his lips together, surely catching on that Choi is up to something that he doesn’t want Jaekwan around for, but he doesn’t call him out on it.

He turns back to his screen.

“Alright,” Soleum agrees easily.

“Great! 

Jaekwan glances at him. There’s a question in his expression. A warning.

Choi shakes his head.

He doesn’t explain further.

/

The entity from the mirror isn’t particularly talkative. 

It makes sense. Neither was Kim Soleum. 

The ghost prefers to focus on his food, while Choi fills the space with idle chatter, placing grilled meat on the ghost’s plate whenever he’s about to finish his portion.

Choi talks about memories that they don’t share, about missions they haven’t been together on, about the life that he’d had with the Kim Soleum who was here before—and he watches the subtle envy in the ghost’s expression.

The ghost feigns a smile, and pretends to have been a part of all the stories that he had never been around for, with a longing, wistful look in its eyes.

He eats well. 

The real Kim Soleum had also eaten well, before… everything.

He didn’t always remember that he had to, but when food was in front of him he ate like a starved man.

The ghost in front of him is the same.

It would be easier, perhaps, if the ghost was somehow worse.

If he was cruel. If he was dangerous. If he was a version of Kim Soleum that Choi couldn’t bear to see.

But most ghosts aren’t. It’s something he’s been forced to have to come to terms with. A lot of supernatural entities aren’t cruel on purpose—they just want to live. And they end up taking down everything they have to in order to make that happen.

This ghost had wanted to be Kim Soleum—and it had done a horrifically good job of it.

He’d been kind, and brave, and good at his job, and desperate to save as many people as he could. He’d loved all of the same things and hated just as many, and he’d been happy.

He’d been content, in a way that Choi could have never made the real Kim Soleum.

But he hadn’t been real.

The one thing that he could never be.

“Should I order something else?” Choi asks.

The ghost shakes its head. “I’m good, sunbae.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Aigoo. If that's the case I didn’t even need to steal Jaekwan’s card.”

“...You stole his card?”

“Well. I borrowed it.”

Choi had no intention of using it, of course. He’d never do that to a junior. It was just fun to see the look of horror he got every time he told someone that he had.

The Kim Soleum that wasn’t Kim Soleum was no different.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been out like this, hm?” Choi says. “Just the two of us.”

“Ah? Yeah, I guess so.”

“I’ll be honest, Grapes,” Choi smiles, resting his chin on the back of his hand, still holding his chopsticks. “I really didn’t think you’d ever want to hang out with us again.”

“What?”

“You seemed done with us. And rightfully so. After what we did to each other—it was only natural that we drifted apart, wasn’t it?”

“...”

“But then you stopped resenting us. Just like that.”

Choi tilts his head, leaning in a little further.

“As if someone had turned a switch off.”

The ghost shakes its head, looking uncomfortable.

“It was a long time ago,” he says quietly. “I was tired of being upset about it.”

“You were tired of everything, weren’t you?”

“What?”

“But then you stopped. Just like that.”

Choi reaches a hand out slowly.

He pretends he doesn’t see the ghost flinch in response.

He pats the ghost on the head, like he always does. He riddles the soft hair in a way he will never get to again, once he breaks this illusion with his own hands and makes sure that this monster returns to where it belongs.

“I was so happy,” he says quietly. “When you stopped hating me.”

He’d been happy enough that he’d dared to look away from the truth, even when he knew with certainty that something was wrong.

He’d been happy enough that he’d finally just let Kim Soleum be.

He’s never made the right decision when it comes to their youngest, has he?

The ghost seems more anxious, eyes darting around the room, even as Choi ruffles his hair. Finally, he slides back in his chair, ducking out of Choi’s touch.

It’s the very first time he hasn’t leaned into it.

“I’ll be right back, sunbae,” the ghost says, setting his chopsticks down.

“Sure,” Choi says. “Take your time.”

Choi watches him go.

The ghost’s eyes dart back and forth as he hurries across the restaurant. He pushes the door to the restroom open, peering inside briefly to make sure there’s no one inside before he goes in, shutting the door behind him.

Choi sets his own chopsticks down.

It’s time to finish this.

/

“You did a good job,” Choi says.

He has his arms crossed, leaning against the wall by the door.

The ghost looks up, alarmed, at Choi’s reflection staring back at him.

There is no reflection of his own. All that stands before him is empty space.

“What?”

“You did a good job of trying to be him.”

The ghost freezes. 

From here, Choi can only see the back of his head. But he can imagine the expression on his face. It’s Kim Soleum’s face, after all.

Choi has cornered him too many times to not know what fear looks like on him.

“What do you mean?” Kim Soleum’s voice asks, tense.

“Give it up. You know I’ve got you.”

The ghost’s shoulders go rigid.

For a moment, neither of them move. There is no way for the ghost to escape, not when Choi is standing by the only exit. He’s well and truly trapped here, and he knows it. 

Still, the ghost tries to dart.

Choi grabs him as he tries to run past him. The ghost is strong. Of course—Kim Soleum had been strong. But Choi is strong too, and he drags the ghost back in by its collar, forcing him back towards the mirror that he should have never dared to escape.

“No,” the ghost says, urgent, afraid. He scratches at Choi’s arms, leaving ugly red marks. “No, no.”

“What are you saying no to? I haven’t even done anything to you.”

“Don’t send me back,” the ghost says desperately. “I can’t go back.”

“Oh?”

“He doesn’t want to come back either.”

Choi’s expression hardens.

“What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything. He just—he just didn’t want to be here. He asked me to take his place—”

Choi slams the ghost’s head into the mirror.

It gasps in pain.

“What did you do to him?” Choi repeats, voice low.

“I didn’t—I didn’t—”

“Let him back out.”

“Why?” the ghost almost wails. “Why do you want him back, I can do everything he can do, I can be better. I can be real—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Choi interrupts. His arms shake with the force needed to press his body down. The entity—the fake Kim Soleum—won’t stop struggling against his weight, even with his head slammed against the glass. “You don’t get to make that choice for him.”

“He chose this himself!” the ghost snarls. It’s almost a wild creature now, forgetting all pretense of being human in the panic of the moment. “He wanted to leave, he couldn’t stand to be here anymore—”

“And I should take your word for it? Yours?”

If Kim Soleum truly chose this, whether out of his own volition, or because of Choi—

Choi wants to hear it from him directly. Not this impostor wearing his skin.

“You’re not him.”

“I will be soon—”

“You won’t be.”

The ghost struggles against him, angrier, trying to break out of Choi’s grasp and claw at his skin. It’s getting harder to keep him down. 

Choi glances at the mirror, but it’s still empty save of his own haggard reflection. 

The real Kim Soleum doesn’t show any sign of trying to come back out.

If he’s seeing this happen in front of him and still doesn’t reach out for Choi—if he truly doesn’t want to come back—

No.

He can’t think like that.

“I did so well,” the ghost mumbles into the cracked glass. There’s blood dripping down his face, onto the marble of the counter. “I did so well. I saved people too, didn’t I? I didn’t—I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The words are cracked, broken. Choi grits his teeth. He can’t fall for a voice that sounds like his junior. This is still a dangerous entity, even if the man under his hands feels like anything but.

Choi has worked this job for too many years to still hold pity for monsters.

“You tried to take his place.”

“He wanted me to. I promised him I’d do a good job and I did—have I ever let you down? Have I—”

Choi slams his head back into the mirror to make him stop.

There’s no point in listening to any of this. Words designed to manipulate him into giving in, to lose sight of what truly matters—

The ghost lets out a pained groan. He shuts his eyes tightly, tears slipping out with the blood.

“I just wanted to live,” he mumbles. “He didn’t, so why should he—”

Choi cuts him off.

“Will you go in of your own accord?” he asks, voice sharp. 

The ghost bites his lip. Shakes his head.

Choi forces his head harder against the mirror.

It still hasn’t caved in. 

“I won’t go,” the ghost says, voice getting darker, more distressed. “And he won’t come out.”

“That’s fine,” Choi says, pulling out his jakdu. “I’ll just have to make you.”

/

The real Kim Soleum that Choi brings back from the mirror is even less of himself than he used to be.

He doesn’t wake up for a week, completely knocked unconscious by the chaos that Choi had put him through. When he does wake up, he barely talks to anyone. He looks resigned by the situation, like this sort of thing might as well happen to him at this point.

The contamination checks show that he’s doing fine. This isn’t any sort of supernatural interference.

This is just Kim Soleum, being himself.

Choi doesn’t know what to do about it.

The screams of the mirror ghost still ring in his ears. The restaurant had to be closed down temporarily until the disaster died down, and no matter how many times Choi washes his hands he can’t get rid of the feel of the blood of someone who felt just like his junior.

“Was it true?” Choi asks quietly, when he finally gets a chance to talk to him.

Soleum gives him a tired look. “What do you want me to say?”

“The truth. Was it true that you didn’t want to come back?”

Soleum looks away.

“Why would I want to come back?” he mumbles. “I didn’t have to be anyone in there.”

Choi doesn’t ask him anything else.

He doesn’t know if he can stomach the answers.

It’s Jaekwan who manages to get the story out of Kim Soleum. 

Choi’s assumption had been right—the switch had happened that day in the restaurant. And the ghost had been right too—Kim Soleum had entered willingly.

“The ghost had talked to him,” Jaekwan tells him, while he types away at his computer to avoid making eye contact. He’s filling the disaster report on Soleum’s behalf, since it might take a while before his mandated sick leave ends. “It took on the faces of several of his contaminated states, from back when he worked at Daydream—”

“Several?”

“Yes. I’m not sure what that company put him through… but he mentioned more than three. But the ghost wasn’t malicious in any way. He said it spoke to him like a friend. It told him that he looked tired, and like he needed a break. And then it offered to take his place.”

“And he just agreed—?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be permanent,” Jaekwan says quietly. “The ghost only wanted a month. One month of pretending to be human, and in the meantime, Agent Grapes could finally rest.”

“He could have just asked for a vacation,” Choi cuts in. “It’s not like we wouldn’t give him a break—”

“He told me that in the mirror, he didn’t have to bother keeping himself alive.”

Choi falls silent.

Jaekwan still doesn’t meet his eyes, but he’s no longer typing, just staring at his screen with an empty expression. “He didn’t need to eat, or talk, or move—he just had to exist. He said that was… preferable, to what he had to do in the real world.”

Choi doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“It was supposed to be one month, right?” he says at last. “What happened after that?”

Jaekwan shakes his head. “The ghost offered to switch back, but Agent Grapes didn’t want to.”

“...”

“He said the ghost did a better job of being real, and it wanted to live… so he let it take his place indefinitely.”

/

It takes a couple of weeks for the doctors to deem Kim Soleum well enough to come back to work. When he finally turns up at the Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting room, he looks like a ghost himself.

Choi keeps that description to himself.

It’s the worst thing that he could say to Kim Soleum right now.

Soleum doesn’t work that day. They assign him a couple of manuals to review for their next regular scheduled dispatch, but it’s nothing pressing—really just work for the sake of giving him work to do—and Soleum makes no move to do it.

He barely even moves.

He just sits in front of his computer, scrolling blindly on his screen. When Choi passes by his desk, he can see that his eyes haven’t moved, and that he hasn’t read a single line.

The perfect employee who had gone above and beyond what he was expected to do is gone.

Instead, there’s a shell of a person who no longer has the energy to offer any of them polite smiles because he no longer has any energy at all.

Choi leaves his drink at his desk as usual. Soleum glances towards it.

The ghost had always thanked him for it, and brightened up at the taste. 

The Kim Soleum from before had thanked him for it, but never bothered to touch it.

The Kim Soleum now doesn’t thank him. He glances at the drink, and then turns back to his screen.

“I don’t want it,” he says simply.

“You haven’t had anything to eat, either—”

“I said I don’t want it.”

Choi takes the drink away. 

The rest of the day doesn’t go by any better.

Kim Soleum doesn’t respond much to any of their attempts at conversation. He looks irritated every time Jaekwan tries to ask him how he’s doing, and almost angry whenever Choi asks if he wants to take a break. 

Choi can barely manage to meet his eyes.

It twists his heart every time he does.

But he forces himself to, because he knows exactly how wrong this could go. If they’d treated the mirror version of Kim Soleum with kindness and warmth, and kept their distance from the real one, it would only make him think that they found it easier to care about the ghost than they did to care about him.

… because the mirror ghost had been happy, and Kim Soleum couldn’t be.

But the ghost isn’t the one that Choi had learned to love. 

Kim Soleum should understand that.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t seem to register anything that Choi says to him at all.

“Grapes,” he tries, at a loss. Kim Soleum doesn’t look up. “Do you want to go home early?”

He expects Soleum to say no.

Soleum’s gaze remains fixed on his own clenched fists. They haven’t moved once from the keyboard since he sat down, and Choi can see the veins stretched across his knuckles, the faint scars stretching across his wrists, from when Choi had dug his fingers into his skin in his desperation to bring him back.

“Grapes?” he tries again. More softly, this time, to see if Soleum will stir.

If there’s anything in him that can still be moved.

There isn’t.

/

The next morning, there’s a resignation letter on Choi’s desk.

It’s formal, emotionless. As if printed off a template.

Choi files the letter wordlessly.

/

Choi doesn’t get to see Kim Soleum often after that.

Soleum barely responds to text messages. He never picks up the phone. When Choi drops by his motel, he’s usually too fast asleep to open the door, and Choi ends up hanging the meals that he buys for him on his door knob before he steps away.

On the rare days that Soleum is awake, things don’t end any better.

“Grapes,” Choi says when the door opens, as brightly as he can, because he still isn’t sure how to deal with things that he’s broken without trying to sweep the worst of it under the rug.

Kim Soleum never argues or tries to kick him out. He opens the door wider and lets him in. He looks tired, and like he hasn’t showered in a week, his hair sticking up oddly like he’d just rolled out of bed.

The motel room hasn’t been cleaned in too long.

The first few times that Choi was here, he tried to help around. He did the dishes, he threw out the trash, tried to sweep the floor—but Kim Soleum watched him with a gaze that unsettled him.

A gaze that seemed to say of course you’re unhappy with what I am.

Choi hadn’t tried to help him out after that.

Instead, he just checks on him. They don’t talk much—he can tell that Soleum is easily annoyed by his stories about work or their fellow agents. They spend most of their time in complete silence, with Soleum staring blankly at his phone, and Choi stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling as time passes.

He can’t explain why he still comes here.

It’s probably just to make sure that Soleum is alive.

To make sure that he’s alive, in one piece, and still here—and then Choi lets him keep crawling through this life that he’s made abundantly clear that he doesn’t want.

It isn’t pleasant hanging out together. There’s no longer any of the easy familiarity that they had had when they worked together so long ago. Every visit to his motel room makes Choi restless, makes him feel like he’s walking on eggshells, like one small thing will ruin this fucked up facade of half-domesticity, broken as it already is.

That he’ll mess things up further, the way he always does.

Soleum doesn’t smile around Choi, or force himself to do anything at all. The pretenses that he’d held himself together with are all long gone.

But he’s still here.

He still hasn’t left.

Choi clings to that thought like a lifeline.

Why do you want him back? the ghost had cried that day, as Choi slammed it into the mirror. I can do everything he can do.

I can be better.

I can be real.

Choi is broken out of his thoughts by Kim Soleum’s voice.

“Why do you keep coming here?”

Choi falters. 

Soleum is standing above where Choi is spread out on the couch, watching with hollow eyes. There is no affection in him, no sadness. No fatigue or anger or anything readable.

I just wanted to live, the ghost had mumbled. He didn’t, so why should he—

Choi shakes his head. “Why wouldn’t I come?”

“You don’t have to keep doing this.”

Choi laughs too quickly. “Doing what?”

“Trying to make up for something.”

“I’m not,” Choi says firmly. “I’m not.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Choi is quiet for a long time.

“Is it that bad to want to know if you’re doing okay?” he asks at last.

“I’m not doing okay,” Soleum says, voice tense.

Choi falls quiet.

“I’m not doing okay,” Soleum repeats. “That’s not going to change. You don’t have to keep coming back to check.”

“That’s not—”

“I’m not going to be like him,” Soleum says firmly. “Don’t wait for me to be.”

He shuts the door to his bedroom. He doesn’t come back out for the rest of the day.

I can be better, the ghost had said.

I just want to live.

The real Kim Soleum used to want to live too. He’d wanted to live so badly that it was breaking him.

All that Choi does is take people who are desperate to survive and then tear them apart until they no longer want to.

/

The restaurant is emptier compared to the last time Choi was here.

He hasn’t been here in a long while. The place had been shut down for a couple of weeks while the bureau tried to shut down the disaster, and after they failed they installed countermeasures to at least lessen its effects. There haven’t been any noted disappearances in this restaurant apart from Kim Soleum, and by Jaekwan’s report it really doesn’t seem like the entity had malicious intent—but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Overall, the chaos has made the place a little unpopular among the bureau agents. It took their top rookie from them after all, even if not everyone knows the story of exactly how.

The field agents had been some of the restaurant's most frequent customers, and with them gone, the place is quieter. The staff look at Choi like they resent him a little, which he can understand, but he smiles back regardless.

Once again, he places an order for galbitang, and then disappears into the bathroom.

The mirror is no longer as grimy as it used to be. It was polished clean during the bureau’s investigations, but enough time has passed that the dirt and stains are starting to show once more. 

Choi stares into his own face, dull and empty in the mirror.

“It must be difficult,” he says quietly, “being on the other side.”

Trapped, eternally, somewhere you don’t want to be.

Kim Soleum was the same. Trapped in a world that he was desperate to leave, held back because Choi kept dragging him back every time he strayed too far.

The ghost in the mirror and his junior are both too far alike.

“I’m sorry about that,” Choi says lightly. “I was just trying to protect someone I loved.”

There’s a smear on the glass that he can’t identify, overlapping with the scar across his neck.

His reflection doesn’t respond.

It shifts slightly as he moves, but always a fraction too slow, as if delayed and thinking about whether to follow.

“You still don’t deserve to take his place,” Choi says.

His reflection flickers.

It frowns, wounded and angry, despite the fact that he hasn’t changed his own expression at all.

“You were right about him not wanting to be here,” Choi admits. “But I have to hope that he’ll want to. Haha.” He pauses. “You can’t blame me for hoping, right?”

The ghost is quiet.

It looks a little sad, like it pities him.

Or maybe that’s just his own reflection.

“You don’t deserve to take his place,” he says again, pressing his hand against the mirror. “But you do deserve the chance to live.”

His reflection’s eyes go wide.

It raises its hand, hesitant, to place a shaky palm against Choi’s own. He feels the warmth of its skin, where he should only feel the cold of the glass.

Choi links his fingers with the ghost’s.

The ghost that feels far too human.

Choi has taken the lives of enough people. He’s dragged them into the depths of hell until they no longer want to come back up for air.

He couldn’t save Kim Soleum. He might never be able to.

But he could still save this creature. This strange human trapped forever, willing to be anyone if only it meant that he could be free.

“What do you think?” he says, tightening his grip on the hand in his.

The ghost squeezes back. There’s an awful hope in its eyes.

I can be better, the ghost had said before.

I can be real.

Choi has to hope that that’s true.

That the reflection that stares back at him, with a hope in its eyes that he lost long ago—can do a better job at this than he can.

“I’ll leave this to you then,” he says quietly, and tugs.

The ghost’s eyes widen as it starts to fall out.

At the same time—just as he knew he would—Choi feels himself being pulled in in its place.

/