Work Text:
If Kim Soleum knows anything, it’s that trying to type up paperwork on 0 hours of sleep is one of the most unappealing things the world has to offer.
Forget the horror stories. Forget the ghosts, or the monsters, or the visceral, spine chilling gore that has turned him into a semi-vegetarian. This—him squinting at his shitty laptop, the words on his document shifting and blurring even though he hasn’t touched the mouse, every keypad pressed feeling like a monumental act of effort—is the worst it’ll ever get.
It’s a testament to just how sleep-deprived he really is at the current moment, to be dismissing his prior fears so easily. In a normal state, he’s sure he’d be cursing himself out right now for daring to think such a thing. He’d read somewhere that having a low enough amount of sleep was equivalent to being drunk— perhaps this is the stupidity part of inebriation talking.
It’s not like he wants to be here in the Hyeonmu Team 1 meeting room at ass-o-clock in the morning typing up a bureau manual draft after the past week has given him maybe fifteen total hours of sleep, but after a full night of staring into the weird popcorn ceiling of his motel and praying futilely to let himself pass out, Kim Soleum had decided to make himself useful and get an early start to the day. These were the naive thoughts of someone still running on the adrenaline of his own nightmarish thoughts; unfortunately, that adrenaline had run out the second he’d stepped into the meeting room.
Either way, he can’t go back to the motel now and ruin his miraculously secured reputation as a stellar rookie, risking screwing up Director Ho’s project—and thus, screwing up his one chance at getting back home— by being seen as a slacker.
The one thing that switching universes hasn’t changed is the truly awful work culture, and even though Agent Choi keeps urging him to slow down and let his sunbaes handle some of the work, Kim Soleum feels bad for making two actual good people pick up his slack.
There are three cans of vending machine coffee stacked by his files, the rest piling up in the trashcan near his knee to the very top. He goes to drink from one of them, but they’re all somehow empty; he’s not sure he can trust himself to walk across the hall to procure another one without passing out midway and giving himself brain damage on the shiny office floors.
And so, the non-caffeinated sprint begins— Choi would be proud.
Everything is, somehow, infinitely worse without the familiar bitter tang of cheap coffee to carry him through it. Kim Soleum glances out the window, hoping to see another person coming into the waiting room through the hallway, but the clock on the outside wall has barely shifted.
Sunrise was— what, an hour ago? It’s unlikely either of his teammates will arrive until around 8 or 9 AM, so he’s just going to have to hold out for another hour or so.
Being around them will wake him up, for sure. Agent Bronze will probably give him that silent, concerned look, while Choi will verbally lecture him for his terrible lifestyle habits, and then they’ll collectively bully him into forwarding the report draft to them instead. At some point, Kim Soleum will be able to guilt trip them into buying him a new energy drink. Not that he can’t afford one, but his prior point about trying to avoid brain damage— well, it’ll all work out in the end.
He types a few more words, but pauses when a pop-up window appears at the centre of his laptop screen.
Bright, garish orange-and-green words blink into existence with a truly garish flashing effect that sends sharp pains ricocheting through his eyeballs and lancing into his brain. He’d thought the Disaster Management Bureau’s devices wouldn’t allow for malware or ads like this, but…
He rubs his eyes, annoyed, and looks closer at the words.
Want to free yourself from the shackles of modern working culture? Want to finally rest your weary soul?
The ugly, loopy font seems to be taunting him.
Sign up for our limited-time-only free trial run! Experience 12–48 consecutive hours of uninterrupted rest, for only half of the time! Offer ends soon!
In smaller text, below:
The free trial run will not cover the costs of any future participation with us beyond 48 hours. The event is not suitable towards beings with a body density greater than 2000 or less than 500 kilograms per square metre. We at Hypnos Inc. will not be held liable to any forms of mental, emotional, or personality deviation, permanent organ rearrangement, and/or irreversible alterations to users’ physical forms.
Kim Soleum faintly recognises the catchy words— Hypnos Inc. was one of the later entries in the Dark Exploration Records, being introduced into the canon mere weeks before he himself had been transported to this world. He doesn’t recall it being anything too dangerous, and the words do sound pretty alluring, if he’s being honest.
It doesn’t matter. Forget sleep, he needs to finish his work, damn it!
He moves the cursor to the small ‘x’ in the top right corner and clicks.
The pop-up flickers, and new text appears.
Welcome, trial user Kim Soleum!
Oh.
It was a fake ‘x’. The real one sits, much smaller, in the left corner, camouflaged behind the tacky, childish graphics. It seems like that pesky advertising trick had also carried through from his old world into this one.
Before he can react, the pop-up expands, covering up the entire screen. It doesn’t stop at the borders of his laptop, growing larger until it fills his entire vision.
Prepare! For! Your! Soul! To! Be! Rested!
Kim Soleum can barely react before he feels his whole body weakening. His vision darkens rapidly, eyelids seemingly weighing a million kilograms, and he wants to give in so, so badly…
So he does.
He passes out at his desk.
***
When Agent Choi clocks in that day, at first, their meeting room looks the way it always does.
Ryu Jaekwan is sitting at his usual spot on the couch, scrolling absently on his phone; he lifts his head and quietly greets Choi when the senior agent enters the room. Meanwhile, Grapes is passed out, face-down, at the table.
Wait, what?
Choi does a double-take, but sure enough, their rookie is actually asleep, glasses askew as his face is pressed into the keyboard of his laptop.
“…Huh?” he says without thinking. It’s loud in the odd silence of the meeting room.
Ryu Jaekwan hurriedly shushes him; he peeks back, worried, at Kim Soleum’s unconscious figure. Thankfully, the man doesn’t seem to have been woken up.
“He was like this when I came in,” Ryu Jaekwan whispers. “I think he made an early start again but fell asleep out of his control, and I wanted to let him rest. He needs it.”
Choi walks over slowly and peers down at the screen. It’s gone dark, but when he clicks with the mouse—carefully avoiding disturbing Grapes while doing so—it shows a half-finished report from their last mission.
There are a lot more spelling errors than usual, as if the person typing them couldn’t quite control their fingers. That, coupled with the number of caffeinated drinks surrounding him paints a picture of their hubae working even in an exhausted state, before he finally succumbed to his body’s needs.
In fact, Kim Soleum’s hand is still half-on the mouse, a half crooked index finger clinging onto the edge of the left button, his other hand resting on the keyboard. A steady stream of hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is being input into the document.
“Then let’s let him sleep a bit longer,” Choi whispers in reply.
He carefully pulls out the cord, disconnecting the keyboard, before quietly stepping back.
Ryu Jaekwan nods like it isn’t even a question, and the room settles back into a comfortable silence.
***
Kim Soleum opens his eyes to a dark room. For a second, he thinks he’s back at the motel— that the pop-up was a hallucination, and Ryu Jaekwan or Choi had taken him back home while he was unconscious to rest. Embarrassment flares up briefly in his chest.
However, when he looks more closely at the room around him, it seems that things aren’t as simple as they look.
The walls are cleaner than he remembers; the blankets look like they’ve been replaced with something much higher quality. Instead of the lumpy pillow with the stains that refuse to go away no matter how much bleach Kim Soleum uses, these ones are fluffier and pure white.
Aside from the slight changes, the general layout is exactly identical to his motel room.
A Darkness, then.
Despite knowing this, it all still looks… extremely appealing, if he’s being completely honest. Half his mind is screaming at him to just rest his heavy head in the warm embrace of that comfortable-looking bed. It seems that even though he’s clearly outside of the real world, his body is still in the same state of extreme fatigue, and the shock from rapidly switching locations is slowly wearing off.
The tiny crappy motel tv flickers once, twice, before a countdown appears.
47:59:59
He waits for something else to happen; surely, there’s a catch to this. But the room remains empty, no ghosts appear in the windows or from under the bed, and the countdown continues.
47:59:37
47:59:36
So, it’s actually the same ghost story he remembers. He’s somehow ended up in the hands of Hypnos Inc.’s services, typically targeted towards underpaid, overworked office workers. To think that this story, written by people in a world without ghost stories to cope with the grind-till-you-die work culture, is applicable to him even now…
The Dark Exploration Records Wiki describes this ghost story as having a moderate danger level— if users decide to stay for longer than their recommended hours, or without paying, they’ll never be able to leave the state of being asleep, their souls being trapped in the room as their real bodies die slowly.
Of course, the payment isn’t simply money: it’s something unique to each person, typically something particularly valuable to themselves personally. The Wiki lists records of eyeballs, decades’ worth of memories, and in one case, an entire village being sacrificed, all in the name of good rest.
As it was right now, while in use of their services, Kim Soleum’s body in the real world was probably in the death-like state that the company advertised, through the complete absence of a soul inhabiting it. After all, there was a reason the company was named after the mythological god of sleep, the twin brother of death.
While his death would only become confirmed and permanent if he refused to pay, right now he was—probably—still alive, or at least something adjacent to that. However, in this case, didn’t the pop-up say this was a completely free offer? A limited-time trial period means he shouldn’t need to pay in the first 48 hours, right?
And, would you look at that, his eyelids are already fluttering shut again. He doesn’t remember at which point he’d crossed the room and fallen onto the bed, but the blankets are already shifting on their own to cover him, the pillows fluffing up beneath his head. Vaguely, he realises they’ve changed out his navy Disaster Management Bureau jacket and uniform pants into cotton pyjamas, and his glasses seem to have been magically teleported onto the nightstand.
The lights switch off automatically.
For the second time in five minutes, Kim Soleum falls asleep.
***
While Choi is all for letting his hubaes be comfortable in the workplace, it’s a bit much to be sleeping for five hours in a row on the job, no?
Lunch is as good a time as any to wake Grapes up, he and Ryu Jaekwan have agreed on. That way, he can still have roughly an hour to readjust before work starts, eat something to regain his energy, and then start their next mission with a fully recharged battery.
“Hey, Grapes-ie,” Choi says, lightly shaking his hubae's much too thin shoulder.
Head still mashed into his keyboard, Kim Soleum does not respond.
Choi feels really bad for this; even months into settling into the Disaster Management Bureau, he’s never seen Grapes come into work not looking completely exhausted. Breaking his sleep now that he’s finally achieved it seems unnecessarily cruel— but, no, he has to steel himself and be a firm sunbae.
“Grapes?” He tries again, this time shaking more vigorously.
There’s still no response.
Which— is odd. He’s using a considerable amount of force, and Choi definitely can’t be considered a physically weak person.
In fact, in the rare occasions where Kim Soleum had napped in their meeting room before this, he’d always woken up after the slightest sounds, such as a door being closed too heavily or footsteps in the halfway. Hence why he and Ryu Jaekwan have been trying so hard to stay completely quiet this whole time.
To think that somebody fully shaking him isn’t eliciting a single response… Choi feels the seeds of trepidation begin to take root in his gut.
“Hey, it’s lunch time. Come on, let’s go. Hello?”
Ryu Jaekwan pauses in the doorway, glancing back with a frown. Choi looks up at him, then down to Kim Soleum, then pats his shoulder more roughly.
This time, it’s enough to make his whole torso shift, jostling in place but coming to a still when Choi lifts his hand with an apprehensive kind of bewilderment.
Again, silence. Grapes’ face remains glued to the table.
“Is he sick?” Ryu Jaekwan asks, confused.
“Ah, he must be,” Choi decides. “Let’s get this one to the infirmary—”
Bracing his hands against Kim Soleum’s frame, he flips him over to check on his head, just in case. He doesn’t really know what he’s expecting— a fever, or a nosebleed, something along those lines.
It is not a fever.
When he lifts his neck gently, Soleum's face flops to the side with little resistance, and—
Choi freezes.
Kim Soleum’s eyes are hollow, half-lidded; in the back of his mind, Choi briefly thinks of the eyes of fish on ice at the market. The normally vibrant red-black glint of his irises has dulled to a murky zircon, and below them are dark circles the size of cups. His mouth is left slightly agape, a vacant expression on his face.
He looks…
Well, he looks dead.
A beat. Choi is unmoving, or in other words, can’t seem to make himself move. It’s odd because he can’t remember the last time he’s done that, genuinely frozen in pure terror, not since his rookie days. Between fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, he usually just finds himself cycling through the other three options, but it seems something has changed.
His grip loosens in his shock, and Kim Soleum’s body—body? Not him, just his body? No, that can’t be right—falls, limp, out of the chair, and crashes into the floor.
“What—”
That’s Ryu Jaekwan talking. Choi blinks, and his hubae is kneeling by Kim Soleum’s side, frantically checking over him. A hand, slightly shaking, is held up to the pale wrist, then the neck, then, in desperation, Ryu Jaekwan leans down and presses his ear against Soleum’s chest.
“…Grapes?”
Choi’s voice sounds brittle, even to himself. He crouches down too, and places two fingers just above Kim Soleum’s upper lip. It’s right below his nose, and he should be feeling soft puffs of breath on his hand, but—
“Agent,” Ryu Jaekwan says. Choi barely hears it.
—but, there’s nothing.
“Sunbae, I can’t— feel a pulse,” he admits. “Or a heartbeat. I can’t hear it anywhere, I— I think he’s—”
Ah, shit.
***
Somehow, their hubae seems to have spontaneously passed away.
Which— what? How?
Sudden heart attack? Poisoning? There are countless cans of energy drinks and coffee scattered around Grapes’ body, in the trashcan and on the table, and that’s a lot of samples they’ll have to take.
But then, but then after they take the samples, what will change? He’s still going to be just as… what the actual fuck, he’s still going to be just as dead.
Choi is still holding onto Grapes’ hand. Earlier, it was to check for a nonexistent pulse, even after Ryu Jaekwan determined there to be none, but now he can’t seem to make himself let go. The skin is cooler than he’d expected, soft to the touch. Kim Soleum has always had icy hands and skin in general, while Choi runs hot naturally; he remembers teasing their youngest just last week about being cold-blooded, like a lizard. Kim Soleum had flinched, not at the teasing, but at being compared to a lizard—weird—before making a vague excuse about the Dokkaebi flame arm and air conditioning.
But, of course he’s cold now, he’s… well.
They have to— what is he going to do? They need to move him, right? Somewhere safe, somewhere like a final resting spot? What, a funeral? Did Grapes ever specify what type he wanted in his employee contract, cremation or a standard burial, closed or open casket?
Fuck this, genuinely fuck—
A sudden, stinging pain erupts on the right side of his face.
Choi blinks. Ryu Jaekwan is suddenly much closer to him than he remembers. He seems to have climbed over Grapes’ body to slap his face.
“Get it together,” he hisses.
What an odd, out of character thing for him to do.
“He’s—” Choi starts. His breath is short.
“Agent, please, get it together. Look. Look at him. What do you see?”
“…a body? Jaekwan, what do you—”
“Yes, a body. But not a dead one. Agent, if he’s been like this since this morning, if not longer, shouldn’t he have entered rigor mortis by now? It’s been at least five or six hours, and yet his body is still malleable, not stiff like it should be.”
And— Ryu Jaekwan’s right.
Choi glances down at Kim Soleum’s hand in his, and squeezes again. It isn’t the skin of a corpse of several hours, but the skin of a normal human being. It’s slightly paler than his usual skintone, the veins of his wrist more prominent than they should be, but it’s certainly leagues away from how corpses feel.
His judgement seems to have been impaired by the shock of seeing Kim Soleum in this state. That doesn’t really make sense; he’s seen countless teammates over the years suffer the same fate—often worse ones, too, slow and painful deaths at the hands of genuinely terrifying supernatural creatures—so why is this one so different?
He’s lying, by the way. Choi knows why his judgement has become so skewed, panicked beyond simple logic or reason. He knows why this particular hubae with cold hands and suspicious background is so different to him than all the others.
Agent Choi is a fool.
He clears his throat and drops the hand. Ryu Jaekwan’s examining him with an expression that a less charitable man would call pity.
“This must be the work of a Disaster, then,” Choi says.
Hopefully, his voice sounds as firm as he’s trying to force it to be. He doubts it.
It’s the kind of thing Kim Soleum would notice immediately; Choi can already see the look he would shoot at him, the flash of timid, cautious worry behind his oversized glasses. Instead, all he gets is the stark emptiness in his hubae's lifeless eyes, gazing blankly at the ceiling.
“It’s like his consciousness is elsewhere,” he continues, shaking himself out of it. Brain, please come back online, thank you. “Most Disasters only make you fall asleep, but this one seems like it’s taken his whole being…”
Ryu Jaekwan nods assuredly. “Wherever he’s gone, we need to get him back.”
***
It’s a lot easier said than done.
Neither of them have any idea what caused Kim Soleum to end up like this. When Choi checks the security footage, it looks like he’d simply fallen asleep at his desk, with nothing out of the ordinary appearing on the cameras. They do a room-wide, and then department-wide check; nothing is wrong. When all else fails, they try taking samples from the drinks around him, but that, too, produces no results.
The afternoon mission is, of course, cancelled. After moving his unconscious body over to the couch, the two senior agents attempt to fall asleep themselves, hoping to end up in the same location as wherever Kim Soleum’s… mental self (?) is.
Nothing happens, beyond just an ordinary nap.
“…At least he doesn’t seem to be getting any worse,” Ryu Jaekwan reasons.
They were both woken up by a passing agent from another team who, upon seeing the entire Hyeonmu Team 1 asleep in their waiting room, came in to check on them out of concern.
Choi pokes at his face. Earlier, he’d closed Grapes’ eyelids— it was creepy, the death-like appearance. Now it just looks like he’s resting; without his usual stressed-out, anxious expression, Kim Soleum looks much younger than he realised. Peaceful, almost.
“We should trust him, right? Grapes-ie here always knows how to get out of situations like these, even if he’s alone.”
It’s a shallow argument and he knows it. They’re both much too aware of how reckless their youngest is when dealing with Disasters, no doubt a result of his mysterious past at Baekilmong coupled with his painfully selfless personality. And that’s with either one of them accompanying him to reign his impulses in— alone, Choi doesn’t even want to imagine what kind of scenarios Kim Soleum will get himself into.
“That’s the best we can do,” Ryu Jaekwan agrees reluctantly. The corners of his eyes are tight; Choi shares the sentiment. “Let’s just monitor his condition for the next few hours and see if anything changes.”
***
Despite the supernatural nature of their specific duties, like most other civil service jobs, they clock off at 5 PM.
Or, rather, they should have clocked off at 5 PM. Instead, Choi and Ryu Jaekwan both agree to stay longer and wait for Grapes to wake up.
The report was finished hours ago. Practically every applicable Disaster prevention tactic in the book has been tried. At some point, Ryu Jaekwan spent two hours reorganising their file cabinet in order to distract himself, while Choi has delegated his time, much less productively, to silently spiralling and racking his brain for ideas. His hand doesn’t leave their hubae's unmoving wrist the entire time.
7 PM rolls around, and then 8, and still, nothing changes. The building slowly empties out until, aside from the three of them, there are only a few other employees still milling around the place.
“We can’t leave him here,” Choi finally breaks the silence.
Ryu Jaekwan looks up from his book, bleary-eyed. “…My roommate will be pissed if I bring home the Destruction King Rookie in this state. He’s a bit of a fan.”
“Nah, I was planning on taking him back to my place anyway,” Choi assures him with a smile. “Of course, as the most senior agent, I’ll look after our Grapes-ie in his time of need… go home, Jaekwan-ah. Don’t worry too much, okay? I’ll call you if something happens.”
And so, they transport Kim Soleum down to the company carpark, securing him horizontally in the back seat of his car. It’s a bit like taking back furniture parts from the store; he buckles down all three seatbelts across Grapes’ calves, torso, and shoulders. Ryu Jaekwan waves goodbye in the windshield mirror with an odd look on his face that Choi can’t quite decipher.
Carrying the body, however, feels less like hauling wood planks and more like he’s actively kidnapping someone. He’s shifted Kim Soleum onto his back, and carries him piggyback-style into his apartment unit so it doesn’t look too incriminating, avoiding all eye contact with his neighbours as he waits for the elevator. Curse him for choosing to live on the tenth floor.
“Ah, he’s had too much to drink,” he explains sheepishly, when the old lady from floor 8 looks at them weirdly.
“You youths are too fickle with your health,” she tuts in response, shaking her head. “Tell your friend that even if he’s young, he shouldn’t be doing this to himself. These habits will only end up hurting him in the end.”
Choi wants to scream his agreement, but wants his neighbours to think he’s sane even more, so he just smiles genially and nods.
His apartment isn’t that big. He can’t let it be; working at the Disaster Management Bureau offers decent pay, but living anywhere too spacious has only ever made him feel more lonely. With Kim Soleum still balanced carefully on his back, Choi considers, for a moment, where he should put him.
The sofa is too short, and he’s felt the neck cramps it causes first-hand, so that’s out of the question. But the apartment is a one-bedroom, which means Kim Soleum will have to sleep on his bed. With him. That’s… a thought he will have to unpack later.
The double bed will be a tight fit with two grown men on it, but he’s slept in worse conditions before. Choi tucks his junior agent in, carefully removing his jacket and shoes, and checks for a pulse one final time. Still nothing; he hopes desperately that he and Ryu Jaekwan haven’t succumbed to some sort of shared psychosis or Contamination, that he hasn’t just tucked the decaying corpse of their hubae into his own bed.
There isn’t much to say about Choi’s nighttime routine. He cooks dinner for two, just in case Kim Soleum wakes up. He checks for a pulse. He takes a shower, does the laundry, clears out the trash. He checks for a pulse.
And then, before he realises it, it’s already midnight.
“Grapes?” Choi asks from his side of the bed.
It’s a lost cause. He knows this. Whatever state of limbo Kim Soleum is currently in, he certainly hasn’t been able to hear or feel anything Choi or Ryu Jaekwan have tried in the past entire day, and he certainly won’t hear anything Choi says now. And yet, he can’t seem to stop trying.
“Grapes, you… ah, we really need you to wake up, okay?”
He’s done his best to keep a respectable distance between them, but Choi isn’t exactly a small person; they’re shoulder-to-shoulder on his slightly too narrow bed, though it’s not uncomfortable, either. He’ll have to get a larger bed for next time, he thinks, and then wants to pull his own hair out for even thinking about there being a next time.
His hand is positioned, gingerly, on Kim Soleum's, once again— to check for a pulse, of course. So he can feel when Kim Soleum comes back. There are no ulterior motives here, he certainly isn’t fulfilling a several-months-long desire to hold his hand, he is a completely and utterly HR–abiding senior. Yep.
It truly defies logic, how suddenly and deeply Kim Soleum has managed to worm his way into Choi’s… he won’t say heart, but, well. An organ somewhere adjacent. His liver, maybe. This is the same person who he’s fairly sure is only working with them to spy for Baekilmong, with his shady job background, suspicious abilities, and a level of awareness and knowledge that goes far beyond what he should be capable of. Everywhere Choi turns in his investigation, another ten red flags appear; everywhere Choi turns, another ten reasons for why Kim Soleum is a rare, genuine, good person appear.
He glances over at Kim Soleum. Centimetres away, his face is lit dimly by the nightstand lamp. It strikes him for the second time that day just how peaceful he looks, in this state. The gentle slope of his fine features; the face of a traitor.
“I need you to wake up, okay?”
And maybe then, he’ll be shaken out of whatever emotional predicament he seems to have fallen into. Or something like that. Choi’s nothing if not an optimist.
***
Kim Soleum wakes up.
And then realises he hasn’t actually woken up.
Immediately, he registers the room around him to be some sort of alternate variation of his motel room, and as he regains his bearings, the memories from however long ago flood back to him.
The suspicious, definitely Darkness related pop-up. Him being sucked into it. Falling asleep for…
Alarmed, he looks up towards the motel television
01:19:50
01:19:49
But— but, when he came in, it’d shown 48 hours, right? Yes, it definitely had, which means he’s been asleep for the past two days!?
How is that even possible? Don’t humans die from thirst after three days? Is he currently two-thirds the way to death? Well, his throat doesn’t feel that dry, and it’s not like he hasn’t been closer… anyways!
He scrambles out of the bed.
This… Hypnos Inc. Of course. A limited-time offer, unfiltered rest for the soul for half the time in the real world, the advertisement had said. That makes sense— given this is a sleep-related Darkness of high enough power to invoke the name of a god of sleep himself, it’s no wonder Kim Soleum’s been knocked out for 47 continuous hours.
But, his mind furiously racing, he remembers the rest of what the Dark Exploration Records said about Hypnos Inc.’s services. Potentially deadly consequences, users’ souls being transported to another realm. In the real world, entering a death-like state, similar to the effects of Snow White’s Apple.
Actually… on that matter, hadn’t he fallen asleep at the Disaster Management Bureau to begin with? He’d been in the waiting room, typing up report drafts, before he was rudely kidnapped, which means…
Agent Bronze and Choi definitely think he’s dead.
No, they’re smarter than that. Surely, they have to be. Kim Soleum feels his back erupt in cold sweat at the thought of reentering the real world, only to find himself on an autopsy table with a power saw hovering mere centimetres above his torso… it’s a cliche he’s seen countless times, much too suitable for this ghost story world he’s currently living in.
Oh, fuck this.
Filled with a sudden vigor, he changes back into his clothes at the speed of light, shoves his glasses on, and all but sprints towards the door. The Dark Exploration Records have no listed negative harmful effects to ending the experience early, so he should be fine to leave with an hour left on his clock.
He pulls open the door.
Hello, trial user Kim Soleum!
Kim Soleum winces. The pop-up is back, hovering in the empty black space beyond his door where he should be seeing the hallway. He’d neglected this earlier, being in a sleep-deprived state that lacked the ability of critical thinking, but the fact that this Darkness was powerful enough to know his name from the get-go… it was all sorts of off.
Would you like to terminate your experience? Please select the corresponding answer below.
Yes / No
… And the use of the word ‘terminate’, with all those connotations… it’s too much…
Would you like to terminate your experience? Please select the corresponding answer below.
[Yes] / No
The pop-up flickers.
Thank you for staying with us, trial user Kim Soleum! We hope you enjoyed this premium plan! Your experience will be terminated immediately!
The room around him wobbles, suddenly unstable. The walls glitch in and out of existence, floorboards loosening beneath him—
***
—and Kim Soleum wakes up.
For real, this time.
He doesn’t recognise this new location, but it doesn’t stop him from deflating in sheer relief. Because, at the very least, the room around him doesn’t look like a hospital or morgue.
The ad had said half the time, which means it’s been roughly 24 hours, so he supposes his seniors must have moved him at some point to a more secure location. Which is great, and certainly more than he’d expected; he’d mostly been praying to be back in Hyeonmu's waiting room. Wherever this is… well.
“Whuh…”
A voice, low and scratchy from sleep. One that he recognises all too well.
Kim Soleum glances down to see the bewildered face of Agent Choi peering up at him. Up at him, from where he’s laying on the same bed Kim Soleum’s currently sitting up on. Which means they have been, for whatever reason, sharing a bed. What the hell did he miss?
Choi’s face lights up.
“Grapes! You’re—”
And then turns a brilliant red.
“—ah.”
Choi quickly drops his hand—why had he been holding his hand to begin with????—and clambers out of the bed, rubbing his eyes as he straightens his clothes. They’re loose and casual, an oversized sleeping shirt and shorts, something Kim Soleum’s never seen him wear before.
Moreover, what’s even weirder is the apparent nervousness; Agent Choi does not fidget.
“Um, this— is my house. I didn’t expect... oh, shit, wait, what do you— are you okay?”
And yet, he’s smoothing down his shirt, fiddling with his fingers, stuttering the words out as he says them.
Whatever. Kim Soleum will chalk this up to the impacts of the Darkness. Or maybe just nerves at a coworker being in someone’s house for the first time. Either reason is equally valid.
“Why am I in your house?” he can’t help but ask.
Choi crosses his arms, immediately shifting to lecturing-sunbae mode. “I don’t know, Grapes, maybe you should answer my question first. Are you okay? And, why were you dead?”
Oh, god. If Kim Soleum doesn’t get a handle on this now, who knows how long Choi will go on for?
“I wasn’t dead, just—”
“Not breathing? Without a heartbeat, completely unresponsive?” Choi counts off with his fingers as he lists them.
“...I’m fine now, though.”
He pauses, and sighs. “Soleum-ah, if you saw yourself, you’d understand where I’m coming from. It was… if Jaekwan wasn’t there, I’d already be planning your funeral, haha…”
Neither of them laugh.
Choi clears his throat. “It was a Disaster, right? I’m just— you’re sure you’re okay? I can get you to the infirmary or Elder Hongrim if you need it?"
"I don't need to see a doctor."
"You’re sure you're not injured?" He tilts his head, skeptical. "Should I check for Contamination?”
“Really, I’m fine, sunbae,” Kim Soleum says, stumbling out of the bed himself.
He reaches for his glasses, pulls his uniform jacket back on over his crumpled shirt. The wrinkles refuse to go away when he smoothes them down several times, so he leaves it alone for now.
“That’s good, that’s good,” Choi smiles half-heartedly. It’s a world away from his usual cheery grin, which he seems to realise, as he coughs into his fist and quickly changes the topic. “Anyway! You’re awake now. And you’re also in my house. That's… I’m gonna get ready, and then I’ll get breakfast started. Stay put, okay?”
He rushes to the bathroom. Over the sound of running water, Kim Soleum can hear him talking to Agent Bronze over the phone.
The apartment around him is surprisingly bare. There are a few framed photos of Choi with various people—he sees Bronze more than once amongst the strangers. It’s strange, seeing just how… human, he supposes, Choi is. So ordinary, in some aspects, when in most others he is above and beyond.
The water shuts off, and Choi’s out, a whirlwind of flustered movement.
“Grapes, feel free to use— anything, I guess?” he calls out. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the cabinet, and the bathroom, it’s all yours, I’m just gonna…”
And, in a blink, he’s moved on to the kitchen.
***
Over breakfast, Kim Soleum explains what had actually happened.
He glosses over a few things— namely, the potential dangers of the Darkness, the degree of sleep deprivation he’d been at before it’d happened, etc. Choi listens with rapt attention, interrogating him about the fine details until he’s finally satisfied.
“It was a benign Disaster, then?” he prods, through a mouthful of rice.
“Yes, sunbae. I’m sorry I scared you, but I’m completely fine. In fact, I’m probably in a better physical condition than before.”
Choi’s giving him that look again, the one where his eyes glint cobalt, bright and electric, searching his face like it’s a treasure map. It's not lost on Kim Soleum how Choi hasn't taken his eyes off him throughout this whole conversation, as if he's expecting him to drop dead on the spot again.
“You did,” he says. Whatever he sees on Kim Soleum’s expression, it seems to be satisfactory. “Scare us, I mean. I’ve told Jaekwan that you’re awake, so he’ll be a bit fussy too when we get to work, haha. Other than that…”
“Yes?”
“Our Grapes,” Choi sighs, with the air of a man much older than his actual early-thirties. “Grapes, my dearest, most favourite hubae. You cannot go to work looking like that.”
…What?
Kim Soleum looks down self-consciously, and… ah. He’s kind of right. There's the coffee stain from yesterday morning, when his hands were too unsteady to hold up his cup properly, and the material itself looks to be more wrinkle than cloth. God knows why his uniform shirt is so creased after 24 hours of unconsciousness— what had Agent Bronze and Choi been doing to him, while he was out? He can already imagine it, them toting his body around from location to location like delivery haulers…
“Is it okay if we stop by my home before work, then? I'll pick up a new shirt and maybe take a shower.”
Choi’s face twists in displeasure when he says home. Even though it's been weeks since he found out, he clearly hasn’t moved on from the fact that Kim Soleum has been living in a tiny motel.
“We might be late if we take a detour. What I was going to say is, why don’t you just borrow one of mine?”
***
It’s slightly too big for him. Of course it is; Choi is a bit taller, a bit wider, with a bit (a lot, let’s be real) more muscle mass.
Choi doesn’t really notice it, but— well, the Disaster Management Bureau is full of gossips. They see their favourite Destroyer King rookie, already a hot topic in the group chats, come to work in the same car as his senior agent, wearing a shirt that’s a little too big for him but would be a perfect fit for that same senior…
Ryu Jaekwan’s been showing him the messages non-stop. Maybe Choi should be glad he’s finally rubbed off on his pedantic hubae enough to give him a sense of humour, but now, he’s sort of regretting it. Apparently, one of the more observant agents had somehow managed to sniff out the specific scent and brand of Kim Soleum's shampoo, as well as the fact that it was an exact match to Choi's, which, of course, has not helped at all with the rumours.
He’s just grateful that, at the very least, Grapes seems fully oblivious.