Work Text:
Three months later, Kim Soleum still flinches at the sound of bells.
As the last customer presses open the glass doors of the bakery’s exit, his hands fist tightly at the cheerful ringing of the bell-like windchimes hanging above. The sharp sting of uneven crescents dug into his palms, excavated by the dozens of repeated grooves that messily mark his flesh, helps gather the hazy wisps of thoughts in his mind and grounds them to the present.
Forcefully, Soleum relaxes his shoulders.
“Good work,” his younger brother remarks, striding over to the glass doors and flipping around its Open sign. Sitting down heavily behind the register, Soleum tiredly props his chin on his hand, watching his brother move with half-lidded eyes. His brother, Soleum finds, is shorter than he’d remembered. There is less fat in his cheeks, and his eyes shine brighter than they did in his memories.
Has his brother’s gait always been like that, Soleum wonders? Has his younger brother always carried himself like this, steps brisk with confidence and shoulders set with pride? Two years of grasping at tendrils of smoke of a forgotten, nonexistent memory has fogged up his brother’s image with a thick layer of condensation. Soleum wipes at the image carefully, tenderly, methodically restoring it with the brushstrokes he’d once known and painting on details he hadn’t. Take the calluses on his brother’s fingertips that he would never have noticed Before for instance, or the bulkier frame dressing his brother’s silhouette.
Or, as of the immediate present, the determined concern in his younger brother’s eyes as he marches up to Soleum.
Soleum blinks up slowly at his brother, brow raised in a wordless question. His brother squints back at him, tilting his head this way and that. Black hair sweeps across into his eyes at the motion. Soleum imagines that if an outsider were to glance upon this scene, they would say something along the lines of: goodness, he does look rather similar to you, doesn’t he?
But there are only two people left to linger in the quiet bakery. “Stay with me tonight,” his younger brother finally says, his tone booking no room for argument.
Soleum raises an eyebrow. “You sure? Our parents still have room for me if necessary.”
“Not just for tonight,” his younger brother declares like a fact, his shoulders set in a serious slant that has Soleum on edge. “Stay with me in Budang-gu for at least a week. Don’t go back just yet.”
Soleum squints at him. “I’m employed. I have to go back to work on Monday,” he says dryly. Work, for the first time in three years, does not refer to insane gambles with his life itself, nor does it even remotely entail the notion of death. Work is easy. Work is comfortable. Work is, at last, safe.
But that memo has clearly not revealed itself to his brother. “You,” his brother announces grandly, jabbing a thumb towards him, “need a break.”
Soleum frowns, ready to protest – he’d say his entire life upon returning back home has been a break, actually – but his brother barrels on past his preemptive words of objection with a single-target overwhelming determination that makes Soleum’s brows raise wryly like his brother is him and he is a Darkness. “Don’t argue with me. You look completely exhausted in a very concerning way, okay? I don’t know what happened to you recently, but you need a break. So take some time off work and stay with me for a few days.”
If this was Before, the situation would probably have gone something along the lines of this: Soleum would pull at his younger brother’s cheek with an unimpressed stare, drawling out a dryly delivered playful scolding about his little brother talking back to him, but ultimately denying the request due to the important meeting he has scheduled that week.
But this is After, and this is how it goes: Soleum’s hand twitches in an urge to pinch his younger brother’s cheek but ultimately abandons its motion, falling uselessly back down to his side. Playful words get swallowed by a sudden wave of exhaustion that makes itself known at his brother’s request, a weakly delivered rejection due to the important meeting he has scheduled that week taking its place instead.
“Listen to yourself,” his brother says, hands on hips. “Can you honestly tell me that you’re alright?”
How rude! To continuously badger a performer after multiple polite rejections is rather unseemly, is what an outsider might have said upon this scene. But the wave of sudden exhaustion has now blanketed Soleum’s shoulders, weighing them down. “I’m the most alright I have been in a while,” he says truthfully.
“That’s even more worrying.” His brother leans down towards him, and he has to bite his tongue at the fiery concern in his brother’s eyes. “Brother. Work isn’t all there is to life, and it isn’t worth sacrificing your health over. Or if there’s something else going on, you should take a break from it as well. Isn’t this the best place to recuperate? Here, at home?”
Every remaining word of protest dies an immediate death on Soleum’s tongue. He stares up at his brother like his arm has been cut off.
He’s home. Soleum is home. Isn’t this the very place he has been fighting to get back to for over two years? He swallows, throat suddenly thick with clouded-up longing. Home is what he spent two years risking fates worse than death for, and home is what he’s finally achieved.
“Okay,” Soleum says helplessly. His younger brother’s lips curve into a satisfied smile, and Soleum’s heart settles somewhat at the sight.
The next day, his brother leaves the bakery to his employees and drags Soleum out to the city streets. Soleum hasn’t been back in his hometown except for the weekend right after returning, in which he mostly slept the trip away and had been far too exhausted to properly enjoy the trip. Now, his brother pulls him to places from their childhood: to the restaurant near their childhood house or to the playground they’d always play at or even to the karaoke his brother always loved. Soleum grimaces at the quality of his voice as his brother cackles at him, and tries not to think about how the last time he’d sung in a painted scroll with a wolf and a tiger in their midst.
“All I’m saying,” his brother says with a pointed pinch of his brows as they walk along the street that evening, “is that if you hadn’t tattled back then, I would have totally crushed it.”
“Sure, sure,” Soleum replies airily, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his hoodie. “It’s called being a good older brother, but you wouldn’t be able to understand that even if you wanted to.”
Sputters of indignant protest leave his brother’s lips, making Soleum smirk lightly. It’s rather refreshing, and almost unnatural, to be able to be as blunt as he’d like just as Before, instead of having to maintain the polite veneer of a corporate mask that has settled into the cracks of his bones over two years.
He’s just about to reply back when he sees it. The words on his tongue die a pitiful death.
To their side, dyed in the orange of the dying sun, a smattering of claw crane machines dot the nearby alleyway. Off-beat music blares from each device, colourful lights flashing into a dizzying kaleidoscope. And in the machine closest to the mouth of the alleyway, a mountain of pink bunny keychains lies sprawled in a claustrophobic heap, each with a little black bowtie tied around their necks.
Soleum’s mouth goes dry.
His brother stops as well, and follows his line of sight. “... Huh? Plushies? Since when were you into that type of thing?”
He could walk away right now.
Soleum could agree with his brother, face back forward, and simply walk away. He’d spent so long running away from it all, and it would be rather stupid to cling to reminders of his darkest days. Or, even worse, if he’d potentially– potentially been followed.
That’s a horrifying thought, one that has his heartbeat picking up and his fists clenching. He wants nothing to do with such a possibility. Soleum moves to turn on his heel and continue on forward.
He steps into the alleyway instead.
“It’s rather cute,” Soleum says with his gift of a voice that betrays nothing of how he feels. His brother folds his arms but doesn’t stop him as he takes out a paper note with only the barest of trembling in his fingers, and inserts it into the machine.
The cheerful music switches up its track. Happy, 8-bit music clashes noisily with the sound from the other machines as Soleum deftly jostles the joystick to align the claw through the dusty glass with the topmost plushie.
He presses down on the button. The claw makes its way down, and closes in over the head of the plushie. If the plushie could talk, it would probably say something along the lines of: Be more careful, please! This cotton body is rather delicate…
His heart lifts as the claw pulls the rabbit up– then plummets as it drops it back down, the claw depositing empty hopes into the hole. The plushie tumbles all the way down to the bottom of the pile.
“...” Soleum lets out a small huff, before reaching into his wallet to pull out another note.
Thirteen notes and thirteen button presses later, Soleum’s brows are knitted together in concentration, sweat lining his temple. His brother shifts from foot to foot, obviously bored. “Is it really that serious? You can just buy one online if you really want one.”
How could Soleum ever begin to explain what this means to him? His thoughts fail even himself, the words he typically strings together so easily falling into jumbled heaps of letters in the murky depths of his brain. His tongue sits heavy and thick at the bottom of his mouth, and it’s all he can do to shake his head mutely before pressing on the button once again–
–The claw grabs hold of the bunny’s head and does not let go. Soleum lets out a shaky sigh of relief as the pink bunny keychain is dropped unceremoniously into the hole, congratulatory music blasting into the alleyway. Pushing past the plastic panel, he reaches delicately into the machine. His fingers close around soft cotton and he gingerly pulls out his prize.
It is, indeed, a pink bunny keychain. Soleum balances it on his hand and runs a thumb over its body. Its fur is cheap and a little plasticky; its bowtie is glued on and its tag describing its make is completely legible; but its size and weight feel awfully, terribly familiar in the palm of Soleum’s hand.
“Congrats,” his brother claps sardonically, clearly eager to get a move on. “Has work truly hit you this hard, brother?”
But Soleum’s breathing a little more easily. The keychain isn’t as terrible as he had feared, nor does it do anything terrifying and supernatural, such as the ludicrous act of moving by itself. Its weight, he finds, feels more comforting than anything, an emotion that surprises even himself.
Soleum runs his thumb over the head of the plushie once more, then tucks it safely in his hoodie’s pocket. “Yeah, maybe. Come, let’s get dinner. I’ll pay.”
What a touching reunion between brothers! Is what an outsider might have said if looking upon the scene. The bunny keychain weighs pleasantly in his pocket, the tinny sound of the metal keychain knocking against its chain jingling cheerfully with each step he takes.
They have dinner, then take the subway back home. Soleum keeps a close eye on the sign the entire way back. He almost exclusively takes the bus these days, and sitting on the seats of the subway has his skin crawling on edge, his nerves alight with each jolt of the train.
But they make it back safely. There’s no hijacking, or nonexistent destinations, or weird station names. There’s only the sprawling night sky above him, and the fresh air whipping at his hair.
The two of them stop at a convenience store on the way back to stock up on a few snacks. His brother catches him staring at a row of cigarette boxes.
“Thought you quit,” his brother remarks curiously.
The keychain seems to weigh heavily in his pocket. Oh dear, a startling return to previous vices!
Soleum hums in reply, hand reaching out to brush a knuckle against the plastic, then drops it.
“I did,” he says simply, and turns away.
That night, he sleeps on a mattress in his brother’s living room again. The next day, the two of them go cycling, on Soleum’s tentative request. Soleum has always been someone who’s enjoyed cycling here and there, so his brother easily agrees without much thought.
Greenery passes by peacefully as the two of them cycle along a trail. Soleum’s eyes, fixed to the road ahead, occasionally drift down to his arms trailing the length to the handlebars in front of him.
Even after three months, he’s still unused to their lack of muscle. It’s the same as Before, obviously, but he hadn’t even realised how much bulkier he’d gotten During it all, until he fought his way back to After and realised that he had much less mass than he was used to. It’s a culmination of all hundreds of these little things that keeps him off balance still – things he had no use to think about and things he never would have expected. Like this lack of muscle mass that makes him feel almost wrong in this body.
Soleum flexes his grip on the handlebars. He teeters between wondering if he was delusional, sometimes, and knowing with crystalline certainty that it was very much real, at other times. Today is the latter. The muscles that have held his memory of somersaults and cartwheels on bicycles might have been carved out of his body, but his mind tells him clearly the number of degrees his wrists would have to turn, the amount of force his arms would have to exert, the angle of his moment and the shift of his body weight to launch the bicycle into the air in a controlled arc.
He deliberates on trying it then and there, but the unfamiliarity of his muscles would likely lead to him tumbling in over his head. Glancing at the pink bunny keychain wrapped in a handkerchief riding happily on the small holster by the handlebars, its fur swept back by the wind as it looks out into the world, Soleum flicks its ears with his thumb before turning his eyes back onto the road.
What a pleasant ride! This seat could be more comfortable, but a good guest appreciates the effort nonetheless, is what Soleum would think it would say. The bunny would fall onto the ground if he attempted a flip with his bicycle, and he cannot afford for that to happen.
The wind whistles in Soleum’s ears. Nature blends together in a blur. It’s peaceful, so very peaceful, and Soleum thinks he should feel at ease right about now. He’s pretty sure this is a situation where his tensed muscles should relax, where he should be able to take a deep breath and feel the fresh air strain painfully at the confines of his lungs before letting it all out in a cathartic sigh, but the strain in his shoulders seem set in a permanent angle and the uneasiness in his body has seeped into his blood; it should be natural, it should be normal – but he only knows how to be anything but, only knows how to live with terrors chasing his frantic footsteps.
And so he cycles on in a steady path with slender arms and tensed muscles. A glance to his side shows his brother riding on with a small smile on his face, eyes fixed forwards on the road – and amidst the fresh air, amidst the tranquil scenery, this is what finally has him exhaling some of the tension out of his body.
There’s a little gift shop at the end of the biking trail. Soleum stops as they pass to stare at the rows of cartoonish mascot plushies hanging innocuously from the shelves.
“I’m hungry,” his brother complains. “If you wanna buy it, do it quick.”
“Okay, okay,” Soleum mutters under his breath. Under the impatient gaze of his brother, he doesn’t dwell too much on it as he grabs a plushie and heads to the cashier.
He gingerly tucks the orange fox plush safely in his bag before he’s drawn into conversation about lunch options once more.
The next day, the day after that, and the day after that, Soleum spends the entire day just lying in his brother’s house and sleeping. Exhaustion that’s been built up in him over the span of a few years that only he has experienced catches up to him in a single go, and pulls him under with such an innate weariness that it has Soleum surprised it hadn’t gotten hold of him sooner. But he’s also had two years of experience forcing down said fatigue, and the past three months of labouring to get used to any semblance of normalcy to top it all off, and so it’s only now that he finally allows himself a few days of uninterrupted rest.
When he’s not sleeping, he’s eating, or watching mindless shows, or more often than not: scrolling on his phone. His brother goes back to work in his bakery, and when he comes back, never fails to comment on how Soleum is in the exact same position on the sofa as he’d left him in.
Soleum is only glad that his brother has to leave at early hours in the morning. He’s awake and scrolling on his phone until his brother leaves just before dawn, and it’s only when the first rays of sunlight begin filtering through the gap between the curtains that has Soleum finally putting down his phone and going to sleep.
“Again?” His brother clicks his tongue on the morning of the third day of this routine.
Soleum stretches all his limbs in his position on the sofa, eyes glued to the glow of his screen shining in the darkness. “You were the one who told me to rest and relax,” he mumbles with the beginnings of a yawn tapering the edges of his voice.
“I know,” his brother huffs, tugging on his jacket and grabbing his bag, “but you’ve never had this type of sleep schedule before.”
“That’s because you didn’t see me while I was staying in dorms during university,” Soleum says wryly. Back then, and even in the months and years leading right up to Before, he had spent many sleepless nights glued to the glow of his phone just like he has been doing the past few days. Outside, the fringes of night begin to wear into day – though dark, murmurs of life begin bleed through the stillness, accompanied by the chirpings of birds.
The pink bunny keychain, barely visible by the small lamp his brother has turned on and the glow of his own screen, stares up at him disapprovingly from its position on the coffee table next to the sofa. That’s no good! Any good performer knows that ample rest is a must for them to function at their best!
There’s the sound of clothes rustling which stops right behind the sofa. “Darkness Exploration Record?” comes the voice of his brother behind him. Soleum startles badly. A glance behind shows the figure of his brother leaning over the backrest of the sofa while squinting at his screen. “Oh, isn’t that the thing that’s been getting pretty popular recently? I see it pop up pretty often on my feeds these days.”
Soleum’s heart beats in his throat. “Uh… yeah,” he manages to say through the roar in his ears. “It’s, uh… it’s… interesting.”
His brother hums, picking himself back up and heading to the door. “Hm, horror’s not really my thing. But is it really this interesting to stay up all night for? From what little I’ve seen of it, it seems kinda edgy, isn’t it?”
“... Yeah,” Soleum croaks faintly, mouth dry. “Kinda.”
“Wait, but aren’t you deathly scared of horror?” His brother snorts in amusement as he puts on his shoes. “Don’t tell me you’re up all night because you’re too scared to sleep.”
“I… am. And I’m not.” Soleum’s fingers are cold from his white-knuckled grip on his phone.
His brother sighs and unlocks the door. “Sleep soon, okay? Don’t purposely read things you know will scare you awake.”
Soleum lets out a shaky, wavering exhale of disbelieved relief. “... Hey, I just told you it’s not–”
Bam. The door shuts close behind his brother. Soleum stares at the door, stares back up at the ceiling, and presses a palm over his eyes. Slowly, his shoulders begin to shake silently, chest heaving rapidly as they do.
Ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Soleum tears his palm away from his eyes so he can burn them on the screen of his phone, which has once again, as it has constantly been for the past three months, been opened to the Dark Exploration Records website.
By now, he knows the entries on this website like the back of his hand. Not only did he obsessively revise the ones he’d known During it all, but he has intimately familiarised himself with the ones he hadn’t known After. Soleum reads and reads and reads like his life depends on it – which it doesn’t, of course, since it’s a collaborative work of fiction – but save for the ones he hadn’t read Before, there is nothing new. Absolutely nothing has changed from Before, no matter what little nook and cranny or crumb of comment he scrolls to.
At the very most, there are posts on social media bemoaning and envying the first place winner of the pop-up store.
And yet Soleum continues reading, re-reads, re-reads again, and doesn’t stop reading. The obsessive compulsion takes hold of him until the words blur and his eyes burn too heavily and he is forced to stop.
The first rays of the morning sun filter through the curtains. Soleum groans softly and throws his phone somewhere onto the coffee table, before closing his burning eyes and rolling over. He falls asleep immediately.
He wakes up drenched with cold sweat and a startled gasp as always. His tongue sits heavy in his mouth as he runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath, forcefully relaxing the muscles in his body in a methodical and well-practised manner as he exhales with a shudder. He’s just thankful it wasn’t a scream this time, and that his brother is still out working, unable to witness his startled rousing.
How about a warm, soothing cup of hot chocolate?
Soleum glances down at the pink bunny keychain on the table illuminated by the golden light filtering through the curtains, then glances away to check the time. It’s just about time for his brother to come back from work. He grimaces through the ache of his weary body and stands up, ambling to the bathroom, ready to wash up then brew himself a cup of hot tea.
When his brother comes back, he tosses something soft straight into Soleum’s face. Soleum, lying on the sofa as usual, sputters in indignation as it hits him square between his eyes.
He pulls the item off his face, and all words die on his lips. Cupped in the palm of his hand is a small stylised white lizard plush, red beads for eyes popping out on either side of its head.
“You’ve been into these recently, right?” His brother says as he takes off his shoes. “Didn’t know there were demands for lizards. Someone left this in the bakery and no one’s claimed it for two weeks. It’s yours now.”
“Uh… kinda. Thanks,” Soleum mumbles. He places the lizard down carefully next to the pink bunny keychain, turns back to his phone, thinks twice, places the lizard on the other end of the table from the pink bunny, then returns to his phone.
“I have to head back to work tomorrow,” Soleum says that night.
“No,” his brother rejects immediately. “Stay longer.”
“The important client I’m meeting isn’t willing to do it over call anymore,” Soleum explains. “I need to do it face to face.”
His brother’s face scrunches up like he’s tasted something foul. “... Then, I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t–”
“I’ll go with you,” his brother says firmly in a tone that brooks no arguments. “The travel time isn’t even bad. I’ll pack my things now.”
Stubborn, Soleum thinks in fond exasperation as his brother marches off to his room with steps full of determination.
The next morning, the two of them pack their bags and hop into his brother’s car, Soleum happily letting his brother drive. They settle into Soleum’s apartment soon without much fanfare.
“You have merch of that Darkness Exploration thing?” His brother snorts incredulously. Soleum whirls around with a sharp inhale.
His brother is looking at an ever-familiar black box tucked neatly into the corner of a shelf. As his brother reaches out to touch the box, Soleum makes the startled beginnings of an instinctive motion to grab his brother, toss the box out of the window, and run – but his brother’s hands land on the box. Nothing happens. Wiping away the sheet of dust that had accumulated on its surface, his brother opens the box. “Hey, isn’t this the same as that pink bunny you got from the claw machine?”
“... It’s similar, I guess,” Soleum says tersely. But then his brother takes the pink bunny out, loops his finger through the keychain hole, and swings the bunny this way and that. A spike of instinctual fear for his brother rises up in him, one that he desperately tamps down as most would find it rather foolish to be fearful of a stuffed toy.
If anything, the pink bunny keychain might just be currently faring the worst fate out of the two. What absolute disrespect! It might have seethed. Release me right this instant!
Soleum crosses the gap between them in two large strides and gently snatches the keychain out of his brother’s hands. “It’s just merch. Nothing much to talk about.”
“Must be if you like it enough to get off-brand merch reminding you of it,” his brother raises an eyebrow and folds his arms across his chest. “What is it? In the Dark Exploration thingy.”
Carefully, Soleum places the pink bunny keychain back into the box and closes it tightly. Something falls out. As he leans down to pick it up, he replies: “It’s… called a Good Friend. It’s supposed to be a medium that can summon supernatural entities.”
“Nerd,” his brother jeers, causing Soleum’s eyes to roll all the way to the back of his head as he straightens back up. In the palm of his hand lies a badge with a silver heart on it. His brother spares it half a glance before moving on, jabbing at him to hurry up so they can get lunch. With a heavy sigh directed at his younger brother’s incessant nagging, Soleum pockets the badge without much thought to go and get ready.
It’s only as they’re passing by awfully, awfully familiar scenery that Soleum feels its weight burn in his pocket once more. They’re just on their way to one of Soleum’s favourite galbitang restaurants when they pass by the Seoul Metropolitan Library and Seoul City Hall. Soleum stares.
His brother stops as well. “What?”
“... Nothing,” he breathes softly. “Come, there’s a shortcut that way.” Soleum stuffs his hands in his pockets and starts back up forward, pretending he doesn’t feel his brother’s narrowed gaze boring into his back.
So Soleum brings his brother down the narrow path between Seoul City Hall and the Seoul Library. He teeters between wondering if he was delusional, sometimes, and knowing with crystalline certainty that it was very much real, at other times. Today is the former. They walk past the unmanned library book return kiosk at the rear of the Seoul Library, then step below the glass walkway stretched overhead that connects the two buildings.
For a brief moment, the two of them are completely silhouetted by the shadow of the walkway bridge. Soleum’s grip on the badge with the silver heart tightens even harder.
And then they walk past. The narrow path opens back up, and they now find themselves at the rear of the two buildings. Government agents of various ages dressed in suits and skirts and all types of proper business attire with all sorts of monochromatic hues stream around them to head for lunch.
His brother hadn’t said a word this entire time, but now, Soleum catches his cautious peering from the peripherals of his vision. “Brother?” comes the carefully intoned inquiry.
“What? Galbitang, remember? Come on, this way. Oh– hold on. Maybe it was back there after all. It’s been a while. Let me check just in case–”
As Soleum speaks, he fishes his phone out of his pocket. His other hand remains in his pocket, since he can’t quite seem to uncurl his trembling fingers at that moment. The fur of the pink bunny keychain his fingers catch on brushes harshly against his skin.
“–This was my bad, I led us in the wrong direction–”
“You’re rambling,” his brother cuts in bluntly.
“I’m not. Come, it’s this direction according to the map for sure.” And Soleum stalks off without a glance back.
The galbitang is even better than he remembers. That new chef who does it best has only been here Before and After, but not During. Soleum eats his meal with a pointed gusto. The metal keychain attached to the pink bunny on the table glints under the warm orange lights. What a quaint and delightfully cozy atmosphere!
After lunch, they stop by a convenience store. Soleum lingers by the cigarettes but moves on, opting to stock up on drinks and snacks instead. He gets so many – a whole basket of them – that his brother, ever the family baker and chef, clicks his tongue at him disapprovingly.
But he’s a grown adult nearly in his thirties with a limit to the amount of coffee he can consume in a day. If he can’t get proper rest during the day due to work and can’t get proper rest during the night either, he can only supplement the rest with sugar and sodium.
There’s an important client that still must be met this evening. Soleum tosses into the basket a can of double-shot espresso, then another, another bag of chips just to cause his brother a bit more grief, then two small keychains of a cartoonish otter and bear respectively as he passes by the toy shelf before finally heading to the counter.
If there’s one thing Soleum is good at, it’s talking.
Soleum smiles with polite charm at the client over dinner, laughs and smiles appropriately, and weaves his words together into a shining tapestry that results in two signatures and a firm handshake. He leaves the restaurant temporarily invigorated; the rush that goes through him at a plan well executed through his meticulous planning, whether it be for a languid, friendly deal or for a frantic, harried escape, is something that has never changed in the human named Kim Soleum.
On the bus back, Soleum is sitting down while scrolling through an entry of the Darkness Exploration Records on his phone as usual, when an old woman hobbles onto the bus. Without much of a thought, he stands and offers her his seat.
The old woman smiles peacefully at him, nodding her thanks as she gingerly manoeuvres to sit down. “You’re a good child,” she says.
“... Thank you, but I’m not a child anymore,” he says softly.
“All youth your age are still a child to me.” The old woman’s eyes glint as the corners of her eyes crease. “You’re a polite young man. What a good child you must be!”
Soleum ducks his head, mumbles out some vague platitudes, and alights at the next stop.
Large, opaque clouds block out the setting sun. Soleum wanders in a daze under the overcast sky, light drops of rain occasionally dotting the shoulders of his suit. The sprawling city flows and ebbs with the never-ending stream of people chattering lowly as they make their way to their friends or their families or their homes. He drifts between the crowd in languor.
Soleum walks home.
A black cat meows in displeasure as droplets of rain fall onto its body. Backlit advertisements advertising this and that and tattoo parlours and counselling services have their colours dulled by the gray of the sky and the rumble of distant thunder. A long alleyway of street vendors bustles steadily to ready their stocks for the night.
Ah, rain, the keychain jammed deep in his pocket says. Though considered an exasperating ordeal for many, one only needs to cast their gaze at not just history, but at present-day agricultural sectors to see how much of a gift it can be…
Soleum walks home.
A cartoon mascot waddles around to cheerfully hand out flyers for a theme park. Retro-styled televisions burst with the overlapping sounds of different advertisements in the window of a vintage shop. Two nameless figures gather in the sheltered crevice between two buildings, each holding lit cigarettes. Students giggle maniacally as they sprint away from the nearby high school to the subway station down the street past the mall and the library and the towering office building.
Soleum walks home.
He doesn’t take the elevator. He climbs all thirteen floors of his apartment building until he stands before the door that’s long been the object of his obsessive desires. It’s a simple wooden door, innocuous in its simple shade of brown, with a simple keypad flashing lightly on top of a simple gray handle.
His trembling hand raises slowly, until all five digits press against the wooden grain, followed by the quiet thunk of his forehead next to it. His eyes fall shut.
“I’m home,” Soleum whispers in a quiet plea.
The next day, his brother returns back to his own home with a multitude of warnings and threats all with an undisguised current of concern underneath his words that Soleum is to continue resting and relaxing. Soleum makes promises that both of them know are empty as he sends his brother off, until the door closes and the house falls silent.
Days turn to weeks. Soleum goes to work and meets clients and reads the Darkness Exploration Records and sleeps. He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps but he always wakes up drenched in sweat and screams. It’s fine, he reasons – if this is the price to pay to be able to be home, then he would pay it every single time.
His days are normal, just like him. He is a normal person in a normal corporate job. Nothing would point to him being special. Nothing is out of the ordinary.
Nothing…
One day, Soleum’s eyes flutter open.
He sits up from the sofa, head a little stuffy. It’s midnight. He looks around with a post-sleep haze until he recalls lying down for a nap after work, only to apparently sleep through his alarms. He’s still in his dress shirt and tie, only having removed his jacket before falling asleep, but something feels… off. Something he can’t quite…
Oh. Oh.
Soleum runs a hand through his hair, then grips it in a shaking grip. He hadn’t woken up with the afterimages of blood and gore in his vision, or a phantom pain in his right arm, or abject terror and primal fear clawing at his very being. No, Soleum woke up peacefully.
Because Soleum had been dreaming of eating beef with three other people, of playing board games in a waiting room, of buying boxes on boxes of donuts with a recipient in mind. He’d dreamt of hugs from a friendly mascot and of friendly chats with secret identities in a shared predicament and of nights of children’s cartoons with a cup of hot tea. He’d dreamt of good things, of happy things, of peaceful situations.
It’s worse than all his nightmares combined.
Soleum moves to stumble out of the sofa and to– to somewhere, somewhere to do something, but before he can move, he turns his head and catches sight of his coffee table. He freezes.
Somewhere along the way, his table has become home to a haphazard littering of small stuffed toys. There’s the pink bunny keychain on one end, and the white lizard on the other, and in between there’s the fox and the otter and the bear but also a light blue dolphin and a brown goat with an eyepatch and a brown goat without and a blue dragon and a blue bird and a badger and a wolf and even a pack of newly-bought unopened cigarettes. And tucked away at the furthest corner of the table, a small stuffed deer overlooks it all.
Soleum stares.
When did he…?
A pained gasp leaves his throat, and he nearly doubles over from the force of the emotions that have suddenly coalesced from the blood cells in his system to form an unignorable pressure clawing straight into his heart. It screams at Soleum to make itself known, giving him no space to hide, no place to push it back down.
Soleum had cared about them. Soleum had cared so deeply and so completely about all the people and beings he’d met, all the experiences he’d had and all the relationships he’d formed that despite him having done his best not to attach himself, everything that had happened in the past two years only he has experienced has dyed his soul in its colours, embedding itself deeply and so intrinsically into the walls of his heart such that he can never untangle its existence from his own. It sings and sings of its existence, of the bad and the horrible and of the good, and leaves him no possible avenue to deny it any further.
He pants harshly, desperately, hands clawing his hair in a pitiful distraction, before staggering up and out, slamming shut the door to his house and walking, before running, then sprinting to his recently-bought bicycle.
The moon shines warmly overhead as Soleum pedals with desperate intensity down the empty roads of Seoul. He pedals so fiercely that his bicycle goes flying, but his mind tells him clearly the number of degrees his wrists have to turn, the amount of force his arms have to exert, the angle of his moment and the shift of his body weight to launch the bicycle into the air in a controlled arc. He lands safely and continues to pedal with gritted teeth, sweat beading his forehead and a stinging in his eyes.
Soleum pulls up underneath a familiar apartment block. Letting his bicycle fall against a random wall, Soleum runs up the stairs in twos and threes before ringing the doorbell with a shaking hand.
For a minute, the night is silent, filled only with his own harsh breathing. Soleum’s heart falls.
He’s about to turn away when the door opens. The figure of his tired brother squints at the intruder in his doorway with venom, before it turns to concerned surprise upon registering who it is. “Brother–?”
“I need to tell you something,” Soleum blurts.
Without hesitation, his brother steps to the side, an invitation to enter. Soleum takes it.
If there’s one thing Soleum is good at, it’s talking. Sitting on the sofa of his brother’s house, still in a dress shirt and tie, Soleum begins to weave a grand and horrific tale for his brother. He tells of a world of supernatural happenings, of companies and governments and cults, and of the journey of an individual’s adventure through it all. He speaks of kind people and ruthless people and inhuman beings; he speaks of horrors and blood and death; he speaks of big, sweeping consequences but of small, daily happenings as well. He talks and talks and talks until his mouth is dry and the sun is up and both of them need to go to work, but he’s still talking and his brother is still listening attentively with unreadable eyes.
“... And finally, there was none of that world left any longer,” Soleum breathes at the end of it all, voice hoarse. “There was only a peaceful, gentle nap.”
Silence rings out in the quiet house. Soleum shifts his gaze to his lap, unable to bear its weight. “... Look, I know I sound insane, so… if you don’t know what to think of it, all you have to know is that I had a crazy dream, alright–”
Soleum’s words are cut off when his brother surges forward and hugs him. His hands flounder a little at the side, before slowly, ever so slowly, resting gingerly on his brother’s back. “You…”
“You’ve worked hard,” his brother says simply, and Soleum’s breath hitches. His brother pulls away, but grips Soleum’s shoulders and looks him in the eye. His brother’s gaze is one of belief and of unshed tears for him.
“Welcome home,” his brother says with a break in his voice.
Soleum stares. And then his shoulders start to shake. Years’ worth of unshed tears collect in his eyes until they spill down his cheeks and refuse to stop.
“I’m finally home…!” Soleum breathes, and sobs with a soul-weary depth into his brother’s shoulders.
Some time later, Soleum rises at home in the morning.
He’d had a good night's sleep last night, which is rather a relief for him, who has to meet an important client fairly early in the morning. Soleum washes up, puts on his suit, and gets ready to head out for the day.
As he is just about to head out, he catches sight of his coffee table. There, a neat row of stuffed animals lines the table, displayed carefully and arranged tenderly. Soleum smiles at the sight, taking a moment before he starts the day to admire the neat formation on the table with fondness.
The keychain of the pink bunny at the furthest side of the table glints under the bright sunlight filtering through the curtains. If the bunny could talk, Soleum thinks it would say… well. What’s the point of wondering, when stuffed toys can’t talk? The keychain is silent as Soleum puts on his shoes and opens the door.
It’s a beautiful day today. Soleum breathes in with a small smile on his face, and steps out the door.