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1.
To be honest, Agent Choi hasn’t really thought this through.
He’s barely slept an hour. The strange Daydream potion that Kim Soleum had left him had healed the bloody mess of his face, but it did nothing to calm his heart or get rid of the awful fatigue that has settled into his bones.
His mind keeps replaying the events of the night. The vision of Kim Soleum, who hadn’t even been human. The Kim Soleum who’d reached straight for Choi’s throat. The Kim Soleum who’d saved his life, who’d looked at him with empty eyes and said I just want to go home.
Choi rubs at his tired eyes.
It’s been a while since he’s gone this long without a decent night’s sleep. The days spent following Soleum around, staking out the dream incubator, searching for information anywhere he could—and now this. 5AM, standing on the sidewalk of a barely lit street after one of the worst nights of his life.
He’s exhausted, but there’s no time to rest. Every time his eyes threaten to close he’s reminded of the worse exhaustion he’d seen in Kim Soleum’s expression and he’s jolted back awake.
He can’t rest until he sees this through.
In truth, he has a month. The bastard Daydream director had stated it quite clearly in his curse—within a month, Kim Soleum would die if he didn’t achieve his goal. There’s no rush to get this done right now, but Choi can’t let himself rest.
Because Soleum really wasn’t okay.
He’d been cold one second, ready to attack Choi with his own hands. The next moment he was diving in front of him to save him. After all of it he’d just been empty, accepting his own death.
He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t stable.
Choi has to save him before Soleum gets himself into more trouble trying to save himself.
He rubs his hands together to warm them up, pressing the warmth against his face to soothe the burn in his eyes. The minutes tick past, the sun starts to rise. Choi waits in the cold until the coffee shop across the street finally opens up, and then he heads inside.
He orders coffee for three.
/
Perhaps Choi’s schedule is a little scrambled.
To be honest, he would have done best if he’d started climbing the mountain the moment he’d decided to. Instead he wasted a couple of hours standing at the side of the road, then dropping by the bureau to leave coffee for his juniors.
But he had to do that.
He had to make sure he’d left something for Kim Soleum—something to let him know that everything was okay. That he was safe, and didn’t need to run, and was still welcome here if he wanted to be.
He’d made awful mistakes but he was still a good person, and Choi was going to help him out.
That message needed to be sent, and if the price was that Choi was exhausted well before he even started his journey, then that was just how it had to be.
An hour into his journey he’s already starting to sweat, so he takes his bureau jacket off and ties it around his waist. He shakes the collar of his shirt to let cool air under the fabric. Then he sets off once again.
The hike up Seoraksan is one he’s taken many times before. It’s always calming, the fresh air making it easier to breathe after being locked up underground in the city for so long. Sometimes he would stop on the way and just stare at the world below them, at the clouds, at the sky, without a thought in his head.
It helped put things into perspective.
This was the place he was trying to protect. This was what he worked so hard for, to make sure that this sight was never destroyed.
But right now, staring down below, Choi doesn’t feel any of that.
He feels nothing about the world he’s trying to save, or his duty to its citizens. The breeze that floats past him doesn’t make him grateful for fresh air.
All that’s on his mind is the dead expression on Kim Soleum’s face, when he’d said that he just wanted to go home.
Choi turns away, focusing on the path ahead of him instead.
He’s running out of time.
/
Choi doesn’t stop for the usual sights.
He crosses bridges without looking down at the water. He turns away from perfect viewpoints without bothering to look down. The soles of his shoes are worn, and he nearly slips and falls when he’s crossing a part of the rock that’s wet, so he ends up taking off his shoes and his socks and hooking them on his fingers as he walks.
The cold against his feet is grounding.
It makes him feel a little more alive.
When he’s back on dry ground, he smacks his shoes against the path to get rid of the dirt, and then puts them back on.
Choi had never found climbing the mountain lonely before.
It had always been time for himself, to get himself back together, to come to terms with loss and inevitability in a place where he didn’t have to smile through it.
But right now it feels like the loneliest place on earth.
With every step he takes, he ends up further from his junior who needs him.
His junior who thinks that Choi hates him, and yet, had jumped in front of him to save him at the cost of his own life…
Choi shakes his head.
This has to be done quickly.
He’ll be back down in no time, and he’ll carry the rest of his plan through, and at the end of it they’ll all be okay.
“Okay,” he tells himself, in the silence. “Let’s do this.”
At the end of it, they’ll all be okay.
/
When he reaches the top, he can barely feel his legs anymore.
But the wind is in his face, letting him forget that it matters.
It isn’t like Choi to be this exhausted. His job is taxing and the bureau is perpetually understaffed—it’s common for him to be tossed into a disaster where he’s suddenly expected to run for his life for five days in a row without a break. This is the sort of thing he’s used to, and yet…
Last night had wrecked him more than he’d expected.
The fatigue doesn’t leave his bones.
Still, he has a mission to complete, so he spreads his arms wide and forces a smile to his face as he calls out for the General.
The wind swirls endlessly in response to his call, making it harder to see, almost pushing him over—but Choi stands strong, arms open.
He just needs to get this done.
Kim Soleum isn’t a bad person, he’s just made too many bad choices. Choi can get him out. He’ll get him out, and then—and then they’ll finally be a team. A real one. Without secrets and ugliness buried between them.
A team where Choi can say I’ve got your back and mean forever instead of until you leave us behind.
There’s a deafening roar as the General approaches, forcing Choi back a few steps, but he steels himself and pushes back forward.
Choi’s job has always been to get people back home.
Kim Soleum, despite everything that happened between them, is no exception.
2.
“I just think we should pack more water,” Agent Bronze frowns, looking through the contents of his backpack once more.
“Eyy, we’ll be back in no time,” Choi says. “Three super fit guys like us? We’ll just zoom up and zoom down.”
Jaekwan still looks doubtful, but Agent Haegeum pats him on the back.
“I have water too,” she says. “And it’s only that one stretch we have to worry about—we can buy bottled water in other places.”
“That’s true,” Jaekwan says.
“Don’t listen to Choi. It’s good to think about these things.”
Choi makes an affronted noise. “Hah? I’m just saying—”
“Stop saying,” Haegeum cuts in, and that’s that.
Choi sighs.
Bronze’s backpack is stocked with almost everything they might need. Food, water, first aid, a couple of talismans for the safety barrier that they will need to build. Haegeum’s backpack is packed similarly.
Choi, on the other hand, holds nothing except a fragile, wrapped bundle, placed gently in his own backpack.
He can feel the imaginary warmth of it against his skin.
It’s the remnants of the egg shells that were left behind after Kim Soleum left them forever—the only pieces of him that they have to remember him by.
“How are you doing in there, Grapes?” Choi calls out.
Jaekwan flinches briefly.
There is no response from the backpack.
“You’re good?” Choi says, regardless. “Let’s get going then.”
The sun hasn’t risen yet. They’d wanted to start the hike early to finish a fair bit before the noon heat. Choi rubs warmth into his hands, and then places his warm hands over his eyes.
Haegeum reaches out, as if to pat him on the back, but hesitates and stops.
/
The hike is easier with someone by his side.
Neither Bronze nor Haegeum are in the mood to be talkative, their gazes focused firmly ahead as they climb, but Choi doesn’t let it stop him. He talks at length about every thought that crosses his mind, points out the best places to stop for pictures, and tells his companions about all the previous times he’s been here, which places he tripped, which places he loved.
He talks as if he’s trying to erase the memory of the lonely hike he’d taken before, when he tried to save the man that he is now trying to bury the memory of.
“We should take a photo together,” Choi says, when they come across a particularly beautiful view.
The sight makes him feel nothing, but he pretends it stirs something in him. He’s been worrying everyone enough lately, the least he can do is pretend he’s fine.
Looking at the world below no longer makes him feel like he’s on the right track or protecting the people he loves.
It only makes him think just how far everything is from him.
Just how easy it is to lose it all.
But he buries the thought and smiles, shifting the backpack so it’s in front of him. “We can get Grapes in the frame too,” he says.
Jaekwan’s expression twists.
But they all shuffle together, side by side, holding Choi’s backpack between them as a replacement for Agent Grapes. Choi throws up a peace sign. Haegeum takes the photo.
It comes out well enough. They all look tired, and a little like they don’t want to be there—but it’s a decent enough photo. Choi tries to send it to himself from Haegeum’s phone but gives up when he can’t get any signal.
“It’s funny,” he says, even when everything in him is warning him to stop speaking. “I think this is the only group photo we ever took.”
There’s a dead silence immediately.
Choi regrets saying it out loud.
But it’s true. He spent the entire time that he knew Kim Soleum knowing that he’d leave him behind, and yet, never managed to hold him close for long enough to take one single photograph.
He stares at the backpack that’s taking his place, and sighs.
“Let’s take another,” he says.
No one complains.
/
The hike is way too long.
Choi runs out of steam eventually. There’s only so much of a conversation that he can have by himself. Haegeum is nice enough to chat a little in between, but Jaekwan is dead to the world.
He blames himself the most, for some reason, for what had happened to Kim Soleum.
So Choi falls quiet at last. He focuses on the weight on his back that he likes to pretend isn’t nothing at all. It’s fitting, in a way, that this is all Kim Soleum had left them of himself—fragile pieces that could crumble between Choi’s fingers, that could easily disappear into dust.
They stop to take a break for a moment. Haegeum digs in her bag for snacks, and Choi sets his own backpack down gently on the floor. It looks a little sad for something that’s holding the memory of their teammate, so he pulls his hat off and sets it on top of the bag carefully to give it a little more personality.
“Ah. We don’t have glasses,” he mumbles.
It doesn’t look a thing like Grapes without glasses.
Wordlessly, Jaekwan reaches into his pocket and pulls out his own, handing them over.
Choi smiles. He places the glasses gently on the backpack. It looks absolutely ridiculous and not at all like Kim Soleum, but somehow, the sight of this misshapen sad looking object twists something in his chest.
They really… didn’t have any photos together.
Choi doesn’t know how he let that happen.
Nothing to remember him by, nothing to let go of.
“I wonder if he’s happy,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else.
No one responds in the silence.
/
When they reach the top, the cold starts to sink into Choi’s bones.
The weight on his back feels emptier than ever, as if it might drift away at any moment. How could they leave the last pieces of Kim Soleum here, where none of them can even check on him?
This isn’t right.
It takes a whole day off to climb Seoraksan. Choi doesn’t get whole days off that easily. He’ll be forced to stay at the bureau and wonder what’s happened, if the egg shells are still there, if they’re still intact, if something has gone horribly wrong…
It’s Jaekwan who brings it up first.
“I… I think we shouldn’t do this.”
Haegeum turns to him, alarmed. “What’s this now?”
Jaekwan hesitates. “It doesn’t feel right. It feels too… final.”
Choi knows what he means.
It feels too much like a burial.
Haegeum sighs. “We’ve talked about this a hundred times. The bureau is too volatile right now. This is the safest place we have—no one will find him here.”
She slips into calling the eggshells him without really being aware of it.
It’s how they’ve all been treating this situation, to be honest.
“We can’t even check on him,” Choi adds quietly. “If something goes wrong… who’s going to make it up here in time?”
“It’s a risk we have to take,” Haegeum says firmly. “Don’t—don’t back out now, you both know this is the only way.”
She’s right.
They’ve talked about it over and over, and this really is the safest place to hide what’s left of Kim Soleum.
And yet…
And yet.
“I don’t want to bury him,” Choi says quietly.
Haegeum’s expression falls.
“He’s fine,” she says firmly. “You know he’s fine. He’s home, he’s doing okay. There is nothing left here to bury.”
Choi’s grip tightens on the strap of his backpack.
He doesn’t want to let this go.
It feels too wrong. Too final. Like forcing a man who isn’t dead into a coffin, just because he will never return to them.
Haegeum sighs.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s sit down for a while. It’ll feel easier in a moment.”
They sit together on the hard ground, the backpack lying between them.
It doesn’t start to feel easier.
/
The hike back down is always the hardest part.
The emptiness of Choi’s backpack feels like carrying a hundred tonnes. There’s a hollow in his chest where something used to be, something that has been buried and hidden with the rest of everything they left behind.
They’d put up wards and sealed the area to make sure that no one could tamper with the eggshells, but it only made everything feel much worse.
Much more final.
In the dead silence of his team, Choi almost feels like he’s making the trip back down alone. Jaekwan is far ahead of him, unwilling to look back. Haegeum lags behind, where no one can see her pretend that she has it all together.
Like this, it feels just like the time he had come up here alone in an attempt to save Kim Soleum from the curse he’d been placed under.
It feels like an eternity ago.
What had he thought back then—that they’d finally be a team? It’s almost funny to think about now.
He’d let himself dream back then of an actual future with the three of them together.
He’d let himself believe, for a brief moment, that Kim Soleum wasn’t always going to leave him behind.
That Choi wouldn’t always feel this lonely making the hike back down.
/
It’s fine, though.
Choi’s job has always been to get people back home.
Kim Soleum, despite everything that happened between them, is no exception.
He slips his hand in his pocket, clenching his fingers around the small package he’d slipped inside.
After they’d buried the box that held the memory of Kim Soleum, Choi had scraped off a handful of soil from the burial that too awfully resembled a grave.
He’d wrapped it up in a handkerchief to hold on to.
What choice did he have?
He didn’t have any photographs. He didn’t have anything to remember Kim Soleum by.
Nothing but a constant ache in his chest when he looked around the almost empty Hyunmoo 1 waiting room.
His fingers tighten on the package in his pocket. It’s a terrible way to remember him—but it’s a way to remember him.
It’s all that Choi has got at this point.
“Everything okay, Grapes?” he asks quietly.
The soil doesn’t reply.
But Choi likes to imagine that in another world, in a better world—Kim Soleum is nodding.
In that world, everything is okay.
In that world, Choi’s heart isn’t broken, because he isn’t even there.
/