Chapter Text
It had already been six months since he’d settled into his new role at Baekilmong, though settled probably wasn’t quite the right word for it. There was no real word for the particular revulsion that seized him every time he walked through those corridors, never quite certain what he’d find around the next corner. Nor for the strange social limbo he’d found himself in with his batchmates, who were neither friendly nor particularly helpful. They took one look at him and seemed to decide he was just another flashy type, or worse —
Hey, doesn’t he look kind of familiar? I swear I’ve seen him before.
That, more than anything, was why he’d gotten used to wearing a face mask everywhere. Head down, eyes lowered, moving quickly. He felt very much like he was hiding, even though there was perhaps nothing about him that could have been more conspicuously un-hidden. If he had a choice, he’d almost rather people gossiped openly than looked at him with that expression of careful, undisguised pity.
But life was never like that.
Life, at present, was waking up around seven or eight. Nine, if he was lucky, or if the previous day had been particularly exhausting, or if he’d come home late enough that their manager had given them the morning off, at which point sleep became the only reasonable thing left to do. The dormitory was fairly nice, if sparsely furnished, and comfortable enough that he never found himself missing his old company dorms, or his old bedroom back home, particularly badly. Compared to the two of them, this was probably better anyway. He had a private ensuite bathroom and a kitchenette shared with his roommate, whose hours ran almost perfectly opposite to his own.
It was a comfortable existence, if one overlooked the small matter of constantly feeling like his life was under threat.
Thankfully, his squad rarely sent them on missions they couldn’t escape from. He considered it one of those small accidents of fortune that he’d ended up living in the era after Monster Rookie Kim Soleum, who had already bulldozed through so many of the old manuals with his unconventional methods that people had started coming up with increasingly creative ways of solving missions, following in his footsteps.
As for Eugene —
He was still not good with scary things, but he held firm in the face of his wish. He was working at a steady, grounded pace; keeping time. There was still time. If he kept working at the pace he was going, eventually he would be able to —
Beep.
He glanced down at his phone, quickly noted the location for the mission briefing, and stood. It had been a strangely dreary day to wake up to; the air felt heavy, and his bones felt all wrong, as though he’d tossed and turned all night, which was unusual for him. He usually slept deeply and well.
He flexed his wrist, feeling the muscles stretch and simmer pleasantly beneath the skin, until something gave with a small, satisfying pop.
Afterwards, he thought — perhaps it was time he checked in at the infirmary. After all, time wasn’t reversing for him.
/
Their briefing was scheduled for half-past ten, in one of the meeting rooms. They were supposed to meet the researcher there, take down notes, and then head to the site after dark. It was simple enough. In and out.
At least, that was what Eugene had assumed.
By the time he arrived, the hallway was full of people trying to leave; some sort of mass meeting had apparently just ended. He pushed his way through the crowd, looking for the meeting room, when a strange smell caught him halfway down the corridor. Someone was smoking by the open window at the far end of the hall, half-hidden behind the glass partition separating the corridor from the designated smoking area.
Eugene wrinkled his nose. He probably wouldn't have minded if he hadn't been able to smell it from all the way over here. He supposed that was what the smoking corner was for, though, so it wasn't as if the person was doing anything wrong. Still, it smelled terrible. He'd have to hold his breath if he walked past... or he could just go around.
Except the meeting room was in that direction.
With a quiet sigh, Eugene headed over, mostly intending to complain about the smell and then leave.
He stepped into the smoking corner. Then stopped.
Ryu Chungwoo looked like he'd seen a ghost. Eugene was fairly certain his own face mirrored the expression, judging by the strain in his cheeks as he tried to keep his jaw from dropping onto the ground. This was probably about as close as he could come to seeing the expression on his own face, too, since his own was, thankfully, covered by a mask.
"A-are you smoking?" Eugene stammered, almost accusatorially, jabbing his index at him. "Why are you —"
It was a stupid question, really, given the very obvious cigarette between Chungwoo's fingers. But in all the months Eugene had been working here, he'd never known that Ryu Chungwoo was an employee too. Nor, in all the years they'd spent together in STier, had he ever known him to be a smoker.
Eugene was active enough in the newbie chat that he'd seen his own name come up more than once, but somehow this particular fact had never made its way into conversation. Surely someone would have mentioned it. Surely someone would have said, Hey, by the way, did you know Ryu Chungwoo works here too? Even if they weren't into K-pop, wasn't he supposed to be a former Olympian? The pride of Korea? It wasn't exactly the sort of thing you might forget to tell someone. If he'd known earlier, perhaps he'd have quit earlier. But now he'd been here for half a year, and he wasn't planning on leaving. If Chungwoo had a problem with that, he could be the one to leave instead.
The last time they'd seen each other had been when they collected their things from the dormitories, after they'd cleaned out most of their belongings. After that, they'd agreed, rather sensibly, never to see each other again.
Chungwoo had seemed bigger then. More imposing. As Eugene's eyes travelled down the length of Chungwoo's torso, he found himself startled by the difference. His shoulders were still broad, but his collarbones stood out starkly beneath his shirt. It was obvious he hadn't been eating properly for some time, though that didn't seem like something Eugene ought to be commenting on. It wasn't any of his business how Chungwoo wanted to treat himself; they weren't even on the same squad now, after all.
Instead, he held on to his mask and pinched his nose. "It smells terrible," he complained.
Chungwoo's eyes flicked past him, then back again. "You're the one standing in the smoking corner," he said, smiling.
It was such an unexpectedly casual and terrible expression on him that Eugene nearly forgot what he'd been about to say. There was something almost normal about it, which was strange enough in itself. Eugene had spent so long thinking of Chungwoo as someone who belonged to a completely separate part of his life, a part that had already ended, that seeing him smile so carefreely like this — here, of all places, in the middle of this deeply unfortunate reunion at Baekilmong — made something in his chest twist oddly tight.
"I've got a mask on, y'know," he said instead. "If even I can smell it from outside, it's gotta stink real bad." It wasn't really a fair argument. Masks weren't supposed to filter out cigarette smoke, and he knew that, but Chungwoo didn't seem inclined to point this out. He only looked at Eugene for a moment, still wearing that faintly amused expression.
Then he lifted the cigarette between two fingers and pinched it out as though this were a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
Damn, that's cool. Eugene almost whistled.
"Hmm," Chungwoo said. He dropped the cigarette into the little metal bin beside him, rubbed his fingers together once, and glanced at Eugene again. Then, tilting his head to regard him: "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Eugene nodded. Silence descended upon them almost immediately afterward.
The more it stretched, the more he became acutely, horribly aware of the tips of his ears warming. He raised a hand to scratch at the back of his head, although there was nothing itchy there, and realised almost immediately that this probably made him look even more suspicious. Chungwoo watched him do it with his lips pursed into that faintly dissatisfied expression of his, as though Eugene were a particularly annoying bug that kept flying around his head, one he wanted very badly to swat away but couldn't bring himself to out of some longstanding sense of propriety.
Although, come to think of it, Chungwoo did seem to be getting closer...?
"Hyung," Eugene said again, finally close enough to get a proper look at him. Yeah. He looked worse than Eugene. Satisfied with his inspection, he added, "What are you doing here?"
"To work," Chungwoo replied blankly. "Isn't that what you're here for as well?"
To... work? For what reason?
Did he even need the money? He could've continued as an idol. No, Eugene was fairly certain the Chungwoo he'd known would have done exactly that. He'd been good at it, after all. Better than good, probably; the kind of person people expected to keep doing something simply because he'd once been good at it.
The fact that they were standing in the same room continued to feel strange enough that Eugene kept turning it over in his head. The longer he thought about it, though, the more obvious another possibility became.
They were probably here for the same reason, though he wasn't entirely sure.
But if he simply asked nicely, maybe Chungwoo would come clean about what he was doing here. Maybe, if they were after the same thing, Eugene could even mooch off his wish a little. Five hundred thousand each would be infinitely easier to clock than the amount Eugene needed on his own. And if Chungwoo really was here for the same reason, then there was no reason, logically speaking, why they couldn't just help each other.
"Hyung."
"Yes?"
"You — are you here for —"
"What is it?"
Pettily, Eugene shook his head. He had a lot of things he wanted to ask, but when he thought about actually voicing them, he suddenly felt like he didn't want to share.
"No, never mind."
Chungwoo looked at him for another second, one eyebrow cocked in displeasure, before turning away, which Eugene took as his cue to leave.
He hadn't wanted to stay a second longer anyway.
/
The mission briefing was held five minutes later.
It was a routine case, or at least routine by Baekilmong's standards. The person from the research team briefing them kept yawning through it, one hand cupped over her mouth while the other turned the pages of a yellowed manual that looked like it hadn't been updated in years.
Something had been sighted inside an abandoned commercial building on the outskirts of [district]. Three civilians had reported hearing knocking from within after midnight. One had also heard soft meowing coming from somewhere beneath the rubble, as though an animal were trapped inside. Another had apparently opened the door and caught sight of something moving along the ceiling.
Their squad specialised in animal-based darknesses, which made it somewhat easier for Eugene to pay attention without feeling like he wanted to bash his eyeballs into the floor. He'd heard about some of the darknesses the other newbies had been assigned to, and his first mission had been... well. He still didn't particularly like thinking about it, but it had been easy enough, all things considered. Insects weren't that terrible, anyway, though he still didn't like them. They had too many legs, and there were too many places for them to hide, and far too many opportunities for them to crawl out from somewhere Eugene hadn't been expecting them to. But at least they were easier to contain than something he couldn't see, or something that had their own strange, irregular logic. You could usually tell where an insect was going to go. More or less.
Mammals were the easiest to look at. This one, thankfully, seemed to be something resembling a cat.
Or, more accurately, something that had once been one.
"Don't look directly at it," the researcher said, turning another page. "If you hear knocking, don't answer. If it knocks three times, leave the building immediately." She paused, her finger resting between the pages. "And if it knocks more than three times, stay where you are until it stops."
"What if it crawls downstairs?"
"Then you leave."
"What if it follows us out?"
"It won't." The researcher yawned again and continued reading in the same monotonous voice.
Eugene was more interested in the photographs being passed around. The building had once been a shopping centre, though there wasn't much left of it now. Most of the windows had been boarded up, and the upper floors were blackened from an old fire. In one of the photographs, something pale was pressed against the ceiling of a corridor. There, it looked almost benign.
Almost.
Multiple paws were splayed against the plaster like a spider's legs, and its head had been turned completely backward, its chin resting somewhere between its shoulder blades.
He turned the photograph over just as the researcher finished saying what she needed to say, then yawned again.
"Any questions?"
There were none.
Nobody really seemed to like asking questions during briefings. They just nodded and did what they were told. He didn't agree with that kind of mindset, but it kept their briefings short, which he did appreciate; at the end of the day, if there was anything important they'd missed, they'd find out soon enough.
As everyone collected their things around him, Eugene flipped to a blank page in his diary. They weren't technically allowed to keep mission notes, but his particular squad had been banned from using electronic devices for that purpose ever since a coworker had somehow sent a virus — something involving a Space Shopping Mall — to their entire batch and gotten the website shut down. Their tablets had been confiscated soon after.
He wrote: Ryu Chungwoo works at Baekilmong.
He stared at the sentence for a moment, then crossed it out.
Below that: Ryu Chungwoo smokes.
He crossed that out too. There was no reason to be writing either of these things down. When he looked at the page — sparse except for the names of the interviewees, the district where they were supposed to meet at seven-thirty that same night, and the two crossed-out statements about Ryu Chungwoo — he felt vaguely like Light Yagami writing names in his Death Note.
He set his pen aside and rubbed his temple. It was beginning to feel like the start of a very, very long day.
/