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Jaekwan woke up with a start, phantom pains of unknown origin shooting around his body like electric shocks. He shot upright, but a thundering pain in his head immediately rendered him useless once more, forcing him back down.
It took him a moment to work through the fog in his head to sit up and figure out where he was. It seemed to be the Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting room, but it was… too quiet. It was much too quiet, given that it appeared to be the middle of the day, early in the morning at the absolute earliest. The room was something of a mess, not enough to be noticeable to an outsider but certainly enough for someone like Jaekwan, who'd spent nearly every day in this room for the past while, to notice.
The mess was mild, admittedly. Some papers strewn about, chairs left askew where they wouldn't have been before. More than that, it seemed almost as though the room had gone relatively unused for what could have been days.
Which was odd.
He stood, almost immediately noticing a sort of unnatural weightlessness to himself that caused him to stumble forward clumsily. Instinctively, he threw a hand out to steady himself…
Jaekwan's hand phased through the table before him as he fell to the floor on his knees. There was no resistance, almost as if the table wasn't there. Or, rather, almost as though he wasn't there.
He pulled his hand back, trying to ignore the way it shook. Instead, he took a deep, steadying breath, focusing on anything but the manner in which it felt as though there was nothing entering his lungs. Assess the situation, Bronze, he told himself, what do I remember?
That was just the problem, wasn't it? All his recent memories were completely fuzzy, almost as if blocked off by some unseen force. He pressed a hand to his forehead, further confused and rather alarmed when his fingers came back red and sticky, a product of some sort of wound he could neither see nor feel.
Jaekwan shakily got to his feet, trying to recalibrate and relearn how to exist with these odd sensations. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to finally get to his feet, given that he couldn't use anything around him to prop himself up.
And then, when he did get to his feet, it seemed he was… no longer affected by gravity. He sort of toppled forward once more, this time finding himself parallel to the floor rather than having fallen completely. That was an entirely different situation to figure out for himself. Dimly, he wondered if this was how astronauts felt in space.
He shot his head up as the door to the waiting room opened. Choi walked in, movements sluggish as he dropped himself onto one of the chairs in the room, one hand reaching up to pinch the bridge between his eyebrows. He smelled strongly of smoke, the scent potent enough to make Jaekwan's eyes water.
His senior didn't seem to notice him at all, staring blankly into one of the dark computer screens as he leaned back in the chair despondently. He looked nothing short of awful, despite clearly having put a great amount of effort into looking the opposite.
Jaekwan took a step (or floated?) towards Choi. "Senior," he attempted to say, only for nothing to come out. He lifted his hand to his throat in concern.
Still, the agent didn't seem to notice him. He drew closer, trying to do something, anything, for his senior to stop looking so carefully blank, so despondent. But his eyes never moved, never left the screen.
Never met Jaekwan's. Dread pooled at the bottom of his stomach.
Choi's feet kicked up onto the desk, the front legs of the chair lifting up as he leaned back to look at the ceiling. Then, disturbingly, he let out a small laugh that trailed off into a sigh, a broken sound unbefitting his senior. It only served to exacerbate the already-present dread he was feeling in regards to his situation.
"Bronze-ie…" the agent said, trailing off. Jaekwan allowed himself to feel a little hope, like Choi really was just messing with him, despite the fact that nothing about the present situation was logical enough to allow that sort of possibility. "I can't believe it's already been five days since you've been gone."
What?
His mind immediately flew to the most sensible conclusion. Obviously, this had to be a Disaster of some sort, one he didn't recall entering. It wasn't like it was entirely uncommon for a Disaster to distort one's cognitive abilities, and it certainly wouldn't be Jaekwan's first time dealing with something like this.
Because there was no way he was dead.
More than that, there was no way he was some sort of ghost. That just… didn't make sense, did it?
On that note, he also had to account for the idea that Choi and Grapes might also be caught in this Disaster. Not only that, but he had to account for the idea that the Choi in front of him might not actually be the Agent himself, and might rather be an inhabitant of the Disaster.
So there he had the bare makings of a plan. Find his teammates, if they were in this (obvious, surely) Disaster alongside him, and figure out how to get out. Admittedly, it wasn't much of a plan, but it wasn't like he had much to work with here. He couldn't think of a single Disaster that was even similar to this.
The first thing he needed to do was observe. He couldn't interact with anything in the world, nor could he influence anything in any manner. Any attempts to make any contact were met with the same results as with the table earlier– His hand would phase straight through like he was waving it through the air rather than an actual object.
His next target for observation was the supposed Agent Choi before him. He spent most of the time in the waiting room doing two things: staring up at the ceiling, or texting someone on his phone with what seemed to be increasing frustration or desperation. Maybe a mix of both.
It made him slightly uncomfortable to invade the privacy of the Agent, even if this was a Disaster, but he figured that maybe the texts could provide him with some sort of context or clues. So, with no small amount of reluctance, he peeked over Choi's shoulder the next time he brought his phone out.
The screen was filled with texts of various lengths only from Choi's end, the contact affectionately labeled Grapes-ah with a silly emoticon following after it. They ranged from questions about his well-being to pleas for him to contact Choi, please, for the love of God.
Scattered within were texts that sounded almost spiteful, the context of which Jaekwan couldn't figure out for the life of him, though those were ones that Choi would quickly delete afterwards.
"Damn it, Grapes," Choi cursed under his breath, practically throwing his phone onto the table in frustration. It was somewhat odd seeing his senior so explicitly frustrated, given that he usually tried to seem lighthearted in most situations.
But, then, given the context of the Disaster, Jaekwan found the frustration to be very in character, so to speak. Reasonable.
Overall, his poor excuse of an investigation turned out to be useless. There weren't things that were explicitly alarming or out of place, things that would indicate something wrong. Moreover, at least as far as Jaekwan could tell, there weren't any hostile entities to be seen. He simply… couldn't be touched, nor could he touch.
It was at this point that Choi got up to leave the waiting room. Jaekwan watched him leave, debating for a moment if he should actually follow, before quickly realizing as something in him seemed to fade inexplicably that maybe he should stick close to his senior. As anticipated, as he quickly rejoined the agent outside, tugged along by some unknown force, something within him seemed to settle.
One danger identified, he thought wryly.
The entire space was exactly as he remembered, almost as though it was perfectly recreated from Jaekwan's memories, save for the odd things out of place here and there. While he would have liked to say that that was helpful, it was also generally misplacements that could easily be attributed to items having been moved after being used. It wasn't like everything was in the same place every day, after all.
Choi reached into his pocket, retrieving a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. He leaned against the wall near the entrance, bringing a cigarette to his mouth and lighting it before taking a long drag of it.
Despite himself and the possibility that this Choi wasn't his Choi, he found it in him to be concerned. It was obvious that he'd been smoking just earlier, so the fact that he was now returning to do so… Jaekwan just couldn't help but think that it couldn't be healthy.
…For as obvious as the thought was, anyway.
Not to mention that the people passing by paid Choi very little mind beyond greeting him for a moment before entering or leaving the building, almost as if they were entirely used to the sight by now. He watched his senior plaster on a fake smile that didn't quite reach his eyes before it would return to the blank stare that Jaekwan was now growing unsettlingly used to as the people left his sight.
I don't like it, Jaekwan thought. This isn't right.
But then, of course it wasn't right. This was, after all, a Disaster, wasn't it?
(He didn't like how unconvinced of that he was gradually becoming.)
Eventually, over the course of the hour or so that Choi spent outside, he was approached by someone Jaekwan recognized as being Agent Mint, someone who had entered the Bureau not too long before Agent Grapes had. If he recalled correctly, the two newer agents seemed to be relatively close with one another.
"Is Agent Grapes not here today, either?" she asked Agent Choi, almost timidly.
Choi took a moment to tap some of the ashes off of his lit cigarette before answering. "Nope," he said shortly, gaze almost cold in contrast to the more lighthearted tone of his voice. It unsettled Jaekwan greatly. "Sorry. No luck contacting him?"
Agent Mint shook her head. "No…" She seemed distracted by a different thought for a moment, worry crossing over her face before it smoothed over into something more neutral. "Thank you, Agent. I'm… sorry for your loss."
"It happens," Choi said in a dismissive and blank tone, no longer seeming to want to try and plaster on an act nor talk to the younger agent in front of him. Agent Mint seemed to take that as her cue to leave, sending one last glance his way before entering into the building.
Jaekwan spent a while trying to test out the boundaries of what little he could do. With the amount of range he had, he attempted to look around the outside as much as he could. Much like with the inside, there was almost nothing explicitly off. Everything looked just the same as he remembered from before he woke up in the waiting room.
Just what the hell kind of…?
He was beginning to grow increasingly frustrated with his situation, almost like Choi's own mood was rubbing off on him. In the several hours that had passed since he awoke, he'd made absolutely no progress. He'd only found out two major things: that he was supposedly dead and that he, for some reason, couldn't stray too far from this supposed Agent Choi.
Once more, he shoved the ever-increasing dread to the back of his mind. Giving up wasn't an option. No matter how long he had to spend, he would find his way out alive.
Though, regardless of how hard he tried to hold onto that hope, he couldn't help but admit that it was slowly slipping from his grasp as time passed. Eventually, he ended up following Choi (who'd gotten close to nothing done over the course of the day, though it wasn't like anyone was actively bothering him about it) back to his apartment.
Jaekwan couldn't recall a time he'd actually stepped foot into his senior's home, though Choi had come to visit him every now and again. Despite how open he seemed, Jaekwan knew that Choi tended to be very quiet about his own private affairs. He couldn't help but feel as though this was just another invasion of his senior's privacy, but it wasn't as though there was much he could do about that in his own interest.
While he would have liked to say otherwise, he found he was unsurprised to see that Choi's apartment was just as much of a mess as the waiting room had been, if not more. And, much like the waiting room, it wasn't as though the mess was major. There was clutter on the counters, dishes piled up in the sink and atop the stove. Choi paid it all little mind, heading straight for the bathroom further in the apartment.
Jaekwan, in an extremely intelligent move, remained just outside of the bathroom, trying not to listen in. Though, admittedly, he did hear the rattle of what seemed to be a pill bottle for a moment.
When Choi eventually re-emerged, he immediately made for the bedroom adjacent to the bathroom. Jaekwan hesitated for a moment before following him inside.
For better or worse (better for Jaekwan, worse for Choi) his senior didn't bother changing out of his work clothes before he threw himself onto the bed, spreading out and staring despondently at the ceiling. Behind the closed doors of his home, Choi's demeanor seemed to change greatly, shoulders slumping in on themselves. Any sense of confidence or energy he'd had was lost to the world.
It made Jaekwan nauseous to see.
…Agent Choi hardly slept that night.
He had spent the entirety of the night just watching over him or trying to do some more mild investigations of his surroundings, albeit more subdued than what he'd attempted back at the Bureau. If this, too, was a recreation of Choi's real-world apartment… He didn't want so much to pry into his senior's life.
Choi tossed and turned throughout the entirety of the night. Occasionally, he would seem to give up on the concept of sleeping and turn to scroll on his phone for some time, thumb mindlessly moving across a screen he stared blankly at.
For a moment, he looked over Choi's shoulder once more. He seemed to be looking through his message history with Jaekwan. That sight made him nauseous, too, so he quickly averted his gaze.
Choi fell asleep eventually, but for hardly any time at all. Maybe for two hours, but that was being generous since he was so restless for the entirety of it. When he finally got up from the bed, the clock read 4:49 AM.
By then, Jaekwan had already done everything he could think of within the range he had with Choi. At some point, he had begun trying to see if he could at least make some sort of contact with something physical, but those endeavors turned out to be nothing short of fruitless.
He watched as Choi moved through the apartment for a while, just seeming to get ready for the new day. By six in the morning, he was standing at his front door, hand grasping the doorknob. He stood there for a few moments, almost as if contemplating if leaving the house was truly worth the trouble. His grip loosened for a moment before tightening again, posture straightening as he opened the door to the outside.
As they made their way back to the Bureau, Jaekwan was once again faced with the realization that he still had no clue what sort of Disaster this was, nor how to get out of it or how to find his teammates (if the Agent he was trailing after wasn't him, that was). He was, in essence, stuck.
When they arrived at the Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting room, the lights were on inside. Choi froze at the door for a moment, but Jaekwan's gaze immediately landed on the responsible individual.
At one of the desks, typing like nothing had ever happened, was Agent Grapes. No, it wasn't right to say that he seemed like nothing had ever happened. He looked more messy than usual, glasses slightly askew on his face, a crack trailing up from one of the corners and ending at the other end.
Beneath them, his eyebags were heavier than they usually were, stark against his paler-than-usual face. He looked up from the computer as the door opened, revealing dull eyes. Grapes…
"Look who finally decided to show up," Choi said as he shut the door behind him, tone light but something almost pained and accusatory hiding beneath. "How was your vacation, hm?"
"I was… looking for something," Grapes said shortly, adjusting his glasses so that they weren't so crooked. Looking for something? "But–"
Suddenly, he cut his own words off. Choi tilted his head inquisitively, letting out a hum. Grapes seemed to pay him no mind, acting almost as though he was listening to something before standing from his chair and looking around the room carefully.
Eventually, he stopped. His gaze landed directly on Jaekwan. No, he still seemed to be looking past him, but the intent was there. He was trying to look at Jaekwan. Jaekwan froze. Vaguely, he registered Choi trying to figure out what Grapes was looking at.
"Agent-nim," Grapes said slowly, voice taking a pained turn. "This… isn't a Disaster."
What?
The words cut through his head like a sharp knife, his stomach dropping to his feet. The words rang clear as being true, despite there being no evidence to support his words.
Choi, beside him, whipped his head around to face Grapes once more. "Who are you talking to?"
He could visibly see Grapes swallow nervously, licking his lips before speaking once more. "Agent Bronze."
Choi stood silent for a moment. "Grapes, that isn't very funny."
"It's not a joke," Kim Soleum said defensively, almost sounding hurt by Choi's doubt. "He's…" He paused a while longer, once more seeming to be listening to something before he spoke again. "Agent-nim, you… You're dead."
Ah.
Jaekwan supposed he knew it all along. Maybe he had just been trying to convince himself otherwise this entire time, trying to find some way to get back to his home despite knowing his efforts were fruitless.
All at once, every bit of frustration leaked out of him, leaving him with nothing but a dull acceptance of his present situation.
"You can rest," Grapes continued softly.
Okay, he thought. He opened his mouth, forming words around his lips that never truly left his throat, hoping that they would find their way to the Agent before him who seemed to know of his presence in the room.
A slow nod. Then, to Choi, he said, "He said…" Kim Soleum paused for a moment. "He said thank you for giving him a home."
With that, he felt something seem to untether, like binds he didn't know were there were being released. Right, he thought dimly, I probably shouldn't remain here.
His hearing grew fuzzy, almost staticky. Distantly, he could register Choi saying something frantically to Grapes, but as for what it was, Jaekwan couldn't tell. Grapes was still staring in his direction, so he opened his mouth once more to say just one last thing, finding it difficult through the growing muddiness of his mind.
Grapes nodded at him once more. Some kind of confirmation, though as for what exactly it was, Jaekwan couldn't figure out. His vision grew dim, and the lightweighted feeling took him over.
His vision grew dark. Okay, he thought once more. I'll… I'll rest.
And then there was nothing.