Chapter Text
choisol starts with an unfair imbalance of knowledge. soleum knows agent choi before he ever knows choi, carrying a version of him in his head from the DER wiki as someone defined by wanting to save everyone, by the belief that human lives simply cannot be weighed against each other. agent choi gets none of that certainty in return, hes left trying to make sense of a rookie who is far too capable, far too secretive, and never quite what he claims to be.
“I already know.”
“……”
“Pressing the pager you stick under your left elbow is your usual way out of situations.”
Agent Choi’s eyes widened.
“But when it becomes too difficult to retrieve the pager like this… you usually start thinking up ways to subdue your opponent. Normally,
you use your dokkaebi flame, but sometimes you also use a book you got from Ijeong Bookstore.”
“……”
“But you only do that when you need to protect someone you’re
rescuing. In this situation, you’ll choose escape. Jay-ssi, there’s
another pocket inside this person’s pants pocket. There should be a sneaker shoelace in there. Please take it out.”
The sergeant did as I asked.
Agent Choi’s smile turned pale when he saw his own escape item in my hand.
I declared,
“I know you. I can predict everything you’ll try to do.”
(193)
but somehow the uncertainty never stops affection from taking root, because beneath all the lies is one thing soleum is incapable of faking. the same inability to dismiss a life just because saving it is inconvenient or unlikely. choi never really needed to believe everything soleum said in order to start believing in soleum. whatever else was hidden, that impulse to reach toward someone who might still be saved was real
“Cough— Kim Soleum. Hey.”
From below, with a small cough and a clogged voice, Agent Choi
grinned.
“That blade didn’t hurt much, did it?”
…!
“A blade like that isn’t something you can just keep moving on after it’s stuck in your foot. You saw it, too, right? When that elite team member from your company got hit.”
I saw it.
In the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace ghost story.
The moment the blade struck, Assistant Manager Jin Nasol had
collapsed, barely able to stifle her groans.
And the fact that it didn’t really hurt me, that means…
“It means you’re not such a bad guy, right?”
(193)
and another thing that was always real was soleum’s longing for “home.” such a small word for everything packed inside it. familiarity, rest, safety, identity, the right to exist without constantly proving usefulness. all of that folded into one private word.
jaekwan gently offers the possibility that maybe home can be made again. maybe hyunmoo team 1 and the people here can become home in the same way they became one for him. but thats exactly what soleum has always been avoiding. everyone around him has been slowly building a place where he could stay, while he is still looking toward the place he left behind, careful not to become too comfortable anywhere because comfort makes roots, and roots are terrifying when the whole point has always been to leave.
choi doesnt know where “home” is yet. but he knows that the word changes soleum.
maybe part of him thinks that if he can understand what soleum misses, he can recreate enough of it here. give him people to come back to, a team, somewhere safe to sleep, some reason for this world to stop feeling temporary. but every road still ends at the same sentence. “i just want to go home” and it hurts like a bitch 😭 because hyunmoo cant be soleum’s home if he doesnt want it to be.
at that point, the location still probably didnt mean much to choi. but the distance surely does.
home sounds like somewhere far enough that once soleum reaches it, there will be no dropping by after work, no number to call, no awkward reunion months later. just somewhere beyond the edge of choi’s reach.
but choi held on to the small hope that “far away” only means far. that even if hyunmoo cannot be soleum’s home, there might still be some way for their worlds to touch again. because distance is painful, but distance can still be crossed.
and then soleum finally tells him. “i came from another world.” suddenly the imbalance of knowledge shifts a little, and it feels strangely intimate because this is the one truth soleum has kept secret more fiercely than almost anything else, and choi is the person he finally chooses to place it in front of.
and choi immediately understands the implication. if soleum truly came from a different world, then going home does not mean moving away. it means leaving choi’s reality entirely. there is no “come visit sometime.” no address to exchange. no promise to meet again when work calms down.
the scale of knowledge has tilted, but what choi learns is something he may have wished remained unknown: now he finally understands what letting soleum go would actually mean.
choi becomes caught between two equally sincere impulses: he wants to believe soleum because soleum is someone he has been learning to trust, and because in a world where cities become supernatural disasters and ghost stories rewrite bodies, “i came from another world” is hardly the most impossible sentence anyone could say.
but maybe there is also a part of him that desperately does not want it to be true. because if it is true, then soleum leaving is not just possible. it is legitimate. there is no moral argument for asking someone to remain stranded in the wrong world simply because this one learned to love having him in it.
so during those agonizing 293 days, choi does what choi always does with uncertainty. he investigates it. later he tells soleum that he “tried to believe that too,” and that 293 days was far too long for him not to attempt verification. were his bones and flesh not born here? was he a wandering spirit adrift in this world?
the oracle says no.
and maybe that answer carries two opposite kinds of relief. maybe soleum is not destined to disappear somewhere unreachable after all. maybe his longing can soften with time. maybe this world can still become somewhere he chooses to stay.
but there is something quietly sad in “i tried to believe that too.” choi did not ask the oracle only because he wanted to prove soleum wrong. somewhere inside all that suspicion, he was also looking for permission to believe something impossible simply because soleum had asked him to.
and then soleum breaks the entire answer open: “you chose the wrong wording for your divination, i was invited into this body. i’m a guest” soleum has not proven his cosmology true, but in one sentence he has destroyed choi’s strongest proof that it is false.
and then there is that word: guest. that word has to hurt in a completely different way. a guest can stay for months. a guest can leave belongings everywhere. a guest can become beloved enough that the house feels emptier whenever they are gone. but “guest” contains impermanence in its very definition. guests arrive from somewhere else, and eventually guests leave.
so whatever comfort choi may have taken from the oracle suddenly becomes unstable again. soleum’s body belonging here does not necessarily mean soleum himself does.
and worse, choi has already said something absolute: “you can’t go home.” he said it because he thought he had evidence, because from his perspective he was trying to stop someone he cared about from throwing his life into a delusion. He probably didnt think oh god i was wrong about everything. but he does have to confront something much more uncomfortable for a person like him: i do not actually know. and once choi no longer knows, he loses the moral certainty that allowed him to decide on soleum’s behalf.
soleum does not even ask choi to believe every impossible detail. what he asks for is something simpler and harder. my choice is my own. and choi has to learn that respecting someone sometimes means making room for a truth that cannot be personally verified.
and that is what makes choi’s eventual decision to help soleum go home so devastating. he doesnt need to conclude that soleum’s cosmology is factually correct before accepting that soleum’s longing for home is real.
the oracle gives choi evidence against the version of the claim he knew how to ask. soleum gives him a reason that evidence may never have answered the right question in the first place. neither of them gets perfect proof.
so in the end, choi falls back on something older than certainty. his own ethics.
in supernatural disasters, choi says, most rescue calls are tricks or arrive too late. sometimes you cannot tell whether the person calling is even really there. but sometimes there really is a citizen there, and you have to trust them; even if you cannot tell for certain, if you get the chance, you have to try to send them back.
and somehow the entire relationship folds back into where it began. choi still cannot know soleum’s truth the way soleum once knew choi’s through der. but maybe knowing soleum himself has finally become enough.
maybe that’s where choisol finally closes the distance it started with. choi still cannot know soleum’s truth in the same way soleum once knew his through DER. he never receives perfect proof that another world exists, never gets an answer clean enough to erase every doubt. he doesnt even get years of knowing soleum. but he knew enough to know that the fear was real, the longing was real, and that “home” had never been a passing wish. so when the chance finally comes, choi chooses to act on the person he knows rather than wait for proof of the story he cannot verify. if soleum is telling the truth, then he is a citizen trapped inside a supernatural disaster asking to be sent back, and uncertainty is no longer enough reason to abandon the rescue. in the end, soleum becomes the impossible distress signal choi chooses to answer.
by that point, choi also has to surrender one of his most deeply ingrained instincts as an agent: defining safety for other people.
choi could wish for soleum to remain human in this world. he could wish for recovery, stability, a body, continued life beside hyunmoo team 1. but none of those things are “home” unless soleum chooses them. so his final act of care is not convincing soleum to stay, but trusting him enough to let him name where “back” is. choi spends so much of the story trying to keep soleum within reach that his final presence is almost defined by restraint
choi has spent so much of part 2 being active in soleum’s life that his final presence is expressed through absence. he is close enough to hear the goodbye, but far away because he cant ask to be heard in return.
he had already chosen to send soleum away using the relationship that asks for nothing back
“please return safely. citizen-nim.” choi doesnt claim soleum one last time as my hoobae, podo-ya, or even soleum-ah. agent to citizen. rescue completed. return safely.
And then Agent Haegeum spoke slowly, almost as if relaying someone’s words—someone who had been in the room all along but hadn’t announced
their presence.
—Please return safely, citizen-nim.
(371)