Archive of Our Own

Seo In-woo is a planner. It’s one of the qualities that sets him apart from Ji-hoon, who stumbles blindly through life with the hope that things will just fall into his lap and throws tantrums when they don’t. In-woo is clever and meticulous and not a goddamn idiot, so he doesn’t understand how exactly it all goes so wrong.

It starts off simple: he laces the sports drink with the crushed up sleeping pills, and hands a bottle to the pathetic wreck sitting bundled up in his three layers at the convenience store counter, staring sadly down at an envelope and a half-finished cup noodle. In-woo’s been watching him for a few days now, noticing the way he seems to just listlessly wander around town between visiting the columbarium and eating meals at this convenience store. A pointless life, almost tailor-made for In-woo’s plans.

“Here, you look like you could use a pick me up,” In-woo says, using his kindest voice, the one he perfected after years of putting up with weak, emotionally vulnerable trash in school and now at work. He’s careful to tamp down on the excited grin that’s threatening to break out. He’s finally going to do it.

“Oh, thank you,” his victim mumbles, glancing up through his glasses at In-woo and mustering up a watery smile. He’s got doleful eyes and a fluffy mop of hair, like a lost lamb. Perfect for sending to slaughter.

In-woo leaves him to his own devices, while pretending to heat up his bread in the microwave. He watches from the corner of his eye as his victim swigs down half the energy drink before sluggishly finishing his noodles. It isn’t long until the man’s body goes slack and he slumps over in his seat.

The girl at the counter looks over, concerned, and In-woo smiles at her, assuring her that he would help this poor fellow into a taxi. His victim is a little shorter than him, but In-woo manages to lug him into his car, parked around the corner out of sight.

It’s hard not to laugh to himself on the drive to the hospital, or while arranging his victim to his liking while he waits for him to rouse. He’s never been so excited by anything in his life.

After binding his quarry’s hands and legs with zipties, In-woo looks through his belongings, searching for an ID. He should remember his first victim’s name. It’s a special occasion, after all.

“Yook Dong-sik,” he says to himself as he flips through the rest of the wallet before tucking it back into the man’s pocket. “It’s your lucky day.” He takes a moment to twirl a lock of curly hair between his fingers as he waits. It’s worthlessly soft, like Dong-sik’s entire existence, and In-woo sighs with the anticipation of removing him from the world. Soon.

When Dong-sik finally rouses, it takes him a moment to come to his senses and adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings. In-woo sits on a chair with his knife in hand and his legs crossed, waiting for Dong-sik to finally register what his presence means. Those lamb eyes go wide and terrified when he finally understands exactly why he can’t move and why In-woo has brought him here.

“W-wait a moment, what are you- oh, please- please d-don’t kill me, I’ll give you anything you want- y-you can have whatever’s in my wallet- anything at all-”

He’s full-on blubbering now, his glasses askew and tears dripping down his face. In-woo stands, and his noises get even louder and less meaningful.

He should draw this out. Revel in the terror in Yook Dong-sik’s eyes as he takes in the glint of In-woo’s knife and the smile on his face. But his blood is pounding thunderously in his ears, and that itch — that constant need that he’s been wrestling with since childhood — is too seductive, too strong, and it’s so easy to step forward, crushing Dong-sik’s torso under his weight, and to slice the knife right across the unguarded line of his pale throat.

It feels so much better than In-woo ever imagined.

There’s still plenty of fear to enjoy as Dong-sik gurgles wetly while his blood pumps helplessly out from the gaping slash in his throat, and In-woo watches as if hypnotized as the struggle goes out of Dong-sik’s body and the light fades from his eyes. He’s so taken with the sight of Dong-sik lying there like a lead weight that at first he doesn’t notice the movement along Dong-sik’s neck.

It isn’t until he reaches out to feel his handiwork for himself that he notices the odd movement beneath the congealing blood. He curls his hand a little tighter around Dong-sik’s ruined throat and feels the eerie sensation of flesh closing up under his fingers. In-woo freezes, his hand falling still around the column of Dong-sik’s throat. He must be going insane.

But no, the gash in Dong-sik’s neck really is sealing itself closed, and leaving no trace of a scar behind.

What the fuck what the fuck that’s not normal Dong-sik should be dead-

In-woo releases him with violent force, and his head bounces against the floor with a clunk.

And then he wakes up.

“Oh my god, oh god, I thought I was gonna die-” Yook Dong-sik word vomits before he vomit vomits at the sight of his own pool of blood. In-woo watches in disbelief before glancing down at the knife in his hand. It’s definitely coated in blood, and In-woo viscerally remembers the feeling of the blade biting through Dong-sik’s jugular, and yet somehow the guy’s throat just closed itself up. What.

“Why is there blood everywhere,” In-woo hears Dong-sik whimpering. He’s wriggling like a beached mermaid, whipping his head around to try and take in everything that he couldn’t before. His crazed eyes finally meet In-woo’s, and then he makes a hysterical keening noise, like a donkey careening off a cliff. “W-what did you do?”

In-woo doesn’t bother answering. He keeps looking between his knife and his victim, as if eventually the pieces of the picture will form into a coherent whole.

“I thought you were dead. You’re supposed to be dead,” he hisses when everything continues to make negative sense.

“Ah, hahaha, yeah, I thought so too?” Yook Dong-sik sounds like he’s on the verge of a breakdown. It’s the closest moment to empathy that In-woo’s ever had with a worm like this. “You definitely, uh.” He draws his thumb across his unmarred throat, laughing nervously. Then the situation seems to catch up with him again, and his expression descends into horror. “Oh god, you killed me. You just- you slit my throat! Why?”

Dong-sik continues babbling as he tries to scooch away, but his bound legs give out and he collapses in a useless heap. In-woo feels a headache coming on. He doesn’t know what the hell is happening, but this has all gone terribly wrong. No time to toy with his prey anymore. He needs to end this.

“Did I do something to you? Whatever it is, I’m sorry! I’ll- I can make it up to you, whatever it is you want-”

“No, just- hush now,” In-woo says, walking around a crying Dong-sik and grabbing an IV stand. Dong-sik watches him through his tears but doesn’t have any way to escape as In-woo slams it down on his skull. He crumples in his spot and In-woo sighs as he crouches down beside him again. There’s blood spatter and puke everywhere, so In-woo pulls Dong-sik to a slightly cleaner patch of floor and frees his hands from the ziptie for ease of access.

“This was an absolute disaster,” he mutters to himself before kneeling over Dong-sik’s unconscious body. Well, there’s always room for improvement. He’ll learn from his mistakes. Won’t try something so indirect as slitting the throat next time.

He plunges the knife in. Once, twice, sixteen times. It feels both warm and wonderful, in a dreamy, unreal way. There’s absolutely no chance he missed the heart. There’s absolutely no chance that Yook Dong-sik isn’t dead. But just for good measure, he takes a few moments to bash his skull in as well. It doesn’t hurt to be thorough.

And yet In-woo crouches with bated breath, his fingers pressed to Dong-sik’s pulse point, waiting for his heart to finally cease beating. His own pulse is racing in counterpoint as the heartbeat beneath his fingertips slows. It does stop, as it should, so In-woo releases his breath and starts to drag Dong-sik’s corpse toward the doorway. He only makes it a handful of steps before the arms in his hands are tensing, and he leaps away defensively as Dong-sik yet again (!) struggles back to life with a violent spasm.

“That hurt!” Dong-sik shrieks as he jolts upward. He clutches at his chest in outrage, and then makes a wounded noise when his hands come away bloody.

“It’s supposed to hurt! It’s a fucking knife!” In-woo yells back, still standing with his arms raised and ready to fight. He can’t believe his life has come to this. Having the world’s stupidest argument with his twice failed murder victim in an abandoned hospital.

“I know, but still- couldn’t you have done it more gently?” Dong-sik’s mouth wobbles as he winces. In-woo wants to squash him flat as a pancake.

“Murder generally isn’t a gentle affair!”

“Why are you even trying to murder me?” Dong-sik wails, desperately trying to wipe his hands clean on his pants. He’s a complete mess, and In-woo feels the irrational desire to wash him clean. Probably just an extension of his disgust at all the trash in the world.

“Because it didn’t stick the first time,” In-woo growls. It didn’t stick this time either, and he knows what he saw, what he felt. The give of flesh under his knife, the slow stop to Dong-sik’s pulse, the literal liters of blood spilled all around them like a particularly deranged Pollock. And still, here Yook Dong-sik is, noisy and filthy and very much still alive.

He’s killed this idiot twice now, and neither time worked. What in the absolute fuck is happening here?

“But it didn’t work this time either. Can’t you just let me go?” Dong-sik is asking through tears. He sounds more confused than frightened, and a flash of offense courses through In-woo. How dare Dong-sik be confused when In-woo’s the one whose plans have been overturned by this clown’s inability to die.

“Not until I understand why.”

In-woo storms over and begins wresting Dong-sik’s shirt open. He needs to see the wounds for himself. Nevermind that he watched Dong-sik’s throat knit itself back together like some kind of messed-up time lapse nature video. There must be some evidence this time around.

“No, this is my good shirt,” Dong-sik whines as In-woo claws at him, but In-woo tears it open anyway.

“It’s soaked in blood and has sixteen knife holes. There’s no salvaging it,” In-woo snaps, as he tugs the sodden fabric away from Dong-sik’s chest. Unfortunately, there’s too much blood for him to be sure, as he pokes around looking for stab wounds.

“Ah, wait- haha- that tickles-”

“Dammit, just-” In-woo swings around, and tears a sheet off the nearest hospital bed. “Wipe yourself off!”

“Okay, okay,” Dong-sik says, mopping the blood from his torso. “It’s starting to dry, though, so I don’t know if- uh.” He pauses, and In-woo is about to start scrubbing him himself, when he notices that though Dong-sik’s skin is crimson with tacky, half-dried blood, it looks completely unharmed.

Not a single wound. Not even a scar or a scratch.

“You definitely stabbed me,” Dong-sik says numbly, prodding his own stained chest. “Right?”

“I did,” In-woo says, feeling equally lost. He reaches up and tugs Dong-sik forward by his hair, searching desperately for a crack in his skull or some loose brain matter or anything.

“Ouch-”

“Sit still.” In-woo cards through the matted strands of hair, but besides the blood he can’t find any sign of injury. “Nothing here either.”

“You already stabbed me! Did you really need to crush my head too?”

“I needed to be sure.”

“But that didn’t work either. Which means…”

“…you can’t die.”

They stare at one another for a long moment before Dong-sik shakes his head vigorously like a dog, his blood-soaked waves whipping around.

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“I know it doesn’t, but we’ve got some pretty incontrovertible evidence,” In-woo bites out before rudely jabbing his finger into Dong-sik’s ribs.

“Oof,” Dong-sik says, but he does the same, and they sit there for a minute poking Dong-sik’s soft, unmarked body. It’s nonsense.

“This is absurd,” In-woo mutters to himself after sticking Dong-sik once more in the stomach. He ignores the sad moan of pain and sits back on his haunches to think about what to do next. Yook Dong-sik literally can’t die. Which means he’s seen In-woo’s face and In-woo has no way of silencing him, which is problematic, to say the least.

Dong-sik seems to be having similar thoughts. “Now what?” he asks meekly, scooting back when In-woo turns his glare on him. “C-can I go home?”

No, In-woo wants to snap, you can’t go home you useless piece of garbage, you’re supposed to be dead. But he isn’t. So there’s nothing In-woo can do to stop him.

However, the more he thinks about it, the better the situation is actually turning out to be. In-woo’s plan may have completely imploded in his face, but at least Yook Dong-sik can’t tell on him. He has a much bigger secret to hide.

“Yes, you can go home,” In-woo says. “But don’t tell anybody what happened here or-”

“You’ll kill me?” And for a second, there’s a stinging flash of sarcasm under that soft-willed, whimpering tone he usually uses, and it gives In-woo pause. Intriguing.

“No, don’t tell anybody or they’ll think you’re insane,” In-woo explains. “Worst case scenario, they do believe you, and then you’ll have to explain how you got away unscathed.” Dong-sik’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, and In-woo gestures with his knife at Dong-sik’s torso. “The government will be much more interested in someone with apparent immortality than an alleged murderer.”

“Oh,” Dong-sik says, looking suddenly worried. “You don’t think- they wouldn’t put me in- in a lab or something, would they?”

“What do you think?” In-woo raises an eyebrow. “Someone like you is perfect guinea pig material for new weapons and experimental research. I’d be surprised if you ever stepped foot in the outside world again.”

Dong-sik blanches. “Oh god. Okay. That’s a good point.”

“You’d do well to remember it.” In-woo reaches over — ignoring Dong-sik’s flinch — and cuts the tie off his ankles. “Alright, get going before I change my mind.”

Scrambling to his feet causes Dong-sik to almost fall backwards onto a hospital bed, but he rights himself and quickly skirts widely around In-woo toward the door. However, at the last second he swivels around and turns back to In-woo.

“Wait! P-promise me you won’t tell anybody about me, either.”

“What?”

“Let’s promise. I- I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. Nobody needs to know.” His hand is trembling as he holds it out, but he’s finally done crying. The knife is lying on the ground between them and In-woo is irrationally vexed that Dong-sik hasn’t thought to pick it up to gut In-woo now that he knows he’s indestructible.

This moron is too soft. In-woo can’t stand the thought of allowing him to continue his vapid, useless existence, but there’s nothing to be done about it right now. So he accepts Dong-sik’s offer and they seal the deal with a disgusting, bloody handshake.

“Alright, don’t forget our promise, or I’ll come find you.” In-woo is about to tell Dong-sik to get the hell out of his sight when he remembers that they both rightfully look like they got caught up in a murder spree, and he barely remembers not to rub his temples in annoyance and smear blood all over his face. In-woo came prepared with extra clothes and cleaning supplies, but Dong-sik certainly didn’t, and people are going to ask too many questions if they see him like this. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says reluctantly, gesturing for Dong-sik to follow him. He’ll come back to deal with the scene later. It isn’t like there’s a body to worry about.

“Ah, okay,” Dong-sik says, scampering after him with not enough fear in his idiot sheep heart. In-woo would consider it a miracle that he hasn’t been murdered yet, if he hadn’t just seen firsthand exactly why.

Unbelievable.

--

In-woo sends Dong-sik on his pitiful way with a set of clean clothes and taxi fare after the weirdest hour of his life spent scrubbing themselves clean in the hospital parking lot. Dong-sik is lucky that In-woo has a whole suitcase full of fresh clothes. Dong-sik is also stupid enough to thank In-woo for his help, as if In-woo weren’t the cause of his problems in the first place.

It takes an inordinate amount of time to dispose of all the evidence, and he has to stay another night at the hotel before returning the next day to scrub the scene clean. This killing business is more labor intensive than he realized.

After he finally returns home, he grabs the first notebook he sees to write down everything he remembers about this absolutely incomprehensible encounter. He’s half-afraid he was somehow tripping out on Ji-hoon’s drugs, even though he knows, logically, that it all must be true. The whole experience leaves him so bewildered that he shelves any further murder plans for now.

Despite the two dozen issues that popped up that night, his little vacation did scratch that itch that’s been building in him for years. He can still recall the sensation of Dong-sik’s body going lifeless beneath him, and it was exhilarating for the short time that it lasted. He has no need to make another attempt so soon. Besides, there are messes to be cleaned up at work, and the chairman will soon be on him about the performance of his sales team, and he’s sure Ji-hoon has done some other moronic thing in the few days In-woo was away.

So Seo In-woo returns to work, and shoves all thoughts of murder from his brain for now, even if every interaction with his father and brother threatens to push them back into the forefront.

He has several months of success until one summer day, when he returns from a lunch meeting and catches sight of a familiar mop of hair attached to a browbeaten, slouchy form shuffling into the elevator. In-woo freezes, wondering for a second if he only imagined it, and then abruptly calls up human resources to demand they look up an employee for him.

They confirm it: Yook Dong-sik is here, at Daehan Securities.

Why?

It’s the only thing he can think about the next five hours, and then the next five days.

He’s filled with an ordinary kind of disgust for the people around him. They’re ants to be crushed underfoot, but Yook Dong-sik? Yook Dong-sik is a cockroach, and In-woo can’t seem to get him out of his mind.

He finally decides to satisfy his curiosity one day and wanders over to Dong-sik’s section to watch him through the glass doors. It’s probably a little creepy, but he doesn’t want to accidentally initiate a confrontation in the middle of the work day. Dong-sik acts however you would expect a non-murder victim to act at work. He makes calls, chats a little bit with coworkers who mostly seem to ignore him, fetches coffee for people and spends most of his time typing and looking through reports. In-woo knows this from swinging by to watch him on eight separate occasions. Perhaps it’s a bit much.

But Dong-sik keeps on living his life in the same pitiable manner In-woo expected when he first watched him slump around town from hotel to columbarium to convenience store, and it’s infuriating. How did this- this abject loser, this chew toy, this absolute chump escape In-woo unscathed? It goes against everything In-woo knows about the world, everything lesson his father ever forced down his throat.

Seo In-woo doesn’t lose. Not when it counts. And every second that Dong-sik remains alive is a stain on his record. Well, it will be, at least, once he murders a few more people. Eventually.

He needs to know that the night in Gwangju wasn’t a fluke. It’s possible that Yook Dong-sik is just immune to violent injuries. But there are ways to kill without leaving any wounds.

And so, In-woo begins plotting again.

--

It’s disturbingly easy to follow Yook Dong-sik home.

He barely pays attention to his surroundings as he walks, and he has no instincts whatsoever. As In-woo suspected during their first encounter in Gwangju, Dong-sik is the ideal murder victim, minus the part where he can’t die. In-woo wants to yell at him to get his life together, but that would be both stupid and self-defeatist, so he just skulks after Dong-sik into his building. He hides in the corner and films Dong-sik entering his door code in plain view; it should be easy enough to decipher later.

The first time, In-woo returns after he sees Dong-sik’s lights are out and simply pads around Dong-sik’s tiny apartment, checking for escape routes and other points of interest. There aren’t many; the man basically lives in a cubicle. He slips back out quietly but decides to move Dong-sik’s shoes from one side of the doorway to the other, just to inspire a little fear.

The second time, he takes care to examine everything in the apartment while he debates what method to use. He settles on using the gas stove to fill the apartment with carbon monoxide, since the idiot doesn’t have a proper alarm installed.

He decides to strike on Friday night, since it leaves him with plenty of free time to complete the act.

Dong-sik is too engrossed in his movie to notice In-woo letting himself into his apartment, and for a minute, In-woo is caught between wanting to strangle him and wanting to yell about having no sense of paranoia. But he came here for a reason, so he slips easily behind the couch and has a needle in Dong-sik’s neck before he notices anything amiss. It’s almost too easy.

In-woo carries him over to bed and tucks him beneath the covers before returning to turn off the tv and turn on the oven and stove, making certain there’s nothing nearby to catch fire. He doesn’t want to accidentally burn down the entire apartment complex; that would be way too attention-grabbing. After making certain the windows are shut tight, he takes his leave.

On Saturday morning he returns, opening the door to Dong-sik’s apartment and letting the carbon monoxide filter out to the hallway, where he’s set up an electric fan and opened up the windows. He holds his breath to take several trips to turn off the stove and open the windows inside as well, before plugging in another fan to hurry the process along. And then he plants himself on one of Dong-sik’s kitchen chairs out in the hallway and reads emails on his phone until his carbon monoxide meter reads the room as safe enough to enter. It’s a good thing that Dong-sik’s unit is the last in the hallway and that no one in this building seems inclined to go outside.

It’s all a bit of a process. Next time he’s just going to lock Dong-sik in his car and drive him into the river.

He drags his chair over to Dong-sik’s bedside, and occupies himself with waiting to see if Dong-sik will wake. In retrospect, after all the work of filtering all that clean air into the apartment, it sure would be a waste of a scene if Dong-sik ends up dying. In-woo will have to restage the suicide if it comes to it.

In-woo spends twenty minutes just staring at Yook Dong-sik’s soft curls and squishy face before he starts wondering why it’s taking so much longer than that time at the hospital. Could the idiot just be asleep? But he doesn’t hear any breaths nor does he see Dong-sik’s chest rise or fall. Frowning, he bends over Dong-sik’s body and holds his fingers to Dong-sik’s (obnoxiously intact) neck to try and find a pulse. But there’s nothing there. He even goes so far as to slap Dong-sik’s cheek a few times, but to no avail.

Stumped, he sits back in his chair and wonders if this means he’s won. Somehow the victory feels a bit hollow. As if the match ended too quickly to be worth playing.

Oh well. He stands to go turn the stove back on and restage the apartment, when he notices the slightest fluttering of Dong-sik’s eyelashes. In-woo’s breath stops dead in his throat and he stands there, hunched over Dong-sik’s body as he waits for another sign of life. Hesitantly, he presses his fingertips to Dong-sik’s throat again, waiting with electric anticipation for a heartbeat. At first, In-woo isn’t certain he isn’t feeling his own pulse throbbing under his skin, but the rhythm is too slow to match. It seems that Yook Dong-sik has yet again returned to the land of the living.

In-woo removes his hand just in time.

Those lamb eyes slit open, squinting at In-woo hovering there like a vampire, and then Dong-sik yelps, flailing his arms out of his blanket to ward In-woo away.

“Oh. You woke up.” In-woo doesn’t know why he feels disappointed after being previously disappointed ten seconds ago that Dong-sik wasn’t reviving. He sits back down in his chair and frowns.

“It’s you! Murderer-ssi!” Dong-sik gasps, struggling toward the other side of the bed. Sadly, In-woo tucked him in too well so he doesn’t make it very far. He clutches his blanket to his chest, as if to protect himself, watching In-woo with wide eyes. His gaze flickers rapidly around the room, perhaps searching for a weapon.

“That’s a stupid name,” In-woo tells him bluntly, lounging back in his chair, and Dong-sik gapes at him like a goldfish for a few seconds.

“But I don’t know what else to call you?” he squeaks out.

In-woo sighs. There’s no point in trying to hide his identity at this point; there’s absolutely no guarantee Dong-sik wouldn’t find out eventually at work anyway. “Seo In-woo. That’s my name.”

“Oh. Um. Welcome to my home, In-woo-ssi,” Dong-sik says blankly, gesturing foolishly around the small apartment, still looking unsure as to why In-woo has decided to pay him an unannounced and unwelcome visit. “How did you find me? Are you here to threaten my life?”

“I already did. Don’t you remember what you were doing before this?” In-woo asks, leaning his face against his hand as he watches the gears and cogs click in Dong-sik’s mind.

“I was watching Memories of Murder on the couch...and then something sharp- did you drug me?” Dong-sik asks, frowning. His hand flies up to slap at the place where In-woo stuck him with the syringe yesterday.

In-woo shrugs. “You’d try to run away, otherwise.”

“Who wouldn’t?” He sounds incredulous, and In-woo finds himself amused that he has the nerve to talk back.

“Fair enough. Anyway, I filled your apartment with enough carbon monoxide to kill you, but you’ve come away unscathed. Again.”

Dong-sik nods numbly at this news, before something seems to occur to him. “Wait, I didn’t tell anyone about anything,” he pleads. “I swear. I didn’t break our promise.”

“Oh, I know,” In-woo assures him. “I didn’t come here to threaten you. I just wanted to try murdering you again, but. Well.”

“Sorry about that,” Dong-sik says, ducking his head.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I- I don’t know, it just seemed like the thing to do-”

“Well, stop,” In-woo says, irritated by the cowed look on Dong-sik’s face. God. This is exactly the reason he needs to shuffle on to the great beyond, except that he won’t. It’s truly unfair.

“Sor-”

“Stop.”

“Right. No more apologizing. Um. Is there something else I can do for you?” It’s only then that In-woo remembers it’s a little odd to just be sitting at someone else’s bedside, and he stands up.

“No, thank you. I got what I came for. I mean, I didn’t, but it was adequate.” And it was. He still remembers the settled feeling of satisfaction as he stood across the street and stared at Dong-sik’s window, knowing that the room was filling itself up with a lethal amount of gas.

“Okay, glad I could help,” Dong-sik says while climbing out of bed. He puts on his glasses and follows In-woo out of the bedroom. “How did you even get in?” he asks, peering over at his unharmed door.

“I stalked you home and figured out your keycode. You’re very defenseless. It makes things easy.”

“Huh. You’re really good at this.” Dong-sik looks both disturbed and curious, and as In-woo sees his poster collection in broad daylight for the first time, he’s starting to understand why.

“I would be, if you would just die,” In-woo mutters. “Anyway, keep your eyes up when you walk and stay away from dark streets. You’re going to get mugged one day.” If Dong-sik is going to continue his futile existence, the least he could do is improve himself. Even the weak should have a limit to how pathetic they can be.

Dong-sik nods placidly at this advice, and then gestures at the refrigerator. “Um, would you like something to drink?”

In-woo shoots him a look of utter disbelief. Who on earth offers their assailant a beverage? This man needs even more help than In-woo realized. “No. I need to be going now.”

“Oh, alright. Thanks for...visiting?” Even Dong-sik looks confused by his own words. He’s probably still in a mild state of shock. Or gas-addled from the carbon monoxide. He looks around the room as if trying to look for something that will restart his reality, and finally sees the electric fans that In-woo plugged in earlier.

“Where did these fans come from?”

“Ah, those are for you,” In-woo says, without bothering to explain. “It’s hot these days.” Actually, that reminds him. “Here. Buy yourself a carbon monoxide detector.” In-woo tosses a stack of bills from his wallet at Dong-sik, who scrambles to catch them.

“But why? I mean, I won’t die-”

“And how are you going to explain that to the paramedics the next time this happens?” In-woo asks. “Like I said, you need to be careful with your secret. A slip up could cost you everything. Don’t forget our promise.”

“R-right,” Dong-sik says apologetically, before trying to hand most of the bills back to In-woo. “I think you gave me too much-”

“Keep it. Buy yourself some...posters or books or something,” In-woo says, waving his hand at the decor and paraphernalia Dong-sik has. “And a nicer tie. And stop letting people at work walk all over you.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Goodbye, Dong-sik-ssi. Enjoy your weekend.”

“Thank you?” Dong-sik says, still utterly baffled, as In-woo lets himself back out and goes to take a long walk around the neighborhood to sort through his thoughts.

So. It wasn’t a fluke. Yook Dong-sik is basically indestructible. In-woo hasn’t quite settled on what to do with this information yet. It seems like too great a gift to waste, but at the same time, In-woo feels the effort is a little pointless. He’ll have to consider the pros and cons before returning here again.

--

As it turns out, Dong-sik decides for him.

In-woo has been watching him from afar for the last two weeks, and found that besides demonstrating an unusual amount of cheer and energy for anyone at Daehan, let alone a person who just suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, Dong-sik remains much the same as before. Damn him.

The questions about Dong-sik’s condition continue to build, and In-woo is going slightly mad at the lack of answers to any of them. Why is Dong-sik effectively immortal? What triggers his mystical healing ability? Why does it take different lengths of time for him to recover? Was he born this way or did some freak accident or mutation cause this? Does Dong-sik have any self-preservation instincts in his stupid noodly sheep body at all, or were those also lost in a freak accident? Why is his face so springy and expressive? Why does In-woo feel the occasional, humiliating urge to pat him on the head like a dog?

There are too many things In-woo wants to know. It’s aggravating how much of his brain output is being wasted on this wastrel.

In-woo is contemplating a risk-benefit chart for going victim hunting again to forget about Yook Dong-sik even though he’s got an important client meeting and his sister’s birthday event on the horizon when reception calls him up on the office phone. An employee from one of the asset management teams is asking to speak to him. He isn’t a senior manager yet, but it’s still unusual for random employees to call him up, and he’s taken aback by the gall.

Still, he allows the call to be put through, because he’s still trying to cultivate the image of a semi-approachable and competent boss to stand in contrast with Ji-hoon’s reputation.

“Hello?”

“I-is this Seo In-woo-ssi?”

It takes only a second to place the voice, but then the bewildering question of “how and why is he calling me” almost strikes In-woo silent.

“Yook Dong-sik-ssi? Are you calling me from your desk? During work hours?” he finally asks when he recoups his senses.

Dong-sik, despite having wool for brains, catches his drift quickly enough, and blurts out, “S-sorry, I wasn’t sure how else to reach you, but um, you’re right, I should be getting back to work. Can you meet me after work? Or I could give you my cell number-”

In-woo should refuse, because associating with this peon will probably bring him nothing but trouble. Yet, Dong-sik’s blase underreaction to being immortal and his cockroach-esque tenacity will not stop plaguing In-woo’s mind, so he gives into his whim and says, “Alright, meet me outside the building at six thirty and we’ll talk. Don’t be late.” He hangs up before Dong-sik can say anything else.

He’s probably going to need some hard liquor for this conversation.

In-woo exits the front door of Daehan Securities at 6:24 and waits. Employees nod and bow at him as he leaves, but he isn’t certain yet if they respect him for his name, or if he’s earned himself any actual regard in their eyes. He’s been working at Daehan now for a few years, ever since graduating from university, but he still doesn’t command anywhere near the same presence as the chairman yet. Maybe when he does, the chairman will finally- no, there’s no point going through that train of thought.

“Ah! In-woo-ssi!”

Dong-sik’s voice and subsequent windmill style wave snaps In-woo out of his thoughts, and In-woo watches in consternation as Dong-sik comes jogging up to him full of joy.

He has no business looking so happy to see In-woo considering their last two encounters, but In-woo is starting to belatedly realize that Dong-sik isn’t only a regular sad-sack. There’s something unsettlingly incongruous about the way he handles the things that happen to him.

In-woo is probably a psychopath, but Yook Dong-sik might be a little bit insane.

“Dong-sik-ssi,” In-woo greets politely, because they’re in public and he can’t be caught shouting at Dong-sik for being a weirdo. “If you don’t have any objections, there’s a bar I like to frequent where we can talk.”

“Sure, anywhere is fine with me.”

They make stilted conversation about work as In-woo leads them to the bar, and In-woo discovers that Dong-sik began working at Daehan shortly after their first encounter. Dong-sik freely offers up the information that he had been in Gwangju visiting his mother’s memorial in order to strengthen his resolve to get his life together. In-woo successfully resists the desire to tell him that he’s still far from completing that goal, since at least the guy has a job and stable income now.

In-woo finds them a private table, since having this conversation right in front of the bartender is a bad idea. He pours them each a drink and sips at it while he waits for Dong-sik to get up the nerve to say whatever it is he called In-woo out to say. He hopes it isn’t a blackmail attempt. Even Dong-sik shouldn’t be that stupid.

It takes two drinks and some circular talk about Dong-sik’s health and In-woo’s hobbies before Dong-sik finally comes out and says what he really wants. In-woo is about to chalk up the outing as a ineffective attempt to suck up to him for a connection at work, when Dong-sik slams his glass down, and stares straight into In-woo’s eyes while full to the brim with liquid courage.

“In-woo-ssi, please kill me.”

In-woo thanks the copious amount of practice he’s had pretending to be ordinary when he doesn’t spew alcohol everywhere at Dong-sik’s words.

“What,” he rasps out, his throat burning, “did you just say?”

Dong-sik glances around, eyes searching for prying bystanders, before he repeats in a hiss, “Can you please kill me again?”

“Why are you asking me this?” In-woo demands. What kind of mind game is Dong-sik playing? Is he trying to set In-woo up? Catch him on camera to reveal what kind of persona In-woo has been hiding behind the masquerade all these years? Is he a plant sent by the chairman to try again to root out some shallow reason why In-woo shouldn’t be advancing as quickly in the company as he is?

“I guess I’m in need of your...services?”

“I’m not a contract killer,” In-woo snaps, still on edge about where this conversation is headed.

“I know, I know! But you’re good at what you do, and if you’re going to kill someone again-”

“You have no proof of that.”

“In-woo-ssi, I’m not trying to entrap you or anything,” Dong-sik blurts out, sounding a bit exasperated. “You can pat me down for recording devices if you want. Look,” and he leans in closer, his eyes shining with an unusual fervor. “You have, um, impulses, right? To kill? Impulses you can’t control.”

In-woo’s hand tightens around his tumbler. “Are you saying I have no self-control?”

“No! Not like that, but- you’re a serial killer, aren’t you? There’s usually a psychological need- an uncontrollable drive- I mean, what I’m saying is- if- if you have to kill someone anyway, do you think you choose me?”

“Choose you…?”

Dong-sik nods quickly, seemingly relieved. “Yes! As a victim, I mean. I want you to kill me again.” There’s something off about how eager he looks.

“Is this...some kind of fetish?” In-woo asks, horrified. Of course he would awaken a bizarre kink in Yook Dong-sik. That’s exactly what he needs on top of this whole mess.

“No! God, no,” Dong-sik babbles, flushing pink. “That’s not it at all. It isn’t even like I’m suicidal, really. But after that time with the carbon monoxide, I felt really refreshed for the whole day. Like I finally got enough rest. It lasted for a week; it was pretty nice! And I thought, uh, that maybe we could try it again?”

In-woo stares at him for a whole two minutes, trying to reconcile yet another terrible new fact with his existing world. “That’s abnormal, Dong-sik-ssi. You should seek professional help.”

Dong-sik throws him a look that says like I really want to be hearing that from you, a would-be serial killer. “I’m not- I’m not getting off on it or anything! And I don’t want it to hurt! I just want to be dead for a bit, take a little break, you know?”

In-woo absolutely does not know. He has no desire to die, unless perhaps at the hands of someone with the same proclivities as his. That might be kind of fun. But this...strange new hobby of Yook Dong-sik’s is outside In-woo’s sphere of comprehension.

“I don’t,” he says, before following it up with, “but if you really want a repeat performance, I suppose it could be arranged,” when he sees Dong-sik’s crestfallen look. Dong-sik somehow manages to look even more unbearable when upset, and In-woo would rather not let it dampen his day. Besides, he’ll never say no to a little murder.

Dong-sik transforms from sad sheep to happy sheep in a millisecond. There’s something wrong with this boy’s face. It’s like he’s made of rubber. In-woo is tempted to reach out and pinch his cheek.

“Really? You would do that for me?”

Not for Dong-sik, no, but In-woo keeps that to himself. “Sure. I’m feeling generous. But I get to choose the method.”

“Oh, uh, okay. Can you pick something that doesn’t hurt too much?”

“Fine,” In-woo says, refilling Dong-sik’s shot glass. Even he can throw a few crumbs of kindness toward a subordinate on occasion. Besides, he’s got a nice collection of poisons he’s been meaning to try. “Now drink up.”

“Yes sir,” Dong-sik says obediently, smiling blithely to himself now that he’s gotten what he wants. How sweet. How cloying. In-woo wants to demolish him and piece him back together better than before, and then destroy him again.

It’s kind of like having a pet, he supposes. It’ll provide some amusement for a little while, so he might as well enjoy it.

--

Hiding the cyanide in Dong-sik’s breakfast is the least difficult part of his decision. It’s the rest of the plan that In-woo has to consider. He obviously can’t kill Dong-sik in public, and he doesn’t want to let the guy into his own place. He’ll have to settle for doing it in Dong-sik’s crummy matchbox apartment again.

Early on Saturday morning, In-woo sends him a text, telling him that he’ll be over with breakfast soon. When he arrives, Dong-sik still looks a little sleepy, dressed in his oversized sweatshirt and yawning. Prime homicide material. But he perks up a bit when In-woo lays out breakfast on his dining table.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I picked up a few things,” In-woo says before taking a sip of his coffee. “Try whatever you like.”

Dong-sik picks out an almond croissant and takes a large bite. He’s somehow managed to get powdered sugar on his glasses.

While chewing he asks, “Is there something I should do to prepare? Like go lie down, or change my clothes-”

“Just eat your croissant,” In-woo instructs, pushing Dong-sik’s coffee cup closer to him. “We can talk about the details afterwards.”

“Okay- oh, this is really good. Is this almond?”

“Yes. There are also profiteroles and pain au chocolat, if you want.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I’m not very hungry. And I wanted to wait until you had your fill.”

“No, we can share,” Dong-sik says before cramming the rest of the almond croissant into his face. It sits in the pocket of his cheek like a squirrel with an acorn as he scampers to his utensil drawer to grab a knife. “Let’s cut everything in half.”

In-woo thinks he should protest, but the effects should kick in soon, so he lets Dong-sik scurry around in that pointless way that he does.

Dong-sik takes a profiterole and starts sawing it in half, but In-woo’s gaze remains fixed on his face, watching for the discomfort that suddenly crosses it. The hand holding the knife presses down with too much force, and pastry cream overflows onto the wax paper below. There’s a flash of confusion in his eyes as he meets In-woo’s eyes.

“In-woo-ssi? I feel- I don’t feel so great- I’m getting kind of dizzy.”

Dong-sik’s breaths are becoming labored, and he reaches up to press a hand to his forehead. The knife slips from his hand and In-woo places it out of his reach, leaving a trail of cream across the table.

“Oh? Does your head hurt?”

“Yeah, I think I-” His words stop short as he slumps face forward onto the table, barely missing the profiterole on his way down. In-woo can hear his breathing become more rapid as he tries in vain to sit back up. “I think something’s wrong,” he slurs out, one arm slipping off the table to dangle uselessly in the air.

“It’s just the cyanide,” In-woo says warmly, scooting his chair closer to take Dong-sik’s pulse. His heartbeat is dangerously fast, and it makes In-woo tremble with pleasure. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Dong-sik’s eyes roll up to look at In-woo but his body jerks erratically and his mouth goes slack.

“Shh, take it easy.” In-woo cards his hand through Dong-sik’s hair as those frightened sheep eyes turn glassy. He carefully removes Dong-sik’s glasses, placing them aside as Dong-sik spasms violently again. The seizure knocks over his cup and coffee begins dripping down one table leg. In-woo ignores it in favor of drinking in the way Dong-sik’s mouth strains to form words he can’t say. “You’re going to fall unconscious very soon. Don’t fight it. Just let go.”

He continues petting Dong-sik’s hair in some twisted parody of affection as Dong-sik struggles to remain awake. Under his tender hand, Dong-sik has one more seizure before his eyes finally slide closed. In-woo lets his hand trail down to Dong-sik’s neck, and waits for the now-slowing pulse to fall still. A bubble of ecstasy wells up in his chest as he feels the life finally drain out of Dong-sik’s body. He didn’t get the chance last time to see it for himself, and it’s so much more delicious to feel Dong-sik die firsthand.

He closes his own eyes in satisfaction. Perfect.

Once he’s certain Dong-sik’s heart has stopped, In-woo lifts him and carries him to the bed as a matter of courtesy. It isn’t exceedingly difficult but it does make In-woo realize he’ll have to work out a bit more if he wants to keep moving bodies around. He doesn’t bother tucking Dong-sik in this time; he just tosses him down and cleans the kitchen before sitting down with a book while he waits.

There’s a much faster turnaround time than the previous murder, and In-woo makes it through three fourths of the profiling book Dong-sik left by his bedside before time is up.

Dong-sik jerks upward abruptly, like a jack in the box, and swivels his head to look around the room. Probably wondering how he wound up in his bed.

“How was your nap?” In-woo asks, half-joking. Dong-sik seems vaguely unhinged, and it’s kind of a good look on him.

“You spiked my breakfast,” Dong-sik accuses, and In-woo smiles at him, delighted by the betrayal in his tone. “I thought you would wait until after we were done eating.”

“I hope you’ve learned a lesson about making assumptions. Besides, I thought people liked surprises.”

“Yes, but- I was really enjoying the croissant,” Dong-sik says, a bit petulantly.

“I’ll buy you five more,” In-woo says, until they both hear the way Dong-sik’s stomach growls. “Or maybe lunch instead. We’ll say you deserve it for doing a good job.”

“What am I, a dog?” In-woo hears Dong-sik mutter under his breath as he slides off the bed.

They go out to eat stew while In-woo waxes poetic about the lovely way Dong-sik’s skin turned red from oxygen saturation after his cardiac arrest. Dong-sik looks like he doesn’t know if he should be troubled or curious about his own death.

“How did you know which croissant I would pick?” Dong-sik asks as he scoops some rice into his doenjang-jjigae.

“I didn’t. I laced them all. I wasn’t going to leave it up to chance, and who knows what kind of pastry you like? I had to provide you with options.”

“I can’t tell if that’s considerate or not.”

In-woo scoffs. “It isn’t. It’s just pragmatic.”

“Hm,” Dong-sik says, his mouth pressing down at the corners like he doesn’t believe In-woo. “If you say so.”

He’s a bit more troublesome than In-woo remembered, but he puts up with it out of curiosity. There are so many things he wants to know.

“What does it feel like when you die?” In-woo asks.

Dong-sik cocks his head, thinking it over. “It doesn’t really feel like anything. Mostly I think about what’s happening right before it, you know, like that time you slit my throat, and then it’s over. It’s like falling asleep; you don’t usually know it’s happening. And then suddenly it isn’t over, and I’m back, and feeling better than before.”

“Does it really improve your energy that much?”

“It did last time. It was like, ah- like I got the perfect amount of sleep after taking a long vacation. I don’t really remember the first time, sorry. I was kind of stressed out.”

“I can’t imagine why,” In-woo says dryly, and to his surprise Dong-sik laughs.

“That was the scariest day of my life. I won’t take drinks from strangers anymore.”

“A lesson you should have learned when you were five, but better late than never, I suppose.”

In-woo interrogates Dong-sik for the remainder of lunch, but Dong-sik, having been unaware of his ability until In-woo came slinking into his life, doesn’t know the answers to most of his questions. He does, however, know more about cinematography and beef marinade than expected. In-woo isn’t even sure how the conversation wound up there.

After lunch, he extricates himself from further social interaction by telling Dong-sik he has a family gathering to attend. Dong-sik nods knowingly, even though his family surely isn’t anything like In-woo’s, and gives him a short bow.

“Thank you, In-woo-ssi. It really hit the spot.” And then he reaches over and gives In-woo a hug.

What the-

“What are you doing.”

“Hugging you! It’s what friends do?”

“We aren’t friends,” In-woo says, alarmed by the way Dong-sik’s arms continue to hold him in place. He’s sturdy and soft and warm. It’s traumatic.

“Oh.” Dong-sik finally releases In-woo and scratches at his bird’s nest of hair sheepishly. “Sorry, I assumed, since- never mind.”

“In any case, we both got what we wanted, so I’ll be going now,” In-woo says, stepping away in case Dong-sik gets any ideas again. He isn’t used to being on the receiving end of physical contact. Most people know better.

“Alright, then I’ll see you again next time! Have a good day,” Dong-sik says with a bright smile as he waves goodbye.

In-woo makes it into his car and around the corner before he really thinks about what Dong-sik said.

Next time? There’s going to be a next time?

--

But Dong-sik doesn’t come asking again.

Maybe this last death was enough to tide him over for a while. In-woo goes through his days at work waiting for a call, and before he knows it another month has passed without any word. He even goes and loiters around Dong-sik’s unit again, but he seems about the same. Maybe a bit happier and less woeful, given that his coworkers seem to at least be making small talk with him now.

He even sees In-woo in the elevator once and gives him a little wave, though luckily doesn’t try to initiate conversation while there are other people present. Despite that, Dong-sik doesn’t come looking for In-woo again, which is fine. Absolutely not something that In-woo dwells on at all. Whatever.

Work is work, but it’s been a shitty week for the market, and by Friday In-woo feels that curl of bloodlust unfurling in his chest again. That drive to hunt, to crush, to subdue.

Without thinking, he’s punched the call button next to Dong-sik’s number. He turns his chair to stare out the window moodily at the people walking along the street as he waits for Dong-sik to pick up. It rings more times than In-woo is comfortable with, and he’s begun entertaining the idea of storming down to Dong-sik’s floor and throwing him into a conference room when the fool finally picks up.

“In-woo-ssi? What can I do for you?” He sounds lively. In-woo wants to ruin him.

“Join me for dinner tonight,” In-woo says, his tone allowing no room for rejection.

“Tonight...I think my schedule is free,” Dong-sik mumbles to himself. “Dong-chan’s school thing isn’t until next week...Okay, sure. I can come.”

“Good. Meet me in the garage at six.”

Dong-sik keeps his word, and In-woo finds him wandering the garage aimlessly when he arrives. In-woo whisks them off to a high-end sushi place and amuses himself with Dong-sik sweating at the sight of the prices until In-woo assures him he’s treating.

In-woo waits until their meal arrives to ask, “Was our previous rendezvous...satisfying for you?”

Dong-sik ruffles his hair in embarrassment at the question. “It sounds so scandalous when you put it like that,” he huffs, stuffing a piece of yellowtail into his mouth. But he slathered on too much wasabi and starts coughing.

In-woo rolls his eyes. “My apologies. Did you enjoy the cyanide?” he asks bluntly this time, watching in amusement as Dong-sik continues choking on his sashimi. “Don’t kick the bucket so soon. That won’t be any fun for me.” He pushes Dong-sik’s glass of water into his hand, refusing to let go until Dong-sik finally raises it to his mouth.

“It was better than the stabbings,” Dong-sik says when he’s finally done dying. “Afterwards, I felt great, like last time. I got really hungry, though, even after we ate lunch. I had about four servings of pork belly for dinner that day. Do you think that’s normal?” he asks suddenly, and In-woo flounders for a second.

“I don’t think it’s any more abnormal than the rest of your condition. Maybe your body needs to recoup on nutrients to make up for the accelerated healing process.”

Dong-sik frowns thoughtfully and pops another roll in his mouth. “That makes a lot of sense. You’re very sharp, In-woo-ssi.”

“Thank you,” In-woo says blankly, wondering why this is what impresses Dong-sik and not every other part of In-woo’s existence.

“Anyway, thanks again. I was a lot more productive because of that. Even my team lead noticed! Dying really does wonders for the body,” Dong-sik says, as if that’s a sentiment that any regular person would ever have.

“On that note, that’s actually why I wanted to speak to you. I’ve been-”

“Getting urges?” Dong-sik whispers, leaning across the table, his eyes wide. “Feeling antsy? Are you going on the hunt again?”

“Sit back down,” In-woo commands, placing his palm on Dong-sik’s forehead and pushing him back into his seat.

“Sorry-” At In-woo’s glare, Dong-sik clacks his mouth closed.

“Like I was saying, last time seems to have been mutually beneficial to the both of us. I wanted to ask if you’d be agreeable to trying it again.” Even if Dong-sik refuses, there really isn’t anything he could do to stop In-woo. But that doesn’t seem to be an issue.

“Sure,” Dong-sik agrees easily, like they’re discussing weekend plans and not homicide. “Um, but like I said before, I’m not really into the violent torture parts though, so-”

“I’ll try and choose something less painful,” In-woo finds himself agreeing, to his surprise. But it’s never really been about the violence of the act so much as the delight of causing a life to slip away out of this world. One more worthless existence stamped out by somebody stronger, somebody more deserving. And Dong-sik’s life is one of the most pitiful disguised as ordinary that he’s ever seen. “Unless we come to an agreement otherwise.”

“Okay. I mean, I guess if you have me on enough drugs, we can negotiate some of the scarier stuff. You seem like the kind who gets bored by doing the same thing over and over,” Dong-sik explains when In-woo raises his eyebrows. It’s surprisingly insightful.

“That’s acceptable to me.”

“Then we have a deal.” Dong-sik sticks his arm out, and In-woo shakes his hand again, this time to much more pleasant effect since neither of them is covered in blood.

With that settled, In-woo orders Dong-sik another plate of sushi and observes that he even grazes like an herbivore, never mind that he’s eating raw fish. Dong-sik must feel In-woo’s eyes on him, because he glances up several times over the rim of his glasses. At first, he averts his eyes, but by the end of dinner, he’s become more confident in holding eye contact. In-woo just continues to watch him, smirking when Dong-sik’s mouth makes that wobbly shape that hints at something brewing in his hot-air-balloon brain.

“Do you have something to ask me?” In-woo asks after catching Dong-sik sneaking another look at him. Dong-sik’s face turns red with alarm, and his gaze flits away before it slides back to In-woo nervously.

“Do you- um, would tomorrow night work for you? I’m free, so-” He’s starting to babble again, like a schoolboy who can’t ask his crush out. In-woo finds the absurdity of the comparison amusing, so he lets Dong-sik struggle for another few seconds before putting him out of his misery.

“Tomorrow night is fine. I’ll meet you at your place.”

In-woo knocks on Dong-sik’s door before he remembers that he can just let himself in. He begins entering the code when the door swings open.

“Welcome!” Dong-sik says, bumping the door open with his hip. He’s wearing a faded apron and he’s holding a pot of rice.

“Did you invite me over for kimbap?” In-woo asks, watching with interest as Dong-sik begins fidgeting.

“I mean, we don’t have to jump right into business, do we? Besides, who doesn’t like kimbap?” he blusters.

It’s true, In-woo hasn’t even decided what he wants to do to Dong-sik today. He brought a duffel bag with some tools, which he sets aside when he sees Dong-sik struggling to stir fry the beef while simultaneously slicing the pickled radish. And thus In-woo gets roped into helping with dinner.

He’s good with a knife, so he slices everything while Dong-sik handles the pan. It all goes well until it’s time to roll the kimbap. In-woo leans against the table and watches Dong-sik lay out his filling and roll it up.

“Ah,” Dong-sik says as everything tumbles out when he picks it up.

“Wow.”

“It’s not that bad,” Dong-sik hedges, and In-woo gives him a flat look.

“All the filling fell out. It’s just a rice roll.” He hacks off a piece and shoves it in Dong-sik’s mouth, who tries to mumble through the mouthful that it’s alright.

Setting the first failed kimbap aside, In-woo spreads out a new sheet of seaweed and coats it with rice. He neatly lines up all the strips of filling, and begins rolling.

As he rolls he squeezes, and then he gets distracted by the thought of what it might be like to squeeze the life out of Dong-sik. He can imagine the way that soft throat would feel under his fingers, and how Dong-sik’s fists might batter against his arms as he tries to escape, and the way his eyes might flutter helplessly as he tries to gasp for air...

In-woo’s finished kimbap roll looks like it got crushed by the Hulk.

“Hm.”

“At least it’s edible!” Dong-sik says optimistically, and gives it another try.

When Dong-sik’s second attempt doesn’t fall apart, In-woo leaves him to it and takes it upon himself to brew them some tea. Poking through Dong-sik’s cabinets and shelves reveals an excessive amount of instant meals and noodles. It’s probably a wonder he knows how to cook at all.

“Let me strangle you,” In-woo requests after brewing up some watery swill pretending to be barley tea. Dong-sik’s pantry only has shitty off-brand junk; In-woo will have to change that if he’s going to be subjected to a meal here again.

“Okay, you can do it during the movie,” Dong-sik agrees before slicing one of their kimbap log into pieces.

“You’re going to make me watch a movie first?”

Dong-sik looks like this hadn’t occurred to him. “Oh, would you like to watch too? Sorry, I didn’t think to ask you.”

Now it’s In-woo’s turn to frown. Yook Dong-sik’s mind is too convoluted for him. “If you didn’t want to watch a movie with me then why-”

“I thought you would want to- I dunno, sneak back into the apartment while I’m watching and get me while my guard is down.”

“Your guard is always down,” In-woo points out, but he has to admit that Dong-sik is right; that is the kind of thing he would want to do.

“But now that I think about it, it’s weird for you to go sit outside for twenty minutes before breaking back in. It’s not like I don’t know you’re there. Yeah, you should just watch the movie and spring it on me while I’m not paying attention,” Dong-sik decides for him. He places the kimbap slices onto a plate and passes it to In-woo, who frowns down at their amorphous forms.

In-woo wants to disagree, just on principle, but it does sound better than squatting outside in the hallway for an undefined amount of time.

“Fine. But don’t pick anything frivolous.”

Dong-sik chooses some foreign heist movie to watch while they eat, and it’s actually pretty entertaining. The kimbap doesn’t even taste too bad.

Halfway through, he wraps his hands tight around Dong-sik’s windpipe, relishing in the fluttery pulse under his palms and the hitch in Dong-sik’s breath, and thinks that perhaps he could get used to this arrangement.

--

After the success of the strangulation, their contract is renewed indefinitely.

Arsenic, hypothermia, smoke inhalation, icepick.

By now, In-woo has murdered Dong-sik about a dozen times, and he’s gotten the hang of the general process though the methods vary. If he can’t set the scene in Dong-sik’s apartment, he makes certain to find discreet, abandoned areas that are easy to clean and control. Most of the murders are scheduled by In-woo. But he can’t refuse those odd occasions when Dong-sik comes begging at his figurative door to be put down because he’s so tired and there’s just so much going on. It’s very symbiotic.

After the act he always sticks around until Dong-sik comes back to life. He’s grown used to listening for the first gasp of breath as Dong-sik rejoins the living world, and he’s come to think of it as part of the killing ritual. Like a ribbon that ties the whole present together. He’s also taken to jotting down all the details in the same notebook he scrawled in all those months ago after Gwangju. He’s hoping to gather some data on Dong-sik’s ability, to see if he’ll finally get some answers to his two dozen questions, but it’s also just good to be meticulous and detail oriented. It makes him a better killer, as does proper tool maintenance.

He’s been building something of a weapons collection, to start filling out that secret room he had placed in his home office. If nothing else, he can at least make a memento wall. In-woo is careful now to sharpen his blades as finely as possible, to minimize resistance when he drives them through Dong-sik’s skull into his brainstem. After one incident, they discovered that Dong-sik’s healing abilities don’t kick in unless he’s been mortally injured. Scrapes and cuts will heal alongside any grievous harm if Dong-sik’s brain or heart stops, but will heal at a regular, human rate if he isn’t in danger of dying.

Their arrangement is going almost suspiciously well. For a transactional relationship built entirely around death, it’s one of the most functional connections that In-woo has. In-woo kills Dong-sik. Dong-sik revives and subjects In-woo to a hug. They have a meal together afterwards, because being dead really does make Dong-sik ravenously hungry. They talk about murder over coffee because Dong-sik has seen more crime movies than In-woo knew existed. In-woo leaves Dong-sik’s company feeling some complicated mix of entertained, exasperated, and almost fond — the way one might feel about a foolish puppy. It’s a nice change of pace from everybody else in In-woo’s life.

He never has to worry that Dong-sik is trying to use him to climb the social ladder or make connections with his father. He has no concerns that Dong-sik is after his money — if anything, Dong-sik finds his social status and wealth offputting. He asked while drunk once if they could eat at Barbecue Chicken World next time instead of going to another Michelin starred restaurant. In-woo dumped him in a taxi and swore to himself to find a fine dining establishment with fried chicken.

Best of all, Dong-sik isn’t a backstabbing douchebag out to sweep the rug from under In-woo’s feet and steal what’s rightfully his. In-woo needs better associates.

Dong-sik, meanwhile, seems to have made at least one casual friend in his team. In-woo knows this because Dong-sik mentioned being invited to lunch a few times, and also because In-woo has noticed them walking back into the building together once or twice. In-woo stalks Dong-sik at work only a normal amount.

Despite In-woo’s insistence that he and Dong-sik are not friends, they spend an atypical amount of time together. Everyone in In-woo’s life knows that he isn’t particularly close with any of his friends from university or the people who float around their families’ social circles. He talks to them, sure, and will attend the same parties and establishments, but they don’t really hang out that much. Not to the same extent that In-woo does with Dong-sik.

Ji-hoon makes a snide comment about it once, but In-woo ignores him. Even Ms. Jo, the woman who In-woo had transferred onto his team when he noticed her stellar track record, is no longer surprised when she sees the two of them walking away from the building together.

“I wish I could snap your neck,” In-woo murmurs one day as Dong-sik forces him to watch some hokey revenge thriller with him before he lets In-woo overdose him on sleeping pills. Ever since the first strangulation, Dong-sik has harangued In-woo into doing some kind of activity with him before he’ll allow himself to be murdered. In-woo has been allowing it since the only things he does in his free time are jog, drink, unwillingly attend family dinners, and plan more murders. He can afford a pedestrian distraction or two if it means getting what he wants.

He did get impatient and forgo it once — just dragged Dong-sik out of the museum and decapitated him in the woods — but Dong-sik moped for days afterward, changed his door code, and refused to take any of In-woo’s calls or demands to accompany him to dinner until he promised not to do it again.

“You could try?” Dong-sik says now, glancing away from the screen to blink owlishly at In-woo. He's wearing a hideous fuzzy sweater In-woo hasn’t managed to burn yet and his fingers are greasy with popcorn butter. Awful.

In-woo hands him a napkin. “No, it’s much harder than it looks in the movies. I would probably paralyze you instead, and have to bash your head in again to finish you off.”

Dong-sik makes a face as he cleans his hands. “I don’t like that one. It always leaves me with a headache the next day unless you use a knife.” And is therefore pointless, from Dong-sik’s perspective. In-woo doesn’t disagree.

“Mm, no neck snapping then,” he says, reaching over to trail his fingers over Dong-sik’s throat. It really is a pity. He’d love to hear how Dong-sik’s vertebrae might crack.

For some reason Dong-sik turns a glowy cherry color and shivers under his touch, so In-woo withdraws his hand lest Dong-sik decide he’s coming down with a cold and won’t give In-woo what he wants tonight. Dong-sik sure has a lot of demands for a sheep basically living in the maw of the wolf, but In-woo hasn’t had enough of a reason not to entertain him yet. Maybe if a more interesting plaything comes his way, though he’s starting to doubt the probability of that ever happening.

--

The office gossip around Daehan is that Seo In-woo has taken a lowly analyst under his wing with the hopes of grooming him into a manager solely under his control. It’s why Dong-sik follows him to restaurants to meet high-profile clients and pops into his office much more frequently than someone of his position should.

The other, more risque office gossip around Daehan is that Seo In-woo has taken a lowly analyst as a sugar baby. It’s why Dong-sik trails after him to exclusive clubs and suddenly has a designer wristwatch and new shoes, and visits In-woo’s office so often for “conferences.”

In-woo hears the salacious implications in their tone and has to resist the urge to cackle. The reality is so much more indecent. If only they knew.

Most of the people in the office have failed to realize three important things about Yook Dong-sik. One, that he’s actually quite competent at his job, once he stops letting people walk over him like a doormat. He’s earnest, observant, and hard-working. It’ll take a while, but In-woo could see Dong-sik working his way up to a managerial position some years down the line, as long as he steers clear of conniving teammates.

Two, that his mode of living is atrocious. In-woo refuses to associate with someone who still dresses like a broke college student and eats instant noodles twice a week. His aura of poverty will probably give In-woo hives after enough exposure, which is why he methodically began upgrading everything in Dong-sik’s apartment so that his skin doesn’t break out. Dong-sik tried to refuse the first five times, but was worn down by In-woo’s persistence.

Three, that Dong-sik is an incorrigible pest. He’s softhearted and naive and tenacious, which makes him obstinate at all the wrong times. He would probably let In-woo throw him off a building but gets snippy when In-woo tries to prevent him from picking up litter. He stops to pet every dog they meet and wails when In-woo makes him jog an extra kilometer and clings closely to In-woo’s side whenever he brings him to meet his upper crust acquaintances. He compels In-woo to taste test his home cooking and asks too many questions when they watch anything beside his usual genre of films. He’ll compulsively purchase a five dvd box set but spend an hour trying to convince In-woo not to buy him a new tv. He never fails to ask In-woo what kind of latte he should try but refuses his assistance at work.

(In fact, he literally ran away from In-woo at work one day. Just caught sight of him through the glass doors and booked it down the corridor and out of sight. Ms. Jo hid her face behind a folder to pretend she wasn’t laughing at In-woo’s consternation.)

Dong-sik bumps into strangers and makes small talk with shopkeepers and helps old people carry bags onto the bus. He cries when cartoon animals die but mercilessly heckles In-woo for owning a replica dueling sword. His favorite fruit is strawberries but he only ever manages to buy sour ones and winces his way through the whole carton. He uses In-woo as a living marionette to act out scenes from the murder mystery he’s decided to write. He gets as jumpy as a rabbit every time In-woo walks around shirtless because he just threw another bloodstained button-up in the incinerator but won’t stop tucking his toes under In-woo’s thigh for warmth when they’re crunched together on his godawful couch even when In-woo threatens to break his legs.

In-woo understands now that he’s some combination of strange pet and intransigent subordinate and not-a-friend. 90% of the time they hang out In-woo doesn’t even cause Dong-sik any bodily harm. It’s probably why people are whispering about them.

It took Dong-sik until a month ago to realize just who In-woo is in relation to Daehan, and then he spent the next week being awkward and obsequious until In-woo threatened to waterboard him with scotch. He quickly returned to normal, bothering In-woo with his stupid texts and meaningless chatter, and by then In-woo realized the sobering fact that Dong-sik holds only an ordinary amount of fear for him now. It’s probably the immortality. It’s made him too gutsy.

On the bright side, Dong-sik doesn’t let people make him do their bidding at work anymore. These days, In-woo sees him having laughs with coworkers in the break room and getting friendly waves goodbye when he leaves the office. He’s only a regular level of pitiful now. Somehow it’s annoying in a whole different way.

Still, that growing attitude of his is both entertaining and kind of a pain in the neck. It used to be that In-woo could frighten him into doing something with just a look, but now Dong-sik is unfazed by most of In-woo’s glares and barely hesitates to talk back. On occasion, he’ll even put up a bit of a fight when In-woo goes to finish him off. The sass he’s been hiding under his loser shell makes him brave enough to drag In-woo around by the wrist and scold him for ignoring social and physical boundaries. In-woo doesn’t know if he admires or abhors it. But he’s always thought that the victims that fight back are the more memorable ones.

“I don’t need another suit,” Dong-sik protests today when In-woo makes him tag along for a fitting.

“Yes you do. You look like off-the-rack burnable garbage. I can’t be seen with you in public like that.”

“It wouldn’t matter so much if you didn’t keep bringing me to all those fancy clubs.”

“Where else would we go?” In-woo asks, only half-listening as he chooses a tie.

“I don’t know, mini-golfing?”

“Mini-golfing? Do you want me to drive a golf ball through your teeth?”

“Not mini-golfing,” Dong-sik says, amending his statement. “How about an escape room! I heard one opened up around here recently. That might be fun.”

“You want to solve a murder mystery? Don’t you get enough of that already? You’ve been working on your book for a while now,” In-woo says as he loops the tie around Dong-sik’s neck. It would be so easy to just pull a little too hard, tugging the silk tight until it bit into the skin, until the oxygen was cut off and Dong-sik’s face turned a pretty blue and his brain functions slowed to a stop...

Dong-sik must read his thoughts from his face, because he frowns and tries to bat In-woo away. He’s either been developing telepathy recently or In-woo’s control over his facial expressions is starting to slip.

“Not in public,” he whines, fidgeting under In-woo’s fingers around his neck. He pulls the tie out of In-woo’s hands and begins knotting it around his own neck.

“I’m not that stupid.” But it does take a second for In-woo’s pulse to return to resting rate. Whew. He leaves Dong-sik to his sloppy half-windsor and goes to finalize the details with the tailor.

“I shouldn’t feed into your control issues. But it’s a nice suit,” Dong-sik admits, as they’re drinking bubble tea later because Dong-sik thought it would be “fun” and “normal.” In-woo doesn’t understand it. It’s too sugary and the tapioca balls are foolish.

“This isn’t about controlling you,” In-woo denies, even though it’s probably 65% about controlling him. Everyone already knows that Dong-sik belongs to In-woo, so he might as well dress like it. “It’s about presentation. Self-improvement. And since you’re so reluctant about the ‘self’ part, I have to resort to doing it myself.”

“Self-improvement is when I don’t dry-heave anymore after running five kilometers with you,” Dong-sik counters, pointing his bubble tea at In-woo. “Self-improvement is when I don’t let Myung-soo-ssi force me to fix the copier every time he breaks it. Self-improvement isn’t letting you dress me in clothes that cost more than six months of rent.”

In-woo pauses in the middle of trying to spear his tapioca bubbles with his skinny straw to ask, “Six months? I knew your apartment was horrendous, but-”

“I’m not moving,” Dong-sik says quickly, before In-woo can threaten him into a nicer complex. “Anyway, In-woo-ssi, I appreciate the gifts, but I’m not your puppet or dress-up doll.”

“You aren’t?” In-woo says, pretending to be surprised. He chuckles when Dong-sik wrinkles his nose in frustration.

“You would get bored if I were.” This is more true than In-woo would like to admit. For all that he likes bending people to his will, his favorite thing about Dong-sik is that flash of unpredictability that acts up every so often. Like last month, when he managed to disarm In-woo when he went in for a stab. The tussle had been rather exciting, even though In-woo knew Dong-sik could never really bring himself to drive a knife into anybody’s eye. Or the time Dong-sik decided to disappear in the middle of dinner, leaving only a cryptic text about In-woo needing to chase him down if he wanted to kill him that night. In-woo was a little bit impressed with how far he made it across the city in just half an hour, considering his general clumsiness.

“Hm. Improve yourself more and maybe I’ll cut you free of some of your strings. And this hideous knot.” He tugs the tail of Dong-sik’s new tie.

“Control issues,” Dong-sik grumbles, but he lets In-woo re-knot his tie for him regardless.

--

Life has evened out into an acceptable kind of equilibrium.

In-woo’s drive to kill is a sort of constant hum under his skin, but it only spikes about once a month. Usually it’s an encounter with his family or some bullshit at work that amplifies that hum into a violent buzz that bounces around his skull and through all his nerve endings. He still feels that same general disgust he used to when he sees the weak and the poor, but there’s no real urge to crush them anymore. The pitiful thing is that their own circumstances will surely drive them to an early end soon enough. As Dong-sik has reminded him, the defenseless masses probably aren’t much fun to kill anyways. In-woo wouldn’t be proving anything beyond his own weakness by crushing those so below him. There’s no fight in them beyond their wretched attachment to life, unlike other predator animals. Like his father.

(Dong-sik didn’t put it quite that way, and had gone rather pale when their casual discussion about serial killers seemed to be encouraging In-woo to chase after bigger game.

“W-wait, don’t go around targeting anyone else though.”

“Why not? Didn’t you just say I should find myself a real challenge?”

“No! I didn’t say you should, I just said that if you had to- but you don’t! You have me!”

It was the affronted kind of desperation in Dong-sik’s voice that gave In-woo a good laugh.

“You aren’t exactly a dangerous predator-”

“I could be! I know how you think, how you operate- I could probably put on a pretty good act.” He was pouting, offended by In-woo’s (and everyone’s) accurate assessment of him as Too Nice.

“No need for posturing, I was going to keep you anyway,” In-woo said, refilling Dong-sik’s glass and smiling as Dong-sik began passionately describing exactly how he would go about murdering In-woo if he had to.)

In any case, the chairman hasn’t outlived his usefulness yet, and there’s no point in In-woo dirtying his hands with anyone else when he has his own perfect victim at his disposal whenever he needs.

More often than he really needs, probably. But In-woo isn’t complaining.

In-woo lets himself into Dong-sik’s apartment at a quarter to seven to find his sheep puttering around the kitchen with a knife in hand. He brightens upon seeing In-woo, and then immediately drops his knife in the sink by accident.

“You’re going to lose a finger,” In-woo says reproachfully. “Let’s go, I’m taking you to dinner.” Might as well get some iron into Dong-sik’s body before he bleeds it all out later.

“Oh, not tonight! I’m trying a new recipe. Come inside!”

In-woo’s forehead crinkles involuntarily as he regards Dong-sik standing happily in his slippers and apron. “But...steak.”

“Steak can wait until tomorrow. Besides, we eat so much meat all the time.” It’s true. Once In-woo made the grievous mistake of introducing himself to Dong-sik’s family, they seemed to pop up everywhere, trying to convince In-woo to come join them at the restaurant again. They’re all just as nice as Dong-sik is. It’s revolting. In-woo has received more hugs than he can process in one lifetime.

At In-woo’s irritated face, Dong-sik continues, “Don’t worry, I’ll still let you have your way with me later. But I already started making dinner and I don’t want it to go to waste.” He stares defiantly back at In-woo, cheeks puffed up like a hamster, and In-woo clicks his tongue in annoyance but removes his shoes and enters the kitchen.

In-woo hangs his coat on the rack he bought for Dong-sik because he was sick of leaving his nice outerwear draped haphazardly all over the place. Dong-sik finally started using it too when faced with the staggering number of scarves In-woo had delivered to him.

He goes to hover beside Dong-sik at the kitchen counter, taking in the sight of chopped vegetables on the cutting board and the finished japchae in the serving bowl. It looks much nicer than the lumpy kimbap they made together so long ago.

“I’m getting pretty good at rolled omelettes!” Dong-sik claims as he whips his chopsticks through the eggs in his bowl.

“Is that so,” In-woo says, appraising Dong-sik’s shelves. The number of instant noodles and microwavable rice bowls does seem to have decreased, and not through In-woo’s influence. Dong-sik’s mild cooking hobby seems to have become a bigger deal than he realized, but it makes sense. No one can possibly spend all his time watching horror movies.

“They don’t break anymore when I turn them over. Help me oil the pan?”

In-woo rolls up his sleeves and heats the pan while Dong-sik mixes his vegetables into the egg, and then steps aside to watch as Dong-sik pours the mixture into the pan. He really is quite adept at rolling the egg into a nice, uniform shape.

“Let me try,” In-woo says after Dong-sik transfers the first omelette to a plate.

“Okay, but don’t be so aggressive. You always treat food so...meanly.”

In-woo ignores his warning and jabs his chopsticks in to turn his omelette, but accidentally skewers it.

“In-woo-ssi!” Dong-sik bursts into laughter at the now malformed blob.

“Whoops.” In-woo prods the egg that he just tore apart. Dong-sik uses his own chopsticks to poke it more or less back together.

“You are a force of destruction, aren’t you? Be gentle with the next flip. I know you’re capable of that, somewhere deeeep down inside.”

“False. Someone’s been filling your head with lies.”

“Nope. I’ve seen it for myself,” Dong-sik claims, but all he does is smile mysteriously when In-woo demands proof. After In-woo finishes his lumpy omelette, Dong-sik rolls the next one and brings them to the table to cut.

He slices them up and then lifts a piece up to In-woo’s face.

“Open your mouth!”

“I’m not letting you feed me,” In-woo says, exasperated. “Give me that.”

“No,” Dong-sik says, withdrawing his chopsticks. His eyes narrow. “Open up, Seo In-woo.”

“And if I don’t?” In-woo rests his chin on his clasped hands, waiting to see what threat Dong-sik will throw at him.

“I’ll...I’ll burn that blue sweater you gave me. No, I’ll go to the Meat Republic and rub grease and kimchi all over it.”

“The cashmere one?” In-woo feels faintly pained at the thought of kimchi getting all over it, but. “I’ll just replace it.”

“You can’t replace the memories! Are you going to buy those back too? I was wearing that sweater when we went to the aquarium together! You almost stabbed yourself on a sea urchin. I saw a hammerhead shark for the first time. We took selcas by the coral reef tank. How will you pay me back for those precious experiences?”

“What are you even saying? Do you like the sweater or not?”

“The sweater isn’t the problem,” Dong-sik snaps, frustrated that he’s more torn up about his threat than In-woo is. “Open your mouth, In-woo-ya,” he dares to say.

At In-woo’s raised eyebrows he changes tack. “In-woo...hyung?” In-woo twitches, and it further fuels his attack. “Manager Seo? My dear friend In-woo? Dearest? Honey-”

“How can one person be as singularly irritating as you are?” In-woo demands, slamming his hands down on the table. Dong-sik doesn’t budge, his chopsticks still jutting out in the air, so In-woo leans forward and snatches the piece of omelette away with his teeth. “There. Are you happy?”

“Yes.” Dong-sik gives him a sunny smile and distributes the rest of the food.

In-woo waits until they’re almost done with dinner before pouring him a glass of spiked juice.

“Drink up. I don’t want you splashing around halfway through.”

“I’d help you clean up the mess,” Dong-sik says, but he drinks his juice regardless, and soon falls unconscious into In-woo’s arms.

The office rumor mill would have a lot to say if they saw them now: In-woo carrying Dong-sik out of the room like some kind of gallant storybook prince.

If only they knew, In-woo thinks to himself as he watches Dong-sik’s blood drain into the tub, leaving beautiful swirls of red in the water. Seo In-woo lets his lowly analyst feed him rolled omelette so that he can watch him bleed out in the bathwater afterwards.

They would never shut up. He leaves Dong-sik lying in his swimming trunks, and goes to wash the razor out in the sink.

While Dong-sik’s cuts slowly close up, In-woo leaves him a set of clean clothes and one of the fluffy new towels he purchased last week and exits to sit gingerly on Dong-sik’s lumpy couch. The new sofa should be coming in next week; In-woo can’t wait until he never has to touch this atrocious thing again.

There’s a book on the coffee table, and In-woo picks it up to peruse while he waits for Dong-sik to come back to life. He doesn’t get the same joy out of reading these pulpy thrillers and psychopathy studies that Dong-sik does, but this one’s a true crime book, so he can consider it research. There’s always more he can do to perfect his craft.

When Dong-sik emerges from the bath, his hair is still wet, and it makes In-woo click his tongue disapprovingly.

“Bring me your hairdryer,” he commands, pointing at the bathroom door until Dong-sik shuffles back out with it. “Sit. Good.”

“How many times do I have to remind you that I’m not actually your pet?” Dong-sik says as he puts a cushion on the ground and sits between In-woo’s legs.

In-woo snorts as he flicks on the hairdryer. “How many times do I have to pull you back from running into traffic?”

“That only happened once! You know I was distracted by my phone-”

“I’m even grooming you right now-”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Dong-sik says, but he closes his eyes and leans back against In-woo’s thigh as In-woo’s fingers comb through his damp hair. He’s unusually docile for having just come back to life, but In-woo can’t bring himself to mind. In-woo likes it when Dong-sik gets feisty, but it’s also pleasant when he settles down obediently for once.

“Every time you go to sleep with wet hair you catch a cold, and I’m not tolerating that behavior any longer. You’re insufferable when you’re sick. Always whining about how cold you are, always asking for porridge and then stealing my food-”

“It’s not my fault that you’re warm and your lunch smells good.”

“It is your fault that you don’t take better care of yourself.”

“Maybe. But it’s unfair that dying doesn’t get rid of a cold!”

In-woo laughs, and sets the hairdryer aside as he ruffles a hand through Dong-sik’s hair one more time. “Well, if you actually died, it would. Give it a try.”

“Mm, no, I’d better not. Who knows what kind of terror you’d be causing without me around.”

“There would be madness in the streets,” In-woo says like he’s telling a joke, even though they’re both aware that it’s more true than anyone will ever know.

--

“My arms are always so tired these days,” Dong-sik is saying as he flops onto In-woo’s leather couch.

“Stop walking such large dogs,” In-woo tells him absently while scrolling through his emails. He can see Dong-sik making some kind of frivolous, wriggling movement in his peripheral vision but he ignores it. Allowing Dong-sik into his apartment is a choice that In-woo still isn’t sure he should have made, but after more than a year of their arrangement, In-woo was sick of spending so much time in Dong-sik’s shoebox house. It’s much better to have him here, in a spacious room away from noisy neighbors.

“They’re good dogs; they just don’t know how strong they are.”

“Maybe you need to lift some weights.”

“Will you go to the gym with me? Soo-young-ssi says there’s a place near the train station-”

“You do know this building has a personal gym, don’t you? Go down there now and work out your weak noodle arms. Get along, now. Shoo.”

“Stop trying to get rid of me so you can sit around and brood,” Dong-sik whines, and In-woo grabs the first disposable item he finds on his desk — a half full bottle of sparkling water — and chucks it at the couch. “You missed,” Dong-sik teases, and In-woo throws an empty file folder next. “Ah, zero for two, Seo In-woo. Does it make sense for a hunter to have such bad aim?” Dong-sik peeks at him mischievously from behind a little mound of cushions he’s piled up.

In-woo almost whips a paperweight at him next, but it wouldn’t do to feed into this neediness. “Stop trying to rile me up. I’ll be with you soon enough.”

“You can’t lecture me on patience when you kidnapped me from my team dinner last week,” Dong-sik says.

“You’ve had dinner with them twice a week for three weeks now. I’m sure they’ve seen enough of your face. I’m doing them a kindness.” What was In-woo supposed to do, just let it slide when he knows for a fact that the newest addition to Dong-sik’s team is becoming infatuated with him? No way. It’ll disrupt their entire arrangement if Dong-sik enters a relationship. Better to just make it clear that Dong-sik is unavailable for such distractions.

“I’m just trying to contribute to team synergy! You can join next time-”

“That would be awkward for everybody.” In-woo avoids as many work events as he can get away with without seeming too stand-offish. It’s exhausting to be so charming so often.

By the time he’s finished with his emails, Dong-sik has constructed himself a whole nest of cushions and has burrowed inside. In-woo sits at the end of the couch and tugs at the hem of Dong-sik’s pant leg to disturb him. “Are you falling asleep?”

“No, of course not,” Dong-sik mumbles, languidly piling the loose cushions even higher around his body. In-woo props his arm along the back of the couch and leans over him, casting a shadow over his face.

“Are you lying to me?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t do that,” Dong-sik says, curling even further into his pillow nest.

“You most certainly would.”

Dong-sik opens one eye to squint at him, before sighing and spreading his arms wide with the declaration, “Alright, before I fall asleep, have at me.”

“How do you want it today?”

“Oh, you’re letting me choose?” Dong-sik rubs his chin as he thinks it over. “That’s okay, you can pick- if you can catch me.”

With a battle cry, Dong-sik flips In-woo onto the floor, knocking the air out of him, before leaping up and dashing away.

“You-”

“Too slow, In-woo-ya,” Dong-sik taunts him, skittering away to hide in In-woo’s bedroom. In-woo watches him go, a grin spreading across his face as he stands. The game is on.

“You better hide while you can,” In-woo warns, striding over to make certain his apartment door is locked tight before he opens up his secret room. Dong-sik has peeked inside before, but decided that In-woo’s “murder shrine” creeps him out.

“Are you getting out a hunting knife, Manager Seo? For little old me?” Dong-sik calls as he skedaddles off to another corner of the apartment.

“Stop squirming around and I’ll let you see.” In-woo takes what he needs and closes up his secret room again before going on the prowl. Dong-sik has stopped responding, so he must have chosen a hiding spot.

In-woo stalks through his bedroom and closet and then to his kitchen. He walks as silently as possible until he sees Dong-sik’s shadow peeking out from around the kitchen island, and then he intentionally bumps a chair. Dong-sik’s shadow shifts nervously, so In-woo takes another step forward and knocks an apple from the fruit bowl to the floor. The sound scares Dong-sik into bolting back toward the living room, with In-woo in pursuit.

In-woo chases him around the apartment for a few pointless minutes, mostly because he likes the way Dong-sik’s expressions alternate between adrenaline-driven intensity and his usual absurd faces whenever he gets close to getting caught. In-woo finally corners him when he makes the mistake of trying to slide behind In-woo’s desk.

Dong-sik cries out in dismay as In-woo shoves him into the bookcase, and pins his struggling hands above his head with one arm.

“Ah, wait- wait.”

“What’s the matter?” In-woo murmurs into his ear. Dong-sik shivers at the sound but continues giving In-woo the haughtiest glare he can manage. Cute. “Not so mouthy any more now that you’ve been caught?”

Dong-sik frowns and makes a last ditch attempt to blitz out of In-woo’s clutches, squawking when they almost bonk foreheads and In-woo traps him against the bookcase with his hand holding Dong-sik’s chest and his thigh pushed between Dong-sik’s legs. Dong-sik averts his gaze when In-woo leans toward his face.

“Yook Dong-sik. Look at me.”

“Why?” Dong-sik asks, still obstinately refusing to meet In-woo’s eyes. He’s pink again.

“I want to give you something nice to look at before you die.”

This startles an ugly laugh out of him. “That’s a terrible line! What kind of narcissist murderer says something like that? I’m embarrassed for the both of us.” His glare has given way to his usual dopey smile, and the sight makes In-woo’s fingers clench reflexively around the shelf he’s braced against. Sometimes, when Dong-sik looks at him like that, In-woo is struck with the desire to do...something. He isn’t sure what. Probably smother the life out of Dong-sik.

“If I had feelings, you’d be hurting them right about now,” In-woo says with false disappointment. “I could have been toiling away on that quip for hours, just for you to mock me right to my face. Who’s really the cruel one here?”

Dong-sik leans his head back against the books to finally make eye contact. “You’re not allowed to tease me about my movie reenactments anymore when you practice weird serial killer lines in front of the mirror.”

“I don’t practice in front of the mirror.”

“In the shower?”

“In bed, as I’m trying to fall asleep.”

This gets him another laugh from Dong-sik and another weird seizure of undefined want in In-woo’s chest, so he decides it’s about time he ended things.

He removes the arm on Dong-sik’s chest to reach into his pocket and retrieve the syringe case he was carrying. With his teeth, he unzips the pouch, still pinning Dong-sik to the shelf with his other hand. Given the chance, Dong-sik will definitely break free.

Once he has the syringe in hand, In-woo brushes a wild lock of hair out of Dong-sik’s eyes almost tenderly, and then sticks the syringe in his arm, carefully injecting the sodium thiopental into his vein. Dong-sik watches him blearily until his body goes limp and crumples into the bookcase, his head lolling back idly. In-woo carries him to his bed and flings a blanket over his prone form, before cleaning up the mess they made and returning to his desk to look over the proposal that Ms. Jo submitted to him yesterday.

Dong-sik wakes close to midnight, looking fairly spacy, so In-woo tells him to stay over for the night, and he curls right back up and goes to sleep, snuggling into In-woo’s pillow. In-woo feels slightly more compunction about watching him sleep versus watching him be a corpse, so he retires to his couch for the night. It’s far from the worst place to fall asleep.

When he wakes up the next day, Dong-sik is already brushing his teeth with the spare toothbrush he keeps in In-woo’s bathroom. He’s changed into some of the extra clothes he leaves in the closet and has started a cup of coffee for In-woo. It’s a far cry from a few months ago, when Dong-sik almost broke In-woo’s coffee machine and had to borrow In-woo’s clothes so In-woo wouldn’t have to drive him back home before going into work.

“Lunch?” In-woo offers after he’s dressed and caffeinated. Dong-sik already has his coat on like he’s ready to go.

“Sorry, not today. I need to help my sister move into her new place. Dinner tomorrow?”

“Not going to meet your team for karaoke again?” In-woo doesn’t bother hiding his distaste.

“No, so don’t lurk around the karaoke bar in your creepy raincoat disguise looking for me,” Dong-sik says with amusement. He’d collapsed in fright in an alleyway the first time he saw In-woo wearing it, and then proceeded to make fun of it every time thereafter. In-woo puts up with a truly unbelievable amount of Dong-sik’s back talk.

“It’s a sturdy, functional coat,” he grouses as he walks Dong-sik to the entryway. He reaches out and fixes the rumpled collar on Dong-sik’s shirt, smoothing it down over his cardigan, and gestures at the door.

“Be on your way, then. I have work to do.”

“Thank you,” Dong-sik trills, before giving In-woo his customary hug. In-woo returns it woodenly, clapping his hands awkwardly against Dong-sik’s back until he’s released. But after Dong-sik lets go of him, he doesn’t withdraw all the way. In-woo’s quizzical look is met with a radiant smile.

In-woo stares him down for a few seconds, trying to decipher what he wants. He’s about to pinch Dong-sik’s face when Dong-sik jolts forward and leaves the tiniest, quickest kiss on his right cheek, before bouncing away.

What the hell?

Even Dong-sik looks surprised by his own action, and his hand comes up to slam over his own mouth. They both stand there, frozen, until In-woo raises a tentative hand to rub at the spot on his cheek. Nobody has ever been foolish enough to try something like that on In-woo, but Dong-sik proves yet again that he’s one of a kind.

It isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to In-woo.

“Uh, t-that was-”

“Is this also what friends do?” In-woo mocks, his posture softening. Some of the tension leaves Dong-sik’s body and he shakes his head.

“Nope. We aren’t friends, right?” He has the audacity to grin and wink before darting away with surprising agility. And then he trips on his own shoes on his way out the door and almost smashes his face into the wall. In-woo watches him leave, bemused by Dong-sik’s boldness but also by the uneasiness in his own chest.

Maybe he’s having a heart attack.

--

“How do you know he’s the one?” In-woo asks Ms. Jo once, when she excuses herself for the evening. She smells faintly of a floral perfume, and her hair is in a more complicated style than usual. She must have started dating someone recently, after she realized that he was never going to reciprocate any burgeoning feelings she might have held for him.

Ms. Jo pauses in the doorway, and then stares patiently at him for a moment as she’s undoubtedly trying to find a way to answer the question diplomatically without intimating that her boss is a nosy, prying weirdo. In-woo respects her enough to wait. After a minute, she takes a few steps back into the room.

“This relationship is too new to tell,” she says, before clasping her hands in front of her. “But I suppose it would be the usual signs. He respects me and appreciates my abilities. I feel like I can be myself around him. We feel comfortable sharing things with one another.” She thinks for another moment, and finishes up with, “We’re each our own person but I miss him when he isn’t around.”

“Hm,” In-woo says, mulling over her words. “I see.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“No. Enjoy your evening, Ms. Jo.”

She bows and removes herself before In-woo can ask her more dull questions. In-woo is left staring at the door long after she leaves.

The chairman wants to go on a hunting trip, so of course In-woo accompanies him. It’s one of the only things they share that’s solely theirs. In-woo tells Dong-sik he’ll be back in three days, and Dong-sik makes one of his vexed faces. Dong-sik has met the members of In-woo’s family in small doses, and has heard enough about them whenever In-woo loosens up enough to talk. Dong-sik is too kind to say it out loud, but In-woo knows he dislikes Ji-hoon and finds the chairman deplorable. In-woo thinks that Dong-sik might consider the chairman’s treatment of In-woo’s mother more unforgivable than the disease that took his own mother from him.

Not to mention everything the chairman did to help mold In-woo into the man he is today.

But they don’t talk about that. Dong-sik leaves In-woo with another confusing peck on the cheek. In-woo doesn’t completely hate it.

He decides not to think about the kiss, not while he’s in the car headed toward their cabin, nor when he’s cleaning his shotgun by the fireplace. It’s best not to think about anything at all when he’s with the chairman, lest the old man read it as some sign of weakness and try to extinguish it again.

The trip is the usual. They hunt. The chairman comments on In-woo’s performance and praises the control he has over his team. In-woo accepts the compliments modestly and waits for the other shoe to drop, waits for the oblique statements that hint at the chairman understanding In-woo’s psyche better than he would like.

In-woo knows the chairman has always seen the part of him that he takes care to hide from everyone else. Cultivated it, even, so that he might create an heir as brutal and Machiavellian as himself. It’s too bad he never saw the part of In-woo that truly needed acknowledgement.

It’s been years. He knows by now that he’s never going to get what he wants from his father. The thought has probably never even crossed the chairman’s mind, not since In-woo could speak, not since his mother passed away, not since Ji-hoon was born.

Maybe it’s time to stop hoping.

The chairman hikes on ahead, and In-woo briefly considers what there is to be gained through his father’s death. He won’t do it, not here, not like this, and perhaps not at all. He doesn’t want to play into the old man’s hands so easily. Neither of them are going to live up to their expectations of each other, and in accepting this, In-woo will be the one to gain.

He steps off the path to descend further into the gray woods, until he’s deep enough that he’s surrounded by trees on all sides. He thinks over Ms. Jo’s words as he stands there in the forest, listening for the patter of animal footsteps.

In-woo has only ever missed one person before. He knows he isn’t equipped to process emotions the same way as other people. Most days he’s pretty sure he doesn’t even remember how most of those emotions feel, nor does he care. But then he’ll see something that reminds him of his mother, and he’ll remember again that there’s a softness in him somewhere, buried under the brick and mortar layers of ruthlessness and pragmatism and ambition that In-woo built upon himself since childhood. An Achilles Heel of sorts. It isn’t anywhere nearly as substantial as what lives in everybody else, but it does exist in some capacity, even if In-woo is the only one who’s aware of it.

In-woo, and perhaps one other person.

There are times when Dong-sik looks at him with an unrestrained kind of joy that no one else has ever directed In-woo’s way. It makes In-woo want to grasp him by the shoulders and rattle him, demanding how he can smile like that when he knows who In-woo is and what he’s willing to do to get what he wants. In-woo isn’t capable of remorse, but some days he wonders how they wound up so deeply entangled when Dong-sik is the very definition of everything In-woo has always wanted to destroy. Kind, sweet, and brazenly disinterested in allowing In-woo to put him in his place.

How does someone like that look at In-woo like he’s something other than the predator they both know him to be? Is it because he sees the glimmer of human emotion inside In-woo and thinks it’s enough to keep him safe? Is it because he thinks In-woo can be tamed like a wild beast? Or does he just not care? Does he think that just because In-woo is regularly consumed by thoughts of him — misses him when they’re apart, even — that In-woo will spare him during his inevitable ascent to the top?

It’s that kind of naivete that ends in bloodshed. So perhaps it’s good that it doesn’t matter how much of Dong-sik’s blood he spills; Dong-sik will never leave him. In-woo will never let him go. He sank his teeth down to the bone the moment Dong-sik first surrendered to him, and he would tear Dong-sik to pieces before releasing him from his grasp.

In-woo isn’t good with emotions, but he does understand that he wants something from Dong-sik that he can’t currently express in words. It burns inside him in a white-hot flame that differs from his usual viscous, molten desire to kill. He should be unnerved by the intensity of this unknown need, and by the power over him that only Dong-sik seems to have.

He should, but…

Sometimes the wolf can’t help but to wonder how he came to be ensnared by the sheep.

--

In-woo returns from his hunting trip with a newfound clarity on two of his relationships, though no real action plan for either one.

He’ll continue to let the chairman live. As long as he doesn’t disturb the life In-woo is building for himself, In-woo will tolerate his existence the way the chairman tolerates him. They’ll keep the same parallel lives they’ve been living all this time, and then, one day In-woo will take his empire from him as compensation for what he’s always really wanted.

Dong-sik is a different matter. In-woo can admit he feels some kind of emotion beyond ownership for Dong-sik, but it’s warm and slippery and vague and he doesn’t want to dwell too hard upon it. Emotions are for chumps and the tedious, vacuous masses.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to see Dong-sik, though, so he sets himself an early alarm to go bother him tomorrow morning. But before he can set his phone aside to go boot up his laptop, he receives a call.

Speak of the devil, and he shall call you up to blather on about Bong Joon-ho or something his parents saw on their hiking trip.

“Hello, Dong-sik-ssi-”

“I got hit by a car!” Dong-sik says with his abnormal cheer.

“You what?” In-woo can’t think over the sudden deafening thunder in his brain as the news catches up with him. Some bastard really had the nerve to harm Dong-sik? His Dong-sik?

If Dong-sik gets himself killed by someone else’s hands, In-woo will drag him back from the grave himself and rip him apart limb by limb.

“It’s okay! I’m okay!”

“Of course you’re okay, you- where are you?” In-woo demands. “Did anyone see you? What kind of car was it? How bad was the injury? Did you see the driver?” He can’t have anybody else discovering Dong-sik’s secret and stealing him away.

“Don’t worry, it was a pretty mild accident. And the driver was a police officer-”

“What?” In-woo is going to obliterate this cop’s entire career. And their whole precinct’s too. “Tell me where you are. I’m coming over right now.”

“I’m at the hospital, and I’m doing fine. They told me I should have someone come check on me, but I don’t want to worry my family-”

“Alright, just stay there. Do not talk to anyone about the incident until I arrive, or you know what might happen. Do you understand?”

“I understand, I understand,” Dong-sik says, sounding amused because he’s a galactic buffoon. In-woo’s hopeless, dimwitted sheep. “See you soon, In-woo-ssi.”

Dong-sik is propped up in his hospital bed in the emergency room when In-woo sweeps in. He beams when In-woo storms over, and allows In-woo to prod and poke him as he searches for injuries. There’s a bandage around his head and a few stitches here and there. In-woo feels his veins filling with an unfamiliar emotion that’s a shade or two different from the possessive anger he feels at the person who dared to do this. It makes his stomach restless and his mouth sour.

The nurse arrives shortly to tell In-woo that Dong-sik was very lucky not to have been more gravely harmed, and that they’ve run a few scans on him but nothing seems to be broken. She assured him that Dong-sik is cleared to go home tonight, but that the officer who brought him in wanted to have a word before they left.

“I’ll tell you about it at home,” Dong-sik says dismissively when In-woo demands answers. “I don’t want you yelling at the officer.”

“I’m going to yell no matter what, so it would be better for everyone involved if I knew what to be angry about first.”

“Nope, sorry, look! She’s already on her way in. Shim Bo-kyung-ssi!”

In-woo thought he had a handle on everything churning inside him like the ocean in a tropical storm, but he hasn’t understood the depth of his rage until he turns and lays eyes on the woman who put Dong-sik in the hospital bed.

When In-woo sees Officer Shim walking toward them, her posture hunched with guilt, he makes a grave mistake.

In-woo has been acting all his life, playing pretend with all the degenerates around him, and he knows that he has to hold back from expressing most of his actual emotions. But sometimes, in moments of deep anger or euphoria, the mask slips.

Their eyes meet and In-woo makes the unforgivable error of letting even a shade of his fury show. He makes the misstep of letting Officer Shim catch a glimpse of who he really is, underneath it all.

She takes a hasty step backwards, her eyes wide with dread at all the killing intent In-woo is radiating in her direction. Dong-sik lets out a tiny sigh, well aware of the power of In-woo’s unhinged murder stare.

“In-woo-ya,” Dong-sik mumbles, tugging at In-woo’s sleeve. He only speaks so casually when he’s acting up and feeling sassy or being affectionate to intentionally grate on In-woo’s nerves. In-woo snaps his head toward him, displeased that he’s trying it right now, until he sees Dong-sik’s face.

Dong-sik shakes his head slowly, and somehow over the last year, In-woo has become terribly fluent in translating the wildly elastic expressions that cross his face. The look he’s currently wearing says too much trouble, and In-woo finally collects his wits. Right. A policewoman. The exact kind of person they don’t need sniffing around them.

He schools his face back into its facsimile of a smile, though from the way Dong-sik’s mouth twitches it isn’t as flawless as usual, but In-woo doesn’t care. His...Dong-sik just got hit by a car. He’s allowed to be a little bit upset about it. Even ordinary worker ants would kick up a fuss in this situation.

“Officer. Good to meet you,” he says, his smile fixed in place, his hand planted protectively on Dong-sik’s shoulder. He can tell from her eyes that she doesn’t buy into it for a second. “Seo In-woo. I’m Dong-sik-ssi’s...associate.”

“Friend-” Dong-sik interrupts, and In-woo’s grip on his shoulder tightens.

“I was told that you were the one responsible for this,” he continues coldly, watching the way her expression wavers but their eye contact never breaks. Interesting.

“Yes, I hit Dong-sik-ssi as I was turning the corner-”

“May I ask how it is that you graduated from the police academy if you can’t even patrol without running over innocent pedestrians?”

“She was actually off-duty,” Dong-sik says, now giving In-woo his stop being mean! look. In-woo is in no way inclined to obey.

Officer Shim has the decency to look ashamed, bowing her head in apology. “I admit that I’m to blame. I actually came to ask you if you would accompany me to the station-”

“Oh, I’m not pressing charges,” Dong-sik pipes up, and In-woo turns back toward him in a swirl of rage.

“Yook Dong-sik-”

Even Officer Shim seems a bit taken aback by this. “Dong-sik-ssi, I think-”

“It’s alright,” he says, smiling at her. “It was partially my fault for just staring at the car instead of trying to get out of the way. Besides,” and he turns to stare at In-woo, “I think I’ll be feeling better soon enough.”

Damn him. He makes a valid point. He’ll be fully healed once In-woo kills him again, and that would be a bad look for a chaebol heir to sue some beat cop when Dong-sik isn’t even injured.

“Are you sure?” Officer Shim asks, looking somewhat pained by her own insistence on questioning Dong-sik’s decision. “We should at least go to the station-”

“No, no need! I’m doing fine, you’re doing fine- we don’t have to drag it out any more than that. I wouldn’t want you to get fired over me!” Dong-sik says, though his face does grow more solemn as he mentions, “Though you should probably try not to do it again?”

“Yes! Yes, of course- I don’t even know what I was thinking- I got distracted by a case and- well, that doesn’t matter-”

Dong-sik perks up. “Oh, what kind of case?”

“She obviously can’t tell you, a random civilian,” In-woo snaps, and then clenches his teeth in irritation that he’s getting sucked into this inane conversation. “Are you certain you don’t want to press charges.”

“Yep, you can’t change my mind this time,” Dong-sik says. The “no matter how much you growl, threaten, or pester me” goes unsaid.

“Fine, if that’s what you want,” In-woo grits out. “Officer Shim, seeing as Dong-sik-ssi does not want to be convinced otherwise, I suppose we will not be suing the police department-”

Dong-sik tugs In-woo’s sleeve again, quite sharply this time. In-woo plows on, disregarding his warning.

“-so unless you have some other urgent matters to discuss, we will be taking our leave.”

“Uh, no- not at this time,” the officer stammers out, and In-woo gives her another frosty smile.

“Then I think we’re done here.”

“R-right.” She glances at Dong-sik as if she wants to say something to him, but instead bows hastily.

“Have a good night, Bo-kyung-ssi!” Dong-sik calls after her as she leaves. She gives him a little wave, which Dong-sik returns, and which makes In-woo want to burn down the entire hospital.

“We’re leaving,” In-woo tells him, before descending upon the nurses’ station to see about getting his idiot discharged.

--

In-woo drives them to his apartment still fuming about the situation. Dong-sik pretends not to notice, fiddling with the radio as he recounts the event from his point of view, which makes the whole thing sound like a wacky mistake.

Dong-sik leans on In-woo when they enter the building, though whether it’s because he really does have a hobble from getting hit by a car or because he wants attention is unclear. In-woo helps him onto the couch and then sits down heavily beside him, trying to contain whatever the unbearable pressure bubbling in his chest is.

“Are you mad? You seem a little mad,” Dong-sik says, leaning in to catch a better look at In-woo’s face. In-woo takes in the sight of the red scratch across his cheek and his swollen lip and the light in his eyes that spells out how unrepentant he is about making In-woo feel like his ribcage is about to explode open. It sets off a new wave of outrage.

In-woo tips him over onto his back, grabbing hold of his wrists and pinning them to the couch. He gets onto his knees and swings one leg over Dong-sik’s hips so he’s bracketing his body with his own, holding him in place while In-woo scowls down at him. Dong-sik blinks back sweetly.

“T-this is quite a compromising position, In-woo-ssi.”

“I’m going to compromise the integrity of your skull, Yook Dong-sik.”

“That’s not attractive at all,” Dong-sik mumbles, looking put out.

In-woo pays no attention to his quips; he has no patience for them at the moment. “What were you thinking?”

“It isn’t like I tried to get run over! But this old woman dropped her bag into the street, and then suddenly the car was there, and I couldn’t jump out of the way fast enough.”

Of course he was helping someone at the time. Typical Dong-sik. In-woo rests his forehead against Dong-sik’s collarbone in defeat.

“This is what happens when you’re too nice! How many times do I have to remind you that there’s no point helping people too weak and worthless to take care of themselves?”

“I don’t think there’s a hit-and-run waiting around every corner for good samaritans,” Dong-sik jokes. “Besides, don’t forget that I’m also weak and pathetic garbage, but you help me anyway.”

“My motivations are thoroughly selfish,” In-woo insists. “I don’t help you out of the kindness of my heart; I help you because you’re an unmitigated disaster who would probably fall into a trash compactor without someone watching over you! I’m not losing you to some ludicrous accident because you were too busy being nice to protect yourself!

“Your life is mine to take, and only mine. I’m not letting some filthy uncivilized half-wit police scum steal what rightfully belongs to me-”

“Bo-kyung-ssi isn’t scum. She’s very kind,” Dong-sik says, without even an ounce of remorse. “I gave her my number. We’re going to get together for lunch at some point.”

In-woo feels his focus stumble at this news, before it reignites his rage.

“You’re going to eat lunch with the person who ran you over with her car?”

At this, Dong-sik begins laughing himself breathless. “You sure are protesting a lot for someone who literally murdered me with an axe once.”

The absolutely unwarranted impertinence. In-woo snarls, caught up in the whirlwind desire to stamp the insolence out of Dong-sik once and for all, despite knowing he would regret it later. “You know it’s different, you wretched, impudent little-”

“I know,” Dong-sik says with dreadful warmth. He looks at In-woo like he sees through all his play-pretend layers of humanity to the creature beneath. And then he smiles like he doesn’t mind what he finds there. “It’s different because I’m yours.”

Hearing Dong-sik say it himself causes In-woo’s internal organs to flip-flop horribly at the same time that it relights that fire in every one of his nerves.

How has this ridiculous, senseless, infuriating man come to captivate In-woo so deeply? Despite all better judgment, In-woo likes everything about Yook Dong-sik. It’s terrifying.

In-woo wonders what it means to want to devour someone so entirely that they’ll be subsumed into you until the two of you are so impossibly intertwined that the universe would have to tear you up atom by atom to separate you again. Dong-sik is his, has been his for long enough now that In-woo can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened. To In-woo’s infinite surprise, the reverse is also true.

Dong-sik owns more of In-woo than he ever thought was possible. He’s never belonged to anybody the way he does to Dong-sik, who knows his secrets, his needs, his scars.

When he finally dies, he wants it to be by Dong-sik’s hands.

Dong-sik’s eyes soften like he knows In-woo is wrestling with a life-changing revelation at the moment, and he remains blessedly quiet for once until In-woo snaps out, “Never forget it.”

“Or what, you’ll kill me?”

In-woo can’t help himself; he laughs, long and hard and a little hysterically, because who else would be so fearless? God, what is he supposed to do about someone like Yook Dong-sik?

A smile spreads across Dong-sik’s face — that brazen one that he wears whenever he gets a rise out of In-woo — and he twiddles his fingers in the air. He tries to tug his wrists ineffectively out of In-woo’s hold, and pouts when In-woo’s grip doesn’t loosen.

“Let me go, In-woo-ssi. I want a hug.”

“And I want to tear your throat out with my teeth.”

“That sounds too messy; we’ll mess up your whole couch,” Dong-sik says, wrinkling his nose. “Give me a hug and I’ll let you poison me later. I got hit by a car today, I deserve comfort,” he says plaintively when In-woo continues to glower at him. Their staring contest lasts a minute and a half until In-woo growls low in his throat and decides to just collapse on top of Dong-sik right after releasing his hands.

“Oof-” Dong-sik gasps as In-woo does his best to crush him flat. Serves him right.

“Well? Take your hug.”

“Why are you always so difficult? Is it your control issues?” Dong-sik struggles enough so that In-woo is only lying along his left side, and wraps his arms around In-woo.

“Stop psychoanalyzing me,” In-woo grumbles into the crook of his neck.

“Maybe when you stop being so cranky.”

“I wouldn’t be ‘cranky’ if you would just learn some basic traffic laws! How many times have I told you to stop zoning out when you walk?”

“Probably a hundred. I’m sorry. I won’t let anybody else kill me, I promise.” He smoothes a hand down In-woo’s back in a soothing motion.

“If you do-”

“Yes, yes, you’ll make me regret it. Snuff out my life like a candle or drain all my lifeblood like a pig at slaughter or something. You’re very dramatic,” he says fondly, clasping his hands together at the small of In-woo’s back.

“And you’re a disaster. I cannot believe I only left you alone for three days and you let this happen.” In-woo needs a contingency plan in case this ever happens again. But letting Dong-sik out of his sight in the first place is the true root of this problem. He should just lock him away forever. Keep him somewhere only In-woo knows about so that no vermin can ever touch him again.

“Please don’t lock me up in your murder shrine,” Dong-sik says, reading In-woo’s mind. Perhaps he wasn’t so wrong when he claimed he understood how In-woo thinks. “And don’t start stalking me even more at work. The whole asset management department already thinks you do unspeakable things to me on your desk after hours.”

In-woo huffs on his exhale, tightening his arm across Dong-sik’s chest when he wiggles around to avoid getting tickled by In-woo’s breath.

“I don’t care what they think as long as they keep their hands off you.”

“Like anyone would dare pick a fight with you,” Dong-sik laughs. He runs his thumb up and down along the ridges of In-woo’s spine until In-woo relaxes even further into him. “Don’t be mad anymore, okay? I’m going to take a nap now. You can be my body pillow.”

“Don’t complain when you wake up with a sore back,” In-woo warns.

“I won’t, as long as you don’t make me let go.” His fingers dig into In-woo’s sides, anchoring them together, and In-woo presses his forehead to the soft juncture between Dong-sik’s skull and his neck, breathing in his heartbeat.

“Just this once.”

--

In the morning, In-woo rouses first and quietly injects Dong-sik with potassium chloride before he fully wakes.

Then he cuts off all of Dong-sik’s stitches and moves him over to the bed because he really doesn’t want to hear bad back complaints. As expected, all his wounds from the accident have sealed themselves up by the time he wakes and sees In-woo silently observing him from the other side of the bed.

“See?” he says brightly, unaware of the turmoil overturning all of In-woo’s organs. “All healed up and good as new.”

“If it happens again, I’m leaving you to deal with it yourself,” In-woo warns him.

“Okay,” Dong-sik says in the least believable tone possible.

In-woo shoves a pillow over his face, pressing down just enough to make Dong-sik snicker and thrash away, rolling off the bed. He skitters off to get ready for the day, and In-woo just watches him go. Now that he’s had some time for introspection, he’s beginning to wonder if letting himself become so preoccupied with Dong-sik is a mistake. He still intends to keep the same lifestyle he had before the realization of how strongly he burns for Dong-sik, but he’s concerned that if he doesn’t temper their relationship a little bit, the other aspects of his life will suffer. He’s worked too hard to let his quality of work at Daehan slip. He isn’t going to let anything interfere with his eventual ascension to the throne.

The other concern is this: In-woo still doesn’t truly understand how Dong-sik’s immortality works. If, for some reason, Dong-sik fails to revive one day, In-woo will have to move on. And In-woo has dealt with worse losses before, but he can admit that this one would wound him.

But he has to be prepared for all eventualities.

Dong-sik is both amused and thrilled when In-woo starts making them breakfast, and he lounges next to the stove making “helpful” comments as In-woo prepares their egg toasts.

“I’m going to crack your head next,” In-woo says the next time Dong-sik tries to correct his egg cracking method.

“I hope you don’t plan to scramble my brains the same way,” Dong-sik replies as In-woo almost flings egg everywhere while mixing in his vegetables. In-woo throws an onion at him.

Despite all his criticisms, Dong-sik enjoys his toast enough to give In-woo another kiss on the cheek goodbye when he takes off to help tutor his younger brother. In-woo watches him leave and wonders blankly if the swooping ache in his core is fear or hunger or something else. He needs to take some space to see if this burning in his nerves will fade into something more manageable.

He takes the following three weeks to create some distance between himself and Dong-sik. It’s hard to cut himself off cold turkey from the million little habits that have tangled Dong-sik’s life in his, but In-woo’s iron-clad control helps him through it. He stops calling, texting, stalking. He responds to exactly one text from Dong-sik with the message, “I’m busy today. Maybe next time.” He doesn’t take Dong-sik out to any meals, nor does he visit his apartment nor interact with him at work in any way. He doesn’t think about killing Dong-sik or watching him revive.

He does have work he could be doing, so it isn’t difficult to keep himself occupied. Between his meetings and engagements with business associates to keep up his connections, In-woo doesn’t have the time to think about all the empty moments left in his day without Dong-sik there. He confirms for himself that if it were necessary, he could live again without Yook Dong-sik.

However, the truth of it is, he hates it. He hates it and the pressure in his chest fluctuates throughout his day whenever he lets his mind wander to what they would be doing if Dong-sik were around. But, as the chairman always says, hatred makes the body stronger, so he perseveres until he’s certain he’s got enough restraint to lift his self-imposed isolation without going off the deep-end one day. He’ll take Dong-sik out to lunch next Monday and phase him back into his life.

Just as In-woo thinks he’s made it to the end of the third week safely, and can slowly re-integrate Dong-sik back into his life, the sheep himself runs amok and tramples all over his plans again.

“In-woo-ya, are you avoiding me?” Dong-sik asks when he finally manages to corner In-woo in his office on his way back from a meeting. In-woo takes a moment to curse his secretary for letting Dong-sik in, and then he curses himself for fostering the kind of rumors that led to the mistaken belief that Dong-sik should just be allowed to wander through In-woo’s territory at will.

“Why would you think that,” In-woo asks semi-rhetorically as he puts away the files he was carrying, before leaning against the front of his desk and watching Dong-sik fidget. It’s a welcome sight. It feels like an eternity since In-woo last laid eyes on him.

“We haven’t seen each other in close to a month. You’ve kidnapped me from zero team bonding activities. I haven’t seen you lurking around the hallway outside my department, or the Meat Republic, or my apartment.” He starts pouting a bit. “You haven’t even sent a single threatening burner phone text.”

“Did you miss me that much?” In-woo asks, mostly to tease, and it backfires on him when Dong-sik comes and crowds him against his desk.

“Obviously. First you went on your trip, and then you disappeared on me even when you came back. Did- did something happen with the chairman?” he asks, genuinely concerned. Because he’s just as soft as ever.

“No,” In-woo assures him quickly. “He’s the same as usual.”

“Then is it because of my accident?”

“Not quite. I’ve been taking some time to myself. I’m a busy man.”

Dong-sik frowns. “Too busy for…” He makes a strangling motion, followed by what seems to be a stab, and then pretends to croak. In-woo has to tamp down on a smile at his antics.

“You do know you aren’t the only potential victim on my radar, don’t you?” In-woo says without much intent, but Dong-sik’s frown immediately deepens, and In-woo finds his interest in this turn of conversation piqued.

“Are you trying to break our contract, In-woo-ssi?” Dong-sik demands, planting his hands on the desk and penning In-woo in with his arms. Given the slight difference in their heights, In-woo wasn’t sure he could, but Dong-sik manages without smacking their heads together, even if it puts their faces dangerously close.

“I don’t see how my behavior could be construed as a breach of contract, Dong-sik-ssi,” In-woo says calmly. He’s enjoying this little display of power, but he isn’t going to make it easy for Dong-sik. It’s only fair, given what Dong-sik puts him through all the time. “We agreed to help one another with our overlapping interests out of convenience. But we never agreed to make our arrangement exclusive.”

He’s technically telling the truth, but they’re both well aware In-woo hasn’t harmed anybody else since the day he slit Dong-sik’s throat. Still, he says it just to rile Dong-sik up, and from the way his eyes narrow, it seems to be working.

A cloudy expression flashes across Dong-sik’s face, and his mouth goes flat with displeasure. It’s a rare sight, and it always makes In-woo wonder if in another world he and Dong-sik might be more alike in their temperaments and desires. It’s a delectable thought, but In-woo already likes his Dong-sik enough as it is. He doesn’t know how he would conduct himself if he had a predator Dong-sik on his hands. Probably very inappropriately.

Even his Dong-sik has gone stiff with uncharacteristic anger, and it’s got In-woo terribly excited.

“What did I promise you three weeks ago?” Dong-sik asks quietly.

“That you wouldn’t let anyone else kill you.”

“Exactly. So I think it’s only fair that the opposite is also true.”

In-woo blinks at him in surprise. “Clarify yourself.”

“I told you before. You have me, so don’t go targeting somebody else. I’m the only one you get to kill.” His eyes flicker with a very familiar darkness right before he grabs In-woo by the tie to drag him forward those few remaining centimeters between them. Close enough to kiss, close enough to kill. His gaze pierces through In-woo, and In-woo catches sight, for just a second, of the same searing flame that burns inside his own chest. Leaning close enough that In-woo can feel the words against his skin, he says, “You’re mine and only mine, Seo In-woo. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” In-woo breathes. “I understand.”

“Okay, well, good.” As if a switch has been flipped, Dong-sik releases In-woo’s tie and steps out of his personal space, all airheaded smiles again. “Then stop avoiding me or I’ll make you go to karaoke with us next week. Let’s go eat steak tonight; I’ll meet you in the lobby at seven.” With that, he scuttles to the door and out of In-woo’s office.

In-woo, unbalanced and heated, almost stumbles after him, until he realizes that chasing after Dong-sik would be an irreparable blow to his pride. Even so, he debates the pros and cons of doing it anyway. It’s as if this brief exposure to Dong-sik was enough to make the withdrawal symptoms kick in. One more fun new problem to throw onto In-woo’s pile of unaddressed issues.

No, it’s fine. In-woo is fine and in control. He’ll see Dong-sik again in five hours, and he has plenty of work to distract himself until then. It’s all good.

--

At seven p.m. on the dot, In-woo sweeps through the Daehan lobby, grabs Dong-sik by the arm, and drags him to the garage without ever breaking step.

“Did you miss me that much?” Dong-sik has the gall to ask, and In-woo almost snaps his spine right then and there, in the middle of the garage. But no. A gentleman waits until after dinner.

In-woo feels like he might vibrate out of his skin throughout their entire meal, and he’s fairly sure that Dong-sik can tell, from the way he torments In-woo with information he isn’t in the right mindset to deal with.

“By the way, I’m having lunch with Bo-kyung-ssi tomorrow. I want to ask her to help me get research for my book. You should come.” He grins sharply, knowing In-woo can’t refuse. They’re both electrically aware that In-woo won’t be leaving Dong-sik alone any time soon, especially not with Shim Bo-kyung.

“Fine,” In-woo says, sawing at his steak with a touch more pressure than needed. “Anything else you want to extort from me while you can?”

“Nope. But my family misses you. They’re worried about your health, you know.”

“My health?”

“They’re afraid you’re overworking yourself, which is why you haven’t come by for dinner recently. You should really go let them know you’re doing okay,” Dong-sik says, leaning against his hand and making a pitiful face.

This aggravating little twerp. In-woo stabs his fork into the meat and says, “Next week. Tuesday night.”

“Great! They’ll be so glad to see you again.”

In-woo cringes, already imagining all the hugs and tittering and compliments they’re going to put him through.

Dinner is prolonged by Dong-sik’s insistence on ordering chocolate cake afterwards, though In-woo avoids his attempts to shove cake into In-woo’s mouth by asking for his own fork. He isn’t so far gone that he’ll let Dong-sik feed him in public. Once Dong-sik finishes his cake, and whipped cream, and wine they finally, finally go on their way.

In-woo has the self-control not to shatter the speed limit on their drive home, but Dong-sik does his best to be distracting from the passenger’s seat. He clings like a limpet when they exit the car, pretending to be much more tipsy than he really is so he can glom into In-woo in the elevator. This boy and his hugs, really.

“Let me choke you,” In-woo says even before they’re out of the elevator, his arm wrapped around Dong-sik’s waist to hold him up, and Dong-sik nods compliantly against his neck. They stumble into In-woo’s apartment like drunk lovers and almost keel over while trying to remove their coats and shoes. Dong-sik is so entertained by the whole struggle; he keeps giggling into In-woo’s chest with each button he refuses to help In-woo undo, and each stupid peal of laughter fans the fire under In-woo’s ribs.

In-woo walks them to the couch, then thinks better of it, and herds Dong-sik to his bed. Dong-sik falls backwards onto the covers and lies there bonelessly as In-woo climbs up to lie next to him. They look at one another for a long moment before Dong-sik curls his fingers in the front of In-woo’s shirt, tying them back together.

“You won’t do it again, will you? Just vanish on me without any warning?”

“No,” In-woo says, resting his hand possessively over Dong-sik’s heart and thinking about how it once felt coming apart under his hands. “Not of my own volition.”

“Good.” He reaches up and loosens his tie; In-woo stops him with a hand to his wrist.

“Let me.”

In-woo slides up onto his knees to straddle Dong-sik’s legs and carefully undoes Dong-sik’s tie before tossing it up the bed. Then he undoes the first button of his shirt, exposing the line of his throat. It’s instinct that drives him to draw his thumb in a line across it, tracing the same path of his knife. How far they’ve come since that night.

When he looks up again, he finds Dong-sik watching him through half-lidded eyes, mouth curved in a lazy smile, his fluffy hair splayed against In-woo’s sheets. He looks almost smug, and it makes In-woo pause with his fingertips resting against Dong-sik’s pulse point.

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Dong-sik says serenely. “I just like being in bed under you.”

The implication is not lost on In-woo, who feels his face turning hot. How the tables have turned, he realizes, when Dong-sik makes a delighted noise and reaches up to run his knuckles over In-woo’s cheek.

In-woo captures Dong-sik’s hand with his own and lowers it back down.

“Be good and I’ll let you stay,” is the best promise he can muster up at the moment. He definitely isn’t opposed to whatever “unspeakable things” everyone at Daehan thinks he’s doing to Dong-sik, but right now there’s only one thing he wants.

“Ready?” He doesn’t usually ask, but this moment feels more intimate than any of the others before.

Dong-sik nods, loosening one more button to tug the collar of his shirt further apart, revealing his neck, still unmarked, still perfectly suited to In-woo’s needs.

“See you tomorrow,” he says with a smile as In-woo’s hands close around his throat.

Afterwards, In-woo collapses next to Dong-sik’s body, still too strung out on his post-killing haze to change either of them out of their clothes. He traces the handprint he left blooming on Dong-sik’s skin and sighs with contentment before curling closer and throwing an arm across Dong-sik’s chest. He’ll take care of the rest when Dong-sik returns in several hours. For now it’s time to sleep.

--

In-woo wakes for the second time that day and takes a moment to memorize the sight of Dong-sik again, as compensation for the last month or so. Then he heads out on his daily jog to let out some of his energy in preparation for an undoubtedly insufferable lunch date.

When he returns, Dong-sik is padding around the kitchen in his borrowed sleepwear, pretending to stab an invisible figure with a banana. In-woo gets roped into being his victim as he tries to replicate whatever crime he witnessed in his dream, and they waste over an hour debating the best fruit to use as a weapon.

Against both his common sense and his free will, In-woo reminds Dong-sik that it isn’t too late to cancel the rendezvous with Officer Shim that he’s clearly forgotten about, which sends Dong-sik rushing off to make himself presentable. In-woo would rather get it over with than have to mentally prepare all over again for another day. By the time he’s done showering, Dong-sik has gathered up a whole messenger bag’s worth of his notebooks and loose papers to bring. In-woo wonders if Officer Shim knows what she’s getting into.

It’s in the hallway down to the elevator that In-woo realizes he hasn’t been forced to endure a hug yet. He’s certain that Dong-sik will remember eventually — he hasn’t forgotten one yet — but that leaves him with the question of whether he’s going to do what he’s been thinking about since last night.

It takes the duration of the elevator ride to make up his mind.

As In-woo suspected, Dong-sik pulls him to a stop after they exit the elevator.

“Thank you,” Dong-sik says affectionately before finally pulling In-woo into their usual hug. In-woo returns it with his typical enthusiasm, which is none. But this time, when Dong-sik lets him go and leans in for his now-usual chaste peck on the cheek, In-woo turns at the last second, bending just slightly so that Dong-sik’s little kiss lands on his lips instead.

Their lips press together for only the briefest of moments, but it’s enough to make Dong-sik’s eyes go comically wide behind his glasses. He stumbles away in shock, and In-woo files the sight away as a nice memory. It’s harder for him to surprise Dong-sik these days.

“You- that- d-did you mean to?”

“What?” In-woo gives him his most unimpressed stare, enjoying the way it makes Dong-sik squirm. Lovely. Let him suffer the same turmoil he’s been putting In-woo through.

“Ah! You- that’s- I didn’t think you would ever-” Dong-sik warbles stupidly, rendered incapable of forming words through such a tiny, insignificant action. His face is strawberry pink and his eyes are darting all over the room. He looks like he wants to hide under a rock. Adorable. In-woo wants to dismantle him cell by cell.

“Stop babbling until you know what you want to say,” In-woo scolds, before tugging Dong-sik closer and tightening his scarf hard enough to hurt. “Come along. If we’re late meeting your little cop friend she’ll suspect me more than she already does.”

Dong-sik struggles out of In-woo’s hold, and loosens the iron grip of wool around his neck but follows him out the door. “Bo-kyung-ssi doesn’t suspect you of anything; she just finds you confusing because you’re upper class and we’re normal.”

“You are far from normal.”

“That’s true,” Dong-sik says, but he sounds happy about it. He’s practically bouncing with every step, and it makes In-woo want to hold him in place with his scarf like a leash so he doesn’t scamper away.

“Don’t let her get too close; she’s a sharp one.” He gets the feeling that once Officer Shim catches even the slightest scent of blood she’ll never give up the chase, and he doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of killing one of Dong-sik’s friends.

“You think so too, right? Bo-kyung-ssi seems really clever. I bet she’ll be a top detective or something one day.”

In-woo makes a noise of disgust. “That’s the exact kind of person I don’t need hanging around you. I should just get rid-”

“Seo In-woo, don’t even finish thinking that sentence.”

“Then don’t talk to her too much. Or let her touch you. Or give her any hugs.”

“You’re so demanding, Mr. Control Issues,” Dong-sik sighs. He grabs hold of In-woo’s wrist and pulls him toward the car. “It’s a good thing you managed to find someone who finds your clinginess kind of cute. Don’t worry so much, I already promised you. You’re my favorite.”

“Favorite murderer,” In-woo clarifies as he fishes out his keys, and Dong-sik hums noncommittally next to him.

“Sure, let’s say that.” He jogs on ahead before In-woo can grill him further.

In-woo stops in his tracks for a moment as he processes this. Yook Dong-sik’s favorite. Of all the titles he’s been given in his life, he can’t say he ever expected this one, but he can certainly live with it. In fact, he never expected any part of Dong-sik at all, yet here he is, the best part of In-woo’s day.

“In-woo-ssi, let’s go! We’ll be late!” Dong-sik calls impatiently from the passenger’s seat window, as if it weren’t his own fault for attacking In-woo with a melon for twenty minutes.

“Settle down,” In-woo says as he walks toward the car. “I’ll get us there in time.”

In-woo may not have planned for Dong-sik to so utterly upend his life, but he can’t complain. Not when they’ve both ended up right where they’re supposed to be.