Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The station isn’t too crowded.

Agent Choi waits near Exit 5 of Gwanghwamun station, watching as people pass by. It’s a weekend, not one of the busy hours, which means he gets a couple of strange glances as people cross him. He’s dressed rather suspiciously—in a black, long sleeved shirt, collar pulled up to cover his neck, a black mask obscuring half his face, and thick gloves hiding the scars on his fingers. He looks like he’s here to rob someone.

One man even hastily pockets his wallet when he spots him, hurrying in the opposite direction. Choi only raises his eyebrows at him in a smile.

To be honest, he doesn’t like his getup anymore than the strangers do.

He never likes having to cover his scar up. 

But a job is a job, and no one from the Disaster Management Bureau wants their suppliers to figure out that the strange requests on the Salmon Market come from them. And Agent Choi, he’s been told, has a rather unforgettable face—courtesy of his scar, mostly, but he likes to think he’s decently handsome as well—and without hiding under his clothes and his mask he’s likely to be recognized by someone during work hours who might put two and two together.

So he covers up.

It’s 12:37PM. He’s here early—he got to the station a whole thirty minutes before the agreed upon meeting time because he didn’t have anything else to do. It’s his day off, but Jaekwan is still working, which means he can’t drag his junior out for lunch. He could have talked some other agents into it, but they’ve all been a little too serious around him lately. Too strange. Too convinced that Choi has to pace himself and is going to burn out soon.

So he’s here instead, waiting for a stranger to bring him goods that they’d put a call out for on the Salmon Market. 

It’s probably a little sad that the only thing he can think of to do on his day off is work.

The minutes tick past. More passersby give Choi strange looks. He smiles at them behind his mask and tries to look as friendly as possible. He’s good at that, and the sight of his curved eyes make their suspicions fade slightly as they wander off. 

Finally, a good seven minutes before the scheduled meeting, a figure steps into view from the direction of Cheonggye Plaza.

Choi’s smile widens at the sight of them.

The figure, much like him, is dressed entirely in black. Dark sunglasses hide their face, an oversized hat pulled low over their head. They’re clutching a paper bag tightly in their hands, as if afraid that the contents will jump out at them at any moment.

Choi raises a hand in greeting.

This has to be the person he’s looking for.

The stranger spots him, hesitating for a moment before they put their head down and hurry towards Choi. They stop right in front of him, still not looking up, thrusting the paper bag at him.

Choi takes it, amused.

“You’re more cautious than I expected,” he says. “Blue Friend.”

The man nods jerkily, still not looking up. But he doesn’t need to. Hiding his identity here doesn’t do him any good—Choi already knows that this is a Daydream employee. He knew from the moment he posted the request for the conch shell from a certain Darkness under Daydream and received an instant reply.

What the employee doesn’t seem to know is that no civilian has ever gone deep enough into the Darkness to get the conch shell and still come out alive.

Having this in his hands is dead proof that he’s from Daydream.

But that’s not what Choi is here for today. He’s not out here to capture and interrogate greedy bastards who make a living spilling the blood of civilians. He’s just here for the shell.

He takes a peek into the paper bag, and sure enough, it’s there. A little crooked, terrifyingly shiny. It’s exactly what he had been looking for.

He folds the bag back down.

“You really did have it,” he murmurs. He pats at his pockets, searching for the check that he’d gotten from the bureau to cover the transaction. When he hands the crumpled paper over the man reaches for it quietly, his sleeves falling back and exposing his wrists.

They look vaguely familiar. In a strange way. 

Choi tilts his head, wondering—but he’s never forgotten someone’s veins before. He’s never not been able to identify someone that he’s already seen.

It’s an ability that borders on obsessiveness, the urge to log every single detail of someone’s appearance. Jaekwan says it comes from learning to never trust anything in a Darkness. Agent Haegeum says it comes from trying to identify faceless bodies.

Whatever it is—Choi can figure people out just by looking at their wrists, but he’s certain that he’s never seen this man before.

The familiarity must just be deja vu.

The man pockets the check, and then, to Choi’s surprise, pulls out a notebook. He holds an open page in front of his face for Choi to read:

[I don’t know what exactly the item will do.]

[There’s something weird about it. I don’t think it’s safe. I know you said it’s for research, but you should be careful.]

Choi blinks at the scrawling handwriting held up in front of him, and laughs.

The man is right. The shell is dangerous. If Choi keeps it with him for too long the contamination will slowly sink into his bones. The Daydream employee probably knows this too.

But it’s still hilarious that he would try to warn Choi in the first place.

“I’ll be careful,” he says.

The man flips another page.

[Have a nice day ^^]

“Ah! You too, you too.”

It only gets funnier.

Choi raises a hand in farewell, smiling wide under his mask as the man hurries away. A polite Daydream employee. What a turn of events. 

There are a lot of people from Daydream that Choi hates. The money hungry psychopaths who regularly destroy the world just for a chance at a wish.

But while the psychopaths are easy to come by—Choi is most fascinated by the ones who seem normal.

Who seem just like every other person he passes on the streets.

Who can wish him a nice day and dart away as if terrified that they’re going to be spotted.

The fact that there are people who can live in that hellhole of a company and still be capable of appearing normal—it’s always been fascinating to Choi.

He tucks the paper bag into the basket of his bicycle. Once he drops this back at the bureau, he still has an entire day ahead of him to figure out how to fill. Maybe he can talk Jaekwan into having dinner together. Jaekwan should be off work by then—it shouldn’t be a problem.

He takes his phone out to text his junior, glancing once more in the direction that the strange man had disappeared in.

The veins on his wrists had looked oddly familiar, but Choi has never not been able to identify someone that he knows.

Maybe he’d met them in a similar circumstance where he never got to see their face. But then he’d remember the circumstance. Which he doesn’t.

He shakes the thoughts away, turning back to his phone.

Jaekwan-ie… wanna meet up for dinner?

The message is read, but ignored.

Choi frowns. This hoobae… always so rude to him. No respect at all.

He sends another ten messages in rapid succession until he finally gets a response.

Sure, Agent. Let’s meet.

He even uses punctuation. Jaekwan is so cute sometimes.

Choi pockets his phone, turning back towards the entrance of the station.

/

Jaekwan is a little awkward at dinners.

It’s possible that he doesn’t like any restaurant that Choi picks.

To be fair, Choi does choose odd places. They used to have team outings in a BBQ restaurant a five minute walk from the bureau headquarters. Choi had spent a ton of nights there, drinking and grilling meat for his seniors and juniors alike, celebrating a job well done or coping with a job that went horrifically wrong.

But he doesn’t like going there anymore. Now, the food tastes bland to him. The change happened suddenly, and odder still—everyone else still finds the food tastes the same.

It had made Choi wonder if there was something wrong with him, but nothing had come up in his regular contamination checks. So he didn’t make a big deal of it and quietly changed the destination of their meetups instead.

Today, he’s picked a dingy little restaurant that’s close to Choi’s own apartment. Jaekwan politely pours him a glass of soju, and then pours his own. Choi adds some more meat to his junior’s plate.

They talk about normal things. Jaekwan tells him about work—someone had tried to fix the leaky tap in Hyunmoo 3’s bathroom and had ended up bursting the pipe and flooding the room. Choi tells him about a lack of work—he’d taken a walk and stared at the lake and then showered back at his apartment until all the hot water ran out.

“I did meet someone interesting this afternoon,” he remembers to add. “When I went to see a guy from the Salmon Market.”

Jaekwan stiffens. “What?”

“He was even more paranoid than we are,” Choi says with a laugh. “He wrote in a notebook because he was scared I’d hear his voice, I guess. Wore glasses that didn’t even fit and a crazy hat. But the funniest part was he warned me about the item.”

Jaekwan is very still.

To someone else, it might be unnoticeable. Jaekwan is a quiet man to begin with.

But to Choi, who has known him for so long, who has carefully memorized every inch of his existence in case one day he’s left identifying a corpse that no longer has Jaekwan’s face—it’s instantly noticeable.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Seonbae,” Jaekwan starts, a stiff anger in his voice. “You said you wouldn’t make deals on the Salmon Market anymore.”

“Haha.” Choi grins, guilty. “I did say that, yeah? But it’s my day off, Jaekwan-ah. I had nothing else to do.”

“You promised.”

It was a strange promise to begin with.

Choi didn’t even understand the reasoning behind it, but it was the unanimous decision of everyone that he knew at the bureau. Something about how too many shady looking deals were being posted, how Choi already had a target on his back as a well known scammer of Daydream employees, and how they’d figure him out soon enough and the bureau’s cover would be exposed.

Whatever it was, he’d been banned from that job indefinitely.

But what else was he supposed to do? Sit in his empty apartment and stare at the ceiling?

“I won’t do it again,” he says. He probably will. He’s never been one for keeping promises.

But Jaekwan is more hurt than Choi expects. He’s quiet for the rest of the meal, frowning to himself. He drinks an entire glass and a half of soju more than he usually would.

Choi wishes the man would tell him more things.

That he would share it with him when he was sad.

But he doesn’t press him. He drinks three glasses more than he should instead.

/

Sometimes, Choi is sadder than he should be.

During his mandatory checkups at the bureau, he’s told that it’s because he laughs too much of his pain away. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to him, and he tells the doctor so, and all they tell him is that there’s only so much you can run from before you have to stay put and deal with it.

But Choi isn’t running from anything. He’s never been able to.

His trauma has always been etched into his skin, forcing him to deal with it every moment of his life.

But that’s not even what’s been bothering him. It’s not the fear that he carries in his heart. The weight of the lives that he carries on his shoulders. The sins that he’s committed with his own hands because he could never save everyone, no matter how much he wanted to.

The emptiness he feels comes from somewhere else that he can’t even identify.

As if he was born with it.

He fills it with work, both tedious and otherwise. He fills it by trailing behind Jaekwan even when his junior is far too busy to tolerate him. He fills it by buying himself and Jaekwan their favourite drinks at their favourite shop, and wondering why the takeaway container feels slightly off in his hands, as if he’s more used to the package feeling heavier.

He spends his life easily enough, tying himself to his purpose. He will save as many people as he can, and die when it’s his time to go. 

It’s easy enough on a usual day. It’s his days off that Choi can’t stand.

“Jaekwan-ah,” he tries. “I’ll just sit in a corner and write my reports. I won’t even bother you.”

“You don’t even write your reports on the days that you do have to work.”

“Well. I’m turning over a new leaf today?”

Jaekwan gives him a look so dead and disgusted that Choi rapidly switches tactics.

“My apartment is so lonely,” he tries instead. “What if I have nightmares, huh? What will I do then?”

“You sleep like a log, don’t give me that.”

It’s true. He does. Choi used to be a fitful sleeper, getting around two or three hours of rest every night—but for the past few months he suddenly sleeps like the dead. He doesn’t dream. He doesn’t wake up in between. He sleeps as if every memory that his brain would usually throw in his face at night has been quietly tucked out of his grasp.

He needs a new tactic here.

Jaekwan sighs, setting down the file he’s working on. “Seonbae. You’ve worked every day for the past two months. You don’t even stay home on weekends. If you keep this up it’ll become a human rights issue.”

“Human rights issue?! We jump into death every day. We’ve never had rights to begin with.”

“We do have some,” Jaekwan seems to think about it. “Our hospital stays are free.”

“Well, yes, they don’t pay us enough for us to cover it every time we nearly die.”

“They also give us days off.”

“I don’t want those.”

“They gave us a coffee machine.”

“Jaekwan-ah… your standards are too low…”

“Agent Choi. Just go home.”

He looks tired. He’s as overworked as Choi himself is, barely getting the chance to rest. The days he does get off he spends volunteering at their local orphanage. Jaekwan has no right to tell Choi off for never taking a break—but for some reason he’s always worried about him.

It doesn’t feel right. It’s Choi’s job to be worried about him. But sometimes concessions can be made. If it gives Jaekwan some peace of mind to think that Choi has taken a break, then Choi can go stare at his ceiling for a couple of days.

Choi sighs heavily. “Fiine,” he says. “I’m going.”

“Take care, seonbae.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He waves as he leaves, shutting the door softly behind him. There are a few agents in the corridor that look up as he passes, nodding or smiling or patting him on the shoulder. They still look a little awkward around him, a little sad, but Choi has learned to brush it off.

The walk home is cold. Lonely. It shouldn’t bother him but it does.

He stops on the way for another cup of coffee. The barista is friendly with him now, since he’s here on more days than not. She starts on his order the moment she sees him come in, and excitedly tells him about what her favourite idol is up to even though Choi did not ask, but Choi listens and laughs in the right places because it’s pretty entertaining regardless.

When she hands him his order, something passes over her face. Her limbs go rigid for the briefest moment, before relaxing again. When she smiles at him again, the smile is foreign.

Choi watches her carefully.

“You used to order for three people,” the barista says, in a lilting voice. “Now you only ever order for two.”

A chill passes over Choi’s spine.

“What do you mean?” he asks sharply.

But the moment is gone. Her smile fades, and she blinks herself back into reality. She stumbles a bit as if whatever possessed her has faded away.

A ghost? A spirit?

Choi doesn’t know.

The barista blinks slowly. “And then he said—it’s so hot isn’t it,” she continues, as if nothing strange had happened. “And the whole stadium was screaming, and then he pulled his coat off, and it was his tattoo! He finally revealed it! At the last possible moment! I lost my mind, I seriously lost my mind—”

Choi takes his cup from her hands, trying to keep the easy smile on his face—but inside, he’s cold.

You used to order for three people.

It can’t mean Elder. Back when Elder was around he had a different favourite shop altogether.

But there was no one after Elder.

Was this ghost trying to fuck with his mind? To make him doubt his reality, suspect his own memories, until he let himself fall apart?

He shakes his head. He should get checked again, once his break is over.

He chats with the barista a little longer, until she’s told him everything she has to say, and then he leaves.

It’s still cold outside.

/

The station isn’t crowded.

It has no reason to be, at such an absurd hour of night. There are a couple of people who look dead on their feet, ready to collapse at any moment. And there’s Choi, in his thick coat, arms crossed to ward off the cold. 

It was an impulse decision, to take a trip. He has three days off, he might as well use them. No one lets him into the bureau and Jaekwan is too busy for Choi to annoy him after work hours, so he had chosen the next best option: to get into a train and wander off in a random direction.

He’d flipped a coin to figure out where to get off and it came up on Mokpo. So that’s where he’s off to. He’ll go find some new faces that don’t look at him like he’s a walking tragedy of a man, hang around them for a couple of days, and then he’ll be back at work and everything will be alright.

The train finally comes in, slowing to a stop. Choi gets in, settling in an empty seat at the side. The lights are far too bright for 2AM, giving the entire place the sort of timeless feel that he hates about hospitals. 

The train pulls out of the station. He checks his phone, to see if Jaekwan has replied. He hasn’t.

He turns back to the window.

The minutes pass.

And then he feels the unmistakable sense of being watched.

He doesn’t turn immediately—he’s been at this job for far too long to make a mistake like that. The gaze turns to him, and then turns away. Turns to him, and then turns away.

Choi pretends to stretch, tilting his head just slightly to look behind him.

There, a couple of seats back and on the opposite side—is a familiar looking figure. 

Choi forces down the smile that threatens to widen.

It’s Blue Friend. The polite Daydream employee who’d warned him about the ill-effects of an item.

The train is mostly empty. Choi could just go over and talk to the man. Try and hear something about his job. It wouldn’t technically be work—just intellectual curiosity.

Just trying to figure out how Daydream employees tick. A way to pass the time.

Choi slips out of his seat, sliding into the one right in front of Blue Friend.

The man jerks up to look at him, eyes wide.

“Hello,” Choi says.

The man’s eyes go even wider.

As someone who’s still alive in this cursed industry, there’s no way he doesn’t recognize Choi’s voice. He must know that this is the person he sold the conch shell to.

But Choi really wants to drive the point home, so he adds: “You were right about the shell, you know? It really was dangerous. The person who’d asked for it had a complete breakdown after looking at it for too long. They tried to get a hit at me, too, but I managed to calm them down. They’re in the hospital now, recovering well.”

It’s a complete lie. Choi handed the item over to the bureau, and they safely sealed it and put it away for later research. Nothing else happened.

But the man doesn’t know this. He looks guilty even, eyes darting from Choi, to the window, back to Choi.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. “I didn’t know it was that dangerous. I just found it in—in a strange place, and it seemed really weird so I got scared and wanted it out of my hands.”

He’s as good a liar as Choi himself.

It’s something that Choi can appreciate.

He glances at the man’s hands. They’re pressed tightly together, nervous—and his wrists still look oddly familiar. A memory that he can’t place. Maybe the veins are similar to someone else’s. Or they’re something from his mostly forgotten childhood.

“Haha, that’s alright,” Choi says. “I’m not blaming you. It was my fault for asking for the shell in the first place.”

“Uhh…”

“But imagine us meeting again like this! What a strange coincidence. Where are you headed, Blue Friend?”

The man’s eyes dart around again, embarrassed. He must be here on work matters. He’s in a neatly pressed, formal shirt, some of the buttons on his suit hanging open. He must be cold without a jacket, but he isn’t shivering at all.

Maybe Daydream employees don’t feel things the way normal people do.

 “I… I’m going to Mokpo.”

“Haha, me too!” 

The man’s expression worsens. It makes Choi’s smile grow wider.

Choi shifts, so he’s leaning against the window with one leg up on the seat. “What’s waiting for you in Mokpo? I’m on the way to meet my grandmother.”

Choi doesn’t even know if he still has a grandmother.

“I’m visiting a friend,” Blue Friend says.

A lie.

“That’s nice,” Choi says. And then, because all this tiptoeing around is boring him— “Does this friend know where you work?”

Blue Friend goes very still.

There’s a hint of dread in his eyes.

Caught.

“Yes?”

“Oh? They know you work at Daydream?”

The dread grows.

“It’s okay, haha,” Choi says. “I have friends who work at Daydream, too. You have to do what you need to do, right? To make money.”

Daydream employees fascinate him.

The most selfish of creatures. The most disgustingly desperate. Crushing lives under their shoes and telling themselves that they never had a choice.

“Or is it the wish?” Choi prompts. “It’s usually the wish, right?”

Blue Friend nods stiffly.

“I don’t think it works, though,” Choi says.

This time he isn’t lying. 

He’s never seen someone’s wish turn out right. Choi has watched as Daydream employees used the ticket and disappeared right in front of his eyes. 

From what he can figure—the person gets sent to a world where their wish would be possible. But where that world is—if it’s a hallucination, an alternate worldline, the afterlife—is anyone’s guess.

“It does,” Blue Friend says, oddly determined. “I’ve seen it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

Choi hums, staring out the window opposite to him.

There isn’t a lot that’s visible in the dark. The inside of the train is too brightly lit, leaving the outside world completely obscured.

He wonders what this desperation must be like.

Choi can’t remember ever feeling it.

There isn’t anything in his life that’s made him think I need this, no matter the cost of it.

The only thing Choi has felt desperate about is his job. The urge to save as many people as he can. To try to trade his own life for it if he can get away with it before Jaekwan grabs the back of his shirt.

Choi is a selfish man, he’ll admit—because he wants to live with as little blood on his hands as he can manage.

He glances back at Blue Friend. 

“What’s your wish?” he asks mildly.

“...eh?”

“What’s keeping you going?”

The man looks conflicted. 

It’s a question that crosses too many boundaries.

He looks like he wants to lie—but then he frowns to himself, something strange passing over his face.

“I want to go home,” he says quietly.

…of course he does.

“Don’t we all,” Choi muses, as if he’s ever had a home at all.

The closest he’s come is to the shaky foundation that he and Jaekwan have tried to build together. Jaekwan calls it home. Choi isn’t so sure.

He doesn’t know if home is supposed to feel like it can slip through your fingers at any moment.

He stares out the blank window again, thinking about the Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting from that somehow feels empty despite being home to the person that Choi loves the most in this world.

The train ride is mostly quiet after that.

Choi offers light conversation. About the weather, the news, the biting cold that Blue Friend seems unaffected by. Blue Friend doesn’t seem to understand why he’s talking to him, but he nods occasionally in the right places and agrees that the weather has been unpredictable and that the news has been quite scary.

When the train finally pulls into Mokpo, the man stands to leave first. He isn’t carrying much, just a light backpack. As he stands Choi spots a small pink bunny plushie peeking out of the water bottle holder.

It’s cute.

Choi isn’t carrying a lot either. But that’s mostly because he forgot he might need to pack.

“Blue Friend,” Choi calls out, as the man steps past him. “I didn’t catch your name.”

The man gives him a strange look. “Why do you need it?”

“What if someday I want to go home too?”

He says it to make fun of the man—but Blue Friend’s eyes widen.

But then he catches himself and shakes his head.

“Baek Saheon,” Blue Friend says, voice careful and firm.

He says it with a certainty that makes it incredibly clear that his name is not Baek Saheon. 

But it’s enough of a hint, so Choi lets him go.

“I’m Choi,” he says, because his name means nothing anyway. It’s never been enough for someone to go on.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

They step off the train. The man who isn’t Baek Saheon leaves in the opposite direction, and Choi watches him go.

/

Baek Saheon, Choi finds easily enough, is a supervisor at Daydream.

Brown hair, only one eye, the mask of a goat. He has an impressive stack of accomplishments, a disturbing streak of luck, and has been the only survivor in too many Darknesses for it to be a complete coincidence.

The exact sort of man that makes Choi sick. The definition of Daydream itself.

But Baek Saheon isn’t the person that he’s looking for. He digs further, to try and find people that the man associates with. Someone who, when under pressure, would rat his name off without a second thought. Someone with a grudge? Someone who had lost a dear colleague to him?

Choi keeps digging.

It takes hours of work. Choi is crosslegged on the bed of his run down motel room, scrolling furiously through the information he’s collected from Daydream over the years. He was supposed to spend his day off going outside, seeing the world, finding new reasons to want to take days off. Instead he's holed up looking for information about a man he might never run into again.

He searches every mention of Baek Saheon on the group chats on Lee Kangheon’s phone. A lot of it is feigned politeness, a lot of it is stiff congratulations. But through it all he does find a key piece of information.

Baek Saheon’s roommate. 

Kim Soleum.

A quick look at Kim Soleum’s profile and Choi knows. This is the person he's been looking for.

Dark hair, serious eyes, a sharp face that could look intimidating when it needed to, but that Choi had found mostly looked afraid.

The more he looks at Soleum’s information, the more fascinated Choi gets. Everyone sings his praises but it feels actually genuine. He has more accomplishments than anyone else, but his record is the opposite of Baek Saheon’s: every darkness he comes out of, he saves more people than should even be technically possible.

Choi is fixated on one conversation in particular, about the Hungry Hangman.

Not even the person sentenced to death had died.

How was that even possible?

A true monster of a rookie. 

It's a shame that he's in Daydream. With skills like that, he could save thousands of people at the bureau. He could make a real difference in this world, instead of selfishly working for money and for the foolish wish for a home that he'd convinced himself Daydream would just grant him.

Choi stares at the photograph. 

It's such a pity.

He texts Jaekwan as a joke.

Jaekwan-ah… do you think we should start poaching Daydream employees? To solve our manpower issue? lolololol

He doesn't expect the message to be read immediately.

Or for his phone to start ringing the next second.

Choi stares at the caller ID in surprise. Jaekwan usually ignores him for hours. He spots Choi’s messages in his notifications and then swipes them away, sometimes right in front of Choi himself.

He picks the call up, bewildered.

“Hello?”

“Agent Choi. Where are you?”

“I’m in Mokpo… what’s wrong?”

“Did you run into any Daydream agents?”

“I did, yes, on the train… what’s going on?”

“I’ve told you not to engage with them outside of Darknesses.”

“Come on, I was bored. And he was someone I knew, too. Remember the guy I told you about from the Salmon Market?”

There’s dead silence from the other end of the line.

“Jaekwan-ah?”

“Don’t—” Jaekwan’s voice is cracked. “Just don’t engage with any of them. Please.”

Choi is quiet for a long moment.

“What do you know?” he asks at last. “What do you know that I don’t?”

Jaekwan doesn’t say anything. He’s never been a good liar. Choi can hear him breathing over the phone, too fast, too strained.

“Seonbae,” he says at last. “Can you just trust me on this?”

“On what?”

“I trust you completely,” Jaekwan says, his voice too honest. “No matter what you say. So please trust me on this—it’s best for the both of us if you don’t engage with Daydream.”

Choi bites his tongue.

A part of him wants to argue. To demand to know what’s being hidden from him. Jaekwan never hides things from him, mostly because he can’t—Choi always finds out somehow. 

The fact that there’s something of such importance that’s being kept out of his reach—it bothers him.

But the phrasing gets to him.

It’s best for the both of us.

As if Jaekwan, too, is being personally hurt by this.

Jaekwan is the only person that Choi still has in this life. He can’t keep running headlong into trouble if it means hurting him.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “I won’t.”

Jaekwan lets out a breath. “Thank you,” he says, but it sounds hollow.

It’s as hollow as Choi himself feels.

When Jaekwan hangs up, Choi is left staring at the face of Kim Soleum on his screen. His tired eyes, the sharp angle of his jaw. He would be good at the bureau. He would save so many lives.

But Choi won’t do that to Jaekwan.

He turns his screen off. Maybe he’ll go outside and find a place to eat.

Somewhere he can forget that something terrible is being kept from him. Something that might even be the reason that everyone around him looks at him with such pity.

Something that has carved tragedy into his existence, but for some reason—no one wants him to know.

/

Choi does keep his promise.

He doesn’t search for any more information about Kim Soleum in Lee Kangheon’s phone, even if he desperately wants to. He wanders the streets of Mokpo, buys himself a snack. Stares into the roads blankly. Starts a conversation with a random stranger waiting at a bus stop.

He pretends for a day that he isn’t a bureau agent. That he has a life outside of it.

It isn’t very fun, but he does it.

All of his thoughts are still spinning around Jaekwan’s words. Just trust me on this, he’d said. It’s best for the both of us.

Had someone threatened Choi through Jaekwan?

Is that what this is?

Jaekwan is overprotective for sure—any threat to Choi’s life would have made him extra careful. Or had something happened to Jaekwan, and the entire bureau was hiding it from him because they knew that it would make Choi burn Daydream to the ground?

The thought makes him stop.

He tries to calculate if there was ever a time when Jaekwan was missing for too long, if he came back worse off, if there was ever anything in his countenance that suggested that something terrible had happened to him. 

And there is a time that comes to mind.

Six months ago.

There were a couple of weeks when Jaekwan could barely look Choi in the eye. The worst few weeks of Choi’s life. He’d tried to patch things up desperately but he didn’t even know what was wrong, and the harder Choi tried, the worse off Jaekwan seemed to get. 

As if Choi’s very presence was enough to make him miserable.

But Choi couldn’t give up. If Jaekwan left him, then he really had no one left. 

The other agents had later told him that Jaekwan’s tension around him was because of the after effects of the darkness that he’d been in. The darkness was notorious for twisting visions of the victim’s loved ones into horrific creatures, and apparently Jaekwan had seen Agent Choi in there. The Choi that he had seen was enough of a monster that Jaekwan hadn’t been able to meet his eyes in the real world without being reminded of it.

Choi hadn’t doubted it then.

He’d just tried his best to show Jaekwan that this Choi was trying not to be a monster, this Choi loved him, but—

He can’t help but doubt the story now. 

What if Jaekwan had been lying back then?

What if something else had happened entirely?

There’s an easy enough way to find out—Choi just needs to check the official report. Jaekwan might lie to his face but he would never lie in an official document. And if the report states that nothing of the sort had happened in the Darkness, it’ll be enough proof for Choi to confront his junior and find out what the hell is going on. 

If Daydream had truly done something to him, if he’s been hiding it all this while…

Choi’s thoughts are cut off as he spots a familiar figure across the street.

It’s Kim Soleum.

His blazer is missing, shirt worn out, sleeves pulled up over his elbows. His hair is a mess, a far cry of the perfect man that Choi had seen on the train. 

The tiny pink plushie that Choi had spotted before is tucked gently into his front pocket.

The man looks tired. Exhausted. 

As if Choi could push him over and he’d just fall asleep.

He still doesn’t seem cold, despite not wearing a jacket. Does he just not have feelings?

Kim Soleum steps into the supermarket at the side of the road. Choi watches him go.

He’d promised Jaekwan that he wouldn’t engage with Daydream agents. He’d promised to trust him.

But Choi never did keep his promises, did he?

If his junior is in trouble, he would rather be hated for saving him than have to bury his body with his own hands.

He crosses the street quickly.

/

Kim Soleum notices him the moment he steps into the store.

He glances up from the two different brands of instant ramyeon that he’s looking at, expression carefully blank. 

Choi raises a hand in greeting. Soleum only nods in response, turning back to the food in his hands.

Choi stops next to him, hands in his pockets, making a big deal of considering the options that Soleum is holding.

“I don’t recommend this one,” Choi says, nodding towards one of the brands. “The spices made me sick for three days.”

“Oh,” Soleum says.

He puts the box down reluctantly, as if he can’t tell if he should be trusting Choi on this or not.

“Anyway, Baek Saheon-ssi,” Choi starts. “Or should I say, Kim Soleum-ssi.”

Soleum flinches.

It’s satisfying to see. To know that Choi has one upped him.

“Monster rookie of Daydream,” Choi continues. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”

Soleum’s eyes are sharp.

“Agent Choi of the Disaster Management Bureau,” he says easily.

Choi blinks in surprise. Then he laughs.

“You’re good too,” he admits.

To be fair, it would be odd if Soleum hadn’t figured it out yet. Choi had outright given him what’s left of his name, and he’s been acting way too suspicious to be a civilian.

“Well, now that we’re acquainted,” Choi says brightly, “Let’s shop together.”

Soleum gives him a dead, disgusted look.

It looks so similar to the expression that Jaekwan gives him on a usual day that for a moment, Choi feels a tinge of fondness.

He shakes the feeling away. Is he getting too codependent? One day without Jaekwan and he’s starting to see him everywhere.

His eyes shift to the grocery basket at Soleum’s feet. It’s full of odd things—a bunch of instant food, a disturbing amount of candy, and a small carton of grape juice.

It doesn’t look like he’s up to anything crazy.

Then why does he look such a mess?

In the span of Choi finding him on the train and finding him in the supermarket it looks like the man has been through hell. Whether he was on a mission, or got caught up in a darkness without meaning to, or just had some kind of nervous breakdown—it’s anyone’s guess.

“What’s on your list?” he asks instead. “I can help you out.”

“It’s fine.”

“Come on, I can be helpful.”

Soleum looks like he’s losing patience with him—much like Jaekwan does.

“It’s fine,” he says again, moving away and into the next aisle.

Choi follows him, amused at the way Soleum’s shoulders tense further.

Watching Kim Soleum shop is fascinating. The man stares at every single thing that he picks up for a full minute, as if expecting to find a secret label on the back that says caution: this is actually poison and should not be consumed. It’s a healthy level of wariness for someone accustomed to Darknesses, but it’s still amusing to watch.

Choi himself barely pays any attention when he shops. He picks up what looks brightest and cheapest and closest to him, and lives on that for weeks, until Jaekwan comes over and looks at the state of his refrigerator and quietly restocks it.

Jaekwan is such a good kid.

“You’re terrible at buying groceries, Kim Soleum-ssi,” he feels the need to say, nodding towards all the instant food the man has in his basket.

Soleum ignores him.

“It isn’t sustainable,” Choi says, trailing after him. Kim Soleum doesn’t look at him, determinedly making his way towards the checkout counter. “A young man like you, you need more vegetables.”

“I’m only here for three days,” Kim Soleum says.

“Oh?” Choi asks. “Your mission ends so soon?”

“I’m not here on a mission.”

“Come on, you don’t have to lie to me anymore. We’re acquaintances, aren’t we?”

Kim Soleum gives him another withering look.

Choi feels that misplaced hint of fondness again. 

“You should learn from Agent Bronze,” Choi says. “He eats balanced meals every day.”

He watches Soleum carefully.

This was what he was here for, after all.

A man like Kim Soleum, who had managed to figure out who Choi was based on one strange meeting on a train, must definitely know Jaekwan. He must know what happened to him.

But Soleum doesn’t show any signs of recognition. “Good for him,” he says easily.

“You must have met him before,” Choi pushes. “Tall guy. Black hair. Acts really professional but he’s actually really cute.”

“Haven’t met him.”

“Really?”

Soleum gives him a suspicious look. “Am I supposed to have?”

Choi studies him.

Kim Soleum may be a good liar—but Choi is good at reading people. Even then he can’t spot any hints of lying in the man’s countenance. He genuinely doesn’t know Agent Bronze.

Choi has to find a different link to get his answers.

“Well,” he says. “You should meet him someday. Or maybe you shouldn’t. He isn’t as tolerant of Daydream employees.”

A strange shadow passes over Soleum’s face.

A mix of guilt, frustration. Annoyance.

Soleum turns away, walking faster towards the register. It’s a childish escape. Choi follows him.

He stands behind Soleum as he places his items on the counter. The cashier looks more dead inside than Soleum himself as they quietly scan the items and drop them into a bag.

“You didn’t buy anything,” Soleum points out.

“Ah? Turns out I didn’t need anything.”

Soleum sighs. He scans his card and thanks the cashier politely. The cashier doesn’t even look up.

Choi picks up the bag of groceries before Soleum has the chance to, giving him a smile in return for the completely fed up look that he gets.

“You look tired,” he insists. “What sort of person would I be if I made you carry so much, hm?”

It’s a weak excuse for what he really wants to do—which is follow Kim Soleum to wherever he’s going and find out what he’s here for—and Soleum knows that as well as he does. But the man just sighs, letting Choi do whatever he wants. He turns to leave, and Choi follows after him, swinging the bag idly as he walks.

An entire minute into walking towards the exit he realizes something is wrong. 

They’ve been walking for way too long.

It shouldn’t have taken them longer than a few seconds. The distance to the door is far too short for it to feel this endless.

Maybe Soleum realizes the same, because he stiffens. He walks slower, more cautiously.

Another minute passes.

Another.

The exit stays out of reach. 

Soleum’s footsteps slow to a stop. 

Choi glances around them. The place doesn’t look all that different from when they first stepped in. The shelves are in the same place as they had been before, the floor plan seems unchanged, and there are no strange customers. 

“Try turning back,” he says quietly.

Soleum doesn’t argue. They quickly walk back in the direction that they came from. They pass through the frozen foods, the cleaning supplies, the snacks. The distances aren’t distorted. Everything is as it should be.

They’re back in a completely ordinary supermarket.

So is it only when they try to leave…?

“Let’s try the entrance,” Soleum says urgently. 

They try to make their way towards the sliding doors, but their steps never get closer. The entrance stays out of reach, just like the exit.

“We’re stuck,” Choi sums up.

Kim Soleum looks a little miserable. For someone who’s called a monster rookie, he looks pretty downtrodden about the idea of being in a Darkness.

Choi looks around, trying to figure the situation out. No one has been hostile towards them. Nothing has appeared to be a threat. Is this really all there is to it? Just an oddly ordinary supermarket that they can never escape?

“At least it isn’t like Looky Mart,” he says, almost to himself.

Soleum blinks in confusion. “Looky Mart?”

He tilts his head like he doesn’t know what Choi is talking about.

It’s odd that he hasn’t heard of it, with how highly ranked he is at his job. Looky Mart has taken countless lives in the most gruesome of ways. It almost took Jaekwan himself, but he’d been saved by a miracle and Choi’s desperate prayers.

It was one of the most frightening days of Choi’s life.

“Looky Mart is more actively hostile,” he says, because there’s no time to get into the details and the horrors right now. “I don’t think there’s anything that wants to attack us here.”

“That makes it harder to figure out what to avoid.”

“Haha, that’s true.”

It’s unsettling. So far, all they can figure out is that the distance extends infinitely if they try to leave. There are no other irregularities.

Choi watches the other customers carefully.

It takes the customers a moment to realize, but everyone seems to be stuck in the same way.

All of the people walking towards the exit end up walking endlessly. Some of them don’t notice, scrolling away on their phones. The ones that do notice try to walk faster, and then break into a run, starting to panic. It still doesn’t lead them anywhere.

“We should calm them down,” Soleum says quietly.

Choi raises his eyebrows in surprise.

That isn’t the first instinct a Daydream employee would have.

But Soleum is watching the customers with a frown. “Let’s tell them we’re locked down for safety reasons,” he says. His voice is steady, professional, but Choi can sense the anxiety under it. “I’ll ask them to wait in the interior.”

“You take the entrance,” Choi says, nodding towards the side of the building with less people. “I’ll take the exit.”

He turns, about to head back—

When he sees a flash of silver flying towards him.

The sound is deafening, of a hundred knives cutting through the air.

Choi freezes in place.

The blade is flying towards his neck. He should dodge. Should run. Should escape.

But in that moment, he’s somewhere else entirely. 

Lost in a memory from years ago.

The endless pain. The never ending slicing through his skin.

Praying for his own death.

For an end.

Pleading, that if he just died, he’d give up anything in his next life—

“Agent!”

The knife is flying towards his neck.

Choi should move, should run, should escape—

Should beg for death, for mercy, for everything to stop—

The knife doesn’t reach him.

Choi blinks, coming back to reality. 

Instead—Kim Soleum is crumpled on the ground, holding the blade in a death grip in his bleeding hands.

“...Kim Soleum?”

The man doesn’t say anything. He’s gasping in pain, eyes unfocused—two of his fingers chopped cleanly off. What’s left of his hands is an ugly, gruesome mess.

Choi crouches next to him, hands twitching, mind racing. 

“Let go,” he says, trying to keep his voice gentle. “Let go of the knife, it’s cutting deeper.”

But Soleum doesn’t seem to hear him, only holding tighter, completely lost in the pain. Choi hisses, gently trying to pry the remnants of his fingers open—but Soleum lets out a terrible sound that makes him stop.

Choi doesn’t have a choice. He has to dislodge the knife from the man’s hands, to stop him from making this worse—but pulling it out is going to hurt like hell.

“I’m okay,” Soleum tries to say, but it comes out a little hysterical. “I’m okay—”

He’s interrupted by the sound of blades cutting through the air again.

Choi pulls Soleum to the ground to avoid them, trying to ignore the wounded sound he makes. 

The supermarket is a mess of blood and gore. There are too many unlucky citizens that were caught in the first strike, when Choi was too frozen in shock to realize what was happening.

The second strike doesn’t end any better. 

Figures collapse to the floor all around the supermarket.

“I know what this place is,” Soleum gasps. He’s shaking terribly. Choi holds him close, digging in his pockets for the spare bandages that he always carries around.

He’s going to have to stop the blood loss somehow. And he should pick up the fingers that were sliced off, so that Soleum can get them reattached later—

Choi feels sick.

What the hell was wrong with this guy?

Why would he catch a knife with his bare hands to save a man he didn’t even know?

“Talk to me about it,” Choi says in the voice he uses to calm victims, while he wraps the bandages around Soleum’s hands. The man folds into himself, trying to jerk away, but Choi holds him firmly in place. “It’s going to hurt, but just bear with it, okay? Talk to me. What is this place?”

“It locks down once someone leaves without buying anything,” Soleum says. He’s terribly pale. Choi is afraid he might pass out. “The knives fly until they’ve killed everyone inside.”

“There’s no way to make them stop?”

“There is,” Soleum says. His eyes are unfocussed. He really might pass out. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“It’s fine,” Choi says. “It’s fine. Catch your breath, alright?”

“There’s candy in my pocket,” Soleum says, like a true crazy person. “Can you take it out?”

“What?”

“Please?”

Choi reaches a hand into the man’s pocket, past the pink bunny plushie that’s about to fall out—and pulls out a small piece of candy wrapped in plastic.

Soleum opens his mouth desperately.

Choi unwraps the item, slipping it onto his tongue, and—

The change is instant.

Soleum’s hands heal themselves, as if they’d never been damaged. The blood, the gore—it’s all right back as it used to be. Soleum himself is steady, calm, his eyes sharp with none of the panic and terror that Choi had just seen in him.

“Okay,” he says, in the same professional voice he’d used earlier. “This effect won’t last for more than ten minutes, so we have to hurry.”

Choi just stares at him.

What the hell…?

There’s something terribly wrong with Kim Soleum.

/

They do manage to escape.

It’s hard. It’s messy. The darkness, as Kim Soleum had said, is triggered by someone leaving the premises without having purchased anything. The supermarket locks down and kills everyone inside of it out of fury—and the only way to clear it is to buy enough items to calm the store down.

Choi doesn’t have nearly enough money to do such a thing, with his sad excuse for a salary, but Kim Soleum is quite rich. They manage to pile up basket after basket of items and get it all checked out at the cash register as fast as they can.

The cashier scans and drops the items into bags with complete disinterest.

As if people weren’t being terribly mutilated in front of their eyes.

It’s hard getting all the items to the cash register while dodging the knives that keep flying towards them. It’s harder still to help the citizens stay safe. Too many of them die before the supermarket is finally pleased with how much Soleum has purchased.

Choi is left hollow as they finally make it out.

Every day he ends up with more blood on his hands.

And Kim Soleum—he looks just as bad.

Worse still, when whatever magical candy he’d ingested gives out and he keels over right into Choi.

Choi catches him, heart twisting. What sort of Daydream employee would risk themselves like this to save a bureau agent?

Soleum’s hands are a mess all over again. 

“Kim Soleum,” he tries urgently.

“I’m fine,” the man says, delirious. “I’m fine—”

“You aren’t—”

Kim Soleum pats at his pockets with his torn hands and missing fingers.

It’s a terrible sight, and Choi stops him, finding the candy on his own.

He slips it between Soleum’s lips. The man gasps in relief as the pain dissipates and his body reverts to what it was before he’d sliced his hands into pieces.

“Why would you do this?” Choi scolds quietly.

The rescue team is already here, helping the citizens that are mutilated, crying, and falling apart. It’s a mess. They’re all going to need to work overtime, and Choi is going to have to file an insane amount of paperwork.

“I didn’t know any other way out,” Soleum says.

“No. Why would you do this,” Choi stresses, gesturing towards his hands. “I’m an agent. I’m trained for this, I would have dodged the knife. You didn’t have to do that for me.” 

The first rule for a civilian in a disaster is to keep themselves safe before they turn to help anyone else.

But Kim Soleum had jumped right into the fire at the first chance he had.

“I don’t know,” Soleum says.

He sounds almost confused.

As if he doesn’t understand what happened any more than Choi did.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t. I just—I knew you wouldn’t run.”

“...what?”

“I just knew.”

He stares at his hands, as if he can’t believe that they’re there. In another ten minutes, they will be a mess again. Choi doesn’t want to know what will happen then. 

“I should get back,” Soleum says quietly. “Before the candy runs out.”

“You should go to a hospital.”

Soleum shakes his head.

He leaves, and Choi doesn’t stop him.

He still has work to do on site. All these people to get to safety, families to contact—there’s a lot of work to be done, and he can’t afford to leave it behind to follow Kim Soleum.

But he spends more time than he should staring at the man’s retreating back. At the painfully unfamiliar figure.

I knew you wouldn’t run, he’d said.

He’s right. Choi wouldn’t have.

His neck is his ugliest weakness. The fear of being attacked completely destroys him. It makes him useless, but Choi hides it well. He has to, to avoid being a liability at a job that depends entirely on quick reactions and survival instincts.

But Kim Soleum had known.

He’d known, and he’d saved him.

Choi tears his eyes away from him, turning back to the supermarket. He still has work to do.

/