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Hwang Inho has a secret. He is not as meticulous as it seems.
Sure, he puts his phone down on the receiver in such a certain way that in the case it is ever touched by a stranger’s hands he’d know straight away from its positioning. And of course he has cameras positioned 24/7 in every corner of every possible wall (except the bathroom, where he positions guards to make up for it). Soldiers have no secrets in this place. He knows their fingerprints, the time they’re awake in the morning, the names of their daughters, ex-girlfriends, and pet fish. No knowledge is useless to him. Nothing slips by him. Mistakes are not allowed. Every little thing could be a jeopardy to the organization, and if anything somehow goes wrong, it will fall on his head first.
And so he devotes all his time into making sure things are going the way they should. That is his job. It is not his job to find players. Honest truth be told, they are never his priority. After all, what are another 456 human beings? They’re the same ones every year, desperate, poor and helpless, picked off the streets or scraped out the gutters. They all cry the same, beg the same, die the same. At the end of the day, it’s only the winner who matters, and he usually ends up in a river the following months anyway.
He has recruiters who do the arduously simple task of rounding them up for him. They find him the correct number of contestants, and that’s that. Inho has never had to worry.
So no, Inho is not as meticulous as it seems. At least not in the ways that don’t matter. And why should he be? He has enough on his plate as it is. Why should he have to worry about the part of the organization that is arguably the least of a concern?
Everything is, and has always been, under control.
-
“Red light!”
Inho lounges in his armchair, legs propped on top of each other, a glass in hand. He pours himself a drink of his liquor. The little doll booth in the corner croons out the chorus of his favorite American warble, the sound blending in with the screaming and gunshots to form the familiar symphony of the Squid Games. Everything is going perfectly.
Usually this is the time where he picks out faces amongst the sea of green and white that look promising to him. Player 067 catches his eye: skinny limbed and sunken eyed, but nimble. And fierce, jerking back the head of the man twice her bulk who’d pushed her around in the rooms earlier in an act of revenge. 199 is strong, his brown face pinched and determined, but–oh, he wastes a precious second rescuing a fellow player from certain death instead of letting him fall. A shame. That kind of mentality never guarantees anything but ruin.
“Green light!”
More players will cross the finish line this year than the last. He has to say, this new group his recruiters found for him has serious potential.
The timer hits zero seconds. Younghee’s enormous head begins to turn. Most players still on the field begin to freeze. But those desperate enough to seize their last possible opportunity give it their all in spurts of energy, hurtling towards safety in an ambitious, last ditch attempt. A young man, the number on his jacket reading 455, breaks from the ranks. He lurches into a magnificent leap. The jump is enormous, contorting his body into a twisted sort of crouch as he hits the ground in a bruised heap.
The timer beeps. He made it.
As the snipers do their job, the last of the shivering, green-clad figures on the field dropping like flies, 455 hobbles up from behind the finish line, hands on his knees, panting.
His face turns to the camera, his eyes red, wet, and horrified.
Hwang Inho spits out his whiskey.
—
“The Front Man would like to see you in his quarters.”
Uh oh, is Moon Kiyong’s immediate thought. Still, he lets the pink guard lead him to his room, smiling politely as ever, waiting to be alone before letting his stretched grin drop into a pout.
He can’t even imagine what Inho wants with him. Despite all his efforts, the Front Man remains formal and aloof with him, only reaching out to interact to discuss strategy and to confirm his annual job as satisfactory, a meeting that had only taken place mere days ago.
An emergency, then? Kiyong hates to wonder. In all his years of working for this place, never has anything under Inho’s management gone any way other than perfect, and though he is always open to new possibilities, the idea gives him…discomfort. He can’t pretend to know anything about the man, but a Front Man without control is a world of serious, serious misfortune for everyone.
He straightens his tie. Runs a hand through his hair. And reaches for the handle.
As soon as he steps inside, he’s grabbed by the lapels and slammed into the wall so hard he sees stars.
“Well hello to you too,” he says through the hands around his throat.
Inho’s not wearing his mask. His face is contorted into a wild medley of emotions unbefitting his usual stoicness, snarling rage and cold fury fighting for the dominant form of anger. And somewhere, underneath both, Kiyong sees pure, unadulterated fear.
“Did you do this on purpose?” he spits. His jaw quivers madly. “Did you?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.” The hands tighten. Kiyong is taller than Inho, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Inho, raising him higher against the wall. “Though I supposed comeuppance for my various crimes was due sooner or later. I did slap that pregnant lady a little harder than I had to in 2017.”
Inho hits him. Hard. And Kiyong is well and truly shocked for what feels like the first time in his life. Because Inho isn’t looking at him with that exasperated glare like he usually does when he makes jokes well beyond his position or asks questions that would give any other person a bullet in the head. No, Inho looks like he wants to kill Kiyong. He looks like he will.
He raises his hands in surrender as Inho prepares for round two. “At least tell me what I’ve done! This is unsightly.”
“I’m in no mood for games, Moon.”
“You think I am? I’ve no desire to die. Just tell me what I did wrong.”
Inho whips a folder out his pocket, thrusting it into Kiyong’s chest. “Hwang Junho,” he says as Kiyong opens it. “Born on September 13th, 1992. 27 years old. 5 feet and 11 inches tall. He lives in Ssangmun-dong, in a little apartment with his mother. He’s a police officer.” His voice rises in pitch. “He’s supposed to be giving out parking tickets.”
The file matches Inho’s words to a point. The picture shows a young man, his eyes crinkled up with how naturally wide his smile is.
“Ah,” Kiyong says. He remembers him. Not too bad at ddakji, which made his slaps all the more satisfying when he lost. His sources had told him about him, a rookie cop who’d made bad deals with bad people to help his ailing mother and fund a mysterious search project with his team. He was about to lose his job. He was one of the first people Kiyong went to, and one of the last to accept the invitation. He was impressionable. Desperate.
Hwang Junho. Who lives in Ssangmun-dong.
Uh oh.
“You know, Hwang is a very common last name,” Kiyong says.
Inho reaches for the gun in his pocket.
“I didn’t know it was him!”
“Then you’re careless and sloppy, and are no longer fit to be my recruiter.”
And Kiyong flinches. The wrath in Inho’s eyes dulls by a millimeter at the sight. He drops Kiyong heavily, turning away so his face is hidden.
“I didn’t know things were that bad,” he mutters, mostly to himself. Kiyong feels like a fish on land, thrust into unfamiliar territory. Just hours ago he’d been planning his vacation with the fat paycheck he’d just finished earning. And now he’s watching his boss have a mental breakdown right in front of him. “Why didn’t you pay more attention? How could this slip past you?”
Is he talking to himself? “I didn’t know what your brother looked like,” he explains, just to be safe. “I saw a potential player and I went for it. I didn’t…I didn’t know.”
“You signed his death warrant.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Inho is quiet. He buries his face in his hands with a muffled groan. Kiyong flails momentarily–his comforting abilities have always been shit. Though he thinks if he attempts anything of the sort Inho will tear him into strips anyway. “The games must continue,” he says.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I’m sorry sir.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Inho sounds like he resents him for it. “I should’ve known–I shouldn’t have–”
Left? Become Front Man? Inho struggles to find the right words. In the end he just sighs. There’s none of that solemn, cool bravado he normally wears alongside his mask. And with all the anger gone, there’s just hysteria left. “That little shit.” He barks out a laugh, tugging at his perfectly gelled hair. “That fucking shithead. I taught him better than this. Trusting strangers? Getting into their cars? He deserves this.” He kicks a chair, skidding it across the floor. “Idiot! This is where my kidney went? Fuck him.”
“All hope isn’t lost. There’s still the voting process afterwards. If your brother is smart enough–”
“After today’s events, I seriously doubt it–”
“–then he will vote X and there could be a chance for him to go home. He still has your mother. Would he really leave her all alone in bodily critical condition for the slim chance to gain some cash?”
The question gives Inho pause. “No.” His head jerks in confirmation. “No. He wouldn’t. He would never.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. He loves her too much…” Inho shakes his head, the beginnings of a smile twitching at his lips. “Of course. The voting process. How could I forget…every year…”
“And after seeing such horrors today, he wouldn’t be so eager to return. He’s unused to violence, like you said, just a parking ticket guy.”
“Parking ticket guy…”
“Then it’s settled.” Kiyong slaps Inho on the back, ignoring his flinch and scowl. Now that looks more like him. “You have nothing to worry about, sir. Your brother made it out so far. Soon, he’ll be going home, and this whole thing will just be a terrible, discontinued nightmare.”
“You’re right.” Inho nods again. “Of course you are, Kiyong. This was just a mistake.”
“A little one. Utterly inconsequential, to be truthful.”
“We just have to wait.” Inho settles himself, brushing invisible wrinkles out of his outfit, as if nothing in this universe ever moved him. “Just an hour more. Then this will be over, and we can go back to another normal year of the games. Everything will be fine.”
-
“Player 455!”
Junho steps towards the buttons. Their red and blue lights reflect on his face, illuminating the sweat and dirt. He’s thinner than Inho last saw. And if he thought his eye bags were atrocious before, they’re nothing compared to now.
His hand hovers over the red, trembling slightly. He looks up at the giant piggy bank hanging from the ceiling. The cash in it is aglow from the light reflecting off the glass, making it appear golden. The pile is enormous, nearly halfway through filling the entire pig, which in itself is taller than quite a few people in the room.
At the last second he moves to the left, hitting blue instead.
“Fuck,” Inho says.
-
001 presses X, but it’s too late. The majority vote is O.
Junho doesn’t cheer like his fellow O voters, only glancing at the Xs across from. He looks guilty, but determined, poking absentmindedly at his left side.
“Fuck!” Inho hurtles his glass at the screen, shattering it into a million pieces. “FUCK!”
(—)
The honking of some juvenile army tune is what shakes Junho awake. He’s confused at first, wondering why his soft blanket is so thin and his mattress so rickety before remembering the previous day’s events.
Red light green light. Voting. More gunshots than Junho has ever heard during his entire time as a cop.
Bodies.
He sits up with a strangled noise. People are already milling about below him, presumably discussing theories about what the day will bring as well as strategy. On the ground, he spots 456 forming his own little team, talking animatedly with the old man he’d taken under his wing and the brown-skinned immigrant who’d saved him from falling before. 218 lingers close by, something unreadable in his stare.
Then he sees 067 in the corner. The big man who’d caused a scene earlier stands next to her, surrounded by men of equal size, all ogling like vultures to a kill. The way he’s looking at her makes a shiver go up Junho’s spine. She says something to him that makes him bare his teeth. He moves forward like he’s going to grab her, and her hand goes behind her back–
“Hey!” Junho’s scrambling over to them before he knows it, sandwiching himself between the two. He and 101 are the same exact height, but Junho can’t help but feel positively miniscule up against him. He refuses to back down even though his mind screams at him to walk away while he still can. “Hey mister. I don’t know what your deal is with this girl, but I think she’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to be bothered. Let’s leave her alone, yeah?”
101 doesn’t look moved. In fact, he inspects Junho up and down, sizing him up in a way that makes Junho feel like a slab of meat being inspected for butchering. “Oh?” 101 says raspily. “And why should I listen to you?”
“Because I’m an officer. And if you try anything with her, sir, I’ll have to write you—”
101 grabs his jacket and slams him against the bedpost. His arm is like a cannon, bulging with muscles and covered in tattoos. He looks like the stereotypical drug dealer schools would tell their children to watch out for in alleyways. “Maybe your parents never told you this,” he says, low and hoarse, “but sticking your face into other peoples’ business is rude. This is a personal matter. Between old friends.” He leers at the girl, who inches backwards.
Junho shoves him in the chest. It’s like shoving a brick wall. 101 snarls at him. His goons begin rolling up their sleeves. 101 cracks his knuckles and Junho braces himself for a fight–
“Attention players.” A female voice over the intercom says. “Your mealtime will begin shortly. Please line up in the center of the room.”
The people around them begin to gather away. 101’s men look at him uncertainly. 101 glares at him for another second. Then smirks. “You’d better watch yourself, boy. Your laws don’t exist in a place like this. We’re in my kind of territory now.” And with that, he shoves off to join the lines.
Junho lets himself relax. The girl stares at him from her place behind a bedpost. There’s a tiny dagger in her hand. She quickly puts it away.
“Are you okay?” he asks. She blinks. Then leaves him.
“Wait!” He catches up to her long strides quickly, but she makes no efforts to speed up. She just ignores him. “I’m sorry. Did I offend you or something?”
“I didn’t need your help.”
Junho can’t help but scoff at that. “So that gang wouldn’t have torn you apart if I didn’t intervene? I find that hard to believe.”
She wheels on him. “I’m not interested in you dude, ok? Just drop it.”
“That is NOT what this is!”
She rolls her eyes. Immoderate vexation turns in Junho’s stomach. He always hated being accused for something he hadn’t done, more so if the perpetrator was condescendingly smug about it. The girl senses his frustration, laughing when he opens his mouth to defend himself. “Listen buddy. I hate that bastard Deoksu with all my heart, but he was right about one thing. Puffing up your chest and declaring you have authority means nothing here. You’re not here to preach. You’re here to survive and to get you share of that.” She jerks her head to the ceiling where the piggy bank hung last night. “I’d suggest joining a team. We have no idea what the next games are, and you might need allies. You seem like a strong guy. Someone’s bound to take you.”
“And what about you?”
They arrive at the front of the line. She takes her breakfast–a bun and a bottle of milk. She seems confused by it for some reason, frowning slightly at the bag. But she shakes it off. “I don’t need anyone in order to win,” she says. “You should get with someone quick. People are already making their groups. You don’t want to be the only one without one. And stop following me, you look like a creep.”
And with that, she’s gone.
People were listening in on their conversation. One woman gives him a look of pity. Suddenly hot, he bows his head and takes his food, fleeing to the farthest corner of the room he can find.
-
It’s time for the 2nd game. The pink guards lead them down a long line of dizzyingly colorful steps. Everyone buzzes nervously, not knowing what to expect. 067 is not too far ahead of him, hands in her pockets, looking like she hasn’t a care in the world. 456’s incessant chattering can be heard from all sides. His friend, the bespeckled one, acts embarrassed.
He looks curious too, casting weird glances at 067. Perhaps he’s still thinking about the run she'd had yesterday with Deoksu. Or all the ruckus she’d caused going to the bathroom with the crazy old woman last night, who’d screamed so loudly Junho was surprised the guards didn’t shoot her.
They’d whispered a lot afterwards. The crazy woman thought they were being quiet, but anyone with an ear would have noticed they were acting suspicious. He hadn’t heard the exact words, too exhausted to care, but now he wonders what they were doing in that bathroom for as long as they did, and why crazy lady was so obsessed with continuing their conversation after getting back even though 067 made it pretty clear she was done.
He pushes his way through the line in front of him. He gets looks, curses, but he doesn’t care, his eye on 218, who also begins venturing closer to 067. He gets there in time to hear 067 say something about sugar.
“What about sugar?” He butts in. 067 startles at his voice then scoffs, moving away. 218 answers for her. “She told me last night when she was going to the bathroom, she saw the guards melting sugar.”
“Melting sugar? Why would they do a thing like that?”
218 doesn’t answer, instead deep in thought. Junho decides not to push it.
They arrive at some sort of playground, complete with slides and monkey bars. But it’s a smaller room, barely enough for everyone to walk around freely. So another athletic game? Or something else?
There are four shapes on the wall in front of them. The female voice over the intercom sweetly instructs them to choose one and get in line. Groups all around him shift around nervously, wondering whether to split up or stick together.
218 is staring at his palms, thinking. 067 watches him from afar. If something’s on his mind, he isn’t sharing with the class. 456 says something to him, and he twitches, forcing a smile on his face and replying.
Junho’s gut is telling him to follow 218. Because if he does have an idea on what the game is, obviously he would pick the best option for himself. But if that’s so, wouldn’t he tell his friends to follow him? They’re splitting up already. 456 heads towards the umbrella, and 199 to the circle, making the shape with his hands absent-mindedly.
067 joins 218 at the triangle. They’re all over the place. The hot sparks of panic prickle all around Junho’s skin. He doesn’t know what to do.
Clenching his fists, he is suddenly reminded of another hand in his, a hand that always seemed so much bigger no matter how old he got. A hand he hasn’t felt in what seems like forever. He remembers being 5 years old and tiny, with a weak body and a strong brother who took him for walks in the rain. He was big enough to balance Junho on his back with one arm as well as keep a hold on the enormous umbrella that kept them dry.
He’d seemed like a giant then. All mighty, and without fault.
Time’s running out. He has to pick now.
Umbrella it is.
-
The doors open. Out slides a pink guard with a cart of little circular casings. They are each given one.
It’s Junho’s turn. He steps forward to take his, but the pink guard winces back. He blinks. Tries to grab one again, but the pink guard swats his hand away like a mother scolding her child for taking banned sweets.
“Wha–”
“There are no more,” the pink guard says. Junho squints. Takes a glance at the fully stocked cart, then back at the guard.
“Are you sure?”
“There are no more. Go to the triangles instead.”
The triangles are all the way on the other side of the room. There are still people in line behind him. They turn heads, trying to see the interruption. “I don’t think–”
The guard shuts the door in his face. Junho is utterly bamboozled. The players behind him grumble, moving to triangle like they were instructed, complaining about lousy management. Junho is almost too perplexed to agree.
-
“The second game is sugar honeycombs!”
Junho looks down at his opened case. He looks back to the umbrella on the wall. Then looks at 456, who appears like he’s a second from taking a gun from a guard and sticking it in his own mouth.
Never mind, he thinks fervently, as he begins to carve.
From the corner, 001 stares at the back of his head.
-
“Player 111, pass!”
A gunshot rings so close by that Junho almost drops his needle. Fuck. He’s entirely too sweaty for this. Knowing his luck, he’s going to cut this triangle out then instantly crush it by dropping it as soon as he reaches out to show a guard.
“Player 067, pass!”
The casing rattles in his grip. He breaks off a corner, letting out a breath of relief when it comes off cleanly. 5 more minutes.
“Player 218, pass!”
One more corner. One more corner and he’s done.
Bang.
The person to his right falls off his seat with a scream, wide eyes now staring at nothing as blood runs down his head. And Junho flinches.
The piece splits, taking a tip off the triangle. He sucks in a breath. Well fuck.
He waits for the click of a revolver, for the burn of a bullet in his neck. Nothing happens. No one has noticed yet. The guard in front of him has his back to him.
The beheaded tip is so small, barely noticeable. His fingers cover it when he holds it up from that end. He wonders…
He taps the pink guard. Flashes him the triangle. The guard looks for a few seconds. Junho resists the urge to shove the thing in his mouth and beg for forgiveness.
“Player 455, pass!”
Junho’s knees buckle. He stumbles his way to the doors, nearly blinded by relief. Before he leaves the room, he shoots one last glance at the poor bastard 456. The man is drenched, stabbing haphazardly at his unforgiving candy. He notices Junho, eyes wilder than a drunkard’s. Junho cannot help the prick of pity he feels as he walks away.
-
218 and 199 are standing when he gets back to the bunks, waiting for their friends. 218 seems surprised to see him, but 199 gives him a shy smile, one he returns tiredly.
The last of the players leak through the doors. Junho squints, trying to see if he can make out 456’s face amongst the haggard crowd. He can’t at first. But then…
199 breaks out in a grin. “Sir!”
456 breaks through, shinier than wax but alive. Junho can hardly believe it. 218 claps his friend on the shoulder, looking immensely relieved. And guilty. 001, the old man, comes up behind 456’s shoulder. His standard toothy grin is gone. Junho feels young under his gaze, which, for some reason, feels accusatory. His palms itch.
“What’s your name, boy?” 001 asks suddenly, interrupting the happy reunion. He’s looking directly at Junho.
“Me? I’m...Hwang Junho.” Manners, a voice that sounds like Inho’s whispers in his ear. “Sir.”
“Ah. I saw you in there, with the other umbrellas. You sure finished quickly, didn’t you?”
“They switched me.” 456’s eyebrows raise. 218 twitches minusculey. “They said they ran out. Told me to go to the triangle line instead.”
“They told you to? You didn’t just pick yourself?”
“No, sir.”
“They ran out for you but not me? Ah, fuck,” 456 curses. “You’re damn lucky, kid. That umbrella was nearly the death of me.”
“Lucky,” 218 repeats. His glasses are off, tucked in his pocket.
The old man suddenly breaks out in laughter. “Lucky indeed! Well then stick with us, boy, and we’ll see if some of that luck rubs off!” His boney fingers wrap around Junho’s elbow, bird-thin, but tight as a vice. Junho gives him a weak smile. 456 engages in cheerful conversation with 199, telling him how licking the dalgona was what got him his victory. 218 is quiet.
They get their food and sit together. Junho finishes his meal quickly, downing everything in a matter of minutes, so exhausted he can barely see straight.
“So,” the old man says. His eyes are like an owl’s.
Junho swallows. “...so?”
“I’m just curious. What’s a person like you doing in a place like this? You seem like a responsible young man, not a hooligan like this one.” He smacks 456’s knee, who yelps indignantly.
Junho pauses. The old man seems unbothered by the personalness of his own question, leaning forward for an answer. The camera in the corner of the wall blinks down on him. He hates the way it makes him feel studied, like a rat in a lab.
“My mother,” he says finally. “She is very ill. I would’ve had to sell the apartment for her treatment. We don’t have much.”
456 clucks. “Ahh, I understand. My mother is also sick. Even after getting her diagnosis at the hospital, she walked straight out without any medical attention. She’s still working at her shop. If I get that money I’ll get her an armchair so nice she’ll never want to stand up again. She’ll have to forgive me for being a deadbeat. Maybe she’ll even stop hiding her credit card from me.”
“Are you jobless then?” the old man asks, cutting off 456’s rambling.
“No sir, I’m a cop. Not a very high paying one though. I’ve always wanted to do detective work, but my brother forbade it.”
001 squints. “You have a brother? What’s his name?”
Junho wonders when this will be over. Are all old people this prying? “He...” 001 nods, near enough now that Junho can see the wart on his nose. His teeth are brown. He smells a bit like his attic, mothballs and tissues. Junho quite wishes he’d back up a bit. “His name–”
A yell interrupts them. People around them gasp, all attention on the center where a commotion is stirring. Someone yells again, and the unmistakable sound of a punch rings throughout the room.
It’s 101 again, yelling, his face twisted in a snarl as he makes a move towards a trembling form on the ground. “Why did you break it, huh?” he kicks the man. “How come a skinny guy like you cares so much about food?” Broken glass and liquid lay next to him on the floor. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened.
101 kicks him again, and there’s the gruesome sound of splitting flesh. Junho stands up. Ignoring 456’s warnings, he stalks over to the pair. 101 reels back for another hit, then notices Junho. He smirks. “Not you again.”
“I knew you were an instigator, but this is a new low even for you. During mealtime? In front of the elderly? Have you no shame?”
“You should’ve told that to this rat. He laid hands on me first. He was wasting food. I’m hungry that’s all.”
“So you’re going to beat him to death for it? How sensible of you.”
101 tilts his head. He looks like a bear, predatory and hungry. Junho can almost see the blood on his maw. “I’ll give you one last chance, kid. Walk away now.”
Junho doesn’t budge. Exactly 5 seconds pass. He dodges 101’s punch, but just barely. He can feel the air from the force of it swipe his nose.
The man is smarter than he looks. He circles him, observing his movements instead of immediately striking. Junho cocks his head. “What’s the matter, old man? Scared of the little cop?”
“You have no idea of what you’re dealing with.”
“I saw you in the dalgona game. You were on your tummy, mewling and arching like a kitten. I thought you were going to piss yourself. Then again, I’m surprised you didn’t just eat it. You know, since you're so hungry.”
“You little–”
Bang! Bang!
The gunshots make both of them jump. A pink guard lowers his pistol, the weapon still smoking. He points it at 101, making the watching crowd shout in alarm. 101 slowly raises his hands.
“There is to be no disruption during mealtime,” the pink guard says, his voice distorted by the mask. A flash of anger rises in Junhos’ chest.
“Then how come you didn’t intervene when this man was getting assaulted?” he says. He gestures to where 271 still lies crumpled on the ground. 456 and 218 join them to check on him. “So what, we can’t fight, but this thug is allowed to beat up whoever he wants?”
“He’s dead,” 218 breathes, dropping the wrist of 271. 456 chokes. They wait for the pink guard to fire, to declare the rules broken. Nothing happens. The piggy banks clinks, a small wad of cash falling to join the enormous pile. And the number on the giant screen decreases by one.
101’s eyes glint. He leers. 456 makes a noise of disbelief. “He–he killed someone!” He stands up, waving a hand in front of the guard’s face. “Hello? Aren’t you going to do something? Someone’s just been murdered! He’s dead!”
101 gestures to the gun in his face with a jerk of his head. “Hey. Put that away. You’re not actually going to shoot me, are you?”
The pink guard hesitates slightly, then relents. 101 barks out a mad, cackling laugh. And with one last sneer at the body, he swaggers off to join his stunned teammates, leaving Junho utterly shocked. What just happened?
Workers arrive to cart 271’s limp body away. His eyes still open, the only indicator of his death a small spot of blood on the floor.
-
The lights will go out soon. 101 is talking with his gang members, and it seems a few more have joined them. Junho’s not stupid. Now that 101’s seen there are no real consequences for killing other people, it’s pretty obvious they’ve got something planned.
The air feels strange, a tenseness different from before affecting everyone’s mood. There’s a stiffness in the way players lie in their beds, turn their backs to their teammates. Restlessness. It’s like they can smell the storm but speaking of it is forbidden.
“Hey.”
Junho jumps. He was so transfixed on 101 he hadn’t noticed the person walking towards him. 218 holds his hands in front of him in a placating manner. “Sorry for startling you.” He follows Junho’s gaze. “You noticed it, right? We think he’s going to attack other players. We’re rounding up a few people, letting them know they should join us if anything happens.”
In the distance, 456 converses with 067 with uncanny seriousness. She looks up at him, unimpressed. “And you especially,” 218 continues. “After confronting him like that, you’ll be a target.”
“I know.”
“He’ll kill you, and this time there won’t be any guards to stop him.” The mattress dips, 218 sitting down next to him. Junho avoids eye contact, staring at a rip in his sleeve. “How did you do it anyway?”
“Do what?”
“Get them to step up for you. Are you bribing them? Do you know any of the guards?” His tone remains friendly enough, but Junho has been around enough criminals to know when a situation is about to turn.
“I don’t know. Like the old man said, it’s probably just luck.”
“Bullshit.”
Junho winces. He turns to face 218 for the first time. His red-rimmed eyes are sharp and unforgiving, piercing like needles. “There were six players behind you in the umbrella line,” he says. “Six players who would’ve lost, which would’ve meant six more million up there.” He jerks his head to the ceiling. “But that didn’t happen. Because the umbrellas ‘ran out.’ Because of you.”
Junho forces himself to stay impassive. He leans in close until 218 backs up, self-awareness suddenly entering him. “I don’t. Know.” he enunciates each word. “You’re delusional if you think I’ve had anything to do with the soldiers’ technological issues. That money is making all that SNU knowledge your friend speaks of fly straight out of your head. Get it together.”
For a minute, 218 looks like he’s going to hit him. Then he clenches his fists, shoulders dropping. Without his glasses, he seems twice as haggard as usual. “You can’t blame me for being suspicious.”
“No, but I can blame you for being fucking stupid.”
“Forgive me. This place…it’s messing with my head. I’ll be happy when we finally get out of here.”
Junho watches as 218 rubs his forehead, sighing out the weight of 50 years of strife and debt. “You know where we are. Come to us when you’re attacked, we’ll protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection.” Junho turns his back to him in a comically adolescent move, letting his head fall against the bed frame with thud.
He stays like that even after 218 leaves, after the countdown hits the minute mark. Only when the lights go out does he lay on his side in the expected display. The shard of glass up his sleeve is cold against his skin.
They waste no time. A woman screams, and the sound is cut off by wet gurgles and lifeless thumping. Chaos erupts like through an opened door. There’s screaming. Bunks are thrown over, hurtling metal parts and human beings alike across the room. Crashing, yelling, and flashing lights that reminds a delirious Junho of the hollywood matrix movie.
Someone grabs his ankle. Immediately he whips the glass out, slashing the air until he’s dropped with a yell of pain. He tries to run, but a huge, rough hand entwines in his hair, wrenching his head back only to shove it forward, slamming it against the ground.
Crack. He tastes blood. He’s turned around and thrown on his back, every bone in his body ringing like a bell.
Despite the red pouring down his face, he lurches forward for a headbutt. With a sickening crunch, he’s free. Scrambling across up, he makes a mad dash across the slippery floor as unrecognizable figures shout his number and make grabs for his jacket.
The doors shake and bang with the force of the players trying to escape the carnage, screaming for assistance. Junho knows there are guards behind them. The security cameras blink cheerfully down at him, their red recording lights an uncaring condemnation.
He can’t see 218. He can’t see 067 either. 199 sticks out like a bonfire in an ocean, swinging around an enormous metal pole to protect the curly head of who Junho assumes is 456. He can’t join them even if he wanted to. The crowd is too thick, the swaying bunk beds too hazardous to run under. He’s trapped.
“Hey cop.”
101 doesn’t lunge. He knows Junho has nowhere to go. His buddies take Junho by the arms, dragging him down until he falls to his knees. 101 grabs him by the chin, forcing his gaze upwards. It meets a drooling, shark-like smile.
“You should learn to respect your elders,” 101 says.
“You should stop picking on 20 year olds,” Junho says.
101 punches him. The force makes Junho’s teeth sink into the inside of his own cheek, drawing blood. “Where’s that mouth now?” Punch. “You fucking disrespect me–” Punch. “–I’ll fucking end you.” Junho is underwater. The entire world is a mess of black, white, and red, the red his own and mostly gathered on 101’s fist. “You little cunt. Parading around here like you know everything, who do you think you are? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
A whistling noise zips somewhere from the wall and embeds in 101’s head. His eyes are blown wide, shocked. Then his body topples over like a pile of stones, cut by an invisible string. A stream of blood squirts from the side of his neck.
The crazy lady screams. The thug holding Junho uprights crumpled too, struck by the same invisible hitman. The entrance bursts open, pink guards streaming in, firing their guns, ordering for players to stand down, to drop their makeshift weapons. But there’s disorder in their formation, a certain confusion in the way they wheel around to face the one presumably in charge. Are you sure?
The lights turn back on, making Junho’s head spin. There’s blood everywhere, torn mattresses and bodies. Including the ones on top of Junho that were, mere seconds ago, beating him to death.
The guards scan the dead bodies, and the numbers of the deceased are read out. Player 74, eliminated. Player 222, eliminated. Like a poem read out, cheerful and plaintitive, the list goes on.
Player 101, eliminated.
And with that, Junho finally lets his head dip. He gasps. And gasps. Fat red droplets plop down his chin. They tickle. It would bother him more if not for the rawness of the rest of his face that occupies him utterly.
444, 006, 206...
001…
(—)
“–fucking piece of shit. Fucking, godamn bastard.” Hwang Inho takes a break to let out a short breath. He’s wet all over, from tears, sweat or piss, he forgot a long time ago. “Get rid of the bodies immediately. Under no circumstance are you to open fire, do you hear me?” He doesn’t wait for the reply, slamming the walkie talkie down on the receiver. “Fuck.” He has air in his lungs again. He dashes his mug into the floor. “FUCK!”
The door opens behind him. He doesn’t bother turning around. “Kiyong, I’m in half a mood to sever both your legs off with a spoon and leave you out at sea to drown. Your half-assed ideas do not deserve my humoring. Leave.”
“So Kiyong is a part of this little scheme of yours? I’ll have to make a note of that.”
Inho freezes, turning around as slowly as he dares. Oh Ilnam, back to wearing his signature suit and purple tie, stands at the doorway. To say the very least, he looks grave.
He stumbles, catching himself on the edge of the couch. Remembering his manners, Inho rushes to help him take a seat, the furious cyclone in his mind dulling down to a fog for the first time in days. “You’re supposed to be in the games,” is all he says.
“I am,” Oh Ilnam replies curtly. “And I was. Until you started acting out of turn.”
Inho’s heart drops. “I can explain.”
“You needn’t. I already know.” The old man leans back with a sigh. His features smooth out as best as they can with his wrinkles. “Ah,” he says with a gruff chuckle. “These old joints won’t be forgiving me any time soon, but even at my age I enjoyed playing. At least until you started pulling strings.”
“So you know of him. 455.”
“Hwang Junho.” Inho flinches. “Yes, the little cop. It was hard not to notice him. He reminds me a bit of you in 2015. You never could keep out of trouble. I suppose it runs in the family.”
Inho curses softly. His hair is a mess, sticking up from when he grabbed and pulled at it in dismay, nothing at all like his usual slicked-back style. He smells like the terrible, dairy-free coffee concoction Kiyong whipped up for him from America. He hates coffee. He buries his face in his ungloved hands, eyes drifting shut.
“He surprised me,” he says, the words like gravel in his throat. “I never expected to see him here.”
“Yet here he is. And you can’t do anything about it.”
Inho’s head snaps up. Oh Ilnam looks down at him innocently. “You may hold nothing but indifference to this world,” he says slowly, carefully, “but even you cannot be so cruel as to ignore a man’s loyalty to his brother.”
“These people are nothing. Garbage. Trash in the sewer, dust in the basement.”
“Junho is different.”
“455 labeled himself as expendable the moment he called the number on the card.”
Illnam says this with the same courtesy he always displays, hands resting on his knees, posture neat as can be. He is not harsh in his words, but that somehow makes it worse. The quiet disappointment that reminds Inho of his own father would be so much more palatable as rage, but no. Inho is the unreasonable child here, needing reprimand and nothing more. “I’m a fool.”
“No, you’re not. You’re strong. I have never doubted your loyalty. Humanity is flawed, and not one of us is without our weak spots.” Illnam reaches up a gnarled finger to poke Inho’s forehead. “Not even you.”
“Am I to just let him die, then?”
“You are to do your job and run the games. This is how the games operate. Above all, there is to be fairness and equality. You know this.”
“I do.” He stops his fingers from twisting against each other, a nervous habit he’d long abandoned.
“I will let you off with a warning because I know you can do better. But no more interference, eh? Shooting the players was understandable at best, but that dalgona lie–”
“Was Kiyong’s idea.” Inho pictures the man’s smug, self-satisfied face, then imagines driving a stake through it. “This will not happen again.”
“I believe you.”
He teeters up, hobbing back out the entrance. Inho starts. “Where are you going, sir?”
“To my room. The VIPs will be arriving any day now, and I am tired enough as it is. It’s a shame, really. I was so excited to play the next game…”
-
Junho sits on the ground with a vacant expression until 456 walks over to him, speaking softly to him. What he says makes him get up to join the rest of the group, slipping a little on the blood-glossed floor.
He picks absentmindedly at the dark stains on his cheek. The camera’s angle doesn’t allow Inho to see how bad the damage from 101 is, but he’s still moving freely, if a bit stiffly. It’s good enough for Inho. Junho just needs to hold out for a few more days, then he can get the treatment he deserves, go back to their mother, and return to his life.
And Inho can finally breathe again.
456, the idiot with the soft heart and wavy hair, seems very shaken up by 001’s “death.” Inho is quite enamored by him. The last player picked, somehow the least fortunate yet the luckiest, saved time and time again from other players and last minute, harebrained ideas. He’s utterly ridiculous. Any normal person in their right mind would abandon a senile old man and never think twice in a place like this, but no. He took care of him. Stood up for him. It’s utter nonsense, but the man is somehow still alive.
Chance is a funny thing. Inho can’t wait to watch his downfall.
Seong Gihun, he says, smiling despite his dejectedness. They’re introducing themselves to each other now. 199 is Ali Abdul. 218 is Cho Sangwoo. 067 is Saebyeok. Words, meaningless, forgettable words in a sea of more, already forgotten. In mere hours, half of them will be incinerated, their ashes dumped in the ocean like waste. Inho has to admire their tenacity, even if in the end it will amount to nothing.
They don’t ask for Junho’s name as most of them already know from earlier. 456 touches his shoulder and asks him if he’s alright. Junho nods, swiping at the mess on his face like a dirty toddler. He straightens his posture, rubbing his eyes until they clear up. He’s the first to propose creating strategy for the next game. Pride lights a spark in Inho’s chest. That’s my boy.
-
218 is smart, Inho notices.
While the players gather up into teams based on sentiment, he makes his preference for men clear to his friends. A man almost joins them, but then asks if his wife can as well. 218 declines.
His first pick is Junho. Illnam’s talk of luck was bullshit, obviously, and he knows it, but there’s a reason he’s made it this far. It’s a good choice even if, unbeknownst to them, Junho’s favor has worn out. He’s a strong man. He will be an asset. 067 picks a girl, but two weak links still make a promising team.
They step up to the platform.
It’s a close finish. They face an all-male side, struggling for a while to hold their own. But 218 saves them at the last minute with an ingenious technique–taking three steps forward, making the other side falter. Inho has to admit, he is impressed. The man has what it takes to be a winner.
It’s unfortunate that he cannot under any circumstances.
The rope cuts, sending 10 men hurtling to their deaths below. Inho lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He falls back against his chair.
“Another day of triumph,” Kiyong says at this side, face twinkling like a fairy and, unfortunately, un-impaled.
Any negative thought Inho has towards him is forgotten when he hands him a bottle of aspirin.
-
After the arduous games of today, the chances of another attack are slim. 218 still calls for a night watch, one in pairs. Junho volunteers, unsurprisingly. 456 joins him, and the two lean against the walls of their makeshift fort, even after the lights go out.
It’s utterly quiet. Junho was never really social, always having trouble keeping conversation going and making friends. But 456’s enormous mouth stays shut as well. Inho thinks the fool has fallen asleep multiple times. But no. His eyes are open. Staring at nothing in the space in front of them.
Kiyong has fallen asleep, head pillowed against a cushion on his seat. His sleek businessman facade is broken by messy slumber, mouth hanging wide open and hair a mess. Inho has half a mind to join him. So pumped up with caffeine and alcohol, he doesn’t recall the last time he’d even considered rest. But he doesn’t believe 456 will try anything, and Junho would easily beat his ass if he did.
Any half-hearted idea is immediately whisked from his mind when 456 speaks.
“You know, you can sleep if you want. I won’t betray anyone.”
Junho’s heat sensor shakes a little, as if attempting to shake the drowsiness away. It’s a move familiar to Inho, seen whenever he came to visit his apartment early in the days of his policeman recruitment. He’d lay on his stomach in Inho’s bed, messing up the pillows, too lethargic to stay upright, too nosy to go to bed.
He always forced his way into Inho’s life. Ever since he was a little boy clinging to Inho’s hand on their trip to the grocery store, and even now, albeit unknowingly, trusting strangers to have his back while Inho runs the organization that determines either his death or life.
God must hate him, Inho decides. It’s no less than he deserves, but it was sinfully cruel to ever bring Junho into all of this. Though he supposes if he was to be punished, the only successful way would have to be through his little brother.
Junho makes no sign of settling in. 456 sighs, defeated.
There’s another section of quiet broken by nothing but miscellaneous noises of sleep across the room. Then…
“So. Your mother?”
456 makes a noise of affirmation.
“What does she have?”
“Diabetes. Yours?”
“Cancer.”
456 hisses in sympathy. “Yikes, kid.”
“She’s all alone back home. She hates hospitals. Ever since–” He stops. Inho wonders what he was going to say. Since his kidney failure? Since Jiyoo’s death? “...well, she just hates them.”
“Hey.” 456’s outline inches ever so slightly closer to Junho’s. “You’ll make it out, alright? We all will. And she’ll scold you for being away so long like a good mother should, but she’ll forgive you and everything will go back to normal.”
“I need that money.”
“We all do.”
“No, I mean I need it. I can’t leave without it. Many people here don’t have anything to live for anymore, but I do. People are counting on me. My entire family. Not just my mother.”
Inho’s blood runs cold.
“I want to get out,” Junho continues. “And not just for the prize. This place is evil. I can’t imagine what kind of sicko could even think of doing something like this. It needs to be taken down. Mr. Seong,” he says with a sudden urgency, “if one of us doesn’t make it out, let's promise to find a way to end this.”
“Don’t say that. We’ll make it.”
“Just in case. Promise me?”
456 says nothing. Junho doesn’t push it, evidently satisfied. The night passes without further disturbance, and eventually 218 and 199 are woken up to take over their shift.
-
“Kiyong.”
Kiyong grunts, shifting in his sleep. He settles after a moment, a slight smile on his face.
Inho has no time for this. He picks up a pitcher of ice cold water, dousing the entire thing on Kiyong’s face. The man shrieks, shooting up comically fast and squirrel-like, eyes wild.
“That was mean, even for you,” he groans when he realizes the perpetrator is only Inho, running his hands through his sopping hair. “I take it you need something?”
“How astute of you.”
“Very well. What does my cruel, cruel master command of me?”
“I need you to watch over the next games for me. You will stay here for the entire duration and give me updates when you see fit. If anything happens to 455, you will tell me immediately.”
“Ah.” Kiyong stretches, then spreads leisurely on the sofa like a cat, watching as Inho straightens himself out, brushing out wrinkles and putting on his mask. “And you can’t do this yourself because…”
“Because the VIPs are arriving and I need to make some last minute preparations for their stay.”
“I hate the way your voice sounds when you wear that thing.”
Inho shoots him a look that bleeds through the stone of the mask.
“Alright, alright. Go on then, do whatever you need to do. Ugh, the VIPs. Don’t give them too much wine, you know how they act when they’re drunk.”
Inho doesn’t grace him with a reply, instead stalking out the doorway.
-
“Your brother picked 453.”
Inho taps his earpiece, gesturing for the pair of pink guards to set the ornate table next to the vase of tropical plants. “Who was that again?”
“Um…the morphine addict, I think.”
Well that sure narrows it down. “Why didn’t he pick someone from his team?”
“How am I supposed to know his reasoning?” A pause. “Wait. I see. 218 and 199 are together. And 067 is with that girl of hers. 456 got himself tied up with 212.”
“Why the hell would he do a thing like that?”
“There was a squabble. 212 refused to be paired with an old woman, and someone almost got shot. They had to compromise.”
Inho doesn’t know how to feel. He’d kind of hoped for Junho to get with 456 just because of how stupidly misfortunate the man’s luck has been so far.
“Alright,” he says. But this game is one of pure chance, not skill. Junho can win. The human decorations finish up the last of their makeup, injecting themselves with the drugs that will help them keep still for the next 24 hours. “Alright.”
-
“My god,” Kiyong says.
“What?” The spoon in Inho’s hand falls with a clatter. The chef gives him an inquisitive look (well, as inquisitive as one can appear with a circular mask on).
“No it’s just–it’s just been revealed what they’re playing. There’s a married couple here.” Kiyong laughs. “Oh how delicious. They’re crying now–oh they’re tearing at each others’ clothes. If they keep this up they’re going to get eliminated.”
“Kiyong.”
“My, but this is just devastating. I must say, sir, your picks for this year’s games were absolutely breathtaking. Just insane. Your brain deserves a 10 hour long massage and a visit to Korea’s finest brothel.”
“Kiyong!”
“Oh relax, they haven’t even begun playing yet. I’ll update you when they start dying.”
Inho pushes down the all-consuming rage, turning to the chef. He smacks the spoon against the counter. “Get me a heavier set of silver,” he says, tight-lipped. “The VIPs are not easily pleased.”
-
“This is painful to watch,” Kiyong says, sounding positively giddy.
Inho almost drops the golden-studded bear mask mid-polish. “Every time you speak it’s like a round of wooden pikes driving themselves into the nerves of my skull.”
“456 is losing badly. 067 and 240 haven’t even begun yet. And 218 is a mess. He’s crying some sob story about his poor mother. Goodness, what is with all these players and having issues with their mothers?
“And my–”
“455 is winning successfully, obtaining 17 marbles and needing only three more to win. There are 10 minutes left in the game. 453 is in shambles, and is currently on her knees, begging for him to let her win so she can return to her 12 year old daughter with autism,” Kiyong says methodically, as if reading from a manuscript. He scoffs. “What is this lady talking about? I found her in a crackhouse butt-naked and wigless. She has no daughter.”
Inho nods to himself. Junho may be sensitive, but he will not let someone beat him in order to feel a moment of short-lived moral high ground. This is a good thing.
The masks all sit in a shining row on a display case. His guards tell him the helicopter will be arriving tonight. They are watching the games right now on their way here, if he is not mistaken. He wonders if they are impressed with his work.
-
“455 has officially passed.”
Inho almost screams in relief. But he doesn’t, not wanting to give Oh Ilnam another reason to fire him.
The VIPs have arrived on the runway. It was a smooth flight, a pink guard reports through a walkie talkie. He also says they are very eager to meet with the overseers of the games.
With his mask in place, it’s impossible to tell the old man’s expression on the incoming reunion with his old friends. Inho knows he’s still cross with him. He won’t look at him, staring straight at the elevator which at any moment might open to their guests. Inho doesn’t mind. He doesn’t dare to hope, hasn’t in a very long time, but Junho might just make it out. He could win this thing.
“And,” he murmurs, careful not to let Illnam’s old ears hear, “what of 456? And the others?”
“218 tricked 199 by giving him rocks instead of marbles. 240 let 067 win. As for 456– I don’t know which fate he’s bribing, but he’s slipped past death again. He won.” A chuckle. “You should’ve seen 212. She was not happy. I thought she was going to bite his head off. Before they shot her, of course.”
So 199 is gone. Inho can’t say he didn’t see that one coming.
“I will admit, some tears were shed. 240 was one of the better ones. I can’t help but wish both she and 067 got to –well, never mind. Rules are rules, no matter how much they hurt. This game was an elite choice, sir, one of the best you’ve ever made. Well done.”
Inho smiles despite himself. “Thank you, Kiyong. You’ve done well.”
“How I’ve waited to hear those words. And you’ll be watching with the VIPs from now on, yes?”
“Yes, Kiyong. Your duties are relieved. You can go now.”
“Ahh.” Kiyong drawls. There’s the sound of glass clinking, then his heave as he stands up. “Finally. I booked a lovely French resort just a week ago that will hopefully last me until fall. See you next year, sir.”
“Have a good trip.”
“And good luck with your brother. I personally cannot help but root for 218, but 455 does play these games exquisitely well.”
The elevator dings! The doors part to seven men, wearing suits and adorning the masks prepared by himself. Illnam greets them formally, clasping their arms and thanking them for visiting in English. He introduces Inho with words that fly straight through his brain, bobbing his head, shaking every hand thrust at him, accepting every homage to his creativity with expected politeness. The line in his ear drops dead.
-
Inho doesn’t know how Illnam hasn’t ordered each and every one of these westerners to be executed in the years he’s known them.
Despite there only being seven of them and in such a large room, they take up all the space, yelling, cursing, and throwing their drinks. They touch up on his waiters, make messes all over the floors, and laugh at everything, even if the situation isn’t humorous in the slightest. At every particularly loud noise Inho flinches, fully expecting Illnam to drop dead from it. But the old man holds his own. He plays along when they crack inside jokes and slam each other on the back, indulgently choosing to stay quiet when they make lewd jokes about 069.
“Piece of shit!”
VIP 4 screams in fury while his friends roar with laughter at his misfortune. On the screen, 096 approaches the very first mannequin in line. His doom. Another bet lost, then. Inho’s heart almost bleeds for him.
“Tough luck,” VIP 6 says, wiping away fake tears. “Well you know, third time’s the charm.”
“You’re assuming I’m even going to try again. Fucking idiots.”
“Now that we’re on the topic,” Illnam cuts in, his papery voice somehow making itself heard, “who is everyone’s pet player? I myself am quite partial to 456. And after the number he’s picked, I think the odds are in his favor.”
VIP 5 says, “Well if we’re going by the numbers they picked, I’d say 218 has a pretty solid chance. And I like his style. That move he pulled last game on 199? Chills. Literal chills. He’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, I’ll tell you that.”
“455,” VIP 4 says abruptly. The others laugh.
“Moving on so quickly? Ouch. And I thought you were still getting over 069.”
“I’m not betting per say. Just. Admiring. From afar.”
Inho stops in his tracks.
“Oh? 455 catch your eye?” Inho swings on Illnam at his question, trying to ask him nonverbally what the hell he thinks he’s doing. He doesn’t even acknowledge him.
“You could say that. There’s something just so…precious about him. Like a puppy. I haven’t been able to look away.”
“Hah, that’s the real 69 huh?” VIP 2 makes a purring noise, and the room bursts with raucous laughter. Inho clings to the control panel so hard the metal creaks under his hands.
“Hey.” VIP 4 says, turning, suddenly addressing him. “Front Man. About the bodies. When the players get eliminated, they just get cremated, right? Just poof, turned to ashes, no one ever hears about them ever again?”
“That is correct.”
“And no one cares either, right? No one ever comes looking for them to pay respects? And they’re not used for anything, just thrown out and burned? You never do anything…else with them?”
VIP 2 throws a pillow at him. “Ah, come on man. That’s messed up, even for you.”
“What? I’m just asking. And they certainly won’t need their bodies anymore. I just think it would be such a waste, to burn up a face like that…”
Inho can barely breathe. It’s not red in his vision, it’s a hellish, monstrous black. His gun weighs down his pocket like lead, calling for the bloated American’s blood showered on its bullets.
The VIP is still speaking. “So you can’t make an exception? Not even for me?”
“No.” This man has soup for brains, not being able to hear the poison in his voice. “After a player is eliminated, their body is disposed of as immediately as possible. They are not to be touched.”
“I’d pay handsomely.”
Inho’s nails dig into his palms like claws. “They are not to be touched.”
“Front Man,” Illnam chastises softly. Inho has to hold himself back from throttling the man. Now you decide to speak up? Illnam addresses VIP 4. “We have rules here, friend. Rules that we take very seriously. As much as I would like to satiate your, ah, desires, in this situation doing so would be impossible.”
VIP 4 grumbles, but drops it. The conversation moves on to the game as the players are introduced to the rules. But Inho can’t bring himself to pay attention.
Junho is 13th. Not a terrible number, but not the most ideal either. He’s next to what’s left of his team, 456, 218, and 067. The lights around the platform are pale and bright, illuminating the sheen on his face and the way his hands shake. Inho remembers how he always hated the monkey bars when they went to the playground together when he was a child, how he cried and clung to Inho whenever they hiked the mountains. Heights have never been his friend.
096 is first. He jumps on the left glass panel first. It holds. Emboldened, he leaps to the one in front of him next.
It breaks, sending him falling to his death. Junho starts visibly at the thump his body makes as it hits the floor. He looks like he’s seconds away from sprinting. Or vomiting.
The lines of players move up for their turns, and he is forced to move with them. As if seeing through his brother’s eyes on the carpet himself, he is suddenly acutely aware of everything that could go wrong. The height is too massive. The spaces between the glasses are too large. A gust of wind or a fan or the ventilation system could kick in, startling a player and making them slip–
Illnam is recounting a tale to the VIPs of one year very early on in the games when a similar game had occurred. Only instead of falling to their deaths, they would land in a trampoline filled with starving dogs. The screams of the fallen, torn and shred to bits alive, had disturbed the remaining players so badly only 10 had gotten across. It was only the 3rd game.
“Remember 341?” At the mention, some of the older VIPs crow in remembrance. “He had just seen his partner fall. She was the one who sounded like a pig when she screamed–”
“–oh yes, the young one? Oink oink ‘let me out!’ Oink haha—”
“Yes yes, and he saw exactly which tile was the right one but he missed. Just fell, right into the mouth of that doberman, begging for another chance with half his arm missing–”
They break into another round of guffaws. Illnam is quiet, owl mask-clad head turned directly at Inho. Inho doesn’t back down, staring back with equal vitriol. Do something. His heart pounds sickeningly hard in his chest as Junho steps up to the first panel, looking like he’s being sentenced to death, Do something, I dare you. I fucking dare you–
“Front Man,” Illnam says unexpectedly. “May I have a word?”
The party is uninterrupted. No one objects, or even seems to notice. VIP 4 has begun jabbing his finger into various crevices of one of the human statues, which captures the attention of everyone in the room. Inho nods curtly. Illnam gets up, painfully, and Inho offers his elbow to lean on as they leave cool blue lights for the yellows of the hallway.
“Your mind is troubled,” Illnam says. Without the presence of their guests, Inho allows his visor to fall, staggering to a railway to steady himself. But this proves to be a mistake, providing him a view downwards, reminding him of his brother’s all too current plight. The gravity of the situation hits him so hard his chest spasms; he can’t protect Junho anymore. He threw him in this pit the moment he left home to take up this mantle, to party and make companionship with golden-clad rapists and murderers.
“Why,” he chokes, eyes watering. “Why are you doing this sir?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do not play with me,” Inho snarls. “You know exactly what you’re doing. Bringing up the players, encouraging 4’s depraved speech of Junho–”
“You mean player 455?”
It’s like a slap to Inho’s face. Illnam takes off his mask. He turns it over in his hands ponderously. “I thought you understood,” he says after a moment with only Inho’s harsh breathing as noise. “I thought you had what it takes. That you’d left behind humanity to embrace your new role in this world.”
“I serve this organization.”
“Not fully. Not utterly, and you won’t until you’ve left it all behind. All of it.”
“I did leave.” Inho’s fist slams against the wall. “It felt like dying, to abandon them the way I did. But I did it anyway. For you. For all of this.”
“You pushed them away, yes. But if you truly abandoned him the way you claim, 455 would’ve been dead a long time ago. He is the thread you still cling to, do you understand? Your tie to the infantile belief that mankind is still worth saving.”
There’s a cheer behind the wall, a burst of excitement from the events happening on screen. Inho has to restrain himself to not peek through the crack in the door. Illnam stands with his hands behind his back, stooping posture and an expression that betrays nothing. No pity, no kindness, not even a speck of guilt. Inho wants to grab him by the throat. To shake something into those sunken old eyes, to force him to feel an inch of the emotions tearing at his insides and threatening to destroy everything he’s worked so hard to build up. Somehow he knows it won’t work. That he could toss the old man off a flight of stairs, and he still wouldn’t be shaken in the slightest.
Is that his goal? To one day be as he is, a cold, shrunken old husk, filled with nothing but cobwebs and dust?
“You told me you’d stop,” Illnam says.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Your mask is slipping. Our friends in there are not as naive as you think, they notice when something is not right. You need to get it together. There is one more game after this one. You can hold on until then. My suggestion? Float away. In a year’s worth, this will all seem like a terrible dream. Let him go, Inho. You know what I say is true. You know it must be done.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you can’t be my Front Man. And you will be dead before he is.” He turns around to squint through the door. “Well maybe not before.”
Junho is the focus of the camera now. There are no more contestants in front of him. There are still two more rows to go.
The clock reads one minute. He’s frozen in place where he stands, like a deer in headlights. Inho wonders if he feels like one too.
218 is right behind him. He glances at the clock. “We’re running out of time,” he says sharply.
Junho doesn’t answer.
“Did you hear me? Hurry up and pick!”
He moves forward, like he might jump to join Junho on his tile, and that’s what finally moves him. He hops to the one in front of him, the right one. After a terrifying second, it holds.
The line moves up. 218 pants, “Good, now just one more.”
Junho’s knees buckle. He makes an awful whimpering sound that will haunt Inho for the rest of his life. “I don’t–I don’t know. I can’t–”
“Then just choose one.”
218 materializes behind him. And pushes him.
On the left tile.
Junho lands on his hands and knees. The glass holds. 218 wastes no time, bounding over him to carpeted safety. 067 follows suit.
10 seconds. 456 races step to step with long, uneven leaps. “Hey.” He lands next to Junho, hauling him up by the elbow. Five seconds. “Hey kid. We gotta go. You hear me? We gotta–”
0 seconds. 456 throws Junho in front of himself, crashing on top of him on the floor. Junho rolls away from their tangle, crawling away from the edge, right in front of 067. The air is thick with wordless accusation directed where 218 stands in the shadows, the furthest from the rim they’d just escaped from.
The glass begins to shatter. Up the rows it goes, shards and pieces flying through the air in an almighty, deadly sparkle. The players fall back, covering themselves from the sharp rain. The vision is soon blocked by the VIPs’ standing ovation, crowding the screen, clapping and cheering another exhilarating display.
“I suppose not, then,” Illnam muses. Inho had almost forgotten he was there. “But my point still stands. There is no choice here, only paths that both lead to the same, inevitable result. You will see what I see soon enough. No matter how you resent it.”
(—)
“And if it were me? Would you have pushed me if it were me in his place?”
Sangwoo rolls his head, barking out a noise of incredulousness. Gihun doesn’t budge. Saebyeok is quiet in her cot, pale but alert to their conversation. Junho leans against the wall sitting on his mattress, hugging himself. His face is ashen.
“Hey.” Gihun snaps his fingers in his direction. “You’re being awfully quiet about this, kid. Aren’t you angry? He didn’t know which tile was the right one. He almost killed you! He would’ve!”
The doors open, saving him from answering. Five pink guards walk in, four of them carrying packages tied up neatly with ribbons.
“Congratulations for making it this far,” the one in front announces. “You have made it through the first five games. You four are now the finalists. We have a gift prepared for you to show our appreciation for your hard work. But first, please change into the outfits we have brought you.”
Gihun regards Sangwoo silently. This isn’t over. Then goes to fetch his parcel, stomping away, presumably to the bathrooms. Saebyeok hurries close behind, her devil-may-care attitude shattered after today’s events. She doesn’t want to spend one more second in a room with Sangwoo than necessary.
Soon he’s left alone with Junho. The guards wait for them to retrieve their packages, clearly getting impatient. Junho doesn’t look like moving anytime soon.
Sangwoo sighs. Then groans in frustration, a noise that quickly leads up to a short yell. He has no time for this. Not for guilt, hatred, anger. Not when he is so close, not when so much is at stake. Gihun needs to understand. Gihun should understand, so why, why doesn’t he?
Junho sits innocently perched on his bed, unassuming and unaccusing. He’s watching Sangwoo, lower half of his face buried in his folded arms over his knees. Vigilant, despite being so visibly rattled. Defensive.
In the end, Sangwoo loses the staring contest, snatching his outfit and preparing for the awkward silence that will ensue in the men’s restroom.
-
It’s a table. A perfect circle, laden with buns, steamed vegetables, and all kinds of fancy cutlery, some of which Gihun doesn’t even know the names of.
The four players sit at equal distance apart from each other, bathed in the eerie glow of candlelight and sweat. Sangwoo still has blood on his cheek. Saebyeok’s chin has a scrape on it, deep enough to require stitches. And Gihun himself still feels the various stings all over his body from the slivers of glass that managed to get through his tracksuit.
All thoughts of bodily pains disappear when a silver platter is presented in front of them though. A heavenly smell wafts to Gihun’s nose, and he almost bursts into tears right then and there. Meat. Real meat, freshly cooked and still smoking.
“This meal is to commend you on the bravery, perseverance, and sacrifice you each have displayed while playing,” a pink guard says. With a poignant pause, he adds, “They are also to encourage you to play your best through the games tomorrow. Enjoy. ”
Sangwoo wastes no time digging in across from him. That’s good enough for Gihun, and he shoves a slice into his mouth, too far gone to care about the oil dripping down his chin. Saebyeok is a whirlwind of motion to his left, abandoning her fork entirely to pick her steak up by the bone and tear at the meat like a starved animal.
Which is a little too close to the truth to be funny for any of them.
Sangwoo eyes him over the rim of his wine glass, not seeming to notice the juice streaming down the sleeve of his suit. Gihun shoves rolls into his mouth until his cheeks puff out, grinding the stuff to a wet, sweet pulp. Saebyeok pops tomatoes into her mouth worryingly, dizzyingly fast. They are transfixed. Locked in a standstill of sorts, no party willing to back down.
Except Junho, who stares at his plate like he’s never seen one before.
Gihun pauses his chewing. He’s seen the boy eat just a night ago, and it was nowhere near as composed as this. Come to think of it, Junho has been acting off ever since they arrived back in the bunks. Days ago, Junho would’ve jumped Sangwoo for pulling that move on him. But he’s barely looked in his direction all night.
The yellow of the flickering wicks make him look almost corpse-like. Saebyeok, panting slightly, every single plate in front of her squeaky clean, begins to see it as well. The tension between the three of them before dissipates slightly at the new attention to the fourth member of their little group.
Junho jolts slightly. Moving as if he’d rather do anything else, he slowly severs a cube of his steak and puts it into his slack mouth. The action does little to convince Gihun. He casts a pointed glance at Saebyeok, then at Sangwoo. Saebyeok shifts, discomforted.
The guards come to take their finished meals. Junho’s is the only one mostly untouched.
They leave behind for each of them a small, individual knife.
-
With the hell-damned piggy bank lowered and the candles still out from their feast, it looks like hell lit a match in this place.
The position Junho lies in, folded against the wall as he is, is by far the least aggravating one he’s managed to find so far. So here he sits, hoping against all hopes that his eyes stay open and Sangwoo and Gihun stay right where they are, legs folded, backs upright, doing their weird, nonverbal eyefucking ritual.
His bones ache deep from deep within. He thinks his marrows are sore, if that’s possible. He doesn’t remember the last time he was comfortable, the last time he had real sleep, the last time he was clean. There’s a smell under his nose he can’t shark off. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s this suit, clean-pressed and lavender-infused, or maybe it’s the invisible claws that have sent themselves deep into his flesh, making everything painful and dark and dull.
He misses home. He misses his lumpy bed. He misses his car, the smell of his mother’s apron, his cat, the greyish-blues of his wallpaper. He wonders if they miss him as well. His mother does, surely. Unlike Inho he was never very elusive, answering when she called, coming when she wanted it.
A cruel trick this is, a twist and an irony. Park Malsoon, abandoned by both her sons and her husband besides, left with no one to protect her but the old family dog. She’ll die thinking he abandoned her. And Inho will die–
Inho–
“Hey cop.”
Junho’s hand shoots out, grabbing the wrist reaching for his head. It’s thin and frail. Saebyeok. She must’ve snuck over when he wasn’t paying attention.
She jerks the arm in his grasp. “I’m not here to kill you.” He doesn’t relent. She tears him off herself. “If I wanted you dead I would’ve done it already. You’ve been dozing off.”
She’s holding her knife. It glints slightly. She rolls her eyes, putting it in her pocket.“This isn’t for you. It’s for the psycho over there who almost got you killed today. And maybe 456. But that seems unlikely.”
She sits next to him unbidden. Junho is in no place to object. They stare into nothing together, neither saying a word. Junho hopes it stays that way. But Saebyeok soon breaks the silence. “You’re not doing all that great, are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You barely ate.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You seriously expect me to believe that?”
“Why do you care? If I say yes are you going to finish me off? Like you said, if you wanted me dead you would’ve done it already.” Talking hurts. He doesn’t want to do it anymore. “Leave me alone, Saebyeok.”
“I don’t want to kill anymore.”
The abruptness of the statement stuns Junho to effective silence.
“I’m not a murderer. I never have been. But here I’ve done things I never would’ve done otherwise.” Junho thinks of 240 and Saebyeok’s partiality towards her. And how she walked out of the marbles game alone. “Tomorrow with so few of us left, I’m afraid that I’ll have to do things I don’t want to. They’ll make us kill each other.”
“Then we should team up.” Saebyeok freezes. Junho doesn’t know why he continues, but he does. “218 is one person. We can take him if we work together, us and 456. Finally win this thing. Split the prize money. Go home.”
Saebyeok says nothing. She looks up at the piggy bank. “And what would you do with all that prize money?”
“Help my mother.” Hospital rooms, a sterile white bed, and tubes. “And get a bigger house. She always said she wanted a garden to plant her tomatoes.”
“And that’s it? That’s the only reason you came here?”
Junho’s temple feels hot. Maybe the match finally hit the ground. Maybe this place is ablaze. “No. It’s not.”
“What else then?”
His throat burns and his hands tremble but he doesn’t stop. “My brother.” There’s a metallic taste in his mouth that he can’t swallow. “He’s missing. Has been missing. For months. No one will listen when I tell them something is wrong. I want to lead an investigation. But I’m not in any position to do so. I just give out parking tickets.” He closes his eyes. “He’d be so disappointed if he saw what I’ve done. But I don’t care. He looked after me my whole life. The least I can do is return the favor.”
“How much older is your brother?”
“16 years.”
Saebyeok hums. Not quite a chuckle, but something startlingly close. “What?”
“Nothing. That’s just the age difference between me and my little brother. Except I didn’t disappear like yours did. I left him.”
“Why?”
“Because I need this money to bring him our mother from the North. He's in an orphanage right now. I promised I’d get him out. That we’d all be together soon.”
“You need to make sure you make it back to him. He needs you.”
She picks at her sleeves. “I know.”
“Promise me you will.” He’s covered in flames. He can see them now. It hurts so badly. “Please Saebyeok–please promise me you’ll go back to him. You can’t leave him. You can’t abandon him.”
His spine caves in. He falls on his back with a wheeze. He’d scream if he could. Saebyeok touches his forehead. Then tugs the suit jacket from his shoulders. She gasps.
“Mister,” she calls out, not whispering anymore. “Mister Gihun!”
Someone dashes over, the spots in Junho’s vision not allowing him to see their face. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Look at him, look at the blood. He’s been hurt. He’s bleeding out.”
“Shit.”
“I think he got hit after the glass bridge, I saw him walking funny. I told you he was acting weird, I knew something was wrong–”
“Here, put pressure on that. I’ll get help, okay? Stay with him.”
A cloth presses against his torn side. He cries out. Warmth slides from his lips, dribbling down his chin.
Someone runs their hand through his hair, but it’s all wrong, not big enough, not calloused enough, not the right kind of warmth. Or maybe it’s right and he’s the one who doesn’t remember correctly, having gone so long without it.
A thought occurs to him. A terrible, awful one. “My mother.” Tubes, tubes, tubes. “She can’t be alone. Please, help my mother. She needs care. She has cancer. She can’t be alone.”
“Stop talking, you’ll only make it worse.”
“Please watch over her. She hates being alone. Please.”
A blunt object whistles through the air, crashing into the figure on top of him holding his insides together. It falls with a yell. Another hit. And another. And another, and then there’s silence. Someone new is next to him now, even more unfamiliar than the last.
“This isn’t personal.” His limbs are pinned down, unnecessary an action as it is. There are eyes in front of him, red-lined and desperate. “But I need this. I am truly sorry.”
Something cold and thin touches the line of his throat. It presses until his skin strains against it, blood begging to be spilt.
“Player 455, eliminated!”
The knife pauses. Junho dimly realizes this is his chance to fight back, to get the upper hand. But his limbs won’t move.
The lights turn on. The person above him hisses. Through the fog in his head, there’s the sound of someone running over, touching him briefly, then screaming. People fight over him, then there’s what he’s pretty sure is the sound of a gun firing. He tries to curl in on himself.
More hands, and this time they are cold. Gloved. He sees pink, then, as he’s lifted and placed downwards, black. The ceiling disappears, and so does the screaming.
They’re gentle, these guards. As they take him away, they don’t purposely jostle his body, shaking him like a toy. Perhaps they have sympathy. Or a twisted sort of respect.
He did, after all, put up a pretty good fight.
—
There is no fire.
—
The dark is pulled away to reveal a face. If a face is what it can be called, as distorted by gold and sparkles as it is. A mask?
“There he is.”
Is that English? Junho’s brain is too filled with water to even try to decipher the unfamiliar twangs and syllables.
The golden face says something else, then grabs his shoulders, hauling him out of the darkness. Pain ripples through his side. He tries to scream. He’s tugged against something large, warm, and hairy–a body. He can feel a rumble through the chest that signifies laughter.
It takes him a second to realize the body is naked. Then another to realize fingers are fumbling with the button of his shirt.
He wheezes, sending another spike through his body. The chest laughed again. He says no, then he remembers to say it in English, but the blood on his tongue garbles his already poor pronunciation. He can manage nothing more than a few meek pushes before he’s placed on his back, revoltingly gentle.
Stop, he says, the word coming out as a weak mewl. A wet mouth connects to his neck just below his ear, one of the few spots on his body untouched by blood. A leg jams between his, grinding against his crotch. He begins to hyperventilate, thick, hot tears streaming from his eyes. Stop, stop, stop–
Bang. The man scrambles away from him, turning to speak to someone beyond his vision. His lips form an angry question. Bang. He drops dead, his mask smoking. Blood squirts from a hole in the forehead, dying the gemstones crimson. Bang. A hole in his stomach now. Bang. And now one at his engorged groin, exploding the thing into a million fleshy pieces.
A figure stands with his gun smoking, clad in black and wearing a mask of his own. It’s not like the one lying on the floor, ornate and flashy, or even like the masked guards. His weapon is still raised. He takes a step forward and Junho lurches backwards, almost hurling from the agonizing spasm it sends through his wound. His back hits the wall.
No no no.
The masked man steps closer, stiff as a board. As if holding himself back. He drops the gun.
No, please. Don’t touch me, please don’t do this.
His hand reaches out.
“Mom.” He’s switched back to Korean, calling for someone who he knows physically cannot come. “Mom, help me! I want my mom. I want my mom.”
“Junho.”
“Inho.” He wants his brother so bad he could be sick from it. He sobs blindly. “Hyung–”
The man takes off his mask.
At first Junho thinks he’s hallucinating. His desire to see his brother combined with the state of his rapidly deteriorating body, making him see the face of his brother on this stranger who could not possibly be him. Even though his height is the same. And his nose is the same. And his voice–
“Junho,” he says fervently. He places a hand on Junho’s knee. “Junho.”
“Hyung?”
He’s trembling. Why is he trembling? He cups Junho’s face in his palms. “It’s me.”
“What.” He tugs him close, pressing Junho’s head to his shoulder. It smells like Inho. His favorite cologne, pine and lavender. “What. Wha—“
“I’m sorry, Junho. I’m sorry.”
“What?” His fingers curl instinctively into the back of his shirt. Silk. Inho loves silk. “How…how…”
“I’m sorry.”
“You…you were gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where did…why…”
Distantly, dreamlike, Junho remembers a similar situation years back. It was in a hospital room, Junho out of his mind on drugs, Inho clinging to him while monitors beeped and doctors protested.
“Where did you go, why did you leave,” he’d tried to ask through the thick haze. Inho’s wife had been pregnant and ill. Junho was about to undergo surgery on his new kidney. But Inho had disappeared just before the process, not answering their mother’s frantic calls. His neighbours hadn’t seen him. No one had. But here he was, days later, gaunt, mysterious scrapes and bruises on his face.
Evidently they’d just broken the news to him, that his wife had gone peacefully in her sleep a night ago. He was crazed in a way Junho had never seen before, raving and trying to get a hold of him while the nurses pulled him back and called for help.
“What happened to you?” Junho tried to ask.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Junho had never heard him say with such desperate sincerity. It terrified him. They put him under, and when he woke up, Inho was sitting next to him, touching his hair, solemn and broken-hearted but otherwise the perfectly composed brother he’d always known.
He never told them explicitly where he’d gone. Junho assumed drinking had its hand in his disappearance, or a last minute gamble on cash that he thought could save his wife and baby. But those were the only words he could ever get out of him. I’m sorry.
“I’m sorry,” he says now like in a mantra. He’s not reassuring Junho, giving him promises of safety or even telling him it will be alright in that condescending yet endearing “I know what’s best” tone. He’s terrified.
The thought should terrify Junho too; his infallible brother, fallen. But strangely, a wave of calm washes over him. Because he’s been waiting for this. His brother needs him for once, and finally, he can help him back.
Junho can’t reciprocate the hug but allows him to pull him as close as he wants. “You…you came back.”
“I shouldn’t have left. I should’ve been there. I should’ve protected you.”
Junho doesn’t understand. He did that last part just now, saving him from that man. He nuzzles his face into the crook of Inho’s neck just like the way he did when he was still small enough to fit there. “I missed you.”
“My little brother. My dear, perfect baby brother, I could never abandon you.”
Junho coughs. A bubble of blood drizzles from his lips. Inho uses his sleeve to wipe the mess away, hushing him as he gurgles. “Hyung.” His voice sounds dim to his own ears. “You’ll stay now, right? You won’t go anywhere else?”
“Of course not.”
“And you’ll come back with me, right? And we can help mom together. And we can get her a house. She wants a garden.”
Inho presses a tender kiss against his forehead. Junho doesn’t remember the last time he did that.
“I want to go home now,” Junho says. He realizes that if he closes his eyes, it’s almost as if he’s already there. They could be doing dishes together, a chore reserved since the beginning of time for the both of them. The slick on his side could be soap bubbles. The tears in his hair could water from the sink, thrown at him by Inho, who thinks teasing his little brother is his god given privilege.
So he tries again. And he can hear his mother singing, and the dog barking, and he’s neither burning to death nor drowning now, just existing in a realm where nothing exists except the hands around him, brushing his tears away and making him safer than anything on this earth that would want to cause him harm.
—
He wishes he had died in 2015. Because then, at least, he would’ve perished still protecting his little brother.
The stories of death tell lies. Junho doesn't look asleep with his eyes closed like this. He looks like what he is–a corpse. Clothes torn half off, covered in his own gore, and limp as a plastic doll.
My fault.
It’s the truth. It turns in his gut like a worm or a dragon, pillowing out his insides and locking him into a body-like shell where he cannot move. He savors the pain of it. Twists its handle into himself until he sees white.
It’s beginning to rain, the droplets hitting the windows with a plink plink plink. The last of the players will be beginning the final game soon. He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t care.
Illnam was right in that regard.
“Call it off,” he says into his walkie talkie. The pink guards will listen to him. They are required to do whatever the Front Man requires of them without exception.
The finalists draw their knives. Inho slips on his mask. And the extraction team downstairs load up their rifles.