Chapter Text
There isn’t a lot to do after Kim Soleum gets off work.
He doesn’t like to take the subway anymore, not after the number of horrors he’s been through on trains, so he’d found a new apartment closer to his workplace and commutes by walking instead. It’s dark by the time he leaves the building, the city streets brightly lit, and Kim Soleum stares at them absently as he walks.
People walk past him in a hurry, on the way to the station, on the way to the store, some of them on the way to their next shift. Soleum is in no rush. His only task is to go home and sleep.
The brightly lit streets have started to look harmless to him.
It took months for them to overwrite the memory of the haunted streets he’d lived in before.
His phone pings a couple of times as he walks. There’s his brother, asking if he’s going to stop by the bakery tonight. Soleum isn’t. There’s a girl he’s been seeing from a dating app, who asks if he’s free this weekend to meet up. Soleum is.
He sips at his green grapeade as he texts back with one hand, quick messages that have become routine to send.
He pockets his phone again.
A few years ago, he would have spent his entire commute on his phone. It was the perfect time to read the Dark Exploration Records, after all.
But Kim Soleum can’t touch the wiki anymore.
He isn’t ready to see what’s written on there.
He doesn’t read anything else in its place. Who knows what’s safe? It took him forever to find his way back home, he isn’t convinced he could do it a second time if he ever got lost again.
But there’s nothing else to do with his time.
He hangs out with his friends when they’re free, he helps his little brother out at his bakery when he isn’t too tired from work. He tries to keep himself busy because when he doesn’t, his thoughts catch up with him and they’re never good.
On the days that he’s too exhausted to hang out with anyone, he lies in bed and watches harmless kids movies on his phone. He no longer owns a TV. One of the first things he did when he returned to this world was give his TV away.
His brother had joked that he could have given it to him, but Kim Soleum thinks that he’s better off without one either.
No one should have a TV.
No one should live in a building with an elevator.
No one should have to take the train…
But that’s just being foolish. Kim Soleum can’t pry these out of anyone’s hands.
He takes the last sip of his green grapeade and dumps the can into the trash bin at the corner of the street.
It only takes Soleum twenty minutes to walk back from work. His new apartment is on the first floor, so he doesn’t need to take the elevator.
He unlocks the door and steps inside.
The place is cozy. He’d furnished it obsessively, to the extent that his brother had raised his eyes at his spending—but Soleum needed it to look as different from the rooms he’d inhabited back in that cursed world as possible.
Now, it looks safe.
It looks like a home.
He tells himself this every day, in case he ever starts to doubt it.
/
Honestly, Kim Soleum thinks he’s doing pretty well.
He hasn’t been in any near death situations since that awful day in Sekwang City, save for once when a drunk driver tried to run him over. But that’s the sort of thing that happens in a world like home, so he doesn’t let that bother him.
The important thing is that he hasn’t had to chop off any limbs, or bleed out through his eyes, or find any faces in his mirror that aren’t his own.
He’s been doing pretty well.
It’s the life he’s always dreamed of having.
It’s… a little boring, but that’s a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep.
The more days that pass, the more time that slips out of his fingers—he realizes how little he actually used to do in his life before he ended up in the world of ghost stories. He’d spent all of his time on the internet, reading and writing and theorizing and arguing—and without that, there genuinely isn’t anything left for him to do.
“There’s a lot for you to do, hyung,” his little brother deadpans. “You can put these in the oven, for one.”
“Aren’t you closer to it?”
“Look at my hands. Do they look free?”
They don’t, but that’s still no reason to be ordering him around.
Soleum takes the tray anyway, placing it gently in the oven. It’s a plate of peanut butter cookies, which aren’t his favourite, but they sell pretty well. Everything his brother makes sells pretty well. His donuts, especially, are something that J3 would absolutely love. It’s a pity that the man will never get the chance to eat them.
Kim Soleum briefly wonders if there’s some kind of reverse-summoning possibility where he could burn a donut and it would reach J3 back in his world. He shakes that thought away.
It’s too dangerous to ever try to contact the other world again. Opening any kind of passage would put him at risk of getting sucked back into it—or worse, letting that world leak into and infect his own.
He’ll just have to hope that J3 is buying himself some great donuts wherever he is.
… and that J3 is okay, after everything that went down in Sekwang with Cheong…
He shakes that thought away too.
There’s no point in worrying about something that he has no control over.
“I should leave,” Soleum announces. His brother’s sleep schedule is fucked on account of being a baker, but his own still wants him in bed by midnight.
“Already?”
“What are you complaining about? You don’t even pay me.”
“Hyung, you make so much more money than I do.”
“That’s no excuse for exploitation.”
“Exploi—? You spent more time eating than you did helping!”
Soleum ignores him. His brother is still cursing darkly to himself as Soleum leaves. The streets are dark, but none of the stars are visible in the terrible levels of light pollution. Soleum wonders briefly if the sky he sees is the same sky from the world of ghost stories. He isn’t quite sure how all these parallel worlds work.
He wonders if anyone remembers him.
It’s been almost a year, after all. Everyone has their own lives to live. The bureau agents have people to save, the Daydream employees have wishes to work towards.
It was normal in their careers for people to come and go without warning. D Squad had lost a ton of teammates before him. Hyunmoo Team 1 had lost even more. Kim Soleum was just one of the many people who had entered their lives and then left abruptly.
It was nothing that they weren’t used to dealing with.
But Soleum still selfishly wishes that they remember him.
Just for a little longer.
/
Kim Soleum doesn’t cook much.
He knows how. He’s just lazy. It’s too much effort to buy ingredients and prep them and cook them and pack his meals, when he could just go to the cafeteria and buy something cheap to eat in all of five minutes.
But a friend of his has invited himself over today, and the man always tells him off for never cooking his own meals, so Soleum has to speed through his pending grocery run so that he doesn’t get the you live like this? speech once his friend sees his empty refrigerator.
He stops by the supermarket on his way home from work.
His phone keeps pinging in his pocket. It’s his brother, asking him if he can buy him some fried chicken on the way to the bakery, when Soleum isn’t even going to the bakery. There’s the girl he’s been seeing, Lee Yesol, who’s sent him a bunch of funny posts that Soleum already knows will make him die inside because her sense of humour is painfully similar to Agent Choi’s.
In another world, he would have forwarded all the messages to Ryu Jaekwan just so that he could share in his pain. In this one, he settles for texting back with stickers that appropriately convey how much he wants to die, which only makes Lee Yesol send him a long string of laughing emojis.
There’s a bunch of spam messages that Soleum still reflexively studies carefully, because he’s too used to the time when spam messages were just his friends or his boss trying to tell him something.
He stuffs his phone back into his pocket and steps inside the supermarket.
He buys enough instant meals to get him through the next week. Plus all the staples he can think of. An eight pack of soda for when he needs to stay awake longer with his brother, and, after some consideration, a couple of bottles of soju.
He sets his basket on the counter. The cashier drags it closer to him, emptying it out onto the counter as he starts to scan them.
“Having a nice day?” a familiar voice asks brightly.
Soleum’s blood goes cold.
He looks up in alarm, and sure enough—
The man in front of him, smiling a perfect customer service smile, is someone he knows.
The tired appearance of an overworked public servant, the dark scar across his neck.
“Agent Choi?”
The man blinks, as if seeing him for the first time.
His face suddenly goes pale.
“Soleum-ah,” he says, something awful in his voice. “You—didn’t you go home?”
/
The supermarket is far from empty.
Already there’s a line forming behind Kim Soleum, as he stares blankly at the man from his past who has no reason to be here. Choi makes no move to scan any of Soleum’s items, completely frozen.
There are grumbles of displeasure behind Soleum as the time ticks past.
“I’m home,” Soleum says quietly. “I’m home—but Agent, why are you here?”
Choi frowns. “This is your home?”
“Yes?”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Yes…”
Choi looks even more lost than before.
The mumbles behind Kim Soleum start to grow louder and more frustrated. The commotion gets bad enough that the cashier at the next counter looks over angrily.
“Kim Soleum-ssi!” she snaps.
Soleum startles visibly. How the fuck does this stranger know his name? What’s going on? Is this—did he end up back in the world of ghost stories? Did he step into the wrong supermarket?
The panic is starting to rise, but Choi cuts in first.
“Yes, sorry,” he responds to the angry voice.
“There’s no time for talking, Kim Soleum-ssi,” the woman says, glaring at Choi. “Pull yourself together and get back to work.”
“Yes noona, sorry noona.”
Choi doesn’t meet Soleum’s eyes as he scans his items quickly, with the practice of someone who’s been doing it for a long time.
Soleum has no clue what’s going on until he catches sight of the nametag pinned to Choi’s shirt.
Kim Soleum.
His own name.
There’s a terrible lump in his throat. His eyes burn.
Choi still doesn’t meet his eyes as he rings up his total and hands him his bag of purchases.
When Soleum swipes his card, Choi briefly wraps his fingers around Soleum’s wrist.
It’s a warmth that Soleum hasn’t felt in forever.
“Wait for me outside,” Choi says quietly. “Alright?”
Soleum nods stiffly.
“You won’t run away, right?”
“What? No.”
For a moment, Choi looks unbearably sad. But the moment passes, and he lets go of his wrist, patting him lightly on the head.
“Wait for me,” he says again. “I’ll be right out.”
Soleum steps aside.
He watches as Choi’s smile widens back into a perfect customer service smile, as he bows politely to the next angry customer and apologizes for the delay. He doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t understand at all.
His gaze falls again on the Kim Soleum pinned to Choi’s shirt.
His eyes burn again. He turns away.
/
Choi bursts out of the supermarket in less than three minutes.
He looks out of breath, looking both ways in desperate search of Soleum before he spots him sitting on the curb of the sidewalk and his shoulders sag in relief.
Soleum holds a hand up in awkward greeting.
Choi sits next to him. He immediately reaches into his pocket for a cigarette.
“I’m sorry about that,” he says, as he tries to light the cigarette and misses three times. His hands are a little shaky, but he hides it well. “I had to wait until I could take my break.”
“Agent Choi,” Kim Soleum cuts in. “What—why are you here?”
“I don’t know, Grapes,” Choi says, the familiar term slipping in easily. “I really don’t know.”
He brings the cigarette to his lips.
“Where are the others?” Soleum tries, when no response seems to be coming. “Agent Bronze?”
Choi is quiet for a long time.
“No one is here,” he says. “It’s just me. I think they’re still back home.” He turns slightly, staring at Soleum’s face for a moment.
Then he smiles.
It’s the smile that Soleum remembers from a lifetime ago—when all they had between them was the next mission to save more citizens and not the literal end of the world.
“You’ve grown,” Choi says, ruffling his hair. “And you finally look like you’ve slept. I’m glad.”
“...”
“I was worried, you know? It’s good that you’re okay.”
Soleum looks away.
“I was worried too,” he says quietly.
Choi’s smile tenses.
“Yeah?” he says. “You didn’t have to be. You saved everyone, after all.”
Soleum shakes his head. “You saved me.”
“What’s that? Our Grapes is saying something nice?”
Soleum gives him a dead look.
But the words are true.
Choi had saved him.
He hadn’t believed that Soleum could go home until the very last moment, but when the time had come and there was no other way, he’d still taken that last leap of faith, trusted him, and managed to send him home.
Soleum will always be grateful for that.
“Things cleared up a little,” Choi says. “After you—” he cuts himself off. “I don’t know if anything is worse now, but when I was still back with them, everyone was fine. Bronze, Haegeum, those friends of yours from Daydream. You didn’t need to worry.”
Soleum dips his head.
“But Agent,” he starts again. “What happened to you?”
“Hm?”
“How did you get here? Why are you working at a supermarket?”
It’s the worst place he can imagine Choi working, after how his death had been recorded in the wiki.
Choi takes another drag of his cigarette.
Any normal person would consider that it might be rude to blow smoke in the vicinity of someone you haven’t seen in so long, but Choi doesn’t seem to be doing well enough to consider what might or might not be rude.
“I woke up one day,” he says at last. “Everything was the same, but the bureau was missing.”
“...”
“My equipment was all gone. Any messages I tried to send to the contacts I used to know didn’t go through. I searched familiar addresses, cafes, apartments—nothing. Everyone I knew was gone.”
It was a classic situation.
It was what had happened to Soleum.
“I kept searching for months,” Choi says. “I tried every trick I knew to contact them, but there is no supernatural power here at all. I couldn’t do anything. Finally I had to accept it and get to work just to keep myself alive.”
“So… you started working here?”
“I didn’t have a name,” Choi admits. “I didn’t have any real qualifications besides my high school certificate because the bureau examination doesn’t even happen here. So I made up a name and forged some documents and applied for the most random jobs I could find—and I ended up getting this one.”
“You made up a name?” Soleum asks, voice dry, staring at the daunting name tag pinned to Choi’s uniform.
Choi cracks a smile. “Alright, I didn’t,” he says. “I used yours. What choice did I have, Grapes? I needed a name I responded to by reflex. It wouldn’t pass as a real name otherwise.”
He tilts his head, eyes crinkling, as if every word he says isn’t killing Soleum to hear.
“What other name could do that, besides the name of our youngest who made me search for him for half my life?”
The guilt in Soleum’s chest grows.
He pushes it aside, careful not to make eye contact.
“Half your life? You aren’t that young, sunbae.”
Choi makes a face. “You were nice to me thirty seconds ago, Soleum-ah. Try going back to that time.”
He takes another drag of his cigarette, exhaling into the empty street ahead of them.
“I had no idea this was your world,” he says at last.
“Hm?”
“If I’d known, I would have come to you.” He frowns, but the expression disappears quickly. “I’ve been here six months, and you were right here the whole time. Imagine that. I didn’t even try searching for you because I was so sure you were gone.”
Six months.
It’s an awful amount of time to have been thrown out of your home.
Choi is stronger than most people—but he’d been on his last straw even when Soleum had left. His life had been an awful stretch of waiting, and searching, and hoping—and now he’s been thrown out of the life he’d finally managed to piece together.
Soleum doesn’t know what to say. He knows better than anyone what that must feels like.
He knows that it’s enough to make you want to die.
“I’ll find a way to get you back,” he says at last. “Somehow. Don’t worry, sunbae.”
He owes Choi that much at least.
For getting him home.
For keeping him alive.
Choi doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then he shakes himself out of it.
“Enough about me,” he says. “What about you, Soleum-ah? How does it feel being home?”
Soleum tries to piece an answer together.
How does it feel being home?
It’s safe. It’s comfortable. It’s a world that he can bear to wake up in every morning, a world that doesn’t make him want to kill himself just to avoid having to turn the next corner.
It feels good.
It feels… lonely.
“It’s peaceful,” he settles for at last.
“Yeah? Friends, family, everything’s the same as you hoped?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good, that’s good…”
Choi trails off.
Soleum glances at him.
Choi looks lost. It’s an expression Soleum has come to know too well, after all the hell that Soleum had put him through.
After what Soleum had let happen to Agent Bronze in Sekwang… after Choi had spent 293 days in a cave hoping his juniors would come back…
Soleum cuts the thoughts off.
There’s no point in dwelling on any of that.
“What do you think, sunbae?” he asks instead. “How do you find this place?”
Choi taps his cigarette lightly by his side to let the ashes fall.
“It’s hell,” he says.
Soleum snorts.
“I’m not sorry,” Choi says. “It’s true. If I’d known this was where you wanted to return, I would have let you stay in Sekwang. You really had to live in the most boring place in the universe, huh?”
“Well…”
“What do I do here, Grapes? Keep printing out bills? Keep making change? Who am I supposed to save, huh?”
“I’m sure there’s someone still in trouble.”
“I’m in trouble. I’m in deep trouble.” Choi falls quiet again. “I think I understand now. Why you were so desperate to get back home.”
“... Yeah.”
“Still,” Choi says. “It’s good in a way. I don’t have to worry if you’re safe anymore.”
He pats Soleum on the head.
“That’s one worry off the list.”
It’s—an odd feeling.
Because Soleum is doing fine. He’s safe. He’s okay.
He doesn’t need anyone to worry about him.
But Choi’s words feel strange. Like summing up the year he spent here as nothing. It was fine—Soleum was fine—but it felt like a dismissal of his day to day.
Of the lonely nights spent staring at the sky and hoping the people he’d started to love still remembered him.
But he can’t complain about that. The loneliness is a small price to pay for making it back home—and he’ll never regret making it back home.
“We’ll figure something out, sunbae,” Soleum says. “I was able to make it into your world, right? There has to be a way to send you back.”
It’ll likely mean having to dig through the Darkness Exploration Records, which is the last thing on earth that Soleum wants to do—but he’ll have to. For Choi.
“Yeah,” Choi says, but he doesn’t really seem to believe it. “I suppose so.”
“And if there isn’t,” Soleum says, “we’ll forge some more documents. You have the experience, we can get you to be—I don’t know. The body guard of a crazed politician, or something.”
Choi’s eyebrows raise in amusement. “Is that where you see me?”
“Maybe not. How about the guy who kills crazed politicians?”
“... A hitman?”
“Sure.”
“... Grapes, I think you’ve really misunderstood what our job was.”
Soleum shrugs. “Your talent is getting rid of evil,” he says. “There’s a lot we can do with that. Social worker? Ice cream truck owner? Climate change activist?”
Choi laughs.
His eyes are soft, despite this failure of a conversation. He ruffles Soleum’s hair again.
“I missed you, you bastard,” Choi says.
Soleum’s eyes sting.
“... I missed you too, sunbae.”
The surprise in Choi’s expression, the flinch in his fingers, makes the guilt hurt worse.
“I’ll get you back home,” Soleum says quietly. “I promise.”
Choi hums. His hand stays in Soleum’s hair.
“I can wait for a while,” he says. “I’ve just found you.”
/