Chapter Text
“I’m not drunk,” Gi-hun said again, louder this time. “I swear to you, I’m not making this up.”
The officer behind the desk didn’t even look up from his keyboard. The soft clack-clack of typing felt like a punch in the face every time it paused, then resumed. Like punctuation marks on how little he mattered.
“They made us play a game,” Gi-hun repeated, gripping the edge of the reception desk. His palms were slick with sweat. “Red light, green light. But if you moved, they shot you. With rifles. People were mowed down like—like animals. There was blood everywhere. I saw hundreds of people die.”
Now the officer glanced at him—briefly, flatly—and said, “You went there voluntarily?”
“Yes,” Gi-hun snapped, then caught himself, forcing the panic back down. “I didn’t know what it was. None of us did. They just said we’d play some games and win money.”
From a desk nearby, another officer—mid-30s, lean, bored—chimed in without looking up from his coffee. “So let me get this straight: you joined a secret murder contest, watched people get executed… and then they just let you leave?”
Gi-hun turned toward him. “We voted. That was part of it. They said if the majority wanted to go home, they’d let us. And we did—we voted, and they let us leave.”
The first cop blinked, then gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Wow. Very democratic of them.”
The younger one snorted. “What’d they do, pass around a ballot box?”
“We all pressed a button,” Gi-hun said. “And it was close. But most of us wanted to go home.”
“Sure, sure,” the younger officer muttered. “And I guess they dropped you off with a gift bag and a thank-you card?”
“A card…” he repeated. His eyes widened as he frantically searched his pockets. “Look, here,” he said, taking out the business card with the three symbols. “That’s the number I called. Call them, see for yourself. And… what about missing people? I bet a lot of people have disappeared lately, right?”
The first cop sighed, rubbing his temple. “Sir, it’s August. People get heatstroke, drink too much, pass out on the subway and have the most vivid dreams.”
“It’s not a dream! I wasn’t drunk! Test me if you want, I don’t care—I’m telling you the truth.”
From outside the sound of shouting caught everyone’s attention. Muffled at first, then louder, sharp and urgent.
Everyone in the lobby turned toward the sound. Another officer stood up. “What the—?”
Outside, just beyond the station steps, two people were grappling. One on the ground, one hunched over him. The man on the ground was screaming for help.
Two cops leapt up and ran outside. Gi-hun moved instinctively toward the door but was stopped by the man behind the counter, who reached out a warning hand, grasping his shoulder to hold him back.
The doors burst open and humid summer air swept in, thick with shouting. The two officers had dragged the attacker off the street, and were grappling with him to bring him under control. Gi-hun’s heart leapt into his throat. The man looked positively rabid. Wild eyes, blood around his mouth, and the two officers were struggling to keep him from breaking free.
“Open cell three!” one of them shouted. “And get the first aid kit, bastard's bitten me!”
Gi-hun backed away. The younger officer who, moments ago had mocked him, looked pale and rattled, his coffee forgotten.
The man at the desk turned to Gi-hun, expression flat but no longer amused. “Look. Whatever you’re here for? You need to go home.”
“What? You’re just going to—”
“Now,” he snapped. “Before I write you up for false reporting and interfering with an active scene.”
Gi-hun opened his mouth, then closed it. There was nothing left to say.
He stepped out into the bright afternoon sun. Gi-hun squinted against the glare, disoriented for a second. Behind him, sirens howled and orders were shouted, but the city around him barely flinched.
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked. Each step felt heavier than the last, like he was dragging the weight of everything no one believed.
By the time he reached the familiar alleyway of his building, sweat clung to the back of his neck. He hesitated at the door, one hand on the handle. What lie would he tell her this time? That he’d been looking for work? That he’d stayed out all night drinking again? He couldn’t dump this new madness on her—not after everything he'd already put her through.
He steeled himself and pushed the door open.
The apartment felt too quiet. “Eomma?” he called.
No answer.
It was Saturday. She shouldn't be working. Gi-hun felt a terrible pang of guilt—she needed to rest, and if she was out, exhausting herself because of him, he wouldn't forgive himself.
He searched his pocket for his phone and quickly scanned the LCD display. Three missed calls, and one voicemail.
The moment he played it his fingers went numb. The phone slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor. He didn’t even stop to pick it up; instead, he was already out the door and running, his lungs burning, and his mind racing.
***
The hospital doors slid open with a hiss, and Gi-hun rushed inside, half-winded, his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, while the air stank of antiseptic and something else—something metallic and sour underneath.
He pushed through a small crowd clustered near the front desk. “Oh Mal-soon,” he said, breath ragged. “My mother. She was brought in last night—I got a call—she collapsed—”
The receptionist behind the glass didn’t look up. ”We cannot take visitors at this time. If you're ill or hurt, you'll need to register and wait to be called.”
“I'm not… I don’t need a doctor!” he snapped. “She’s old, she’s—just let me see her!”
The receptionist finally met his eyes. “We can't take visitors at this time.”
“I’m her son!”
“Everyone’s someone’s something.”
The reply hit like a slap. Gi-hun slammed his palm on the glass. “Please. Just tell me what’s wrong with her!”
The receptionist let out a deep, heavy sigh, and typed something into the computer.
“Diabetic ketoacidosis,” the receptionist said finally. “She’s being stabilized.”
Gi-hun stared. “Diabetes?” The word didn’t make sense at first. Like he’d misheard it. “She didn’t tell me she was—” He stopped, mouth still open. A fresh wave of cold washed through his chest. “You’re saying she’s been sick this whole time?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the receptionist said, voice flat. “All I can tell you is that she's being kept under observation.”
“Then let me see her. Just five minutes. Please.”
“I’m sorry. That’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“Government protocols,” she said. “There’s been a suspected outbreak. All incoming patients are being held until further notice.”
“Outbreak? What kind of outbreak?”
She didn’t answer. Just turned back to her screen.
“I’m taking her home,” he said, trying to sound certain even as the ground seemed to tilt beneath him. “She just needs rest. She doesn’t need to be caught up in this.”
“You can’t take her,” the receptionist replied, not looking away. “All patients are under quarantine until we’re cleared to discharge. That’s all I know.”
“Then let me talk to someone who does know.”
“No one’s available, and if you don't calm down, I'll have to call security.”
“Are you kidding me?” His voice was rising now, panic heavy in his gut.
“You need to step away from the desk.”
Gi-hun turned, chest heaving, eyes darting from one indifferent face to another. No answers. No explanation. Just a locked door between him and the one constant in his life.
A uniformed guard moved toward him. “Sir, you need to leave. Now.”
Gi-hun didn’t protest. Not really. His fight had already drained out of him, leaking away with every blank stare and every unanswered question.
He turned and walked out of the hospital, the sliding doors whispering closed behind him like the end of a chapter.
The street outside was hot and loud, but it all felt muffled—like he was underwater. People passed him in every direction, but he barely registered them.
His mother had been sick. And he hadn’t known. And now—now she was behind glass and government tape, and no one would tell him why.
The city around him kept moving. But something had changed. He could feel it.
***
The security feeds buzzed quietly, flickering across the wall of monitors in precise rows. In-ho stood in silence, hands clasped behind his back, the black gloss of his mask catching the soft blue glow of the screens. Each monitor displayed first-person footage—wobbling, close-angled clips recorded by hidden cameras worn by staff embedded near the returned players.
One view bobbed slightly as the agent walked through a crowded marketplace, keeping pace a few metres behind player 197 as he argued with a street vendor. Another screen showed the dim interior of a bus, where player 035 slouched in a window seat, unaware of the staff member three rows back filming every twitch.
“We’re rotating teams hourly,” said the staffer beside In-ho. “Everyone will be monitored at some point during the day. No contact. Just observation.”
“Any concerning behavior?”
“A couple of them have tried reporting to the police. Got laughed out. A few others have spoken to relatives. No real threats.”
In-ho gave a small nod. “Good. Let them breathe just enough to suffocate.”
Then came the ping. A sharper tone from the console’s alert system. One of the seated technicians leaned forward scanning the display.
“Mainland incident,” he said. “Emergency services flagged unusual injuries in the western districts. Early reports are calling it drug-induced violence. Multiple civilian attacks.”
“Any of our players involved?”
“No, sir. But it’s escalating quickly. They’re calling it a ‘viral psychotic episode.’”
In-ho didn’t move, but something in the room shifted with the tension. He paused, processing the information. The system filtered hundreds of alerts a day—panics, crimes, protests—anything that could potentially lead unwanted attention to the island. Most resolved on their own. But something about the feed—its sharp tone, the volume of keywords—nudged at his attention.
Before he could respond, the walkie clipped to his belt crackled.
“Front Man, this is unit 3B. Do you copy?”
In-ho unclipped it, and pressed to transmit. “Copy. Go ahead.”
There was a hesitant pause before the guard began speaking. “Uh… we’ve got a situation in the incineration block. Room 12.”
“What kind of situation?”
The voice was shaking. “They’re… they’re moving.”
In-ho frowned. “Clarify.”
“The bodies. The ones we—sir, we didn’t burn them all yet. There was a backlog. One of them, I swear to god, it got up.”
Silence stretched. The staffers looked up from their terminals.
In-ho spoke, calm and crisp. “If protocol wasn’t followed, finish the disposal. Now.”
Another voice broke in over the channel, distorted and panicked. “It’s not—sir, they’re not alive, they’re not right—one of them bit 015, and—”
A shriek cut through the static. Garbled shouting. Something crashed—then the walkie went dead. In-ho lowered it slowly. “Send a team to incineration block 12,” he said. “Red protocol.”
The staffer hesitated. “Sir, what if—”
“If it breathes or bleeds, contain it. I want real time updates. Go.”
A team of armed guards immediately left the control room. A new feed appeared on the monitors, provided by the security camera worn by the lead guard. In-ho watched the footage as they made their way through the labyrinthine halls of the compound and down to the incinerators.
As they got closer, strange sounds could be heard over the microphones. Panicked shouts, screams, and a deep, guttural snarling.
When the guards finally broke through the doors to the incinerator block, a nightmare unfolded before them. In-ho stepped closer to the monitor, his heart racing desperately as he tried to maintain a calm exterior.
Players with clear gunshot wounds to their chests, bullets piercing their hearts and lungs, were hunched over the corpses of guards. It looked like they were eating them, tearing them apart with their bare hands.
“Shoot them,” In-ho ordered.
The guards opened fire, but the hail of bullets didn’t appear to stop the attackers. It merely drew their attention to the newcomers.
In-ho watched with horror as the players advanced on the guards, still ignoring the bullets firing at them.
Two players reached the lead guard, and In-ho caught proper sight of them at last. Their eyes were clouded and unblinking. They were… dead. Surely? But that made no sense at all…
He caught sight of a pair of hands reaching out, then there was a struggle and the sounds of screaming and flesh tearing filled his ears.
In-ho thought he was immune to the sight of death, but as he watched the players tearing into the corpse of one of his guards with their bare hands, pushing the raw flesh greedily into their open mouths, he felt a dawning realisation; one that almost made him laugh out loud. Perhaps he wasn't so immune to the horror of death after all. He pushed the thought away; there would be time to dwell on that weakness later. Right now, this—whatever this was—had to be dealt with, and promptly.
“Everyone. Arm yourselves,” In-ho said, his voice clear and steady. “With me.”
The triangle guards moved, unlocking the weapons locker along the wall and pulling out rifles with mechanical efficiency. The room’s remaining staff, mostly circle-masks, looked up from their monitors, uncertain as to what they should do.
“All of you,” In-ho repeated, turning toward them. His tone left no room for interpretation.
The circles exchanged glances—they weren't fully trained for this—but after a moment, they stood. One by one, they took weapons in their trembling hands, clearly feeling out of place with the cold weight of steel slung across their chests.
In-ho led the group down through the lower corridors. At each junction, he placed guards—triangles with circles at their sides, posted like sentries. When they reached the corridor outside Incineration Block 12, the air had changed, become charged and thick with anticipation.In-ho took a slow breath and stepped forward. He raised his weapon, then kicked the door open.
In-ho had witnessed a lot of horror over the past five years. But never anything quite like this.
Bodies lay sprawled across the floor—guards in pink suits, their weapons fallen by their sides. And among them, the players were feasting on their raw corpses, pulling entrails from them, biting flesh away from their faces.
One looked up as the door slammed open. Her face was half-torn away, blood smeared across her chin. She stood almost in slow motion, and the others followed, drawn by the presence of the living.
“Let’s end this,” In-ho said simply.
He fired.
The first round hit her chest. She staggered but kept coming—her limbs too loose, her eyes unfocused and unblinking.
He adjusted his aim. The second shot struck her head, and she dropped instantly.
In-ho’s voice rang loud and clear. “Headshots only.”
Around him, the guards opened fire, their rifles cracking in practiced bursts. In-ho moved with clinical precision; just a single round per target, never wasting a bullet. He advanced steadily, boots splashing through blood slicks, adjusting as each body fell.
A shout broke out to his right. He turned in time to see a circle guard stumble back, clutching his arm. He quickly turned his gun on the player that had bitten him, dropping him to the ground.
“Get him to the infirmary,” In-ho ordered, eyes turning back to the room. Two more circles broke off to assist.
They seemed to keep coming. And even the black coffins that had been sealed and not yet incinerated appeared to be rattling, as if the occupants were trying to fight their way out.
In-ho’s grip on his weapon tightened. Not out of fear, but out of cold, sharp clarity. He felt it settle into his bones. That familiar rhythm—control under pressure. Decisions made in half-breaths. It reminded him of his own game, before the mask. Before the power. And for the first time in years… he felt alive.
He stepped forward again, as the lid of one of the coffins burst open before him.
“Headshots,” he said again, quieter this time, and just to himself. It seemed to be the first rule of this new game.
***
Were there always this many sirens in Seoul?
Gi-hun wasn’t sure. He thought maybe they had always been there, background noise to a city constantly in motion. But now… now they screamed. Every few minutes another emergency vehicle roared past, lights strobing across buildings and windows, bathing everything in frantic flashes of blue.
Just yesterday—was it really only yesterday?—he’d been blindfolded and dragged to some hidden place, herded like cattle into a game that nearly killed him. That first day. That girl in front of him with her head blown open by some giant robot doll. He felt like he'd left reality then and hadn’t quite landed back in it.
And then the police station. The cops who smirked while he tried to explain. The attacker that got dragged in off the street—the one that bit the officer. The one who didn’t act human.
He shook his head hard, as if the movement might physically dislodge the images. He was safe now. He was out. It didn’t matter if no one believed him. He just needed rest. Food. Sleep. His eomma—
His stomach twisted again. The voicemail. The hospital. He still didn’t fully understand exactly what was wrong with her, only that she’d collapsed. And then there was all that nonsense about infection and quarantine. Like they were all following some script no one had told him existed.
When he finally reached his building, the light had shifted. The early evening was starting to settle into night. He slowed as he neared his gate; someone was there waiting for him. A man—standing just a little too straight and stiffly—watched him approach.
Gi-hun’s body tensed instinctively. He was done being followed. Done being cornered.
“Mr. Seong?” the man called out, stepping forward.
Gi-hun narrowed his eyes. “If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”
The man didn’t flinch. Instead, he flashed a badge. “Detective Hwang Jun-ho. You tried reporting a crime this morning?”
Gi-hun nervously took half a step backwards. “Am I under arrest?” he asked.
“No,” the policeman replied. “But it’s imperative that I speak to you.”
Gi-hun stared at the ID for a moment before exhaling. “So now you care? Look, I already said what I had to say. No one wanted to hear it then. If I’m not under arrest, I’ve had a long day. Come find me tomorrow.”
He turned toward the gate, key already halfway to the lock.
“Please,” the man said, and the plaintive desperation in his voice made Gi-hun hesitate.
The man stepped forward, pulling something else from his coat pocket. A business card, marked only by a circle, triangle, and square.
Gi-hun’s eyes fell on the card and his blood froze.
“I found this in my brother’s apartment,” the man said. “You left a card exactly like this at the station. My brother—he’s missing. I think, wherever you were taken, he may have been taken there too.” Jun-ho produced a photograph and handed it over.
Gi-hun studied it. A clean-cut man in a suit, handsome in that effortless kind of way. Sharp cheekbones. Intense eyes. Strong jawline. Definitely a face he would have remembered if he’d noticed him.
“I’m sorry,” Gi-hun said, handing the photo back.
“His name is Hwang In-ho. Please, take another look.”
How many faces had he seen inside that place? Hundreds. All just as scared as he was. Most of them already gone.
“I’m sorry,” Gi-hun repeated. “I didn’t know anyone’s name. I can come in tomorrow,” he offered, “if you still want to talk. But right now, I just want to go home.”
“There might not be a station tomorrow.”
The words came too fast, too loud. Jun-ho seemed to hear them himself and stepped back immediately, his face flushing. “Sorry. I just meant…nothing. Just... lock your doors and windows. Keep the TV or radio on tonight.”
Gi-hun stared at him for a moment, searching his eyes.
“Why? What’s happening?”
Jun-ho hesitated for a moment, then he turned and walked away, leaving Gi-hun alone at the gate, key still in his hand.
The street behind him echoed with another siren.