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Gi-hun speaks on the metal stairs leading up to the stacked beds. If he were anyone else, meaner around the eyes and through his voice, the company around them would have jumped from the suddenness.
They didn’t, just too far away to hear that Gi-hun had started a conversation willingly. That, and he was not cruelty incarnate (there was no need to flinch around him). That In-ho gathered years back and regathered now, sat next to him, participating in the same game.
Gi-hun says, “You remind me of somebody.”
After saying this, Gi-hun turns his head and meets his eyes easily. In-ho was already looking at him.
In-ho took a moment, then moved his chest back a little. Not a mimic of pleasant surprise – genuine surprise. “I do?”
Gi-hun nods and looks back to the entrance doors, as though the ‘pink soldiers’ (his), would pummel in any minute and gun them down – games over, minds were changed.
In-ho smiles to himself, at the thought.
“You remind me of,” Gi-hun continues, then seems to trail off, like he was running his fingers through beach sand, trying to nick at something that kept slipping through his fingers. “A friend I had. One who was with the, the last time I was here.”
In-ho shifts a little closer, slightly. The metal under them didn’t even creak. “The last time you were here?”
Gi-hun says nothing else. In-ho slides his eyes down his body and watches the man’s hands slowly flex and twitch – really like he was trying to grab something.
“Hm,” In-ho decides to copy the pin-point of where the other man was staring.
As expected, the doors are still shut. Behind them, he knows, several soldiers may be standing guard and waiting for the temporary frontman’s orders.
Quiet conversation hummed dimly around the room. Some of the survivors had resorted to climbing onto the topmost mattresses—not theirs, probably—to stare at the ceiling.
Unlike Gi-hun, who seemed glued to the ground. Always on his feet, In-ho thought.
And in his thinking, he asks (unless the conversation goes nowhere): “What was their name?”
Gi-hun takes a long moment to reply, as In-ho thought he would. And when he did, his voice was thick. In-ho drew his eyes back, and managed to glimpse some sort of transformation taking place on Gi-hun’s face – a thing from the background, moving into the front.
“His name was Sang-woo,” Gi-hun tells him. “Cho Sang-woo.”
In-ho blinks quickly and thinks he knows that name. No, he definitely does: Sang-woo, the man with the glasses, the second last to survive out of four-hundred and fifty-six. Close, but not close enough.
A few memories return to him. The VIPs hollering when Sang-woo pushed a glass specialist onto the last (wrong) tile. He’d given them a good show. Good enough for the VIPs to complain that they had bet on the wrong horse.
Sang-woo, though? In-ho feels himself smiling faintly at the confusion of it all. Sang-woo?
Carefully, though. Carefully. In-ho controls his face and tries to put a lid on his intrigue. “Did you know each other before the games?”
Gi-hun responds quicker, this time. “We were childhood friends.”
“Ah,” In-ho says, stopping himself from saying, ‘That’s nice’. He thinks for a moment, then decides to go for it. “How do I remind you of him?” And he watches.
Out of all the things, this made Gi-hun look away from the doors, and at his face instead. There was a long moment when In-ho found himself unsure if he should look back (Gi-hun had seemed to change from then to now. His eyes were more focused, and his face gaunt).
Gi-hun kept staring. For some reason, In-ho is reminded of a long stand-off between two suited men in pouring rain – who strikes first?
He knew the answer.
“I don’t know,” Gi-hun says. “Your hair. It’s a similar parting. And your jaw, too.”
“Oh?” Hair parting? Jaw?
The more Gi-hun talked, and thought, the more he seemed to know. “You have a similar sense to you.”
In-ho laughed lightly. “Really? That’s interesting.” He didn’t need to lie. “Tell me more about him, if you want. It might,” make him feel better? ‘Cheer him up?’ None of those things.
He wanted Gi-hun to finish for him, to speak again in possibly the same, taut voice he had before. It might what?
Gi-hun didn’t finish what he had started for him. He did something better and took up his offer. “Sang-woo,” he pauses – here, then continues, “was clever. Really clever. He was always ahead like he knew what was coming. Like he’d made the games himself.”
In-ho blinks. He thinks, then, of the Mingle game they had made, and his ‘prediction’ of two. Like Sang-woo, Gi-hun was probably thinking. He bites the inside of his cheek.
“I was shocked when I saw him.” Gi-hun reflects. “All I could think was – Sang-woo? The one I knew, the genius? But he was. Embezzlement, he told me.”
In-ho whistles, very quietly, to confirm that he has heard and for Gi-hun to keep talking.
“He seemed to have a plan for everything. It seemed like,” Gi-hun shifts where he was sat, a bit, like his body couldn’t contain itself. “Like, he could enter any game, just one–” he stressed, and pointed his finger in the air like a loaded pistol.
At that moment, it dawned on In-ho, in fascination, that the Gi-hun he was witnessing in person, up close, was the drops of the man he’d watched two or three years ago.
“And he’d have a plan,” Gi-hun tells him.
“Wow,” In-ho leans back in awe. He stared at Gi-hun’s pointer finger, still in the air, which dropped and fell back to rest on his right thigh. “A plan for everyone?” He looks back at his face.
At this question, Gi-hun seemed, nearly to smile. It could have been the corners of his mouth spasming, but it fell by too quick to know. Whatever it was, or its reasons, it took Gi-hun longer to reply, like his throat had dried up.
In-ho had noticed that about him. No words seemed to be wasted.
“No,” Gi-hun confesses. “Usually not.”
In-ho hums.
“Sang-woo made it far,” Gi-hun’s voice goes quieter. “Very far. He’d do whatever it took to win.” Here, he stopped, like the memory lane bricks had discoloured. He wobbled on the word win as though he were unsure of it.
Almost, In-ho mentally corrects Gi-hun on his dishonesty. He’d do almost whatever it took for him to win.
“And the thing about Sang-woo, is,” Gi-hun stares forward, and seems to change what he wanted to say. “We didn’t agree on everything. Near the end, it. He did something that–”
Gi-hun breathes in and out. In-ho leans forward and watches Gi-hun process. He wonders what his brain had hooked on: their last argument, the sand he threw into his eyes, the knife Sang-woo took to that girl’s throat.
“He always knew what to do,” Gi-hun settles on.
In-ho stares, and stares. Now, he was thinking about his plans, undoubtedly.
Never before had In-ho wanted to crack him open more. Not for the present, but for the fresh fascinating past, that had taken its toll on his being, which was still a bleeding heart, hooked on things dead.
In-ho remembers what had gotten them into his. He clears his throat and retracts slightly.
“You don’t think I’m entirely like him, do you?” In-ho asks.
Gi-hun stares at the doors. “No,” he confesses. “Not at all.”
In-ho follows his eyes and finds nothing interesting there. The doorway is all the same: a stage for the soldiers, black handles, blinding white outline like a mishappen halo.
This time, In-ho entertains the idea that Gi-hun wasn’t waiting for something possible. His smile turns hard and ironic, as he considers someone alive and dry entering under the white light.