Chapter Text
Her breath came in harsh rasping gasps. Memories of the sand, the blood, the high-pitched sing-song voice of the doll, the screams... her head dipped to her knees and she rested it there, the panic not dimming, not easing. The doors opened and they marched in, different this time, still in pink but holding guns. Around her she could hear the pleading, the exhortations, the sobs, yet it echoed slightly as though coming through water. All she could hear were the shots, loud, terrifying. Even when the money spilled into the pig overhead, she didn't look at it.
I want to go home
She had known when the man slapped her on the platform that his offer was wrong, she had known when he'd laid her entire history at her feet that she was being dragged towards some pit and when she signed that consent form she had known that whatever she had been recruited for had been a lie or a scam, something that had seemed too good to be true, even as she'd reached for the apparent lifeline. And now all she could think, even as the money rained into the piggy bank, was how much she wanted to return home, to see her mother, to talk to her friends. Sod the money.
They wheeled out a booth and began the vote. Number after number being called to the pedestal. Though she barely paid attention to the vote until her number, 117, was finally called. Stepping forward she hit the X button and returned to her place on the scaffold, watching with almost blank disinterest as the rest voted. When the last player, an old man, voted to leave, she felt the shakes begin, relief, raw emotional, relief.
The gravel seared across her upper arm as she landed in the road in her underwear. Behind her two other people landed in the dust.
"Can one of you?" The woman next to her asked, waving her tied arms in an attempt to get some assistance. It took some flailing, some contortionism but eventually they managed to free themselves.
"Where?" They didn't speak until they had finished dressing, pulling the clothes from the black bags that had been tossed in the dirt beside them.
"Yeuido I think." The other woman said, her voice softly broken. "Do you have any money or a phone or..." Her fingers twisted about her hair, nervously playing with the straggly curls as though she couldn't stop moving.
"My phone's out of charge." Mi Cha answered as she fished the slim phone from her pocket. They had not removed their personal possessions at least.
"I'm Park Mi Cha.." She said, more from a need to say something than for anything else.
"Han Su Min." The other woman answered after a moment.
"I have a phone." The man behind them said, his face blank. "Its charged.. who do you want to call?"
"Well.. I can call.." Su Min stuttered to a halt and sat down heavily. "Oh dear god what was that?"
"Something we survived." The man's voice was hushed and he reached out a hand. "Come on, you'll catch cold there." Su Min gingerly took his hand and he pulled her upright. "I'm Jeon Dojan." He glanced along the road. "There's a shop about ten minutes down the road. Let's get some food."
They walked together along the dark road towards the bright lights of the store. Mi Cha rubbed her hands together, the cold numbing them. She had on a jacket, but it was lightweight, had always been, but today she felt the cold more keenly than she ever had before. "Ramyeon, soup and a hot drink." Dojan said with what felt like false efforts at cheer. They paid for the food and sat on the chairs outside the market, feeling shivers ripple through them. They were quiet, full of the knowledge of what they had gone through.
"Thank you." Mi Cha said finally as she took small bites from the pot before her. The food filling, warming, yet part of her remained frozen, numbed by what had happened.
Su Min finally spoke, voice small. "We can't go home like this. Not yet."
Mi Cha looked at her. "Why?"
"Because..." Su Min's eyes darted to the dark beyond the parking lot. "What if they're watching? What if they know?"
Dojan unscrewed the soju cap, took a small swig, then offered the bottle around. No one took it. He shrugged. "They probably are watching. But right now, we're just three people eating ramyeon outside a GS25. Nothing suspicious about that."
"I want to go home." Mi Cha whispered against the rim of the ramyeon pot, the words almost lost. "Hug my eomma."
Su Min bit her lip and nodded, a gleam of what could have been tears sparkling within her eyes.
"Well, then we'll pool and get a cab." He took a breath and plunged ahead. "What about talking to the police?"
Su Min gave a short laugh. "I doubt they'd believe us. I lived through it and I don't believe it."
"So we just forget about it?"
"Did you see the size of that place?" Mi Cha said, "I bet they bribe every cop from here to the DMZ. Something that well organised, I doubt we'd get someone to investigate."
Dojan nodded and took a slug of the Soju. "I knew it was stupid to go." He leant back and pushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. "But..."
"You needed the money." Mi Cha added, remembering her own reasons for calling the number.
The silence stretched after Mi Cha's words, broken only by the faint hum of the GS25's neon sign flickering above them and the occasional car passing on the dark road. Dojan stared into the neck of the soju bottle like it held answers, then set it down carefully between his knees.
"Yeah," he said finally, voice low. "I needed the money. Bad. Rent was three months behind, collectors were calling my sister's phone to get to me. They said... easy cash, one game, life-changing. Sounded like every scam ever, but I was desperate enough to pretend it wasn't."
Su Min hugged her arms tighter around herself, the thin jacket doing nothing against the February chill. Her curls had started to frizz from the damp night air, and she kept twisting a strand around her finger until it hurt.
"My brother," she murmured. "Hospital bills. They promised we'd walk out with enough to cover everything, no strings. I signed because I thought... what if it was real? What if this was the one time the universe gave someone like me a break?" She gave a small, bitter laugh that didn't reach her eyes. "Stupid."
Mi Cha looked between them, the ramyeon pot cooling in her hands. The steam had long since stopped rising, leaving only the greasy smell of instant noodles and the metallic tang of fear still clinging to all three of them.
"So we just forget about it?" she repeated Su Min's earlier question, softer this time, testing the words like they might cut her tongue. "Pretend none of it happened? Go back to scraping by, jumping at shadows?"
Dojan rubbed his face with both hands, hard enough to leave red marks. "Forgetting isn't the same as ignoring. We can't undo what we saw. But talking... going to the cops, the news... Mi Cha's right. That place was too big, too clean, too quiet. Pink suits with rifles don't run a back-alley gambling ring. That's government-level money, or bigger. Chaebols, maybe. Foreigners with private islands. Whoever's behind it, they've got reach."
He glanced at the road again, eyes scanning the darkness beyond the parking lot lights. Nothing moved except a stray cat slinking past a dumpster.
"They let us go once," he continued. "Dropped us like trash on the side of the road because the vote went through. But if we start poking around... or even if we don't... they'll know. They already knew exactly where to find us the first time. They knew our debts, our families, our shame. They probably know we're sitting here right now."
Su Min's breath hitched. "You think they bugged us? Or... followed?"
"Doesn't need bugs," Dojan said. "Just eyes. Cameras on every corner in Seoul. A phone ping. A favour from someone in the right office. They don't have to kill us outright, they can just make life impossible. Creditors show up again, but worse. Jobs vanish. Family gets 'accidents.' Or maybe one day a black van pulls up and we become one of the many 'missing' from Seoul."
Mi Cha set the pot down, untouched now. Her hands shook slightly as she pulled her phone from her pocket, the screen still at low battery, but enough to check the time. 2:47 a.m. Her eomma would be asleep, probably worrying why she hadn't answered texts for days.
"I can't live like that," she whispered. "Looking over my shoulder forever. Wondering if the guy at the bus stop is one of them. If every delivery guy is watching."
Su Min nodded slowly. "Then what? Run? Disappear?"
Dojan exhaled through his nose. "Maybe. Or... we stay quiet. Really quiet. No police. No telling anyone, not even family."
"They said they'd hold the opportunity open, what do you think they meant by that?"
"Don't know... maybe they would ask us to play again."
Mi Cha's fingers slipped and banged painfully against the metal table. "Would you go?"
He flicked a stray hair out of his eyes and bit his lip. "I'd like to say I wouldn't, but it depends what options I have. I had it bad enough that I was willing to wait on a street corner at 3am to join a game in order to win money,"
Mi Cha nodded, she understood what he meant. The pull to find a miracle to get them out of debt was incredible. But she couldn't rely on that anymore. Not at the expense of her life, for she was under no illusions. Had she not been near the front of the group, had she not been behind someone tall, she may have been shot. She didn't want to know if she could be that lucky again.
"Let's just pool what money we have and get a taxi to our homes, see what we can salvage of our pride."
After a moment, Mi Cha nodded and soon they were in the warmth of a car heading through Yeuido and hopefully home.