Chapter Text
Restricted. Gi-hun lies unconscious, enclosed by the box around him.
Restricted. Masked guards cuff him to the edge of a bed, allowing everyone to stare and make assumptions.
Restricted. He envisions the rebellion, haunted by the faces of men who never returned.
Restricted. His tongue catches itself before he can reply to Hyun-ju’s question about Jung-bae.
They’re all gone. All of them except himself, Hyun-ju, and—
“I’d say it’s Dae-ho’s fault,” Young-sik declares. Gi-hun looks up. For once, he isn’t staring at the floor. “He was leaving with the magazines when he just dropped them. He hasn’t left his bed since.”
The sentence prompts Gi-hun to turn his head to the right. There, Dae-ho sits in the corner where they launched this plan. A failure. A traitor.
Ridden with grief, Gi-hun doesn’t mind the isolation as he sits alone. The screams of fallen rebels shake him, but he’d rather sit with them than the people he failed—the people he promised to save.
Seon-nyeo barges into his view of the world, making her presence known with sharp words. He can’t take it—her mockery or her followers behind her, holding up their hands in prayer.
Hand wraps around throat, squeezing to hear worn grunts. Dae-ho whines against Gi-hun’s palm, lungs instinctively begging for air. Eyes wide, he looks upward to the sky.
Restricted. Seon-nyeo’s followers pull her away, and her hand protectively flies to her neck. Shaken, Gi-hun’s outburst is enough to shoo her away—and everyone else mocking him and his failure.
How dare that man line up with everyone for measly potatoes? Behind a shorter man who hides with a timid stance, eyebrows expressive of his fear. Min-su finds himself similarly distracted, staring at the one who killed his goals.
Unaware of Min-su’s watchful eyes, Nam-gyu fidgets with the cross in his shaky hands. He eventually pries it open, eyes lighting up as colorful tablets appear. Finally.
His fingers work quickly to pry one out and sit it on his tongue. Crunch. The tablet snaps between his teeth. Delighted with the easy supply, he finds himself no longer dwelling on Thanos’ demise. He’d pick these pills over lame raps any day. Namgyu’s grip on the closed pendant tightens. After all, the man didn’t even have the respect to remember Nam-gyu’s name. Nam-su this; Nam-su that.
Relief settles onto Nam-gyu’s shoulders. He no longer has to tuck his hair behind his ears, trying to look pretty in hopes of scoring a treat from the cross. It’s his now. His. Thanos isn’t here to restrict him anymore. He chuckles to himself as he indulges in another piece.
Thoroughly buzzed, Nam-gyu plants himself on his feet, feeling light as he finds himself wandering towards the line of remaining players. His free hair frames his face as he eyes up a shaken X, dried blood speckling his cheeks. As he awaits his food, a woman leaves with hers.
Jun-hee stares at her two sweet potatoes, her feet aching as she approaches her bed. Suddenly, two turns into three. Looking to her right, Myung-gi stands before her.
“You like sweet potatoes,” he recalls, a man’s blood still staining his jacket. His eyes wander down to her pronounced belly. She is too physically worn to wonder about it. Before she can reply, the back of Myung-gi’s jacket is facing her as he walks away, clutching his singular potato.
As she approaches her own spot, she walks past a timid man staring down someone still in line. She ignores it. Another man is refusing to take even a bite of food, staring down at the floor. She ignores it. Her entire body aches with each step, a lingering dread absorbing every fiber of her energy. Looking to move past it, her hand supports the underside of her stomach. It grows stronger.
She bites into her first of three potatoes. So does Dae-ho. Hands shaking, he forces down pieces of food. He can’t rid his head of the gunshots, the screams. What would his father say? Strands of hair sticking out everywhere, he doesn’t notice Gi-hun staring him down, a hatred creeping into his eyes. The next day arrives, and Dae-ho isn’t oblivious anymore, unsettled by Gi-hun’s dark gaze.
The O's won the vote by a landslide, meaning every player has to shuffle onto worn, vibrant staircases in order to proceed to the next game. Bullet holes remind Gi-hun of the failure.
The remaining players are faced with the fallout of Dae-ho’s betrayal, bodies strung up with their fronts facing out. Dae-ho dares to look away, coughing as he grapples with what he’s done. Gi-hun doesn’t rip his eyes away from Dae-ho—partly because he can’t bear that Dae-ho gets to walk instead of those men, partly because he can’t bring himself to look at the outcome.
Warriors. Strung up by the arms. Humiliated. Defeated. A chandelier of humans, once so desperate to live. Gi-hun can’t look.
As players enter the next game hall, chatter fills the room along with them. The door behind them is a knife, while another takes on the shape of a keyhole. In the middle of the room is a jar full of blue and red balls. Players file into a line, each spinning the knob for a ball—one at a time. Gi-hun is last, left with one ball. He gets no choice. In reality, none of them do. Half of them didn’t even choose to be here.
Clutching a red ball in his hand, Gi-hun takes his place on the red team’s designated side of the room. He looks at the familiar faces, but the familiar faces don’t look back at him. They haven’t. Not since Dae-ho’s failure.
Geum-ja stares at her son, who is positioned on the other side of the room. Her usually kind face is contorted into confusion. The two are usually stuck together, a pair that never splits. Her trademark care returns to her eyes as she hears a mumble behind her.
“Ms. Jang?”
She takes it upon herself to evaluate Jun-hee’s well-being, patting her arms. “How are you feeling? Any pain?” The shake of Jun-hee’s head allows Geum-ja to exhale in somewhat relief, though his shoulders are still tense.
In the sea of blue vests, Gi-hun notices that ponytail. Dae-ho.
A guard explains the rules of the game: seekers, those in red, must eliminate at least one hider, those in blue, while hiders must avoid death or find an exit. The time limit is thirty minutes. Seekers get knives, and hiders are armed with keys. The hiders will be released into the maze first, allocated a two-minute head start. Then, the seekers are let loose. Seekers are not allowed to attack each other.
“Players will first be given a chance to switch teams so long as both parties agree. You have ten minutes.”
Gi-hun doesn’t bother with the stalling, opting to keep a watch on Dae-ho. The man fruitlessly attempts to persuade seekers, begging to switch vests. Moving on, Dae-ho frantically searches the room for someone else to bother. He walks past a pair—one seeker, one hider.
“Switch with me,” Myung-gi orders. “You can’t hurt anyone, let alone kill them. I’ll quickly find someone and do it, and then, I’ll find you.” Eyes earnest, he holds his key in his hand. “I’ll protect you and the baby.”
Jun-hee scoffs. “Is it that easy for you?” she asks, recalling his blood-stained jacket. The front of his uniform was basically soaked. “Killing someone?”
Stressed, Myung-gi blows out air, lips making an ‘o’ shape. “Jun-hee,” he starts again. “You’re pregnant. Any hider will easily overpower you. You won’t be able to kill anyone.”
As much as Jun-hee's fiery side wants to bite back, she is overly aware of her inability to move as fast as other people. Her feet still hurt, and her back could barely take walking up all those stairs. “I’ll do anything for my baby,” she manages to spit back.
“Then, kill me.”
Jun-hee stares at him.
“It’ll be too hard for you to fight someone. I won’t put up a fight. I want you to live.”
The sincere declaration is interrupted by a loud exclamation. “You can do it, my boy, Min-su!”
Nam-gyu backs away from the seeker he was intimidating, voice contorted to mimic Thanos’. “Min-su,” he continues with a laugh. His body is tense, full of energy. Giddy, he can already imagine pushing his blade into someone’s gut. The knife sits in his hand, heavy with the possibilities. That chandelier had really inspired him.
Finally, the two-minute head start begins. Hiders shuffle into the maze, one by one. Myung-gi, dressed in blue, nods at Jun-hee before making his way through the keyhole. Geum-ja follows him, her red vest on her son’s shoulders.
Gi-hun listens to every tick, waiting patiently for each second to pass. Finally, he could soon avenge the fallen men—unrestricted.