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Minhyuk flinched when the door to his control center burst open. There was only one person who would enter like that, and for a moment, sheer panic lanced through him. His hands, slick with sudden sweat, curled at his sides as he stood immediately, gaze pinned to the floor, preparing to face his father's ire.

But it was not his father who stormed in.

Mirae stood in the threshold, shoulders curled inward like a tightly wound coil ready to snap. He had seen that posture before—honed, restrained fury barely contained beneath trembling sinew—and for the briefest moment, it reminded him of their father. It pained him to draw the comparison, and he dismissed the thought as soon as it formed. 

She was unarmed, mercifully, but when she ripped off her triangle-painted mask and hurled it across the room, he winced as it struck the wall and clattered to the floor.

So she knew. Of course, she knew. 

Strands of damp hair clung to her face, her skin pallid beneath the sheen of sweat. Her gloved hands quivered as she pressed them against her brow, but she did not look at him—only at the fallen mask, as though trying to process its existence. Minhyuk had seen his sister endure their father's worst tempers, had watched her stand unshaken in the face of unspeakable horrors. But now she looked as though she might break apart if he so much as breathed wrong.

"I wanted to tell you..." His voice wavered, thick with something dangerously close to regret. "I swear, I was trying to—"

Slowly, she turned to him. Her expression was stricken, her lips flattened so thin they nearly disappeared.

Minhyuk pressed on. "I only found out last week. I've been trying to tell you, but you never wanted to hear it. You never want to hear about the players, so I—"

"You knew." Her voice was hollow, rasping with disbelief. Then, sharper: "You knew all this time, and you did nothing to—" She cut herself off with a shuddering breath.

Minhyuk swallowed hard. "I only saw after Father finalized the list. You know I can't change anything after that."

"I don't care. You should have—I should have—"

"There's nothing you could have done."

She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes, though they were too dry for tears. There had to be something she could do. There had to be a way to fix this.

"I want her file," she demanded, steadier now. "I want to know how much she owes. Who she owes. I want everything."

"You never wanted to know before. What happened to respecting her privacy?"

Mirae let out a humourless laugh. "It doesn't matter now, does it? What good is privacy if she's dead?"

Minhyuk's stomach twisted. "What are you going to do?"

His sister levelled him with a glare. "What's it to you?"

"You can't just—It wouldn't be fair to the others."

She scoffed. "Fair? You think I care about fair? The only thing I care about is—"

Her. Her. Her. 

Eun-kyung was the only one who ever mattered.

Mirae took a step closer in an attempt to cajole her brother. "You won't get in trouble. I promise. I'll make sure of it." She inhaled shakily. "She's my—" The words tangled in her throat, but she forced them out. "I cannot lose her to this place."

A pause.

"Okay."

A gunshot rang through the suffocating silence, and the siblings jolted in unison, their heads snapping toward the tangled web of monitors casting an eerie glow across the room.

Mirae reached the central console first, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she pulled up the security feed from the main hall. Minhyuk trailed behind, but he did not need to see the screen to feel the weight settling over them.

The survivors from the first game huddled together on the floor, their limbs coiled in self-preservation. In the midst of them stood a guard, the square emblem on his mask catching the fluorescent light as he levelled a pistol toward the ceiling. A warning shot, a show of dominance, a reminder of where they were.

Minhyuk exhaled sharply, bracing himself, but his sister barely seemed to breathe at all. Her hands, usually so steady, shook as she zoomed in on the faces. Every one of them was twisted in fear, each expression a variation of the same stark horror. And then she went still. 

She enhanced the image until it was unbearably crisp, the desolation in that one face so sharp it might as well have been bleeding through the screen. Her brother did not need to ask. He knew who she had found.

Unable to look at her any longer, Minhyuk stepped away, his hands finding his own ruin—picking, peeling, tearing at the raw edges of his cuticles until the broken skin wept red. Still, he did not stop. Not for the first time, he longed to go home. At least there, his father was rarely present, and Mirae was... herself. Not this dreary thing the air poisoned her into becoming.

She did not belong here, in this room that was both his domain and his prison. 

The space stretched around him, an intricate labyrinth of wires, monitors, and flickering lights, every inch of the walls occupied by screens looping endless horrors. The air was thick with the hum of machinery, the dull electric buzz sinking into his bones, a sound he had grown too accustomed to. 

Every year, two sets of game footage were collected. The first belonged to the overseers below—the hooded Front Man and his masked sentinels who monitored in real-time from the main security chamber. That footage, however, was malleable. A shifting narrative at the hands of those who wished to conceal illicit activities, who deleted and altered the evidence of their transgressions with the ease of men sweeping dust beneath a rug. Guards who smuggled in contraband, those who sought to profit from the suffering of the desperate, and those who slipped into the shadows to carve out their own pockets of sin. A world built on manipulation.

But this second set of footage was untouchable.

It existed beyond their reach, accessible only to a select few. An unflinching witness to the game's true nature. Most violations were permitted so long as they did not hinder the function of the games, but there were limits. And when those limits were crossed, Minhyuk's files became a weapon, wielded in the belly of this monstrous place where punishments needed to be dealt not just for control, but for spectacle. For power.

He had not chosen this duty. He had not asked to be the keeper of these records, the observer cataloging every atrocity like a bureaucrat filing mundane reports, but his father had ensured it.

If Minhyuk refused to partake as Mirae did, then he would be forced to watch.

He watched as his sister morphed from girl to machine, as her skin hardened into gunmetal, and he could do nothing. He watched the aftermath as well. The way players wept long after lights-out, the way the guards stapled coffins shut with mechanical efficiency, as they loaded the bodies into flames.

He also watched what no one else dared to, spending night after night trying not to empty the contents of his stomach while scavengers dissected still-living flesh. He listened as players gasped their final breaths on an operating table, their bodies plundered for the only thing they had left to give. He would see it all, and then he would archive it in neat, numbered folders.

"Consent form, clause three," came a voice from the screen, and Minhyuk's attention snapped toward one of the monitors displaying a middle-aged man in glasses. Player 218.

The player continued, "Games may be terminated if the majority agrees. Isn't that correct?"

The square-masked guard nodded. "That is correct."

Player 218 straightened his shoulders, seizing the moment. "Then let us take a vote. If the majority wish to leave this place, you must let us go."

Mirae inhaled, her hands clamping onto the console's edge, her whole body thrumming with something dangerously close to hope.

The guard simply inclined his head. "As you wish. We will take a vote to decide on the termination of the game."

It was possible, then. It could end here. It could end now.

"Before we vote," the guard went on, "let the prize money accumulated from the first game be revealed."

On another screen, the room where the players huddled dimmed, the overhead lights shifting to cast an eerie glow. Above them, a massive, transparent piggy bank hung suspended from the ceiling, its vast emptiness an altar waiting to be filled.

A chute at the top of the container opened, and through it, stacks of money began to descend in a rain of paper wealth. Minhyuk did not have to look at the players to know what was happening. He had seen it before. 

The cowering masses stirred, catching the glow of the accumulating fortune. One by one, they rose, no longer shivering, no longer shrinking from the shadow of death that loomed over them.

No, this was something else entirely.

They stood like worshippers in a cathedral, eyes drawn heavenward as if awaiting revelation. They beheld the money as though it were a holy miracle, the divine face of salvation itself descending from the firmament.

What was God, if not this?

Not the silent, indifferent deities of scripture. Not the ones who demanded faith and sacrifice with no promise of return. This was a god that answered prayers. A god that could be seen, touched, and held in quivering hands. A god of crisp paper and ink, worth more than blood, more than dignity, more than life itself.

And when it spoke, it did not whisper. It roared, thunderous in its omnipotence.

The square-masked guard's voice echoed across the chamber. "Two hundred and twenty-five players were eliminated during the first game. One hundred million won was at stake for each of them. As such, the prize pool now stands at 25.5 billion won. If you choose to leave now, that sum will be distributed among the bereaved families of the eliminated players. And the rest of you will return home empty-handed."

A murmur rippled through the players.

Then, a question rang out from the crowd. "And if we survive all six games?"

"45.6 billion won."

And that was it. The divine had spoken.

Minhyuk sighed, massaging his temples before turning to his sister. When he nudged her down into the wheeled chair beside him, she didn't resist, but her fingers remained clenched, her gaze glued to the screen.

There, the players lined up, one by one, to cast their votes.

An O to continue playing.

An X to stop. 

The outcome was never certain, but Minhyuk had lived this moment too many times before to be surprised. The world beyond these walls was its own kind of execution ground. Poverty could kill as surely as a bullet, and for many, there was no difference between dying here or dying outside. 

Faith was not measured in devotion; it was measured in risk, and like all good disciples, they would choose to believe that they had a chance here. Better to gamble everything, even your own soul, than to leave this mausoleum and die an invisible death.

In these games, salvation was not found in mercy; it was found in fortune.

Minhyuk forcefully pried his sister's hands away from the console, wincing when he saw that her grip on the console had torn open her callouses, her palm sticky with blood. 

"You shouldn't watch anymore," he remarked, though he knew she would be deaf to his suggestion. 

As much as he hated this place, he hated what it had done to them even more.

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In the end, the games were halted by the will of the players, and amongst those who chose to end it all was Oh Il-woo himself. Mirae had watched in astonishment as her grandfather, the architect of this wretched place, calmly placed his vote: X. The deciding tally. The one that tipped the scales.

Let them believe they are free. Let them crawl back of their own accord. It is far more satisfying when they choose their suffering.

And they would return. Mirae knew it as well as he did. Perhaps that was why he had broken the tie, why he had ended this round with the cruellest move of all: mercy.

Still, she had more pressing matters. It had been three days since the players had been dumped back into their old lives like discarded scraps. Three days since the calls had started again—the first whispers of desperation, the first hands reaching for the noose once more.

But Eun-kyung remained silent. She had vanished, slipping through the cracks as though she had never been there at all.

Mirae had called. Texted. She had staked out the woman's workplace and walked the length of her street more times than she cared to admit. Even Eun-kyung's daughter, who was still attending school, was staying with a colleague on the other side of the city. 

The absence had begun to gnaw at her ribs like an open wound, and so, for the third night in a row, she found herself slumped in front of her friend's apartment door, knees drawn up, cheek resting against the chipped paint of the wall. She knew this was insanity. Borderline stalker behaviour, even. But what else could she do?

She had to see her. She had to speak to her. She had to make sure Eun-kyung never went back.

The games had not yet resumed—she had not been summoned back to the island, after all—but the calls had already begun. The damned, begging for their crucifixion.

She was considering giving up, her muscles aching from hours of stillness, when the sound of footsteps echoed through the narrow hallway. She knew who was coming before she looked, and she scrambled to her feet so fast that dizziness swarmed her vision.

Eun-kyung's reaction was immediate. Her eyes went wide with alarm, and for a brief second, Mirae thought she would turn and run. But then the woman's gaze hardened, her jaw tightening as she stormed forward, marching straight to her door. She fumbled with her keys, shoving one into the lock with frantic movements. She was trying to disappear before Mirae could stop her or interrogate her about her disappearance. 

But Mirae was already speaking.

"You've been ignoring my calls. You haven't been speaking to me. I've been worried."

The key jammed in the lock, and Eun-kyung exhaled through her nose. "Weren't you supposed to be on your family trip?" she snapped.

"That doesn't matter right now. I only wanted to know if you were in trouble?"

Eun-kyung's fury was a living thing, barely leashed. It rippled through the tension in her hands, the sharp, jerking motions of her fingers as she scrolled through her phone until she found what she was looking for. Then, she thrust the screen into her friend's face, the cold glow of the notification unmistakable.

"Well, I'm not in trouble anymore, am I?" she spat. "Is the money from you?"

Mirae's silence was all the confirmation she needed, and she couldn't help the tears that welled in her eyes as she looked down at the notification from her bank  It was the first thing she had seen after being dumped back into her miserable life.

At first, she had thought it was hush money. Some kind of twisted compensation for surviving hell. A bribe from the game makers to keep her mouth shut. But it hadn't made sense. Why would they care? Why would the architects of that nightmare erase her debts so neatly, so completely? Why would they pay for Eun-ha's emergency surgery, down to the exact amount needed?

No, this money was personal. This was someone with a vested interest in her well-being. There was only one person who could have done this, and it made her sick with inadequacy. Sick with bitter gratitude.

Mirae opened her mouth—perhaps to explain or to justify—but Eun-kyung cut her off with a snarl.

"I know it's from you!" She shook the phone for emphasis. "Don't you dare try to lie to me!"

Mirae flinched but refused to look away. "I know I should have asked first, but I was only trying to—"

"I'm not your fucking charity case!"

She might as well have slapped her, and Mirae swallowed against the ache in her throat. 

Eun-kyung's hands curled into fists at her sides. She hadn't wanted to use the money. God, she had tried so hard to ignore it. To pretend she could do without. But she couldn't. Her daughter's health had gotten worse, and there had been no other choice.

Still, it burned to know that her friend could just give away that much money without batting an eye. That it meant so little to her, while Eun-kyung needed it so desperately. She refused to let herself cry, so instead, she sneered, hating the way the words tasted on her tongue.

"I'll pay you back. If you just fucking wait, I'll pay you back, interest and all."

Mirae's response was too gentle. "You don't have to do that." Her eyes were searching, raw and earnest. "I just need you to be okay. Is everything okay? Is Eun-ha okay? I heard about the medical expenses."

That was a mistake.

Eun-kyung's posture stiffened. "So you've been stalking me?"

"No!" Mirae's eyes widened, hands raised to placate her. "I'm trying to help! I just don't want you to put yourself in danger again. You don't have to—"

"Don't have to what? Get involved with loan sharks? Crawl on my knees for scraps? Risk my fucking life just to pay the bills? Do you know what I've had to go through these past few days?"

Mirae knew. She had been there, but she couldn't admit that. 

"Of course you don't. How could someone like you ever understand?"

"No, but if you tell me, I could—"

Eun-kyung let out a sour laugh, shaking her head. "Must be nice. Must be fucking nice to be able to throw money at your problems and think that fixes everything. Must be nice not to even worry about being paid back for that kind of money. But we can't all be like you."

The hollow between Mirae's ribs ached, each word landing with lethal precision.  "I don't care about the money."

"Of course you don't."

"But, I do care about you."

Something inside Eun-kyung was beginning to putrefy, turning ugly and rotten the longer she looked into her friend's pleading eyes. Equal parts humiliation, resentment, and guilt. Mirae had always been kind. The kind of generosity that made people feel small in comparison. And Eun-kyung was so tired of feeling small. She could never return any of her favours, and could never treat her half as well as she deserved to be treated. Every moment Mirae spent by her side, Eun-kyung waited for the charade to to end, waited to be told the punchline of this elaborate joke. Why else would someone of her status be friends with her? 

"You care about me?" she repeated, mockingly. "What a nice sentiment. What a luxury, to have the time to care."

Mirae winced. "That's not fair."

"Not fair? What's not fair is you swooping in like some goddamn saint and acting like money can fix everything. That money can just wipe away the fact that I almost died, Mirae. That I—" She stopped just in time, chest heaving, her fingers curling into the fabric over her ribs.

There were things she couldn't say. Mirae would never understand what she had seen, what she had been through. Having to see hundreds of people shot down in cold blood; that sort of image was difficult to purge from your mind. That filthy place had brought out the worst in her, making her see the stark difference between the starving and the sheltered. Between herself and Mirae. They came from entirely different worlds. Mirae would never understand, so it was pointless to even try explaining. 

"That's okay, you don't have to tell me if you're not comfortable," Mirae pleaded, chewing on her lower lip until she tasted blood. "I never meant to make you feel like that. I just—"

"You just what? You just wanted to help? You just wanted to save me?" Eun-kyung's voice cracked on the last word, and that made her even angrier. "I don't need saving."

"I never said you did."

"Then why are you here? Why are you still looking at me like that? Like I'm some wounded thing you're trying to nurse back to health?"

"You're not. I'm not, I swear it."

Eun-kyung wanted to throw the funds back in her face so badly, but she couldn't do that either. All she had were pitiful promises to pay it back whenever she could. 

"You can't fix me, Mirae."

"That's not what I'm trying to do."

"Isn't it? That's the whole problem." Eun-kyung gestured vaguely between them. "You don't even see what you're doing. You think you're different from the rest of them, from all those people who think they can buy their way into other people's lives. But you're not."

Mirae's expression crumpled. "You're being unfair."

"None of this is fair. But that's the difference between us, isn't it?" She tilted her head, her tone turning venomous. "You've never had to worry about fair. Not with your rich father who has never made you work a day in your life. You have the best resources at your disposal. What would you know about the fear of losing someone you love? All I have is Eun-ha, and even she—whatever. Just forget it."

Eun-kyung knew it was a low blow, but she was drowning in the feeling of being less, and Mirae was standing there, looking at her like she was something worthy. She just couldn't stand it.

"You don't get it," she muttered. "You'll never get it, so just go home, and don't look for me again. Go back to your posh world and forget about your decade-long charity case."

Helplessness flooded Mirae's lungs, rising in her throat, thick as salt water, sharp as broken glass. She wanted to gasp, to choke, to do something to purge it from her body, but there was no escape from this kind of suffocation. Her whole body felt wrong, like her skin wasn't sitting right on her bones, like she was caught in a moment that didn't belong to her.

Eun-kyung was getting it all wrong. None of it was true.

It wasn't Mirae who had saved her. It was she who had saved Mirae. It was Eun-kyung, who had given her something solid to hold onto when everything else was just a blur of blood and orders and smoke curling from the mouths of burning dead men. It was Eun-kyung who had always looked at her as a person, not a cog in a machine she had no power to stop. 

And now she stood in front of her, eyes burning with something Mirae didn't have the words to fix, and she refused to listen. Refused to let her explain.

And how could she? How could she say she needed her, without it sounding like an empty plea? How could she say that this was the only way she knew how without it sounding like an excuse? 

All she could do was try to keep her only friend safe and take care of her in the only way she knew how—by making sure there was nothing left to hurt her. No debt, no danger, no reason to ever seek out those god-forsaken games again.

But she had done it all wrong, and Eun-kyung didn't see it for what it was. She only saw pity. She only saw charity. 

Before she could come up with a response, she noticed a young man watching their exchange from a few doors down, standing like he couldn't quite decide if he wanted to intervene or pretend he wasn't there at all. He wasn't in uniform, but Mirae recognized him. Officer Hwang, or something. She couldn't recall his first name, only that he had given a presentation to Eun-kyung's class. 

Her lips curled into something that wasn't quite a laugh. "You want me to leave? Fine. I'll leave."

Eun-kyung's brows furrowed, her frustration shifting into confusion at the sudden acquiescence. "Mirae—"

"But you didn't have to call the damned police on me."

"Call the—? I didn't call anyone."

But Mirae was already walking away, her nails biting bloody crescents into her palms as she stormed past the officer without sparing him another glance.

However, before Eun-kyung too could disappear into her apartment, the young man closed the distance between them and intercepted her. She stiffened, then relaxed just slightly as recognition flickered in her eyes. She knew Junho well enough. His mother was a friend. And he was polite enough not to comment on the tears streaking down her face, though she knew he had seen them. 

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, but I was actually here to follow up on your statement from the other day," he stated. "When you came into the station."

Eun-kyung shook her head immediately. "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have gone there. I was confused. I misremembered the details."

"You misremembered?"

"I haven't been sleeping well. I must've gotten my dreams mixed up with reality...or something. It was quite an outlandish story."

"You can't just make up something like that." There was no anger in Junho's tone, only insistence.

When she refused to meet his eyes, he ran a hand through his hair. Then he reached into his pocket to pull out a stiff card, the embossed symbols stark in the dim hallway light. 

A circle. A triangle. A square.

Eun-kyung's pulse quickened. 

"You said you received a similar card," the officer urged, watching her reaction carefully. "Would you mind if I took a look at it? Please."

There was a thread of desperation in him, barely concealed beneath his composure.

She swallowed hard, forcing herself to keep still. "No. I don't have it anymore. I'm sorry for wasting your time." She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze but didn't let herself waver. Then, quieter, she added, "Give my regards to your mother."

Turning before he could say anything else, she slipped inside and slammed the door behind her. The moment the lock clicked into place, her strength crumbled. She slid to the floor, pressing her forehead against the door as great, wrenching sobs tore from her throat. She felt miserable. She felt lonely. More than anything, she felt the weight of what she had done.

She had finally driven her best friend away.

The mere notion made her want to reach for her phone. It was Mirae she had always turned to, the one person who could hold her and wipe her tears away, whispering that it would all be okay, even if they both knew it was a lie. She wanted that comfort, craved it so badly it hurt, but she couldn't. She couldn't be a burden. She had to handle this on her own.

A knock on the door made her recoil.

"Eun-kyung?" Junho's concern was an aching echo of Mirae's. "Are you all right?"

She squeezed her hands over her ears.

"Are you sure you don't—"

"Leave me alone!" she screamed. "Everyone just leave me alone!"

For a long moment, there was silence. Then she heard the retreat of footsteps, growing more distant until they were gone. Still, she didn't move, her body shaking as she buried her face in her hands, trying to steady herself. But it was useless. She was useless. 

Eventually, she forced herself to take a deep breath and reached into her pocket, her fingers brushing against something familiar. Slowly, she pulled it out.

The card.

She had carried it with her ever since her return. Ever since she had barely survived. Ever since she had walked away with nothing but this. It was a way back. A way to pay Mirae back. A way to build a better life for her daughter.

Her thumb brushed over the embossed symbols.

She just had to call.

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A/N: Eid Mubarak to all the lovely folks who celebrate! Hope y'all had a wonderful Ramadan! Super sorry for the delay in chapters, this past month has been such an energy drain lol, but we are back!! Tagging this fic wlw for women losing women lmfao. This chapter got way too long so I split it into 2. Real honest to god mirae/junho interaction in the next one I promise T_T