Two Dead Men

It was a disturbed sleep that was broken, when a square-masked worker shook Gihun awake. A triangle stood by the door, rifle pointed in case Gihun tried anything.

Right then, Gihun didn’t have the energy to try anything. He hadn’t slept deeply enough to counteract the effects of being shot, though the pain had settled into a deep ache.

‘Come with us,’ said the square. Gihun nodded, and eased himself off the bed. The square crouched down to remove the cuff at his ankle.

‘Your boss is a pervert,’ Gihun said, as he straightened.

No reaction, of course. The mask hid any information Gihun could have got out of him. Probably another kid. What sort of a person signed up for a job like that anyway? Gihun pushed his thoughts away from that question.

The workers only escorted him to the bathroom, not to an execution. Five minutes, they said – which might have been enough for a shower, but not for Gihun to truly scrub himself clean. He set the water as hot as he could stand. Peaked under the bandage on his shoulder, and decided it was better left alone.

When Gihun was finished, they’d swapped out his clothes. Gihun looked for the familiar trackpants and t-shirt, but they were gone. Instead there were black dress pants, a black shirt. He glanced at the workers, who were of course impassive.

He would have been more comfortable in the player’s uniform than this. He didn’t want to dress up for the sake of a mass murderer.

You’re already dead, he reminded himself. Think of it as a funeral. At least it wasn’t the suit he’d been given in the last games.

The clothes fitted well. Unwillingly, Gihun checked himself in the mirror. He had the thought that maybe these were the Front Man’s own clothes, the same trousers, same shirt.

Except Gihun was taller. They wouldn’t have fit so well, if Gihun were wearing the Front Man’s clothes. Still. If he wore the coat, put on the mask, would anyone notice the difference? Put gloves on his hands? Only touch the world in gloves; only see the world through the mask?

Gihun touched his own stubbled cheeks. They already seemed hollower than before he came here.

‘That’s enough,’ said the square. Gihun pulled away from the mirror, and followed them again through the hallways. Not back to the muraled room, but somewhere further away – a small dining room.

His heart sunk.

All of this was a performance.

There was a waiter, dressed all in black as he was, but wearing a curious mask. The table was set western-style, with two places laid.

‘Wait here,’ said the square. He paused, as if Gihun might have a response, and then he and the triangle filed out the room.

Gihun fingered his top button as he looked about. There was one other exit, which was where the waiter stood. Probably he was armed too.

‘I don’t suppose you talk,’ Gihun said.

No reaction. Gihun let it go.

A few days ago, this would have seemed the perfect time to try for an escape. But a few days ago Gihun hadn’t felt as old as he did today. He was worn out; his ass hurt, and his shoulder hurt more. And the room was probably being monitored.

He hoped to god the room with the murals hadn’t been monitored. The Front Man wouldn’t do something like that on camera, would he? The thought hadn’t occurred to Gihun before then, but he felt suddenly unsure.

He was still standing when the Front Man arrived, sweeping into the room like an emperor. Gihun startled and turned to face him as he crossed the room; he didn’t like having him out of view.

‘You should sit down,’ the Front Man said. ‘You must be exhausted.’

Gihun wanted to argue, to insist on standing, but it was pointless. He sat down, the place setting putting him directly across from the Front Man. They sat at the same time, and that must have been a signal for the waiter: he produced a bottle of red wine, and poured for them both.

Gihun glanced at the wine, but left it. He looked instead at his dining partner.

‘What am I doing here?’

‘We’re going to eat.’ The Front Man turned his head slightly, and when Gihun turned his own in the same direction, he saw the waiter holding out a black mask to him. It wasn’t a full-face mask like the others wore – but unlike theirs, there was no gap or mesh to see through.

Gihun looked back at the Front Man.

‘Put it on.’

Gihun took the mask. It felt strangely heavy. When he put it over his face, it sealed off his vision completely. His heart bet faster; now if he tried to reach for the wine, he was as likely to knock it over as anything.

‘How am I meant to eat like this?’

‘You’ll have help.’

The press of glass against his lips. It must have been the waiter; Gihun shook his head, and pulled his face back.

‘I don’t want this,’ Gihun said.

‘Suit yourself.’

Had the Front Man taken off his mask? Has the tenor of his voice changed?

Gihun heard a plate being set down in front of him. He could smell it only slightly, a clean vegetable smell. It made Gihun’s stomach grumble, but he ignored it.

‘What happened today? How many people died?’

‘Twenty-two left.’ No emotion in that voice, no concern. ‘We can discuss it after dinner.’

‘I don’t want to –’

‘I do.’ A shut-door tone of voice. Gihun sat back in his seat. After a moment, he sensed movement near his side, then warmth near his lips.

He still wanted to refuse, but they fed them so little as part of those games, and Gihun hadn’t eaten in … it must have been more than twenty-four hours ago.

Gihun opened his mouth. Something – a spoon – was gently pushed in. He was being fed like a baby. The dish was a smooth soup, savoury with some delicate herbal note Gihun couldn’t identify.

He swallowed. Thought that the Front Man must have taken his mask off, was watching with a bare face. It made Gihun itchy and uncomfortable.

Again, the spoon was lifted to his mouth, and again Gihun let it in. No wonder, he thought, that little kids threw tantrums when they were being fed. Thinking that, he was reminded of his own daughter. Thought, as he did sometimes, that he should have gone to America after all. Tried to be a proper dad, even if he was only seeing her every other week. Now what would she think? Would she think he was dead? Or would she just think he didn’t care?

Of course he cared. But he had still come here. He’d chosen this over her.

And like everything else, he’d fucked it up.

The spoon stopped coming; it felt as if the person who’d been feeding him had moved away. Gihun squeezed and released and squeezed his hands in his laps. He heard the waiter’s footsteps retreat, and return, a new dish being set on the table before him. Then the footsteps moved around the table.

‘Do you always finish the games the same way?’ Gihun asked. He wondered who was left, who might be forced into that final trial. He hated to think of it for any of them.

‘Watch it and find out.’

‘You’ll keep me alive till then?’

‘That’s up to you.’

The waiter hadn’t returned to Gihun’s side. But he thought he heard the man at the other end of the table get up.

‘You could stop this now,’ Gihun said.

‘If I go,’ the Front Man said, ‘someone else will replace me.’ He was coming closer. ‘Just as someone replaced you.'

Gihun turned his head toward his voice. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the one who’s going to win this game.’

Gihun heard a chair being pulled out; the Front Man was sitting down beside him.

‘I won’t ask you to make a wager on who it might be. The young pregnant woman, perhaps. She has a lot to live for.’

Gihun drew his breath in sharply. ‘Why do you do this?’

‘She deserves a chance, doesn’t she? What do you think her life would be otherwise? The father’s no help.’ A voice without pity.

‘You don’t know that. You’re just assuming.’

‘Would she be here otherwise?’

Of course she wouldn’t. The people who were here were here because they were desperate. He’d been the same. He’d come back the first time even knowing the stakes. He’d come back this time because he thought he could do something about it.

Gihun lifted a hand to his face, to the mask he was wearing. A hand clamped over his before he could do anything. No glove, just warm skin. It was a shock, that contact. The firm grip.

‘What?’ Gihun said. ‘If you think you’re doing us all such a favour, shouldn’t you be willing to show your face?’

‘My face doesn’t matter. The role is what matters.’ The grip didn’t loosen, but it felt less as if the Front Man were restraining Gihun and more … well, more like he was holding Gihun’s hand. ‘Anyone can play the role, if they wear the right mask.’

Gihun felt himself relax infinitesimally. The Front Man must have felt it, because he let go of Gihun’s hand.

Gihun’s skin was cool, where the Front Man had gripped it. Gihun let his hand fall back to his lap.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m wearing the “prisoner” mask right now. I should stick to my role.’

‘You should.’

Gihun heard the scrape of cutlery against a plate. Had the waiter come back? Gihun hadn’t heard him. But it wasn’t the waiter who said, ‘Open up.’

‘What?’

‘Wider.’

He was messing with him. The Front Man had kept him alive to mess with him.

On the other hand, Gihun could smell the sear on the meat, and he was hungry. The soup had hardly taken the edge off.

Gihun opened his mouth, and wider, to take the fork that was being delivered. It was meat – beef, he thought, rare in the middle, with a fruity sauce. Blackberry, maybe.

It was delicious.

He heard the cutlery against the plate again, but this time, the Front Man ate himself. Then he offered the next mouthful to Gihun. Then himself.

It confused Gihun. It was too much effort for messing with someone, wasn’t it? Yet the Front Man continued to feed him, patiently.

In the end, Gihun heard him set down the cutlery.

‘You keep chefs on the island too?’ Gihun said, uncomfortable.

‘The VIPs have certain expectations.’

‘They want food with their entertainment,’ Gihun said bitterly. The Front Man didn’t answer. Gihun heard him pick something up, heard him swallow. The wine maybe. Hadn’t there been wine poured?

‘Can I –’ Gihun reached his hand over the table, searching for the glass; the Front Man pushed it toward him. Gihun cupped the bowl with his fingers; he trembled, as he lifted it to drink.

He didn’t really appreciate wine, but it was alcohol. And he was going to do something very stupid.

Gihun thought he knew from listening where the Front Man was sitting. So he sculled the wine, and he smashed the glass against the Front Man’s head. He felt the impact through the stem of the glass as the bowl shattered. He brought his arm down again, but this time the Front Man had moved – straight into Gihun, hitting him in the chest and launching him and the chair backwards. Gihun hit the ground with Front Man on top of him; he punched Gihun in the face, once.

Gihun winced automatically, but the pain didn’t stand out; it was anticipatory. The impact had knocked the mask, slightly – Gihun tried to tilt his head backwards to see his enemy’s face –

But instead was confronted with the barrel of a gun shoved into his mouth, knocking his teeth apart.

‘You’re really testing me, Seong Gihun,’ the Front Man said. He shoved the gun deeper, pushing Gihun’s tongue down and hitting his soft palate. Gihun could taste the metal of the barrel, a taste like iron and smoke.

The Front Man sat on top of him, pinning Gihun’s arms, and while Gihun could see his lower body, he couldn’t see his face. Not even when the Front Man leaned closer, close enough that Gihun could feel his breath, could almost recognise his voice – ‘What would it take for you to stop?’

It was a rhetorical question; Gihun was in no position to answer. He took deep breaths, aware of the gun and the weight of the Front Man’s body with every inhalation.

Gihun hoped he’d hurt him, at least. It would have been good to have made him bleed.

If the Front Man was going to kill him, he would have done it already, so Gihun wasn’t surprised when he removed the gun from Gihun’s mouth. It was a relief for Gihun to shut his mouth, wriggle his jaw.

The Front Man moved the gun to the curve of his neck. It was still wet with saliva as he dragged the barrel downwards, along Gihun’s neck and to his chest, where it pressed between the buttons of his shirt.

‘Why haven’t you killed me yet?’ Gihun asked.

‘I want you to see how this ends,’ the Front Man said, ‘and to know there was nothing you could do to stop it.’

The gun was pulled away. The Front Man gripped beneath Gihun’s jaw with his hand instead, bare skin, thumb curled possessively.

Gihun didn’t expect, then, that the Front Man would lean forward and kiss him. Even the idea would have been perversed

It was a brutal kiss. Gihun could have been bruised from such a kiss alone. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The pressure was gone, but Gihun’s lips were electrified. The Front Man’s weight was still on top of him, and if he held the gun, he wasn’t pushing it into Gihun any more.

He wasn’t going to kill him. At least, not unless Gihun really pissed him off. Not until the games had a winner. Which could be tomorrow, could be the next day. Was that enough time that the Front Man would let his guard down? For Junho and the others to find them?

It was time enough for Gihun to try and save someone other than himself.

It didn’t matter what the Front Man wanted to do to him in the meantime, as long as he was alive.

‘Nothing to say?’ The Front Man’s voice was hoarse, more human than Gihun was used to.

‘Thank you for keeping me alive,’ Gihun said.

He wished he could see the Front Man’s face. He didn’t know how to picture him: whether he looked like a bruiser, or the kind of rich man who never did his own dirty work except as a hobby.

The weight on Gihun lifted. ‘Get up.’ The Front Man didn’t lend him a hand so much as lift him bodily; Gihun stumbled to get his feet under him, catching his weight against his captor’s shoulder.

He was shoved back, but not randomly – as Gihun hit the table, he knew exactly what was intended.

Well, that was okay. He could endure it.

Roughly, the Front Man positioned Gihun over the table, sweeping the crockery aside to bend him over. Gihun thought it was only two of them in the room, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t know they weren’t watched anyway. Just another thing for rich pricks to get their jollies off to.

Gihun strained his ears for any hint of what the Front Man was doing. The sound of fabric collapsing on itself when he dropped his coat on the floor.

‘Are people watching this too?’ Gihun found himself asking.

‘No.’ The Front Man didn’t feel the need to qualify that, but Gihun heard the sound of a zip being undone. He hadn’t undressed Gihun at all. But maybe he needed to warm himself up. Gihun shouldn’t think about it, but he did. He anticipated it, expected it, dreaded it. What would come next.

A hand groped him from behind, sliding down to the the base of his ass and forcing Gihun to spread his legs, so that the Front Man could fondle his balls through his trousers. The nice dress trousers they’d made him wear.

Then he patted Gihun’s butt and said, ‘Take them off.’ As if to make Gihun complicit.

Gihun stood straight enough to undo the trousers and let them fall to the floor. The air pricked his bare legs. What did the Front Man even get out of this? It wasn’t like Gihun was young any more.

It was just this, he thought: this feeling of low humiliation.

Gihun stepped out of the trousers, kicked them away with his feet. He felt the Front Man step in close to him again, his arms around Gihun’s abdomen, hands relaxed where they sat at the band of Gihun’s underwear. Gihun could feel the Front Man’s erection against the back of his thigh. He rubbed himself again him, his dick slipping between Gihun’s legs.

‘Why don’t you get on with it?’ The underwear would come off next. This was just the slow torture the Front Man had chosen for him.

‘Feeling impatient?’ A hand gripped Gihun’s dick. ‘Too bad.’ Again, Gihun felt there was something darkly familiar in his voice. ‘You made me bleed, with that glass trick.’

‘I’m glad,’ Gihun said, before he could think better of it. The Front Man squeezed him to the point of pain – but Gihun’s dick still responded to the attention. It was messed up, but it didn’t feel bad. Maybe it was Gihun’s fault: he’d been focused so long on this one goal, casting everything else aside, but he couldn’t escape his stupid body, with its needs. Just flesh and blood and chemical reactions.

The Front Man slipped his hand inside Gihun’s underwear, feeling out the shape of his dick. Bare skin, firm pressure. It felt good.

Why was he doing this? One minute he was shoving a gun into Gihun’s mouth, the next he was touching him like this. Intimately. Familiarly.

He pushed Gihun’s underwear down over his thighs. Now, when his dick rubbed between Gihun’s legs, there was nothing keeping them apart. It sent an ache through Gihun. God help him, but he wanted the Front Man to get him off.

Was this meant to be his punishment? It wasn’t you made me bleed so I’ll bleed you in turn; Gihun could have understood that. He could have understood himself, in that situation. He couldn’t understand himself in this.

Abruptly, the Front Man let go of Gihun’s dick and put his hands on his hips, shoving him into the table. He pressed his thumbs into the skin above Gihun’s ass, spreading it.

He spat. Warm saliva hit Gihun’s skin and made him shudder; he felt it slide cruelly toward the crack of his ass, his exposed hole.

The Front Man rubbed the head of his dick there, in the wet. Gihun could feel every inch of his own skin tingle, anticipatory. Yes. They’d get this over with.

He didn’t resist it, when the Front Man pushed forward into him. He let it happen. Made it happen. It occurred to him that the Front Man wasn’t wearing a condom this time. He was entering him bare.

Had this happened to any of the players before? Had the Front Man had plucked them out from their moment of failure, saved them from death, for however long that whim lasted?

Fucked them until there was nothing left.

If only it had felt worse. For all the violence this was culminating, Gihun felt good. It didn’t matter who was doing this to him. He could pretend it was someone else – if he’d made a different decision those few nights ago, turned back to the real world and moved on with life ... but Gihun couldn’t think of anyone on the outside world who it would be.

Too many of the people in his past were dead.

So it was what it was; who it was. The enemy Gihun had come here to defeat. Whatever satisfaction there was in being penetrated, being filled up, didn’t mean Gihun could forget that fact. Fingers dug into his hip, and he couldn’t forget whose fingers those were.

When he’d kissed Gihun, that had been a form of violence too.

The Front Man came first. Gihun could feel it, his seed spilling inside of him; the sensation was mortifying and new. The Front Man finished off, a few more wet thrusts before pulling out.

The room was silent a moment; Gihun could hear his own laboured breathing, but he couldn’t hear anything over it.

Then the Front Man grabbed him again, manhandling him until his ass was crushed against the table. Gihun was aware of his own erection; a part of him wanted to cover himself, but it was too late for that.

‘I guess you’re not better than the rest of us after all,’ the Front Man said. It was a strange thing to say, but Gihun couldn’t consider it further because the Front Man wrapped a firm hand around his erection and began to jerk him off.

‘How does it feel?’ he said. ‘To know that this is all you’re reduced to.’

The voice was close; the grip of his hand was closer.

‘It’s just,’ Gihun got out, ‘a physical reaction.’

‘Of course.’ The tone was ironic.

It was worse, for not being able to see anything. Because the world was reduced to that physical reaction.

‘Anyone could do this to you,’ the Front Man said, ‘and it wouldn’t matter who. It could be arranged.’

Gihun’s breath was a shudder. He wasn’t going to talk back any more; protesting would make it worse.

He felt like crying.

Was there a difference, when it came down to it, between the release of tears and the release of orgasm? Gihun held himself back from both.

‘But don’t worry,’ the Front Man said, ‘no-one else will touch you. Ever.’

It wasn’t that the words tipped Gihun over the edge. This was, like he’d said, a physical reaction, and had its natural conclusion. Even if it killed him inside, to come at the hand of his captor–rapist–enemy. There was nothing else to be done.

But the words would come back to him later. No-one else will touch you. Ever.

The Front Man let out a satisfied noise. Gihun was too hot, the mask sticking to his face, the new clothes stuck with sweat.

‘I’ll give you a minute to make yourself presentable.’

Gihun waited as the footsteps drew away from him; he heard the slide of a door, and only then did he strip the mask from his face. The shock of air made him queasy. He gathered his clothes from the floor and dressed quickly.

The plates on the table had been pushed aside. There was broken glass on the table and the floor, but the Front Man must have steered him around the latter. Some of the glass was coloured with blood, but none of it was Gihun’s. The Front Man hadn’t injured him any more than he already was. It made Gihun uncomfortable; if he were allowed to get away with anything, it would come back to bite him later.

Except he was already dead.

Gihun crouched down to slip the stem of the wine glass into his sleeve.