Two Dead Men

In the end, even after Junho arrived, even after the police began to ask their questions (before the whole thing got shut down): Gihun never mentioned the connection between the Front Man and Youngil. Gihun shot the Front Man, who had kept him alive for some unknown reason; he disguised himself as the Front Man in order to disrupt events, and was discovered by Youngil after that. No, he didn’t know how Youngil survived. You’d have to ask him.

Gihun didn’t know what story Youngil gave. It was none of his business.

He still thought about killing him. Showing up at his hospital room (or later his doorstep) with a revolver and a single bullet. Offering that they play a game. It wasn’t fair not to kill him, to let him live, after all the people Gihun had killed. The ones who were ‘just following orders’.

Gihun still wanted to know if he was right.

---

Youngil was a fake name, of course. Gihun only got a clue to the real one when Junho thanked him. They’d met for a drink, where Junho told him the investigation was being closed.

‘That doesn’t mean I’ll stop,’ he said. ‘The money came from somewhere.’ He hesitated. ‘He hasn’t said anything yet. But I’ll wear him down. He knows I don’t give up.’

‘Who’s that?’

Junho avoided his eyes. ‘I should thank you. For covering for him.’

There was only one person Gihun had covered for. ‘Why would you thank me?’ But he thought he knew. The brother Junho was looking for. Had he ever mentioned his name? It wasn’t Youngil, that was sure.

‘Our family can’t make up for what he did,’ Junho said. ‘And I know you won’t get an apology from him.’

‘I don’t need an apology.’ Gihun found himself smiling.

Junho didn’t seem reassured, or maybe the smile unnerved him.

‘I won’t stop either,’ Gihun told him, and finished his drink.

---

When he didn’t know Youngil’s real name, he couldn’t find him. But finding out the name of Junho’s brother was easy. Hell, Junho probably would have told him, but it seemed more polite for Gihun to do his own research.

Not that there was anything polite about what Gihun did next: break into Hwang Inho’s apartment in the middle of the night.

It was a pretty sad apartment – Inho, a survivor of the games, could have afforded a nicer neighbourhood, a newer building. Curtains, perhaps. In the fridge were leftover takeaways and beer; Gihun took one of the beers and drank it as he peered around in the dim light that came in through the windows.

It was a one-room apartment; Inho was in bed, sleeping, or pretending to sleep. Only one way to make sure.

Gihun took another swallow of beer; checked the gun in the back of his waistband. Even if he hadn’t come with the intent to kill, he didn’t know how Inho would react to home invasion.

As Gihun approached the bed, Inho sat up – not in shock, but lazily, as if he’d expected the visit. He turned on a bedside light. He held a hand to his face a moment – long moment – before he lifted his eyes to Gihun.

‘What took you so long?’ he said.

Gihun took another drink, the hops bitter on his tongue. He lowered the bottle. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ he said, ‘what I wanted to do. I’m still not sure. Your brother thinks I’m letting you go. He said thank you.’

‘He’s an idiot,’ Inho said, without conviction.

‘A determined idiot. No-one ever looked that hard for me.’ Gihun stepped closer; Inho tensed, even though he tried to hide it. 'He must really love you.'

Inho laughed. It was a horrible laugh; the kind where you wouldn’t be surprised if the person wasn’t actually crying. But no: laughter.

‘You didn’t come here to talk about my brother,’ Inho said, after the laughter had stopped.

‘I was thinking,’ Gihun said, ‘about the worst thing I could do to you that wouldn’t break his heart.’ He put the bottle to his lips again, and tipped it back until there was nothing left. ‘Something that would never get back to him.’

Inho met his eyes, showing no concern at all. Gihun wondered if he even felt anything anymore. Since the day Gihun had killed him. Since the day he’d been the final survivor. Under what circumstances, Gihun wondered, had Inho won the squid game?

He hadn’t lied to Gihun, when he’d told him why he was taking part. He’d only told him the story too late.

Gihun dropped the bottle, and heard it hit the floor. Inho’s eyes flicked down at the sound, before returning to Gihun.

‘How’s your leg?’ Gihun asked.

‘Healing.’ A hunt of humour. ‘How’s your shoulder?’

Gihun didn’t answer, but took his shirt off to touch his fingers to the healing skin, shiny and fleshy. Presenting the evidence. He’d got over his infection quickly, off the island. He hadn’t even needed a hospital stay. Not like Inho.

But he was home now. In this sad little apartment. Did he intend to live a sad little life from now on? A life like a ghost’s, leaving no mark, not being changed for anything.

Gihun pulled the gun from the waistband of his trousers. It made a sort of emphasis, to hold a weapon. He didn’t even need to point it for Inho’s posture to change, for him to come to attention.

‘How about,’ Gihun said, ‘we make this your turn.’ The hand that wasn’t holding the gun went to undo his trousers. A part of him knew he was pushing things. If Inho wanted to resist, it didn’t matter if Gihun were holding a gun to his head or not.

But Inho didn’t react violently. He watched lazily as Gihun dropped his trousers. As he peeled off his underwear, discarding that too on the floor. Till it was just Gihun and his body – his vulnerable, resilient body.

That, and the gun.

Gihun climbed onto the bed. Inho kept looking at him, at his body. His eyes seemed to devour Gihun – the scars along with the rest. He’d seen all this before, but still he took it in.

Gihun shifted closer on his knees, and he made a beckoning gesture with the gun. Directing Inho to his as-yet flaccid dick.

Inho looked him in the eye as he raised one hand to wrap around Gihun’s dick. To stroke it. Gihun breathed in with the motion; he breathed out.

‘You know that’s not what I mean,’ he said, although he was caught in Inho’s fixed gaze. Even though Inho was the one giving him a hand job, Gihun felt like prey.

Inho didn’t take his eyes away even when he leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the side of Gihun’s dick.

‘I didn’t know you were such a tease.’

Inho hummed against him. Kept his lips against Gihun’s skin, but moved them down to mouth his balls. Smiled when Gihun’s dick twitched.

Then he opened his mouth to wrap warm and wet around one of Gihun’s testicles. Gihun made an involuntary groan – he wasn’t sure he liked it. It wasn’t Inho degrading himself by sucking on another man’s balls; it was Inho reminding him that he could crush them. Except that because he kept jerking Gihun’s dick in his hand, Gihun’s body didn’t quite register the threat.

Gihun patted Inho’s cheek with the barrel of the gun. Inho’s gaze slid toward it, then he released Gihun’s testicle to move his mouth lower again, rotating his body under Gihun’s. And he stuck his tongue against Gihun’s asshole.

Gihun yelped; Inho grabbed hold of his thighs to hold him in place, and he pressed his tongue against the pucker of Gihun’s hole, pushing in.

Gihun’s dick definitely wasn’t soft anymore.

He wasn’t going to let Inho fuck him. Maybe, terribly, Inho’s tongue on his ass did feel good, but he was not letting Inho stick his dick in there. Even when he felt himself ease up, welcoming the intrusion. Even when he found he didn’t want Inho to stop.

It was an awkward position or maybe Gihun would have let him keep going; Inho could eat him out till his jaw got tired and maybe then Gihun could have taken pity and sat on his dick after all –

But that wasn’t what Gihun had come for.

‘That’s enough, Mr Smart Guy.’ Gihun moved away, turning so that he was facing Inho again. He pressed the barrel of the gun under Inho’s chin so that Inho had to look at him. Then Gihun took him by the head and pulled him in so that Gihun’s dick was pointed right at his mouth. Inho relented and opened up for him, but he didn’t try to spare Gihun his teeth. Gihun thrust into his open wet mouth, not meaning to spare Inho anything either. He’d just meant to get his dick wet, but it was easy to go overboard: to hold Inho’s head and fuck in deeper, till he heard him gag, Inho’s throat constricting against him –

And then he let go and Inho pulled back coughing, his mouth dripping his own saliva.

‘Get on your hands and knees,’ Gihun said, before he could change his mind again.

Inho’s eyes narrowed, and Gihun thought he might refuse. Instead he obeyed with a slowness that verged on sullen. Ass up, face toward the headboard of the bed. Gihun put a hand on the bare small of Inho’s back; Inho tensed at his touch and Gihun ran his fingers around to his waist, proprietarily. He moved round behind Inho, running his other hand to work his pyjama bottoms down and expose his ass to the air. Gihun still had the gun, and he smacked Inho’s ass cheek with the muzzle. Inho flinched, even as he maintained his position.

Then Gihun moved the gun between Inho’s legs and tapped it sharply against his perineum. Inho let out a grunt, and he dropped his head against his arms.

‘You’re a pervert,’ Gihun said, but it didn’t come out as an accusation. He rubbed the muzzle of the gun along Inho’s dick. Gihun hadn’t even touched him, but Inho was hard. Knowing that only inflamed Gihun’s own lust, made him immoderate. Insensitive.

‘Want me to stick it in you?’ Gihun said, his own voice foreign to him, thick with fucked-up desire. He caressed the skin at Inho’s waist while with his other hand he slowly, very deliberately, dragged the gun backwards until the muzzle teased at Inho’s pucker.

This was crazy. What Inho had done to him had made him crazy. But having had the thought, having had it in proximity to Inho’s willing body, Gihun couldn’t unthink it. He wanted to stick the gun in Inho’s ass. He wanted Inho to let him.

Fuck it.

Gihun spat into his free hand, and he slicked up the end of the gun. Spat again on his fingers and pressed them against Inho’s ass, two fingers swallowed by that tight heat. He wanted to feel that heat, that pressure, around his dick; he wanted to fuck into Inho with abandon.

But first he wanted to see Inho’s ass stretched on the barrel of a gun.

And so he pulled his fingers out, and he took the gun in that same hand, and he placed the barrel against Inho’s hole, and in one rough, violent motion, he shoved it in him.

Inho gave a low cry, his hips yanking back, but Gihun had him. He held onto Inho’s waist and he pushed the muzzle of the gun in further.

And he laughed, because the situation was so absurd. That Inho hadn’t killed him – that he had let him live – for this.

‘How does it feel?’ Gihun leaned over him, pulling the gun back and then sliding it forward again. ‘You pervert. I hope it hurts.’

Inho didn’t say anything, but Gihun could see his back shudder as he took breath. Gihun twisted the gun as he pulled it back again, pulled it free, his eyes drawn to the blink of Inho’s asshole.

He thrust the gun forward again. All his hatred, the rage and the helplessness he’d felt, he concentrated in that motion. Such a small motion, really. But if it cost Inho, then it was good for him.

And it must have cost him.

There was only so long Gihun could mess around though, because whatever his desire to humiliate Inho, his own erection was getting hard to ignore. So he withdrew the gun, watching with fascination as Inho’s ass gaped, and he threw it aside. Thought god, before he drove himself inside Inho, his whole dick swallowed in that tight passage. And it felt good. He’d got himself so worked up that it was a relief.

Gihun grabbed Inho’s hips and he began to fuck him in earnest. A part of him wanted to take his time, to draw it out – to enjoy the way Inho’s body trembled, the noises he made as Gihun stuck it in him. Gihun hadn’t really cared whether Inho got anything out of it, so he was surprised when Inho dropped his weight on one arm so that he could jerk himself off with the other.

Pervert, he thought. He could have given him a reach-around but he didn’t care enough. Not right then. Not for anything but his own release, which arrived soon enough, spilling over in one ecstatic whiteout moment. His balls were rammed against Inho’s ass and he didn’t even want to pull out, but to push deeper, deeper, until they were one person and not two.

One entirely fucked-up person.

And then the moment was passed, and he was just one sweaty guy with his dick going soft inside another.

Gihun pulled out and collapsed on his back beside Inho, lying limp. Inho lay down too, on his back with his legs splayed as he continued to pump his own dick. Gihun wasn’t so exhausted as to be completely disinterested. If he were a younger man he might have gone for another round; as it was he reached over and wrapped his hands beside Inho’s, and took over jerking him off.

He didn’t think about his reasons. He just did it, firm and efficient, watching the muscles in Inho’s thighs tense. Watching himself do this thing.

Inho groaned as he came, shooting white spunk over his own stomach, and Gihun felt sickly satisfied. He let Inho’s dick go, and dragged his fingers through it, playing the substance between his fingers.

Inho turned his head to watch Gihun, his breathing heavy.

‘Don’t fucking say anything,’ Gihun said, and shoved his fingers in Inho’s mouth. Inho looked disgusted and outraged. Which was pretty funny, considering where he’d had that mouth earlier.

Remembering that made Gihun consider that second round again.

‘I’m using your shower,’ he said, and pushed himself off the bed.

Inho didn’t say anything, but wiped his mouth. He looked almost confused.

Well, it wasn’t as if Gihun himself understood what he’d done. Why he’d done it. Why he’d had to do it like that.

He was a pervert too.

They were the same, weren’t they? Inho had wanted to prove that all along. Surviving the same games had made them the same. Except Inho thought that meant letting the games continue, and it didn’t.

It only meant they couldn’t be normal people anymore. It was a relief not to have to try.

Maybe it was a pathway to hell, but they’d been through hell before.

This way, when you weren’t the only one – it didn’t seem so bad.