SHE DIDN'T LIE — Mr. Kim's men identified Yoon-ah from a distance in the very park she said she'd be in, and for two excruciatingly long hours, all Gi-hun received as an update was that she did nothing but sit on a bench, staring at the trees and the lake. Though she clearly looked like she was waiting for someone, no suspicious individuals talked with her, nor sat besides her.

I was the one she was supposed to meet, Gi-hun couldn't help the passing thought while he watched his updates pop up in texts on his phone.

According to Mr. Kim's men, Yoon-ah carried nothing odd with herself in the park, nor did she leave anything behind to indicate some ulterior, illegal motives to her morning routine. By the end of the two hours, Gi-hun felt both relief and shame for having immediately assumed she was setting him, that she was hand in hand with the Front Man, looking to get him when he least expects it for snooping around where he wasn't supposed to. A bullseye burned on the back of his head with worry since the threat in the airport, and now it was bleeding out into everything he did, everyone he met. He wasn't even certain he could trust Mr. Kim, only that he could put his faith in the man's greed for money. 

Feeling less worried about her affiliations being dangerous meant however that the moment the two hours were up, Gi-hun started the engine of his own car and let Mr. Kim's men know their work's day was over. That precautious side of him wanted to drive back to the hotel, return to his repetitive routine and forget this ever happened, but he couldn't. Forgetting was no longer something Gi-hun found himself capable of doing.

Whether it was curiosity or something closer to hope leading him to follow Yoon-ah's car around the city instead of going home, Gi-hun didn't exactly pause to ask of himself he difference between the two.

It was much easier to tell himself it was both, that he felt a silver of fear in his chest that Min Yoon-ah had been wholly sincere at his door the other night and him, like some idiot, turned away the only person who could not only help him, but actually believe him too. Mr. Kim may humor his goose chase for the people behind the games, but he only did so for the money. Had he been poorer, he'd be laughed at now just as he had been by the police all that time ago.

The first stop Yoon-ah made was at a coffee shop. It was too far away from the park they've been to for the stop to be about her getting a drink, so Gi-hun's expectations when pulling over across the street from the store ensured he wouldn't be surprised to see the scene which followed unfold. Something else entirely took him by surprise as a child, no older than perhaps ten years old, ran into Yoon-ah arms the second she got into that flower riddled shop. For a brief and painful moment, his heart froze and his hands gripped the steering wheel a little stronger — it's been so long, but missing her made every memory he's had with his daughter brighter.

He couldn't help but be reminded of her, and the timing was just about as bad as it could have been, because by the time he caught his bearings, the child was holding something, running back to her mother, seated at a table and being on the receiving end of an awkward wave from Yoon-ah.

Save for a far more enthusiastic wave towards the little girl, Yoon-ah didn't linger in the coffee shop further and though Gi-hun had no clarifications as to what had just happened, nor what she had given the child, he could do nothing but stay close to her as she took off again.

The second stop made was in a neighbourhood everyone with ears in the city knew to avoid. In the daylight however, it wasn't much different to other poor places, with its old buildings, the graffiti covering every wall it could and the litter barely hidden from sight.

Gi-hun struggled against his instinct to turn back and abandon this curiosity now, while he still could. Though nothing about her morning had been suspicious, everything that followed gave him more questions than answers. Yet there he was, parking his car across the street from a rundown gym Yoon-ah entered without even a single word exchanged with the guy currently holding the door open by leaning in the doorway.

When he embarked on this quest to form an opinion on the credibility of this woman, Gi-hun didn't exactly expect to spend ten hours sat in his car and waiting for her to exit a building.

Did she realize she was being followed? Did she walk out the back of the building and abandon her car altogether to continue on foot? Those were all valid questions considering it was properly dark outside and the owner of the place was just then wrapping the chain around the front door, locking the gym up for the night.

If this is a trap..., the beginning of a thought got completed by him taking out the gun from the front compartment of his car, to instead secure it by his side. While he was starting to doubt his sanity on the matter, Gi-hun exited the car knowing his curiosity was interlinked with the only lead to progress he could make against the people controlling the games before the next recruiting period comes around. That was another whole year of waiting, while this he could do now. Suddenly, he was walking towards the gym and around it, knowing that no matter the veracity of Yoon-ah's words and offer, he was going to find out something tonight — whether it was information or someone to help him he gained, that was unimportant.

As soon as he made the second corner around the building, looking for open windows, he heard it — crowd cheers and music, leading him in the direction of a concealed flight of stairs going down to the open door to basement of the place. The pavement beneath his feet was vibrating from the bass, and he could already make out the clouds of smoke making the crowd below blurry. Between loud chants and grouped groans, he heard shouts mentioning 'bets', and while he hesitated going in that place seemingly lit by a single bright light placed much further into the basement, two men pushed past him from the street and went downstairs laughing.

That little nudge he received from them was sufficient to get him to follow them down. It took no more than a single step into this place to understand why there was no guard at the entrance, nor any colorful neon lights flashing: this wasn't some underground nightclub, but rather a betting zone for the one area of betting he's never actually touched — cage fighting.

To his left side, closest to the entrance, people were pushing each other to get themselves a ticket for the on going bet, while in the middle of the room, surrounded by a crowd he was walking around for now, a cage had been erected. Made out of barbed wire at the top, some metal fencing and the remnants of an old boxing ring, the cage was holding a match already, which, by the names written on the screen above it keeping track of the bet rates, was held between 'Bolt' and 'Canine'.

There were thuds, clear sounds of a tackle, but it wasn't until he made it to the very edge of the room and pushed himself to his tiptoes that Gi-hun saw who was really fighting. His eyes went wide just as a man twice her size pushed Yoon-ah into the wall of the cage and threw a hit into her stomach as if she was nothing more than a human punching bag.

The hit made her double over in a cough, immediately spitting out blood that splattered itself on the floor below.

Gi-hun lost his balance at the sight of her pushing the guy away only to be dropped to the ground of the cage.

He stumbled back. What the hell, he thought, yet paid no mind whatsoever to his arising need taking over his actions — he had to see how the fight was progressing now, because though Yoon-ah looked to him a moment ago mere seconds away from passing out, the sounds from inside that cage seemed to tell him that the fight was still going on strong.

How could she still be standing? The question bounced around in his head while he stepped back and pressed his back to the wall, once again raising to his tiptoes to see the state of the fight again.

It was quite an exaggeration to call the whole ordeal a 'fight' though, as that would have required both parties involved to play an active role. So far, it seemed to him that it would be fairer to the happenings before his eyes to call this for what it was: Min Yoon-ah was being beaten to death.

She was standing with some sort of sway to her stance, taking hit after hit, either to her ribs or her abdomen, occasionally across her face. Her eyes were not even fully open anymore, and her lips were red from the blood, but she didn't make any effort to throw back a punch or at least get out of that man's way when he took breaks to catch his breath.

Gi-hun could have sworn he saw the corner of her lips raise right before a strong jab hit her across the right cheek and threw her off her unreliable balance right into the wall of the cage again, but surely, Gi-hun ensured himself, he must have imagined it. She is losing and bleeding. How could she smile?

He watched with his heart tightening in his chest how her face was pushed into the wire making out the walls of the cage and before he knew it, his clenched fists told him he was one more dirty move away from yelling out how unfair this whole fight was. Clearly, she wasn't supposed to fight a man whose hand was the size of her head, and clearly using the environment must have been against the rules even a place such as this one must have.

Then again, he had forgotten for a moment in just what kind of place he had winded up following her. It escaped his mind that he was breathing in the thick, musky air of a gym's basement, eardrums vibrating with the loud music of a gathering most likely illegal.

For the first time since he recognized her as part of that cage fight, Gi-hun's mind filled with the right questions — Why was she there anyway? Did she volunteer for this thing? Is she actually fighting for money? She sure didn't look forced or scared when entering the building all those hours ago, but to walk so confidently to a losing match... Something didn't feel quite right to him.

The sudden increase in crowd noise made him blink back to the present and realize he couldn't see Yoon-ah, nor her adversary anymore. A chant broke out and he understood immediately that the fight had turned into a tackle to the floor, one that he had to see now that he asked himself — Was she there because he didn't show up today? What if she wasn't lying? What if she did win and he had been her last hope left? You got out of the games, yet here you are, still killing players by being alive.

With his heart thundering in his chest and his eyes wide, Gi-hun pushed through the crowd and towards the cage, trying his best to ignore the all too familiar sting of guilt forming a knot in his throat.

Three more uneven rows of chanting people stood between him and the cage but through their raised arms, he caught glimpses of the chokehold which Yoon-ah has been maneuvered into. Her face was losing its color, her eyes — however little of them was still visible — were turning bloodshot while her limbs were spasming their last attempts to stray from the numbness of unconsciousness. Given the amount of blood on her lips, on her shirt and on her bandaged hands, Gi-hun feared it wouldn't be a quick sleep she fell into, but the final one that she took instead.

His right hand reached around back to touch the handle of his gun. A single gunshot towards the tall ceiling would have been enough to disperse some of the crowd and at the very least startle that man into letting go of Yoon-ah before his only chance at a new lead disappeared, before someone else died.

He didn't get to remove his pistol from its holster though.

Yoon-ah gasped, eyebrows raising, and her right hand lifted to frantically tap on the man's arm. Instantly, the guy let go and lowered the back of her head to the ground, far gentler than he would have expected that behemoth to ever be.

'Bolt wins,' the screen above the cage spelled out and the crowd had mostly reacted with a cheer. Gi-hun cared very little about how the bets have looked in that room. He was far more interested in actually seeing Yoon-ah stand up, which is why he rejoiced in the crowd dispersing to return to the betting booth near the exit to claim their tickets.

She didn't get help while standing up, which frankly, given how long it took her to do so, Gi-hun found rather cruel. This whole thing was simply barbaric, locking up a frail woman in a cage with a brute, bringing her to the point she coughs up spit mixed with blood, have her tremble from every joint and gasp her breaths while she drags her steps to congratulate her opponent.

But as soon as she climbed out of the cage, he couldn't blame it on his imagination anymore — she was smiling.

She can smile all she want, Gi-hun told himself while watching Yoon-ah from a distance, keeping himself close enough not to lose her from his sight as she walked towards the exit. But no way she can drive home in this condition.

He expected to be correct, but he didn't expect to see her outside, walking past her car and down the alley, even as her swayed steps told him she was barely holding herself up as it was.

She isn't going to make it home, Gi-hun concluded, making sure to not follow her too closely either now that they were out in the open and the streets were either way deserted.

After a few bumps into walls while trying to make turns into connecting alleys, Yoon-ah led the way down a short flight of stairs, into a tunnel connecting to the other side of a larger street, buzzing with midnight traffic. Sporadic white lights flickered between the graffiti coating the humid walls down there. Something moist on the ground not worth even thinking about echoed each step taken in the rounded hallway.

Yoon-ah was only around halfway across when Gi-hun made his first step off the stairs, but that was nonetheless the moment she stopped, her head dropping back. "Are you going to at least walk besides me, Seong Gi-hun?"

Slowly, as neither numbness nor adrenaline could cover up just how much each movement hurt, Yoon-ah looked back over her shoulder, making eye contact with Gi-hun. Though he had initially stalled besides the stairs, meeting her eyes unfroze him from the spot and he walked forward, in no hurry whatsoever to explain this choice even to himself.

"If I knew you'd change your mind so fast about my offer, I would have rescheduled my fight to another day," Yoon-ah admitted, turning her attention back on the exit stairs further away and onto actually remaining upright while walking towards them.

Perhaps she felt his stare burn into the side of her neck where the red marks from that chokehold caught his attention, or maybe she made her way into his mind to guess the exact question burning itself into his thoughts — why? Whichever was the case, Yoon-ah spoke again, a little calmer now, looking right ahead at the daunting task the stairs presented itself as, "I'll ask you not to judge how I choose to make surviving a little more bearable."

Getting beat up close to deathmakes it easier for you? Gi-hun's thoughts were outraged by what he assumed she was trying to say, but he knew better than to make assumptions and speak that out loud. Instead, he preferred circling back to something she said before. "How do you know I changed my mind?"

"You're here, aren't you?" Yoon-ah didn't seem to mind the subject change, especially not as he focus was more so on readjusting her compsure and getting ready to climb up the stairs, rather than on him. "You could have called it a day after your guys followed my every breath in the park this morning," her roughed up voice continued and she took the first step, pausing due to the strain. "Or after seeing what the gym stop was all about."

Gi-hun didn't bother with answering, at least not for now and especially not to a statement he hadn't a clue how to defend himself against just yet. Instead, seeing her struggle with the stairs and not wishing to see her trip and add onto the injuries he was starting to believe she might have been to blame for, he grabbed hold of her left arm and gave her some support going up. 

She didn't thank him. Not that he expected her to. If more people appreciated his gesture as the most basic of kindnesses, perhaps the world would have been kind enough to not have those deadly games exist at all.

The tunnel had led them to the entrace of a residential area, a complex of several apartment buildings, an area just about public enough, albeit without a soul out so late on the sidewalk, that Gi-hun felt compelled to let go of her arm as soon as they made it to the top of the stairs and acknowledge he should turn back.

Before he could make a single movement away, Yoon-ah nodded towards the first building, "My place is up there." She looked back at him, "You've come all this way. Might as well take a look at all I have gathered so far."

Prolonged silence instead of a prompt response made her sigh and slightly adjust her posture to face him. "You have a gun with you, right?" she asked, though immediately also measuring him from top to bottom. "Do I look like I can pose a threat to you tonight?"

His answer was walking by her side and taking out his gun from its holster, to hold it close, half concealed by his sleeve, right in the space between them. They didn't exchange a single word after that. Not in the elevator, not on the hallway of the last floor and not for some good minutes after Yoon-ah let him into her apartment, smelling and looking as if no one lived there, and it was still just up for sell, brand new after being built. The emptiness and diffused blue lights coming from a billboard across the street painted to Gi-hun the picture of a place left as it has been for the most part, a place to exist in, not live in.

He had to make it past the entry hallway and the untouched kitchen to catch the first glimpse of some life in that place. It was gruesome.

In the living room — he called it that simply due to the couch pushed all the way to the side —, hung from the ceiling, a boxing bag presented to him dried blood stains over usage marks, a sight which made him look back at her and towards her hands, remembering the bruised knuckles he saw the other night only to see them in a different light.

To make surviving more bearable.

"This way," Yoon-ah prompted him to follow in the room to the side where, right next to her mattress on the floor, she crammed everything. Piles of documents, two computers with several hanging screens, all to frame a wall on which pictures and pieces of paper have been pinned to.

"That's all I have," Yoon-ah leant in the doorway, letting Gi-hun step inside. Tiredness compelled her to lean her head onto the frame and watch the floor rather than him. "Traced winners back ten years. Most of them disappeared. Changed their names, left the country, you name it. Others are simply missing, like the guy from 2015. There's a proper police report on his disappearance though. The others didn't have that sort of luck."

Having adjusted her posture, she realized he's noticed his own picture up there too. "I wasn't expecting to find you so fast after you got out of there. Again, most people choose to disappear right away, which makes looking for witnesses a lot harder than it sounds."

But Gi-hun was not interested in his little corner of her wall, not even in her mentions of needing 'witnesses', but rather in the small picture pinned to a board forgotten on the ground. He picked up the whole board and pointed at the picture. Merely looking at it made a chill run doen his spine. "Where did you take this?" He asked, forgetting to care about the tremble in his voice.

Like an image ripped out of his most vivid nightmares, the damned song they used to play before each game came back to him while he stared down at a picture of those convoluted, colorful stairs.

"A local art exhibition," Yoon-ah responded. "I have the details of the painter on the back. Apparently he's an architect who participated in the art exhibition as part of his university studies. His background check doesn't indicate that he'd be a past winner of the games, but some odd payments could mean he's an employee. Maybe a guard. I've been looking for him for the past couple of months now though, and ever since I asked more about the painting, it's like he disappeared entirely."

"So," Gi-hun lowered the board back to the ground, "you don't have anything really?"

"I have a connection in the police force who's willing to hear me out so long as I have proof of what had happened or a witness that can back-up my story," Yoon-ah didn't hesitate to respond to him, however, she did so while moving away from the crammed room and towards the kitchen instead where, with a shaking hand, she retrieved a glass, taking it directly to the sink to fill it up with water. "I still have my tracker. I keep it in a box. That and the scar behind my ear is a piece of evidence. I suppose you got rid of yours." She looked over her shoulder only to watch for Gi-hun's nod.

"Can you really trust this guy?" He continued after the confirmation, walking towards her kitchen. He found her trust to keep her back turned at him undeniably intoxicating. They did not know each other further than the fact both of them have had to survive the unsurvivable cruelties of the games, yet there she was, facing the sink and letting an armed man just stand behind her. By all means, he should be on guard as well, but there he was too, following her example and finally putting his gun away.

Yoon-ah simply nodded as an answer, preferring to instead gulp down the water and hoping it helps her dry and bruised throat.

"I suppose you won't mind if I check that for myself," Gi-hun appreciated out loud and, with a final look around, sighed. "Tomorrow night. Come by the hotel so we can discuss the details of this plan of yours and what security measures it involves."

"I've got time now," Yoon-ah hurried to drop her empty glass down and turn around. She watched with wide eyes as Gi-hun walked himself back to the door through which they came.

"You should clean yourself up," he sighed, grasping the handle. Desperation recognized desperation, and though he would have liked to stay, he couldn't deny preferring they did this in a place he knew to be safe with utmost certainty. "And we should both be more rested and prepared," he presented her with a superficial reason instead though.

Yoon-ah looked like she was going to object, so Gi-hun nodded first, a silent goodbye, and exited, heart a little lighter knowing at least that she seemed to have told him the truth yesterday — she was looking to achieve the same thing as him, and though he didn't like her plan, nor its reliance on the faith in others, perhaps he could convince her to follow his instead.

《 🦑 》

AUTHOR'S NOTE |   
Alrightyy, apparently I could think of nothing else this weekend but this chapter so the next update came a little sooner than expect or planned 😅

Hope you all enjoy!! And please do consider leaving some feedback if you're reading this, I would very much appreciate it.