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The Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting room feels frighteningly empty.
It didn’t used to feel like this, even when Agent Choi was alone in it. Despite the emptiness the place had always been a home, a room that had been painstakingly built into a solace by everyone who had ever belonged in it.
But now, the emptiness is chilling.
Kim Soleum has been in the Glass Prison for six days now. He refuses to eat, refuses to sleep, refuses to talk, and the interrogators are starting to lose patience with him. They’re starting to get more aggressive, proposing more and more horrifying methods. Choi had to give management hell for even daring to consider it.
The place isn’t completely empty. Jaekwan is still around sometimes, but for the most part he avoids Choi. He hasn’t forgiven him for not trusting him yet.
Plus Jaekwan has been running himself dead to get approved as an interrogator. While tests and paperwork have always been his forte, he’s stressing himself out by trying not to be stressed out, because the fact that Agent Choi had failed the objectivity test rattled something in them both.
If Jaekwan fails as well, they really might be doomed.
Choi sits at his desk, reviewing the files from the interrogations that he doesn’t have permission to read. Kim Soleum says absolutely nothing. His condition only worsens every day. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He was supposed to be in and out of there before anything could go wrong.
Why is he doing this?
He knows that he’s been exposed as a spy. Choi removed his ban. He knows he’ll be protected after he confesses, so why?
Kim Soleum doesn’t open up about the reason he was sent here as a spy, about where he got all his information from, about Director Ho, about what he did before he started working at the Disaster Management Agency—
Why is he keeping quiet, when he knows that Choi knows everything already?
Does he really have something more to hide…?
Was Choi wrong? Did he miss something? Did he make another terrible miscalculation?
The clock on the wall ticks endlessly. It’s late in the evening and he still hasn’t switched any lights on. The dimness adds to the eerie feeling of the room, and makes him strain his eyes to read, but he can’t look away. He needs to find out what he’s missing.
To save Kim Soleum? To damn him?
He doesn’t know anymore, and it’s making him insane.
Jaekwan was right. For all that Choi talks about being a team and working together, he holds everyone at arms length and doesn’t trust them for shit. He would trust Kim Soleum to jump in front of him and take the bullet if Choi was shot in the chest—but he doesn’t trust him to not turn back and return to Daydream’s side.
It’s insane. Who is their maknae?
What sort of person works for the side of evil while their heart stays horrifyingly kind?
The sort of person who is desperate, or has no grip on reality—and Kim Soleum has always had the traits of both.
The interrogation papers tell Choi nothing except that Agent Grapes is only digging himself a deeper grave every day.
Choi shuts the file, taking a deep breath. He isn’t getting anywhere. At this rate, the intensity of the interrogation will just keep being ramped up until Kim Soleum breaks.
He pushes himself up. He needs to think clearer. There has to be a way out of this.
There has to be a way to push Soleum into honesty that doesn’t kill him.
Choi is certain he could do it, if they’d just let him in, but management is too pissed at the amount of chaos that he’s caused to even consider him at this point.
He needs to think.
He heads into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face. It soaks his sleeves and the collar of his shirt, drenching strands of his hair, but it calms him down. They still have time.
They still have time.
He glances up at his reflection, and—
His heart stops.
There, in the mirror, right by his side—
—is Kim Soleum.
/
There is no one else in the bathroom.
Agent Choi turns to look behind himself reflexively, but it’s only him. And yet, the damning reflection of his junior stays in the mirror. Watching him.
Just watching.
This isn’t the Kim Soleum he knows. It isn’t the withdrawn, falling apart, anxious Soleum that he’s worked with. This Kim Soleum is—someone else.
He stands tall, in a neat suit instead of his worn bureau jumper. His glasses are nowhere to be seen. The dark circles under his eyes are somehow even worse but there’s a calm intensity that he watches Choi with.
He looks like a Soleum that’s learned how to put himself together.
A force that causes destruction on purpose, instead of out of desperation.
“Well, well. What’s this?” Choi asks, trying for a smile. “Our youngest, did you make it out of prison?”
At that, the reflection’s expression twists.
It twists into something ugly. Disgusted. Pure, unadulterated hatred.
Choi can’t look away.
Their Kim Soleum—Choi would never say this out loud, but the man used to look at Choi like he was a star.
Of course, Soleum was annoyed with him half the time and often treated him like a bug that wouldn’t go away, which was possibly Jaekwan’s influence—but in between, in brief moments of what Choi used to think was honesty, he would look at Choi like he was Soleum’s personal hero.
It was an expression that Choi hadn’t known what to do with, because he’d never done anything to deserve it.
It was an expression even more startling coming from a spy.
The expression Kim Soleum has now, in the mirror—it’s something Choi has never had to see before.
But it’s finally something that he deserves.
Something that could, perhaps, be honest.
The figure in the mirror moves closer, leaning against the glass. It doesn’t break eye contact, an ugly sneer still twisting its face.
It raises its fist, and—
BANG.
—slams it against the glass.
The room shudders, but there’s no crack in the mirror.
“Ahhh, Grapes,” Choi says. “What do you think this will help?”
BANG.
It slams the glass again.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
If this is a Darkness, it isn’t one that Choi recognizes. He’s heard of mirror darknesses before, namely the one in an elevator, the one in a Hall of Mirrors, and several in public bathrooms, but this is not one that he recognizes.
The entry requirements don’t match, and the reflection doesn’t match either. He should either be seeing a twisted version of himself, or a shadowy horror of a corpse, but this is neither.
In addition, the bathroom door is still wide open. This isn’t a closed off area. He could leave at any time, and go back to Hyunmoo Team 1’s waiting room, leaving this ghost here.
That leaves only two options.
The first option: This really is Kim Soleum. He’s doing one of his strange tricks to communicate outside of the Glass Prison, which, knowing their rookie, isn’t entirely impossible. If anyone could learn to break the rules of the Glass Prison, it would be him.
And the second, more likely option: This is a reflection that Kim Soleum left behind in a Darkness that has somehow broken out of it.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“Come now, Grapes. You have to know this isn’t going to work.”
The easiest way to piss off a reflection is to treat it like a fake. Asking it are you the real Kim Soleum or a cheap copy would be like planting a target over Choi’s head. The best way to deal with this situation is to simply treat the reflection as if it’s real—and if it is real, then. That works too.
The reflection mouths something that Choi can’t decipher. But then words appear on the mirror, in thin, watery lines.
LET ME OUT
“You know I can’t do that.”
LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT
The mirror is covered entirely in no time, the threatening text appearing and then instantly dripping down the mirror into nothingness. Kim Soleum’s eyes shine with crazed intensity. His gaze is firmly locked on Choi’s neck, as if he wouldn’t hesitate to sink his fingers into it.
He hadn’t hesitated before.
Kim Soleum hadn’t regretted it for a second before he’d reached towards Agent Choi’s ugliest weakness.
“All you need to do is answer the questions that you’ve been asked,” Choi says easily. “That isn’t so hard, is it, Grapes? You’ll be out in no time.”
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The room shakes even worse, but still, no cracks appear in the mirror.
“You know you can’t hide anything in there,” Choi says. “It’s just a few simple questions. Who were you, before you came to the Agency? We both know that already.”
Kim Soleum’s eyes flash angrily. And then words appear on the mirror. But this time, in blood red.
YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
The blood drips down the mirror, leaving ugly red streaks. Choi can see his own face reflected in the words, as if the blood is on him.
/
He has to leave the bathroom just to make sure nothing in the Prison has changed.
The reflection slams the glass angrily as he leaves, but it’s unable to stop him. Agent Choi steps out easily and gives the Agent on duty today a quick call.
They check on Kim Soleum, and nothing has changed. He’s still in his cell, staring into space, refusing to eat or sleep or speak. His breathing is slow but passable, and his heart rate is safe. They brought him a special meal today but he ignored it the way he ignored everything else. There are no signs of disturbance, no sign that he could be summoning some kind of power to communicate with Choi through a mirror.
Everything in the Prison is fine.
Which means—this might just be a reflection after all.
The demands to be let out were reasonable. Any trapped ghost would want to be let out after all.
It’s the words at the end that have shaken him—
You don’t know anything.
A clear indication that the ghost shares Kim Soleum’s memory.
The banging from the bathroom is so loud that Choi can still hear it out here, outside in the corridor of the waiting room. He’s lucky that this reflection can’t speak, because being forced to listen to Kim Soleum screaming for freedom would give Choi nightmares for months.
He exhales slowly, puts his phone back in his pocket, and heads back inside to deal with the monster.
The reflection is waiting for him, fingers digging into the mirror almost as if it could claw its way out. It looks terrifying, but also—nothing more than a trapped animal. And that’s what Kim Soleum is, really.
He has no power in this situation, no matter how desperately he tries to show his teeth.
Choi has the upper hand, but he’s no longer sure if he deserves it.
“Let’s talk, then,” he tells the reflection. “You’re Kim Soleum, aren’t you?”
The words take a moment to appear in their watery form.
YES
“Why don’t you want to tell me what happened to you?”
The reflection scratches at the mirror furiously, leaving bloody tracks in its wake. It’s writing words, Choi thinks, but he can’t read any of it. It’s a language beyond him that unsettles something deep inside of him.
The words scrawl across the mirror, in blood and water that might even be tears.
Choi understands none of it but he can tell that it’s important. That it might be the key to figuring out what the fuck is going on with Kim Soleum.
But—what does it say?
It’s not code. It’s not even language. It’s just—
What the hell is it?
The reflection looks at him with disappointed eyes.
The blood of the cursed script drips down the mirror, disappearing as it streaks down.
It’s replaced with simple Korean that tells him nothing at all.
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND
AND YOU WON’T
“Alright,” Choi says carefully. “Alright. Let me ask something else. Why did you come here as a spy?”
The response is instant.
TO GO HOME
“Where is your home?”
OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT
LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT
“Let you out of where?”
GLASS CAGE GLASS CAGE GLASS CAGE
…ah.
DON’T DESERVE DON’T DESERVE DON’T DESERVE
SCARED SCARED SCARED SCARED SCARED
He knows that this isn’t Kim Soleum.
Whether it’s a reflection with a purpose or one that’s just here to fuck with his guilt—it isn’t Kim Soleum but it’s doing a perfect job of cutting right through Choi’s heart.
“Soleum-ah,” he starts, keeping his voice gentle. “I know you’re scared, but it’ll be over soon. If you just answer the questions.”
CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT
LET ME GO
LET ME GO
LET ME GO
The reflection tries to smash the glass again, the room shaking so hard that the hand soap near the sink tumbles and falls to the floor by Choi's feet.
LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO
There’s a ringing in Choi’s ears as the words keep pouring down. The reflection looks at him like it wishes he was dead. It’s unnerving to see Kim Soleum like this, with a face that he doesn’t recognize.
The ringing gets louder, and louder, and louder, until he’s hunched over the sink with his hands over his ears, trying to steady himself.
His vision is getting blurry. He grips the edge of the sink, trying to hold himself up.
It’s too loud.
Too deafening.
Too painful.
Like someone who has been forced to their absolute lowest screaming directly in his ears.
LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO
“Agent Choi?”
Jaekwan’s voice cuts in through the ringing, tense and concerned. And then, more panicked—
“Agent Choi!”
Jaekwan grabs him from behind, holding him up, and then Choi feels more than hears his sharp inhale as he notices the state of the mirror.
“...Agent Grapes?”
/
Jaekwan has the sense to drag Choi out of the bathroom instantly.
It makes Choi realize why he failed the objectivity test to begin with. If he was standing around making conversation with a ghost in a mirror in some effort to learn about a man trapped in prison—clearly his brain wasn’t working as well as it should be.
Jaekwan locks the bathroom door and sends for a security team to investigate. They’re both too close to this to make any sense of what’s happening, he says. It’s another excellent point. Another reason why Choi failed his test, clearly.
The ringing is gone now, but he can’t forget it. The fury in the letters that had appeared, the admission of fear, the desperation with which the reflection had insisted that it didn’t deserve to be where it was—
Was it…really not Kim Soleum?
The reflection wasn’t asking to be let out of the mirror—it wanted to be let out of the ‘glass cage.’
Had one of his reflections wandered all the way out here to beg in his place?
What was even happening?
The security team takes a look, and they find nothing out of the ordinary. The mirror is clear, there are no traces of anything supernatural around it, both him and Jaekwan are instructed to get themselves checked for contamination and to get some sleep because they look like death and are probably attracting ghosts that waited for them to be at their weakest. The bathroom is declared safe to enter again, and the moment they leave, Choi does.
There is no sign of Kim Soleum.
He waits for longer, in case the man is hiding, but he doesn’t appear. The hours tick past. He checks regularly. The reflection doesn’t appear again.
At a loss, Agent Choi clocks out for the day, and heads home.
/
He turns on the lights in his apartment, steps over the mess of clothes and cigarette ends and empty bottles of soju that he hasn’t cleaned up in a week.
He heads into the bathroom to wash up.
There’s a figure standing in the mirror, waiting for him, an ugly grin stretching across its face.
“You followed me home,” Choi murmurs.
/
I WON’T LEAVE UNTIL YOU LET ME OUT
/
It’s not the strangest thing that Choi has done—getting drunk in his bathroom with a ghost.
He’s changed out of his work clothes into shorts and a t-shirt, sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor and shamelessly pouring soju into a glass. Kim Soleum watches him from the mirror in disgust, fingers scratching impatiently against the glass.
“Want a drink?” Choi murmurs, just to be funny.
The reflection does not find it funny, if the smash of its fist against the mirror is anything to go by.
“Soleum-ah,” Choi drawls. “I don’t get what you think you’re doing here. I have no authority to let you out of Prison. It’s never been in my hands. Of all people, why are you here with me?”
The reflection says nothing.
“Even haunting Jaekwan would make more sense. He really might get approved as an interrogator, you know? Go haunt him for a while. Make him take your side.” He pauses. “That is, if you think threatening us is making us take your side.”
Again, the reflection says nothing.
“So tell me. What are you hoping to accomplish here? What do you think I can do for you?”
He locks eyes with Kim Soleum, taking a slow sip of his soju.
The words appear slowly.
YOU KNOW ME
Choi frowns.
It’s the last thing he expected the reflection to say. After all the accusations that have been hurled at him today, telling him that he would never understand and that he doesn’t know shit—these quiet words are the last thing he thought he would see.
“Really,” he muses aloud. “I don’t think I do.”
The words disappear, replaced again, this time larger and more insistent.
YOU KNOW ME
Choi frowns, downing the entirety of his glass in one go.
He doesn’t know anything about Kim Soleum. This face in the mirror is one he can’t even recognize—this must be how he looked back during his Daydream days. A crisp suit, a neat tie, eyes that stare into his soul when the current Soleum barely makes eye contact on a good day. Every day that passes Agent Choi only realizes how little he knows about his junior.
But the ghost disagrees.
YOU KNOW ME
Agent Choi doesn’t want to think he does.
The man who dived in front of Choi to protect him from Director Ho, who traded his life for Choi’s own, who went into a cursed Darkness and gave up his arm for Jaekwan’s legs, who cried uncontrollably at the thought of returning from Mermaid Palace without saving anyone—
Agent Choi doesn’t know him.
He doesn’t.
He sighs, fisting a hand in his hair. “What do you want, Kim Soleum?”
LET ME OUT
“You know I can’t do that.”
SCARED
“No one will hurt you in there. You don’t have to be scared.”
NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE
DON’T DESERVE
DON’T DESERVE
DON’T DESERVE
“Maybe you don’t,” Choi says. “But it’s procedure. Just. Go with it, okay? I’m—I’m sorry, Grapes.”
It’s the first time he’s admitted it.
That he’s sorry.
That he took the trust of his juniors and trampled all over it, that he barged into the darkness to save Kim Soleum and then pulled the ground out from under his feet.
That to be cautious, he ended up being cruel.
That if he’d just explained the situation—maybe Kim Soleum wouldn’t be stuck in there for this long. Maybe he would have answered questions. And eaten. And slept. Instead of losing his mind convinced that the Agency was now his enemy.
The reflection takes a moment to respond. When it does, Choi feels his stomach sink.
NOT OKAY
/
The reflection follows him around for a few days.
It would be easy to avoid. Choi could just stay away from mirrors altogether, and he’d never see Kim Soleum’s face again. He wouldn’t have to watch as the reflection wrote words that crushed his soul every time he locked eyes with it.
But he can’t help it.
Choi hasn’t been allowed to see the real Kim Soleum, so the reflection is the best he can do.
Days pass. They learn nothing about each other, him and the figure in the mirror. Jaekwan gets approved as an interrogator, and he and the real Kim Soleum bond rapidly. He gets a confession out of him so fast that it makes all the other Agents look a little silly.
Jaekwan has always been kinder than Choi. More put together. More—willing to save Kim Soleum.
And yet, it was Agent Choi that Soleum used to look at as if he hung the stars and the moon himself.
And now, it’s Agent Choi that Soleum stares at through a mirror, like he thinks Choi is the scum of the earth.
They talk more, him and the reflection. It gets nowhere. The reflection hates him, and Choi holds onto that hatred. There’s something honest in it, he thinks. Something real.
On the third day of Jaekwan’s interrogation, he comes back with news.
“The mirror really isn’t his doing,” he tells Choi. “I asked him. I told him there was a strange figure following you around and he said he has nothing to do with it.”
“I thought so,” Choi says, still staring at the face in the glass.
Jaekwan places a hand on his shoulder. “He was in the elevator darkness once,” he says. “At the end of it, he ended up giving freedom to the mirror version of himself by letting it out on the first floor. He thinks that—this might be that reflection. Trying to look into our world and return the favour.”
The figure in the mirror looks directly at them.
And then slowly, slowly, it nods.
There’s a tightness in Choi’s throat.
Trust their rookie to clear a darkness by setting the ghost in it free.
Jaekwan looks up at the figure. “You don’t have to worry,” he says seriously. “Agent Grapes will be released soon. I guarantee it.”
The figure is quiet for a long time. And then slowly, words appear.
OKAY
And then it disappears, leaving the words behind.
/
It doesn’t leave permanently. The reflection seems to trust Jaekwan, but it still lingers. Agent Choi doesn’t see it as often, and the reflection no longer speaks to him much, but he catches sight of it every now and then, just watching him.
Kim Soleum is released at last. It’s like Choi can finally breathe again. He’s rushed through a health check up and a bunch of official procedures and is finally brought to the Hyunmoo Team 1 waiting room. Choi and Jaekwan practically run to find him, but by then—
He’s gone.
All that’s left is a resignation letter.
As Choi reads it, his heart falls lower and lower. He’s made a mistake. He’s messed up, somehow. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. He had it all planned out, how did it go so wrong?
How did it go so wrong?
Weeks pass. Kim Soleum never returns. He must have gone home, to whatever this cursed place is. Whatever place it was so impossible to return to that he had to do all this just to get there. Choi doesn’t see his reflection again, and the worst part is—he misses it.
He finds himself staring blankly into empty mirrors, at his own serious face, wishing that he could at least hear something from the ghost in the mirror that had tried so hard to save his junior.
But it doesn’t appear.
Things are uncomfortable between him and Jaekwan. There is too much unsaid, too much that Choi has messed up. Choi still teases him and annoys him and buys him meals, but there’s a tenseness that’s settled between them.
Like there’s a quiet grief that they’re still learning how to bury.
But weeks pass.
Time goes on.
It always does.
/
One night, Choi wakes up to a BANG.
/
He wakes with a start, already reaching for his weapon.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
It’s coming from the bathroom.
Choi knows who it is instantly. He stumbles out of bed, slamming the bathroom door open, and there he is.
Kim Soleum, fingers pressed up against the mirror.
He looks the same as he did before—neat suit, wild eyes, but with a fear in them that wasn’t there before. He looks like an animal on the run. On his last thread of sanity.
The words appear in blood.
LET ME OUT
“What’s wrong?” Choi asks. “Is he trapped somewhere?”
LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT
The ringing in Choi’s ears grows louder and louder with every word.
What the hell is going on?
Is Soleum not home? Is he not safe? Where is he now?
The reflection slams against the mirror, over and over, panicked and afraid.
NOT SAFE NOT SAFE NOT SAFE
NOT HOME NOT HOME NOT HOME
NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM NO LONGER KIM SOLEUM
Choi tries to push himself up, but the ringing is too loud. His vision is getting blurry. He grips the edge of the sink, trying to pull himself back up, but—
It’s too loud.
Too deafening.
Too painful.
Like someone who has been forced to their absolute lowest is screaming directly in his ears.
“I’ll save him,” he tries to say. “Calm—calm down, I’ll save him—”
The ringing stops abruptly.
It takes a while to orient himself, as he heaves in an effort to breathe. When his vision clears, when he can finally look up—
The mirror is clear of words again.
And the reflection is staring at him.
With hope in its eyes.
The expression is far too similar to the Kim Soleum he had known. To the one that had looked up to him. To the one he had cared for.
To the one that didn’t hate Choi.
Their maknae.
Words appear on the mirror, shaky. Unsure.
TRUTH?
“Yes, I promise. I’ll save him.”
There’s a pause. The words disappear again.
The reflection watches him with careful eyes. It’s too similar to the Kim Soleum he remembers. Despite the entirely unfamiliar appearance—it looks just like him.
It presses its palm up against the glass, gentle, as if trying to reach for him.
Agent Choi shouldn’t reach back. No matter how much this ghost looks like Kim Soleum, it isn’t him. He shouldn’t reach back. He doesn’t know what could happen, if he dares to touch the mirror.
He feels his fingers twitching in want. The regret eating away at him. He hasn’t seen Kim Soleum in so long.
He never once got to apologize.
But before he can reach out—
Words appear on the mirror again.
DAYDREAM SECURITY TEAM
It’s the only information that he’s given, before the ghost lets its hand slide down the mirror, and then quietly disappears.
Choi is left alone on the bathroom floor.
Their maknae…
What did he do?
/