inverseye | ic inbox

[ ...

...

much like earlier, and luckily kim soleum had made the words fuzz out, fade from time to time as though they're going through a poor connection. he feels... annoyed, no, this feeling of disgust, no, this tight feeling in his gut where ooze draws up to his throat. baek saheon lived because he asked... for help?

if it was anyone else but agent choi or the other man with them, soleum would have never known. there are entities that can be reached, individuals who can bring back the dead— espera, one, there's sleep. what he knows of her, a young creature probably obsessed with the concept of romance, will probably throw a temper tantrum if her belongings are taken. could he, would he? it's not the first time baek saheon has called on the help of an entity that resulted in negative results.

fuck, fuck, fuck!

and he's happy about it?!

and they suffered for it?!

why couldn't it have been me who died?

selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish. ]

[ and if soleum could, if he could break baek saheon's jaw so he could no longer speak, if he could crush that brain of his underneath his work shoe that he could no longer think. if he could deface what makes baek saheon so appealing to supposed higher powers that they'd no longer look his way and he would have to suffer on his own with no one and nothing.

...

soleum doesn't even know if that would make him happy. ]

[ Saheon would probably prefer some of that, all of it maybe, to the nauseating anxiety he feels waiting for the words to appear on the page. It just doesn't matter if he did this or that, or who lived or died, when it's suddenly a matter of not just his life, but his tenuous grasp to human sanity. Haha. What he has left, anyway.

What is important about this? It's just how the world works. It's not unique or worth examining. The agent is stringing him along. He doesn't care, and Saheon doesn't have any good excuse with his brain like this. There are a thousand running disordered: they threatened me, they were going to kill me if i tried to run, they would have done the same, they were probably thinking the same thing, but he can't make sense of what the agent would want to hear. ]

why does it matter.

[ Because the honest truth is that he didn't want them to die for any reason at all. ]

we were going to die. i just wanted it to be them instead of me

and

andd

a

anybody would say yes then. you woudld? you would. it wasnt like i could take it back, and we were all dead anyway, so why does it matter if someone wants to help me?

[ there's blame, because there was no "we", there was never any "we", and kim soleum feels like he's talking to a dog that can't stop pissing on the floor. how many times will it take until he stops? ]

[ no one has to die for saheon to live, it's always been his choice who dies over and over again. before, even this time too, the fact he called upon some higher power and they listened to him. it drives a knife through soleum, he bleeds at the realization, if only he had known it was possible.

he didn't know. he should have done more. even if it was pinning the man down to keep redirect his focus on him, he should have done something. ]

....

[ But there's nothing to say. Outside the letter, he leans down against the cold surface of a nearby dumpster bin, the frozen putrid overflowing garbage, feeling the cold seep through his coat and into his back. There's nothing to say. The agent says that, because he's a good person, but all Saheon can think is that if the crime was wanting people to die, then that was a crime he committed every day, every hour, every conversation. He wished someone dead the second he saw them, for no other reason then he found their presence uncomfortable.

Help him. What a joke. What a stupid joke. The agent is such a fool.

He flips the boat over. The pen is in his hand. He flips the boat over. The pen touches the paper. He removes it. Puts it down. Removes it again. He flips the boat again. The words the agent wrote have already faded away, he's only staring at the ones singed in his memory.

He has to think of something, or he won't get answers. ]

do you want an apology

[ He can't do it. He can. It would only take writing, he doesn't need to think, he can find the words the agent wants to hear. ]

because i did it too you too

[ blood, effort, determination, help from others brought them back. an apology never did a thing, cursing at himself did nothing, there was nothing he can do that's as simple as saying a few simple words was able to bring them back. baek saheon should understand that, for his own circumstance, didn't it take him gambling on others to flee from his ugly livelihood? wasn't it risking it all on someone to handle it be the reason why...

however, when soleum thinks about why saheon felt that no one could help him, that he had to rely on something like that. isn't it the same song and dance from before, it's so ingrained into him that he would refer to it. it's why soleum should have been more mindful, but he was afraid himself, he couldn't do much because he's weak. ]