Chapter Text
The fall seems to go on forever.
Seong Gi-hun has heard it said that in the moment before death, a person’s life flashes before their eyes. He imagines what that would look like for most people, better people; their first steps, first kiss, first love, first child. A gleaming cascade of memories, achievements, victories, each one sweeter than the last.
Victories. He can count them on one hand; as sweet as nicotine, and as venomous.
The strike at Dragon Motors, tear gas stinging his eyes and searing his lungs, watching as a friend he’s worked beside for ten years dies in front of him. The severance pay is a pittance, and it comes at the cost of Ga-yeong’s birth and the last of Eun-ji’s respect. Weeks later, he bets the last of it on a horse that crashes to the ground at the first hurdle.
Nothing had ever felt more appropriate.
Years later, his big win at the races, six and eight tearing across the finish line, his heart pounding as his own jubilation roars in his ears. Six and eight, Ga-yeong’s birthday; it almost feels like a reprieve. Eun-ji is long gone, but he’ll lavish his winnings on Ga-yeong, show his little girl what a real father looks like.
Within minutes, his winnings are stolen from him — oh, Sae-byeok, his heart still aches — and he’s lying in a heap on the piss-soaked floor of a public bathroom, a snivelling wretch with a bloody nose, signing away his organs to the loan sharks who he sees more frequently than his own kid. All because of the horses.
How quickly he would come to see the world through their eyes.
Ddakji. He gets his shit handed to him again and again, that rat bastard smirking at him with every brutal blow, the humiliation almost as bad as the pain. Then it happens; his blue tile hits hard and true, the red tile flips, and he’s going to slap the slimy smile right off that smug face… but he doesn’t. He takes the hundred thousand won, and the little brown card that will ruin his life.
They meet again, amid the mess of empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays that for the past three years has been Gi-hun’s home — no, hideout, nowhere feels like home any more — but this time, the game is Russian Roulette.
Six chambers in the cylinder, with one round between them. No more than six rounds in the game.
He’s won a game of six rounds before, and all it had cost him was several hundred lives, a knife through his hand — oh, Sang-woo, the grief and guilt still haunt him — and a knife through his heart. The stakes are lower this time; his life, or the life of the man — no, not a man, the dog — sitting opposite him, still smirking, gun in hand.
Seong Gi-hun could not have said which one mattered to him less.
He wins, of course. Trash, the dog had called him, a piece of trash who got lucky, and he had, hadn’t he? Winning at Russian Roulette is nothing but luck, and Gi-hun doesn’t consider it a victory. He wouldn’t say that the dog had exactly lost, either; it had kept its promise, played by its own rules, and dutifully blown its brains out when prompted. Loyal to its masters until the very end, but Gi-hun gives it no credit for that.
A dog’s loyalty means nothing if it’s hungry.
He’s getting ahead of himself, his thoughts blurring like the scenery that rushes past. There was another game he’d won, the only one that meant anything, and it hadn’t been luck that won it for him. It had been people.
Do you still have faith in people? After all you’ve been through?
Oh Il-nam had believed that no one would help a homeless drunk, freezing to death on the street. When a passerby called for help, moments before midnight, that had not been Gi-hun’s victory.
It was that the old man had seen it, and died in the knowledge that he was wrong.
Even that comes as little consolation. All of Gi-hun’s victories leave a bitter taste, bitter as blood; he releases them as he falls, confetti in a storm, not one of them worth holding onto, not one of them able to save him.
He is falling into an abyss, somewhere between Oh Il-nam and the sort of person some might call a hero. He, too, is going to die knowing that he has lost. He came to save them all, but every one of them died. The Game goes on. He has failed.
Let that be what flashes before his eyes; everyone he has lost. He knows he cannot possibly remember every face, every name, but Seong Gi-hun is nothing if not a fighter for lost causes.
His own family. Eun-ji, Ga-yeong. His mother.
Sae-byeok, who he couldn’t save from Sang-woo.
Sang-woo, who he couldn’t save from himself.
Ali, who had saved him.
All those ‘X’ voters, whose lives he had thrown away for nothing.
Jung-bae, who had died for nothing.
Dae-ho, who he had killed for nothing.
Jun-hee…
They go on and on, the faces and the names. Some goodbyes take time.
The fall finishes first.