ɴᴀᴍᴊɪɴ ᴏɴᴇsʜᴏᴛs • 🔒

7) "플레이어 구십-이, 탈락" (Angst)

It was silent for a long time.

"I thought it'd be better here." Namjoon spoke, making the boy look down at him.

They were currently sitting on the steps of a fake house. Namjoon was four stairs lower than him. "So, is it better?" The boy asked.

Namjoon was silent. "What about your family? Are they here with you?"

"Just my younger brother." Namjoon replied.

"What about your parents?"

"My dad was shot while crossing the river. Then drifted down. My mom... was caught by the public security officers in China, then sent back."

"Where's your brother?"

"At a children's home."

It was silent again.

"If you leave here with that money, what will you do with it?" The boy asked.

"I will buy a house to live with my brother, then bring my mom back from the North."

"Hey, you can do much more with 40 billion won." Namjoon looked at him now. "Anything else? Is there anywhere you want to go?"

"Jeju island."

"Jeju island?" Namjoon nodded.

"I never got to visit it. Only saw it on TV. It looked exotic and nothing like Korea. My brother wants to go there, so I want to fulfill this for him."

"Hey," The boy giggled a bit. "you have a heart of gold, even if you don't show it. But you gotta dream big, don't you think?"

"You should at least go to Hawaii- no, the Maldives." The ravenette continued. "You know what, let's go together."

At this Namjoon looked back down again and the boy realized what he said. "Right, we can't get out of here together." The ravenette giggled a bit again. But this time, it didn't sound humorous at all.

There was this feeling in Namjoon's chest. It wasn't nice, but Namjoon couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Quite a lot of time passed as both of them just sat there. "Player 002, eliminated."

"Have you ever seen a dead person before you came here?" The boy asked.

"A plague broke out in my town when I was a kid. There were dead bodies everywhere, everyday. Soldiers piled up the bodies and burned them. That's when my grandma, grandpa, and older brother- all burned up." Namjoon finished.

"I've got to say, your stories are way too dark."

"You?" Namjoon caught him off-guard. "What about you?"

The boy looked like he was contemplating something. "Player 130, eliminated."

"The first one I saw," He started. "was my mom's dead body." Then he continued.

"One day, coming back from school, I found her dead on the floor at home. And next to her, was my so-called dad with a knife in his hand. The next dead person I saw... was my dad. And the one standing next to him with a knife, was me." He finished.

"He was a pastor. Whenever he beat my mom, and did the unthinkable to me, he always prayed," Namjoon was about to tell him that he didn't need to tell him if he didn't want to, but the ravenette continued.

"that our sins be forgiven. But he didn't pray the day he killed my mom." He stopped for a bit. "Maybe he knew his sins couldn't be forgiven." Namjoon was silent and speechless.