[ Soleum listens to Agent Choi casually speak about such existential matters like he's already experienced all there is to understand about that far shore, like he personally knows where the sky runs and ends between this place and the untold heaven not even the Dark Exploration Records is familiar with. Without realizing it, his eyes had risen to focus on him through a clearer lens, the dark of his gaze nearly gleaming red from behind his glasses.
For the first time, it hits him: He's so young. And yet the Agent Choi in the stories he read was consumed by a ghost story at this age, with that understanding of life, of his role, what he was willing to accept and make peace with, like it was something he was made for — which he was, he was written for it. Another thought bludgeons Soleum over the back of his head: Whatever transpires when he leaves, whether he escapes to his former employer in shame or hopefully returns to where he should have been all along, he won't know what happens to this person.
The inner linings of his heart run both hot and cold at once. Expanding, compressing. Leaving nothing in-between. ]
Am I a bicycle to you?
[ He hopes Agent Choi ignores it, the tautness squeezed around his voice, and just enjoys his pitiful attempt at a joke.
He needs another drink, so he takes a long one. Looks down at the leftover fizz bubbling in the rim of his can, his thumbnail scratching into the notch. ]
That's… not something you have to worry about. There are a lot of people who will remember you. [ This room, this team. What it was all for, and the torch that's been passed on. ] That ajumma, Agent Bronze-nim, the agents here… No matter where you go, there will be someone who wants to hang on to you. You're that kind of person.
no subject
For the first time, it hits him: He's so young. And yet the Agent Choi in the stories he read was consumed by a ghost story at this age, with that understanding of life, of his role, what he was willing to accept and make peace with, like it was something he was made for — which he was, he was written for it. Another thought bludgeons Soleum over the back of his head: Whatever transpires when he leaves, whether he escapes to his former employer in shame or hopefully returns to where he should have been all along, he won't know what happens to this person.
The inner linings of his heart run both hot and cold at once. Expanding, compressing. Leaving nothing in-between. ]
Am I a bicycle to you?
[ He hopes Agent Choi ignores it, the tautness squeezed around his voice, and just enjoys his pitiful attempt at a joke.
He needs another drink, so he takes a long one. Looks down at the leftover fizz bubbling in the rim of his can, his thumbnail scratching into the notch. ]
That's… not something you have to worry about. There are a lot of people who will remember you. [ This room, this team. What it was all for, and the torch that's been passed on. ] That ajumma, Agent Bronze-nim, the agents here… No matter where you go, there will be someone who wants to hang on to you. You're that kind of person.