EGOIST (Sang Woo x Fem!OC) [COMPLETED]

34

Hae Young sat on her bed wide awake, chin on her knees as her eyes blankly stared into the faint darkness. From her peripheral, Ali walks off from his bunk and approaches hers. For a moment, they stare at nothingness.

He did not ask her approval as he climbed up the stairs and situates himself on the platform next to her. He hesitates before he speaks, "I did not intend to kill your friend."

His voice sounded empty and robbed. There was something missing in his tone.

"I know." Was all she said to him, then a moment of silence again.

"He was a good guy, and if I could have died instead of him--"

"--Ali." She interrupts him. His name from her mouth was like a six shooter gun, with only one chamber loaded. He wishes he'd get shot by an empty barrel.

"I do not wish for you to be dead instead of Gi-Hun."

That was the empty click he was looking for, but somehow it did not make him feel any better.

"I don't wish for anyone else to die, but..." She sighs. She wasn't passive, just tired. "There are a lot of things in this place that we cannot control."

"I'm sorry." He says.

"I'm not mad." She tells him. It will just take a while to get used to the silence, she thought instead. The emptiness, the lack of dumb luck and persistent optimism, the wobbly voice of 001, and Mi-nyeo screeching how good she was in these games. Nothing, emptiness, this was something she must further get used to in order to keep going in this hell.

"He and I made a promise to each other." Ali tells her. "That if one of us makes it out, we will promise to take care of our families."

She smiles at the sentiment, it's just like what they had both promised each other before.

"But then he was losing the game..." Ali continued. "His marbles were running out. I think he knew, ma'am." He looks at her. "So he made me promise a new thing."

She looks at him in anticipation.

"He made me promise that I will take care of everyone else in our team." He said. "For him."

For him.

The lump in her throat forms again, though tears couldn't well up in her eyes anymore. Hae Young just let out a shaky breath.

"And he told me to make you promise to do the same."

Hae Young just nods, sniffing.

"I promise." She tells Ali, as finally a single tear rolls down her cheek. "I promise." She says again as if to set it in stone. And in the midst of the two players, the passed down promises and heavy conversations, there was a weight that was lifted off her chest then it was as if she could breathe again. Though she still felt weighted, some of it left. She felt better than feeling nothing at all.

Though Hae Young hardly slept through the hours of grief and the uneasy silence. In the middle of the night, it was shuffling and the ruffling of sheets that had made her jolt up to alertness. It was a strange sound to hear in a quiet night, like a limb being thrown and hitting one of the metal beams, then choking. At first, Hae Young had thought that there had been another attempt of killing in the midst of the black-out, but the faint glow of the piggy bank had shown her a more sorrowful sight.

By the time some of the players had snapped back to reality and others had realized what just happened, player 069 was already hanging from the metal beams of his bunk. Someone screams--a woman– that set off the entire room in a frenzy. And then--