The torturer or the tormented?

I lived in that motel for two months, and each day blurred into the next as if in a fog. Time flowed slowly, as if it itself had decided to take a rest from life's bustle. I spent my days immersed in books and, strangely enough, in alcohol, which had become my only companion in this solitude. Sometimes I visited Oh Il-nam and, watching his fading existence, realized that everything has its end. His condition worsened with each visit, and I felt life leaving him, like the wind carrying away the last leaves from the trees in autumn. In such moments, I understood that death is not just an end, but something more, something we all must accept. My duties during my leave included surveillance of the winners from past seasons. They usually allotted about a month for mourning, and then began a new life of luxury, moving to other countries, as if to not remember what they had endured. It was a kind of concentration camp syndrome; having escaped hell, they strove to forget, as if that would rid them of the nightmares. But this didn't apply to me, nor, as I expected, to Mr. Seong Gi-hun. He had returned to a life of poverty and seclusion and, most strikingly, had refused the prize money. It was a strange and even tragic decision that only underscored his inner struggle. New duties summoned me earlier than usual. I, the Front Man, was engaged in player selection, assisted by Gong Yoo. This stage took about a month and, strangely enough, Korea was full of the right candidates. People willing to participate in these games often had very little time left: some were terminally ill, others were running from loan sharks, and some simply had no place to return to. Family problems became a catalyst, and when a family member began to depend on our target, all doubts vanished as if they had never been. The next stage was recruitment. This was handled by five people: two of them recruited staff, and three recruited players. For most of these stages, I and some operators were located in the Seoul office, while the island remained under the protection of the coast guard. It's dangerous to create significant thermal activity for a long time, and I tried not to attract unnecessary attention. I devised new games and controlled all processes of material procurement and production. I had several assistants, but trusting such information to a wide circle was risky. I tried to take on as much work as possible, perhaps fearing to trust the operators, or maybe simply wanting to immerse myself in work to temporarily forget my personal torment. Working with archives and papers took about three months, and it seemed this stage was coming to an end. Usually, by this time, all winners had begun their new lives, but Player 456 still hadn't spent more than ten thousand won. This was an interesting case, and Mr. Oh Il-nam asked about him during every one of my visits. By the end of December, I received an interesting assignment—to invite Seong Gi-hun to a meeting with his "sponsor." The creator's plan was to have a flower seller offer Mr. Seong a flower, to which I would attach the invitation. It was like a final test of his empathy and compassion. I did just that. Mr. Seong, of course, helped the poor woman, which didn't surprise me. My interest in Player 456 was growing at a furious pace. His fate somewhat resembled mine, and there was something sinister and compelling about that. We both felt the same pain, but I was truly guilty, while he had merely walked out alone, though he had tried everything to take his friend with him. He was even willing to forfeit the prize to save Players 218 and 067, which had stunned the VIP guests. All of this made me ponder what it means to be human in this world, where life and death, hope and despair intertwine into an inseparable knot. I felt the darkness enveloping my soul, squeezing me in its embrace, and at the same time, I understood that perhaps this is our true nature—to struggle, to strive for light, even when darkness reigns all around. I watched as Gi-hun read the invitation with a trembling heart. His eyes, full of astonishment, seemed to open wide to something unknown, and his dulled expression, which had remained in the shadows for so long, blossomed again like a spring flower breaking through the snow. My own reaction to that invitation, to the possibility of becoming an officer, had been almost the same. We were growing closer, although he was unaware of my existence, of the fact that I, like a shadow, was watching over his fate. After that meeting with the creator of the games, which Mr. Seong had so yearned for, he probably assumed the games were over. No creator—no games. Gi-hun finally kept his promise to 067 and donated a significant sum to 218's mother. He offered her an orphan in place of her lost son, and in that gesture lay his sincere belief in what he had to do for Sang-woo. Player 218 had given his life so his mother would have a chance at a decent existence, and Gi-hun, being a true person, did not disrupt the plans of the calculating Player 218. And I, after the director's death, immediately went to the island, where I had to oversee the repair of facilities and the construction of numerous sets. There was much work, and in it I found solace, a chance to dull the sufferings that, like sharp thorns, tormented my soul. Having finished all his business in Korea, Gi-hun was ready to leave for the USA to his daughter; he was ready to live for Ga-yeong. And there he was at the airport, so vivid, so alive, talking to his daughter like in the old days. But suddenly a sharp, familiar slap sound caught his attention. Gong Yoo, as was later reported to me, was supposed to deliver the invitation to the final players of the new season. Gi-hun, seeing him, dropped everything and raced after the recruiter, as if something had flipped in his heart. Mr. Seong truly thought the games were over and never expected to see Gong Yoo processing a new victim again. I don't know exactly how it happened, but soon a call came through. The operator, picking up the receiver, called for me, frantic. This had never happened before. Taking the handset, I heard the voice of Player 456, as I had once called him. In that same instant, I ordered the operator to pull up Mr. Seong's location on screen. As it turned out, he had somehow obtained the business card and, already ascending the aircraft stairs, had stopped and called us, declaring his revenge. "I am not a horse, I am a person, and so I want to know who you all are and why you commit such brutality against people. You know... I will never forgive you for what you have done!" I had been monitoring him especially closely that day, as he was supposed to leave Korea. It took leaving him unattended for just a few minutes for him to draw attention to himself. I had almost become disappointed in him, but that call changed everything. Now I understood that deep down, I was immensely glad for that call. Duty commanded me to stop him, to force him onto the plane, and that frightened me, but I could not do otherwise. In that moment, I felt hope. Of course, I couldn't persuade Gi-hun to leave Korea. That same day, the tracker disappeared; he'd had the wit and courage to remove it. This was not a problem for me. I immediately established more thorough surveillance, knowing his every step. Even my brother's life had not interested me so much. Obsession united us. We both longed to meet each other, like two lost ships wandering the boundless waters of fate. I had a purpose and a reason for existing. Two years—and all that time was as if in a fog; no, not simply as if in a fog, but rather in a continuous, viscous haze that wouldn't let me breathe, pressed on my chest, and expanded meaningless anxiety to the size of the universe. My obsession did not weaken—it seemed to thicken, to grow, turning into a kind of flesh and mind simultaneously; I felt it entering everything: the morning and the night, every movement and every thought. Seong Gi-hun—oh, that dream!—began visiting me more often than the old nightmares that had once tormented me for years; and in that dream, as in a mirror, all my former torments and all my future fears were reflected, so that I would wake with rapid breath, cold hands, and a feeling as if something inside me was breaking and would not mend again. I saw in this the most cruel irony. Although I do not believe in fate, this coincidence provoked hysterical laughter. Mr. Seong—his condition worsened gradually and inexorably, not that he didn't understand it—he understood and was tormented by an understanding worse than any punishment: for he could not forgive himself; he could not release that weight, those events that lay upon him like shackles on his feet. It seemed to him—and there was something almost religiously irrational in this delusion—that every death on that cursed island somehow prolonged his own life; prolonged it! As if someone was destined to live at the cost of another's fatal exhaustion—and he himself, unwillingly, had become an adherent of this vile faith. I knew this not only from his condition; I knew it because I felt the same thing: that same bloody pity for my own salvation, that same ugly thought that someone's demise was the guarantee of my tomorrow. He was aware that the games had not ceased; but, alas, he chose an unworthy and ineffective path—his languishing, sunken consciousness denied him critical thought; a permanent, persistent depression had robbed him of the clarity in which caution and resourcefulness lie. And so—in some weak, almost delirious manner—he expended strength, time, and resources on having some gang of thugs, the kind you might find under the arches of a noisy subway, track down Gong Yoo; he entrusted base people with a task that required subtlety, cunning, and, most importantly, patience. Ah, how easily the mind breaks when melancholy eats into it! It was then—it wasn't sudden, but rather seemed necessary, inevitable—that I decided: enough; enough of keeping all this to myself, enough of allowing this man to perish from his own torments; I wanted to make myself known, not in the sense of empty bravado, but in the sense of a warm, agonizing intervention. On my orders, Gong Yoo took his place in the backwaters of the scene I had set: he was waiting for another player right under the noses of Gi-hun's people—where passers-by rustled paper tickets, where the smell of exhaust fumes mixed with the smell of human fatigue; Gong Yoo stood in the shadows, with a face simple and calm, like a man who had been told to be calm, and in his eyes was that obedience possessed only by those filled with another's will. I had given him the invitation, neatly addressed to Gi-hun; the business card was composed not with cold calculation, but with that subtle, almost childlike cunning used by people who want to break a stalemate in a long-standing game. The meeting was set for October thirty-first—and here I showed myself to be a player who knows days and signs: it was his birthday; like no one else, I understood: at that meeting, player number 456 would inevitably feel a compelling desire to return to the game. Could there be a more subtle tool for manipulating human striving? I knew for sure: the game would begin the next day; and at any moment I could, had I so wished, take him to the island—I wanted this and had long been making plans for him, plans that sometimes seemed ruthless to me, and at other times—salvific. The messengers—the very ones who deliver news from the street to the dark offices of the pink motel—immediately reported Gong Yoo's presence to their boss. And a certain creature of joy, that very smile that wouldn't leave my face, appeared then, as I watched Gi-hun's reaction: for the first time in a long while, his eyes filled with a kind of live, painful surprise. He seemed to feel that he had found the trail; but along with this, his appearance was rent with melancholy and fear, and I, seeing this, smiled not so much out of schadenfreude, but from a deep, sickening joy of settling scores long since hidden in my heart. Oh, what a nature Gong Yoo had—no longer a man, but a preacher, an apologist, a saint in his own madness. For him, Il-nam's philosophy was not just an idea—it was life, the meaning of breath, and the sole right to existence. And whoever dared to refute it was not an opponent to him, but an executioner, a messenger of death. That is why he conducted his "experiments"—the tuna in hand that knows no mercy—for faith, having become essence, demanded proof, and proof demanded sacrifices. I, in my weakness and vanity—ah, how I almost didn't want to admit this aloud!—gave him permission for the final test. And don't think it was a frivolous decision: not everyone was permitted to invite Gi-hun for a talk, and Gi-hun had to earn that invitation just as one earns an audience with a saint or a court's sentence. I was aware, and acutely aware, as if my tongue were being pulled, that my obsession was something sick, wrong. I wanted to be rid of it—I wanted to want to be rid of it, which is stranger and more tormenting—this paradox, this clever aphorism—"to want to want"—was invented in a chapel by the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. Sometimes we confuse true desire with the desire for desire itself—and who would have thought that this emptiness could beckon so relentlessly. I permitted Gong Yoo any method of testing: he was a master at this, knowing how to pierce the spirit through and through. As was later reported to me, he proposed that Player 456 play Russian roulette—but without spinning the chamber. A simple proposal, inhumanly cold, like a sentence: not a trick of fate, but a test of faith. Player 456, it must be said, agreed: for him, it was a no-lose situation. If Gi-hun himself died—he would forgive himself, for justice had been served by his death. If he survived—he would get the information he craved more than any treasure. And herein lay the strangeness and tragedy: suddenly, like lightning, the realization in one man of something higher than animal instinct—unreasonable, divine, and terrifying—proved, for Gong Yoo, tantamount to death. His whole life was built on Il-nam's ideals, and if those ideals were called into question, then he had no other way out but to take his own life. And he fired—did not cry out for vengeance, did not weep, but simply, with that calm resolve achieved only by fanatics, removed the burden from himself and departed. And once again, like a malicious trick of fate, luck was on the side of Player 456. For three months, three months I lived as if confined in the light, counting every day, every minute—and in my thoughts, plans were woven for every possible trap that could be born in Gi-hun's head. It was all like a game of chess, where every piece is a person and every thought is a move. The most probable course of events seemed clear to me: first, a demand—to stop the games; then, from shattered nerves and a heart aflame, an attempt at kidnapping—to stop everything by force. Followed by a demand to return to the game. I knew this—I myself, perhaps, would have done the same in the heat of inflamed nerves and a scorched soul. And so it happened.