dynamic goes crazy.
why is this so funny to me?ššš dae-ho and jung-bae are literally āIām in the death game and I donāt know what the fuck is going on between these two but why the fuck are they gay?ā
frontman
Preview of Season Three Villain Reveal Inho: I joined the games personally to fuck you. Gihun *handcuffed*: you mean 'to fuck with me' right? Inho: ... Gihun *struggling against his bonds*: Right??? Inho: I said what I said. Junho *handcuffed next to Gihun*: Hyung????!
make me your one and only, but don't make me your enemy
I found the perfect reference
I had this idea and it made me chuckle.
āI will betray youā
āIf you do you will betray yourself at the same timeā
āYes⦠yes i knowā
JUMPSCARE
Not the kind you can shake off. The kind that burrow in behind your eyes and make it feel like your skull is splintering from the inside. The kind you hide because life wonāt slow down for your pain.
It started young. Before Junho ever needed a kidney, before they even knew the full extent of how hard life was going to get. Inho learned early to swallow his pain because his stepmother already had too much on her plateāmedications, bills, long shifts at the market, and a fragile kid who needed more than they could afford. Inho was now an adult barely. He didnāt want to be a burden.
Sometimes Junho would find him like that: tucked in the fetal position, drenched in sweat, barely breathing through the pounding in his skull. And baby Junho, bless him, would climb in bed and curl around him, whispering nonsense, trying to āpet the pain away.ā It never worked, but Inho would pretend it did.
Inho got good at hiding it. He had to. On the police force, you donāt get to be fragile. You donāt get sick days when your paycheck is feeding three mouths and buying dialysis supplies. He never disclosed his conditionāhe couldnāt afford the scrutiny. So he powered through shifts half-blind, vomiting quietly in the station bathroom before heading back out to the street. There were days he drove patrol with one eye closed and his fingers white-knuckled on the wheel.
Even from his wifeāGod, Inho hid it from her too. Said it was stress, just too many hours, said he was fine when he came home with that tightness in his jaw, his body trembling under the blankets. She knew. Of course she did. Sheād sit beside him in the dark, quietly massaging his temples, kissing his forehead, running her fingers over pressure points on his brow. She never said anything, just held him like he wasnāt cracking open inside. Inho thinks of her hands even now, sometimes. Thinks of the quiet kindness, the way she never asked for an explanation.
And then she got sick. And the Games came. And everything broke.
Inho fought through the pain the entire time. People think the hardest part of the Game is the violence. But for Inho, it was the nights. The lights, the noise, the cold. He bit into his knuckles until they bled to keep from screaming. Sometimes heād black out and wake up unsure if it was from a migraine or from sheer exhaustion. He only won because he was used to pain. He knew how to compartmentalize. Heād been doing it his whole life.
When Inho came home and found her gone, the grief screamed louder than any migraine ever had. He howled until his throat tore, and for one small, twisted moment, he was glad the pain in his head was drowned out by the pain in his chest.
But the migraines never left. If anything, becoming the Front Man made them worse. The maskāheavy, suffocatingāmakes the pressure unbearable. The screens are too bright. The intercoms too loud. He lives in a world of sensory torture, and no one sees it. Heās careful. Clinical. Keeps the lights in his quarters low. Takes his pills in secret. Breeds loyalty through silence. The guards never suspect anything. The Managers know better than to ask why he sometimes retreats to his room, breathing like heās drowning. And when the VIPs are around, he wears his mask like a wall. They donāt see the tremor in his hands. They donāt notice how often he excuses himself mid-conversation.
And then came Gihun.
Inho, as Young-il, was supposed to monitor him. Test him. Chip away at him. But one night, the mask slipped. The migraine hit like a hammer, and InhoāYoung-ilācouldnāt hide it fast enough. He curled up in the shadows, fingers pressed hard to his temples, shaking, trying not to cry. Trying to breathe.
And Gihun found him.
Gihun knelt beside him without asking anything. Just placed Inhoās head in his lap and began to gently rub circles into his forehead, along his brow, down the sides of his nose.
āMy mom used to say this helps,ā he murmured.
Inho wanted to pull away. He should have pulled away. But the pain was too much. And the touch was⦠kind.
So he stayed.
And in the dark, with his head cradled in the lap of a man who didnāt know who he really was, a tear slipped down Inhoās temple and into his hair.
Because Gihun was comforting Young-il. Not him.
Gihun didnāt know he was touching a monster. Didnāt know the blood on Inhoās hands. Didnāt know the mask behind the man. Inho was glad it was dark. Glad Gihun didnāt see the tear.
Because if he did⦠he might have pulled away.
Gi-Hun: I canāt believe weāre stuck in this room together.
In-ho, swallowing the key: Truly unfortunate.