Work Text:
“You,” Han Sooyoung says, “are a bitch.” She jabs a finger in Yoo Sangah’s sternum. “A real bitch. You know that? You’re the worst. I fucking hate people like you.”
“Sooyoung-ssi,” Yoo Sangah says, evenly, “will you please just help with the laundry.”
The scene before her eyes is nothing new, but Lee Sookyung, her cup of tea half-lifted to her lips, watches them bicker their way to the washing machine all the same. Han Sooyoung throws another little tantrum before finally giving in and wrenching the machine open with unnecessary vehemence, nearly tearing the lid off its hinges, and dumping the pile of clothes inside. “See, was that so hard?” Yoo Sangah asks, her tone just condescending enough to have Han Sooyoung popping a vein. “Take care of the rest. I have to meet up with some incarnations today.”
“What? Wait!” Han Sooyoung barks, but Yoo Sangah is already striding away, out of the room and presumably down the stairs. Lee Sookyung imagines that if she had any less self-control, she would have vaulted out the window if it would have gotten her away from Han Sooyoung quicker.
Silence. Han Sooyoung stares at the door Yoo Sangah had swung shut behind her, then moves to stare at Lee Sookyung. “Did you see that?” she exclaims. “She just dumped her chores on me! The fucking nerve!”
Lee Sookyung takes a sip of her tea. “You are in charge of the laundry today, Sooyoung-ah,” she informs her.
“Ugh. Whatever.” Han Sooyoung returns to busying herself with the washing machine, grumbling under her breath the whole while.
Normally Lee Sookyung would return to her work today as well, which mostly entails going through the list of incarnations in the Industrial Complex and start assigning them to various tasks, like farming materials and training against monster mobs, then move on to clearing small sub-scenarios that occasionally spawn in the vicinity. But she holds off on that for another few minutes, choosing instead to observe as Han Sooyoung, busy as she looks with the machine, can’t seem to actually start it—there’s no telltale rumble as it begins its cycle, nor does she ever do much outside of squinting at the buttons and muttering colorful curses to herself.
It takes three minutes before Han Sooyoung looks up from the machine, meeting Lee Sookyung’s eyes. It takes another few, painful seconds before she groans and asks, “How… do you turn this thing on?”
Yoo Sangah would have sighed, shaken her head, and tossed Han Sooyoung the instruction manual. As it is, Lee Sookyung pushes the chair opposite her out with her foot. “Have some tea,” she offers, pouring Han Sooyoung and her embarrassed flush a cup before standing up to do it herself.
Lee Sookyung is not so unused to being without her son. She had been without him for the better part of twenty years, and she had expected to be without him right up for the rest of her life until the dokkaebi had materialized in the dining hall and instructed them to murder. She remembers how it had felt, to lunge behind some unsuspecting prison guard and watch as the life drained out of him under her hands. When she and a handful of other prisoners stepped out of the building, she had thought about looking for him, about seeking him out, because the last time she had seen him he had looked so tired and so drained and so terribly incapable of winning a fight through strength alone.
But she had a people to lead, then, and she could only forge through in the hopes he was out there, alive, surviving as he has his whole life. When she thinks about it, her current situation isn’t so different from back then: she is without him, again, but she cannot afford to think about him, again, if only because now she has other children to deal with.
“This is so sick and twisted,” Han Sooyoung says, kicking the air humidifier like that will get it to work. “She knows how to use this, so why doesn’t she fix it herself? Ugh! As if we can’t just buy a new one off the Dokkaebi Bag anyway!”
“That would be a waste of coins, and you know it,” Lee Sookyung says, picking idly at a loose thread on the armchair she’s seated on. She can’t remember when they’d gotten this, actually, but she’s sure it hadn’t originally been in the company building when they first decided to stay in it. “Besides,” she adds, at the ornery expression on Han Sooyoung’s face, “don’t you think Sangah-ya is just messing with you?”
Han Sooyoung whips around to face her so quickly, Lee Sookyung feels her own neck twitch in sympathy. “She’s what?”
“Oh.” Lee Sookyung turns away. “Hmm.” She hadn’t quite planned for this level of stupidity. “Ah, never mind. You work hard on that thing, Sooyoung-ah.”
“What? No! You can’t just leave it there, what do you mean she’s messing with me? Oh, my fucking God,” Han Sooyoung says, sounding positively furious, “you mean she knows I don’t know how to use a single one of these things and she’s having fun watching me struggle? I’m going to kill her so hard—I mean, I’m going to punch her in the face—Yoo Sangah!” she shouts, so loudly her voice must reach all the way down to the ground floor of the building. “You piece of shit! So you like fucking with me, huh!?”
Lee Sookyung watches her stomp out of the room and probably towards the kitchen, where Yoo Sangah had excused herself to earlier.
At first Sooyoung had felt nothing like Dokja, loud where he is quiet and irritable where he is placid, but then Sookyung saw them wear the same dry smirk, shoot off the same spiteful insults. More than that, though, she felt the same wall around them, the barrier that blocked off anyone else who came near, as thick and impassable as the thin sheet of glass between a prisoner and a visitor, and then Sookyung had known, in that moment, that they were far too alike for her to look away from. She saw the way Dokja closed in on himself in how Sooyoung lashed out at others, the way he buried himself in reading in how she buried herself in writing.
When Dokja was younger, on the rare occasions the house was blissfully quiet, he would crawl up beside her in bed and prop a book up on his lap to read. He never said anything, and Sookyung found no need to speak either. Now Sooyoung kicks the door open and sets tea on the table without a word, and Sookyung will congratulate her on learning how to use the electric kettle, but no more than that.
“Oh, you’re sick of me, are you? You can’t stand me? Is that what you came here to say?” Yoo Sangah says, her voice a wooden calm. “I’m afraid to tell you I’m already perfectly aware of that. By virtue of you having said the exact same thing a dozen times by now.”
“But somehow you still don’t fucking get it! You’re—You’re so—I get that you’re so gorgeous and perfect and whatever,” Han Sooyoung snaps, “but—but not everyone can be like you, okay? Sorry you think I’m some stain on your shoe or something!”
A pause. “I don’t think of you that way.”
“That… Then quit being such a bitch. What do you even think of me, then?”
Another pause, this time longer and far more loaded than the previous one. Lee Sookyung stands up, walks over to the ajar door, and very loudly says, “My, it’s a wonderful night, isn’t it? I am going to close this door and turn the television on now. You girls have fun out there.” Then she shuts the door as audibly as possible, just in case Sooyoung and Sangah hadn’t heard her the first time.
Lee Sookyung remains standing there a moment longer, leaning back against the door. She wants to see him. She wants to know he’s still alive, somewhere out there, due to come back at any moment with that unlucky smile on his face, greeting her in that endearingly awkward manner of his. She wants to see him. She wants.
But she has people here, too—his people, she remembers. Sooyoung is no replacement for him, and treating her as such would just be callous, but while she’s here and while he’s gone, Sookyung can, at the very least, do well by her.