Chapter Text
It’s been a week since Jinchul has moved into his new apartment due to financial troubles.
For all the work he puts in as chief investigator of Seoul’s police station and his passion for the job position he holds, it truly doesn’t pay well enough, all things considered.
His old studio apartment had been decent enough to survive off of before the landlord decided to suddenly inflate the monthly rent to an absurd price. He suspects it has something to do with gambling debt, but regardless of the reason, he can no longer afford to live there when the monthly rent has increased by half of what it originally was.
Apartment hunting is as hellish of an experience as he remembers it to be. He goes from complex to complex surveying their open residencies only to find it’s not at all like how it was advertised their pictures online or it’s worse than the studio apartment he had lived in prior, even at its spiked rent price.
That’s why when ten days into his endeavors to find a new place to stay, he feels like he’s aged a decade and he’s shocked his hair hasn’t turned white or started falling out at the roots. It’s also why when he sees his first good offer for a decent apartment, he doesn’t think too hard before he agrees to take it.
It goes like this: he arrives at the complex with no expectations, because it’s in a better part of the city and that usually comes with a higher cost. When he gets to the apartment itself, he finds someone else already getting a sales pitch from who he assumed to be a realtor.
The man looks to be in his late teens or early adulthood — definitely younger than Jinchul himself. He’s dressed casually in a plain black hoodie and jeans, and honestly looks like he wants to leave, but is unsure how to politely turn down the realtor’s desperate sales attempts.
Until he spots Jinchul, that is.
There’s a spark of… something… that lights up in the stranger’s eyes as he identifies Jinchul, as if he recognizes him — but that’s impossible, because this is the first time Jinchul’s laid eyes on this man. (Except not, a voice whispers in his mind unheard, except you have seen him before, you know him as he knows you— though not in this time, not yet at least—)
The younger man says something to the realtor that Jinchul doesn’t catch, and she glances over at him, then back at the man, before back again at Jinchul, waving him over.
“My client here is wondering if you would be agreeable to sharing the apartment,” she explains with a hopeful smile.
Jinchul looks at the other man with a somewhat dumbfounded look, because he had just walked in minutes ago — who in the world just offers to be roommates with someone who’s a complete stranger? He doesn’t even know Jinchul’s name.
“We’ll be able to split the rent by half this way,” the man says, like that’s all the reasoning Jinchul needs to move in with him.
“I—“ he’s about to decline before he remembers all the excruciating apartment hunting he’s been put through the past week and a half. He glances at the window that looks out from the living room. It is a really nice view. So he sighs instead. “Give me a moment to take a look around and I’ll consider your proposition.”
And the apartment doesn’t disappoint. It has two separate bedrooms, both being a comfortable size to work with, and a nice bathroom — hard to come by on his apartment hunting — and a small, but clean, working kitchen with just enough space that a small dining table can be squeezed in. The living room is commodious as well, with the window from earlier that shows a great view of the city from up high, high enough for him to catch sight of the sun starting to dip below the horizon. The floor is layered with white carpet, which he tends to shy away from when looking for homes because of how hard it is to remove stains, but it’s a negligible point when considering all the other benefits of the apartment.
Except he'd have to share it with someone he’s never even met before, he winces internally.
He turns back to gently turn down the offer, shooting the stranger a regretful smile before turning to inform the realtor herself.
And he supposes that brief glance he sends the stranger must have given away his hesitancy to the realtor, or perhaps she just has a quota she’s anxious to meet, because she gets this hardened look in her eyes and says, “The first month is free as long as at least one of you plans to take the apartment for a minimum of three months.”
Fuck. That’s not a deal he can refuse. His phone in his back pocket chimes a notification sound, likely a text from one of his colleagues, as if to agree that he doesn’t have the time to look for a different offer elsewhere.
“Are you willing to share the apartment?” the stranger asks, lips quirked up with amusement as if he already knows the answer.
Jinchul feels the beginnings of a headache forming and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Yes, that’s agreeable,” he finally capitulates. “As strange as first meetings go, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Woo Jinchul.”
“Sung Jinwoo,” the no-longer-a-stranger grins, eyes dancing with mirth as though he’s laughing at a joke that Jinchul has missed in the conversation.
And that’s how he ends up living with an unexpected guest in his new apartment.
He learns on the first night after moving in that Jinwoo is just as hopeless a victim of insomnia as he is, because hours past midnight he returns from the police precinct to the sight of his new housemate still up and shuffling about the flat, a mug of hot chocolate in hand.
University must take its toll on Jinwoo, Jinchul deduces, because this trend continues for nearly every time he turns in from work at late hours of the night. Jinwoo welcomes him home warmly on each of these occasions, as though he doesn’t realize how strange it is at all.
Surely he can’t be functioning properly with how little rest he gets, is Jinchul’s initial assessment of Jinwoo after the second time he catches baking sweets at three o’clock in the morning. Maybe it’s hypocritical of him to be judging his housemate’s sketchy sleep schedule, considering he might be the only person in Seoul that has a worse track record of sleepless nights and habitual power-napping — he knows from memories of his university days how shady their sleeping patterns can get, but one glance at Jinwoo has him frowning. He doesn’t even have eyebags. How is that any fair?
(He’s not sure if Jinwoo ever actually sleeps. Every time Jinchul has awoken at an ungodly hour to use the bathroom or get a glass of water, Jinwoo’s door has been left wide open, his room conspicuously empty of any occupants. That, or Jinchul finds his housemate staring blankly out the living room window at the pitch black of night from where he’s curled up on the couch, as if his mind has wandered away elsewhere, somewhere far away from their reality.)
He’s also starting to wonder if he knows the man he now shares his new apartment with, judging from the little voice screaming in the back of his mind about the uncanny familiarity of that face.
“Jinchul? Is there something wrong?”
The voice snaps him out of his thoughts and Jinchul shakes the thoughts from mind and raises his head to look at Sung Jinwoo, who’s staring back with mild concern. Ah. He must have spaced out during their conversation then.
“Sorry about that,” he says sincerely. The apology gets waved off, but Jinchul feels the need to provide a justified excuse anyways. “I’ve had a lot to think about from a recent case from work,” he tacks on.
The expression on Jinwoo’s face turns understanding. “Ah, I heard about the increase in the severity of crimes lately,” his housemate commiserates. “That must add a lot to your workload, then? It’s no wonder you come back to the flat looking dead on your feet.”
Jinchul grimaces at the reminder. Yes, the cases have been getting worse in the recent months — files with less information and less suspects, worse crimes and worse criminals, but it’s also not what’s responsible for causing his late night returns to the apartment, hours past the end of his shift at the precinct. That honor belongs to the rise in fugitives turning themselves in of their own accord.
It’s not… a bad thing, Jinchul amends. Of course he’s glad that there’s one less criminal wandering the streets of his city, as uncommon as it is for offenders to confess to their own crimes — but that’s not the part of these seemingly open-and-shut cases that’s making him lose sleep. No, the true unsettling aspect of these cases that has him stumped is the story he’s heard from these criminals over and over again during their interrogations.
Monsters wreathed in shrouds of inky black — creatures ranging from soldiers, to bears, to ogres and ants — a voice in their head threatening a gruesome death if they choose to stay silent about their wrongdoings — flickers of ghost-light in the air and stygian darkness stretching across the floors.
It’s the retellings of the same nightmares from each of these criminals he’s questioned (—or should they be called victims instead, if their accounts hold true?) The descriptions vary slightly from person to person, but the one unchanging detail that overlaps in every version is that whatever these monsters are, they come from the shadows.
Jinchul sighs. It’s not the first rumors of these strange happenings. On the contrary, the myth of these strange creatures wreathed in black have dated back to a couple years prior, closing some of the most notorious cold-trail cases no less. Hardened criminals have turned themselves in, shaken and fearing their own shadows, and Seoul is left better for it.
His colleagues shrug it off. It’s just some silly rumor, Chief, the younger few who have encountered less of these cases say. Perhaps it’s just some manifestation of their guilt that made them go crazy and turn themselves in. And while that’s a rational conclusion to come to, it’s not one that Jinchul is happy with accepting. Not after he’s personally seen so many repeated instances of the same happenings.
The colleagues he’s been around with longer call it a boon — say it’s good luck and they should think nothing more of it. We have our work cut out for us, Jinchul-ssi, he remembers a senior detective telling him. Criminals are turning themselves in, and we don’t have to lift a finger. Let’s just focus our heads on the ones still out there on the streets instead of the ones already behind bars, yes?
The mysterious phenomenon has gained infamy at the station after years of it being in effect. Gossip has appointed it a nickname as well. ‘The Phantom,’ they call it. There are of course different branching takes on the phenomenon, and the specifics of it get twisted as it becomes a common folktale shared between members of the precinct. But among the most common of stories is the one detailing some mysterious vigilante shadow leader behind the scenes who’s directing these monsters to clean up the crime in Korea.
It’s a ridiculous notion — a crime-fighting Shadow Lord? It sounds like something out of the superhero comics that he used to read as a kid. And yet Jinchul doesn’t abandon the idea entirely either, because nothing about this mystery seems to follow typical rules of logic.
Whatever the case, the number of criminals turning themselves in only seems to be increasing lately, and although some of his coworkers may believe it’s a higher god showing them favor, while others rationalize that it’s some ubiquitous anxiety disorder shared by the criminals, and the rest of them actually think the rumors of the phantom are true, Jinchul has never been one to leave a puzzle unsolved and he won’t be satisfied until he finds the answers to his questions backed up by evidential proof. And so his indefinite headache thunders on.
“—inchul, Jinchul?”
Fuck. He rubs his temple with one hand and sighs.
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again. “I guess my work’s getting to my head more than I expected.”
Jinwoo’s lips only quirk up in amusement. Looks like he takes no offense to being spaced out on — that’s good.
“No worries.” his housemate says, picking up his empty plate and standing up to go place it in the sink. “Detective work sounds difficult. You look stressed. I hope your current case isn’t giving you too much trouble?”
“Ah, that's…” He makes a face. He’s a bit hesitant to share the ‘Phantom’ rumor to Jinwoo, considering how insane it all sounds — it also puts into perspective how disorganized his priorities are that he’s probably more on edge about hypothetical shadow monsters than tracking down whichever new murderer is lurking in Korea today.
“That’s alright if you can’t share,” Jinwoo smiles wryly, “I won’t pry.”
Jinchul huffs a laugh. Right, he’d forgotten about the house-rules they’d established a week back.
“How generous of you,” he replies with his own sardonic smile. Jinwoo delivers a mock-bow from where he’s standing next to the sink, before he makes his way back to their dining table.
Rule #7) Respect each other’s privacy.
It’d been brought up by Jinwoo as they’d brainstormed the list, somewhere between distribution of chores and discussing any habits either of them had that may incite contention from the other. Jinchul had agreed on the rule’s creation readily — it was a no brainer, with how many classified documents and files he had laying around in his room concerning some of the more sensitive cases he’d been assigned. And he appreciates his alone time too — coming back after a long day’s worth of dealing with migraine-inducing investigations and incompetent idiots, (both excluding and including his own subordinates,) he comes to enjoy having assured quiet time to himself.
So he’s glad that they’ve established their boundaries with that rule. It allows for Jinchul to breathe a little easier knowing his housemate won’t be nosy for details about his work or try to get into his room to peek at government issued files. Considering Jinwoo was the one to propose the rule in the first place, he seems to hold the value of privacy highly, so it’s unlikely he’d cross that violate Jinchul’s privacy unless he’s an ass, which he isn’t. He guards his own secrets with a silent intensity as well, so it’d be quite hypocritical of him if he did cross the lines they’ve set for one another.
“I do hope you’re not pushing yourself too hard though,” Jinwoo says, shaking him from his thoughts once more as he begins preparing the leftovers of breakfast to put in the fridge. “You clearly put a lot of effort in doing your job, but it’s not always worth it to overwork yourself, you know.”
Jinchul lets out a noncommittal hum. “It can’t be helped. Crime doesn’t sleep, so neither can justice.”
He hears Jinwoo snort at his words. It’s probably the most inelegant sound Jinchul has heard from his housemate so far. “Did the investigation academy teach you that one? They have you well indoctrinated if you’re reciting their motto outside of working hours.”
“It’s not that bad,” he argues weakly.
Jinwoo raises a brow. “I haven’t seen you back at the apartment any earlier than eleven o’clock every night since I’ve known you.”
Jinchul is fighting a losing battle. Jinwoo stares him down judgingly, for what feels like an eternity before he lets up with a sigh. Hooray for small mercies.
“Well,” the younger man says as the fridge door swings shut, “I suppose they don’t have you brainwashed right proper just yet. You’re about to be late for work.”
Jinchul’s head whips to the clock hanging on the kitchen wall at his words and feels his heart drop to his stomach. Shit, 7:41 AM — He’s going to miss his bus!
“Fuck—“ he swears under his breath and runs to grab his work folders from his room, with Jinwoo’s laughter chasing his steps. The files in the manilla folders almost fly out in his haste to dump them all into his open bag, and then he’s ripping his jacket off the coat-rack, slipping into his shoes, and kicking open the front door.
“Have a good day at work!” he hears Jinwoo’s voice call out, still tinged with laughter as he moves to shut the door and race for the bus stop.
In his hurry, he misses the way the shadows of his bag flicker unnaturally as the work papers inside rearrange themselves properly in their folders and the open flap zips itself up tight.