I had this idea a while ago, but to really convey it, it’s going to have to be a longer scene. (If I just described it, it would lose all its emotion.)
Gi-hun doesn’t know exactly what happened. He was with Jung-bae, panicking, trying to come up with a solution. Then he felt a hard blow to the back of his head, and his vision went dark as his body grew heavier.
When he wakes up, he doesn’t recognize where he is. His body feels heavy, and his view of his surroundings is blocked by something strange. When he finally manages to sit up, he understands. A crib. Or a cot? It’s wide enough for him to fit comfortably, but it has rails on the sides, stuffed animals, and soft blankets that feel strange to the touch—as if they were too much for his worn skin and rough hands. He carefully climbs out of the crib and realizes he’s been changed again.
He’d been bathed. Gone was the smell of blood, dirt, and sweat that had been ingrained in his skin; his hair was washed and soft, and even his teeth had been brushed. Although identical, it wasn’t his jersey. It wasn’t made of the same cheap fabric. This one is soft, with a gentle baby scent. His pants had been replaced by a pair of almost identical shorts.
He explored his new surroundings for hours. There were two rooms there; one was a nursery, with a “bed,” a small table, a bookshelf decorated with stars, another with books, a locked dresser, and drawings on the walls—drawings of horses and other animals. In the other room, there were toys, a ball pit, educational toys (such as building blocks, numbers, and simple puzzles), regular toys (dinosaurs, animals, toy cars, and dolls), and stuffed animals. It looked like a playroom.
There were more doors, but he couldn’t open any of them.
Hours or days passed—he couldn’t tell. There were no windows or clocks, so time was relative. He was bored, worried, and probably cried himself to sleep on the room’s soft carpet. Then he woke up startled by the sound of something falling.
He crept over to the other room, ready to face any of the guards. But there was no one there. Nothing had changed. Or almost nothing. A model car had fallen off the shelf where they were kept. Gi-hun stepped closer to take a look, and he recognized it immediately. It was a Nissan Skyline GT-R, and he gasped in surprise. He’d seen one of those before, but he’d never been able to afford one, let alone buy one. And when he became an adult, he’d forgotten about the die-cast cars he’d always wanted as a kid. He stood there looking at it for a long time, a smile threatening to break out at every detail, and just as he was about to put it away, he saw the shelf full of other die-cast cars. Gi-hun spent hours sitting on the floor playing with the cars, captivated by every detail and a silly story about a mechanic who inherits all his boss’s cars after he dies.
He doesn’t even realize he’s starving.
But coincidentally, he hears a door open. His blood runs cold, and he waits, but nothing comes in. There are no footsteps, there’s no one there. He’s careful as he gets up (and ignores the fact that he’s stashed two toy cars in his pocket) before heading through the open door.
It led to a kitchen. Everything there was light-colored. It looked like it was made of plastic, like some he’d seen in Gayeong. There was a table and a large high chair, which obviously wasn’t meant for a baby. He got goosebumps and decided not to overthink it.
Everything was closed—from the cabinets to the oven—except for the refrigerator. Inside, there was a bottle of chocolate milk with pictures of little horses on it, and a sandwich that was too warm to have been sitting there for long. He tried to remove the cap from the bottle, but it was stuck. And he was starving. He ate everything and decided not to think about how comforting it felt to suck on the chocolate milk. There was water in a bottle, too.
For days, Gi-hun lived like this. The kitchen door would open at some point during the day, and he knew it was time to eat. A new toy would appear for him day after day. The lights would begin to dim when it was time to sleep. The bathtub would fill up at bath time, and when he returned, a fresh change of clothes was already waiting for him.
Gi-hun would already be fully adjusted for his papa.
