Harolin looked at him.

Ruaan looked back.

The silence stretched for about five seconds and then Harolin exhaled through his nose and said, "Yes. I helped you."

Just like that. No buildup or performance. Just the words sitting there in the middle of the room like he had decided fighting it was more effort than it was worth.

Ruaan stared at him. "Why?"

Harolin looked at the AC unit on the wall. Then at the fridge. "Because of Yoon."

"What about Yoon?"

"I didn’t want you staying in the same cell as him anymore." Harolin folded his arms. "He’s been a problem since last week. The shirt. The bathroom. The blackmail. And the new room only comes with ranking up, so." He shrugged once. "I made sure you ranked up."

Ruaan stood there and processed that.

"Also," Harolin added, "the bet you made with him. You told him you’d sleep with him if he ranked up after the game."

Ruaan’s eyes went slightly wide.

"He didn’t rank up," Harolin said. "He went back to grey. So he can’t collect on whatever you promised him. The bet is void."

Ruaan rubbed the back of his neck. "Right. The bet."

He had almost completely forgotten about Yoon.

In the middle of everything, the game, the uniform, the room, the fridge, falling face-first into the best mattress he had touched in two weeks, he had filed Yoon somewhere at the back of his head and left him there.

"I need to go deal with that," Ruaan said.

Harolin nodded.

Ruaan walked toward the door.

He got three steps away from it.

Then he stopped and turned around.

He walked back to Harolin.

Harolin looked at him with mild confusion and then Ruaan grabbed his collar with one hand and kissed him quickly. Just a second kiss. Harolin barely felt anything.

He pulled back. "Thank you. That’s a thank you kiss."

Harolin looked at him.

Then his hand came up and his fingers wrapped into Ruaan’s hair and held him there.

"You call that a kiss?" Harolin said.

"It was a kiss..."

"Do it properly."

Ruaan swallowed.

He looked at Harolin’s face. The glasses. The white shirt. The rolled sleeves. The expression that was not quite patient and not quite impatient and very specifically focused on Ruaan.

He kissed him properly.

Both hands found the front of Harolin’s shirt and he kissed him the way he had been kissed in the shower block that night, slow and deliberate, not rushing it, letting it be what it was. Harolin’s hand in his hair tightened slightly and his other hand found Ruaan’s back and pulled him in and the room was very quiet around them.

When Ruaan broke it he was breathing differently.

He let go of Harolin’s collar and stepped back and did not look at his face because he already knew what he would find there and he was not ready for that information right now.

He turned around and walked to the door and opened it and left.

.

.

Harolin stood in the empty room for a moment.

He touched his own collar where Ruaan had grabbed it.

Then he pulled out his phone.

One new message. From Mara.

He opened it.

’I sorted the situation you asked me about. Done. Also, stop being so stubborn and hard on him. He’s just a spoiled brat who made a bad decision. He’s not evil. And also, thanks to being in prison, I found love. She loves me too. I’m happy.’

Harolin read it twice.

He wore a small and genuine smile, the kind that rarely appeared on his face.

’I’m glad she’s happy,’ he thought.

Then he read the second part again.

’She loves me too.’

He stared at his phone.

’She found love in prison.’

He thought about himself standing in a room that belonged to a grey uniform prisoner who was now the top one because Harolin had personally arranged it. The spare key was made into a necklace. A watch given one a field. Midnight corridors and storerooms and shower blocks at 1am.

He looked at the door Ruaan had just walked through.

"How did both of us manage this," he said to the empty room. "She was in a women’s facility and I’m here and somehow we both found the same problem." He looked back at his phone. "Are we cursed? Is this something our family does? Is there something wrong with us?"

He got no answer because he was talking to himself.

He pocketed the phone as he sat on the edge of Ruaan’s very comfortable new bed and looked at the ceiling.

He sat there for a while.

.

.

Cell 109 was audible before Ruaan reached it.

Yoon’s voice, carrying through the bars and into the corridor, high and frustrated, aimed at whoever would listen.

"It’s not fair! I was so close! My partner shot me before I could shoot him first and now I’m back to grey? Grey? Do you know how long I worked to get to blue?"

Ruaan stepped through the door.

Yoon was standing in the middle of the cell in his grey uniform looking like a man who had been personally wronged by the universe. Petre and Luca were on their beds in their dark blue uniforms, both of them having the expression of people who had been listening to this for a while.

Ruaan leaned against the doorframe.

"Hey," he said.

Everyone looked at him.

At the black uniform.

At the 2525 tag on it.

Yoon’s mouth closed.

Petre’s eyebrows went up. Luca’s head turned, which for Luca was basically a standing ovation.

Ruaan waved at Petre and Luca. Then he looked at Yoon.

"So," Ruaan said pleasantly, "about our bet."

Yoon’s jaw tightened. "I know. You don’t have to say it."

"You went back to grey."

"I know."

"So the condition wasn’t met."

"I said I fucking know." Yoon turned away and sat on his bed heavily. "You don’t have to rub it in."

"I’m not rubbing anything in." Ruaan walked into the cell and crouched in front of Yoon’s bed, looking up at him. "But I am going to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly."

Yoon looked at him with the expression of a man who already knew where this was going.

"My uniform," Ruaan said. "The one someone left on my bed."

Silence.

"Yoon."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"You were sniffing it that day."

The colour that went across Yoon’s face started at his neck and moved upward fast and completely.

"I don’t know what..."

"I saw you," Ruaan said. "Through the cell. You had my shirt against your face and your hand was doing something that was very clear from the doorway and you were saying my name." He kept his voice completely even. "I saw all of it."

Yoon had nothing left.

He sat there with his face red and his mouth slightly open and absolutely no response available to him.

"And then," Ruaan continued, "you dropped it on my bed. And when everyone saw it, you were the one who told them about it. And acted concerned." He tilted his head. "You reported the crime you committed. Which is honestly quite creative."

Petre made a sound that was very clearly a laugh that he was attempting to disguise as a cough.

Luca was completely still and staring at a fixed point on the wall trying to be invisible.

Yoon covered his face with both hands.

"I’m not going to do anything about it," Ruaan said, standing back up. "But you’re not blackmailing me ever again. And if you try, I’ll make sure every person in this facility knows what you were doing with my shirt." He smiled. "We understand each other?"

Yoon said something muffled into his hands that sounded like yes.

"Great," Ruaan said.

He went to his corner of the cell and started collecting his things. Not much. The soap, the few items he had been keeping on the shelf, Harolin’s second soap which he wrapped carefully. He could feel Petre trying not to laugh and Yoon trying not to die and Luca being Luca.

He picked up his bag.

Luca stood up.

Ruaan looked at him.

Luca was not a man who stood up for things. Luca had been the one who had exposed him in the button game, had betrayed him for a dark blue uniform, and had spent most of the subsequent weeks being a grey wall with legs.

"Congratulations," Luca said that one word.

Ruaan looked at him for a moment.

Then he nodded. "Thanks, Luca."

He walked out.

.

.

He took a different route back.

Not on purpose. He was looking at the facility map on the wall trying to find a shorter way to the new room block and turned left instead of right and walked down a corridor he hadn’t been in before.

The sounds came first.

The sounds of people who were not having a good time in a space that was designed to make things worse.

He recognised the corridor.

He had been here before.

The holding cell where the bottom ten went after the game. The first time he had ended up in here it had been with Cullen’s hand in his hair and his face meeting the floor. He had been one of ten people crammed in together waiting for whatever came next.

He slowed down.

He shouldn’t look. It had nothing to do with him. He was at the top one now. He could keep walking and be in his room with his fridge and his AC unit in under five minutes.

He stopped in front of the door and looked through the gate.

Ten people on the floor in various states. Some were sitting while some were lying down. One against the wall with his head back and his eyes closed.

One of them had broken glasses held together with tape.

Ruaan’s eyes went wide.

"Seo?"