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Yoo Joonghyuk had a secret that he hadn’t told anyone else about before – not his parents, not his sister and not even his friends. Not that he had any friends to talk to; there were too many sticks up his ass for that to ever be possible.
The truth was, Yoo Joonghyuk was a regressor. The first time he’d regressed and announced it confidently to the rest of the kids in school they’d all laughed at him. He ended up beating them black and blue and was set to live the rest of his days in prison.
He kept his mouth shut after that.
By now, he must have regressed more than a thousand times, not that he was really keeping count anymore because that would be kind of lame and Yoo Joonghyuk was not lame. He stared at the droves of people passing by on the streets. The sun beat down harshly on him and if he was anybody else he might’ve been worried that his tan lines would pass for a shirt soon. But because he was Yoo Joonghyuk, he was covered head to toe in black clothing despite the sweltering weather and looked like he just walked out of a Hot Topic. Not a single drop of sweat could be seen.
He prodded at the sausage on the grill with his tongs. In this regression, Yoo Joonghyuk worked at a hotdog stand.
It hadn’t been his choice, really. He’d shut himself in his room for six months straight after proclaiming that he would finally make it big as a Gamer™ for the hundredth regression in a row and eventually his parents had gotten sick of it. They’d booted him out along with the clothes on his back and a few hundred dollars and left him to fend for himself.
Yoo Joonghyuk took a quick whiff at his clothes and the faint scent of Febreeze wafted from the fabric. It seemed like his new hygiene routine of substituting showering for a couple sprays of Febreeze was working well.
He turned the sausage again because he had nothing better to do. It was already starting to go black from spending far too many minutes on the grill, just as Yoo Joonghyuk intended. It was almost time.
“Joonghyuk-ah!”
Speak of the devil.
In Yoo Joonghyuk’s last regression he used to frequent the same waffle house just to have a homoerotic fight with its cook. Not even the fact that his girlfriend had dumped him because she couldn’t stand the sexual tension between him and another man could stop him. In fact, the reason he died in the last regression was because the cook had given him a concussion and he refused to go to hospital because that would have meant no more kicking the bastard in the balls.
In this regression though it seemed as though their roles had reversed, because standing in front of him was the cook from the waffle house – now as a customer.
“Two hotdogs please,” Kim Dokja said with the same shit-eating grin that made Yoo Joonghyuk want to punch a hole through his face.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked down at the grill and the lone sausage lying atop it. It had now been charred fully black and the smoke made his eyes water. He looked back up at the man in front of him.
“There’s only enough for one hotdog,” he deadpanned.
“Oh.” Kim Dokja fished around in his pocket before pulling out a couple small bills and a pile of lint. Yoo Joonghyuk scrunched his nose in disgust. “Well good thing because I only have enough money for one.” Yoo Joonghyuk resisted the urge to knock him out with his fist.
“Why did you order two then.”
“Since I always order one I wanted to spice things up a little.”
Yoo Joonghyuk swung his fist. Kim Dokja dodged.
“Is that for me?” Kim Dokja pointed at the shrivelled piece of meat burning on the grill, completely unfazed by Yoo Joonghyuk’s temporary lapse in anger management.
“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk said. Yes, he meant.
“I prefer my sausages raw,” Kim Dokja said mournfully.
“That’s against health and safety regulations.”
Kim Dokja picked up the blackened lump with his bare hands as though it wasn’t literally smoking in his grip. “I’m pretty sure this is also against health and safety regulations.”
“Increased chance of cancer or certain chance of food poisoning, take your pick.”
Kim Dokja looked thoughtful, carefully turning over the choices in his head. He eyed the object in his hand suspiciously and gave it a pensive sniff before seemingly coming to a conclusion. He took a large bite with a resounding crunch and made a face.
Yoo Joonghyuk flinched. He sure hoped Kim Dokja didn’t eat all his sausages like that.
“It’s kind of bitter,” he complained, grinding at the charcoal between his teeth.
“Sausages tend to taste like that,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied with a shrug.
“What kind of sausages have you been eating!?”
Yoo Joonghyuk declined to comment.
“God this tastes like shit,” Kim Dokja grumbled, taking another large bite out of the no longer identifiable object in his hand.
“You are what you eat.”
“I could report you for this you know. Get your license revoked.”
“What license,” Yoo Joonghyuk said flatly.
“What?”
“What.”
Kim Dokja lobbed the remaining piece of black lump as hard as he could at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. This meant that given his noodle arms, the sausage didn’t even make it halfway before falling flat onto the floor.
Yoo Joonghyuk eyed the suspicious lump on the floor before looking back at Kim Dokja whose face had gone red from humiliation. Or maybe it was overexertion; Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t think it was possible for Kim Dokja to feel shame.
“Stop littering.”
Kim Dokja waved his hand absentmindedly, having seemingly recovered from whatever had ailed him moments prior. “I’m sure the birds will take care of it.”
He finished his sentence just in time to see a pigeon swoop in to snatch up the charred remains of the sausage and swallow it in one gulp, promptly causing it to pass out on the pavement.
“Are you sure you’re not developing biochemical weaponry here, Joonghyuk-ah?”
Yoo Joonghyuk clicked his tongue. “Clearly it hasn’t worked seeing as you’re still alive and well.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure I’m dying as we speak.”
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“I got fired today,” Kim Dokja said glumly, and maybe Yoo Joonghyuk would have felt sorry for him if he weren’t such an annoying little shit. But alas, Kim Dokja once cooked at a waffle house and Yoo Joonghyuk once ate at said waffle house and thus they were destined to be enemies with unresolved sexual tension forever.
“Speaking of unresolved sexual tension,” Kim Dokja said casually as if he didn’t just break the fourth wall, “I could really go for another hot dog.” His eyes trained on somewhere that was very much not the grill.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked unimpressed. “Was the last however many hundred words your terrible attempt at flirting?” he asked, also breaking the fourth wall just to make sure Kim Dokja didn’t get any funny ideas that he was better than Yoo Joonghyuk at anything.
“Maybe it was.” Kim Dokja twirled his hair between his fingers. “Maybe it wasn’t.”
Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed Kim Dokja by the scruff of his neck and crashed their lips together with the force of a thousand suns.
They were both sent to the ER after that.
“Are you still down to fuck?” Kim Dokja asked later from atop a hospital bed, but the bandages wrapped around his face made it sound more like the constipated groaning of a squid.
Yoo Joonghyuk lay atop a matching bed, wearing a matching hospital gown and had matching bandages.
“Shut up, Kim Dokja.”