Chapter Text

Kim Dokja stood in the produce aisle of a luxury grocery store ignoring his text messages.

Back when he was closer to 30 than 40 - when he still thought regular moisturizing might get rid of the bags under his eyes - the character of Kim Dokja being placed in such a scene might have struck one as odd, unrealistic, even.

For one, he had been a limited contract employee at a third rate tech company. Half his meals had been kimbap rolls from convenience stores, and he hadn't cared enough about his nutrition to learn how to cook or muster up enough energy to shoplift... What would someone like that be doing in a luxury grocery store???

And furthermore, how could "Dokja" - a loner who only used his phone to access the internet and barely had any numbers even saved in his contacts - have a phone that was being blown up with texts from multiple people?

Really, way too out of character... One star, thumbs down review.

But the middle aged Kim Dokja that stood in that luxury grocery store, glaring at some heirloom tomatoes, was actually very used to this kind of scene. It in fact, made perfect sense to find him in the grocery store, considering that, despite being the most multi-universally known person in existence, he was the only person in his household that could regularly go about his day in public without getting recognized by someone.

At least, that was the case when the responsibilities were first doled out for the upkeep of "Kim Dokja's House."

"Listen, I know we just got you back and we need to be keeping an eye on you and making sure you're going to your millions of very needed therapies - and I WILL do that whether you like it or not - but also that's the worst name ever and I wish that tree had finished the job." Han Sooyoung had responded when he first suggested the name.

"Kill yourself." Yoo Joonghyuk had said when Kim Dokja pointed out they still hadn't changed the name 10 years later.

Obviously Yoo Joonghyuk was in charge of the cooking, and he had wanted to do the shopping too. The problem with that, of course, was that he was an extremely handsome and memorable domestic terrorist.

With the rest of Kim Dokja's company being public figures or children, the pickings were a bit slim...

Han Sooyoung probably could have done it; her celebrity had sort of faded after she shut herself up writing a 550 chapter web novel about her comatose friend with the target audience of exactly one person: her comatose friend.

It didn't work out, however. Somehow Yoo Joonghyuk giving shopping instructions to Han Sooyoung didn't work out as well as her instructing him through trans-universal travel... Although Kim Dokja thought maybe that made sense with the relationship between the two being at times author and protagonist and other times author and editor...

Whatever it was, by the third week Kim Dokja had been prescribed taking walks around his neighborhood by the physical therapist. As soon as Han Sooyoung heard, she had made a text in the group chat (Lee Jihye had changed its name to "Kim Dokja's Groupchat" once and Yoo Joonghyuk didn't make dinner for her that night) announcing the Great News about how Kim Dokja's recovery meant he was now able to contribute to the chore wheel and he would be getting the groceries from now on, "heart heart smiley face."

He really hated that walk to the grocery store, when he first started doing it. He was alone with his thoughts and not having the distraction of the people who were all either at home or off doing their important jobs or schoolwork forced him to linger in this sense of uselessness... Even just walking to the grocery store made him tired then - even though his body was ostensibly the same one that had once shot lightning, became a star, been disintegrated and put back together again, etc. - and it was hard not to think about how he used to be able to be in the mind of one person on the street of Seoul and then also in the mind of that same person in another universe hanging out in First Murim simultaneously. When his legs started hurting or his feet felt sore, Kim Dokja would lose himself to memories of the Fourth wall, which had stopped every hurt, physical or emotional... Even worse, his mind would linger on trying to recapture the impossible to recall sensation of not even having a physical form, just... Being, everything. Seeing everything at once without even having to search or try or walk for 20 grueling minutes to the stores a few blocks closer to the city than their big house in the suburbs.

In ways, this dissatisfaction actually helped ground Kim Dokja, though he was loathe to admit it. Every tired step was evidence that he was here, wasn't it? He really was this person, Kim Dokja, who was terrible at walking now and couldn't really do much of anything else in the first place... But still had a lot of people waiting at home for him, expecting him to come home with their cooking supplies and snacks for the week...

That was what was real. He couldn't forget that they were real, when he was there at the store, trying to remember what each of them had asked for that he hadn't been allowed to put down on the Yoo Joonghyuk Approved Shopping List he always held in one hand...

And slowly but surely, Kim Dokja became the kind of character who was typically found at a luxury grocery store with his phone blowing up once a week.

Although, there were, perhaps, a few abnormal things about this particular grocery store visit.

First of all, was, of course, the fact that Kim Dokja had been asked to retrieve tomatoes. Yoo Joonghyuk never asked him to get tomatoes. Sometimes other people in the house would ask for some, and Kim Dokja could just conveniently forget to buy them, but this time, Yoo Joonghyuk had actually put them on the list...

... Ah. Rereading the list one more time, Kim Dokja figured it out. Yoo Sangah was coming back from her trip to Brazil this week and... Well, Kim Dokja forgot if she was there doing some big diplomatic stuff or just visiting for fun (because Yoo Sangah thought traveling was Fun), but it meant that there would have to be some sort of welcome back dinner, he supposed. Kim Dokja didn't participate in it much, but he liked to read through their Groupchat at the end of each day when he was settling into bed... So even he knew from Yoo Sangah's travel and food pictures that her current obsession was a spicy Italian noodle dish that just so happened to require a tomato sauce...

... Which was why... Kim Dokja should... Pick some of these tomatoes out...

....

Well... Yoo Joonghyuk could probably make a substitution, couldn't he? He was the master cook... And how was Kim Dokja even supposed to know what a good tomato was anyway? They never tasted exactly the same, just all being equally disgusting in different ways...

Kim Dokja had almost talked himself out of buying the tomatoes when he suddenly pictured something. Surprisingly, it wasn't just the angry face of Yoo Joonghyuk berating him for not following the list... It was... Just all of Kim Dokja's Company sitting together at the big dinner table... Gilyoung complaining about the spice, Jihye wolfing hers down, Yoo Sangah eating politely even though it's the best thing she's ever tasted... Yoo Joonghyuk standing proudly over everything, like seeing others eat something he made was the happiest thing for him....

Kim Dokja swallowed his disgust. Then, with the bravery of a man marching towards his own death, he reached towards the pile of tomatoes, for the first time assessing the quality of said produce with the intent of making a purchase...

The second odd thing was when he started violently convulsing and threw up a bunch of bloody flower petals all over the tomato display.

"..." Kim Dokja looked blankly at the mess of floral mutilation that had just come out of his mouth.

"AAAIIIIIIEEEEEE!" some of the customers browsing behind him screamed.

The rest of his time in the store was a bit of a blur, but 15 minutes later Kim Dokja was standing outside, a bag full of somewhat bloody tomatoes he had been forced to pay for in one hand and his phone in the other.

He swiped away texts requesting more snacks from the kids, Han Sooyoung's list of fancy coffee brands, and Yoo Joonghyuk's dozens of texts about buying the right kind of produce to pull up his contacts list. Scrolling through it for only a second, he found the number he was looking for and hit the call button.

"..."

The phone rang a few times.

"... Hi, Seolwha-ssi? This is Kim Dokja... Listen, I need help scheduling a surgery..."

Chapter Text

There was once a time when Kim Dokja was an existence that had absolute knowledge of all things. In fact, it would have been more accurate to say that if there was a story that Kim Dokja didn't know about, then it stopped existing.

Of course, when he crammed himself back into his gross, medically comatose body, all of that knowledge couldn't come with him.

"Ahjussi, why is your body like this? Before you woke up you were a kid, and then there was a bunch of light and magic looking stuff and you'd think that you would be magically healed... But then somehow you just ended up looking like yourself except you were in a coma…”

“Well, I was in a coma.”

Through the amalgamation of memories regarding the story that got injected into the multiverse as "Omniscient Reader," Kim Dokja had been able to deduce that the rules of this universe weren't really set in stone... They were set inside of him.

Or at least inside of his existence as the most ancient dream... Which he still technically was? In a way?

Basically when you looked at it, Kim Dokja hadn't been able to escape his existence as the most ancient dream, because he believed it to be the only ◼◼ he could be granted by the rules of the universe... But actually he was the one dictating those rules because he Was the rules of the universe and anything he subconsciously believed about those existential mechanics was just true... But then Kim Dokja's friends compiled a story where he could see himself as a protagonist with a significant percentage of his existence and he had subconsciously been convinced to a certain degree that the character of Kim Dokja deserved a happy ending so he appeared in his hospital bed...

But apparently that existence that was technically his subconscious or whatever thought it was most realistic for him to have a coma body to deal with... Not to mention various other "flare ups" Kim Dokja had since encountered.

Even though the powers granted by the scenarios had long since faded from this world, Kim Dokja was still technically the most ancient dream. Which meant he was still uh... Somewhat magical.

It was honestly hard to parse most of the time, because there would be days when some kind of atrocity or cataclysmic disaster would occur on the same day Kim Dokja was sort of losing faith in humanity and he would have the thought "did I do that?"

Usually the answer was no. The probability of certain disasters occurring was a concept that had been long since developed to where it was by his existence in the world before scenarios, so it should be roughly even to then nowadays... Still, Kim Dokja always found himself wondering about it...

Then there were sometimes really clear, obvious signs that his subconscious was fucking with the world somehow.

For instance, the fact that he seemed to have just spontaneously developed Hanahaki Disease.

"... I'm sorry Dokja-ssi, I don't have any knowledge of a disease with that name." Lee Seolhwa told him over the phone.

"That's perfectly understandable," Kim Dokja had replied with a twinge of frustration, "seeing as its a disease that shouldn't exist in this world."

Hanahaki was a fictional disease that was popular in online publications in Kim Dokja's original world, and, of course, happened to really exist in a few of the realities he had been privy to as the all seeing godlike existence that surveyed the multiverse.

He couldn't recall a lot of specific characters and stories involving the disease, but could recognize it as any reader of innumerable webnovel publications could recognize a trope.

The first sign was spitting up petals, then when the disease progressed the person spat up whole flowers. Apparently this spontaneous floral regurgitation was triggered by unrequited romantic feelings... So maybe the idea of being choked by flowers was just supposed to be symbolic of that... Although to be honest throwing up petals at the grocery store had just felt like throwing up blood to Kim Dokja. He'd thrown up plenty of blood before without being in unrequited romantic love so...

Okay, wait, that was the problem. Kim Dokja was definitely not a lovelorn schoolgirl with an unrequited crush. He was a 40 year old man who used to be a god or whatever. By the logic of the universe somehow his own perception of himself had led him to have this disease... But how did this make sense at all!?!?

He wasn't even like actively repressing any emotions or memories or whatever anymore! He literally cried in therapy last week! He's so normal now!

Luckily even though the cause was nonsensical and opaque, Hanahaki Disease had an easy solution. In the majority of the universes involving it, there was always a magical "surgery" that got rid of it for good with a recovery period just long enough to be slightly dramatic.

The big thing about it that created a lot of the drama was that if the afflicted had the surgery, apparently all their feelings for their unrequited love would disappear.

... But wasn't that the ideal? Kim Dokja didn't understand how the other option for the cure, confessing the unrequited feelings and having them reciprocated, wasn't obviously worse. At best the other person would be pressured to accept the feelings, at worst you're using your own illness to full-on manipulate the object of your affections to love you back... Isn't it a lot better to just get the flowers out of you with the bonus of never having to worry about the unreciprocated feelings again?

Which was why he was on the phone with Lee Seolhwa

Of course, he wasn't going to tell her about all the repressed love nonsense.

"Basically I have flowers growing in my lungs, and I'm going to keep spitting petals out until I get them surgically removed." Kim Dokja explained.

"Your lungs?!?" Lee Seolhwa's voice spiked up in pitch. "Dokja-ssi this sounds really serious- Listen, I can reschedule my 1 o'clock and if you go to urgent care right now I can get there in time to advise -"

"No, no." Ah, yeah, flowers in his lungs sounded bad when he said it out loud, didn't it. Kim Dokja feels stupid for worrying her. "Listen it's one of my, uh, 'special' illnesses-" and in case Kim Dokja didn't feel like enough of an ass having to explain this to his close friend and doctor, some customers came out of the store right when he said that and definitely heard him, "- the petals are just the first stage and then it gets slowly worse over months and years until I'm spitting up whole flowers. It's more dramatic that way."

"... Alright." Lee Seolhwa's voice sounds a little strained. Luckily Kim Dokja is used to it. The things that are wrong with him very often defy the bounds of the medical understanding of the human body.

That's why Lee Seolhwa, who managed to adapt so quickly to the medical logic of TWSA's system, was the only person he could call on to invent Hanahaki surgery from scratch.

"... I suppose if your suspicions about the prognosis prove accurate, we do need the time to plan out the best treatment plan." Proving once more that he had made the right choice in trusting her, Lee Seolhwa accepted the situation as it was. "Dokja-ssi could I trouble you to come in tomorrow morning for a physical exam?"

"Sure." Kim Dokja wanted this all taken care of as quickly as possible... Oh!

His eyes catching on the tomatoes in his bag, Kim Dokja went on, "By the way, did you hear about the company dinner coming up? Yoo Sangah and Yoosung will be back from Brazil this week."

Lee Seolhwa lived in an apartment in the city to be near the hospital where she worked. Kim Dokja had been surprised and a bit saddened when he realized that her and Yoo Joonghyuk had ended up living separate lives in this world... But then he thought again about how the Yoo Joonghyuk of the zeroeth regression had been ready to leave everything behind and how the Lee Seolhwa of that time had been prepared to let him go even though they were supposed to have their happiness toge-

"Ah, yes- I saw something about that in the group chat. I'll make time." Lee Seolhwa replied over the phone. "... But Dokja-ssi, right now, maybe you should go in for observation..."

"I'm really, honestly confident that I should just rest at home." Kim Dokja made sure to reassure her. Yes, he obviously knew how he sounded whenever he said "everything's fine." He had read the book where he died like 80 times too, okay? Kim Dokja liked to think he'd changed a bit since then, enough that he could be trusted at his word about this kind of thing. "From what I know, I should just be going about my regular day to day, because there's nothing that can be done about the disease except the surgery and all it does is make me cough up flowers every once in a while."

"... Alright." Lee Seolhwa replied after a moment of hesitation. "You're my first appointment tomorrow, I'll send you the details over text."

"Thanks." Kim Dokja felt really grateful as he said his goodbyes. In fact, the emotion must have been a lot stronger than he realized... He was a little choked up...

"HGGGRK."

Oh, right.

Kim Dokja hacked up some more bloody flower petals in the trash can outside the grocery store.

Chapter Text

Of course, the first person who finds out beyond the scope of doctor-patient confidentiality is the absolute worst person who could have found out.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Kim Dokja didn't even figure out she knew until after she had already told everyone about it.

Han Sooyoung had driven him to and from Lee Seolhwa's office, since Kim Dokja still didn't have a license. On the way there she spent the majority of the car ride making fun of him for only bringing back tomatoes from his grocery run and trying to guess whether or not Yoo Joonghyuk thought he was being passive aggressive about his spicy spaghetti plans. On the way back she poked and prodded about what his doctor's visit was about.

It wasn't until they got home that Kim Dokja found out she already knew.

"Ahjussi!" Lee Jihye called from the home office where she was doing some work, "Tell me who it was!"

"Who what was?" Kim Dokja was shrugging his coat off and meandered towards the voice that had called him, thinking that the 29 year old might be asking for help on a crossword puzzle or something.

"Who got you pregnant!" She cackled, barely giving Kim Dokja enough time to process her words before sticking her phone in his face through the office door.

Kim Dokja was flabbergasted, fixing his eyes on the screen in front of him and reading the texts there.

It looked like the middle of a conversation in the big group chat.

Unnie! <3 : We should kill whoever it is.

idiot : yeah its like someone knocked up our sister

Yoosung : No, it's like someone knocked up our mom

Bug boy : Someone knocked up my old man.

Master : Kim Dokja is not pregnant.

My Evil Ahjumma : His lungs are knocked up with dying.

Reading this, Kim Dokja frowned. His eyes flicked over to glare at Han Sooyoung in the doorway, who was notably avoiding eye contact with him, before he turned to his own phone, scrolling up the chat log to figure out just how much everyone knew.

...

There it was, the second conversation of the day. Just after everyone away from the house had finished exchanging pictures of their breakfasts with Yoo Joonghyuk, Han Sooyoung had sent a message while Kim Dokja was getting x-rays done of his lungs.

Han Sooyoung : ???

Han Sooyoung : Kim Dokja why are there rose petals on my goddamn car seat

Ah, shit. Kim Dokja almost facepalmed when he realized some of the flower petals he had been coughing into his handkerchief must have spilled out of his coat pocket when he got out of the car…

Yoosung : Maybe he’s trying to romance you, Ahjumma!

Gilyoung : Ahjumma? No way.

Lee Jihye : Ahjussi must have misplaced them

Han Sooyoung : Wow! Fuck you!

Yoosung : Hmm… if they’re not for Ahjumma, maybe Ahjussi got Seolhwa-unnie some flowers? ( *o*)!

Gilyoung : No way.

Lee Jihye : Yeah she’s way out of his league

Han Sooyoung : And I’m not?

Lee Jihye : You’re not

Gilyoung : You’re in the same league. Old person league.

Kim Namwoon : nerd league

Han Sooyoung : I have no children.

Yoosung : Ah, well maybe it’s not really romantic… I mean, knowing Ahjussi… (^^;) 

Yoosung : Is it, like, doctor appreciation week or something?

Han Sooyoung : oh yea, Kim Dokja would never voluntarily do something romantic. I don’t think he has a romantic bone in his body. If he had romantic feelings for someone, he would definitely rather die than admit them.

Han Sooyoung : Oh you know what I bet he has hanahaki lmao.

Oh. There it was.

Yoo Sangah : Hanahaki? Is that Japanese?

Han Sooyoung : sigh. This is the problem with having normie friends 

Han Sooyoung : they don’t get your great jokes

Han Sooyoung : https://namu.wiki/w/하나하키병

Han Sooyoung : educate yourselves

Ignoring Lee Jihye’s continued cackling as she kept her texting fingers busy adding to the back and forth making fun of Kim Dokja for having a fictional disease they had assigned to him as a joke, Kim Dokja turned around and grabbed Han Sooyoung by the elbow. She made a noise of protest, but followed when he pulled her into the library room across from the home office and shut the door behind him.

“Jeez, relax! Kim Dokja, it was just a joke!” Han Sooyoung seemed to already have a guess at what Kim Dokja wanted to speak with her about and was already making up excuses for herself.

She blabbered on with it and Kim Dokja let her, silently collecting himself.

Of course Han Sooyoung would manage to make such a joke of his situation without even knowing the truth behind her own words… This was really just too typical… Really how had he even put up with this woman the past ten years?

“- and it’s not like you could actually get hanahaki in real… Uh…” Han Sooyoung trailed off mid sentence. “Hey. Hey, Kim Dokja, are you oka-”

Kim Dokja realized that he wasn’t sick to his stomach because of Han Sooyoung’s unknowing betrayal, but rather because there had been flower petals blocking up his throat and - oh shit - he had left his handkerchief in his coat pocket-

Han Sooyoung realized something of a similar effect when Kim Dokja keeled over and blew bloody flower chunks onto her shoes.

Chapter Text

Kim Dokja was now sitting on a couch in the living room with a waste basket clutched between his knees. When he was done setting out the tea and snacks, Yoo Joonghyuk sat in the spot next to him, but about 5 inches apart from him; which Kim Dokja thought was absolutely fair, considering how gross he felt right now. On his other side and sitting even further away was Lee Jihye. Although, Kim Dokja assumed her avoidance was caused by the awkwardness of Han Sooyoung’s text of “wait uh okay stop joking you guys. The bastard actually gave himself hanahaki.” more than anything else.

Han Sooyoung had changed clothes completely, having thrown out her contaminated shoes and pants instead of assuming they could be cleaned. She was now wearing her stay-at-home hoodie and leggings combo while wheeling in a white board from the home office. 

The “company meeting” she had called was supposedly to be regarding Kim Dokja’s affliction. This statement should be regarded with skepticism, partly because the only people home at the time of her calling the meeting were the four of them who fell upon the scale of working from home or not working at all, and mostly because the white board Han Sooyoung rolled in had the words “ Who does Kim Dokja have a crush on? ” written on it.

“I don’t think this is-” Kim Dokja was interrupted when the front door slammed open and the sound of someone shucking off heavy shoes and stomping up the hallway could be heard.

“DOKA-SSI’S DYING?!?” Lee Hyunsung sounded panicked and out of breath, like he had run all the way from the Blue House as soon as he heard the news. 

“No, Hyunsung-ssi, I’m-” Kim Dokja thought that some warmth was blooming in his chest at seeing Lee Hyunsung’s earnest reaction to his illness, but actually it was just his throat filling up with petals again.

As he leaned over the waste bin in his lap, Yoo Joonghyuk hit him a few times on the back, helping him get all the phlegm, blood, and petals out.

Han Sooyoung took the opportunity to answer Lee Hyunsung’s question for him.

“Yes, he is.” She said bruskly. “And you’re a suspect. Sit down.”

Lee Hyunsung sat down as ordered, although now he looked both alarmed and confused.

Yoo Joonghyuk was making a face at Kim Dokja, but offered him some tea. Kim Dokja accepted the cup gratefully, and swallowed some of it down. He felt some resentment bubbling up in him towards authors or artists would ever portray Hanahaki as being some kind of beautiful depiction of a tragic romance… 

Newsflash: flowers stop looking pretty when they come out your mouth backwards covered in all your respiratory fluids.

  Luckily, the tea Yoo Joonghyuk had made was, of course, delicious and seemed to have a soothing effect on the throat that was becoming increasingly sore with each floral regurgitation… ah so refreshing? Did he put honey in it? How considerate… wait was Kim Dokja feeling touched or was he just-

"HGGGRK!"

While Kim Dokja went for another round of petal spewing with the assistance of Yoo Joonghyuk's strong hand pounding on his back, Han Sooyoung was writing names on the white board.

  "Ahjumma can I be a suspect this time?" Lee Jihye raised her hand while speaking, as if Han Sooyoung was still a professor and was teaching a class.

"No way." Han Sooyoung shot her down, although she seemed to have been assembling a conspiracy board of every adult Kim Dokja knew… 

"Whaaaaat. Why not?" Lee Jihye complained. "I mean, I know that I've maintained my youthful charm over the years, but my beauty has matured~"

As if trying to provide proof of this claim, Lee Jihye did a little hair flip, flicking her long black tresses over her shoulder. Unfortunately for her, all that this move revealed was that Lee Jihye had failed to change out of her sleep shirt that morning. It was the one with the English text that would have seemed like a trendy sweater if not for the fact that the translation of the words printed on it was something like "Crap Your Hands."

Han Sooyoung ignored her.

Kim Dokja was sort of ignoring everything right now too. He was trying to finish his cup and eat a snack before he got attacked by his own lungs again.

Lee Hyunsung, on the other hand, seemed to honestly want to contribute to the conversation.

"Ah, Jihye, sorry if this is a stupid question, but, uh, what do you mean by 'last time?'" Lee Hyunsung asked as if lost.

"Eh? You don't remember?" Lee Jihye blinked at him. "Um, I mean… it was a long time ago, I don't remember the specifics… but we definitely had to find out who Ahjussi liked one time before, right?"

"Olympus had his fate read."  Yoo Joonghyuk said a few words.

 "Yeah, it was-" Kim Dokja took a bite of tea cookie. "It was 'Incarnation Kim Dokja will be killed by the person he loves most.'" He frowned. "Shouldn't you know that? It was a pretty important part of the book you all wrote…"

Lee Jihye seemed to have just noticed the cookies herself, because she seemed only interested in reaching for them when she muttered "Really? Was it?"

 "Yeah. That's the set up to the arc where Kim Dokja becomes a constellation." Kim Dokja explained. "That's the reason that the prophecy specifies that his 'incarnation' will die."

Han Sooyoung paused her writing to walk towards him and tap him on the head with the capped end of the whiteboard marker.

"You're talking in third person." She reminded him because, ack, yeah, he was supposed to stop doing that. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and all that.

Then Han Sooyoung's eyes caught on the coffee table, and she grabbed a tea cookie of her own.

Seeing as everyone else was eating them, Lee Hyunsung reached for a cookie as well.

Then there was a moment where everyone except the star baker was just eating cookies for a second.

…

Lee Jihye finished hers first.

"Wait a second, if that was the prophecy then don't we already know who knock- I mean, who Ahjussi is in love with?" She pointed out. "Who killed him back then?"

"I did." Yoo Joonghyuk declared.

"So it's you." Lee Jihye concluded.

Kim Dokja frowned. "I don't think…"

He trailed off because Lee Hyunsung had started speaking at the same time as him.

"Wait, I'm sorry- so is Dokja-ssi's true love murdering him? Is that the situation? Again?" 

… Who said anything about "True Love"?!?

While Kim Dokja was stunned, Han Sooyoung stepped in.

"Yeah basically. He has a disease that'll kill him if he doesn't confess to whoever he's carrying a torch for." Han Sooyoung brushed the crumbs off her hands as she spoke. "But I dunno if it's Yoo Joonghyuk. You would think that after 10 years Kim Dokja's taste would have improved."

That was a pretty audacious thing to say about the man that provided all of her meals, but Yoo Joonghyuk didn't seem affected by the barb. In fact, his focus was on Kim Dokja, towards whom he was issuing a narrow eyed look of suspicion.

"Wait, hold on." Kim Dokja interrupted the conversation firmly this time. "First of all, that's not the only cure; my appointment with Seolhwa-ssi today was about performing a surgery that would fully take care of the problem."

"Yeah, and care to share with the class the side effects of that surgery, Kim Dokja?" Han Sooyoung asked accusingly, most likely referring to the whole "losing the feelings of your unrequited love" thing  typical to the trope.

"Second of all," Kim Dokja just kept going as if she hadn't spoken, "that prophecy wasn't saying that I was in love with Yoo Joonghyuk!"

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned at him.

"No, it really wasn't!" Kim Dokja replied as if the protagonist had disagreed with him aloud. "It was all of you working together that killed me - because you were all a part of my favorite story! That's what I loved most of anything in the world, being able to be with all of you…"

"Aww, Ahjussi. That's really sweet."  Lee Jihye cooed. "Definitely wrong though."

"Yeah, total BS." Han Sooyoung agreed.

"I stabbed you dead Kim Dokja." Yoo Joonghyuk said. 

Kim Dokja thought he might be choking with anger at that series of dismissals, but actually he just had to throw up some flower petals again.

"It's honestly possible that Kim Dokja is so repressed that he actually doesn't know who it is himself." Han Sooyoung said while Yoo Joonghyuk started thumping his back again.

 "That makes sense." Lee Jihye said.

Even Lee Hyunsung nodded. "Ah, otherwise he would just tell us, right?"

"Fuck all of you." Kim Dokja rasped from over his sick bucket.

"That's an idea!" Han Sooyoung walked back over to the board, and under the header 'ideas' she wrote the words 'Group Sex.'

"No." Kim Dokja, Yoo Joonghyuk and Lee Hyunsung all spoke at the same time, though Lee Hyunsung's refusal was almost squawked rather than said.

"Ugh, fine!" Han Sooyoung reluctantly crossed out 'Group Sex.' "But I'm not hearing any other bright ideas. Group sex just seems a lot less embarrassing for all of us than having Kim Dokja just go down the line trying to confess to everyone."

"I'm not doing that either." Kim Dokja said.

"Well then what are you doing?" Han Sooyoung asked exasperatedly. "How is it that you even managed to get magical flower spitting disease in the first place??"

"I don't know!" Kim Dokja put his hands up. "It just started at the grocery store the other day - I suddenly threw up bloody petals on the tomatoes."

At that Yoo Joonghyuk stood up from next to him.

In a flash, the protagonist was in the kitchen grabbing the tomatoes from the fridge and shucking them into a paper bag to take out to the compost bin in the yard…

"Hey- I washed them!" Kim Dokja yelled back at him, feeling some dismay at seeing so much food go to waste, even if it was a pile of the blighted red fruit he detested…

While Yoo Joonghyuk broke out some disinfectant to treat his contaminated fridge, Kim Dokja was so distracted that he missed where Han Sooyoung's eyes had gone.

"Aha!" She exclaimed, pointing towards his waste bin. "Flower symbolism! In Hanahaki stories the flowers usually mean something - maybe figuring out what flowers you've been spitting up will give us a clue!" 

The both looked down in the mess bucket… only to find that the petals within were multicolored and varied. 

"..."

"..."

Kim Dokja gave Han Sooyoung a flat look.

"Do you know how to identify flowers by their petals?"

Looking into the floral vomit arrangement, Han Sooyoung seemed slightly nauseated. Still, she didn't avert her gaze.

"... Let's try the internet." She decided.

Chapter Text

Kim Dokja had somehow failed to relocate from the living room by the time Jung Heewon returned home from her day at work.

"Hey hon." Jung Heewon greeted the Lee Hyunsung who had been eagerly waiting for her return with a kiss on the cheek. Then - in what Kim Dokja had to assume was a continuation of the long standing bit she had committed to since Han Sooyoung had one time asked "What, and nothing for me?" - Jung Heewon also headed over to the couch Kim Dokja sat on to give Han Sooyoung, who was sitting next to him on her laptop, a cheek kiss too.

"What are you guys up to over here?" Jung Heewon then went on to ask, sitting down on the couch as well.

There weren't any more spots on the couch, so when Lee Hyunsung followed her over, Jung Heewon patted her thighs and he sat down right there on her lap. 

There were certain combinations of the company members for whom such an action might appear inappropriate or even obscene, but Lee Hyunsung just looked comfortable while Jung Heewon actually managed to make supporting a broad shouldered man twice her size quite cool… Not to mention that it was a normal sight to see on movie nights, so Kim Dokja and Han Sooyoung who witnessed it then didn't bat an eye.

"Nothing. Shut up, I'm busy." Han Sooyoung muttered in reply to Jung Heewon's inquiry, seemingly very busy fiddling with the wildflower identifying tool she had found online.

"How are you busy doing nothing?" Jung Heewon pestered, craning her neck to see the computer screen from a better angle.

"She's trying to-" Kim Dokja coughed, finally evicting the loose petal that had been tickling his throat since his last massexpulsion, "-trying to identify what flowers I've been throwing up."

Jung Heewon looked at the loose petal dangling from his lip as if it was a third head he'd just grown. "… Did you swallow a bouquet, Dokja-ssi?"

"No, Heewon, don't you remember?" Lee Hyunsung piped up helpfully,  "He has that illness Sooyoung-ssi linked in the Groupchat earlier today."

"What?" Jung Heewon blinked up at him. "That's real?"

"Do you even read the texts I sent you?" Han Sooyoung snapped, fully turning towards Jung Heewon and abandoning her pretense of still being focused on the task in front of her.

"No." Jung Heewon replied flatly.

"It's only real because it's Dokja-ssi," Lee Hyunsung explained, appearing happy that he was now one of the people who knew what was going on and could explain it to others. "Like the time he grew shorter every day for a week and we had to help him visualize himself…"

"Oooh." Jung Heewon nodded in understanding. "Like when he kept turning invisible when he disassociated and we had to find him and convince him we could see him?"

"Exactly," although she had seemed annoyed a moment ago, Han Sooyoung was now smirking, "Or that month when the full moon came out and he grew a furry tail and -"

"That one didn't happen!" Kim Dokja hit Han Sooyoung on the shoulder, suspecting that his own face may have gotten a bit red at being forced to listen to a top ten count down of his embarrassing flare ups.

"You can't prove it didn't!" Han Sooyoung cackled.

Kim Dokja glowered at her. "How's your flower hunt going?" He asked, mostly just trying to change the subject.

Han Sooyoung frowned, attention clearly captured by that particular subject. She grabbed one of the rubber gloves out of the box they had commandeered from under the kitchen sink and pulled it on over her hand. The gloves were in the Large size since usually only Yoo Joonghyuk used them while cleaning, but Han Sooyoung didn't let it bother her that the glove was much too long for her, scrunching up the fingers so that she filled in the tips.

She then, very gingerly, as if handling radioactive material, peeled the petal Kim Dokja had just spit up off of his lip and held it up to the light.

"Hggh… I can't be sure but…" Han Sooyoung squinted at the blue petal between her fingers while grimacing. "I think that I've narrowed it down to either… 'Virginia Bluebell,' or 'Viper's Bugloss.'"

Lee Hyunsung looked at Han Sooyoung's computer screen. "I like that one, it's pretty." He said, pointing at the bluebell.

"Yes, thank you, that's very helpful, Lee Hyunsung." Han Sooyoung's words were clearly meant to be sarcastic, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling when she said them.

Jung Heewon's reaction was very different. She looked at the flowers on the screen, then up to the petal in Han Sooyoung's hand. It only took a second of analysis for her to say, "Han Sooyoung, that's a Hyacinth."

"Fuck you." Han Sooyoung said instantly.

"No, I'm serious," Jung Heewon insisted. "Look up 'blue hyacinth,' you'll see what I mean."

Han Sooyoung grumbled, opening a new tab to type in the flower name one-handed.

A flower that… yep, pretty much looked exactly like the one this petal might've come from… popped up on the screen.

"Ooh, that one's pretty, too." Lee Hyunsung added his two cents.

"… Okay, fine. It's a blue hyacinth." Han Sooyoung muttered. "Worthless." She said under her breath as she closed the wildflower search engine's tab and pulled up the Naver blog post with flower meanings she had found online.

"How'd you know that, Heewon-ssi?" Kim Dokja asked.

Jung Heewon shrugged. "Uh I dunno… I guess I was in scouts for a year as a kid… Oh!" She made a flat palm and hit it with her first. "You know what, it's Uriel's fault. When I was working for her - back before they got engaged - every Friday we had to go to a florist and get a bouquet for Gabriel, and she would always ask my opinion and try to make 'girl-talk' with me about it…"

Kim Dokja nodded. Jung Heewon was referencing the time when her job as a high profile bodyguard had her following Uriel's idol group around the world for a while. He wanted to say something like, 'Heewon-ssi remembering such details shows how good she is at her job,' but he felt something coming up…

This time what he spat into the bucket was mostly just a clot of blood and phlegm, with a few tiny yellow petals dotted in it.

They all looked at it for a second, before simultaneously turning to Jung Heewon.

She made a face.

…

They went back to looking at the computer.

"Naver user Flower Traveler says that blue hyacinths represent 'constancy.'" Han Sooyoung read aloud.

"So maybe it's someone he's been in love with for a long time, then?" Lee Hyunsung suggested.

"Wait, is that what we're doing here?" Jung Heewon asked. "Trying to figure out who Dokja-ssi is in love with based on the flowers he's barfing up?"

"Yeah." Han Sooyoung replied. "If we don't force him to confess his feelings to that person, his lungs fill up with flowers all the way, and he dies."

"Hm." Jung Heewon's expression turned serious for a moment. Then she said, "Have you tried the cheongsam and garter belt yet?"

Kim Dokja felt a wave of nausea at that comment.

Then a glob of pink petals made its way into his now semi-full waste basket.

"Petunias!" Jung Heewon called out as soon as she got a good look. "Those are petunia petals!" She turned to Han Sooyoung. " You know, I think that you might be having trouble identifying them just because it looks like they're coming out of him, like, unfused, for some reason… some of these flower varieties are identified by fused petals…"

"Anger. Naver says that means anger," Han Sooyoung ignored the person giving her some advice to say.

"So the person is someone that he's constantly angry at?" Lee Hyunsung guessed.

Jung Heewon laughed. "Then it's gotta be you, Sooyoung."

"No." Han Sooyoung and Kim Dokja both spoke at the same time.

Kim Dokja didn't have a good reason to say so, aside from his gut feelings, but Han Sooyoung went on.

"Usually in Hanahaki stories, there's one kind of flower that sort of just symbolically represents the object of the afflicted's affections," Han Sooyoung explained like she was their own personal TVtropes page, "but Kim Dokja's keep changing, so I'm guessing they reflect how he feels about the person in the moment." She turned to point her gross, gloved finger at someone. "Jung Heewon, I think you're the one who made him angry just then, bringing up his fetish."

"Me?" Jung Heewon seemed surprised, turning towards Kim Dokja. "Agh, Dokja-ssi, I'm flattered, but I always saw you as more of a little brother…"

Kim Dokja wished he was still throwing up, because that seemed preferable to having to talk to these people any longer.

“I really don’t think it’s any of you,” he insisted. “And I’m not going to die - I just need to get a surgery to remove the flower roots from my lungs.”

Jung Heewon squinted. “Wait, how do you have the roots of all these different flowers in your lungs?” She asked. “And how are they even growing in there? Most of these flowers wilt if you so much as wink at them, how are they thriving literally inside of you where there’s definitely no sunlight? Not to mention they’re coming in one petal at a time…”

“... Huh, you’re right.” Han Sooyoung took on a similarly contemplative expression. “You know, why is it that coughing up whole flowers is the final stage of the disease, when flowers only shed their petals at the end of their life cycle?”

Kim Dokja was very tired.

“I don’t have answers to any of those questions,” he said, “all I know is that when I went into Seolhwa-ssi’s office, she took an X-ray and there were roots in my lungs that magically somehow didn’t automatically make me super dead.”

“Are they just in your lungs?” Han Sooyoung asked, “Or do they extend up into your brain, ready to tear out the teeny tiny part that’s capable of love?”

“I’ll tear out your teeny tiny part…” Kim Dokja muttered unintelligently.

“Why would it be in his brain?” Lee Hyunsung asked, sounding, alarmingly, quite concerned.

“That’s always one of the side effects of surgery.” Han Sooyoung jumped on the chance to explain. “When the afflicted chooses surgery instead of confessing their feelings, the surgery, like, removes the feelings.”

“Wait, it’s going to stop him from feeling?” Jung Heewon looked like she would’ve sat up at that, if not for the fact she had a precious Lee Hyunsung in her lap. “Like the fourth wall?”

“No, no, no.” Kim Dokja waved his hands dismissively. “The whole purpose of the trope is that the choking on flowers thing represents having an unrequited love, so getting rid of the flowers through surgery is like, surgically removing the unrequited love from you. Like a metaphor.”

“A metaphor that is literally happening to you.” Han Sooyoung pointed out.

Jung Heewon was doing that thing where her grip was tightening and loosening on Lee Hyunsung’s arm repeatedly; like she wanted him to be a sword again. Presumably so that she could find some way to ‘Hour of Judgement’ her way out of this problem like in the good old days.

“It’s not happening to me literally .” Kim Dokja wanted to make sure their concerns were eased. “I know you guys won’t take my word for it, but seriously, I’m not in love with anyone.” He waved his hands. “This is is all just some subconscious snafu of some sort, like, my subconscious hiccuped and randomly assigned me a trope that was popular a decade ago. Big whoop. I’ll get the surgery and go back to normal. There’s no feelings to erase in the first place!”

They were all looking at him now, but Kim Dokja kept going.

“... And besides, even if I had those kinds of feelings and didn’t know about them - isn’t it just simpler to get rid of them?”

That set them off.

“Kim Dokja that’s the most idiotic thing I’ve-!”

“Dokja-ssi do you, um, think that’s really healthy or-?”

“Therapist! Therapist! For the love of all in heaven call your fucking thera-”

Then, one voice cut through the ruckus.

“Hey, old people.”

It was Yoo Mia who had returned from her celebrity appearance judging a cooking show a few hours ago and promptly decided she didn’t care about why her ‘Ugly Ahjussi’ was holding a waste bucket full of grossified flower petals.

“Didn’t you guys hear Oppa call from the dining room?” It seemed she only came back to tell them about the status of their dinner. 

Han Sooyoung made an expression that was completely inappropriate for the face of someone who had just heard they would get to taste Yoo Joonghyuk’s cooking.

“He didn’t use any of the tomatoes, did he?” She asked.

“Uh, no.” Yoo Mia looked a little quizzical. “It’s fried chicken.”

Fried chicken…

Kim Dokja really thought it wasn’t a stretch for him to be feeling emotionally choked up about the fried chicken, but to his disappointment he had to lean over and let some flower petals out again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Han Sooyoung start typing into her browser “pink round-ish triangle petals –” and he grabbed her wrist before she could hit search.

“Wait.” He said. “I already know what that one means.”

“... Oh yeah? What does it mean, then?” She asked, skeptically.

“It means…" Kim Dokja told her, "That I’m hungry.”

Chapter Text

The next day, Kim Dokja found himself puttering around Gilyoung's room with a laundry basket in one hand and a plastic trash bag in the other.

See, by mid morning Kim Dokja had developed a strategy for managing his Hanahaki. 

The first thing to remember was to not feel things. It may have just been confirmation bias or selective association, but Kim Dokja was pretty sure that his petal hacking fits flared up when he was feeling strong emotions.

Then the second thing was, when not feeling stuff failed, he just carried a barf bag with him everywhere.

For instance, when he saw some of Gilyoung's academic awards on the desk, and the memory of attending his high school graduation made some fuzzy feelings rise in his chest, Kim Dokja was able to just spit the small yellow petals he hacked up into his trash bag; Gilyoung's special insect-print sheets in the laundry basket were perfectly safe!

When he was done, Kim Dokja gripped the trash bag closed in his fist. Mostly out of habit. Han Sooyoung had been following him around since breakfast, still playing Hanahaki Herlock Sholmes. She only quit when Kim Dokja went to get Lee Gilyoung's room ready for him and it looked like he was going to make her help with the house work. Although Kim Dokja bet she was still skulking around the house somewhere, possibly gossiping about him in the group chat, actually…

Aaah, he was too busy for all that! Kim Dokja dismissed all concerns about Han Sooyoung as he set down his sick bag somewhere accessible so he could put the sheets back on the bed.

Gilyoung was supposed to be back from school a month ago - in time to join Yoo Sangah and Yoosung on their trip - but got selected for an entomology field study that was too good to pass up, so he was on some Pacific island looking at bugs the past few weeks instead.

Han Sooyoung was going to pick him up at the airport this afternoon. Then the next day, Jang Hayoung was back from her trip to the USA… Kim Namwoon would probably be bringing the other car back from his model building convention around then too… well maybe Kim Dokja could skip making up his room since he hadn't been gone that long… he still had Yoo Sangah and Yoosung's rooms to do, and they were going to be the last to arrive at the end of the week… should he make up the guest room Lee Seolhwa used to use when she babysat? … No, she was only staying for dinner… Same for Gong Pildu and Han Myungoh if they RSVP'd, though Han Myungoh mentioned he might be with his daughter… Oh! Biyoo would probably want to stay a while, though. Better tidy up her room too.

Ah… it was going to be really good to have everyone in the same spot again… even if it meant he had to eat…

Kim Dokja had to abruptly abandon his attempt to tuck the corners of the fitted sheet under the mattress to grab for his bag.

He coughed up some magenta petals. Ugh. It would really suck to still be sick on the day when everyone would be back at the house, celebrating…

Luckily for Kim Dokja - at the tail end of his hacking fit - his phone started buzzing and ringing, distracting him from his miserable thoughts.

He beat his chest one more time and wiped the last few traces of mucus from his face with one arm, his other hand fishing out his phone from his pocket.

The caller ID said… Lee Seolhwa!

Kim Dokja accepted the call right away, pulling the phone up to his ear.

"Seolhwa-ssi, good to hear from you!" Kim Dokja said these greeting words that were shortly followed by another fit of coughing.

"Hi, Dokja-ssi." Lee Seolhwa sounded tired, but not unfriendly. "I have some news about your… situation. Do you have time to discuss over the phone now?"

"Yeah, uh-" Kim Dokja took a quick glance at his half finished task on the bed, then searched around the room for a second before squatting to settle down on Gilyoung's roly-poly shaped bean bag chair. "Yeah, I have time, uh, so- what's up?"

"Well, I have some good news about the surgery." Lee Seolhwa started off with some words that made Kim Dokja's mind relax a bit. "I called Jang Hayoung-ssi last night and she helped track down an accredited botanist who used to be a trancender specializing in otherworld flora back in the time of the scenarios. I was able to consult with that person along with a surgeon colleague of mine specializing in Pulmonology - ah, that means the respiratory system."

"Mhm." Kim Dokja hummed in a spot he probably would have nodded in an in-person conversation.

"So we came up with a couple different treatment options, and I thought it might be important to run them by you before taking next steps, given the… special nature of the illness."

"Yeah…" Kim Dokja mentally cursed his subconscious again. Treatments for his "special problems" only ended up working if it made sense to him why they worked…

"So- first off there was an option for noninvasive treatment we discussed at length." Lee Seolhwa told him. "This is really the typical treatment for fungal growths in the lungs, so our Pulmonologist was rather insistent about giving it a try; using the samples I have of the petals you expelled during your visit, we can test existing antifungal medicinal treatments or synthesize our own specific to this type of plant growth…"

"Ah… sorry, Seolhwa-ssi." Kim Dokja grimaced. "I don't really think that would work… I mean the flowers are already growing so irregularly in an inhospitable environment," he pointed out, remembering what Jung Heewon had said the other day. It sounded a lot better than saying 'the cure has to be a surgery because it's always a surgery,' which were actually his most certain thoughts on the matter…

Lee Seolhwa sighed.

"I thought that might be the case; the Botanist actually held a similar opinion as well." She told him. "The option they proposed was keyhole surgery. That means we put you under and cut a little keyhole in your lung that we operate out of. A deft hand would be able to use our surgical tools to extract the roots from that point… which I assume our Botanist was eager to propose given the opportunity to study the remnants once extracted…"

"Sure." Kim Dokja didn't have a problem with that; he'd like to know what was wrong with him too. "When's the operation?"

"Ah, well- hold on, now, Dokja-ssi." Lee Seolhwa's tone seemed to imply he was being a little overeager about getting his Hanahaki-ectomy. "I want to propose a third option here, and I want you to really consider it seriously, alright?"

Kim Dokja didn't like the sound of that. 

"Alright." He said anyway.

"So, Hayoung-ssi was actually the one to propose this and I thought it had some merit given the circumstances…" Lee Seolhwa hesitated before going on, "Dokja-ssi, at peril of not sounding concerned enough about the magical plants obstructing your airways, I have to ask - have you considered consulting your Psychiatric care team about this matter as well?"

Hearing these words, Kim Dokja wanted to spit blood. It wasn't that he thought Lee Seolhwa was wrong or that she didn't have good intentions; it was just that… Wasn't hearing advice like this a bit too much like a young girl with a tumor near her heart telling a doctor about her chest pain, and the doctor saying something like 'sometimes when you have a crush on a boy your chest will feel tight,' and prescribing anxiety medication?

Kim Dokja's head filled for a moment with stories he knew that went exactly like that…

"It's just that Hayoung-ssi stumbled upon the discussion you all were having in the Groupchat the other day, and we went through some of the articles on the internet about 'Hanahaki' together as well." Kim Dokja snapped back into reality and his own situation some time after Lee Seolhwa had continued speaking."Given the psychological and social aspect of this disease in fictional accounts of it, and the nature of your own… history of health, I think that you should really consider how therapeutic treatment options could be of some assistance."

Kim Dokja couldn't tell if Lee Seolhwa's tone said anything about whether or not she knew that he had intentionally obfuscated some of the details about Hanahaki from her… did it even matter?

He had to chew on her words for a moment, before deciding…

"... I know that it honestly wouldn't hurt." He admitted to both himself and Lee Seolhwa. "I have my weekly with my regular therapist tomorrow, and I'll definitely talk through some of it then, but…"

He felt a bit conflicted. 

"Honestly, Seolhwa-ssi, I don't really have the best track record with working these things out in a timely manner… and before I wasn't really getting stuff that was… well, you probably know from your research, but once someone starts coughing up whole flowers Hanahaki is supposed to be fatal..."

Kim Dokja was sort of hunched over in the whimsical bug chair at this point, holding his phone close like he was wary of someone else hearing.

"... I really just don't want to worry anyone longer than I have to." He told her. "If the surgery could be done soon I… well, it's just one operation, and I find that preferable…"

"Dokja-ssi, undergoing this kind of surgery won't be quick and easy. To think of it as convenient as flipping a switch and being cured would be wrong." Lee Seolhwa told him firmly. Part of Kim Dokja wanted to tell her that yes it would be because that's how it always worked with Hanahaki - but she kept going. "There's a recovery process and you'll definitely have to be monitored for a while afterward to make sure that the operation was a success. It's possible that we could miss some of the roots on the first go around and in that case we would have to prepare you to be operated on again. There could be two or more procedures - not to mention that regardless of the outcome there could still be lasting neurological effects."

"Ah… right." Kim Dokja's head swam a little, thinking of all that. "I understand all that, but… Well, working through things psychologically takes a long time for me." He sort of said this as if it were a joke, but Lee Seolhwa didn't laugh.

She sighed again, though.

"Okay Dokja-ssi, ultimately the treatment plan we're going to go with is going to be the one that's best for you." She told him. "I'd say that the soonest I could get an operating table for someone with your prognosis with the right kind of specialized surgeon would be… at the end of the week."

Kim Dokja blinked. "Ah- wait- well, that's fast, but actually-" Kim Dokja got interrupted by a coughing fit, but tried to work through it, "- that's the day of the company dinner. Would it be possible to, um, do it the next day, or-?"

"Hm?" Lee Seolhwa made a contemplative noise and Kim Dokja could hear some shuffling papers on the other end of the line. "Oh. So it is." Lee Seolhwa seemed to have forgotten. "Yes, we can move it to the day after. Let me know if there's any change in your symptoms before then, however." She told him sternly.

"Yes, yes, okay." Kim Dokja confirmed, happy to have that all settled.

He stood up from the bug bean bag and did a bit of the stretch.

"Ah, by the way Seolhwa-ssi, I was wondering -" Kim Dokja asked as the question occurred to him, "- did you want me to make up your room at the house for you, or are you leaving after dinner?" 

The other end of the line was silent for a moment.

Then, "Dokja-ssi. Are you doing housework… while there are literally flowers growing in your lungs ?"

Kim Dokja froze where he was about to go back to smoothing out Gilyoung's sheets.

"... No." He took a guess at what the right answer would be, given Lee Seolhwa's tone.

"Dokja-ssi." Kim Dokja could just picture Lee Seolhwa putting her head in her hands. "Just get the kids to help you."

"I can't!" Kim Dokja told her, giving up on pretense. "Mia's still at the street food fair and Gilyoung and Yoosung don't get back until later this week."

"Then wait until they get home." Lee Seolhwa was relentless.

"Yoosung doesn't get back until the end of the week." Kim Dokja complained about this idea too.

The sound of a page flipping. "Gilyoung gets back tomorrow. Wait for him or get someone else to help." She kept going. "Dokja-ssi, this is doctor's orders - you're on bedrest. Get some light exercise, but no chores - especially not anything that's a lot of lifting or running around."

Hearing this tone of voice, Kim Dokja finally relented.

"Alright…" he said. "I feel bad making Gilyoung do up his own room, though…"

"Don't." Lee Seolhwa told him.

"... See you at the company dinner." Kim Dokja said as way of goodbye. He listened to her say something similar, and hung up the phone just after her.

…

Kim Dokja looked around the room. As if a criminal checking for possible witnesses.

…

There was no one.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Kim Dokja went back to putting the insect-print sheets on Gilyoung's bed, wondering how much he could get done before getting caught...

Chapter Text

The next day, Kim Dokja sat in Shin Yoosung’s fuzzy white desk chair while Lee Gilyoung carried in a load of laundry.

When Gilyoung took out Yoosung’s fitted sheet (the one with Pusheen decals), Yoo Mia reluctantly stood up from where she had been sitting on the bed. 

Gilyoung glared at her. “You know you could actually help me with the fucking chores, Mia.”

Kim Dokja felt sort of anxious over this entire situation. To him, Gilyoung seemed rightfully grumpy at being roped into housework only a few hours after arriving home, and Kim Dokja really hated to make him do it, but…

“Oppa’s orders outrank yours, Grasshopper.” Yoo Mia responded to Gilyoung coldly.

Then, to Kim Dokja who had started tidying up Yoosung’s desk, she raised her water pistol.

“Put down the puppy dog pen, Old Man.” Threat was clear in her voice… Honestly it was almost nostalgic; the kid sounded so much like her brother used to when he was threatening him back then…

“Mia, is that really necessary?” He asked, straining to suppress the tightness building in his chest. “Surely it’s not straining to do this mu-”

He failed to hold back his cough mid sentence, hacking up a mix of purple, white, and red petals that had been building up in his airways into the plastic bag at his feet.

Mia’s mouth twitched with disgust, but Gilyoung looked a fair bit concerned.

“Ah, Hyung, it’s really okay – I can clean up the desk next if you want!” He quickly tried to reassure Kim Dokja, but his words only made him feel worse… Gilyoung had been so nice and accommodating towards him, ever since he got back from the airport and first saw Kim Dokja cough up some petals… even though some of his specimens had gotten into Kim Dokja’s sick bucket… “It’s okay Hyung, that just means they have a taste for human blood now,” he had said…

Yoo Mia only lowered the water pistol when Kim Dokja had set down the cutesy 8 color pen with a puppy sitting on top of it back where he found it on the desk.

This child had also been inconvenienced by him… Although she claimed that she wasn’t missing out on much, she had canceled the rest of her appearances at the street food festival when Yoo Joonghyuk had promised her some brownies in exchange for enforcing Lee Seolhwa’s “doctor’s orders.”

She had even stood firmly at attention outside the windowed door of the office where Kim Dokja had been doing his video appointment with his therapist, pointing at her two eyes and then towards him when he glanced back at her in the universal gesture of “I’m watching you!”

What she had been watching him do was… honestly, not much.

The therapist he was seeing now was someone who used to be an incarnation sponsored by a constellation that presumably had something to do with psychology, although not that famous one that the Yoo Joonghyuk of the 69th had seen... 

Regardless, it was his longest standing stay with a therapist as of yet. He spent some time bouncing around. A couple had gotten scared off by some of his… stranger episodes, and others had scared him off by suggesting things he was pretty sure he didn’t need, like medication and couples and family focused therapy… 

It was probably pretty fortunate that the person he was seeing now had been pretty thoroughly exposed to both the scenarios and Kim Dokja’s own particular brand of weirdness. They didn’t even bat an eye when Kim Dokja had to explain his magical flower disease to them.

Instead, they had said this:

“Hmm. That’s interesting.”

They then glanced off screen as if checking something, then looked into the monitor where Kim Dokja assumed they must be seeing his eyes on the video call.

“So in your mind - which I suppose, means in reality, now - this is a disease that only affects those with afflicted with feelings of unrequited love?”

“..Yes.” Kim Dokja had admitted with a grimace.

His therapist put their hands up as if trying to make peace with him.

“I’m only picking on that detail because, from what I remember in previous sessions, you once described to me that the notion of “romantic love,” as you’ve seen it portrayed in fictional narratives, repels you.” They explained.

“Yes, that’s true.” Kim Dokja smiled a little bitterly. He already knew that there was no way he could actually have such a thing as an “unrequited” crush, but it was tiring to spend all day with people claiming to know him being so skeptical of that fact… and honestly hearing a professional just restating his own words made them seem more solid and factual than just having to say them himself over and over…

“So, then, since the parameters of this disease are determined entirely based on your feelings about things and no one else’s…” the therapist went on, “... then what does love mean to you , Dokja-ssi?”

Kim Dokja had stopped smiling, then.

Because this question… it had become a real problem for him now…

Like he thought, the therapy session hadn’t magically “cured” him. Honestly, for Kim Dokja, therapy never did anything but bring up more problems. 

The therapist would figure out how to connive some kind of emotional admission out of him and then he would just have to… think about that. For the entire rest of the week. And then when he finally had something to say that was kind of a resolution at the next session, suddenly there was just a new problem. 

Completely unsustainable.

Case in point: Lee Gilyoung had come home from the airport excited to spend time observing the specimen tank he had gotten from a surplus delivery to the lab he had been working at – but when Kim Dokja threw up in that very specimen tank, the boy had dropped everything to help him do some chores Kim Dokja knew that he hated being asked to do…

… And the question his therapist had left him with just took that and made him think… this kid probably had at least a little love in his heart for this old man, didn’t he? Like… when he got so old and gray he really couldn’t go around doing household chores anymore, this kid would probably take care of him then, wouldn’t he? Maybe even Mia would as well…

Which were absolutely ridiculous thoughts to be having. Of course it wasn’t a good thing that he’d completely ruined these kids’ day by being afflicted by a completely made up illness… So why did thinking about it make him feel so…

Kim Dokja’s emotional thoughts once more spurred forth a coughing fit.

It got even worse when the kids turned some concerned gazes towards him.

“Hyung, I can get you some water if you want…” Lee Gilyoung offered.

“No- *KLLK* - I’m fine-” Kim Dokja said through retching coughs. “You can *KLLK* keep going, I just need some *KLLK* air- I- *KLLK*”

Shaking his head, Kim Dokja stood and headed for the door. He heard Yoo Mia following behind him, but didn’t look back at her. He was afraid that looking at the kids any longer would only worsen his affection for them, the prolonged emotion proving a detriment in his condition.

He ended up outside looking at the rose bushes in their yard and trying to think about nothing.

Of course, he was unlucky enough to run into Han Sooyoung, who had been sitting the lemon tree that was supposedly her “favorite writing spot,” despite the fact that Kim Dokja had only ever seen her nap there…

She started bothering him about the tropes of Hanahaki again, which was particularly frustrating because he wanted to be annoyed with her for it… But because of his cruddy therapy session he had inexplicably begun recalling some of the details of Han Sooyoung’s story… The avatar who died trying to save him as a child… the incarnation who risked her life side by side with him in the scenarios… the adult who put her career and happily ever after completely on hold to write a novel about him …

… Instead of being properly aggravated at this person, he was feeling some tender feelings well up inside!

Kim Dokja became so sick from this that he ended up back inside, heaving over the toilet.

It didn’t get better over time, either.

Things got especially bad at dinner, when everyone was eating at one table together… Kim Dokja was only able to keep it down long enough to eat by virtue of the fact that he was eating Yoo Joonghyuk’s cooking… Which was delicious enough that he could avoid thinking about how Yoo Joonghyuk definitely showed his love toward them all by taking time out of his day to prepare delicious meals for them… Yes! He could suppress such thoughts through sheer force of will if it meant he got to sample some of said cooking!

… It made him worry, though, about how he would fare at that upcoming company dinner…

In other circumstances, he might be able to stomach tomato sauce for the benefit of everyone, but in this condition… would he have to abstain? Would that ruin the spaghetti dinner for everyone else, if they had to worry about him the whole time?

He only continued to feel worse about some things, as days passed and more of the company trickled in. Seeing all their faces only dredged up more memories and more feelings… which would then only be followed by violent regurgitations and well meaning concern.

Kim Dokja had been darkly contemplating the pitiful state of himself in the mirror above his bathroom sink on the morning of the day of the company dinner, when he was wracked by a particularly bad fit of coughs.

When it was over with, he reached for the handle of the cold water spout, presuming to wash the mess away, down the drain never to be seen again.

The hand he had lain on the faucet froze when he saw what lay there.

In the porcelain bowl of the sink, surrounded in blood, was a miraculously pristine, dry white rose.

The flower had grown in whole. Stem and all.

Chapter Text

“White Rose Flower Symbolism?”

"..."

“The meaning of a Dried White Rose is…”

"..."

"..."

"..."

“Better Death than Loss of Virtue.”

"Ahjussi!"

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but smile as Shin Yoosung abandoned her luggage on the doorstep in favor of running up to embrace him.

Back when he first met her, Shin Yoosung and the other kids had been so little that they could only reach to hug at his legs. 

Now, though, unlike Gilyoung and Mia, Yoosung had actually grown to be just an inch or so taller than Kim Dokja himself.

Still, Shin Yoosung was Shin Yoosung. At that time he remembered the young girl had the habit of smushing her face into the leg she hugged as if trying to hide there. Nowadays, she still leaned down to smush at least one cheek on his shoulder while they hugged.

Kim Dokja swallowed down the dry tang that had begun tightening his throat, patting Shin Yoosung on the back a few times.

"Yoosung, it's good to see you again," he said, a little annoyed with the way his voice felt strained over the syllables of his words. "Eh, it seems like you got a bit of a tan this time, hm?"

They had stopped really hugging, but Shin Yoosung kept her head on his shoulder, pouting up at him instead of responding to his observation.

"Ahjussi I heard you got sick…" the girl looked up at him with big eyes, her voice sounding a little tearful.

“Ah…” Kim Dokja made himself calm at such an expression. “Well, yes a little bit, but it’s really nothing to be too concerned about…”

“He’s lying.” Kim Dokja grinned and bore it as Yoo Mia cut in with some sharp words. “He was throwing up blood all day yesterday.”

“Ahjussi!” Shin Yoosung’s eyes seemed to dry up, her tone shifting accusatory as she straightened out and took up a scolding posture… where exactly had she picked that up? “Should you be lying down? Why aren’t you in the hospital?!”

Kim Dokja swallowed. He didn’t feel able to answer these questions, so he just moved to pick up Shin Yoosung’s bag for her.

This motion earned him a squirt of water in his face. 

The one who shot him, Yoo Mia, moved to pick up the bag instead.

“He has a surgery scheduled for tomorrow.” She told Shin Yoosung. 

The girl hadn’t been blessed with her brother’s height in her adulthood, she was about as broad as him, lifting Yoosung’s heavy bags over her shoulders with ease. Eating well to grow big and strong in this case was primarily accurate on the latter count…

“For now, I’m watching him.” Yoo Mia’s words were obviously directed towards Yoosung, but her eyes narrowed towards Kim Dokja as if they were a warning for him.

“Ah, Mia, you’re so reliable these days…” Shin Yoosung put her hand to her chest as though she was really taking Yoo Mia’s words to heart.

“Tch.” Gilyoung, who had been lurking on the staircase as if waiting for Shin Yoosung to notice him, suddenly made a dismissive sound. “That’s not true at all. Hyung was trying to do chores all day yesterday and Mia didn’t lend a hand even once.”

Kim Dokja, for his part, was only half paying attention to this exchange, mind wandering to whether or not he could make a quick trip to the bathroom…

It seemed to be his chance when the kids went up the stairs bickering between themselves, but then two more people seemed to file in.

“... and then he just completely yartzes all over my shoes.” Han Sooyoung’s annoying speech broke through Kim Dokja’s thoughts as she kicked the door open wider, her arms occupied holding another bag. “I swear I didn’t know before then! You got the order of operations wrong Sangah.”

“If you say so Sooyoung-ssi…” Yoo Sangah followed behind Han Sooyoung, holding with each of her hands bags that were larger than the one Han Sooyoung was holding with both her arms. “But, ah, what about the… Oh Dokja-ssi!” 

Yoo Sangah also appeared to have tanned a bit on her trip – and, was it just his eyes or, was the red hue in her hair a bit more prominent than before? 

Yoo Sangah, for her part, had seemed to have noticed something about Kim Dokja as well. 

“Oh my… was it raining earlier today?” She asked him with a polite smile that only someone who knew Yoo Sangah could tell was rather impish.

Kim Dokja blinked at the odd comment, before realizing she must be referring to the ballistic impact he had suffered from Yoo Mia’s water pistol.

Seeing his chance, Kim Dokja lifted the collar of his black button up, as if wiping the water off his face, and discretely covering his mouth while something long and dry fell from it into the spot where his shirt hung over the belt it was tucked into.

“Ah, sorry,” Kim Dokja took a second to lick the metallic tang off his teeth before opening his mouth to smile. “The kids are taking my bed rest orders a bit too seriously… Mia’s been squirting a little water gun at me whenever I ‘step out of line.’”

He had kind of been expecting Yoo Sangah to be able to laugh over the kids’ antics with him, but her eyes narrowed in concern rather than amusement.

“Dokja-ssi’s voice sounds so strained… should you be up and about?” She asked him.

“Yeah, you sound like shit.” Han Sooyoung told him indelicately, squinting at him as if he were suspicious.

“I’m fine–” Oh, no, they did not like that, um, uh, “Well, you know, not fine , but I’m actually doing a lot better than I was yesterday.” Kim Dokja had to adjust what he was saying mid-sentence, but felt it was going pretty smoothly. “I was coughing up petals every few minutes all day – that’s probably why my throat still hurts, though I’m doing well enough now I don’t even have to carry a sick bag with me…”

“Ah, well, if you’re throwing up less flowers that’s a good thing?” Yoo Sangah’s tone wavered up as if she was guessing when it came to his condition, “Maybe you got them all out…”

Kim Dokja wanted to say yes, but Han Sooyoung snorted before he could.

“No way, that’s not how Hanahaki works.” She tattled on him. “I mean, I’d definitely write a character thinking his illness got better only for it to come back even worse later on. It’s more dramatic if the reader gets a glimpse of what hope looks like, only for it to be taken completely away at the last moment.”

At these words, all three of them standing there in the entry way seemed to feel some unease; some for different reasons than others.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kim Dokja was the first to dismiss Han Sooyoung’s grim words, as he had the most reason to disbelieve them, “Not every story is the kind of grimdark trauma literature you like to write.”

“Maybe not,” Han Sooyoung replied, still eyeing him suspiciously, “but every story you like to read is.”

Kim Dokja scoffed a little. He made a move to take one of Yoo Sangah’s bags, whose grip on them had dropped slightly to rest on the ground, thinking they must be heavy, but Yoo Sangah picked them up herself and stepped back a bit.

Han Sooyoung, on the other hand, shoved the bag she was holding back into Yoo Sangah’s arms just to get her hand free to come hit him on the shoulder.

“No!” She chastised him in the tone one might use for a dog who was trying to eat an onion.

“Dokja-ssi, I appreciate it, but I can carry a few bags…” Yoo Sangah, who was now holding a third bag with her forearms while the other two hung from her elbows, spoke in a voice a bit harsher than her words implied.

Han Sooyoung’s blow had unsettled something in Kim Dokja’s chest, so he had to fight for breath before beginning to plead, “Sangah-ssi, your room is on the third floor, couldn’t I just-”

“Not necessary, not necessary.” Yoo Sangah began walking toward the staircase with her bags. “I need to freshen up after the flight,” she claimed, as if Yoo Sangah didn’t somehow always embody the description of someone with a refreshing appearance, “I’ll come down to the living room in a bit to catch up.”

She gave a look to Han Sooyoung that made Kim Dokja think she chose the living room because of the number of comfortable sitting arrangements there, and her words meant something like ‘Make that idiot sit down.’

For a few reasons, Yoo Sangah leaving so abruptly left Kim Dokja feeling rather disappointed. Firstly, he had been hoping that maybe she might be able to see his side of things in all this, or that maybe she hadn’t been paying too much attention to the group chat where his embarrassing medical “needs” were apparently being discussed… But he had also wanted to go up and see if she reacted at all to how clean her room was… Of course, he hadn’t managed to do it by himself, but they probably could have talked about the kids and how responsible Gilyoung was with the chores – and maybe Yoo Sangah in return might even have some stories to give him about Shin Yoosung during their trip…

Something lurched in his chest again.

Ah… On second thought, maybe having that kind of conversation wouldn’t have turned out well.

The hard thing about this was that, of course, Kim Dokja was holding back on telling Lee Seolhwa about the advancement of the disease to not get in the way of the Company dinner that was happening tonight… but because of that, Kim Dokja himself probably wasn’t going to be able to enjoy all the company members being in one place as much as he usually would… Though, he had probably already accepted that was going to be the case back when he found out Spaghetti was the main course for tonight, haha…

Unbeknownst to Kim Dokja, while thinking these thoughts, he had been watching Yoo Sangah go up the stairs with some weird expressions.

Han Sooyoung, instead of helping carry bags up the stairs, had been watching Kim Dokja watch Yoo Sangah.

“... So?” she asked as soon as the woman carrying all her own bags up the stairs was out of sight. “Is it her?”

Kim Dokja had only been reminded that Han Sooyoung was standing next to him by her speaking.

“What?” he asked, blinking at her.

Han Sooyoung’s face contorted.

“I’m asking you if our very own queen of congeniality is your crush, dumbass.”

At that, Kim Dokja’s face twisted as well.

Him… Yoo Sangah?

“No.” He uttered his truthful reaction to the notion.

“Why not?” Han Sooyoung sounded frustrated. “I mean, even if you really don’t think you have romantic feelings for anyone–”

“I don’t.” Kim Dokja confirmed, bouncing the concept of ‘romantic love’ against his feelings towards Yoo Sangah in his head and finding that they repelled one another like the wrong ends of a pair of magnets.

“-- Even if that’s the case,” Han Sooyoung went on, “does that really matter?”

She started making her way toward the living room.

“... What do you mean?” Kim Dokja reluctantly followed her, trying to figure out what she was on about.

“The nature of your uh… ‘condition’ isn’t whatever you think or want it to be, right?” She said, grabbing the white board that had been pushed up against the wall and yanking it toward her favorite spot on the couch. “It’s based on what you unconsciously think is true .”

“Uh, I guess.” With Han Sooyoung so lost in thought, Kim Dokja managed to help her push the board over without her noticing.

She started wiping the list of flower names she had given up on identifying yesterday off of the board.

“But you’re a nerd, so all the stuff you think of as ‘true’ and making perfect sense are just based off of unrealistic storytelling tropes you grew up with…”

Oh, she was drawing a plot diagram now.

Kim Dokja spitefully considered standing… but actually he was kind of tired. He plopped down on the couch while Han Sooyoung continued to talk at him.

“If you think about the typical love story of a male action novel protagonist, it’s usually a side plot that only really exists to make a protag seem cool,” she spoke dismissively of the concept, despite being the one who had put to keyboard Yoo Joonghyuk’s tragic back and forth with Lee Seolhwa in the original Ways of Survival … “especially in the genre of modern fantasy or apocalypse novels, where the idea is that our protag might be unsuited to the real world, but the fantastical or apocalyptic reality just so happens to be set up so that all the things he’s good at that are useless in the real world are the things you need to be good at to succeed or survive… It’s a power fantasy for real life lamos.”

“Aren’t you the one who wrote the damn story?” Kim Dokja was getting offended, thinking about Yoo Joonghyuk of the 0th turn’s struggling pro-gaming career and the way Ways of Survival turned it into his legendary ‘Ruler of Amusement’ attribute later on…

“It’s not my fault your initial character arc was generic and predictable!” What the- Oh, she means Kim Dokja, she’s talking about Kim Dokja’s story. “Blame yourself! Or, I guess the damn genre.”

“Here, look.” Han Sooyoung wrote at the starting point of her plot diagram FL is out of ML’s league , “It’s pretty typical for the female love interest to be treated as sort of a marker of the male lead's development."

Further along the diagram, she wrote Apocalypse/whatever makes Lame ML Cool . Then, with a grimace, FL falls for new Cool MC to show he is Cool now .

"Uh, sure." Kim Dokja supposed he could think of a good chunk of stories that had the sort of progression Han Sooyoung described. Though, he definitely didn’t think Kim Dokja’s story had that sort of progression.

“In your story, uh, in like the first chapter, I think?” Chapter 1? ML sees popular girl from work and says they’re from ‘different worlds’ she wrote under the plot point she had put at the beginning of the diagram as she spoke, comparing the plot of Omniscient Reader to the one she had described before.

“Okay, stop right there.” When Kim Dokja finally realized what this hack plagiarist was getting at, he gathered the strength to get up and grab the white board eraser, mortified by what had turned out to be a shipping diagram and wanting to erase the evidence. "I don't have any romantic feelings towards-"

"No no no! Listen!" Han Sooyoung shoved Kim Dokja's eraser holding hand away from the board and angled her body to protect her diagram. Usually this wouldn't have been very effective, as Kim Dokja's superior stature would allow him to easily reach past her (despite her vigorous attack method of playing "keep away"), but unfortunately, he was at a disadvantage due to his condition, and it actually took him a second to balance himself after Han Sooyoung had hit his arm away, leaving him open to a verbal attack by his assailant.

"What I'm telling you is that it doesn't matter how you feel !" She sneered at him, gesturing toward her cruel and unjust diagram. "Can't you admit that this makes sense? If we make genre assumptions about your story, Yoo Sangah is the one who best fits the role of Female Lead!"

"What, just because I met her first???" It wasn't as if Kim Dokja didn't grasp the process of Han Sooyoung's logic, he just had to find fault with it. "Well there's plenty of tropes that go against that - for instance, in a love triangle, doesn't the love interest who was friends with the main character first always lose?"

“Don’t say that.” Han Sooyoung scrunched her nose. “If we’re talking about the odd end of a love triangle then I would be shoehorned into it! I'm the only other woman you know. Well, besides Jung Heewon, but her and Lee Hyunsung are pretty solid "beta couple" material…”

Han Sooyoung trailed off as if lost in thought, but Kim Dokja didn’t care what she was going to say next. He already had enough objections with the bullshit she had already spewed, but had needed a moment to swallow everything in his throat.

“If anyone’s shoe-horning, then it’s you!” Kim Dokja’s discontent with her entire premise crept past the rasp in his voice. “Yoo Sangah doesn’t fit the status of token Female Love Interest at all – don’t you remember all the character development she had? Her struggle with the nature of a role in the story that was inherently passive and complementary to others? Her reclamation of who she was in the world before the story, someone who tried to save Kim Dokja with her very own hands, grabbing him out of the timeline? And you even wrote that whole section together of how she didn’t even have an unfavorable impression of Kim Dokja at the start, she wasn’t the popular pretty girl on the pedestal that the kind of narrative would expect her to be, she was just another person who felt lost in the modern world and she saw herself in Kim Dokja who –”  

“How can you remember all that and not remember how to talk in first person like normal people do.” Han Sooyoung interrupted him, leaving Kim Dokja choking back some frustration. In his silence, Han Sooyoung had time to look back at the white board, contemplating her diagram. “... You know, if you were a female lead, then the obvious Male Love Interest would actually be Yoo Joonghyuk.”

Kim Dokja wanted to spit blood, but he remembered himself in time and swallowed it instead.

“He has all the hallmarks.” Han Sooyoung held up a finger as if counting out these so-called characteristics.” Hates you for no fucking reason.” The second finger. “You think he's hot so you help him anyway.” Third, “Unlock tragic backstory.” Fourth, “Once you're useful he decides he likes you.” The fingers that had been counting spread apart into jazz hands. “Romance.”

Kim Dokja couldn't speak, so he tried to give Han Sooyoung a stare that implied his lack of response was the ultimate expression of his disdain.

“…”  

Han Sooyoung just turned around and kept talking, erasing her old notes around the plot diagram and making new ones featuring Yoo Joonghyuk.

Kim Dokja thought that maybe if he just gave up and stopped participating in this conversation, then Han Sooyoung would eventually wear herself out.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Han Sooyoung seemed to have entered her “Professor’s Lecture” mode, and continued to speak for well over an hour. In the meantime, the kids came down and sat at the couches nearby, texting each other like they were in a class they didn’t particularly care about.

Mia was sitting on the couch perpendicular to the white board and where Kim Dokja sat leaning back on the armrest, her legs spread out over both the cushions on that particular couch. She didn’t seem particularly concerned with what Kim Dokja was up to now that he was sitting down, but she was still facing him and had her water pistol with her. Shin Yoosung sat on the same couch as her, on top of the other arm rest that formed a 90 degree angle with the armrest Kim Dokja had to prop himself up on to sit normally. 

Gilyoung, on the other hand, sat in the spot next to Kim Dokja on the same couch as him, glancing up concernedly to him from time to time.

Kim Dokja didn’t want to worry him, so he avoided making contact and smiling at him. For some reason, everyone at the company always freaked out even more when he smiled at them.

He did, however, glance over his shoulder occasionally. One time, he saw that Shin Yoosung had texted Gilyoung, and when Gilyoung opened it there was a strange image of some people he didn’t know with Shin Yoosung’s hand writing on top of it.

‘Dokhyuk?’ What was Dokhyuk… were these people Yoosung’s friends?

Kim Dokja wondered about this silently instead of listening to Han Sooyoung. Eventually, Yoo Sangah came down as she mentioned she would, and his thoughts changed course slightly.

Her hair was wet and she was wearing one of the house’s fuzzy white shower robes, so her need to ‘freshen up’ must’ve included bathing a bit – presumably in hot water, as Kim Dokja recognized the extracting skin mask she had on her face from their most recent spa trip together.

He wanted to ask about it… actually he wanted to talk with all these people about so many different things.

The pain in his chest he suppressed… continuously clamping down on the cough that won’t go away… Wasn’t the point of it that he got to spend time with them? That he didn’t ruin this moment with all of them back together.

Silenced by his decision, Kim Dokja didn’t have any control or say in the conversation at all. Yoo Sangah seemed content to treat Han Sooyoung’s ramblings as a seminar on romance writing just as the kids were, but, unlike them, she was a particularly attentive student, raising her hand to ask questions and redirecting the train of Han Sooyoung’s thought several times until Kim Dokja honestly had no idea what they were talking about, anymore.

It was… getting hard to focus on… anything, actually…

Was there a point to all this? Maybe if he just left silently and called Lee Seolhwa it wouldn’t make much of a difference…

“*Snrk!*” 

“Ha!”

Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung both let out abrupt laughs at the same time. When Kim Dokja looked over Gilyoung’s shoulder again, he saw a message Yoo Mia had apparently sent.

… The image was once more completely undecipherable to him, but it was nice to see the kids laughing… Especially Gilyoung, who had been carving worry lines into his young face over Kim Dokja’s state the past day or so…

…

Maybe he did matter, here. He did make a little difference, to these kids, at least. Seeing him here gave them some comfort, didn’t it?

… So there was no way he could leave.

So what if he wasn't able to catch up with the company members the way he had wanted to? It should be enough for him to get to see them all having fun like this, even if it was at his own expense…

… It was… hard to focus on any joy from that, though… Not just because he was wary of approaching all strong emotions in his current state, but also because…

He was getting really… tired. Yeah, he felt pretty exhausted. Sitting here and trying not to move in any way that would cause pain to bloom out in his chest actually took a lot of energy…

At some point, Kim Dokja’s awareness started to slip away from the present and the people in front of him… in this state, could he even get up to call Lee Seolhwa if he tried?

Considering the options left available to him, Kim Dokja started thinking again about the question he was supposed to be asking himself to try and kill the damn flowers in his lungs.

What… what was love? To him?

The word was attached to a few foundational memories. Lee Seolhwa and Yoo Joonghyuk’s life in the 0th and 2nd scenarios… his mom and dad kissing once when he was in elementary school… his mom holding the knife and the foolish, desperate hope that things might end up alright because she loved him…

Hey… why are these memories so shitty? Kim Dokja wanted to lodge a complaint with his subconscious.

Gah. Okay. This was one of the things he had talked about a lot in therapy. He was processing it completely normally and healthily. There shouldn’t actually be any reason to think that his mom didn’t love him, because of that. She thought of it as doing it for him, but even thought to Kim Dokja it was… well, it was still a mother’s love, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t blame everything on her… the situation she was in… well, it was a good thing that she was in a better place now… that Ex-Wanderer’s Cruise Ship Retreat she was missing out on this company dinner to attend.

The selfish voice of a little boy griped that if his mommy really loved him she would cancel all her plans to come hang out with her grandkids who missed her while he was sick, but Kim Dokja just told it to pipe down.

Okay, okay, so, he, uh… he knew that his mom probably loved him. Which was probably the same way that he loved the kids, right? Or at least kind of similar-ish… But he only thought about his mom because he was trying to think of examples of romantic love, and she was probably the first married person he ever met. Yeah, that was definitely the train of thought, there.

… But there was definitely no one Kim Dokja loved enough to stand being treated the way his mother was treated by… Whatever strong emotion she had felt towards that man at the start, Kim Dokja didn’t think he was born with the capability of having it… Even when Yoo Joonghyuk fought him in the past, he always got him back twice as hard… so it was hard to make comparisons….

“-jussi. Wake up, Ahjussi.” Kim Dokja only realized he had closed his eyes when a gentle hand tapped on his shoulder, and light flooded into his eyes as he opened them to see Shin Yoosung gazing down at him, looking a little worried. Despite this, she gave him a gentle smile that reminded him of Yoo Sangah’s. “Mia’s Oppa says dinner is ready.”

Without thinking about it, Kim Dokja opened his mouth to smile back.

This, as it turned out, was a very big mistake.

At the change of pressure parting his lips created, his chest began rapidly convulsing and-

“*HACK KLLK HACK*”

An entire bouquet of the dry white roses that had been scratching at his throat all day suddenly burst forth, nearly unhinging his jaw with their urgency to emerge.

…

As Kim Dokja watched the bouquet fall out of his mouth and onto the floor, petals dripping from his lips… he heard someone scream.

It was all a little foggy… after that…

… The one who screamed… it was probably Shin Yoosung, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t tell if they took an ambulance or someone’s car to the hospital… he was lying down and there were too many people crowding around him to see.

“-s he responsive?”

“Dokja-ssi… Dokja-ssi!”

Oh… had Kim Dokja closed his eyes again?

He tried to look for who had called him, but- Shit, wow, it was bright. They… were at the hospital?

Glancing around from his perspective lying down on a gurney, Kim Dokja saw six people. Lee Seolhwa on his right writing something down on a clipboard. Beside her, Yoo Sangah… who was probably the one that called him just now? But when he met her eyes her expression seemed to get worse, and she turned to say something to Lee Seolhwa.

Closer to his bedside, he saw Shin Yoosung. She was biting her lip with worry, wringing her hands like she wasn’t sure what to do with them, if she could reach out and hold him or not… Gilyoung on the other hand was clenching the side of the gurney tightly between his fists.

A sudden shadow came over Kim Dokja’s vision. Han Sooyoung leaned over him, looking directly into his eyes.

“Hey asshole.” Her words were aggressive, the kind she often used in her arguments or friendly ribbing, but the voice she used to say them was somehow tighter than usual. “This is the suitably climactic moment for your fucking deathbed confession, idiot. Last chance to not become an emotionless husk for the rest of your life.”

Next to Han Sooyoung was Yoo Joonghyuk. He didn’t say anything, just staring down at him with his deep, dark eyes.

Kim Dokja used to think the depths of you Joonghyuk’s gaze were unfathomable. Now, however, he thought that he could read something there. 

Frustration. 

Anger. 

… Helplessness and concern. 

Worry, even.

Yeah, it was… it was obvious all these people loved him, wasn’t it? They were the people Kim Dokja knew best in all the world and… and because of that, he found himself upset to see them at his bedside.

So I ruined the dinner, after all…

What had it all been for, then? Kim Dokja felt the feeling of failure wash over him.

Because the thing was that… Kim Dokja knew that the company members loved him. He knew  it. They didn’t need to tell him for him to know it. Their love for him was completely obvious in their concern for him, the pains they had gone through to adjust to and care for him the past few days, the lengths they had gone to to try and solve his problems for him…

But what did Kim Dokja ever do to deserve that love? What did he ever do for them, in return? To show that he loved them just as much?

He supposed that he did the chores around the house, but there was no loss in that considering he was the one home all the time and consistently unemployed with only one hobby to his name. He felt that it was more of an act of ill will for him not to do those things than a show of love to do them…

The company dinner, though. The dinner… it was supposed to get on smoothly. Kim Dokja wasn’t supposed to ruin it. He wasn’t supposed to make them worry, tonight when they were supposed to just have this one nice thing for all of them… even if he had choke back bloody flowers, even if he had to pretend not to feel any pain, even if he had to eat tomatoes.

… That powerful feeling he had then, the determination driving him on throughout the whole of his illness, wasn't that his love for them?

…

Oh.

…

Okay. Wait a second.

…

That's so fucking stupid . Kim Dokja realized, as he remembered what he had been thinking about the day the Hanahaki had started.

Because the feeling Kim Dokja had felt just then… it was the feeling of sacrificing something.

At the supermarket, it had been accepting that he'd eat a tomato based dish for the sake of spending time with the company members.

Now, it was what had kept him from getting medical care in fear of ruining the very company dinner he had been looking forward to then.

That feeling which was sacrificing something of his for someone else…

To Kim Dokja, that feeling was what love was, too.

That’s so fucked up.  

The reason behind Kim Dokja’s mystery illness was becoming clearer to him.

This sucks.

He had always been someone who expressed love this way, hadn’t he? Shown it through his actions – no, through his hurt. The cost of loving was the only evidence of it.

And what was the one action central to the heart of a Hanahaki plot?

The verbal love confession.

Just. Saying “I love you,” instead of suffering in silence.

Oh fuck me. Kim Dokja hated this. Oldest Dream powers, I am a 40 year old man. Are you telling me we gave ourselves fucking Flowers. In. Our. Lungs. Because I felt like I didn't tell my family I love them enough?

Of course there was no answer, except for the fact that this explanation of events seemed to make some kind of twisted, perfect sense to him once summarized clearly by his turbulent mind.

That said, the realization was only something that came about inside Kim Dokja's mind. Back in reality, he was still lying on a gurney, about to be wheeled into the emergency surgery room.

Lee Seolhwa was saying something urgently overhead, everyone else looking towards her, still wearing a mixture of expressions on their faces.

“You all… I…” Gah. Speaking really hurt Kim Dokja’s throat. His words felt so thick on his tongue, and raspy once they passed through his lips.

… Were they hard to say because he was in pain, or because they were words that were hard to say? 

Whatever the mixture of causation was, Kim Dokja’s lungs felt tight as everyone turned to look at him.

This was his last chance.

“I… really wanted to eat dinner with you all tonight.” He admitted in the loudest tone he could muster, barely above a whisper. “Because… because it was a family dinner. You all… you’re my family, and I love you, and I wanted to eat dinner with you tonight.”

Kim Dokja paused for a moment, a twinge of pain in his chest.

“But… but I… I can’t eat the spaghetti you made.” He blurted out too Yoo Joonghyuk. “It has too many tomatoes in it… and I don’t like those so…”

Kim Dokja felt like he was choking… something warm was sliding down his cheek.

“Hyung, it’s alright, don’t strain yourself,” Lee Gilyoung sounded near tears at Kim Dokja’s emotional confession, “That sooty ba- I mean, Yoo Joonghyuk had me get you a can of Alfredo when I went to the store the other day.”

Kim Dokja squinted. ‘Al-fray-doh?’ Alfredo… Oh, that had been on the shopping list, but Kim Dokja didn’t know what it was.

“It’s a cream based sauce for italian noodles.” Yoo Joonghyuk cut in as if reading Kim Dokja’s mind, his arms crossed over his chest and clenched into fists. “There’s a bowl waiting for you at home.”

“Oh.” At Yoo Joonghyuk’s words, Kim Dokja felt something… lighten. In his chest. 

… 

“Okay.”

And rather than being appreciated for what he could do for others, what he could give up for them… those words made him realize that… 

Kim Dokja was loved, just for being who he was.