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There is this guy that you dislike with every fibre of your being.
The mere thought of him makes your heart burn, your chest stuffy. It rouses the need to strangle the bastard. But, it also wakes all of the other things that you feel about him. The regret, the anger, the question of why was he not here with you? The indignations— how could he lie again and again and leave you with an empty life, with no sight of a conclusion and the ever-familiar hollow feeling of: perhaps if you did just a little better, was a little stronger…
Or, it could be, that with how he wormed his way into your heart and mind from the very first day you saw him, in that broken world (still broken) and on that bridge— he never left.
Perhaps, he will become a person that has planted themselves within the depths of your consciousness, taking root like a particularly sturdy tree. (Maybe, he already has.) Though he couldn’t have been a very sturdy tree with how often he uprooted himself from your life, leaving gaping holes within your soul.
And yet, the hints of his shadow will follow you with every hour you live and every step you take. Every decision.
Perhaps, when you cook for yourself, or your sister, or for the many annoyances that stuck when he had dragged them into your life— you will think of his own particular food preferences, not that they matter anymore. Perhaps, you will also start to dislike tomatoes, though the presence of it does not sour your mouth, but your mind. Your food, which he had consumed with begrudging glee and joy, will start to show the undertones of his own tastes.
Maybe, your bland salads will start missing the red dots of cherry tomatoes. Maybe, you do that just so you could feel ever so closer to him— even just one percent closer.
When you pass by large houses, you will hear the faintest whispers of his promise, his dream. In the opaqueness of the panes, the shapes, the silhouettes of what-could-be will form in your mind’s eyes. You will stop and stare, just for a second, before moving past with an aggravated, heavy heart.
Your anguish has always been diverted into anger.
At night, that anger will shift to defeat. Your mind will run circles around you, parading around the nth time you failed, the tenth-twentieth-one-thousandth time that you died and the one time you ignorantly walked away. You will replay the scene of his child form and your alternative self fading in sparks of gold, realising their own conclusion. You will remember how hopeful you felt— and oh, was that so naive of you, a man born to live a tragedy, to fail time and time again. You were never made to have a happy ending.
You will remember carelessly turning around and not looking . You will think of how you turned away from the him that lurked in the dark, walking off with the annoying witch and a mere shade of him. The him that does not love you, understand you, follow you through the entirety of your life. Guided you. He will only live as the person who cleared the scenario with you, doggedly dragged you away from the depths of regression, from the sands of time that slowly drown you. Yet never knowing why he did so, so fervently.
Perhaps, you will even start to hate him. Just a little bit—but that’s never been new to you. Hating him, just a little bit. For his tendency to throw his life away for your worthless own, for his need to disappear for months, years on end as a cost for advancing to the next scenario. To see that wretched wall. To become the most ancient dream. To keep them all alive at the expense of himself.
You will yearn for him. You will question why. You will despair over your lack of strength, now more prevalent than others. Your thoughts circle back to regression, but that’s already something long passed. You are no longer his Incarnation. You no longer possess the cursed ability to turn back the clock, back to the subway train.
You will yearn and despair. And you will hope. An endless cycle, but you are familiar with endless loops that result in agony.
And then, you will sleep, where he reaches for you in your dreams. Where you will continue to chase him within the depths of your own subconscious.
And then. And then, you wake up. Where not even a shade of him remains now. A reality more drab and barren than the apocalypse you’ve spent an innumerable amount of years journeying through.
You will agonise in the day, where the nightmares continue to stalk and haunt. You will think that maybe he— maybe—
—maybe Kim Dokja would say something like this in that deceptively lighthearted tone of his:
Yoo Joonghyuk, you need to move on.
Or maybe, you will hear that wretchedly warped voice, of his wretched skill chastising you, almost smugly:
「You shouldn’t have been greedy. No, Y ou sh o u ld’ ve b ee n co nt e nt w ith 4 9% Ki m Dok j a. 」
END.