Work Text:
OCTOBER 13, 2022
10:30 AM
SESSION 1
“Name.”
The man in front of Yoo Joonghyuk snickers. “Not even a good morning?”
“Good morning,” Yoo Joonghyuk grits out, flipping over a page of the documents in front of him, “State your name and age for the record.”
“My name?”
Leaning forward, the man glances at the bold writing at the very top of the document settled between them.
“Apparently, it’s Case 63, if that stack of documents you’re holding has anything to say about it.”
“Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk resigns with a click of his tongue. The recorder picks up on his sheer exhaustion immediately. “28 years old. Is that correct?”
Yoo Joonghyuk has to resist the urge to punch Kim Dokja’s gleefully amused smile off of his face. Why does he always get the worst patients?
“Sure,” Kim Dokja answers easily. “Kim Dokja, case 63, 28 years old—that’s me. What else do you need, Dr. Yoo?”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs. “For the record, tell me the year you claim you came from.”
Kim Dokja’s smile widens.
“2062.”
OCTOBER 14, 2022
9:45 AM
SESSION 2
Yoo Joonghyuk’s furious footsteps echo between the walls of the hallway. Reassignment—his request for a referral for both him and Kim Dokja was shot down immediately.
He’d like to think that he’s had enough delusional patients assigned to him these past 3 months alone, and too much on his plate, but clearly he’s wrong. Yoo Joonghyuk has no idea how he’s managed to piss off whichever higher-up has it out for him now.
When he walks in after the telltale, deafening click of the door opening, he thinks that someone even higher up—in the clouds, maybe; the heavens—truly hates him, because the first thing Yoo Joonghyuk sees is Kim Dokja’s infuriating smile, and he almost physically throttles himself back out the door, if only not to do that to Kim Dokja instead.
The self control he exercises is amazing, really. Any less, and Kim Dokja would be flying across the room in an instant. Why is his face so fucking punchable?
“Like yesterday’s session, I’ll be recording our conversation.” The click of the recorder; Yoo Joonghyuk sets down his papers on the table separating him and Kim Dokja, and flicks through the pages. “To recap: your name is Kim Dokja, you’re 28 years old, and you’re from the year… 2062?”
“That’s right.”
“Right.” Yoo Joonghyuk jots down Delusional, might be having a psychotic break or an elongated mental breakdown on his notepad. “And the evidence for your time traveling?”
“…You don’t believe me,” is all Kim Dokja says, instead of offering any ground-breaking evidence to support his claims.
Yoo Joonghyuk gives Kim Dokja a look.
Immediately, Kim Dokja recoils. “Well—of course. That’s normal. It’s a normal thing to think. I mean, I can’t possibly be from the future. That’s impossible—right? Right. It’s unthinkable.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath before Kim Dokja stretches his arms across the gray surface of the table, crossing them afterwards, and speaks in a more hushed tone.
“Listen, Dr. Yoo. I’m not all that interested in making you believe me. It’s not my goal, and you’re not—you’re not really that important, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“So,” Kim Dokja smiles amicably, tension seeping away from each of his joints, “for your sake and mine, just… don’t mind me, will you? Just write in your notebook that I have some mental disorder. That I’m dealing with a psychotic break. That way we’ll both be happy. I can’t imagine that I’m your first delirious patient.”
Yoo Joonghyuk resists the urge to jot down Mind reader on his notepad. His gaze finally shifts to Kim Dokja’s face. “Are you aware that you’re having a mental breakdown right now, Kim Dokja-ssi?”
Kim Dokja’s smile doesn’t strain in the slightest. “I don’t really have a say in that, do I? You decide that. In fact, you already have.”
Yoo Joonghyuk hums, grabbing his clipboard, and starts flipping through a thin stack of pages.
“You mentioned earlier that I’m not important—for your goal, I assume—so tell me, Kim Dokja-ssi, what is?”
“You don’t care about that. Not yet, at least.”
Yoo Joonghyuk dutifully ignores that last part. “Does it have something to do with—” He squints at the ridiculously empty paper, the lone, italicized name at the very top, “—Lee Gilyoung?”
Kim Dokja inhales sharply. It’s all the confirmation Yoo Joonghyuk needs.
“You mentioned that name when you were brought in, and you repeated it while under the effects of a sedative. Lee Gilyoung. Is he someone important? A relative?”
“No, no—he’s not—” Kim Dokja shifts in his seat, knuckles having gone paper white. The tension’s all back on his shoulders; his eyes are back to flitting between the corners of the room, “He’s not… related to me. We don’t know each other personally.”
“And you expect him to believe that you’re a time traveler?”
“Do you take me for an idiot?”
“So you’re aware.” Yoo Joonghyuk scribbles something down on the clipboard—on Lee Gilyoung’s file. “And is there going to be an evil robot you’ll need to protect him against? Warn him about? Something sent back in time to kill him?”
“I wish it were that simple.” Kim Dokja huffs out something close to a laugh. “No, it’s—it’s something else. I just… need to stop him from getting on a plane.”
“Why?”
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks up from Lee Gilyoung’s file. “Try me.”
Infuriatingly, all Kim Dokja does is huff again—exasperated, half-hearted, non-committal. “I’m afraid I can’t,” he says. “You and I still don’t trust each other, Doctor. We don’t have that kind of relationship yet.”
Silence.
“A patient-therapist type of relationship! Patient-therapist!”
The implication of his own words dawn on him far too late; Yoo Joonghyuk has shot up from his seat, gathering all his papers and pens, right after the miniscule, disturbed lift of his eyebrows Kim Dokja somehow managed to catch. Now: horror. There’s nothing but horror on Kim Dokja’s face.
“Wait, wait! Don’t leave! I’m—you’ve kept me in this place for days already! I need—I need to get out, Yoo Joonghyuk!”
“We’ll continue our discussion tomorrow—”
Kim Dokja grabs his sleeve when he reaches to stop the recorder.
He’s stood up from his seat too, but with a wide-eyed look, labored breathing, and if Yoo Joonghyuk were to listen close enough, there would no doubt be the rapid, sledgehammering beat of his pulse.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” Kim Dokja breathes, “Yoo Joonghyuk, listen to me. I have to get out.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s glare sharpens. “You’re in a medium security unit psychiatric center in Seoul. We’re not really in the habit of letting our patients out.”
“And that’s great! Really! If not for the fact that I’m not a patient,” Kim Dokja licks his lips, frantic, frazzled, “My name is Kim Dokja, I’m 28 years old, and I come from the year 2062. I’ve been sent here to prevent the end of the world, and I need to get out of here. Now.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at Kim Dokja. His face tightens almost cartoonishly, something like disbelief and incredulity piling up and overflowing all at once. The glass cracks; Yoo Joonghyuk laments over the fact that his pay is far too good for him to walk out of this room just like that. Retracting his hand, he sighs and roots himself back to his seat.
“Sit back down, Kim Dokja.”
A fucking lunatic, Yoo Joonghyuk jots down on his notepad, and closes it without another word.
Kim Dokja asks Yoo Joonghyuk this, one session—“Do you dream?”
He’s a lot calmer now, after a few sessions. There’s something in his eyes—not quite resigned, not quite a spark. It’s enough, though, for Yoo Joonghyuk to regard him cautiously, guarded. Like he’s dangerous.
“People normally do.”
“And people don’t normally remember their dreams, do they?”
“No. No, they don’t. What are you getting at?”
“Has anyone ever told you about that stick up your ass? Obviously, what I’m getting at is—” Kim Dokja smacks his lips. Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze follows the action. “Don’t you want to try?”
Frowning, Yoo Joonghyuk tears his gaze away. “No,” he says.
And that’s that.
OCTOBER 20, 2022
10:25 AM
SESSION 7
Kim Dokja blinks away his drowsiness. Like always, there’s Yoo Joonghyuk sitting in front of him, the ends of his lab coat dragging across the floor as he scoots forward with his chair. The fluorescent lights hanging above are sickeningly blinding.
“Tell me about yourself.”
Kim Dokja’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “This is awfully uncharacteristic of you, Dr. Yoo.”
“What this is,” Yoo Joonghyuk very carefully articulates, speaking almost as if he’s trying to talk to a toddler, just with slight murderous intent, “is my job. I’m just doing it.”
“Well,” begins Kim Dokja, “It doesn’t seem like you’ve been doing your job very well—or at all, really. What happened to just letting me talk about my delusions until the session’s over?”
“…My superior scolded me about that.”
And that’s fucking hilarious, apparently, because Kim Dokja almost fails to stifle a laugh. Thankfully, Yoo Joonghyuk’s glare is enough of a warning to shut him up. Kind of.
“Sorry, you—” Kim Dokja clears his throat, averting his eyes, as if the mere sight of Yoo Joonghyuk will punt him directly into a raucous fit of laughter. “You’re right, you’re right, it’s not funny. The picture of you, broad-shouldered, six-foot-tall, permanent scowl, getting scolded by your superior like a child—”
“Kim Dokja.”
“Not funny! Right! Not funny at all!”
Yoo Joonghyuk wants to smack his head against the table.
This pseudo-friendship they’ve developed over the course of a few sessions is a funny little thing. Through the eyes of an outsider, they probably look concerning: a 28-year-old looking on the cusp of committing first-degree murder sitting across another 28-year-old babbling away with the stupidest smile on his face. Not a drop of professionalism, sure, but Yoo Joonghyuk blames it on Kim Dokja’s otherworldly—pull? It’s something inexplicable, he thinks; it’s something he doesn’t understand at all.
Distantly, he’s aware of the puff of laughter that manages to escape Kim Dokja’s lips and promptly wants to bash Kim Dokja’s face in, but that’s not professional. In fact, it’s the farthest thing from professional.
Still. “I want to bash your face in,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, because Kim Dokja somehow manages to strip him of his inhibitions every single time he so much as breathes. Annoying bastard.
“On the record?” Kim Dokja, amused, looks at him wide-eyed, before looking at the recorder.
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls and sighs at the same time like he’s exhausted, and busies himself with tidying up the stack of papers in front of him. Kim Dokja laughs lightly before reaching over the table and pressing his thumb against Yoo Joonghyuk’s bangs. Immediately, Yoo Joonghyuk tenses.
Slowly, he lifts his gaze, glancing up and catching sight of the awestruck eyes staring at him, and an awful tug at his chest makes itself known.
“…Kim Dokja.”
The call of his name seems to pull him back to reality—Kim Dokja’s face reddens immediately, like Christmas lights all across December, and Yoo Joonghyuk watches him fidget back to his seat.
“There was a loose strand,” comes the weak defense. “You, uh, did your hair.”
“I did.”
“…Gel, is it? Do you have something important today?”
“I was trying something new,” Yoo Joonghyuk huffs, looking away, cheeks warming all the same. And because he’s sunk low enough: “You messed up my look. That loose strand was intentional. A fashion statement.” A beat. “Bastard.”
Rude and, again, unprofessional, but how else was he supposed to act when his heart is trying to jump out of his fucking chest?
The invitation to return to their usual banter has Kim Dokja relaxing, it seems, as the man finally looks back at him with an obnoxious grin. “Never get into the fashion industry, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“Right,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. “Now stop avoiding the question: tell me about yourself, Kim Dokja.”
Kim Dokja laughs. “Not really a question, though, is it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles something unintelligible under his breath. Kim Dokja figures that he’s probably cursing him out like usual.
“But, okay, fine,” Kim Dokja ends up conceding. He clasps his hands together. Purses his lips. “Where to start? I… was a lonely child, for one, and I, uh, read a lot, like a lot of children from my generation, the IP generation. Do they call us that already?”
A hint of confusion shows on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. “The IP generation?”
“…The interpandemic generation?” Kim Dokja stares at him like he’s an idiot. Frankly, it should be the other way around.
(It usually is.)
Kim Dokja fumbles with his hands, gesturing wildly. “You know! Those who grew up between waves of deadly infection rates? It set us apart. I grew up, eyes glued to a screen. My first dates were virtual—”
“People wanted you?”
A glare.
“—and like everyone in my generation, we learned to fear physical contact and trust the distance more than the closeness. From my generation, a simple kiss became an act of faith!”
“Romantic,” Yoo Joonghyuk replies flatly. “What happened next?”
“Therapy!”
Ah. “Clearly. And that ended?”
“The whole world did!” Kim Dokja cries. “The whole world—everything! And that’s—that’s why I’m here now, you see? I’m here to fix things before they go to shit, but I can’t do anything if you keep me confined here!”
“Hm. I’m starting to understand you.” Unimpressed, Yoo Joonghyuk circles Delusional on his notepad. “Aliens, natural disasters, or robots?”
“…You don’t believe me.”
Kim Dokja sounds as if he’s genuinely upset. Yoo Joonghyuk raises his gaze and watches the tight lines of his face—and something in his chest stirs.
“It’s hard to believe the musings of a man on the verge of insanity,” he says, mouth drying, but a second look at Kim Dokja reassures Yoo Joonghyuk that he looks nothing like a madman. Then again, it’s hard to tell, with people, but…
“Why do I want to believe you?” Yoo Joonghyuk adds quietly under his breath.
Kim Dokja doesn’t hear him.
OCTOBER 23, 2022
11:57 PM
HOME (YOO JOONGHYUK)
Ten things, a hundred things, a million things—
Kim Dokja, Kim Dokja, Kim Dokja.
Yoo Joonghyuk lingers and lingers and lingers, tossing and turning on his bed. Three syllables under his tongue, words that sound like a lie, and then, a question: Do you dream?
Someone’s face falling, like his whole world’s been crashing over and over again without warning; the brush of cold skin against his warmer skin; that fucking smile.
Kim Dokja, Kim Dokja, Kim Dokja.
Yoo Joonghyuk takes a deep breath.
It’s a mantra. It’s a loop. It’s a broken record: Kim Dokja, he thinks and thinks and thinks. Kim Dokja—
OCTOBER 24, 2022
10:15 AM
SESSION 9
“—do you dream?”
Kim Dokja looks faintly surprised at the question.
“They’re… Well, yes, but no.”
“So which is it?” Yoo Joonghyuk scowls, impatient. He taps his pen against the edge of his clipboard. “Are they dreams or reality?”
“I can’t… It’s not…” Kim Dokja’s expression twists. “I guess it’s—both at the same time?”
Yoo Joonghyuk nods. “And would you say that you have a hard time discerning between dreams and reality?”
Kim Dokja frowns. “You’re not asking the right questions.”
“But I want the right answers, don’t I?”
“No, you don’t.” This time, Kim Dokja’s the one to scowl. He looks away, cheek resting against his palm. “In fact, I think you’re afraid.”
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs out something close to a laugh. “Of you?”
“You have a sister.”
The world stops. Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes are blown wide in the matter of seconds. He snaps his head to Kim Dokja, who offers him that infuriating, all-knowing smile of his.
“How do you know that?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression is rigid. Stiff. Jaw clenched and face tight. “I never talked about her, I never so much as mentioned her—how do you know that?”
“Afraid now, aren’t you?” Kim Dokja fiddles with the pen he’s swiped from Yoo Joonghyuk’s side of the table, leaning against his chair. “Yoo Mia’s sick, isn’t she? A rare disease, if I remember correctly, but I don’t think you have to worry, no. She’ll get better in no time.”
Yoo Joonghyuk is still reeling. “Have you been investigating me?”
Kim Dokja looks up, and only smiles.
Then, Yoo Joonghyuk’s phone rings, and Kim Dokja blinks in a mixture of amusement and surprise.
“Oh, wow. I didn’t think you’d be able to get phone service down here in this closet.”
Yoo Joonghyuk glares at him. That damn smile is agitating. Unfazed.
“Well? Go ahead, take the call. I’m not going anywhere.”
And, see, the thing about Yoo Joonghyuk is that he’s aggravatingly good at drawing the line between his work and personal lives.
This call—it has to be something personal, and if this were any other patient sitting in front of him, Yoo Joonghyuk would immediately turn on his heel and leave, excusing himself politely, with no urge to land himself in a max security prison cell. But it’s not. It’s Kim Dokja in front of him, with that goddamned smile of his, eyes somehow always gleaming under the bleak tube lights when their gazes lock, and their earlier conversation has him seething. Worried. Alert.
Irrational.
He has no time to think twice. No time to rake back in his rationality. So, he picks up the phone without another thought, gripping the steel frame of his chair, and waits.
His voice is hushed when he speaks; on the other end is the hospital Yoo Mia was moved to a few months ago.
“Yes, yes, this is her older brother—no, we don’t have any parents, I’m her legal guardian—yes, no other relatives… yes, the hospital bills…” The nurse on the other line says something, and whatever color he had left on his face drains in an instant. Watching him, Kim Dokja frowns.
“What? No… no, what—? Sorry, can you repeat—? Mia… Mia is…?”
Yoo Joonghyuk opens his mouth, and he looks as if he’s struggling to find words, form sentences—and so he closes his mouth, opens it again, and again, and again.
He takes a deep breath.
“Yes, the surgery—right. We—I can immediately pay, yes, and the list—it can be started immediately? Then, please—” His lips press into a shaky line, “Yes, thank you. Have a good day.”
The call ends. His hand drops to his side, balled up and trembling.
Standing here between white walls and under boring, blinding lights is Yoo Joonghyuk at his most vulnerable. His hands are shaking, his entire body—worry, worry, worry. The words the nurse had told him echo in his mind. This—is nothing like before or anything Yoo Joonghyuk has allowed any other person to see, and to think that Kim Dokja is the first person to see him like this is just. Fuck.
Humiliation creeps up his skin. The lights are nauseating. The silence stretches.
But then: the creak of a chair getting pushed back against the floor, lanky elbows knocking accidentally against the gray table. Kim Dokja reaching towards him, reaching for his hand.
Warmth.
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t shake him off.
There’s a thumb running across his knuckles, slow and careful, and the tension seeps out of his body like flowing water. Fingers entwine, and Yoo Joonghyuk finally musters the courage to glance at Kim Dokja.
“Your sister will be fine,” Kim Dokja whispers. Briefly, Yoo Joonghyuk realizes that he really should shake him off by now. Wince. Grimace. Flinch. Anything to show how foreign his touch is. There’s just one problem: it isn’t foreign. Doesn’t feel that way. Instead, it’s familiar. Instead, it’s grounding. Why the fuck is it grounding?
“Do you—” Kim Dokja clears his throat. “Do you need a minute? We could, um, reschedule. Continue our session tomorrow.”
“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk breathes. He shakes his head and finally, finally wrenches his hand out of Kim Dokja’s grasp. He sits back down, eyes fixed on anything that isn’t Kim Dokja or Kim Dokja’s goddamn hands, fuck.
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
“I’m—a professional,” Yoo Joonghyuk gathers back his wits, “I can do this. Not let my personal life get in the way of my work. It’s fine. Let’s continue the session.”
Kim Dokja stares at him thoughtfully. “Look,” he says then, less quiet than before; the earlier moment’s gone already, filed away to both their memories, “I’m going to give you a piece of advice for our next meeting. Homework, if you will.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns, but makes no indication for him to stop.
“Imagine that time is a path in a park,” begins Kim Dokja. “A trail. You’re at one point right now. Tomorrow, you’ll be further along and next year you’ll be even further down the path. Now imagine there’s a Yoo Joonghyuk at each of those points. The Yoo Joonghyuk that we’re interested in is at the other end of the trail in the future, and that version of yourself wants to tell you something. To give you a piece of advice about his past self, which would be you today. What advice would you give him?”
“…You want me to do this now?”
“No!” Kim Dokja chokes on something like laughter, surprised. “No, no, no—that’s ridiculous, god! You couldn’t. That’d—that’d be like—you know—imagining the future Yoo Joonghyuk giving advice influenced by information you’ve learned just now.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t understand the apparent comedy in all of this.
“But,” continues Kim Dokja, “You could establish an agreement instead. You’ll communicate with the future you while you’re asleep, he’ll give you good advice and the next time we meet, you’ll tell me what you dreamt. Maybe he’ll tell you about us, too.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrows crease together. “About us?”
“About you. About me.” Kim Dokja offers up an easy smile. “In my life, in yours, in the future—our relationship is relevant. Extremely. And the future Yoo Joonghyuk will tell you immediately about everything… we are.”
His rationality starts coming back to him in small waves, Kim Dokja’s words registering in his mind like the words of someone who’s never had a single sober thought his entire life.
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at Kim Dokja.
“Through my dreams,” he says.
“Through your dreams,” Kim Dokja confirms gleefully.
“Right,” Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, shaking his head and looking away once again. He should’ve never let himself think that Kim Dokja was even the least bit sane. His fingers curl around the cover of his notepad before he flips through the pages.
“We’re moving on,” he announces then, and the sound of Kim Dokja’s amused laughter fills the room.
(What do you see in your dreams, Yoo Joonghyuk?)
Kim Dokja is an enigma.
He’s a grade S lunatic. Top of the lunacy food chain. Sounds like one, too, with the way his lies sound like truths and his truths sound like lies.
And this—is not to say that Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t have his occasional run-ins with the exceptionally delusional every now and then, no. He’s a psychiatrist, for fuck’s sake. It’s his job. But Kim Dokja is unlike any other person he’s ever had the displeasure of meeting, lunatic or not.
Then again, maybe the problem lies within Yoo Joonghyuk himself. Maybe the problem lies within the fact that Kim Dokja is, quite frankly, completely sane.
Any normal person wouldn’t even think to entertain the thought of believing whatever bullshit that comes out of Kim Dokja’s mouth, and Yoo Joonghyuk would like to think that he’s a part of this group too—normal, rational, unwavering—but the cold, hard facts of this case suggest very strongly: No. There’s some—a large—part of him that wants to believe Kim Dokja in spite of everything and fuck, he might’ve actually already started believing Kim Dokja since a handful of sessions ago.
Or maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he just wants to, but something like that goes a long way, doesn’t it? Wanting to do something. Wanting to believe someone. Wanting—someone. Want eventually turns into Need, but just where does the line start to blur?
The day the bickering started—did this want stem from that day, perhaps? Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps Yoo Joonghyuk has spun the thought of this, all of this, in his mind tens of thousands of times. Perhaps they all started from that day in the white-walled room, when Kim Dokja had grabbed his hand and calmed him down. Perhaps—
Yoo Joonghyuk wants to bash his head into a fucking wall.
Perhaps, he laments.
Perhaps he’s finally gone insane.
OCTOBER 28, 2022
10:03 AM
SESSION 13
“You traveled back in time through dreams.”
Kim Dokja shoots him the harshest ‘Are you stupid?’ look Yoo Joonghyuk has ever received in his entire life.
“That’s ridiculous. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“You wouldn’t shut up about dreams,” Yoo Joonghyuk argues, defensive. He will not have Kim Dokja, of all people, give him that wretched you’re-the-stupidest-person-alive stink eye. “You told me that I’d be able to meet and talk to my future self through my dreams.”
“That was… an example.” Kim Dokja looks constipated. “I… traveled in a much more complex way, Dr. Yoo.”
“Picking the honorifics back up?” Yoo Joonghyuk huffs. Scribbles something on his notepad. “Are you a scientist? Or were you in the army?”
“If I was a scientist or in the army, I wouldn’t be trapped here, okay? I’d be prepared for such… situations. I’m just a regular person that was sent here precisely because of that—because of who I am.”
“And who are you, Kim Dokja?”
Kim Dokja tilts his head. “I’m afraid I don’t kiss and tell, Dr. Yoo.”
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue.
They’re doing it this way? Fine then. Two can play at that game.
“A first date, then. What movie are you feeling?”
Kim Dokja blinks in surprise before bursting out laughing.
Used to his antics, Yoo Joonghyuk only glances up at him with a faintly curious look in his eyes and a raised eyebrow.
“Sorry, it’s just”—are those tears in his eyes?—“I didn’t think you’d play along so quickly—or ever, actually!”
“I do have a sense of humor, you know,” Yoo Joonghyuk grouches.
“Sure you do.” Kim Dokja grins, laughter dying out into these small breaths. For a moment, he looks contemplative. “How about… DeLorean? Pretty fitting, don’t you think? Though, a time machine, or ship, or capsule, or whatever—I didn’t use anything like that. I won’t be able to relate to that part of the movie.”
“You don’t remember historical events that could convince me but you remember small details in a movie.”
“It’s a pop culture reset!” Kim Dokja gawks. “Just because I like going to the movies, just because I saw the Godfather and The Man From Earth—that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a time traveler! It just—it just—” His arms flail, frustration seeping out of every bone of his body. “It just makes me a time-traveling movie buff!”
“Right.” Against his will, Yoo Joonghyuk finds that he has to stifle a laugh. Kim Dokja’s resurfacing grin is wide. “We’re getting sidetracked, you fool. Let’s get back to the topic at hand. I wanted to tell you—”
NOVEMBER 1, 2022
10:38 AM
SESSION 16
“—I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“I intrigue you,” Kim Dokja corrects, and, well, Yoo Joonghyuk has lost enough ego in their sessions to admit that he’s right.
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue. His pen drags across the paper of his notepad. “Tell me how you traveled back in time.”
“Oh, that’s easy. I used lasers.”
Yoo Joonghyuk wants to take back his earlier words: Kim Dokja is definitely some degree of crazy.
“A laser.” He levels this disinterested, unamused look on him. “That’s how you traveled back in time.”
“A group of them, actually,” Kim Dokja says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“A group of lasers surrounded you?”
“They alter gravity, Yoo Joonghyuk. That’s how it works.” Kim Dokja speaks as if he genuinely can’t believe Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t know common knowledge from the 2060s. “To travel into the future, the keyword is speed. To travel into the past, the keyword is gravity. The gravitational field produced by a ring of lasers… It’s a time machine based on a circular beam of light.”
Fine, Yoo Joonghyuk decides. He’ll bite. “And where is this technology now so that you can return back home?”
Kim Dokja winces. “That’s the sad thing, you see. These journeys have one rather large inconvenience: it’s a one-way trip.”
“And yet, you came.”
“And yet, I came.”
A pause. “Why?”
“I have a purpose—haven’t you been listening? I told you this already!”
“Your purpose.” If Yoo Joonghyuk were anyone else, he’d snicker. “You mean, ‘to save the world’?”
“I mean, when you put it like that, it’s—” Kim Dokja grimaces, “it’s obvious, and cliché, but yes, certainly. And to elaborate, because I’m just so nice: I’m here to save the world from a person.”
“Lee Gilyoung?”
“Exactly! You’re finally seeing things a little more my way! We’ve come a long way, you and I.” When Yoo Joonghyuk’s scowl returns, Kim Dokja lets out a light laugh. “Lee Gilyoung—a very important person, but ultimately just a person. A stranger. Someone who’s normal and invisible in the grand scheme of things, like you, and like me.”
“And you plan on stopping him from ending the world.” Yoo Joonghyuk demands, “Tell me how you’re planning to do that.”
“It’s simple,” Kim Dokja says. “I won’t.”
There’s that unnerving smile on Kim Dokja’s lips again, but the implications of it are clear now, and something akin to disbelief takes hold of Yoo Joonghyuk.
Let it be known that Yoo Joonghyuk is no idiot.
“I’m not going to be the one who stops him; I’m not going to be the one who saves the world, no.” Kim Dokja’s smile lifts into a grin—wider, more infuriating. He lazily raises his hand, pointing at Yoo Joonghyuk before jabbing his finger to his chest and sealing his fate:
“You will.”
NOVEMBER 1, 2022
11:33 PM
HOME (YOO JOONGHYUK)
This is a dream.
Yoo Joonghyuk knows this with a sort of terrifying clarity he’s never experienced in all his years of living.
His bedroom’s gone and changed into a field of grass and flowers with no end. An endless stretch of grass under baby blue skies. Across him stands a man like a reflection of himself, but there are little gray strands at the forefront of his fringe getting swept away by the breeze, and a horse by his side.
Yoo Joonghyuk is quiet for a moment too brief because he asks, because he knows the right question to ask this time around, “What is Kim Dokja to you?”
The man steps to the side, and only then does Yoo Joonghyuk see the white, folded pigeon-like wings on the horse. They flutter open, and the horse huffs as if expressing its displeasure of the man going too, too far from him.
Still. It doesn’t move. But the man stands directly in front of Yoo Joonghyuk, one, maybe two, steps away, and reaches out a hand.
His palm opens: a knife.
“You already know what he is to us,” the man says, forcing the knife into Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands. He looks ghastly, like a phantom, like a reckoning and a haunting. There’s something glimmering on one of his fingers. “Don’t be a fool, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
Then he tilts his head up, pupils a vortex, too dark for any kind of light, and says, “Kill the horse behind me.”
Yoo Joonghyuk jolts awake.
NOVEMBER 4, 2022
11:29 AM
SESSION 17
Yoo Joonghyuk angrily slams down a stack of papers in front of Kim Dokja. There are deep, deep eyebags littering his usually spotless face, and Kim Dokja’s wide eyes as he inspects him is humiliating, to say the least. Yoo Joonghyuk hasn’t been able to sleep a wink since…
“The theory that a future me will whisper answers in my dreams is not yours, it’s a theory from a physicist, Jean-Pierre Garnier Malet. The temporal projection theory—”
“Alright, alright! Hold on! You get a failing grade for the homework I gave you. Did you even try, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
Where the fuck do you think my eyebags came from? Yoo Joonghyuk hisses in his mind.
What he says aloud instead is, “I’m not paid enough to entertain you or play your games, Kim Dokja. You’re not going through a psychotic episode built around a central organized idea. You—you’ve just been fucking with me.”
“I never said the theory was mine,” Kim Dokja murmurs, turning away, “The Garnier Malet phenomenon has been taught in schools ever since I was 10 years old in 2044.”
“Convincing. And your physics teacher is?”
“16 this year,” Kim Dokja sighs. “It’s a pipe dream, you know. Trying to find someone or something to confirm my existence.”
Yoo Joonghyuk narrows his eyes. “That means that there’s no one to support any of your claims either.”
“Nope. No one at all.” Here, Kim Dokja’s voice strains just the slightest bit. “By the way, how did you find out about that—that Garnier Malet theory so quickly? Did you go to the library? Ask around for help from your coworkers?”
When Yoo Joonghyuk searches his expression for anything, there isn’t a hint of insincerity or mockery. There’s only genuine curiosity, and, ah, right.
Kim Dokja is from the future.
“I googled it,” he grunts out.
“…Googled it?”
“Yes,” says Yoo Joonghyuk. “I can’t imagine how useless googling must be in 2062. It must be an archaic concept to wrap your head around; why use google when the future has a hundred better things?”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.”
The aircon whirrs in the background, too loud in this room where there’s only the two of them and nobody—nothing else.
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “Elaborate.”
“The Great Deletion.”
Kim Dokja looks ghastly when he speaks, tracing the 50th line of nothing but white against white in this damned storage closet they’re in.
“March 30th, 2033. All the data in—in everything—clouds, search engines, servers—gone. Everything—gone. In 2062, the one thing we had to do was go to libraries if we wanted to learn about pretty much anything.”
It’s another spiel. Another layer of fantasy laid over the groundwork and promises of an unforeseeable future.
“And what makes you think I’ll believe any of that?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks—challenges, like his fate wasn’t sealed the moment he realized he wanted nothing more than to believe every word that leaves Kim Dokja’s mouth.
“You have to. Believe me, I mean. I’m no fraud.”
“That,” says Yoo Joonghyuk, “is very hard to believe.”
“What is?” Kim Dokja snickers, irritation flaring. “That I’m not a fraud?”
“You claim to be from somewhere that hasn’t existed.”
“And what? Everything I say has to be fake because I’m not in a lab coat like you?” Something flashes across his expression—is that hurt? “Right. Take my words at face value, always, because I’m not wearing a white coat. Your words are always, always true, though, just because. Right! I must be a fraud, you’re right.” His lips flatten. “The call is coming from inside the house, Yoo Joonghyuk. ‘Fraud’—okay, fine, I get where you’re coming from, but take a look at your own profession first before waving me off, Doc.”
“Watch your tongue, Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw clenches. “Do they not teach manners anymore in the future? Be respectful.”
“Oh, that’s adorable!” Kim Dokja throws his back against his chair’s headrest. “This profession—it’s the one medical science out of them all that deals with lies the most, you realize? It’s not—it’s not respectful in the slightest and you, of all people, want to talk about respect?”
“Kim Dokja.”
“And—and do you want me to list all the unethical things you do here? Water cures, lobotomies, electroshock therapy, forced confinement—do you want me to continue? Anti-depressants that cause suicides, opiods that cause addictions, stimulants to calm kids down—”
“Kim Dokja!” Yoo Joonghyuk’s chair falls to the ground. “You’ve made your point. For your sake and mine, shut your mouth.”
Kim Dokja regards him coldly. “What did your future self tell you, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
“This session is done.”
“No, tell me! What did your future self—”
“This session is done!”
“Yoo Joonghyuk!”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
“Yoo Joonghyuk, you can’t—you can’t run from this forever, you hear me?! You’ll give in eventually, you and I both know that!”
“Yoo Joonghyuk!”
Yoo Joonghyuk slams the door shut.
NOVEMBER 7, 2022
9:30 AM
OFF THE RECORD
The next time they meet, Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t wearing his usual get up.
His usual lab coat’s been discarded for the day in favor of a light brown trench coat, and the steaming cups of coffee in his hands are mocking him, almost. Sneering at him.
But no matter. Yoo Joonghyuk only lets himself linger in a few seconds of hesitation before opening the door and stepping in. The sight of him like this—in casual clothes, outside of work—shocks Kim Dokja, it seems. For good reason.
“I got you coffee,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, as if that explains anything. What he should say: I was an ass. But he figures that Kim Dokja kind of knows that already, too.
Kim Dokja accepts the cup with equal parts confused and amused. “Isn’t this… against protocol, or whatever? What if I was crazy and burned myself with this on purpose?”
“You are crazy,” Yoo Joonghyuk responds without missing a beat. Kim Dokja snorts. “But it’s fine. Those kinds of protocols are only for specific patients—when it gets real bad for them—and,” he pauses. “And, I’m not here for work. Right now, I’m not visiting you as your psychiatrist.”
Kim Dokja lights up. Almost laughs. “I thought medical professionals shouldn’t have any personal relationships with their patients?”
“You and I both know that we’ve crossed that line by a mile.”
“What if I give you back an inch?”
“Give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s piercing gaze. “You give an inch back, and I’ll just take another mile.”
“How greedy.” Kim Dokja’s pale hands have bloomed to a lovely color—warm, warm, warm. He no longer looks so washed out. “That much greed is dangerous. I can’t imagine you don’t know this.”
“You’re dangerous,” Yoo Joonghyuk tuts and this time, Kim Dokja really does laugh.
There’s silence. Yoo Joonghyuk watches Kim Dokja so intently, so closely, like he’s trying to count his lashes, that Kim Dokja shifts on his seat with a lovely shade of pink dashing across his cheeks.
It’s a wonder how Kim Dokja looks right now: all color, a small smile on his lips that he’s let stay there with some hesitance. If Yoo Joonghyuk hears his own heart thumping loudly in his ribcage, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
Kim Dokja looks embarrassed. “Are you, uh, going to sit?” he asks.
“No.” Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs.
They’re thrown into another round of silence. This time, it’s more awkward than bashful.
Then, Yoo Joonghyuk pinches the bridge of his nose and tilts his head up, eyes closing as he lets out a grueling sigh.
“I’ve been… on edge recently.”
Kim Dokja glances at him with thinly veiled surprise. Rarely does Yoo Joonghyuk actually start a conversation so… normal. Not at all ill-mannered. Not at all hostile or ill-intentioned. And is that a sprinkle of vulnerability in his voice? Wow.
“Sleep has been hard; I haven’t been getting much of it lately.”
“Oh,” Kim Dokja helpfully replies, wincing immediately after. ‘Oh’? Who the fuck just says ‘Oh’? “That’s why you were, um, out of it? At our last session.”
“We were both ‘out of it’,” Yoo Joonghyuk snaps back, settling on the seat across Kim Dokja. If he closes his eyes and replays the memory of Kim Dokja’s small smile, slightly flushed cheeks, and knuckles not at all sheet white, he can see it: what-ifs after what-ifs, painted by the smell of coffee.
“Well.” Kim Dokja leans forward. Places his coffee on the table. Fidgets with his fingers. “You can’t—you can’t really blame me for it, though. This place—” A strained breath. “It’s… very hard to tell the time here, isn’t it? There’s a clock, sure, and the sound of it ticking drives me insane most of the time, but…”
He purses his lips. Yoo Joonghyuk’s attention is on nothing but him.
“It’s just. In a place like this, how do people not just—” he breathes, “lose it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips curl downward. “We could let you go, Kim Dokja.”
“You could,” Kim Dokja acknowledges, “but I imagine it’s only if I had someone to vouch for me. Someone I could return to. And, the thing is, I don’t. I have nobody. No one can neither confirm nor deny any of my claims; I don’t—I don’t exist here, Yoo Joonghyuk.” His voice manages to push through its own cracks. There are tinges of grief even then, splattered all throughout his words. “Do you know how damning that is? How shitty I feel? Hell—how do I know that anything I’m doing is real? How do I know that it’s—right?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent, but only for a moment.
He stirs and leans forward too. They’re so much closer now, their bodies, with breaths that feel too close that they can hear each inhale and exhale in the room.
“Give me your hand,” Yoo Joonghyuk mumbles.
Obediently, Kim Dokja offers up the hand that isn’t curled around his coffee cup, though he looks at Yoo Joonghyuk strangely while he does.
What are you going to do? he thinks to say but doesn’t, because Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand has wrapped around his own. It’s scarred, its texture, and warm from his own coffee. The memories roll back in Kim Dokja’s mind: Yoo Mia, he remembers. The day Yoo Joonghyuk had started losing himself in a fit of panic right in front of him.
His chest flutters.
Oh, he thinks.
“Oh,” he says aloud.
Yoo Joonghyuk is trying to comfort him, however awkwardly. He’s never been good at stuff like this. And, see, the thing about Yoo Joonghyuk is that he’s always, always been a man of very few, very select words. At this point, this might as well be some sort of publicly acknowledged fact. He’s not at all good at arranging them, at forming the sentences to comfort other people, but…
But he can do this, he supposes.
Yes. Yes, he can do this.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s thumb swipes over Kim Dokja’s knuckles. Slowly, surely. As soothing as he can be. Yoo Joonghyuk tries mimicking what Kim Dokja did for him, once upon a time, and hopes, and hopes, and hopes. Hopes that Kim Dokja can deal with his silence. Hopes that Kim Dokja understands what he’s trying to say. What he’s offering.
Still, Yoo Joonghyuk has no idea if Kim Dokja really does get everything he’s trying to convey and do, but he hasn’t pulled his hand away, and that—has to be something, right? And when Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers briefly brush over the pulse point on Kim Dokja’s wrist, he feels the pulse there like a slowing beat. A thrum. Muted. Slowly, slowly relaxing.
Suddenly, everything is alright.
He glances up at Kim Dokja, whose reddened face has on the most beautiful smile he’s ever seen, and his heart stutters.
NOVEMBER 1, 2022
1:04 PM
SESSION 16 (CONT’D)
“Pegasus.”
Sighing, Yoo Joonghyuk rubs at his temples. Here comes the headache again, suited up in something like a straitjacket with gangly limbs.
“What?” The headache—Kim Dokja is its name—laughs cheerily. “I’m offering highly valuable information here. Don’t you want me to continue?”
“You make me want to resign.”
“So why don’t you?”
Shamelessly irritating, this bastard. Yoo Joonghyuk wrestles with the urge to smack Kim Dokja in his mind.
“Just—” a tired, tired exhale, “Out with it, you fool.”
The words tumble out of Kim Dokja’s mouth with practiced ease: “A pandemic is going to exterminate humanity and it’s bigger, much bigger than the covid epidemic. And I,” he points lazily towards himself, wags his index finger and jabs it lightly to his chest, “am here to stop patient zero.”
“And this… Pegasus,” says Yoo Joonghyuk. “Tell me what it is.”
Kim Dokja grins. “Poetic, isn’t it? It’s name, I mean.” He leans his back against the headrest of his seat and looks up and up and up—like he’s trying to burn a hole through the ceiling. Or blind himself. Whichever one he achieves first. The lights are glaring. “Under a microscope, it has a white membrane that looks like it has wings; someone thought the name was poetic. This virus started from a mutation in the body of a young man years after world-wide vaccination, years after the last pandemic finally died down.”
Yoo Joonghyuk taps his fingers against the cold surface of the table. “The covid virus was dormant for years and humanity was safe. But then a mutation—this Pegasus—developed in Lee Gilyoung and caused the end of the world? How are you so sure about any of this?”
“It’s not just bullshit, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Kim Dokja is still looking away, grumbling as he squints at the ceiling. “We know everything about Lee Gilyoung, but we don’t know when the virus will occur—and yes, the overall development of technology centuries into the future is disappointing, I know.”
“But you know the flight and month the virus will spread.”
“We have a range of dates.” Kim Dokja blinks. “The virus started during this one flight Lee Gilyoung will get on in the future—a commercial flight. Business class. Flight number 262, November 30th of this year.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scribbles everything down on the clipboard. On the increasingly full file belonging to one Lee Gilyoung.
“And the vaccine for this virus?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks.
“Zilch.”
Kim Dokja finally spares a glance at Yoo Joonghyuk, looking vaguely—manic? Insane? There’s something Yoo Joonghyuk can’t fully decipher in that gaze. The ends of Kim Dokja’s lips have tugged up into some sort of sad smile but he doesn’t quite look like someone who’s entirely lost their mind even then.
“Pegasus has no vaccine,” Kim Dokja—the enigma, the sane lunatic—says, and Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t sure if he’ll ever figure him out.
NOVEMBER 17, 2022
10:00 AM
SESSION 25
Recently, the main source of Yoo Joonghyuk’s stress has been getting quieter. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t a good thing.
Kim Dokja has this far-away look every time Yoo Joonghyuk sees him. The last time he looked this way was when they had their biggest fight yet but even then, it wasn’t this bad.
He’s a lot quieter these days, more fidgety than usual, and always staring, staring, staring. At the ceiling. At the walls. Which is ridiculous, honestly, because neither the walls nor the ceiling have anything worth mulling over. Suffice to say that with the amount of time he’s spent practically locked up in this place, there’s nothing left for him to scrutinize; Kim Dokja has been confined in this small, empty space since the day he was caught.
Sometimes, Yoo Joonghyuk catches Kim Dokja staring at him and only him.
For a brief moment, Yoo Joonghyuk pities him. Even if Kim Dokja were someone with some degree of lunacy, no one deserves anything like this: not being allowed to go out, not being able to do anything but wait for the next appointment to pick at his brain, and, just…
How do you live knowing that you don’t exist to anyone?
Yoo Joonghyuk often finds himself thinking back to coffee cups and small smiles. There are thoughts that resurface. Thoughts with Kim Dokja in them and sometimes, nothing else.
How, he thinks, and thinks, and thinks, How do you live with yourself like that?
He’d love to mull over this some other time, maybe. He’s sure that in another life, he’d have all the time to do so. The thing is, his job is his life this time around, and unfortunately for him and Kim Dokja, he’s both a professional and the farthest thing from an empath, even if he hadn’t been acting appropriately in the beginning.
So, here they were, Yoo Joonghyuk’s guilty conscience pushed to the back of his mind.
“Airborne transmission, extremely lethal and contagious—Pegasus began spreading in November of this year, but the world ended in 2052. Is that right?”
“To the T, Doctor.”
That didn’t explain the large time gap between the spread of the virus and the supposed end of the world. Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrows scrunch up. Knit together. “Then why didn’t it kill the population immediately?”
“The horrible thing about the end of the world is not that it happens in the blink of an eye,” Kim Dokja drawls, “It’s the slow, progressive burn-out of our species. It’s the getting-used-to-it. We learned to protect and confine ourselves for the first pandemics. With Pegasus, we thought, ‘Oh, just another virus; lockdown will do the trick.’ Cue the protocols, the vaccines…” he trails off.
Wait. “You told me Pegasus had no vaccines.”
“There were—” Kim Dokja’s face twists, “attempts. To make some. And they worked for a while. Kept Pegasus at bay. But the virus mutated. It kept mutating, over and over again. Vaccine, variant, vaccine, variant—it was never-ending. 30 years of wear and tear.”
“And lucky you, who survived it all?”
“Only cowards survive,” he recites. Recalls. Wistful. “That’s a saying we have in the future. Can you guess what I am?”
“You’re here,” Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes flicker upwards. “You survived.”
“Thus, I’m a coward.” Kim Dokja glances away. “My husband, on the other hand, was not.”
Something in Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest aches.
He doesn’t say anything.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Kim Dokja starts. A beginning, a prologue, an introduction. His eyelashes fluttering shut so slowly that his hurt is so palpable, so there, that Yoo Joonghyuk can feel it overflowing the room. The glass breaks, cracks, before Kim Dokja asks, “Do you know how devastating that is?” And Yoo Joonghyuk thinks no because grief has always been different for everyone. No, because Yoo Joonghyuk thinks he can’t begin to understand how large a love Kim Dokja has still, still in his unending grief.
Kim Dokja’s cheeks are trembling.
He speaks like he’s made of stories.
“He’s alive one moment, kissing me good morning while scolding me for sleeping too late the night before. I’m shrugging him off and whining at him to just stay home with me for the hundredth time, and everything is good. Everything is great. The—the light’s in my eyes and it won’t go away. My husband had drawn the curtains open first thing in the morning. He always does this. We don’t have any alarms—we didn’t need any—because of his freakishly on-time body clock, and because he always wakes me up himself.”
Kim Dokja sucks in a breath, eyes so distant that Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t sure if he really is here. “He… goes out. To his car. I hear the door clicking softly shut and the engine starting. While he’s driving to work, I laugh a little at the thought of him being late because of a husband who wouldn’t stop pestering him to stay home for the day. Because of a husband he couldn’t shake off.”
Occasionally, Kim Dokja allows the barest hint of vulnerability to slip by. This time, a heap of it shows through his wry laugh. Kim Dokja is looking him in the eye, but it’s like he’s looking at something far past Yoo Joonghyuk—something long-gone, is it? What does he see?
Kim Dokja’s lips wobble, tremble, shake. “He enters his office next.”
Yoo Joonghyuk listens to all the glass in his voice.
“God must have it out for us,” Kim Dokja says, “because Pegasus gets him the second he steps into that shithole and I only hear about this half a day later—and the funeral proceedings? They didn’t let me so much as see his body. Didn’t let me be in one room as him, didn’t let me see his face. I didn’t—” He gulps, swallowing down the tangled sentences locked in his throat, straining, as the world shatters again, and again, and again. “I didn’t—” he tries, and tries, and tries. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
And oh, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, lips parting and face contorting in a way he’s never known it to. His fingers, trembling around the base of his pen. Careful, a voice in his head tells him. Gentle hands, remember? Gentle hands and fingers and knuckles.
He mutters, “It sounds like you’re doing this for love.”
“The biggest sacrifices are made for love,” Kim Dokja says. “I’m sacrificing my whole life.”
“To see him again?”
“No, god, no,” he shakes his head. “I’ll never see him again, Yoo Joonghyuk, as much as I hate to admit it. My original timeline can no longer be changed. My life with him, his life with me, his death—none of those can be changed. If I change something now, it’ll change the future, but it won’t change the future that I came from.”
“Then why did you take this job?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s wrists thud against the surface of the table, fingers curling around air, forehead creasing. “You—you mentioned before that it’s—”
“—a one-way trip,” Kim Dokja smiles sadly.
“Yes. Exactly. So,” Yoo Joonghyuk’s tongue flicks across his lips, “Why?”
“I want him to exist in a new future. Even though he isn’t with me, even though he’s never met me. After all, our mission, ultimately, is to create a better future. A different one,” he glances at, then away from Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze. His lips are still, frozen in time, smiling still, still, still. “He’ll be a part of that future. It’s as simple as that.”
But how do you live—knowing that you don’t exist to anyone?
Catapulted to some foreign land you have no place in, no home—how do you live with yourself like that?
The lines on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face pull in all the right and wrong ways, yet it’s become absurdly clear how ridiculously simple the answer is: you hang onto hope.
What hope has Kim Dokja been hanging onto? The memory of a person who’s long gone, already molded into the shape of grief and loss and nothing but? What was hope for him, if not something ugly, something leading to his all-encompassing self-sacrificial ideation?
It’s romantic, Yoo Joonghyuk supposes. The idea of sacrificing large parts of yourself for another person. This is how Kim Dokja lives. But to love someone so ardently—Yoo Joonghyuk can’t begin to fathom how someone, anyone, is able to do that.
“Simple,” he echoes then.
“Simple,” confirms Kim Dokja.
A pause. “You want me to believe you.” On what exactly, he doesn’t say; it’s an amalgamation of things.
In a flash it’s back again—that calculating, all-knowing quirk of Kim Dokja’s lips.
“You already do,” Kim Dokja claims.
“What makes you say that, Kim Dokja?”
Kim Dokja laughs.
“Your dream—the homework I assigned you a few days ago. I take back that failing grade I gave you a few sessions ago. You don’t have to tell me that you did it, that you tried, because I already know you did. In fact, I can tell you what you dreamt of myself.”
Yoo Joonghyuk watches him wordlessly.
“A horse,” Kim Dokja starts. “A white horse. Wings on its back. Beautiful. Gorgeous. And—a field, right? You were in a field, and…”
Silence.
“And you had to kill it, didn’t you, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
“…We’ll end today’s session here.”
AUGUST 3, 2059
7:59 AM
HOME(?) (KIM DOKJA)
It’s a gloomy day.
Overhead, the sky has grayed. The clouds have merged together.
Kim Dokja has his forehead pressed against the steering wheel. His grip is tight, trembling. His breaths are coming out ragged and stuttering and shaky. There’s no one in the passenger seat, nothing except for white, white, white. The song playing from the radio cuts off completely and there’s static for a moment, before a gruff voice makes itself known, grumbling.
“Volunteers needed for experimental therapy against Pegasus,” the voice says. “I repeat, volunteers needed for experimental therapy against Pegasus. There is a reward of 50 million USD for those who fulfill all requirements. I repeat…” It fades as Kim Dokja turns the volume down and glances at the bouquet of lilies beside him. Seconds pass. Minutes. Centuries.
He wonders, When does grief get easier?
The gold band on his ring finger doesn’t shine in this light. The weather doesn’t let it. In front, rain hits his windshield. The archway and the trees all cast such large shadows on his car. The trees’ trunks are so wide that it’s almost impossible to see into the cemetery, past the fence, and yet.
And yet, Kim Dokja squirms in his seat.
The blob of gray far, far into the distance has its own set of text no one would ever be able to make out at this distance, but it’s so achingly familiar to Kim Dokja that he sees it clear as day. A name, he sees. A set of dates, and an epitaph.
Kim Dokja can’t breathe.
His vision starts to get blurry. He can’t think properly. Mortifyingly, he realizes how can never not mess anything up. How he’ll always, always somehow end up messing things up.
His shoulders sag as he drops his head, hitting the car horn. It screeches. He screeches, almost. Wants to. The birds taking shelter from the rain in the trees startle, zipping out of the leaves in a flurry, and Kim Dokja kind of wants to cry.
When does grief get easier?
When can he think about someone long-gone and smile at the memories they’d left behind instead of feeling his world crashing and shattering into a thousand pieces over and over again at the mere thought of them?
When Kim Dokja screws his eyes shut and inhales sharply, the world warps.
NOVEMBER 17, 2022
1:44 AM
HOME(???) (KIM DOKJA)
He’s woken up.
Cold sweat. Sweaty palms. Gripping his own shoulders.
White-walled rooms and blinding lights. Two chairs and a table and nothing else.
Tick, tick, tick.
The clock says that it’s midnight. It says that it’s barely even the next day. Kim Dokja wants to cry and leave and come back to someone who’s already gone. He rocks himself in his arms. He tells himself that everything will be okay. That he needs to get it together already, because he’s doing this—all of this—for the only man he’s never stopped loving and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t finish what he’s started.
Still—he doesn’t stop shaking. He can’t.
Suddenly Kim Dokja remembers Yoo Joonghyuk—this Yoo Joonghyuk, the one who doesn’t know him well outside of white walls and recorded conversations. Suddenly he remembers how this Yoo Joonghyuk never fails to visit him at ten in the morning.
Coffee, he remembers. Coffee and Yoo Mia and banter and anything and everything else that’s good.
His breathing slows. The earthquake taking hold of him does, too, until it eventually stops altogether.
Yoo Joonghyuk will be here, he reminds himself. Even if he really is on the verge of insanity, even if it turns out that he really is crazy…
Kim Dokja gulps and aggressively rubs his eyes.
Yoo Joonghyuk will be here.
NOVEMBER 18, 2022
11:15 AM
SESSION 26
“I really appreciate this, Yoo Joonghyuk. That broom closet you called an office—”
“Did you just call your room a broom closet?”
“Well, yeah,” Kim Dokja shrugs, smiling in a way he hasn’t smiled in in what feels like centuries. “What else would you call it? Anyway, I didn’t know this hospital had a park.”
“That’s because it doesn’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs and tears his gaze away.
The wind blows through his hair, picks up at his words. Atop the hospital is a small garden with little to no people. The entrance blooms with life—flowers, colors. Springtime condensed into this small space hidden in plain sight. This small, the place could hardly be called a park.
“But it’s beautiful,” Kim Dokja argues lightheartedly, and it’s true. Yoo Joonghyuk shares that sentiment. He’s glad he brought Kim Dokja out here. “Just enough quiet from the city.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles. “I was assigned to this hospital for my last year of medical school. I practically lived here.”
Kim Dokja’s smile—it’s so loud, somehow. But maybe that’s just the beating of Yoo Joonghyuk’s heart. Maybe. Again, when it comes to anything involving Kim Dokja, he can’t really tell.
The cheeky lilt of Kim Dokja’s voice. “I’ll take it that this is your secret garden, then, and that this is a sign that you believe me—or that you’re starting to, at least…” His words fade into white noise. Yoo Joonghyuk turns his gaze back to Kim Dokja; in this light, with the backdrop of a blue sky and beautiful, beautiful flowers. “…finally leaving all your prejudices of me behind, taking my words fully into consideration, all that—even if I have to pretend that I don’t see your security only a few feet away.”
Yoo Joonghyuk swallows his heart back down. “There are protocols I have to follow.”
“Ones that’ll ruin our little date?”
“Ones that’ll ruin your delusions.”
Kim Dokja brings his hand to the petals of a flower peeking out of a bush. They’re standing under a tree settled along the edge of the garden now, and the wind is so nice—everything is, at this moment—and—
And the scenery is gorgeous, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks.
(Who looks at someone like that?)
“Tell me about your life, Kim Dokja.” After what feels like a century of staring, Yoo Joonghyuk turns away. “You mentioned something about a husband at our last session.”
A light flickers in Kim Dokja’s eyes. “Are you jealous?”
Yes. “If you pray hard enough, I could be.”
The laughter that spills from Kim Dokja’s mouth in response easily knocks the wind out of Yoo Joonghyuk.
“My husband and I, huh? It was just the two of us back—or is it later on? Tenses are tricky in these situations—in the 2060s.” Kim Dokja’s nose scrunches. “We had no children; that’s one of the reasons why I was able to sign up for this time-traveling program, actually. No direct relatives, no one to miss me. There was a selection process and everything. My immunity levels to each Pegasus variant were checked and they found out that I was immune to the Pegasus strain from this year.”
“Your blood has antibodies for this variant of the virus,” Yoo Joonghyuk mumbles.
Kim Dokja nods, laughing lightly. “The higher-ups were overjoyed. Then, I met other people like you.”
“People to annoy?”
“Psychiatrists,” his mouth curls, “But I guess you’re not wrong about that, either. Now that I think about it, they’re just like you: uptight, sticks always up their asses… not nearly as handsome, though. A shame.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have an infuriatingly glib tongue?”
“A few people—my husband, mostly.”
“My condolences to him for having to put up with you.” Yoo Joknghyuk’s face hardens. “So? Continue your story. What did the psychiatrists talk to you about?”
“They asked if I had recurring dreams.”
Yoo Joonghyuk quiets.
“I told them that I had—one. Always with my husband and I, and some kid in a bathroom and that was it, I guess. That was how they knew I was The One. They told me that it wasn’t a dream, that it was an echo from another timeline. Contact with a double through a dreamscape—a past or parallel time—we’ve talked about this already, the—”
“The Garnier Malet event,” Yoo Joonghyuk offers.
“Right—and that’s when they told me the truth about everything!”
The bodyguards a distance away tense at the sudden raise of Kim Dokja’s voice. Some of their hands have come to hover over their pockets—what have they brought? Yoo Joonghyuk muses. Kim Dokja’s back faces Yoo Joonghyuk and the security, stubbornly still, as Yoo Joonghyuk watches, watches, and watches.
“Only a fool would fall for that. You were roped into a pyramid scheme.”
“How much of an idiot do you think I am?” Kim Dokja glances over his shoulder just to throw him a sharp look. He scoffs, turning his head back to the tree in front of them. “These were government officials. I met actual world leaders in preparation for this. The psychiatrists, interviewers… Everyone confessed to being a part of this secret organization with the goal of immunizing patient zero with my plasma.”
“By traveling back in time,” Yoo Joonghyuk tacks on plainly. “Convincing.”
“You still don’t believe me?”
“You’re telling me that having a dream made a whole organization believe you were The Chosen One.”
“Don’t patronize me, Yoo Joonghyuk. Those dreams actually proved something.”
“They proved that you haven’t moved on,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. “It’s common for people who haven’t stopped grieving. Mourning. You see your loved ones in your dreams, in the corner of your eye. Wherever.”
Kim Dokja hums dismissively. “How about we keep the psychoanalyzing for another day, yeah? I thought this was supposed to be a laid-back outing? Something casual?”
Yoo Joonghyuk shrugs. “I’m in my lab coat.”
“Right.” Kim Dokja groans after a brief glance at Yoo Joonghyuk’s attire. “Work-life balance. You’re in your so-called professional mode right now.” When he looks away, he starts walking forward. “Has anyone told you how much of an asshole you are? Fuck you, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“I prefer maintaining strictly professional relationships with my patients.” Yoo Joonghyuk trails closely behind, fallen leaves crunching under his shoes.
Kim Dokja snickers. “You were looking at me like I was your whole world just a second ago.”
“…Fuck you.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you too!”
Unnoticed, fast-approaching steps in the background.
“Listen here—” Kim Dokja picks up a twig at the foot of a tree and swivels around, pointing it at Yoo Joonghyuk, before he yelps, a scuffle of large men in black vests smacking the thin branch out of his grasp and apprehending him.
“I’m sorry sir, but I’m going to need you to calm down,” says one of the men—the leader, it seems—who then turns his head and shouts at his subordinates, “Hostile patient! Weapon already removed, but make sure to restrict his movement!”
“Hos—?! I’m not—” The bodyguards lock his arms, their own secured around his forearms. Limbs. Kim Dokja flounders. “I’m—I was just getting a tw—fuck! Yoo Joonghyuk!”
He turns. Yoo Joonghyuk’s face is impassive, but Kim Dokja swears that he can see a glimmer of amusement in his pupils. Kim Dokja clenches his jaw, rage and incredulity building up side by side.
“Is this funny to you?”
“A little.” Yoo Joonghyuk covers his mouth with his hand—is this bastard fucking laughing?
Kim Dokja bristles. “Tell your security off!”
“Sir, I’m going to need you to calm down—”
“Shut up! I’m talking to your goddamn asshole of a boss!”
“I’m not their boss,” Yoo Joonghyuk helpfully corrects.
“You—”
“My boss is their boss. Do you know how many people try to escape or harm their psychiatrists in this institute?”
“I don’t care—shit, just—tell them to let go of me—!” Two of the bodyguards grip and tug Kim Dokja’s wrists harshly. “Yoo Joonghyuk!”
When Kim Dokja yelps in pain, tears beginning to gather in his eyes, Yoo Joonghyuk’s pupils go wide.
Fuck.
“Let him go,” Yoo Joonghyuk orders.
The security guards pause in their movements. “But sir—” the leader starts.
“Are you deaf?” Yoo Joonghyuk turns an icy gaze on them. “I could have you fired with one call. Have you forgotten my position? I said let him go.” He scowls. “What harm could a twig held by another twig do? Do I look like a weakling? I could kill that man without moving an inch.”
A moment of hesitance. Unsure glances shared between men in black vests. Then, nods throughout that small crowd, and Kim Dokja is released.
“Good,” Yoo Joonghyuk eases. “Now scram. Go back to watching us from a distance. If I need you to apprehend my patient, I will call you—understood?”
“…Understood, sir.”
While they walk away, settling back over near the entrance, watching Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja in silence, Kim Dokja wobbles on his feet, squinting and rubbing at his sore wrists.
Yoo Joonghyuk feels his regret pounce on him. His conscience. “Are…” he grunts, “Are you okay, Kim Dokja?”
“You’re a fucking bastard,” Kim Dokja answers.
“I didn’t think they’d hurt you to the point of tears.”
“They’re trained, for fuck’s sake! And just look at them! Look at me! Compared to them, I’m a goddamn twi—” Kim Dokja cuts himself off, the irony of his words sinking in.
What harm could a twig held by another twig do?
“You know what? Nevermind,” he exhales, frustrated, pinching the bridge of his nose. He picks the earlier twig back up and draws a line on the ground.
“A time traveler that’s here,” he draws a dot near one end of the line, drags the stick to the opposite side, “goes back in time in their same timeline here. Once they arrive at the same moment, a new timeline opens up. So I’m both here and here. That dream I mentioned I had earlier? It was about me—in another life. Another timeline. A different past and present and future. If I could contact that alternate timeline of mine, it was proof I could modify the catastrophe.”
“You expect me to believe that you were the only one who had that kind of dream out of thousands of people,” Yoo Joonghyuk deadpans.
“Yes, because despite the fact that you’re a bastard, you’re a bastard I need to make believe me.”
Kim Dokja glances up, eyes catching on the flutter of a bird’s wings a distance away.
“See that bird fountain over there? That bird that just landed there?” he gestures to it with a tilt of his chin. “It’s drinking water, bathed by a ray of sunlight that creates a shadow on the grass. Now what’s the possibility that’ll happen again to the same bird, at the same hour, minute, and second, on that same pond?”
“…Slim to none,” Yoo Joonghyuk reluctantly answers.
“We call that,” says Kim Dokja, “a vortex. A unique moment in time that never happens twice. Sometimes, these moments are completely harmless but sometimes, even the smallest things have planetary consequences. Everything changes. It was confirmed that the most effective vortex to prevent Pegasus from spreading happens at the end of November, 2022, in Incheon International Airport—”
“Lee Gilyoung is a teenage boy who’d probably never thought that he’d be the cause of the end of the world,” Yoo Joonghyuk cuts in, “and you want to stop him from getting on a fucking plane.”
“I want to immunize him, Yoo Joonghyuk. I need to give him my plasma—”
“—via blood transfusion, which no one would accept from a ridiculously suspicious stranger.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s head spins. He’s tired. He wants to believe Kim Dokja and he really does, to some extent, but how was he supposed to blindly believe in all of this?
“I might not know this Lee Gilyoung. This boy you’re obsessed with. But I know that no one stupid enough to voluntarily get off a plane to accept a blood transfusion from a stranger exists.” He narrows his eyes at Kim Dokja. “Not in this year, at least. The 2060s have you.”
“You’re a comedian,” Kim Dokja sniggers. “But I know that you’re aware of my sanity, as well as the fact that I’m not an idiot. I never expected Lee Gilyoung to accept—anything voluntarily—”
“So you plan on kidnapping him.”
“That’s a felony.”
“I can’t imagine that you care.”
Kim Dokja huffs. His arms falling to his side. Eyes flicking away before landing back on Yoo Joonghyuk’s humorless expression.
“Like I said before, I’m not even going to be the one doing it. Hell, I don’t—I don’t even know how to administer the vaccine. My damn plasma. The plan was designed for someone who does.”
“Then humor me, Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. “Who is that someone?”
“That someone is an irredeemable asshole.” Fire crackles under skin. Under the tongue. Kim Dokja’s voice had risen. Is rising. “This plan was designed for you, bastard.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s fists clench. “You’re saying that I’m going to kidnap Lee Gilyoung and inject him with a sample of your plasma by force.” His lips are a tight line stretching thinly from one cheek to the other. “That’s some accusation. You think of me as a criminal?”
“You—you already drew my blood!” Kim Dokja stresses. Throws his hands and arms up and around. “Several times! You needed it for testing, lab, whatever the fuck the hospital needed! You only need to order another sample and keep it in your fridge until the right moment arrives—”
Yoo Joonghyuk snaps around.
“What are you—look at me when I’m talking to you—”
A nod to a group of men in black vests. Loud, approaching heavy steps. The widening of Kim Dokja’s eyes.
“What—”
Kim Dokja, frozen in place, has his mouth dry. An embarrassed red rises up his cheeks, a heat, and Yoo Joonghyuk has turned back around to spare him what feels like one last damning look.
“Yoo Joonghyuk!” The guards’ vice grip around his wrists, their arms locked around his own, holding him back like he’s insane, a wild animal. Kim Dokja yelps. “Tell them to—to let go of me, you bastard!”
“This is for everybody’s safety, including that young man you’re obsessed with. I’ll also consider transferring you to a higher level security…” Yoo Joonghyuk’s words are drowned out by Kim Dokja’s shouts.
“Is this why you brought me up here? Did you know that they were going to lock me up?” There’s hurt, red on Kim Dokja’s face. “Let—let go of me! Fucking—oh my fucking god! You don’t know what you’re doing, Yoo Joonghyuk!”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent.
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand? You will all die!” One of the guards wraps their arms around Kim Dokja’s torso, subduing him, afraid, it seems, of the possibility of him jumping out to claw at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face like a feral animal. “You will all die—” he shrieks, “Yoo Joonghyuk!”
High in the sky the sun blazes, casting a sharp, dark shadow over the side of Yoo Joonghyuk’s profile. At the sight of Kim Dokja—crazy-eyed, thrashing around—his frown hardens and hardens and hardens. Even then, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t falter.
Until.
“You—you wanna know what I saw in my dreams? The reason I took this damn suicide mission?”
Finally: a pause.
“Let go of him.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s earlier scolding still fresh in their minds, the security guards obediently release Kim Dokja. They remain on stand-by, though, stepping backward only a small amount. Kim Dokja scrambles to his feet, panting, with unfocused pupils. Not for the first time, Yoo Joonghyuk wonders what he’s looking at, well beyond him.
“Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk demands, “Speak.”
When Kim Dokja’s mouth opens, lips dry, his words come out stringed too close together, rushed and incoherent to anyone who hasn’t grown as intimate as Yoo Joonghyuk has to him.
“I had two dreams and I saw you in both. The first: you, me, and Lee Gilyoung in the restroom of an airport—I’ve told you about this one. There’s blood on the floor. A needle in one of our hands. The second—”
He swallows down his heart.
“The second,” he speaks slower now, taking a careful step forward, “has me in a room filled with light. I wake up very slowly. I’m still groggy; I’ve never been good at immediately waking up.” His limbs calm, no longer floundering, but his skin thrums, and thrums, and thrums. “But there’s someone who’s wide awake beside me. I am—was—in his arms. I was—” he gulps, “in your arms—”
Fire. Forest fires and rage and disbelief. Ebbing tsunami waters under Yoo Joonghyuk’s tongue and skin and ribcage.
“—and you notice how I’m almost—there. How I’ve almost completely, properly, and finally woken up. My eyelids are still heavy, though, and I tell you that I want to sleep in. It’s a public holiday, I say. Tomorrow’s when the weekend will start, and none of us will have work for days. You laugh and I love you.”
“I think about how your laughs aren’t rare anymore—not to me. And I—I think, Fuck, how did I become so lucky? What did I do to deserve you? And my eyes finally open, their full length, and notice how you look at me like how I look at you despite the fact that there’s no special occasion, despite the fact that it’s the normalest day of our lives. Again, I tell you that I don’t want to wake up. That I want to sleep in. Your hand is warm and it’s made a place in mine. I didn’t—want to wake up, Yoo Joonghyuk.” His voice breaks, every now and then. “But you’re patient,” he whispers. “You always are when it comes to me. And despite all my reluctance and whining, you’re still trying to wake me up.”
“So you put your lips on my forehead next,” Kim Dokja continues, “before pressing them against my cheeks. My eyelids. My nose. Your whispers are in my ear, your lips hovering over its shell, and I finally wake up. Again I look at you looking at me, and my heartbeat’s all I have.”
Kim Dokja’s tongue darts out against, across his lips. “In this dream,” he says, “just this dream, the world is a good place. There are… honeymoons, hotel rooms, and large, wide windows; Incheon and Busan and Jeju, and plans overseas; America, China, visiting Yoo Mia, Rome—”
“Enough.” Yoo Joonghyuk shuts his eyes. “Take him away.”
Immediately, the bodyguards close in around Kim Dokja.
“Wait—no—wait—!”
One of them secures their hands around his left limb. His left wrist and his left arm. Another does the same, but for the right.
“Listen! Yoo Joonghyuk!”
They pull him back, back, back. Yoo Joonghyuk looks away.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” Kim Dokja snarls, “You fucking bastard!”
Clenched fists. Gritted teeth. “Take Kim Dokja away.” Yoo Joonghyuk shouts, “Now!”
The trees rustle once, only once, before the wind runs to another part of Seoul. Up on this not-quite-park, the roof of the hospital, the sun is hissing.
When Kim Dokja is apprehended more aggressively and pulled back into the hospital, about to be dragged across the hallways and thrown back into his room, treated like a mindless, rabid animal who only knows how to struggle, Yoo Joonghyuk can’t bear to watch.
Slowly, the skies gray.