Chapter Text
“You are upset,” Kim Dokja said, a month after. It was not a question nor an accusation, but a mere observation. He sounded as if he already knew why, a crooked smile on his lips.
“I am not,” Joonghyuk lied, just because he could and not because he thought it would make any difference. He placed the last of the cutlery onto the drying rack, reaching for the dish towel to wipe his hands. But Dokja swiped it, waving it tauntingly in the air away from Joonghyuk’s reach. He was impressively mobile for someone who spent a week unable to walk after he returned.
It would not be so difficult to snatch it back. Joonghyuk eyed the cloth, the unyielding look in Dokja’s eyes, and wiped his wet hands against the back of his pants.
Dokja huffed, expression narrowing into something pointed. Joonghyuk felt so inexplicably transparent. “You’re upset,” he repeated, this time much more firmly. “Tell me why, you bastard.”
“I am not upset,” Joonghyuk repeated in turn, side-stepping Dokja, but he grabbed onto his sleeve, grounding him to the spot.
His face had grown cloudy, brewing with a storm and ready to thunder. Joonghyuk didn’t know what it meant, why the atmosphere had gone off-kilter; he had never known Kim Dokja the way the other man had known him. But it felt like a warning and instead of simply playing it off as he’d been doing for the past few weeks, Joonghyuk’s muscles unconsciously tensed, as if preparing for a fight.
Dokja’s mouth was pressed into a thin line, fingers digging into Joonghyuk’s arm. “You know I’m not going to let this go, right?”
That’s what he had said, but when Joonghyuk nodded through gritted teeth, Kim Dokja let go anyway.
.
Yoo Joonghyuk did not yet know how to sleep without a sword within his reach.
The monsters were gone. Their threats had been dealt with. Kim Dokja was home, awake and alive and whole—or as whole as can be. But quelling fears from the physical world was far less arduous than banishing them from your mind. They crept back in when you least expected it, through the cracks you’d already filled in with caulk and into drawers locked shut. Joonghyuk might not be able to get rid of them with a sword, but it certainly helped to try.
He stared long and hard at the scabbard resting against his bedside table. His fingers itched to grab it; he curled them into fists instead.
The door slammed open. Joonghyuk didn’t bat an eye because he’d heard her footsteps coming, uneven and always in a rush. There was a pause at the doorframe, and Joonghyuk did not need to look up to know she was studying him over. “Why are you moping?” Sooyoung asked, unimpressed.
Joonghyuk had long learned that deigning such queries with a response was like setting foot in a bear trap. It will hurt. It will be difficult to escape. Joonghyuk did not have the patience for that, but he knew Han Sooyoung had far less.
“I am not moping,” he said quietly, eyes still trained on his sword.
“Well, you’re doing something,” Sooyoung said after a heartbeat’s hesitation. Something in her voice had softened, and Joonghyuk felt his own body slouch with it. She padded over to where he was sitting on the bed, and the mattress dipped when she sank into it. “You didn’t come for dinner.”
Joonghyuk grunted, a bit… alarmed at the nonchalance in her voice.
Sooyoung nudged him on the shoulder. “Use your words,” she ordered, not condescendingly but not kindly either.
Joonghyuk never liked words and even less so now. He hadn’t told Han Sooyoung this, though; how could he, when the very concept affected both of them on opposite ends of the spectrum? He couldn’t pretend to understand her plights the way she attempted to do his. Their late-night conversations about recovered memories were proof enough of that, so he just sighed through gritted teeth. “I was not hungry.”
She didn’t like that. “He says you’re mad.” The tempo of Sooyoung’s foot increased as did her impatience. “He says you hate him. That you never want to see him again.”
Joonghyuk paused. “He did not say that.”
“He didn’t,” Sooyoung admitted. She sounded as if she had something to add but they lapsed into silence instead. It continued for exactly eighteen beats of his heart before she clicked her tongue. “So what’s with the sword?”
And Joonghyuk finally looked at her. This close, it was so obvious she had changed. Smile lines had been replaced with stress, and her lips seemed to curve down more these days, instead of donning their signature smirk; it was a wonder he hadn’t noticed it before. Didn’t have the time, Joonghyuk contemplated, and he knew it was a feeble attempt to justify himself. But it wasn’t entirely false. Ever since he got back home, it was always full of bated breaths and great expectations and even though he’d finally set his foot on solid ground after years, Joonghyuk still had to move. Still had to run.
“It’s my sword,” Joonghyuk said simply, because the answer Sooyoung wants to hear couldn’t come out so easily. If it must, it needed to squeeze up his stomach and claw out his throat first.
Sooyoung’s resolution wavered. “You don’t need it.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Joonghyuk sucked in a long breath, recalling all his guilt back before it can pool out beneath his feet. “You no longer write, but you still keep your laptop.”
Any reaction was concealed in a tight pursing of lips. But her nostrils flared and she murmured an apology in the only way she knew. “You’re an asshole,” she said, eyes hanging low. “Keep your damn sword if it makes you happy.”
“It does not make me happy,” Joonghyuk snapped before he could help himself. I hate it as much as you hate keeping your stories around.
Sooyoung tilted her head, eye twitching as her bangs brushed against it. They were in need of a trim. “Then what’s the fucking matter, Yoo Joonghyuk?” She didn’t seem as mad as she sounded. She had gotten impossibly patient. A couple of years of waiting with little surety of an end must do that to people, Joonghyuk figured. “Your moping isn’t going unnoticed. Everyone’s too scared to ask you why.”
“Not you.”
“Never me,” Sooyoung snorted, and it was the first rush of warmth that bloomed in Joonghyuk’s chest. “Don’t forget I’m the only one who can match you in a fight these days.”
These days, Joonghyuk pondered. His eyes drifted back towards his sword.
“You know you have no use for that sword.” He proffered a long, quiet frown and Sooyoung corrected herself. “Not in the way it’s intended for.”
“No,” Joonghyuk admitted. But that had never been the issue.
He expected Sooyoung to urge him aggressively, making demands and prodding his shoulder. He couldn’t call her expression warm, but he could her voice. “What is it?”
“I am not mad at him,” he felt the need to clarify, though Sooyoung would hardly consider that to be the root of everything. Anger was too petty, even for him. Grudges were useless in the long run. “I am not upset. He should know that.”
“He does know that.” Sooyoung looked at him like he was an idiot. “And he is not upset with you either. He understands.” Her brows furrowed together and she pinched the comforter next to her leg. “Though I think he understands too much.”
That should not make much sense, but it explained a good number of Dokja’s recent actions. “That…”
“Yes,” answered Sooyoung. Then she swung her attention back at him. “And there’s not much we can do about it.”
The knot in his throat swelled in panic, a last-resort safeguard to keep his emotions out of the air. “I am… uneasy.”
Deft fingers halted where they’d been drumming on her thigh. “Uneasy,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable, tasting every component of the word.
“Everything is—” Joonghyuk did not want to say it. “Things feel…”
“Unfinished?”
When Joonghyuk snapped his head over, Sooyoung was not looking at him. Her eyes were trained on his sword wearily, as if it was going to jump up and fight the battles it no longer got the chance to, even if they didn’t exist anymore. It was by watching her that he realized he must look at it exactly the same.
“Han Sooyoung…”
The smile she supplied him is expired, uncertain yet passable enough to be excused. Joonghyuk closed his eyes, not knowing what to make of the implications.
So it goes.
.
Finding your footing in a world with rewritten rules was foraging through an untrodden path in a forest, or searching blindly for a light switch in the dark. Joonghyuk knew better than anyone what it was like to be unsure of choices, but this was worse in ways he couldn’t explain. He stared blankly as the kids packed up their bags in the early morning, grumbling as they scarf down their breakfast. Lee Jihye was barking orders at them, something about how she was leaving in exactly four minutes and if they weren’t ready by then, they could take the damn bus for all she cared. Joonghyuk raised a skeptical eyebrow at her when she noticed his presence, and she raised one back.
“I’m dropping them off on my way,” Jihye explained, stuffing her own bag with half the pantry. “To work,” she tacked on, exaggerating the words in a tone that was so obviously miffed.
Joonghyuk was not quite sure what to say to that.
They were all irritated with him, clearly. How dare he act like this after everything they went through, after everything it took to bring Kim Dokja home. They didn’t see the problem, of course they didn’t.
Mia eyed him, in that long scrutinizing expression of hers that made Joonghyuk feel like the smallest person in the world. “We want mochi ice cream by the time we’re back, oppa,” Mia ordered. “Hyunsung ahjussi said he’d get them but he forgot last time.” Then she turned away, following the others down the stairs.
The room fell into an eerie silence that Joonghyuk had still not gotten used to.
“Mochi ice cream, huh?” a voice snickered, a bit hoarse around the edges with sleep. “You know how to make that?”
He’ll have to learn, of course. It was only eight in the morning; he had time. “I have to go grocery shopping.”
“I’ll come.” It hadn’t slipped Joonghyuk’s attention that Han Sooyoung bludgeoned her way into everything as soon as she became the only person in the house. Tagging in on grocery trips was ubiquitous; she’d play chauffeur if everyone was heading out, or leaving before most had awaken. Joonghyuk was not sure what she was afraid of.
“You have lecture.”
“Not today,” she rolled her eyes, as if Joonghyuk was supposed to be aware of her daily schedule. It wasn’t a concept he was used to, really, when every day before was always about picking up swords and himself at odd hours, and fighting creatures that didn’t come with a warning. He glared at his feet, willing them to move. “I’ll come.”
“Kim Dokja?”
Sooyoung’s expression softened. “He went out with Hyunsung-ssi earlier.”
“What for?”
She shrugged, regarding him suspiciously. Joonghyuk didn’t push it. He’d only asked out of politeness, maybe. Out of a desperate need to prove he wasn’t avoiding him intentionally. But Sooyoung knew that already, and what use was it trying to convince another person when he could barely convince himself?
“You’re worried about him,” she brought up in the car, where he wouldn’t be able to run away. Joonghyuk sucked the inside of his cheek, eyes trained on the road in front of him. What exactly was he supposed to say to a comment like that? “I should tell him that.”
“Shut up.”
“He knows,” Sooyoung said dismissively, but she had obviously gotten what she wanted. He could hear the smirk on her lips without even looking at her. “He knows that much by just the look on your face. We all do.”
His chest tightened. Joonghyuk said nothing.
“You’re not alone,” she murmured after several beats of silence. “I worry too.”
Perhaps it wouldn’t be like this if Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know the truth of the universe. The power of stories was something he’d barely understood and the reality had pummeled into him when he traversed the world lines. So many people out there, and so many people imagining a story he’d chosen not to complete. It didn’t matter what kind of ending they’d written; whatever Kim Dokja that returned to them would have always been a bit different from their blurred memories.
They should be grateful for what they had but it wasn’t the first time they’d been greedy for more.
Then again, Joonghyuk thinks he’s long forgotten the difference between greed and deserve. Now, it simply was a question of what he believed in—what he wanted.
He didn’t need to speak with Han Sooyoung to know she felt the same.
The grocery store creates a shift in attitude that Joonghyuk knew he should’ve been prepared for. It was the reason he didn’t want to take Han Sooyoung in the first place. She was an unnecessary addition not just to the supermarket but to most places that involved currency; she came from money and made a whole bunch of money and thus only knew how to spend it on useless things.
Joonghyuk sighed, in a poor attempt to conceal his irritation. “We do not need ice cream bars.”
“Um. Of course we do,” Sooyoung rolled her eyes, pushing past Joonghyuk’s hand and placing way more boxes of Magnum bars than a person should ever have at once. Joonghyuk swore even Mia was more cooperative than this. “They get eaten too quickly.”
At that, he stared blankly. “We have Magnum bars in the house?”
Sooyoung exhaled, deep and weary, with all the experience of someone who’d gone to the fridge looking for ice cream only for it to not be there. She glared at the boxes, as if they’d personally wronged her. “Like I said, they get eaten way too quickly.”
Joonghyuk felt as if he were arguing with a ten-year-old, a child not too easily placated by lies and smart enough to make convincing cases. “I am going to be making mochi ice cream,” he tried.
She snorted. “Yeah, and how long do you think that will last?”
They went on their way, with not only six boxes of Magnum bars, but four additional containers of mochi ice cream and regular ice cream.
Grocery expenses came to be a lot for such a large household. There were growing children and adults who ate as if they were growing children. Lee Seolhwa said it was something to do with their metabolism, that it altered to function quicker after the scenarios ended, but Joonghyuk just thought everyone were pigs. And so ultimately, they ended up with two chock-full carts at checkout, intended to last two weeks.
The cashier looked at them with suspicion, with a pinch of incredulity.
“I’m not sure why you’re making mochi… manually,” Sooyoung muttered, finally looking a bit miffed by the store of ice cream in their purchase. “I don’t think Mia particularly cares whether it’s filled with her brother’s love and devotion or whatnot.”
Joonghyuk stayed quiet for a moment, until they’d stepped away from the cashier with their bags. Dozens upon dozens of bags, for that matter. “It is not about making it myself,” admitted Joonghyuk. They loaded everything into the trunk with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. “It is about having something to do.”
It was a confession of a truth he thought Sooyoung already knew. Her eyes widened slightly, but seemingly more in the fact that he actually acknowledged it. “You’re not worried that you’re feeling useless, ri—” she broke off, sounding absolutely furious. “Because that’s—”
“We do not live in a world of fighting anymore, Han Sooyoung,” he said firmly, slamming the trunk of the vehicle. I must learn to use blades in other ways.
She looked almost perplexed for a moment, rather than the pity Joonghyuk had grown accustomed to getting from everyone. That was his fault, he figured, for expecting anything like comfort from Han Sooyoung.
“Don’t you think I know that, Yoo Joonghyuk?” she hissed, a tinge of irritation seeping into her inflection. “I’m just saying that you… ugh. Forget it. You’re just as bad as him.”
His fingers tingled, like he’d been burnt.
Unloading everything out of the car was another painful endeavor. “This is a lot of vegetables,” complained Sooyoung as she tried to carry as much as she could in one go. While Joonghyuk was as lazy as she was, he was also practical. He plucked two bags off Sooyoung’s hands and placed them back in the car; they were going to have to come back down anyway.
“The kids cannot survive on just ice cream,” Joonghyuk said, kicking open the building door with his foot and making his way to the elevator.
“You’d be surprised.”
“If they are full of vegetables, they will not hunt your ice cream.”
“I’ve ordered my own freezer,” Sooyoung declared triumphantly when they reached their floor. “So that’s not going to be a problem anymore. They are not getting their hands on these babies.” She kissed the bag she was holding as she fumbled to type in the passcode. “Not when they have a personal chef to make them—”
The door opened before she’d finished her sentence, and before she’d finished typing the passcode. A blank-faced Kim Dokja greeted them, face twisting in a frown. “Need help?”
“What do you think?” Sooyoung snarled, looking ready to dump her load on him, before she remembered what she was carrying. “Wait no. You go get the other stuff; this one’s mine.”
Joonghyuk set everything on the counter before he and Dokja made their way back down.
“This is… a lot.” Dokja stared. “I had no idea we ate this much.”
Joonghyuk exhaled into a short scoff and handed him a boxful. “The food does not replenish itself.”
Dokja shrugged, then grunted under the weight. “How long with all this last? A month?”
“Two weeks.”
It was on the elevator where Joonghyuk found the silence most suffocating. “How was your day?” he asked, trying to ease the air and also because he was curious.
“I went out with Hyunsung-ssi,” Dokja hummed. “We went to the beach.”
They’d made good time then, since it was just past lunch. It wasn’t the destination Joonghyuk had been anticipating, but he hadn’t been thinking of much really. He knew Hyunsung quite well but not like this. Not about the things he liked to do in his pastime, free of enemies to hold back. Didn’t know what his favorite food was until recently when he asked, and Hyunsung had clammed up like he’d been interrogated on why he and Jung Heewon broke up.
“Did you eat?”
“Yeah,” Dokja replied, eyeing him funnily, almost pleased. “We ate well.”
Joonghyuk took pity on Han Sooyoung, though he was going to make lunch for himself anyway, and decided to make a simple chicken stew. It was easy to glide back into cooking, more so than he anticipated. He thought perhaps he’d have forgotten how to get into the groove of it, too tinged with war, but he was fine so long as he had a recipe to follow.
As he diced vegetables and cut chicken, Sooyoung and Dokja chattering—bickering, rather—in the background, Joonghyuk couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he was doing. His hands were so, so steady in what they did but everything was shaking, like the way they did the fleeting seconds before he sliced through bodies. The boiling water blistered angrily, similar the acid of high-grade monsters and the gas flame was an electric blue the exact shade of their status window. The chicken sizzled on the grill, salted and seasoned, but nothing seemed to mask the smell of burning flesh.
Cooking wasn’t always a reprieve.
When he served their food, he poured an extra bowl for Kim Dokja, not wanting any leftovers.
“You’ll have enough?” Dokja asked, unwilling to steal someone else’s portion, but his face betrayed his eagerness. “You sure?”
Joonghyuk slid over rice along with the utensils. He didn’t quite meet Dokja’s eyes. “I am sure, Kim Dokja.”
Perhaps what he wouldn’t admit was how often they wondered if Kim Dokja was eating well. He was sure the others worried over that normally, but those thoughts plagued him often while he drifted in space. He read firsthand about the Kim Dokja with a miserable upbringing, left to fend for himself. Yoo Joonghyuk occasionally mourned his own lack of childhood, but he could only image the youth of Kim Dokja, a man destined to never survive without the existence of a damn novel.
He watched Dokja shovel rice into his mouth, taking steady sips of broth. His chest ached. Joonghyuk looked away and went to serve himself.
Once they finished eating, Joonghyuk dove right into his mochi. It wasn’t a difficult procedure, if only a bit painstaking. Lots of microwaving and stirring and waiting for the right consistency.
Sooyoung lingered with him in the kitchen—to help out, she claimed—while Dokja sat on the other side of the countertop, content with just watching. Han Sooyoung hovered all while he prepared his ingredients up until the kneading of the dough, over his shoulder the way Biyoo did during his travels. Except Sooyoung is much larger with a far more loquacious attitude.
“I think you rolled it out too thin,” she remarked, elbows leaning on the granite, cupping her face. “You’re gonna break it when you stuff the red bean paste.”
Dokja canted his head, as if actually acknowledging her bullshit assessment.
“Stop talking.”
She paid no heed to him, of curse. “Look, it’s still sticky!” She poked a finger right into his smoothly rolled-out circle. When she pulled her hand away, there was a nail-sized tear. Dokja’s mouth parted open. “I told you should’ve added more cornstarch.”
Joonghyuk stared at the dough in front of him, at the frozen ice cream balls he’d just taken out of the freezer, then inhaled deeply. Then he stuck his hand into his bench flour and promptly smacked it against Sooyoung’s cheek.
.
“Joonghyuk-ssi, why do you have nail marks on your— ah.” Yoo Sangah pinched the bridge of her nose but she was no actor; Joonghyuk noticed her smile behind her hand, saw it by the crinkling of her eyes. She eyed Kim Dokja, innocently wiping the stovetop they certainly did not throw ice cream on, his locks sticking up awkwardly as if tugged from the root. She stared at the still-damp hair of Han Sooyoung, the bruise on her cheekbone, and the wet towel she was rubbing over the fridge. “I see.”
“No, you don’t see,” snapped Sooyoung, scrubbing particularly hard on the handle. She picked up her towel and waggled it in front of Sangah’s face. “You don’t see anything, you hear me?”
“As you wish, Sooyoung-ssi,” Sangah replied calmly. Dokja’s poorly schooled face wavers, lips trembling. “Would you like me to make an ice pouch for your face?”
Sooyoung grunted, as if vaguely deliberating the offer. Then she must have remembered where she was standing because she tugged on the freezer door and fished out a packet of frozen beans. “I’m good.”
“How about you, Dokja-ssi?” Sangah hauled her bag off her shoulders and placed it on a chair. “Would you like some ice for your head?”
Dokja startled, and glanced cheekily at Han Sooyoung, who was looking as if she had no idea what happened to him. Joonghyuk was sure Yoo Sangah was more observant than they were giving her credit for; there was still powder above Dokja’s eyebrow.
“Yes, Sangah-ssi,” he snickered. “I would appreciate that.”
Sangah hip-checked Sooyoung out of the way from the freezer before pulling out another packet of frozen vegetables. Dokja gave it a sniff when she tossed it to her before letting it sit against his head.
As Joonghyuk finished his section of the mess, he drifted to the sink to rinse off. Yoo Sangah, never to pass up an opportunity, sidled next to him under the same guise. “Surely the cause of this mess isn’t what I’m thinking, is it?” she said quietly, a faint smirk at her lips. Joonghyuk said nothing. “Surely, you didn’t instigate this churlish incident, did you, Joonghyuk-ssi?”
“I have no idea what you are referring to,” he said plainly, letting her arrange the pieces herself. But she looked strangely happy, sneaking a brief glance at Kim Dokja, who was in deep conversation—or argument—with Han Sooyoung.
Sangah gently squeezed his arm, an action he wasn’t sure how to respond in kind to. “Thank you,” she mumbled, fond. “I think all of you could have used that.”
Before Joonghyuk could deny anything of the sort, she’d already sauntered upstairs to wash up.
There was a brief moment of silence that surprisingly Kim Dokja broke. “I still don’t know why I got dragged into this,” he grumbled, but the playful note in his voice was too obvious to miss. “I was but an innocent bystander.”
In no less than a second, he became the unfortunate victim of Han Sooyoung’s kitchen towel, a smart smack meeting his arm. “Bystander, my ass.”
“I was!” Dokja insisted, laughing as he tried to escape Sooyoung. He settled behind Joonghyuk, who felt like he was dealing with toddlers, as they dodged and weaved around his frame. “You dragged me into it just because I looked too clean!”
Han Sooyoung swore as Joonghyuk snatched the towel from her and hung it on the dishwasher, herding them both of them out of the kitchen. “Out,” he snapped, resisting the temptation to pick them up by the neck like mother cats did. “As if you two haven’t made enough of a mess.”
And then the both of them whirled on him. “You started it!” Sooyoung screeched, making yet another swipe for his face that he barely managed to dodge. A stripe of white powder remained from her jaw to her collarbone.
Even Dokja looked appalled, but there was a tinge of amusement to it. “We wouldn’t have even had a mess if it weren’t for you!”
Joonghyuk thought what he’d done was justified, frankly, with all the incessant commentary Han Sooyoung was blabbering next to him like an insect. “I merely did what was necessary,” he said defensively, glaring. "You should not have interfered with my cooking."
“The fucking audacity—“ Sooyoung snarled, trying once again to launch herself at him, failing miserably as Joonghyuk pressed an open palm against her forehead. “I was trying to help!”
Dokja tilted his head back and forth, weighing the options. “Well, that’s a little debatable.”
“Shut up, Kim Dokja.”
“You shouldn't have even been allowed into the kitchen.”
“I'll kill you." She grabbed at him, all wild cat and many years too old for this kind of behavior. Joonghyuk looked up at the ceiling, fed up. There was cornstarch up there too. “Don't test me, you shit!”
“I didn't even do anything! Maybe if he”—Dokja pointed at Yoo Joonghyuk again, shifting targets—“thought to talk about his problems instead of resorting to violence, we wouldn't be covered in flour for days!”
“It is cornstarch, actually.”
Sooyoung just made another petulant sound, something between a shout and a groan before they both began to claw at Joonghyuk. As if the three of them don’t already have enough scars to display.
Joonghyuk huffed. How immature. He tried swatting their hands away but Dokja was too quick, too sly—not to mention, actually tall enough—and his hand reached Joonghyuk’s face with ease, finger prodding his cheek. “You should take responsibility,” he said, a hint of a smile sneaking onto his face.
Suddenly, Joonghyuk’s chest constricted and loosened all at once. Smiling looked so good on Kim Dokja, especially now. He wondered if this was how everyone felt with Joonghyuk first returned home from his space travel, joking and smiling like a new man. Strange… but not undesired.
“I cannot take responsibility for something that was not my fault.” Joonghyuk nearly shuddered as Kim Dokja’s hand, still ice cold from the vegetables, crept beneath his jaw and up.
“You’re not as mad anymore,” Dokja said abruptly, palm flat against Joonghyuk’s cheek. He resisted the urge to sink into the touch, to shift his lips over and against skin.
“I never was,” Joonghyuk managed, swallowing the lump in his throat that had appeared from nowhere. He tried not to look at Sooyoung, whose devilish glare had evaporated to a blanched expression.
“You were,” Dokja insisted, a bit crooked on the mouth, as if omniscience wasn’t a look he liked to wear anymore. “Not in the way you thought you should be.”
Joonghyuk didn’t know what to say. Han Sooyoung stood rooted to the spot. Her fingers were curled into fists.
“I’m sorry for whatever I did to get you upset,” Dokja murmured. It was flat, yet strangely sincere. The rest of the party members would have slaughtered them for letting such words come out of his mouth, but neither Sooyoung nor Joonghyuk moved. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. “I’m sure I deserved it.”
With that, he walked away.