Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As he woke, he caught a brief glimpse of the pages and paragraphs and sentences and phrases and words streaming back to him, painting a picture with a thousand words, the picture of Kim Dokja.

Beyond those illuminated words was Han Sooyoung, her vice grip on the doorway, looking like she was barely holding up. Her cheeks were red with exertion, wet with tears; Yoo Joonghyuk was just as much of a mess behind her, looming, hands shaking over her shoulders as if holding back the urge to push his way into the room.

He tried to sit up but pain bloomed from various parts of his body, as quick as a fall from a window, so visceral and excruciating that he couldn’t hold the scream clawing up from his throat.

A rebirth– his body being reforged into a world he had thought he’d left for good.

Days before he woke, the Bureau’s system had begun steadily disintegrating. Planes crashed, hospital patients drew their last breaths, the Internet short-circuited within Seoul and its surrounding cities.

Weeks passed like that and seemed to show no signs of stopping.

The second coming, was what people had begun referring to it to.

Yet another end to a world painstakingly rebuilt from the ground up within the span of six years.

Six years.

What an arbitrary number.

The Bureau’s system had already begun steadily disintegrating.

In that time, his [Gold Dragon’s Heart] had to be replaced– the previous one had been made up for stories, so of course it had to be. The various story fragments that had become part of him throughout his misadventures as a Constellation had begun decomposing throughout the weeks of the system’s loss. Lee Seolhwa and Aileen Makerfield had to act fast.

Then.

As the system restarted, as his stories streamed back into his hospital room,

the replacements were repositioned—excised, ejected— as the patchwork story fragments grew back what he once had, undoing numerous days of painstaking surgeries.

Two hearts,

two arms,

bits and pounds of flesh—

... Needless to say, it took a few more days in the operating room, and a few more weeks in intensive care. As a Myth-grade Constellation, recovery was a lot faster but recovery was still required regardless. Luckily for him, he was unconscious for most of it.

Then, on his first week of recovery, when he wasn’t in danger of rupturing a muscle, limb, or organ, when his 38 year old body finally accepted his 32 year old story fragments, the rest of the Company outside of Lee Seolhwa finally managed to see him.

Seolhwa Medical Center

^{Kim Dokja's Industrial Complex, Gwanghwamun}

Hospital visitation record
for Room 9A

The first visitor had been Yoo Joonghyuk.

It would have been easier to assume Joonghyuk would never have visited at all—it was his first conscious impulse. After all they'd been through, Yoo Joonghyuk was one of the few people who had every right to never want to see him again.

But as Aileen Makerfield was just about to leave his room after replacing his drip bag, Lee Seolhwa unceremoniously shoved a tall, disheveled, and disgruntled pillar of black into the room and told him to never leave the hospital if he knew what was good for him.

Dokja was honestly still a little frail— years being comatose would take a toll on anyone— so all they could really manage was companionable silence.

In the times he was awake, Yoo Joonghyuk would be reading a novel on his phone. (when did that start?) He would try, valiantly, to stay awake and keep him company while on the cocktail of painkillers.

It never worked, and Yoo Joonghyuk had never been the chatty type between the two of them anyhow.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was that he listened to Lee Seolhwa. The jerk actually never left.

When Dokja woke, it was always a rotating cast of characters, brief glimpses into a life continuing on as he slept: Lee Gilyoung chatting with Shin Yoosung and Yoo Mia, Yoo Sangah speaking gently to Yoo Joonghyuk, Jung Heewon and Lee Seolhwa conversing a little ways away from his bedside.

All the while, Yoo Joonghyuk loomed in the corner of a room in his own bed, if he wasn’t already occupying the chair by Dokja's bedside.

On one particular bout of wakefulness, it was just him and Lee Jihye.

It was a holiday, she told him (he couldn’t really respond much beyond nods and a few whispered words)— one commemorating the Company’s departure from this world-line around two years before. Whatever the case, it had gotten her free enough to drop by.

It had been a foolish hope that he’d recover instantly, she said after spending a minute too long staring at him.

“We thought,” Jihye whispered, quiet as a confession. She almost looked a little ashamed, saying it. “… Well, we spent four years tracking you down that one time– you remember–?”

They did that a lot, checking if he remembered some event after the final scenario. It took him a slow while to notice, maybe on one of the other visits, on Lee Hyunsung and Jang Hayoung’s.

His dependence on [The Fourth Wall] had turned into a phantom ache, at this point, its absence a hollow in the center of his mind. Amidst the brief bouts of pain that woke him and the hazy effects of the painkillers, it was hard to note and remember things.

But, he’d grown up on his own, he knew how these things went.

He nodded to appease her.

In the corner of the room, Yoo Joonghyuk shifted.

That too, the relief passing through them as he nodded to confirm that he remembered. It was hard to ignore once he’d noticed.

He’d tried so hard to remember if he did. It was the least he could do.

“Anyway, yeah,” she said, not paying Joonghyuk any mind (why was that?) as she rolled over the micro-interaction like it had never happened. “We thought since… After that time past the Final Wall, when we got teleported back to Gwanghwamun in an instant, as if nothing had happened... Maybe it’d be like that again. At least— I mean, we didn’t really talk to each other about it, we just assumed—”

With a bit of strain, he whispered, “Jihye-ya.”

She didn’t look up to meet his eyes.

Instead, she reached out to hold his hand— the discolored lizard limb that had grown back. Her grip was uncharacteristically firm, yet so characteristically gentle in this situation.

He remembered her grief for Na Bori, the blame buried deep in her. He remembered Master of the Sunken Island's own grief about her Captain. He knew, in his head, what this gentle-firm hold on his hand was. He knew from all the time he spent with her and her character in Ways of Survival.

His heart ached around the shape of it.

“You’ll get better,” she proclaimed, voice low but still trembling. “You will.” You have to.

All he could do was nod again.

Weaned off the painkillers, Yoo Joonghyuk finally deigned it time to be conversational.

He was grateful for it— he would have loved to have something to read, but he thought, well, maybe not reading something for a while would be good too. He didn’t want to think about what happened to the makeshift phone Aileen made for him or if he could borrow Joonghyuk’s because, well, it’s Joonghyuk and also– what would he even read at this point? The final revision of Ways of Survival? Were webnovel sites a thing in the post-apocalypse?

Except, he’d never really been the conversational type and when he spoke it was usually with intent. The [Fourth Wall] had staved off a significant amount of his social anxiety, and the rest of the Company didn’t really have a choice but to listen to him during the scenarios.

Who was Dokja without the [Fourth Wall]? When the characters became people, what role did the reader take?

It was a question he could ask Han Sooyoung, if she ever found the time to visit him.

Anyway, he had no idea how to even begin talking to Joonghyuk, but the other seemed to want to make up for the lost time.

... In his own roundabout way.

When his mother finally visited, she was toting Yoo Mia and…

He couldn’t keep the wonder from his voice.

“Biyoo-ya, you look…”

Biyoo beamed, cheeks flushing as she did. She climbed up his bed with some difficulty. Behind her, Lee Sookyung’s hands hovered over her back. “Appa, you recognized me! Even Captain couldn’t do that!”

“Of course I would,” he said, careful to keep the tremble from his voice, pulling her closer to him on the bed so she wouldn’t fall off. If that meant she could be the wall between him and his mother, then that was an unintentional consequence of their arrangement. “You’re the spitting image of me, you know.”

She seemed to smile even brighter at that. Warmth bloomed in Dokja's chest at the sight of it. “You really think so?”

She looked up at his mother. “I did so well, making this form right, halmeonim?”

“Yes, yes, Biyoo-ya. You look very beautiful. Don’t jostle your appa’s IV, now.”

Biyoo’s attention was across the room already by then, her attention split between every act in the room. She was still his little storyteller, through and through. She said, “Captain, you look paler. Stop worrying Mia eonni.”

Mia gave Joonghyuk a stern look in agreement as he glanced at his sister.

Dokja could have sworn he heard Joonghyuk apologize under his breath.

“He’s happy to see me, but appa especially,” Biyoo whispered, loud enough for Joonghyuk to hear and bringing Dokja out of his thoughts. “He used to read me Sooyoung ahjumma’s novel over and over while we were traveling—”

Joonghyuk called, voice imposing. “Biyoo.”

It would have been more threatening, if he wasn’t leaning back as Mia combed through his hair.

Was that hair oil?

“Captain.”

“Dokja-ya, how have you been?”

He was pulled away from the banter as his mother took a seat by his bedside.

He nodded, “I’m well enough. Aileen-ssi has me on physical therapy a lot less than usual these days, so I think I’ll be good to start walking around more regularly the coming week.”

“That’s good.” And because they never really knew what else to talk about, “Have you been reading anything recently?”

He sighed. “I have no idea where they put my phone. I only get to read when Joonghyuk lets me borrow his but—” and he says this quietly, leaning behind Biyoo, “No one can account for taste…”

Brightly, Biyoo asked, “Appa, do you want a new phone? I’ll ask Sangah ahjumma.”

Simultaneously, his mother replied, “I can bring you a few books I think you might like tomorrow, Dokja.”

.

.

.

After a while, without any input from him or his mother, Biyoo and Mia simultaneously decided to drag Joonghyuk out of their room.

He knew a set-up when he saw one.

“You live with Mia and Biyoo, now?”

“Mia-ya is usually with Sangah, but lately, yes. Biyoo-ya is legally obligated to stay with me in that form, she is my granddaughter, after all.”

He nodded.

“It’s a recent arrangement. It’s not like your Joonghyuk can house her when he’s a wanted criminal.”

There were times with his mother, in the past, when it seemed like he had his own [Fourth Wall] before the apocalypse even began. Instead of separating the reader from the read, it would separate him from his mother.

In all his visits, she never deigned to share anything about herself and, in turn, he would only tell her about Ways of Survival. It was all they had of each other. It was all the love they could give— she would keep her silence, he would share his salvation.

In this new world, the clumsy stumbling reality that Dokja still had difficulty reconciling with, their love felt off-kilter again. She shared bits of herself, of the life Dokja and his Company had helped her build after the fall. He...

He struggled to keep up.

Sookyung had carefully kept her voice level when she saw something in his face and said, “You didn’t know?”

“He told me this was sanctuary,” he answered instead. Leave it to Joonghyuk to lie with the truth. Leave it to him to be so obvious, so easily read without his precious [Fourth Wall]. “But no, I didn’t. Did he actually get arrested for carrying a sword in public, the bastard.”

“He destroyed a museum,” his mother answered, blunt as a baseball bat. “He was trying to get you back. He and Sooyoung-ah actually stayed here in your room for a while after. Their fight almost leveled that new building.”

“He hasn’t stood trial?” Because he knew Joonghyuk would never.

“He said he’d turn himself in as soon as you were released.”

...

Get your bearings, Dokja. There were more important things in that statement.

“Released to your care?”

She looked bemused at that. “Do you want to live with me? You were quite determined not to before.”

She was right. He still had to ask though. “I suppose you're still living with the wanderers.”

“No, I live with… Never mind. I know you wouldn’t want that, Dokja-ya. You can come visit any time though. Just make sure to call ahead."

Did the Company actually get that huge house? Did they still live in the Complex? It was the only natural conclusion, being released to the care of the Company who had gone through hell just to get him back.

“Sooyoung-ah will take you. She already arranged your room, I’ve seen it.”

Han Sooyoung, he discovered eventually, only visited after hours. This was a privilege afforded to them by Seolhwa, he supposed.

He should have guessed as much, when there were times even Gilyoung and Yoosung stayed late into the night.

He almost laughed when he realized that the door opening and closing in the middle of the night hadn’t been Joonghyuk going out for a walk or a midnight snack or whatever it was he did.

Almost. That night was full of them.

That one particular night when he’d finally, finally managed enough courage to borrow Joonghyuk’s phone, he watched as she slipped into his room like a bandit, and unceremoniously dropped her coat and bag into Joonghyuk’s bed.

He watched as she slowly unwound, like she did this every night, like she lived in the hospital room with them without him ever having noticed before,

and he watched as she took off her glasses (when had she began using them?),

   and he watched as she combed her fingers through her hair (it had gotten longer. Six years),

      and he watched as she realized that Joonghyuk was deep asleep (he still had no idea when that guy began sleeping so deeply),

         and he watched as she finally deigned to look over at his side of the room.

He watched as she froze.

He couldn’t get up, not really. He was set for physical therapy tomorrow (which was why it had been so difficult to pry Joonghyuk’s phone away from him), so he couldn’t have gotten up to—

To what?

   What would he have done?

      Hit her over the head?

         Clapped a hand on her shoulder?

            Hugged her?

                Grabbed her hand and dragged her over to his wider, emptier bed where Joonghyuk wasn’t curled up with his feet dangling over the edge?

Instead: “I wanted to see you.” Because he did. He missed her like the ache of the [Fourth Wall] from where it no longer whispered sentences to him, for him.

He never asked after other members when the Company visited. It felt rude. He thought, if he were to take time out of his day to visit someone, he would want to spend it with them, not with the ghost of someone else hanging over their shoulder.

Apart from Yoo Joonghyuk, Han Sooyoung was another person who had every right to never want to see him again. She had spent years of her countless lives writing for him, keeping him alive, afloat, torturing Joonghyuk and the others, dragging them around another world-line only for—

For what?

He hadn't gotten that far into everyone's retelling of the events of two years ago.

But he thought she would have gotten tired of trying to keep him with her. She should have.

Sooyoung’s mouth opened for a moment, as if sensing the mounting annoyance-dread-resignation in him, and when it seemed like she was about to say something, she closed it again.

He could almost feel himself surge forward, try to capture whatever words would have tumbled out of her mouth, hungry for whatever she would give him

“I know,” she settled, awkward as ever whenever he broached a serious topic with a bluntness he'd inherited from Lee Sookyung. It almost relieved him. This was Han Sooyoung, who got awkward about such things, who was brazen and loud and passionate about the things she cared for. People she cared about.

But he wasn’t relieved. He was a mixture of petulant and angry– a self-aware hurt that reminded him, distinctly, of his mother.

Han Sooyoung was behaving like his mother.

“You could have visited,” he said, putting Joonghyuk’s phone down, the words almost rehearsed as he remembered the way his mother stood in front of that tableau of their old house. She had been free to visit, she had just been forcing herself through exile in some backwards belief that he never wanted to see her again. “While I was awake. So we could talk.”

“About what,” she asked, almost softly, almost scared.

So much like his mother. She was behaving like he could fall apart after a single crack.

He was almost just as scared when he waved her over,

   when she wordlessly traipsed across the room towards his bed,

      when she sat cross-legged on top of his sheets, by the foot of his bed like this was a sleepover and they were trying not to get caught.

Right, that’s why he wasn’t actually scared.

This was usually what talking to Han Sooyoung felt like.

Always, always, she shared parts of him that no one else in the company knew. She had been one of the only people apart from Yoo Sangah and Lee Gilyoung who weren’t characters from Ways of Survival, she had been one of the only people who understood the cost of an ending where everyone was safe. Of all the people in the company, if Joonghyuk was someone he’d wanted to be, Sooyoung was the one he was like the most. His dear writer.

Why did she seem so scared, in that moment, as their knees touched between blankets and jeans?

Quick as a breath, he swapped out his next words for safer ones. “Did you know Yoo Joonghyuk has the worst taste in novels.”

This seemed to startle a snort out of Sooyoung. Across the room, the supposed object of his momentary ire stirred in bed. “What?” she hissed.

He unlocked Joonghyuk’s phone and turned it towards her. “Sooyoung-ah, this is no laughing matter. You can make fun of me all you want about reading Ways of Survival, but— look…”

.

.

.

Because this was Han Sooyoung, and because she couldn’t avert her eyes from a gun on the table even if she wanted to, his charade doesn’t last for too long.

He was halfway through telling her about the way his frequent visitors seemed to avoid the topic of skills when she said, “I’m here everyday, you know.”

It startled him into a stop long enough for him to realize that his throat was parched from all the talking he’d just done.

Everyday, she said, but this was the first time he had ever seen her since he woke.

Han Sooyoung could be lying.

Except that she never lied to him. That wasn't her role. She would embellish, sure, but never omit.

“I never see you,” he pointed out, almost taunting. He and Sooyoung had a rapport as well-worn as an old book, its spine cracked. “Setting up that boundary, huh? Is this revenge, Sooyoung-ah?”

“No, I–“

“I don’t care about that," he lied, because that was his role, not Sooyoung's. It was a desperate lie. "Just, next time, visit when I’m up. Or Joonghyuk, if you want free food. I never finish my meals. I missed solid foods but I always did have a light stomach. Do you know he started cooking for Seolhwa’s hospital cafeteria? Maybe they’ll let him off easy for being a terrorist if he did community service—”

“Dokja-ya, I know you don’t know what we did,” she finally spat out. Her tone was annoyed, but her eyes were fearful, anxious, searching for anger, hurt.

All she got was confusion.

“Huh?”

For several moments too long, because he’d never known Han Sooyoung to be hesitant, she didn’t say anything. She just kept searching and searching. It felt like she was trying to find the truth, like when he used to give her cryptic answers during the scenarios.

But the scenarios were over, and all he ever gave her since then was grief for never having visited him, never having spoken to him when she did.

So much like his mother, the writer, the dictator of reality, yet without a voice of her own.

“I didn’t know what happened in that train,” she said. “I don’t… [Predictive Plagiarism] could only guess so much, me too. So I… You can probably only remember up to a certain point, right? You can’t remember everything on that train.”

With conviction, like Lee Jihye, like she was casting a spell to reshape reality. He didn't know if it was because she needed this to be real or fictional.

The thing was … she was right. He couldn’t remember everything. He wasn’t omniscient and neither was she.

Even as the Oldest Dream, he could only really focus on one person. Even while using Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, he could only observe one person at a time, and only if they were thinking about each other.

All he could remember of life after the scenarios was the train arriving at Jongro and a few jumbled scenes between— becoming Joonghyuk’s sponsor, reading the final revision of Ways of Survival, even seeing them running along the margins of the 1865th world-line— but they were distant, less like memories and more like scenes.

My memories returned only during the time when I was borrowing Kim Dokja's Story for a little while. It was similar to watching someone else's history.

Perhaps that’s what Yoo Joonghyuk had meant. He didn’t remember much of everything that was happening inside the train with the [Fourth Wall], but he watched it happen. Surely, he thought, surely it did happen if he’d watched himself experience it.

But again, things were shoddy. He only knew what he watched, so he didn’t really know what he should have known.

The Kim Dokja that had become the Oldest Dream despite only being 51% of himself had been there for around 21,000 years. The Kim Dokja in his hospital room could only remember that all he did on that train was watch, read, talk to the [Fourth Wall], and sleep.

He didn’t remember meeting them on the train,

   didn’t remember what all they did in the 1865th regression turn,

     didn’t remember what happened to this regression turn’s epilogue,

       didn't remember why no one had been living together in the big house,

         didn't remember why everyone in the Company save for Mia, his mother, Biyoo, and Sooyoung wanted to talk to Yoo Joonghyuk,

           didn't remember why Joonghyuk and Sooyoung had almost killed each other,

             didn't remember why Joonghyuk blew up a museum to save him—

Six years.

What an arbitrary number.

An arbitrarily long time spent not living.

“I only know what I remember, Sooyoung-ah. If at any point I was passed out or if I hadn’t seen you and the others while I was attending to things inside the train, I wouldn’t remember it at all. I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

She shook her head, and he could feel her slipping because she only gave up explaining when she knew it was a lost cause.

“We should sleep,” she said, instead. “I’m free tomorrow, but you have therapy. Joonghyuk told me.”

Next time, her words said. We’ll talk about it next time.

Well, since they’d be living together, he supposed she wouldn’t be able to weasel her way out of an explanation at any point.

So, instead of demanding answers with his limited brain capacity in the late hour, he asked,

“Will you be here when I wake?”

Sooyoung glanced at him, and for a second he almost felt as if she’d say no.

“I will. Good night.”

Chapter Text

Hospital Discharge Form

The Company no longer lived together in a big house.

Kim Dokja knew this before he’d even been discharged, knew it before he woke up, but seeing the abandoned house from the outside as Han Sooyoung drove past it… He couldn’t help feeling a little sad.

It was a grand old-looking thing. If he were to describe it, he'd say it looked plain, like a child’s idea of what a big house looked like. White walls, red roof, brown door with a shiny knob. It had three storeys, with windows only large enough to poke one’s head out of.

The porch had a swing on it, settled in front of a window that he imagined would have been overlooking the living or dining room. Out front was a spacious yard with fruit trees, no doubt grown with magic. Below it was a wooden picnic table. There was a winding path leading to a backyard he couldn’t see in passing.

The second floor had a balcony large enough to fit laundry lines and plants, even a table and chairs for smoking or reading in.

A house with all the foundations of life written on top of it. Instead, it stood empty, railings gleaming in the dappled sunlight.

A dream he, naively, conjured up during a Company outing.

There it stood.

Built by the others, no doubt, in the six years he’d been gone.

…

Growing up, he’d learned not to pay heed to other people’s suffering if it wasn’t in a book. He had his own pains to ache with, he had no energy or space to feel others’.

Because of that, he wasn’t equipped with the words to ask— how did they fall apart? What happened? Why did Lee Hyunsung and Jung Heewon no longer see each other? Why did Yoo Joonghyuk leave Yoo Mia to try and save him? Why did Han Sooyoung live alone again, after all those years she spent alone already?

Instead of finding the words to ask these, he watched the empty house pass from the passenger side seat and tried to think of a plan.

It was reminiscent, safe. Planning for a way to get everyone together again was what he did best, during the scenarios. Sure, the [Fourth Wall] was no longer there to help him brainstorm, but give him a few nights and he could do it.

Probably.

It had been his dream, hadn’t it?

“Stop the car,” intoned Yoo Joonghyuk. He could hear shuffling behind him.

“Keep your head down,” Han Sooyoung hissed, then reached behind her, presumably, to shove Joonghyuk’s head back down. “Someone’s gonna see your big stupid head and report me to the government! My beautiful genius will rot away in prison, and then where would we be? Who would pay our bills, our rent?”

“Don’t we have Sangah-ssi, Heewon-ssi, and Hyunsung-ssi working for the government?” he asked, ignoring the latter part of Sooyoung’s statement.

She shook her head.

“That place was sanctuary,” answered Joonghyuk instead, avoiding the question with the grace of a baby elephant.

Dokja carefully didn’t turn in his seat and failed to refrain from commenting on the lack of tact. “You keep saying that and never explaining. You should learn to use your words more, Joonghyuk-ah.”

Before he got a rise out of Joonghyuk, Sooyoung interjected. “Seolhwa-ssi’s hospital is a neutral zone, he means. The entire Complex is, technically. But that doesn’t mean anything until we get him indoors. Whatever it was you were going to do, Joonghyuk, we can do it later.”

“What, did you get sniped on your way home at some point?” Dokja taunted Joonghyuk.

“If they find out I’m in the neutral zone, they’ll lure me out.”

Instead of continuing to needle answers out of the ever-evasive Joonghyuk, he asked Sooyoung, “So… Yoo Joonghyuk and I are staying at yours? I mean, I already know I’m staying. My mother told me you had a room ready for me and all that. But Joonghyuk?”

“It’s not for free,” Sooyoung pointed out. “We get a homeworker, he gets a roof over his head. Isn’t that nice?”

“So I’m staying for free?”

She snorted, “Hell no. Joonghyuk’s been editing my work for a while, helping me check writing exercises and essays and whatnot— Well, when he’s not busy reading bad novels.”

“They’re not bad novels,” Joonghyuk defended, surprising Dokja and Sooyoung both.

“They so are!”      “They’re terrible.”

“Yoo Mia likes them, ” he grouched, as if that explained anything, turning towards the back of Sooyoung’s seat before unceremoniously kicking the back of Dokja’s.

“Hey, don’t kick it, that’s expensive!”      “Why me!”

“You’re rich,” he told Sooyoung.

“And you’re a brat. You’re cleaning that later.”

“Wait, so Yoo Joonghyuk edits your work,” Dokja asked, interjecting. He tried his best to sound scandalized. “How’s that going?”

Sooyoung's face soured at the implication, wrenching a smile out of him. She corrected, “He proofreads, there’s a difference.”

Joonghyuk had a different opinion. “I finished the last part of your novel for you.”

“Did not! It was already done!”

“Did too. It didn’t send through the Cloud System, so I had to add the last part.”

“Oh, well, the pieces were already there,” Sooyoung argued, waving her hand around so wildly, Dokja had to dodge. “All you had to do was put it together. It’s like saying you killed the boss when I was the one shaving down its HP. All you did was steal my kill.”

“Yeah, and we won. He’s here, isn’t he?”

Sooyoung made an affronted noise, before deftly turning down a building’s basement parking lot. “You’re so full of shit, Yoo Joonghyuk.” To Dokja, she said, “Anyway, he’s gonna stop proofreading and work full-time in the house now that you’re here, doofus. You’re gonna be my editor.”

“Wait, wasn’t he gonna turn himself in as soon as I was discharged.”

Sooyoung slammed the brakes, ejecting Joonghyuk from his cramped sideways position in the backseat. Dokja’s seatbelt dug into his collarbone. She whirled around to glare at the former. “What?!”

When Joonghyuk only moved to reposition himself, she aimed her glare at Dokja instead. “He what.”

He held his hands up. “That’s what my mother told me, don’t shoot the messenger!”

“I told you your mom didn’t like me,” Joonghyuk said, as if he hadn’t asked Sooyoung to pull over earlier, probably with full intentions to turn himself in.

That, that was what broke him.

He laughed, “You’re a wanted terrorist, Yoo Joonghyuk? You have no leg to stand on, you crazy bastard.”

After settling in, a routine was made.

When he woke late into the day, the hour already nearing noon, Han Sooyoung will have already headed out for her day job, but he wouldn’t notice until Yoo Joonghyuk ran out of patience and pulled back the black-out curtains covering the east-facing windows. Breakfast would already be ready, still steaming even after his stretches and hemming and hawing about having to get out of bed.

Joonghyuk would eat breakfast with him in complete silence.

That development wasn’t entirely unusual. Though a vague memory of the past, and though the wake-up call was new, he could still remember when they used to live in the Complex together. That Yoo Joonghyuk had already lived with the Company a fair amount, coaxed out of isolation by the others after the fall of the 73rd Demon Realm.

Then after, they both also had time to adjust to each other in the weeks leading up to the Final Scenario.

Anyhow. if he deemed it necessary, he'd tell Yoo Joonghyuk his plans for the day– cleaning the grout off the bathroom tiles or dusting the entire living room area or taking down the curtains and sheets to bring to the laundromat or reading a few of Han Sooyoung's books or going on an outing with people from the Company (usually, it will be the kids coming over, but after the first time that happened, they seemed to think he was too pale to stay indoors).

If he deemed it necessary, Yoo Joonghyuk would also ask him to pick up groceries, but never about his own plans. Sometimes, Kim Dokja would walk out of their broom closet armed with cleaning supplies and would find Yoo Mia in the living room. Sometimes, he'd find Joonghyuk just napping on the couch. Sometimes, Joonghyuk would seem to be... meditating in his Punisher form in the living room and Dokja would just stand there until Joonghyuk told him to stop staring, apparently only comfortable enough to show Dokja the form but not to have Dokja interact with him while he's in it.

He didn't really know how to feel about that.

By dusk, he would force Joonghyuk into accepting his help in the kitchen and they'd manage at least one dish before Han Sooyoung got home to find them bickering over the second and third dish, just in time for the rice to finish cooking.

Needless to say, this Joonghyuk wasn't prone to trying to hit him over the head for every slight transgression anymore. He didn't carry around a sword or threaten bloody murder for hearing something ridiculously offensive come tumbling out of Kim Dokja's mouth. But, he didn't change too much. Joonghyuk was still an obstinate brat who would sock him on the shoulder for calling him a show-off or for bringing home discount preservatives or forgetting something on the grocery list.

It was a kind of violence that seemed a lot more fitting for the Joonghyuk he'd gotten to know over the years and scenarios. Roughhousing suited him a lot more than fighting for his ending.

But...

It had him wondering sometimes.

Did Joonghyuk still have nightmares like the ones Dokja remembered? When Joonghyuk turned in early for the night and barely made a sound even as Dokja puttered around and chatted with Sooyoung until she got tired in the evenings, did the memories of the past regression turns haunt him? Did the memories of their scenarios, the ones that included him, haunt him just as much, considering how much fresher they were then the previous regression turns?

Would it be polite to ask?

He’d never really been too polite to Yoo Joonghyuk. He was overly familiar, in the way only someone who’d read about someone for 13 years could be. But he was just Dokja. It didn’t matter if he was Joonghyuk’s former sponsor— the reason for his regressions— or if he was Joonghyuk’s companion in life and death. If anyone had asked him, “Do you still think about ending things?” He…

Well, he probably wouldn’t give them an answer.

“Whatever it is, just spit it out and stop staring.”

He furrowed his brows, confused. Not because of the inquisitiveness, but because it was breakfast and Joonghyuk did not just ask him to pick up groceries.

“What.”

Joonghyuk was not amused by this non-question, so he gave a non-answer.

Silence.

Rascal. "Why do you even assume I'm going to ask you a question anyway? What if I was thinking about something else and my eyes just so happened to be settled on you? It's a little conceited to assume I'd be staring so intently, Joonghyuk-ah."

“You're deflecting. You start frowning for more than a minute when you’re planning to do something foolish and roundabout instead of just being direct. Usually you try not to show you're upset about something.”

The vertigo of being so thoroughly read by Joonghyuk never really got old. It was the same with Han Sooyoung, both of them having just wordlessly adjusted to his oddities without his notice. He tried to never acknowledge it but when faced with Yoo Joonghyuk's blunt honesty, it felt like being submerged into a pool of cold water.

With a dry mouth, he said, “You want me to be direct.”

“That is what I said.”

Dokja wondered why he bothered even thinking about this guy’s feelings for a second.

“Do you still have nightmares?” He asked, mopping up the egg yolk with his bread. If he was going to be blunt about it, he’d rather not be looking at Joonghyuk for this. He’d seen enough of this man’s pain to last two thousand lifetimes.

Joonghyuk shifted his foot under the table, house slippers squeaking briefly across wood. “Why are you thinking about that?”

Dokja put the bread in his mouth, trying to get his train of thought in order.

Finally, he looked up to meet Joonghyuk’s observant gaze.

No anger, no pain.

Well, he supposed if anyone ever did ask him if he still thought about ending things, it would just feel too surreal. No one ever thought to ask, after all.

With a deep breath, he leaned back in his seat. “After the world ends and we come out… like this, how do we just pretend like it never happened? Why do we have to? That's what I've been thinking.”

Joonghyuk mirrored him, pushing away from the table to cross his arms. His eyes were grim, and Dokja held back the urge to open his attribute window to see what was wrong, to try and help.

"I've been thinking," he continued after a few moments of his lips just bobbing up and down as he tested out the words without using his vocal cords. "I've been thinking about how every time I left the Complex, I'd get odd questions from people about how I seemed familiar and instead of me getting chills from that, freezing up and leaving the conversation out of fright that they'd figured it out, that I'm a murderer's son, I would think 'Oh, crap, they'll start overpricing their goods once they've figured out I'm the Demon King of Salvation.'

"And then it would hit me all over again. The apocalypse has passed but everyone keeps pretending that everything is normal. We have taxes, laws, and corporate jobs. But everyone out there who wasn't born within the past six years has blood on their hands and they just keep going. I guess I've just... I've just been thinking if any of the past decade was real. If I just woke up from a coma and imagined everything while under it. That you used to just be a guy I read about in a webnovel I found after I tried to kill myself. That Han Sooyoung made you just to keep me alive. Maybe none of it was real–"

“Kim Dokja.”

He looked up.

“Those nightmares,” Joonghyuk started. He tended to do that, start in media res. It always drew Dokja’s attention even unintentionally, wanting to know how it’s going to continue, how it would end. “Having those nightmares means I can’t pretend it never happened.”

Just because I will forget about them, that doesn't mean they'll suddenly stop existing. They definitely continue to live in this world.

Dokja leaned forward, a little harried. “Do you ever feel like none of it was real?”

Joonghyuk studied him for a moment, head tilting as if a new angle on his face would give him a different insight. “Do you?”

He blinked.

There was a burning in Yoo Joonghyuk's gaze that was at once searing and comforting to see, more familiar than the haze of domesticity they have landed themselves in. He said, "Your time in that train, the scenarios, you dying over and over. Do you think the 41st Shin Yoosung dying to the Star Stream wasn't real? When you had to drag your mother out of the [Fourth Wall]? When every single person whose lives you've changed chose to regress with me instead of accepting what you forced onto us?”

He didn't know what to think. It was half the reason why he kept thinking and thinking and thinking, looking back and analyzing everything. Those memories, he read over and over again in the vague hope that maybe one of those memories-that-felt-like-dreams would finally reveal its falsity, or its verity, or something about its quiddity would finally give him a third, more truthful answer.

Because Kim Dokja felt himself anew, a patchwork man buffed down to the base.

He was still, undoubtedly, Kim Dokja. All the memories, the stories that made him him still defined him— his relationship with his mother was still frayed, he still hated tomatoes, he was still the Demon King of Salvation, the Watcher of Light and Darkness, still the leader of the nebula <Kim Dokja’s Company> who had dragged his unwilling companions to the end of the line and dumped them there.

But his edges were soft from wear and tear, like he didn’t know what shape to take next.

“Instead of that, tell me this: what comes after surviving, Kim Dokja?”

He pulled himself back to his senses at the question.

Yoo Joonghyuk had this look on his face that had him averting his eyes, fast. Less intense but somehow more pointed. The act of reading it was like trying to swim upstream, Joonghyuk the tumbling rapids.

Dokja shook his head, drawing shapes on the table with his finger. “I’ve never not been surviving all my life.”

“I thought you used to just be a salaryman with a webnovel addiction.”

He smiled, though it felt more like a grimace on his straining cheeks. “That was me surviving. When the you I always read about kept going, when he kept choosing to want to save the world instead of giving up… Even if I told you, once, that choosing to regress wasn’t going to help you grow… I needed that. It's why Sooyoung-ah wrote it for me.

“Because there was no growth for me, just survival. Half the reason I kept it with me for that long was because I needed to feel like I wanted to save the world to keep living in it, so I tried to embody you. Your ideals, your strength. When I went through my own hardships, I was you, of course I had to come out the other side. You’re stronger than me, so I had to be you.

“So no, Joonghyuk, I don’t think I know what not surviving feels like. I’m sorry.”

Soft. “... Why are you sorry?”

“Because I… I think I taught you that as well. As your sponsor.”

Joonghyuk’s eyes shook, then he looked away.

“You can hate me for it. I know I would. But… and this is going to sound selfish and mean and you can even punch me after I tell you this, on the back of the head, right where I hit you in that 0th turn.”

Joonghyuk looked back. Their eyes met.

Dokja smiled. “I’m glad we're both a little lost. We're supposed to be together in this. We're companions, after all, aren't we?”

He blinked away what felt like tears forming, then pushed up from his seat with a loud huff, pushing away the jitter in his smile, the hitch in his breath.

“Well! Thank you for the delicious food as always, Yoo Joonghyuk. I’ll go put these in the dishwasher now. I still have to sort through the laundry and check a few of Sooyoung's papers.”

Of all of Han Sooyoung’s writing projects, he liked her short stories the most.

She plotted all of them during her lecture-workshops, taking and forming ideas with her students, helping them shape the stories from the first letter to the last stop. They were collaborative, informative, and fascinating.

The short stories were the most like her old writing, he reasoned. It reminded him of the days of Ways of Survival’s daily updates. The build-up to the conclusion was fast-paced, and the twist often left the reader wondering, eternally. It had always left him short of breath, those short stories.

After reading the works she made with her students after every session, they would stay up late. Dokja would grill her on her structure and intent, Sooyoung would bite back, blunt and effective.

Sooyoung would tell him that a turn of phrase that came up late in story alluded to something earlier on, and he would pick the notebook PC back up to read it again, which would get him tangled in another different turn of phrase that would have her muttering that she didn’t see it that way. Dokja would point out to her what a potential line could have led towards instead, would ask her why they hadn’t taken that route rather than the one intended, which would get Sooyoung to open up a notepad to make short notes while telling him her initial reasoning.

Some nights, Dokja would pull back after seeing sleep make Sooyoung’s eyelids droop. Most nights, though, Joonghyuk would bang on the far wall after a certain hour, and that would be their cue to get ready for bed.

One evening, Han Sooyoung came home early.

“I’m doing a morning lecture tomorrow, scheduling error. I’d cancel, but I’m literally an elective so.”

This was unusual, as Han Sooyoung was a night owl and hated working in the mornings. If anything, Dokja had pegged her to be the type of professor who would cancel class for whatever reason she saw fit.

He told her as much.

"Oh, what would you know," she snarked back, shoulders raised. "I wake up way earlier than you!"

"I'm the one waking you up," Joonghyuk interjected, handing her the bottle of soy sauce.

She snatched it from his hand with a glare. "Shut up. I never asked you to do that."

"Should I stop then."

Seeing the direction of the argument pivoting towards a dead-end back and forth, Dokja interjected, "It wouldn't hurt your kids to make one story on their own, would it? You can't keep holding their hand through the creative process. I say you've taught them enough to let them do this one on their own, no?"

"Again, what would you know," Sooyoung grumbled, but it was with a pout that Dokja associated with concession.

"I'm your editor. And since you make stories with them, I'm also their editor. They've improved a lot. You can cancel the class."

"I'm covering for someone, it's half the reason why I'm– oh, stop, stop with the face, Kim Dokja, you bastard. Fine. I'm lying. I need to do it in the morning though. No ums, wells, or buts."

“At least it will have you in bed before 1 in the morning,” grouched Joonghyuk from behind his can of beer.

Han Sooyoung kicked his shin under the table, making Joonghyuk slap her on the arm, hard. "Okay, listen, Dokja. Here's my one-time offer: if you're going to miss me that much, you can just sleep in my room. I'll even be nice and share the bed with you. It'll be your first time with a woman in bed, right?"

He felt his face burn. “Fuck off, you menace, and eat your fried chicken before it gets cold.”

“Nag,” she snarked.

“Prick.”

“Just attend her lecture,” Joonghyuk said, visibly annoyed by the back and forth. Dokja had to wonder if Yoo Mia never annoyed her brother to this intent.

Maybe it was the other way around.

So, on the morning of his 39th birthday, he left the apartment to the Yoo siblings, armed with two cups of coffee for himself, and came in late on his first Han Sooyoung lecture.

There was no way in hell he was going to get up as early as the professor.

Anyway.

It wasn’t the same lecture hall set-up he’d gotten used to during his days in college.

At a glance, the lecture halls after the fall were a little disheveled— especially for non-vocational courses like Sooyoung’s. Long tables that were easy to push askew, plastic chairs that were dragged to and fro by students. Makeshift laptops that were shared by two to three students at a time, while Sooyoung scribbled on a glass board upfront.

The students gave him curious glances when he entered.

He gave them a quick wave, and they bowed back at him.

Did they think he was a professor?

Moments later, the door admitted another attendee.

This one sat right next to Dokja.

Sooyoung didn’t seem interested in putting up a fuss and ignored them.

“Scoot,” said Jung Heewon, putting her arm in his space as she pulled at her bag.

Dokja scooted.

He hadn’t seen her since the hospital, no doubt busy with her own life. Sooyoung told him they met up every year, more if work brought them together, but no more than that.

The 1865th regression turn took a toll on everyone’s bonds with each other, a direct result over the grief of his absence.

It was still an odd thing to think about: the consequences of his choice, the selfishness of his salvation.

The first and foremost person who had every right to never want to see him again. That was the person sitting next to him as Sooyoung talked about the value of set-up and pay-off.

“I never thought of Heewon-ssi as the type to read, much less write. Or is this something you do just for Sooyoung-ssi?” He raised a brow.

Listen, if there wasn't a chance between Lee Hyunsung and her, he was going to take his chances elsewhere.

Jung Heewon didn't even bat an eye at his lack of greeting or the insinuation. She just said, "People change, Dokja-ssi. Sooyoung-ssi's writing is actually good, once it's seen all the polish it needs."

His brows raised at that. "Really? Is it anything I've read?"

Heewon stared at him for a moment. Then, "Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi told me you’d be here.”

He didn't point out the sudden change of topics, just giving her a brief look before responding with, "You were looking for me?"

“I know you know what day it is.”

He nodded, slow.

“Everyone does.”

That he didn’t know.

“Do you perhaps have a gift for me?” He asked cheekily, slowly easing into the role he used to play around Heewon during slow moments. “I will humbly accept whatever it is and am very grateful to Heewon-nim and the rest.”

She bumped her shoulder against his. “Pipe down before she throws a marker at you.”

Dokja shook his head, then gave her that moment of companionable silence.

“You look well.”

“Joonghyuk-ah feeds us well.”

“Ah, how envious.”

If there was one thing about Jung Heewon that made Dokja uneasy, it was how easily they could go on pretending that he had done nothing to wrong her. Heewon, he knew, did not like being mad at him. Similarly, he never wanted to upset her.

But as it stood, just like Han Sooyoung, she was never the type to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Could Dokja-ssi answer a question for me?”

Kim Dokja made a sound in the back of his throat to acknowledge her question, but didn’t look at her. At the front of the class, Sooyoung was sitting on her desk, listening intently to one of her students speak.

“Back in that Final Scenario— the first one,” she started. Dokja pulled his eyes away from Sooyoung. Heewon continued, “Remember that time when we left the library and we arrived at that station?”

He blinked, but it was like a layer superimposed over Heewon’s expressionless face.

How could he forget?

He could still remember how surreal it was, how realistic everything had felt.

   How the date said that it was the day his mother had published that book,

     how he knew how clueless he must have been, sitting on that bench thinking only of Ways of Survival,

       how he knew that was going to be his only lifeline until the world ended.

The Kim Dokja that had dragged everyone to the end of the line stared down that clueless kid and felt despair he hadn’t felt since his days on the frontlines. How, somehow, deep inside, he’d known.

That every single bit of the hell they'd experienced was his fault.

Feeling himself adrift, he nodded, blinking sluggishly at Heewon’s concerned face.

Was this what it was like when he’d asked the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk about his happy memories?

“I guess, I was just wondering,” Heewon said, biting back her remarks. “What was the deal with that Secretive Plotter guy anyway? Didn’t you say you owed him? Even after all those kidnappings?”

“That was what I owed,” he whispered. “The end to the Oldest Dream.”

“Right but… that you, the younger you that was the Oldest Dream… he didn’t die. I mean, not like you.”

That pulled him out of the fog that had settled over him. “What?”

Heewon straightened in her seat, looking as if she was gathering her thoughts. “No, it’s just… I don’t get it. When we reached our second Final Scenario and Dokja-ssi’s Oldest Dream ended, you were comatosed for four years. How come that Oldest Dream and your Oldest Dream didn’t have the same end?”

He took a deep breath, then stared at the table before him. “We had different Dreams.”

“Huh?”

“Has my mother told you everything?”

“... Lee Sookyung-ahjumma?”

“The day we got to that station was the day she published her novel. Does that ring a bell?”

“The one about your father?”

He nodded jerkily. “That’s really only tangentially related. It brings things to perspective for me. That ‘Oldest Dream’ was 15. He probably looked like he was on his way home from school. But I remember that day. I was coming home from therapy.”

“You had a therapist?”

He snorted. “I was forced to have one. I jumped out of a building, after all.”

That got Jung Heewon quiet.

He took a deep, shaky breath, pressing his palms together. “That version of me... The me by the end of the scenarios wanted a world where I could see everyone be alive and happy. It was a lot simpler, by far. More realistic, if you ignore the shit we did to get there.”

“What did you used to dream about before?”

He shrugged. “What would a teenage boy with no friends, a shitty home life, and a single webnovel as a lifeline dream about?”

Realization bled into Jung Heewon’s features. “You wanted it to be real.”

He shifted his head side to side. “Less the scenarios, more just the characters, I think. There’s a reason why you thought I seemed overly familiar with Joonghyuk and the others when we first met. It's the same with everyone. Even you. ”

“So, when the Secretive Plotter and the Outer God Kings stepped in…”

“It was my ‘dream come true,’” he said sardonically. "Or... his."

Then, clarity was wrenched away from Heewon’s features again, back to concern, to confusion. “What was your dream, then? The you that we rescued from the train. Your dream had ended by then, right? How?”

He sighed.

Sooyoung met his gaze from across the room, then raised her brow.

“I don't remember.”

“That's bullshit.”

He huffed, frustrated. “Then don’t ask.”

“I just wanted to see if you’d admit to it.”

This jerk. “You have any other questions?”

“No, I just wanted to know before I dragged you out of class. Otherwise, you’d start running. C’mon, let me take you somewhere, my treat. You haven’t had lunch, right?”

Several plans were in the works.

There was the surprise birthday party back home. Joonghyuk and the other kids were no doubt finishing up by then.

There was Jung Heewon, playing distraction.

And then, there was me, who had organized this carefully.

Normally, I wasn’t the type to organize surprise parties. Considering the e-mail that bastard left me and the Company (sans Joonghyuk) a few days ago, no, planning usually wasn’t my strong suit. Not even while writing.

But without Kim Dokja, everything fell to me.

So, planning Kim Dokja’s surprise birthday party it was.

I had several years of birthday plans to catch up on. This was one such plan that I made about a year into Joonghyuk’s absence, in an evening during which I drove to that stupid monument to Dokja’s name and got drunk enough to be escorted home by Heewon.

She probably took him there, probably thought it was going to be funny.

I was curious about what they were muttering on about in the back of class.

There was a look in Dokja’s eyes that seemed familiar and unnerving. It reminded me of the 49% Avatar of him, like Heewon had just spilled hot broth on his lap and all he really had to do was sit there and take it, because what else was he going to do?

...

I actually missed the bastard sometimes, even if it felt like it was wrong to just keep him there, knowing that another 51% of Kim Dokja was out there, still suffering through the scenarios while we enjoyed our lives.

[49] was...

He was a fragmented man, void of the few things that made Kim Dokja Kim Dokja. Sure, he remembered everything that led up to the end, but he had never survived ten years on the flimsy passion for a stupid webnovel– my stupid webnovel.

I understood him. I stopped being a writer when I lost my memories that first time.

Throughout the scenarios, that lack of wholeness made me who I was. I was religiously reading and rereading a well-written parody of my own work in a misguided attempt to fill that hole back up, to bring back a perspective of me that had already been lost on my journey to who I was.

…

Damn, I should jot that down.

I paused in the middle of the hallway, standing close to the wall as I dug into my endless pit of a handbag for my phone.

Chapstick, pocket knife, keys—

The phone vibrated in my hand.

3 missed calls from Laika I.

49 unread messages from Laika I.

5 unread messages from Heewon-ie <3.

What the hell?

When did she change her name on my phone?

I decided then and there as I opened the notes app that I was going to beat her at arm-wrestling later, once and for all.

I could do it, I just had to have enough drinks in me.

And a few more in Jung Heewon.

The phone vibrated again, switching me out of the notes app mid-sentence.

I picked up. “The hell is your problem—?”

“Hello?”

“Yeah, whatever. Stop texting me. I'm trying to write.”

“Han Sooyoung. Kim Dokja is missing.”

← Heewon-ie <3


i can’t come in any earlier than i already do.

i have work, yk
12:30

Heewon-ie <3

ohhh bs

youre awake rn arent you


can’t a girl catch up on some beauty sleep, you jerk
12:31


Heewon-ie <3

ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

stop replying first bitch


ㅗ
12:35


Heewon-ie <3

hey hey pick up

8282

pick up joonghyuk-ssi's calls
Today, 16:21


where did you take him last
16:24


Heewon-ie <3

the park

his statue remember?

then he said he needed to use the toilet

so we went in one of the factories

last i saw of him

never even took him out of the complex
16:25


what were you two talking about

did you tell him anything weird


Heewon-ie <3

wym by weird


jung heewon.
16:26


Heewon-ie <3

ok fine


we were just talking about the oldest dream before we left


i wanted to ask what made him stop being the oldest dream


bc he told me the last one only stopped when his dream came true


that was all we talked abt

everything else was above board

stuff abt the kids, abt where the company went 2 yrs ago
16:30


okay.

it's okay, i'll find him


Heewon-ie <3

you know where he is???

you do dont you

sooyong-ahhhhh
16:32


i'm driving damn

i'll let you know when we're otw 2 my place

just stay w the kids

tell yjh to msg me on mdt

he'll know what it is
16:36

A chill was settling in. I couldn’t tell if it was my nerves, the early February dusk, or the fact that I forgot to turn on the heater in my haste.

My mind was running through possibilities and ideas. There were any number of places he could have gone.

• His mother’s— he’s visited her twice since he’s been released. He said he didn’t want to take Biyoo in yet because our apartment wasn’t big enough for three adults and a child;
• Back to the statue— hell no;
• The subway— stop. Stop it;
• The nearest building rooftop— c’mon, Sooyoung;

“Well, what the hell do you want me to think?! Fuck!”

I hit the steering wheel, then hit it a few more times until I was out of breath and gasping in my car like an idiot.

Where the hell would an idiot like Kim Dokja go after he’d been reminded of just how much he blamed himself for the world ending?

I didn’t want to blame Jung Heewon, because just like anyone from the Company, she was owed an explanation, she was due her answers. Every single one of us had questions for Kim Dokja and here the man finally was.

Was it really him? Were we satisfied with the one we finally got after the third fucked up, desperate gambit we pulled? Weren’t we fucking tired of hoping for more?

I was scared of Kim Dokja. All of them. Every single one. I was willing to admit that much to myself, right then, in my car as I tried to gather enough of my wits to try and get in his headspace.

It wasn’t that the mere sight or thought of him sent me shivering in fear, it wasn’t that the idea of losing him kept me up at night. I’ve had too much of him to ever be scared of him in that way.

I think it was just how much he meant to me that scared me so much. Who the hell even was he? Some guy with half-baked schemes and only a tinge of flair to him. Some guy who was clearly suicidal.

Some guy I desperately kept alive for lifetimes now, killed in a few, wanted dead in barely any.

He was my biggest and most-enduring muse by far. Trying to write him into existence felt like trying to build a wall with pebbles. The concept was too big, the building blocks were misshapen and would crumble apart at every motion.

I barely knew Kim Dokja. I was satisfied with only barely knowing him. I knew the one we brought back wasn’t all of him, because we each all had a share in the story that was Kim Dokja. I had tasked myself with writing the hole he left behind and hoping it would become a person. I played god.

And now I had to think like him.

If I were forcefully brought back from the brink of willing death once again, where would I want to go?

What would I want?

Where would I go?

What would Kim Dokja do?

“You were here this whole time.”

“It’s a lovely place.”

“It’s been empty for years.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you say where you were going?”

“I wanted to be alone for a while.”

“...”

“This is your writing, isn’t it?”

“Hah. I forgot I left these here.”

“You wrote another novel?”

“This was the first manuscript. Everyone’s seen it. It’s been… through a lot of changes. I was going to burn it but I…”

“You wrote a novel about me?”

“You don’t know just how much we’ve done for you.”

“Why?”

“... I don’t have the energy to do our song and dance, Dokja-ya. I’m really very tired of pretending I don’t love you. I’m sure everyone else is too.”

“...”

“Turn around. Come home.”

“I am. This is supposed to be home.”

“This is an empty house a few blocks from where we live.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Sooyoung-ah. You know what I mean.”

He stayed there, staring out the glass doors. The backyard was awash with the gold, the sunset streaming into the room.

This had been our living room once upon a time. I could close my eyes and imagine the carpet here, two sofas there, the large screen TV we’d eventually buy for everyone to use.

But it was just a dusty, empty room.

It was just me and Kim Dokja, his back to me, my old manuscript in his hands. In this light, his tan coat looked white. I could pretend that the Kim Dokja I finished the scenarios with had never changed so much that I had to struggle for an hour before realizing just how much he probably wanted that home he’d dreamt of.

Once upon a time.

“Are you mad at me for what I wrote? For what I did?” There was no room for doubt in me, between us, or in the room with us. With the manuscript to Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint in his hands, he should know what I’d done. He should know what he was, what I was to him, what we were to each other.

“I can’t make judgments until I’ve read the final version.”

“I’m not asking you as my editor, I’m asking you as my— Dokja-ya. Kim Dokja. Turn around, please. Did I do good? Are you happy?”

He turned.

I couldn’t see his face, his back lit in gold, his face full of shadows. Was he smiling or was I imagining it?

Then, he stepped forward. His shadow came over me.

And suddenly, the room was just a room. Dokja’s face came into view, impassive, eyes twinkling, so much like I remembered him.

I was always grieving this bastard. He was here right in front of me and I wanted him with me. I wanted him home probably as much as he wanted to be.

“Did I do good?” I asked again, voice barely above a whisper.

— Han Sooyoung, did you find him.

I jolted, blinking away my tears.

Midday Tryst.

Yoo Joonghyuk.

This bastard’s timing.

— Do not ignore me here as well.

“Y-you’re getting that, right?”

Dokja smiled, and I felt my insides settle a little, finally.

— I’m coming home.

“C’mon, Sooyoung-ah. I can’t miss my own birthday party.”

“... You bastard, you knew?!”