Work Text:
“It’s Christmas!” Han Sooyoung shouted aggressively, slamming her hot chocolate cup on the table, its contents splashing up the sides. “You’re telling me it’s Christmas time, and you didn’t think for a second about getting gifts for everyone for the literal Christmas party we are celebrating tomorrow? The very party you planned?”
Kim Dokja’s face remained impassive as he took a small sip of his hot cider. The cup sat warmly in his hands, a comfort he indulged in frequently. “In my defense, I’ve never actually celebrated Christmas before.”
She resolutely ignored the words coming out of his mouth. “It’s blasphemous! It’s ungodly! It’s downright fucking weird!”
“We are in public.”
Han Sooyoung pressed both of her hands to her temples, taking deep breaths as she attempted to use her, quite lacking amount of, brain cells to gauge the situation. “Alright. Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do; because I don’t want you to be the only freak at the party who didn’t bring gifts, we’re going to go out shopping right now to find,” she glanced up, “ten different gifts.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Observant as ever, Kim Dokja.”
He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment, his brain beginning to finally catch up to the conversation at hand. “Wait, so you’re telling me you bought gifts for everyone?”
Han Sooyoung looked appalled. “Of course! I’m not a monster.”
“That’s debatable.” He leaned back in his chair, glancing around at the busy coffee shop. Kim Dokja wondered who all these people were, and what kind of lives they led. A large group of similarly-aged college students were nearby, presumably those who had stayed behind instead of traveling over the winter break. Kim Dokja thought he even recognized one from his literary theory class. A little girl in a bright red dress clung absently to her mother’s leg nearby, a limp stuffed bunny clutched in her arms. Maybe she was going to her grandmother’s house tomorrow, a loving embrace awaiting her at the door. Maybe she was going to fall asleep that night in a cozy bed, a tree enveloped with presents there for her when she woke up. He hoped at the very least she was happy.
“I already have a few places close by we can walk to,” Han Sooyoung mumbled, whipping out her phone to pull up a map.
She hadn’t been wrong. This was technically his party, since he was the one who arranged everyone to meet up–if what Han Sooyoung was saying was true, it would probably be disappointing if he was the only person who showed up without gifts.
He sighed.
The first store they went to, Han Sooyoung cackled at the hideous sweater Kim Dokja was desperately trying to justify buying.
The corner of his mouth had lifted jokingly. “What, you don’t think he would like it?”
In between her wheezes, she shook her head no. They had been in the department store for almost an hour now, grasping at straws trying to find any item of clothing that wasn’t horrifically ugly or overpriced. Everything decent had to have been bought out for days at that point. The unwanted shirts were hilariously bad, and Han Sooyoung was debating buying some as a joke. Despite the unfortunate turnout, Kim Dokja had successfully bought a few small items, as well as a few different bags of assorted candies.
They went to a bookstore next, and bringing Kim Dokja there was the worst decision Han Sooyoung could have made.
She watched as he studied every title, carefully removing books from the shelf before reading their descriptions and putting them back. He had already gone through the romance and fantasy walls, and was currently examining self-help books.
“You know you aren’t shopping for yourself, right?”
The third store was almost worse.
“What even is this?”
Han Sooyoung pursed her lips, watching carefully as Kim Dokja examined a strange weight loss contraption. She decided not to say a word.
“You know, you’re kind of terrible at buying gifts.”
“Oh shut up,” he said, his face screwed up in a look of mild frustration. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
“What, shopping for your friends?”
He looked at her, exasperated. She smiled her shark smile, all teeth with a vicious curl of her mouth. She looked down at her phone to Yoo Joonghyuk’s contact—he had been asking her about the food she was going to be bringing to the party. She had told him something off-handed, like lemon desserts. “You know, you could just admit to everyone you forgot to buy gifts for them.”
“I didn’t forget to buy gifts,” Kim Dokja muttered.
Han Sooyoung paused at that, her fingers stilling where she had previously been texting. “You didn’t?”
Instead of responding, he held up a pair of earrings with little bears on them. “Do you think Shin Yoosung would like these?”
The fourth store they went to was a music shop, the fifth a bakery (because Han Sooyoung needed to pick up her desserts for the party, which she was apparently bringing now), the sixth another clothing store—eventually, they found enough gifts to respectfully give to all the people at the party (some more questionable than others). Han Sooyoung would have been lying if she said that she wasn’t a little bit disappointed by the fact that she wouldn’t be receiving a gift from Kim Dokja, since she had followed him around all day, and he would have had no way of getting her something without knowing. They had been friends for so long, and they never really gave each other gifts, but…Well, she would just have to wait until her birthday.
Hopefully he was aware that people received gifts on their birthday, but knowing Kim Dokja’s parents, she couldn’t be too sure.
Snowflakes floated down from high in the dark sky, fat little things that landed softly atop Kim Dokja’s head. Han Sooyoung had left a few hours ago, and he decided to head up to the roof of his apartment building to clear his head. From this view he could see rows of homes, lights still on. He spotted a family having a late dinner together through one open window, their laughter drifting away with the wind. The snow hadn’t come too long after.
In his hands he loosely held onto a book. It had been the last thing his mother had given him before he left. His family had never celebrated any holidays, birthdays rarely even mentioned besides in passing. Gifts were never received or given, let alone asked for. When his mom had handed him the book, he had been standing on the sidewalk, an ancient green suitcase beside him that carried within it all of his belongings. His departure had been sudden–the night before was when he announced he was going to be leaving to live with a friend in her apartment. His mom thought Han Sooyoung was his girlfriend, and his dad didn’t give a single fuck, so there wasn’t much for them to argue him staying besides the fact he was only in his third year of college.
He knew Lee Sookyung was troubled by her only son abruptly moving out, but she knew better than anyone what it was like to live in that house. The hidden mold in the corners of the rooms, the mice hiding in the walls, the persistently flickering yellow lights, the oppressive stench of sorrow that had permeated since his birth. He remembered the rough spatter of the shower on his skin, aggressive, like everything else in his life had been. Stains covered the walls, and family dinners were quiet if not angry affairs. Everything in that house had been hostile, every word a potential knife stabbing him in the back. The air was volatile, and his arms and face had been bruised for years.
At first he almost thought Lee Sookyung would be upset, but he hadn’t seen his mother cry in years. He didn’t think she was about to start.
Still, when she stood next to him there on that sidewalk, there was a moment where he thought she was going to hug him, where her arms would envelop him for the first time in almost a decade, where he would feel the comfort of her head in the crook of his neck and her arms wrapped tightly around his back. It was a foolish desire, but there are certain things people always tend to expect from their parents, no matter how many times they end up disappointed.
So when his mom had handed that book to him, the same book he had seen her reading his whole life, he thought maybe things were going to be different. It had looked like an olive branch, extending its limbs towards him. He did the worst thing he could have–he hoped. He hoped that things could be different.
Nearly a year later and he finds that maybe hope is the last thing he should have ever had, in his mother of all people. And so for the last time, he held that book in his hands. His mother loved reading as much as her son, so when he set the book onto the ledge of the building, he didn’t think of it as destroying the red string connecting him and his mother, but rather untying it and setting it softly on the ground. He was passing the string on to the next person who wanted to pick it up, because he was finished with it. His mother loved him in her own ways, though she never said it, and he was finally okay with having nothing to do with her. It had taken him until now to realize it, but that had always been exactly what she wanted–for at least one of them to make it out.
As he pushed the first gift he had ever received off the ledge of the roof, he thought, there will be plenty more to receive and give, and plenty of hugs to give as thanks.
“Shoes off everyone! That means you, Kim Dokja,” Yoo Mia looked up menacingly at the man, his eyebrows raised slightly at her indignant tone. If he went long enough without seeing Mia, he would forget the type of person she had grown up with as her only influence.
Yoo Joonghyuk could be seen from the front door in the kitchen, where he was placing out bowls of food for people to snack on. Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung had already arrived, talking amiably to Yoo Joonghyuk from the kitchen table.
Han Sooyoung came trailing in behind Kim Dokja, carrying their bags with the wrapped gifts. She had a scowl on her face, and residual water from the melted snowflakes dripping down the side of her face. “Thank you, Kim Dokja, for your continued non-existent help with anything.”
“You're welcome.”
Leading them to the small living area, Yoo Mia pointed to where they were to keep their gifts for later when they would all be handing them out. Kim Dokja was almost thankful towards Han Sooyoung for taking him out the day previous to shop–he would’ve gotten a lot of shit for not buying anything, most of it from Han Sooyoung herself.
It was warm in the kitchen, a soft orange glow surrounding the room. When Jung Heewon saw him walk in, she got up from her seat rather quickly to rush over and give him a strong hug, nearly strong enough to lift him up off the ground.
“Hey, what about me, Heewon-noona?” Han Sooyoung jibed, her shoulder hitting Jung Heewon on her way past. She simply rolled her eyes, too used to Han Sooyoung’s antics. When Lee Hyunsung caught his eye, he smiled warmly, still caught up in conversation with Yoo Joonghyuk. Snow fell lightly outside the window, nearly glowing from the light it reflected.
“Yoo Joonghuk, when are the kids getting here?” Han Sooyoung was in the process of digging through the fridge, looking for God-knows-what.
He looked at the watch on his wrist as he untied the apron that had been wrapped around his waist, seemingly finished with all the cooking he had been doing. “Mia’s friends should be here in about an hour. They don’t live far.” In the same apartment building, actually.
Han Sooyoung narrowed her eyes, deep in thought. “Do we have to wait till they leave to pull out the soju?”
As if having been called upon, the ever-gracious and lovely Yoo Sangah entered the room, setting her coat on the back of a nearby chair, flipping her chestnut brown hair over her shoulder. “Sooyoung-ssi, I think you already know the answer to that question.” Han Sooyoung’s head rolled back and she groaned loudly as she shut the fridge doors, falling against them in a remarkable display of childish behavior.
Slowly, everyone else began to trickle in. Lee Jihye arrived at the same time as Kim Namwoon, which resulted in a five minute display of her accusing him of stalking her. The first time Kim Dokja met them he thought they were in middle school from the way they behaved around each other, but when speaking with other people, they were actually quite mature. Both were in their third year of high school, and Kim Dokja had known them for quite a bit of time; their parents were long-time friends of Yoo Joonghyuk’s.
Lee Gilyoung arrived next, and the first person he greeted upon arrival was Kim Dokja, who smiled sweetly at the young boy. “Hello Gilyoung, and merry Christmas.”
“Hi ahjussi!” Kim Dokja’s eye twitched momentarily at the honorific. “Look what I found!” He held up a praying mantis that sat calmly in his small hands, its little green body sat square in his palm. Before he could say anything, Shin Yoosung arrived, and she came barreling right towards Kim Dokja with something held tightly in her hands. Without so much as a hello, she thrust it into his lap. He blinked owlishly before understanding what she had given him, and he held the card up before reading it, three 10,000 won bills falling out.
Shin Yoosung grinned widely at him, “My mom wishes you well.”
Gilyoung gaped at her. “No fair, Yoosung! We aren’t supposed to give gifts yet.”
In retaliation, she stuck her tongue out at him.
Everyone began to eat the food that had been laid out, conversations surrounding the kitchen. A deck of cards had been pulled out and a few people were playing that, while the younger kids had taken to playing Mario Kart in the living room. Han Sooyoung was lamenting the fact that she couldn’t play any drinking games yet. It was a soft environment, despite some rather loud yelling coming from the living room. As a few hours passed, people slowly started to move out of the kitchen to watch the Mario Kart matches, cheering on the people they wanted to win and jeering at the others.
“Come on Dokja! Beat that witch’s ass!”
“Language, Heewon-ssi.”
An intense match between him, Han Sooyoung, and Yoo Joonghuk was currently taking place. Yoo Joonghyuk was in first place, naturally, and Kim Dokja and Han Sooyoung were vying for second place. Kim Dokja was currently swatting away Han Sooyoung’s arm as she tried to knock the controller out of his hand.
“Play fair, Sooyoung,” he yelled, elbowing her in the ribs, and accidentally kicking Yoo Joonghuk in the process. The three of them were half-wrestling at that point, rather than paying attention to the actual game.
As people rotated in and out of playing for a bit, it soon came around the time to give gifts.
Everyone handed out all their gifts at once as they spread themselves out on couches and the carpeted floor. Kim Dokja was sitting next to Yoo Joonghyuk near where they had set up a small, artificial Christmas tree.
“Is everyone ready to open up their gifts?” Yoo Sangah said, and the cacophonous sound of paper tearing filled the air. The first thing Kim Dokja heard after was laughter. Gilyoung and Yoosung had opened each other’s gifts first, and both had gotten each other the same thing: a pair of fuzzy socks with dogs on them. Gilyoung had gotten it for her because he knew that’s what she liked, and Yoosung had gotten it for him because it was something she liked. Gilyoung looked affronted. Jung Heewon was smirking mildly as she held up a CD for her favorite artist, and Han Sooyoung looked a little red as she asked her if she liked it, which Jung Heewon was not responding to, causing Han Sooyoung to think she didn’t like it. Lee Jihye was gushing with Lee Hyunsung about naval ships, which he had gotten her a toy model of, and Kim Namwoon was hugging a new video game Yoo Joonghyuk bought for him. Yoo Mia looked, begrudgingly, quite happy with the new bow Kim Dokja had gotten her.
Presents continued to be opened, and at some point, Shin Yoosung had placed a silver gift bow in his hair.
When Lee Gilyoung walked over to him, Kim Dokja hadn’t been expecting him to place a small terrarium in his outstretched hands. The mason jar was filled with twigs and leaves and moss, and was intricately decorated, each piece having to have been hand-placed.
Kim Dokja had known Lee Gilyoung for almost two years. It had been one random day in summer where he and Han Sooyoung were lounging in Yoo Joonghuk’s much more spacious apartment. Yoo Mia had arrived home from school, two friends in tow. At first she had been determined to ignore the older two, but Gilyoung had begun asking Kim Dokja questions, and the other girl, Shin Yoosung, also became rather interested. Yoo Mia began to roll on the ground out of boredom during the subsequent thirty minutes in which Kim Dokja chatted with the two elementary students. So when Kim Dokja looked up at Lee Gilyoung now, he still saw the same boy from two years ago, his light brown eyes wide and innocent. As he pulled Gilyoung into a hug, he could feel his sweet smile against his shoulder. Kim Dokja had never received a more wonderful gift.
“Oh my God,” Han Sooyoung said, a slight manic laugh erupting from her. “What is that?”
One look at Yoo Joonghyuk and the horrendous sweater he was currently holding up had everyone erupting into laughter. It was a bright red thing, with intricate patterns adorning the bottom and the top, and a giant cow plastered on the front.
Kim Dokja was grinning humorously. “Don’t you love it, Joonghyuk-ssi?”
Without comment, Yoo Joonghyuk slipped the sweater over his plain black shirt, which caused everyone to laugh even harder. It was almost like a melody, the blending of shrieking childlike tones with deeper, more restrained ones. Kim Dokja’s eyes met with Yoo Joonghyuk’s, a mirth within them despite his stoic face. Kim Dokja smiled, inching a little closer to get a better look at the sweater. “Merry Christmas, Joonghyuk.”
Yoo Joonghyuk reached up, picking the gift bow out of Kim Dokja’s hair. His voice was soft. “Merry Christmas, Dokja.”
Slowly, everyone finished unwrapping their packages and bags, showing off their new gifts to each other. Kim Dokja looked at his own pile: the first volume of a newly printed web novel from Han Sooyoung, a rather strange (but cute) decorative gnome from Jung Heewon, a vinyl for the band Chinese Football from Yoo Sangah, a rather large stuffed squid from Yoo Joonghyuk, a fancy fountain pen from Lee Hyunsung, and a few stray bags of candy that Kim Namwoon and Lee Jihye had bought last minute. It was all so…nice. Nicer than anything Kim Dokja had ever had before, nicer than anything he ever thought he deserved. He looked around the room at the smiling faces of his friends, and for a moment he was nowhere but there, and there was no one but them.
“Sooyoung-ssi, what did Dokja-ssi get you?” Lee Jihye commented as she was surfing through other people’s gifts.
Han Sooyoung’s face fell slightly, “Ah, yeah, about that…”
“Oh!” Kim Dokja interrupted. “My bad, I must’ve forgotten to give it to you.”
Standing up out of his sitting position, he stretched out his legs a little, and walked over to her, a small rectangular shaped box in his hands. Her eyes widened slightly, an uncharacteristic look of shock adorning her face. Everyone watched as she carefully unwrapped the gift, Kim Dokja still standing in front of her.
“I remember a long time ago, your mom saying something about us having no pictures together, so she took this one of us, and I thought…Well, I thought you might like it. Because it’s kind of the only one we have together.”
In her hand’s, Han Sooyoung held a framed picture of thirteen-year-old Kim Dokja and her, their arms begrudgingly placed around each other. Her hair was still long in the photo, and she was wearing rectangle glasses and purple braces. It was probably the first and only time the two of them were of the same height. They were seated on the front porch of Han Sooyoung’s childhood home, a deck of cards in front of them. She still remembered them practicing magic tricks that day, and the feeling of the sun on her face. Kim Dokja looked the exact same, with his stupid face and hair. But when she looked up from the photo into the current Kim Dokja’s eyes, she saw an undeniable happiness in them she had never seen before.
Her eyes became glassy.
Jung Heewon leaned across the couch to get a good look. “Sooyoung, are you crying?”
“No!” The shorter woman shouted, covering her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. The kids clambered around, trying to get a good look at the mildly embarrassing photo. “Kim Dokja, you fool!” she shouted, standing up and hugging him tightly.
A half hour later Yoo Sangah and Lee Hyunsung walked around the living room, gathering up the wrapping paper and opened boxes. Everyone said their goodbyes to the kids, who had to go back to their own homes and go to sleep, and Namwoon and Jihye, who were going out with a few local friends. The moment the door closed behind them, a bottle of soju appeared in Han Sooyoung’s hands.
It was late that night, when everyone’s eyes were fluttering and their cheeks were flushed from the alcohol. The lights were dimmed, and Kim Dokja was sitting beside Yoo Joonghuk on the couch, the other’s arm wrapped around him as he leaned into his side. His eyes had been closed for a while now, no thoughts in his mind, bordering on a world of dreams and the slight cinnamon scent of reality.
For the first time in a while, Kim Dokja felt warm.