Chapter Text
Yoo Mia noticed that things started to change when those two started running together.
Yoo Junghyuk and Han Sooyoung were both trying to fill the void that ahjussi left behind, it seems, and the closest thing they could find was each other. Whether it was the need for the other’s capabilities or something else, she doesn’t know, but as soon as the group regressed, they stuck together like glue.
Han Sooyoung was spending the evening in their room again. A remnant habit of the previous round, where she would strategize long into the night with that ugly ahjussi. In this round, with the remnant Kim Dokja out of comission, she did that all with her oppa instead.
It didn’t always turn out well.
More often than not, Han Sooyoung would yell then storm out of the room, or Yoo Junghyuk would break something and the conversation would end there. But always, like clockwork, Han Sooyoung would appear the next evening. Yoo Junghyuk would let her in.
Yoo Mia was trying to sleep, her cot feeling stiff beneath her, but the uncharacteristic whispers and hushed voices pulled her out of the sleepy haze she’d been falling into.
It was bad when they were shouting and getting into fist fights, but it was worse when they were both quiet.
“Once, I fell asleep in his room. Around the same time as this scenario, and doing—doing what we’re doing now. Making plans.”
There’s a pause. Then a sniffle.
“When I woke up, I was tucked in his bed. That bastard chose to sleep on the floor,” Han Sooyoung laughed mirthlessly. “The floor of his own room.”
Yoo Mia opened her eyes to see Han Sooyoung sitting on the floor, with fingers running through her hair and tears staining her cheeks.
Yoo Junghyuk was sitting on his bed, back partially turned to her and staring skyward as if he could meet a certain someone’s gaze if he looked long enough.
“He’s a fool,” Yoo Junghyuk agreed.
“I told him that too when I woke up,” Han Sooyoung told him. “…I miss him. All of him.”
“We’ll get the rest of him back.”
“Even if it works, what if we lose someone in the process?”
“…It was my idea to do this group regression.”
“We’re working off of my strategies.”
Yoo Junghyuk continued to challenge her insecurities. “Everyone here regressed on their own volition.”
Han Sooyoung wasn’t having it.
They had just cleared a particularly difficult scenario and it had far too many close calls for her to be as self-assured as she usually was. She tilted her head backwards, bangs brushing past the wetness of her eyes and inhaled deeply to regain her composure.
“…I need a smoke,” Han Sooyoung eventually decided.
Yoo Junghyuk stopped her from getting up. “Kim Dokja won’t like that.”
They’re down bad, Yoo Mia thought, disgusted.
After that, it wasn’t long until Han Sooyoung curled up into exhaustion, muttering profanities against Kim Dokja as she drifted off into sleep.
Yoo Junghyuk carried her back to her room.
Of course he wouldn’t place her on his bed and tuck her in. It was a happy memory for her.
Her oppa knew better than anyone what it felt like to relive happy memories.
*
In the 1865th round, Yoo Mia was a transcender, an incarnation that could match the power of constellations. She was a prodigy in every definition, and gained incredible stories simply for her immense talent.
[Fable, ‘Blooming Apocalypse’, is continuing its storytelling!]
A fable she acquired for killing a constellation at the age of ten.
[Fable, ‘Born to Break Heavens’, is continuing its storytelling!]
For mastering Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship, a style meant for women, at the age of eleven.
[Fable, ‘Dark Horse of a Nebula’, is continuing its storytelling!]
For listening to Han Sooyoung and Yoo Junghyuk’s strategizing night after night, and leading the nebula herself when the two were unable to give orders.
[Fable, ‘Transcendent Prodigy’, is continuing its storytelling!]
A fable that increased the rate of achieving transcendence, for being the youngest transcender in the history of the <Star Stream>.
As a result, she had reached the fourth level of transcendence by the later scenarios, and had more than enough legendary stories to become a constellation.
However talented she was, her strength was still child’s play to the monster that was her oppa.
Yoo Junghyuk fought with the justified cruelty of a crusader, desperate and ruthless, like every drop of blood on his sword would take him a step closer to meeting his god. In each scenario, he was drenched in it.
The group regression had to be perfect. Because Kim Dokja wouldn’t accept anything less, and her oppa would walk through death’s door to meet that god’s demands.
But perfection was a burden.
Yoo Junghyuk, her stupidly powerful brother, shouldered the brunt of it.
In one scenario, he pushes himself too far for that perfection and Yoo Mia finds him bleeding out among the corpses of the aftermath.
“You’re okay,” Yoo Mia called out him, voice shaking. She all but collapsed at his side, her knees scraping at blood and remnants of concrete.
She tries to shift him into a more comfortable position. But she wasn’t even fifteen in this worldline, and holding up her brother even with her coin-reinforced body was a challenge.
“You’re going to be alright, orabeoni,” Yoo Mia continued reassuring him. “Seolwha-unni’s coming over.”
Yoo Mia fumbled around her [Inventory] for healing items, practically spitting out the whole stash for her oppa to use.
Yoo Junghyuk blinked slow, unseeing, shell-shocked from whatever attack he failed to defend against, and dizzy from blood loss.
“…Kim Dokja?” Yoo Junghyuk asked deliriously.
Yoo Mia’s blood ran cold.
Why?
Why are you calling for him when I’m right here?
“It’s me,” Yoo Mia tells him. Begs him. His body lay slack and heavy in her arms. “Orabeoni, it’s me.”
Yoo Junghyuk mouths something as his consciousness slips.
It wasn’t her name.
Yoo Mia’s heart beat tremendously fast. She couldn’t see his notifications, but what if—what if his stigma was activating?
Did he feel it, that ahjussi’s status?
“Orabeoni, please.”
Wake up.
Don’t die.
Don’t leave me behind again.
Would you abandon your only family just for a star to look at you? Is he that much more important?
Yoo Mia cradled his body.
Yoo Junghyuk was everything to her. He was her father, her brother, and her oldest friend.
She felt a deep twisting in her gut as emotions clashed within. She cursed that ahjussi who had taken her place in his heart. She prayed to that ahjussi who had the power to save him.
1863 deaths.
It was Kim Dokja who graced him each time—Yoo Junghyuk’s exclusive guardian angel and his personal grim reaper.
Yoo Mia felt the warmth trickling out of him, staining her red. She felt his breathing go dangerously still, and her hands trembled violently in turn.
Once. Just once.
This might be the one and only life where she was able to rush to her brother’s side in the midst of an active battlefield.
And maybe, this is just what it meant to have died 1863 times and felt the same status embrace him each time. Knowing that it was never her, but that ahjussi. To have it ingrained in one’s soul that the afterlife would include Kim Dokja in some way.
Yoo Mia felt ashamed at her own powerlessness, at her own jealousy, knowing she was the one begging. But that was all she could do at this moment.
Beg.
Yoo Mia holds her brother’s dying body tighter in her arms and begs once again.
“Don’t go to him, oppa.”
*
Her oppa once said—even if you do not reach the conclusion you were looking for, do not think of it as a failed turn.
But love changes people.
Yoo Junghyuk thought the perfect regression ended in failure.
He became a free man without a sponsor, that cursed stigma of his vanishing without a trace, and yet it was a failure because the conclusion did not include a 100% Kim Dokja.
Yoo Mia watched as her brother lived his life empty and devoid of purpose.
She thought things would change if they returned to their old lives—with her oppa going back to his old profession, coming home and cooking dinner for them both, and helping her get ready for school in the mornings.
But some things would never go back the way they were.
She would catch him in his sleepless nights, staring out the window and counting the sparse stars in the sky. She would hear him curse as he burned himself on the stove.
Yoo Mia watched him live until he couldn’t live anymore, and all but asked his author to write his last sentence.
1864 lives.
1864 lives, and Yoo Junghyuk broke on the 1865th.
Yoo Junghyuk chooses to abandon Yoo Mia in the end. All for a mere 1% chance of bringing back that ahjussi.
Yoo Mia throws a fit.
She knows it’s childish, pouting and pleading like this, but it’s all she can do to get even a promise of returning out of him. Again, begging is all she could do and she hates it.
When Yoo Junghyuk gives her his last goodbye, she burns the sight of his eyes into her memory. It might be the last she ever sees of it.
It was a gaze that held purpose.
It was something that ‘Kim Dokja’ could give him, but ’Yoo Mia’ couldn’t.