Work Text:
The day before Yoo Joonghyuk transfers into his high school, Kim Dokja remembers.
He’s 16.
Or maybe he’s not.
He’s in a novel during this life. Kim Dokja preferred webnovels, always has, but in his last life, around this age, he picked up a normal novel. It wasn’t very thick, it wasn’t very complicated. It was a love story between two perfect high schoolers. Three Ways to Fall in Love.
It was trite. Tropey. Boring, even. It was safe. The protagonist was perfect. The love interest was perfect. They were handsome and beautiful, strong and smart, brusque and gentle. Like two puzzle pieces. Perfect for each other.
Kim Dokja should’ve hated it. He kind of hated it.
Still, he reread it, over and over and over again. It could’ve been because it was one of his only physical print novels, it could’ve been because it was actually a library book from his school that he never returned, and it was an act of vengeance. It could’ve been because he knew how it would end. He knew how they would meet, how they would get together, how they would break up in the third act, how they would reunite in the end, and how their future played out in the epilogue.
In this life, he is in that novel.
If this was a normal transmigration story, Kim Dokja would be the main character, or the love interest, or the rival, or a side character.
No.
Kim Dokja is still Kim Dokja, even in this life.
After all, there was no son-of-a-murderer in the original. Why would there be? It’s a silly romance novel. There were no sour rumors. There was no Kim Dokja.
It feels like a condemnation.
When he’s in school that day, still coming to terms with the realization, he considers the idea that it’s all a hallucination. In a desperate time of need, Kim Dokja dreamed this entire story, and hallucinated that he was reborn in this novel where everything is perfect, and everything follows a boring, well known structure. It made more sense.
Until he tried to burst out of his classroom before everyone else did for lunch, and ran straight past Lee Seolhwa.
Lee Seolhwa. No introduction needed.
Hair white as snow. Lips red as blood. Her gaze as tough as ebony. She was like a twisted version of Snow White. But she isn’t Snow White. She is mature, smart, and though she’s so beautiful to the point of being frightening, her smile and gentle nature melts away her ice-cold appearance.
Things made sense.
Kim Dokja has always stared at Lee Seolhwa. It’s normal to stare at someone like her. But he felt strange when he looked at her. It wasn’t that he leered at or desired her, he just felt that she seemed empty. Something was wrong. Something was missing.
Now he understood. Lee Seolhwa had snow-white hair but was never confronted by authority figures over this. Lee Seolhwa was smart when she had plenty of time without studying. Lee Seolhwa had a gentle nature but no one to be gentle for. She was a perfect novel character, a perfect love interest.
The next day, Yoo Joonghyuk showed up in Kim Dokja’s classroom.
Some of the finer details were impossible to recall. Kim Dokja failed to remember if Yoo Joonghyuk and Lee Seolhwa were in the same class or not. Not that it mattered. Yoo Joonghyuk was in his class, and no matter how much or how little mental preparation Kim Dokja could’ve had, he’s too much like the Yoo Joonghyuk that Kim Dokja knows.
His gaze is piercing, and he brings the air down five degrees as he arrives. He introduces himself in a terribly short, unfriendly way, and yet girls around Kim Dokja spring to life upon seeing him. He’s wearing the same school uniform as everyone else, but it’s straining against his build.
Kim Dokja knows how this goes. Yoo Joonghyuk sits all the way in the back, by himself, next to the windows. For the record, Kim Dokja sits two seats behind and one seat to the left of the door. Near the middle.
He doesn’t talk. He answers questions with ease. Girls giggle when they glance over to him. Kim Dokja keeps his head down.
There is a pause of hope. What happens on the first day is, during the first break, Yoo Joonghyuk will valiantly defend a bullied kid in the hallways. Lee Seolhwa will notice in the background, and though he fails to see her in the moment, a seed of love is planted within her.
Kim Dokja has a fantasy while the teacher is droning on. He sees himself as the bullied kid, and he sees Song Minwoo as the bully that Yoo Joonghyuk faces down. He sees it.
During the first break, he watches in the hallway as Yoo Joonghyuk defends a classmate he has never seen before.
In that moment, Kim Dokja sees his life so clearly. Like he’s already lived it before. He’ll graduate with bruises all over. He’ll go to a third-rate university after flunking his CSAT. He’ll go into the military on the front lines. He’ll go to a black company. He’ll work himself to death.
In that moment, Kim Dokja does not feel like a novel character. He feels nothing. He feels like he is Kim Dokja.
If this realization had happened a year ago, perhaps Kim Dokja would’ve had a different way of going about things. He probably would’ve read a web novel about a transmigrator who suddenly gains a noble house, with delicious food and kind servants because of coincidences. There’s so many of those these days.
Then he would’ve had a different goal while throwing himself out a window.
An image of texts he’s never received before reaches him during lunch, where he shuts his eyes and buries his head into his lap of arms.
idiot
idiot bastard kim dokja
what would you do
huh
that story is trash anyway
if you were reborn in that story
wouldn’t you change it?
shitty reader
don’t
treasure such an ass story
not even written by me
Kim Dokja is running.
Fuck you, he thinks without wanting to, Han Sooyoung.
He’s never met a Han Sooyoung before.
Fuck you, Han Sooyoung, he thinks again. Fucking die.
Yoo Joonghyuk is on the roof. He always eats lunch on the roof. It’s cold. It’s hot. It’s real.
“You screwed that kid over, you know?”
Yoo Joonghyuk raises an eyebrow at him.
This scene never happened in the original. No one said that line in the original. Kim Dokja didn’t exist in the original. Kim Dokja grins.
“Those bullies aren’t gonna stop,” he says. “Actually, they might get worse.”
There’s no proof that what he’s saying is true. If this was the world of the novel, the answer would be no, but if this was the world that Kim Dokja knew, then the answer would be yes.
“Who are you?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks.
Kim Dokja knows everything there is to know about Yoo Joonghyuk. He knows about his sister, he knows about his past, he knows about his future, he knows who and how he falls in love. He knows, even, that Yoo Joonghyuk is not what he seems.
Yoo Joonghyuk is violent, but he’s gentle. Cold, but he cares deeply. He’s a bastard. He’s a protagonist. Kim Dokja knows him.
Yoo Joonghyuk might be the only person in this entire school who has to ask for his name.
Even Lee Seolhwa has sent him pitying glances before.
“Kim Dokja. I’m in your class, you bastard.”
Kim Dokja does not belong in this world. He was not transmigrated into an existing character.
He’s ruining this perfect world, this perfect protagonist.
It’s okay.
Kim Dokja is Kim Dokja, and Kim Dokja is a reader, a human being.
Kim Dokja has not changed. But maybe his story has.