Work Text:
Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse has ended. It was inevitable, because all stories had to end. If a story didn’t end, the protagonists would never get their answers, their closure, and to finish their journey.
Yoo Joonghyuk got neither.
Officially, it was an end. Yoo Joonghyuk reached the wall, finished the scenarios, like a checkbox being filled. He had an end without answers, closure, and a reason for the journey.
… There’s an epilogue.
Kim Dokja’s phone buzzed quietly: he had received a notification. Tls123 said he would send him a gift, and Dokja felt giddy. Ways of Survival would become paid content, but Dokja’s read everything. If he had some spare money, he could purchase a couple of his favourite chapters to reread them. It wouldn’t get monetized until tomorrow, anyway. When he searched for 'Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse', there were no results. Strange.
Kim Dokja returned home to his apartment. He checked his phone again. Searching ‘tls123’ showed no results. Ways of Survival was deleted. Gone.
... At least he could read other novels.
It would be very cool if Han Myungoh crashed his dumb fancy car into his dumb fancy boat. Afterwards, both would burn down. Maybe his dumb fancy money could be kindling. If fantasy-Dokja didn’t have a valid reason for getting the money, Han Myungoh wouldn't have it either. Despite years of actively daydreaming in class and going mostly unnoticed, he huffed out a laugh.
“Huh? What’re you laughing at?” Manager Han sneered. Dokja pushed his lips shut and stilled. He didn’t have overtime today. After almost a week of extra hours every day, he was planning on savouring the break.
One desperate time he opened a document on his computer. The black line blinked in and out of existence.
3Yoo Joonghyuk was on a subway. He killed them all. He gpt Kim namwoon and Lee Hyunsung. He went to Geumhi station. Got control. Won. His hands flew over the keyboard like a child desperately trying to imitate Chopin.
Late into the night, he stopped.
This wasn't legal, he thought.
The line blinked.
In his apartment, there was a small storage shed with old, unpacked cardboard boxes. His apartment had no space for used notebooks.
Dokja read his copy. The truth was glaringly obvious. It was not Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. It would never be. He shut his computer.
The shed had gotten dusty.
When he didn’t have Ways of Survival waiting for him when he got home, work was much more exhausting. He never had much motivation to begin with, but after broken printers, deadlines, scoldings, and so much overtime, he wished …
Dokja was not a writer. He simply did not want to forget.
In a fit of insanity, Dokja read the first 10 chapters of SSSSS-Grade Infinite Regressor. In a different tab, a document titled ‘Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse’ burned. SSSSS-grade Regressor was one of his most difficult reads for all the wrong reasons. Yoo Joonyun had very much in common with Yoo Joonghyuk, but their differences vastly outweighed the similarities. Joonhyun was snarky, talked too much, and was way less of a sunfish.
It would be inevitable for Dokja to forget some pieces of Ways of Survival. At least this way he got reminded of a few early events.
Yoo Joonhyun was not Yoo Joonghyuk. Shamefully, he wished the plagiarist had forgotten that part.
Rotten leaves crunched under his foot and rotten leaves fell from the trees. Well, leaves weren’t rotten when they fell from trees. The leaves were simply preparing for when they would die in the winter. At least he remembered something from school.
Predictably, his contract with Minosoft ended.
He started at a new company. The interviewing process took a while; nobody wants a man pushing 30 with no achievements in life.
Against all odds, his salary was even worse than what Minosoft paid him.
One week, he googled ‘tls123’ every single day.
With his new salary, he could not afford his old apartment. For once, luck was on his side. He managed to get a quiet roommate. Besides common courtesy and necessities, they had next to no interactions, which worked just fine.
It seemed his new company wasn't very interested in following the law. The new report he had received confirmed his doubts. At this rate the company will get caught if they leave such a glaring error in a report for a contractual worker.
Dokja read many, many stories. He tried different genres. Maybe something would give him the same rush. Ways of Survival may not have been perfect, but it had many things Dokja loved: frequent updates, long chapters, and the characters? The plot? It made him feel alive in a different way anything else had ever made him. Even if the stories had many of the same tropes and types of characters, it was still not the same story.
Perhaps TWSA reflected reality. That no matter how much you fought, struggled and lived, despite it all, life didn’t have a reward for you, no satisfying conclusion. It was just more of the same, same, old.
There was no ‘end’ in reality.
It was snowing. Fall had passed. Dokja held out a gloveless hand. A lone snowflake landed on his hand, but it did not melt. He was a bit cold, after all.
He missed his old apartment. The heating was so much better.
His lips always became chapped during the winter. He felt a pang of envy for people who could afford beauty products. What a stupid season.
“Overtime?” His roommate asked.
“Yes,” He replied.
What a strange occurrence. He did not think much about it. In fact, he would forget it. He and his roommate did not interact with each other.
It seemed horrible scheduling was another flaw of this company. After a few weeks of calm, the storm approached. He had never worked so much overtime in his life.
The lights shut down. Maybe the company wanted to save money, or they had forgotten half their QA team was on overtime. The only light present was the rectangular light of the screens, lighting up the haggard employees’ faces. Quick, desperate low-quality keyboard clicking filled the air. The deadline was soon.
As a horrible apology, the company had bought Valentines’ day chocolate and put it in a big bowl in the cafeteria. Unsurprisingly, the bowl was empty before 9.
He blew air on his cold hands. It was a bit strange, how he kept blowing on them even when they'd long gone numb.
Work had been very hectic, and in the rush he had forgotten to charge his phone. Unfortunately, that meant by the time he arrived at the subway station his phone was dead. Maybe it died earlier.
When the train did not arrive, he checked the time tables on the wall-mounted screens. Just his luck. The train was delayed the very day he could not read on his phone to pass time. He wasn’t very sure what people did when they wished to pass time. Dokja always read. Webnovels were his only company.
When the subway train approached, Dokja thought of Ways of Survival. It was gone. He was alone.
Nothing in his life ever stayed.
Like blinking when hands clap in front of you, like your eyes watering after getting punched, like flipping to the next page, Kim Dokja stepped towards the edge of the platform.
Nothing ever stayed.
Someone grabbed the hem of his jacket. He turned around. A young woman, perhaps a university student, with a beauty mark under her eye that ingrained itself in his memory.
“Oi, you bastard, do you want to delay this stupid train even more?”