Work Text:
“Do you really not remember?”
The other woman’s lips screwed into a playful grimace. Her perfectly manicured hands resting on her keyboard.
“Remember what? I tend to forget how annoying you are, thanks for reminding me.”
Han Sooyoung rolled her eyes and went on typing. The click-clacking of the laptop keys filled the otherwise empty hospital room. Han Sooyoung would have never admitted it but she had matured more in her personal style. She had a beige coat over a crisp white shirt, her black paloza pants matched her sharp hair bob. She stopped typing for a moment to bite her thumb, her lips a perfect shade of pink that matched the slight blush that was starting to show up on her face.
Yoo Sangah hummed with a smile.
“I wonder, where did you get your lip gloss from.”
Han Sooyoung looked up startled, she stuttered, trying to sputter out a response that didn’t betray her embarrassment.
“Ugh whatever, you're so annoying.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, yes you are.”
Yoo Sangah couldn’t stop the smile that was appearing on her lips.
“Hey Sooyoung- ah.”
Han Sooyoung did not look up from her keyboard, pretending like she didn’t hear the other woman. Yoo Sangah looked at the man in the hospital bed, wondering if this was the right time to ask. Everything was over yet there was still so much to do. She wondered how Han Sooyoung would react if she asked the question, maybe yoo Sangah was wrong about everything and everything she assumed was egotistical of her.
She took in a deep breath, knowing that whatever she would say would change their relationship moving forward .
“Sooyoung-ah, when did you start liking me?”
The click-clack stopped. Han Sooyoung met Yoo Sangahs eyes, her black iris wide in either shock or humiliation. Yoo Sangahs breath hitched, immediately regretting the words that came out of her mouth.
“Fuck,” Han Sooyoung huffed out, “you’re really something, are you serious?”
Yoo Sangah got up abruptly, snatching her bag at her feet and racing for the door.
“I’m sorry, it slipped out, I didn’t mean to, I’ll go now.” Yoo Sangah turned away from the writer, her heart hammering in her rib cage. She wanted to go home and scream into a pillow, at how stupid she was. Oh god she had done it now, she fucked up bad, fucked up to the only person she could drop her facade around.
There was a crash
“Wait.”
Someone had grabbed her wrist. The governor slowly turned back.
Han Sooyoung had grabbed her in a rush, her coat had snagged on the edge of the chair, causing it to slam onto the mausoleum floor. Han Sooyoung's face, if she was blushing before she was on fire now. Her entire face was flushed, her teeth were clenched with anxiety. Her chest rose and fell with every pant and her eyes were gleaning with tears.
“Who said you could go? sit down.”
Yoo Sangah blinked, she knew that Han Sooyoung had a short temper, but she thought of it more as a cute cat throwing a tantrum whenever it didn’t get a treat. This was the first time she saw Han Sooyoung express something rather than the adorable rage that she knew. Han Sooyoung was no longer the angsty chunni twenty year old she had met in the beginning. She was a grown woman.
She nodded as she sat down. Han Sooyoung went to prop the chair that had fallen, she sat down before dramatically holding her dropping head in her hands.
“You can’t just… you can’t just ask someone that and run away,” Han Sooyoung heaved, her words muffled by her hands. “Who does that? The yoo Sangah I know isn’t an evil person.”
“I-, I apologise, it wasn’t fair of m-“
“How long?”
Han Sooyoung parted her fingers, her eyes and red face showing through the peak. “How long have you known?”
Yoo Sangah bit her lip as she looked down. She wasn’t sure how she would answer this.
“Since, god I don’t know, I can’t pinpoint, maybe a few months ago?”
Han Sooyoung squawked with laughter.
“Am I wrong? Was it more recent?”
“You’re lying, the Yoo Sangah I know is more perceptive,” Han Sooyoung moved closer to the governor, looking up at her with serious eyes. “I’m serious, how long?”
How long? Han Sooyoung was right, as much as Yoo Sangah wanted to get angry at her assumption, she couldn’t. When was it?
“I hated you when we first met, you know that right? It was clear from the start that we were different people.”
She thought back to the catastrophe of floods, the moment just before then. How Han Sooyoung looked at her like she was stupid for not wanting to kill Shin Yoosung. Yoo Sangah knew there was a part of her that agreed with the writer's judgment, after all she and dokja were the only people that had read the ways of survival.
But she was a child, an innocent child that didn’t warrant the hostility that both of them harboured towards her.
“I’d think you were stupid if you didn’t hate me honestly.”
Yoo Sangah looked up. “Because of the Shin Yoosung incident?”
The writer shook her head, “I mean I wouldn’t trust the woman that tried killing my companions either.”
“Ah.”
Han Sooyoung smirked, her gaze softened.
“You forgot didn’t you?”
Yoo Sangah blushed furiously, she didn’t forget. But the woman in front of her, bathed in the soft sunlight, seemed so far removed from the villainous antagonist she had first met.
“How could I forget, I didn’t forget of course I didn’t.”
“Right right,” Han Sooyoung had said teasingly. Yoo Sangah didn’t like how their roles have switched now.
She looked at the woman in front of her right now. When had she fallen for Han Sooyoung?
She thought back to the three years that Kim dokja had gone missing. It was the first time Yoo Sangah had noticed how different Han Sooyoung acted towards, how she looked at her differently from Jung Heewon or Lee seolhwa. Her gaze was naked with adoration, her iris’s wide with affection whenever Yoo Sangah wanted to share a meal together. She remembered how Han Sooyoung would use her hand to cover her face but her pale eyelids betrayed her blush.
Yoo Sangah vaguely remembered being uncomfortable. She didn’t like it. In fact she had tried avoiding Han Sooyoung once she had noticed, which in all honestly was incredibly easy to do with everything she was held responsible to do. At the time she was pulled in a hundred different directions at once, her health was deteriorating, she felt tired all the time.
Yet why had yoo Sangah felt her heart drop slightly when she had to see Han Sooyoung's despondent face. Yoo Sangah wasn’t in love, she remembered still warmly thinking of Han Sooyoung as a dear friend.
Han Sooyoung made her uncomfortable, but she also was the only person she could truly be herself with without worrying about how her opinion would change.
“I asked you to live with me, during the apocalypse.”
Han Sooyoung shook her head.
Yoo Sangah was surprised.
“Before that.” The other woman smiled
“Before that?”
Yoo Sangah wracked her brain, this felt more like a quiz than a confession slowly going right.
Han Sooyoung laughed for the second time that day.
“God you’re really something, you’re an open book.”
An open book?
That was a first, no one had ever told her that. She had made sure no one would ever say that to her because she always kept her emotions in check.
“There was a time” Han Sooyoung continued. “I think it was right after you appeared on tv for the first time, you came to see me, I know you still hated me then because you had a sour expression on your pretty face. I remember thinking you were a really pretty and the perfect woman and I also remember being really pissed.”
That wasn’t surprising to yoo Sangah, she always had the impression that Han Sooyoung didn’t like her because of her personality. But the feeling back then was mutual so she obviously didn’t care. But pretty? Yoo Sangah felt her cheeks beginning to heat up. She didn’t expect to hear that Han Sooyoung thought of her as pretty so early on.
“And you were talking about Kim dokja, and back then I didn’t care about the bastard, he was just some guy and you were just some woman who seemed to trust him more than anything. And he in turn trusted you beyond what was possible, and I remember thinking this part clearly."
Han Sooyoung turned to look at her.
“Dokja’s such a lucky bastard, he’s got someone who’d worry this much about him.”
The room fell silent, Yoo Sangahs eyes were fixed on Han Sooyoung and Kim dokja. She did care deeply about Kim dokja, even though she was busy she always visited his hospital room, praying to who ever would listen for him to wake up, so they could all be happy together. Yoo Sangah knew better than anyone that Kim dokja wanted this for them, he wanted Yoo Sangah to be happy, for all of them to be happy. Even at this moment she was worried about him.
“See?” Han Sooyoung said softly. “You sincerely cared about him, and I was jealous because.”
Han Sooyoung took in a shakey breath before she continued. “I wanted someone to care about me like that.”
The governor was stunned. She kept her gaze on the writer who looked at her. The affection in her eyes more prominent than ever.
Han Sooyoung looked over at the hospital bed, smiling weakly, “even at this moment, I’m selfish, I’m getting jealous of a man whose bed ridden.”
She looked back at yoo Sangah, her voice cracking ever so slightly. “God I’m a horrible person, no way you would love someone like me.”
If there was something Yoo Sangah was used to, it was the crying face of men that would confess to her. She knew it was a manipulation tactic, they wanted her to feel bad for him, for her to take back the rejection and to kiss them softly while happily exclaiming ‘sorry I wasn’t thinking! Yes I’d be happy to date a bum like you!’. She knew that, yet instead of indifference.
Her heart felt like it was being squeezed.
there was maybe a time in the past that Yoo sangah would have consoled han sooyoung by patting her back and saying that they could still be friends. That she would say this conversation didn’t happen and continue acting as normal. That even when she knew deep down that she shared the same feelings, she would pretend as though she didn’t, she would act like her life depended on it, so she could keep han sooyoung by her side in a way that was comfortable for her. Maybe there was a time when she didn’t want their relationship to change.
But that time in the past wasn’t her present.
she lifted han sooyoung's chin and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Stop dictating how I’d feel, especially when you’re wrong.”
it was now yoo sangahs turn to tease.
“I guess predictive plagiarism isn’t so predictable now.”
With a red kiss mark on her pale forehead. Han Sooyoung began to cry, she banged her fists on the taller woman’s chest and she weeped into her chest. All of the emotions han sooyoung had kept at bay tumbled out of her with earnest.
“I hate you, I hate you so much.”
“those words would be much more believable if you weren’t wearing my clothes.”
“fuck your stupid clothes, and your stupid looks and your stupid makeup, you and your stupid perfumes,”
Han Sooyoung sniffled before detaching herself and rummaging through her bag for tissue.
Yoo Sangah giggled. Her white shirt was messed up with tears and lipstick but she couldn’t be happier.
Han Sooyoung wiped her nose before she resumed typing on her laptop. Her eyes and cheeks red and stained with tears.
“Your work ethic is admirable.”
“Of course it is,” Han Sooyoung mumbled. “If it wasn’t for this bastard, I wouldn’t have met you and the others.”
“Oh?”
“Why so apprehensive?” The writer pouted. “I-.”
She paused again. Biting her lip.
“I know you think of me as selfish. And I am.”
The sun was now setting in the hospital room, the light illuminating the sleeping man’s face. His IV drops reflecting a myriad of light into the room.
“I love kim dokja, I really do.”
“I didn’t doubt that,” Yoo Sangah mused. “After all you’re doing this for him are you not?”
“No, it’s not… it’s not all for him.” Han Sooyoung looked at yoo sangah. “During those years when I was writing the novel, do you want to know what went through my mind?”
Yoo Sangah knew the story, han Sooyoung met Kim dokja in the hospital when they were both young. The writer knew she had to save the reader so she wrote a saga spanning 3000 chapters for him.
“When I saw him laying there, the first thing that appeared in my mind was. If he dies… if he dies, how would I have met you, how would I have met Heewon-ssi, the kids, that stupid regressor, Hyusung-ssi.”
“If the reader died, how would the writer's world come to be? how would I have known a family as wonderful as the one I had during the apocalypse?”
“I didn’t want there to ever be a world where I was lonely, Kim Dokja was the key for that.”
“And, during the years where I wasted away, trying to keep Kim Dokja alive, sacrificing my body’s sleep. I don’t regret it, not one bit but I found myself missing you.”
Yoo Sangah looked away, embarrassed. “I-, i don’t know what to say.”
“Have you ever realised how similar you and Yoo Junghyuk are?”
Yoo Sangahs brows furrowed a bit. She didn’t know why but she felt a bit offended. She was nothing like Yoo Junghyuk, she knew responsibility, she had never suddenly left the company to get stronger by herself.
“What? I’m not like him.”
Han Sooyoung chuckled a bit. “No of course you arent, but, a lot of what I wrote into Yoo Junghyuk, it was inspired by you.”
“You're the ideal woman, and Yoo Junghyuk is the ideal man. You're both devoted to the people you love, you’re both impossibly charismatic.”
“You’re both the ideal protagonists.”
Yoo Sangah stuttered a bit.
“And that’s why, Kim Dokja felt so strongly about you when you two met for the first time.”
Using Yoo Sangah as the baseline for the ideal protagonist. She didn’t know what to say.
“But why me? Heewon-sai is much cooler than me, I'm just a regular office worker.”
“Because you understood me, we both understand each other.”
Han Sooyoung went on typing. “And I wanted to make sure that in every timeline, I was always going to be bound to meet you. To meet someone who understands me so well.”
”I love you, yoo sangah.”
This was such an insane declaration of love that Yoo Sangah felt a bit dizzy.
She went over to sit on the bed, trying to collect her thoughts. Kim Dokja looked as serene as ever. Eyes closed, oblivious to the conversation going on. Yoo Sangah sighed, wishing she could discuss Kim Dokja, to confide in him about this. But Yoo Sangah already knew what Kim dokja thought of them together.
They make a really good pair.
She resolved herself. The twilight was startling to settle in, lighting up han sooyoungs impossibly delicate lashes.
“Should I treat you to dinner?”
“Is that all you have to say?”
Yoo Sangah got up and closed the writers laptop. She leaned in close, close enough to feel her breath on her lips. Han Sooyoung close her eyes and Yoo Sangah connected their lips for a brief moment before pulling back. She smiled.
“I love you too, my dear writer.”