Chapter Text
Kim Dokja wakes up to the sound of raindrops tapping against the window. He doesn’t open his eyes right away. He does not need to. He already knows what time it is. His body has already learned the schedule.
7:10 a.m.
Joonghyuk moves with the same restrained precision he always has. Fabric shifts. A hanger clicks softly against metal. The closet door sighs open and closed. Every sound is careful, contained, as if even noise should not take up more space than necessary. Joonghyuk has always been like this. precise, consistent, impossible to interrupt. Even now, when everything else between them feels off, his routine hasn’t changed.
Joonghyuk pulls on the black hoodie.
Dokja knows without looking. The sleeves are loose, the hem stretched just enough to show it has been worn by someone smaller, someone who kept tugging it over their hands. They argued about it once. Half-hearted, barely an argument at all.
“You stretch it out,” Joonghyuk had said, annoyed but not really angry.
“You never wear it anyway,” Dokja replied, already wearing it.
Joonghyuk did not ask for it back. He simply stopped reaching for it, like giving something up quietly made it less of a loss.
The smell of fabric softener drifts across the bed, sharp and unfamiliar. Joonghyuk switched brands weeks ago. Dokja noticed immediately. He never mentioned it. There are many things he notices and never mentions now.
Joonghyuk pauses at the door.
This pause always feels heavier than it should. Dokja waits, suspended in it, wondering whether he is about to be acknowledged or passed over entirely.
“Dokja.”
He keeps his eyes closed. “Yeah?”
“I’ll be late.”
Late has become a shape more than a word. Late dinners. Late replies. Late nights that stretch into early mornings where Joonghyuk does not come home at all.
“Okay.”
Dokja does not ask how late. He stopped asking when the answers became vague, and then stopped coming altogether.
Keys jingle. The lock turns. The door closes with a sound that is too final for something so routine.
That is all.
No take care. No text me. No kiss pressed to Dokja’s forehead like there used to be, back when leaving felt temporary instead of rehearsed.
Dokja opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. A thin crack runs from the corner of the room to the light fixture. He has traced its shape so many times it feels like something he could redraw from memory.
'Today again,' he thinks. 'You leave me again.'
It feels childish to think that way. Joonghyuk still lives here. His shoes remain lined neatly by the door, toes aligned with quiet discipline. His toothbrush sits in the bathroom, though it is often dry now. He still eats the food Dokja cooks. Still leaves his socks on the chair like it’s his personal storage space.
Dokja asked him once, half-joking, “Is that chair just yours now?”
Joonghyuk glanced at it. “I’ll move them later.”
Later never came.
And yet.
Dokja rolls onto Joonghyuk’s side of the bed. It is already cold. Joonghyuk started waking earlier months ago, claiming he liked the quiet. Dokja pretended not to hear the distance hidden inside that excuse.
He presses his face into the pillow. It smells faintly like soap, rain, and something metallic he has never been able to name.
He told himself this would be easier by now.
That he’d adjusted to the silences. To the way conversations die halfway through. To eating dinner alone while reheating Joonghyuk’s portion just in case. To pretending he doesn’t notice when Joonghyuk doesn’t look at him while talking. Speaking less and less—these were all things people learned to do when they loved someone maturely.
But his body betrays him every morning, counting seconds after the door closes, keeping track of losses his mind refuses to name.
Outside, cars hiss against wet pavement. Someone laughs. The city continues without pause.
Nothing’s changed.
And that, somehow, hurts more than if something had.
The convenience store downstairs smells like a unique blend of manufactured scents mixed with real food odors cleaning products, and sometimes the less pleasant hint of garbage or stale air, creating a distinctive, often artificial yet comforting aroma designed to entice purchases by evoking feelings of freshness, cleanliness, or hunger.
Dokja stands in line wearing Joonghyuk’s hoodie, sleeves pulled over his hands. It’s a little too big on him. Joonghyuk used to complain about it, tugging the cuffs back up Dokja’s wrists and telling him to stop stretching it out.
Dokja still wears it anyway.
The cashier greets him with a bored nod. They’ve seen him enough times to recognize his face, but not enough to remember his name. Dokja used to come down here with Joonghyuk late at night, arguing over which ramen was better, joking about how neither of them should be drinking coffee that late.
Now he comes alone.
His phone buzzes. A group chat message from Han Sooyoung.
HSY : Squid! u alive or finally decomposed?
KDJ : wow touching concern
HSY : answer the damn question
KDJ : unfortunately yes
He almost types something else. Something honest. But deletes it.
He buys Joonghyuk’s preferred coffee out of habit and drinks it despite the bitterness. He has learned how to swallow things he does not like without making a face.
On the subway, the air smells like damp coats and metal. Dokja grabs a pole and sways slightly with the movement of the train.
Across from him, a couple argues under their breath. Not loudly. Just sharp little comments, the kind that sound familiar.
“You said you’d text!”
“I was busy. Don't you understand?!”
Dokja looks away.
He watches his reflection in the window instead. His hair’s a mess. There’s a faint crease between his brows he doesn’t remember having before.
He looks… fine.
That’s the worst part.
No red eyes. No shaking hands. No visible signs that something’s wrong. If Joonghyuk saw him like this, he’d probably think Dokja was handling it well.
Dokja really wants to cry. Just once. On the train. In the station bathroom. Anywhere that would make it better.
But his eyes stay dry.
'Why is even crying hard?' he wonders.
At the office near Hongdae, the heater’s broken again. Someone complains about it. Someone else jokes about bringing a blanket tomorrow. Dokja laughs at the right moment, a little too late.
He sits at his desk and opens his laptop. A crumpled sticky note still clings to the corner of the screen.
Remember to eat lunch today, Joonghyuk’s handwriting says.
Dokja stares at it longer than necessary.
Joonghyuk used to check on him like that. Remind him to eat, to sleep, to stop working so late. Somewhere along the way, those reminders turned into silence instead.
At lunch, his coworkers talk about weekend plans. Hiking trips. Dating mishaps. Someone hums a breakup song under their breath while scrolling through their phone.
Dokja doesn’t recognize it.
He tries listening closely, wondering if maybe this is the kind of song he needs.
It isn’t.
There’s no song for this kind of breakup. Nothing that lets you say -I’m hurting so badly I feel sick- without sounding dramatic or fake.
Nothing about forgetting to text back. About eating alone. About wearing someone else’s hoodie because it still smells like them.
These days, breakups are supposed to be clean. Mutual. Mature.
You talk it out. You wish each other well. You move on.
This doesn’t feel like any of that.
This feels like something that’s still happening, slowly, while everyone else expects it to be over already.
By evening, the cold has settled into Dokja’s bones.
He walks instead of taking the subway, letting the city pass him slowly. Neon signs flicker to life one by one, reflected on wet pavement. The smell of fried chicken and tteokbokki drifts out from street stalls. Someone yells an order. Someone laughs too loudly.
A couple walks by arguing quietly. The kind of argument that’s been going on for weeks in different forms.
“You always say that,” the woman mutters.
“And you always assume the worst of all,” the man replies.
Dokja slows without meaning to.
People cry, joke, rush past him. A group of college students bump into him and apologize too fast, already distracted by their own conversation.
He nods automatically and keeps walking.
He feels detached from all of it, like he is observing life through thick glass.
He thinks of small things.
Joonghyuk eating dinner standing up because he says he doesn’t have time to sit. Checking his phone while Dokja talks, then asking him to repeat himself.
Saying, “Can we talk about this later?” and never picking a later.
None of it big enough to fight over.
All of it heavy enough to add up.
The café in Myeongdong is warm and smells like espresso and vanilla syrup. Nirvana Moebius is already there, sitting near the window, long beige coat draped neatly over the chair. They look irritatingly calm, like someone who slept eight full hours and drank enough water.
“You look bad,” Nirvana says the moment Dokja sits down.
“Nice to see you too,” Dokja replies, shrugging out of his hoodie.
Nirvana studies him for a second longer than necessary. “You’re thinner.”
“I’m busy.”
“Mm.” Nirvana stirs their drink slowly. “Are you still stuck with that jerk who doesn’t respect your feelings?”
Dokja winces. “He’s not—”
“Don't defend him,” Nirvana interrupts. “Still not breaking up, and pretending you’re not hurt?”
Dokja shrugs, shoulders lifting and dropping like it doesn’t matter. “I can’t even try to pretend to stop it.”
Nirvana looks at him. Really looks.
“Why?”
Dokja opens his mouth. Closes it. He stares at the table instead, at a faint coffee ring someone didn’t wipe properly.
“I thought…” He exhales. “If I didn’t cling, he wouldn’t avoid me. Wouldn’t feel burdened.”
Nirvana’s eyebrow lifts. “Dokja.”
He keeps going, words spilling now. “Joonghyuk hates being cornered. He hates feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions. If I made it look easy, acted fine, maybe he’d stay.”
There’s a pause.
“You’re a couple,” Nirvana says finally. “How can lovers live their own lives without each other? That’s not what it means to be together.”
Dokja presses his lips together.
Because the truth is—Joonghyuk can.
Joonghyuk is good at compartmentalizing. Good at moving forward. Good at living like nothing’s wrong as long as no one makes it obvious.
Dokja learned, slowly, to stop asking for things.
Stop texting first.
Stop waiting up.
Stop saying I miss you when Joonghyuk didn’t say it back.
He considered it a sign of maturity. Giving space. Being understanding.
Now it just feels like he disappeared on his own.
Dokja doesn’t answer.
He can’t.
The coffee goes untouched between them, steam curling upward and fading into nothing.
Joonghyuk comes home close to midnight.
The lock clicks softly, like he’s trying not to wake anyone. Dokja hears it anyway. He always does.
Joonghyuk smells like someone else’s perfume mixed with cigarette smoke. Not strong enough to accuse, just strong enough to notice. Dokja sits up a little straighter on the couch, instinctively, before forcing himself to relax again.
“You ate?” Joonghyuk asks, toeing off his shoes and lining them up neatly by the door.
That neatness used to be comforting. Now it just feels distant.
“Yeah,” Dokja says.
That’s a lie. But it’s easier than explaining why the takeout is still untouched in the fridge. Easier than admitting he waited. Again.
Joonghyuk hums, already distracted, scrolling through his phone as he shrugs out of his jacket. He tosses it over the chair—Dokja’s chair—and Dokja doesn’t say anything, even though he’s been meaning to ask him to stop doing that for weeks.
They sit on opposite ends of the couch. There’s a gap between them that didn’t used to exist. Not a physical one because they could reach each other easily, but something else. Something heavier.
The TV plays some late-night variety show. Laugh tracks burst out at awkward intervals. Neither of them laughs.
Joonghyuk checks his phone again.
“Work was rough,” he says, like it explains everything.
“Yeah?” Dokja didn't have time to catch the meaning of the words.
“Mhm.” And Joonghyuk had no intention of repeating or explaining further.
That was the only conversation that took place before silence and drowsiness began to envelop them.
Dokja remembers when they used to talk about everything. Small things. Big things. Stupid things that didn’t matter. Now every sentence feels like it needs a reason to exist.
He remembers the first time he noticed it changing.
Joonghyuk forgetting to text when he was running late. Saying I’ll call you and then not doing it. He often sighs when Dokja asked if they could spend the weekend together.
None of it big enough to confront.
But all of it enough to hurt.
Dokja glances at the kitchen clock.
12:17 a.m.
He used to stay up this late just to wait for Joonghyuk. Now he doesn’t know why he still does.
“Did you—” Dokja starts.
Joonghyuk looks up. “Hm?”
There it is. The opening. The moment.
Stay.
Talk to me.
I’m not okay.
Dokja swallows. “Did you… have fun today?”
Joonghyuk blinks, then nods. “Not really. We're pretty busy at the office.”
He goes back to his phone.
That’s it.
Dokja leans back into the couch. His chest feels tight, but not in a way that’s urgent enough to justify saying anything. That’s the problem. Nothing ever feels urgent. Just persistent.
He thinks, If I’d said something earlier, would this be different?
If he’d complained the first time Joonghyuk didn’t come home.
If he’d admitted how lonely it felt to eat alone.
If he’d stopped pretending he was okay with being second to everything else.
He didn’t.
He told himself this was what trust looked like. This was what being understanding looked like.
Now Joonghyuk feels farther away even when he’s sitting right there, close enough that Dokja can see the crease between his brows, close enough to reach out and touch him.
This kind of breakup doesn’t exist in songs.
It’s too quiet. Too slow. Too easy to ignore until it’s already happened.
Dokja stares at the TV, at faces laughing about things that don’t matter, and wonders—
If he let go earlier, just a little, would Joonghyuk have noticed?
Or would he have walked away without ever looking back at him at all?
Joonghyuk used to say it casually, like it wasn’t a complaint.
“You never go out,” he’d say, glancing up from his phone. “You don’t talk to anyone but me.”
Dokja would laugh it off. “I talk to people at work. Also to Sooyoung and Nirvana.”
“That doesn’t count,” Joonghyuk replied. “You need your own life.”
At the time, Dokja didn’t think much of it. He liked staying in. He liked quiet. He liked knowing Joonghyuk would come home and fill the space.
Now, sitting alone in a café surrounded by strangers, those words replay in his head.
So he tries.
He accepts coffee invitations from coworkers he barely knows. Sits through conversations about hiking trails and weekend plans, nodding in the right places. He goes to a small novel reader discussion in Hongdae, listening to people passionately debate characters and endings.
He even talks.
A little.
“What do you do?”
“What kind of books do you like?”
Safe questions. Neutral answers. Nothing that exposes anything more private.
People smile at him. Some even seem interested.
Dokja can’t relax.
He can’t joke the way he used to like throwing out dumb comments just to see Joonghyuk roll his eyes. He can’t ramble about things that don’t matter, trusting the other person to stay anyway.
He measures every word. Keeps everything light.
With Joonghyuk, he never did that.
With Joonghyuk, he talked without thinking. Complained freely. Admitted insecurities he didn’t even realize he had. He was open without trying.
Now he doesn’t know how to be that person again.
He goes on several gatherings. Nothing bad happens. Nothing good happens either. Everyone is kind. Reasonable. Normal.
No one makes his chest tighten in that familiar, stupid way.
No one feels like home.
One night, he sits with Nirvana Moebius at a quiet bar. The music is low, the lights warm. Nirvana watches him over the rim of their glass.
“You okay?” Nirvana says.
“I am.”
“You should try to open up opportunities for new people,” he say. Not unkindly.
Dokja stares into his drink. “There’s no one else for me,” he admits quietly. “I can’t find anyone who fills this space.”
“There are many people out there,” Nirvana replies.
“I know.” Dokja exhales. “I just don’t think I can be… like that again.”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but Nirvana understands.
Dokja throws himself into work after that. Stays late. Takes on extra projects. Walks home instead of riding the subway until his legs ache and his thoughts blur.
He tells himself that if he exhausts everything else, the feeling will fade.
It doesn’t.
Nothing hurts as much as hearing one thing.
“Yoo Joonghyuk.”
Someone says it casually at work, in passing, maybe talking about someone else with the same name.
Dokja’s chest tightens instantly. His breath catches like his body reacts before his mind can stop it.
That’s all it takes.
A name that refuses to disappear. A name carved too deeply to be overwritten, even now.
Especially now.
Because it’s the same name that made him feel safe.
And the same one that left the deepest wound behind.
Joonghyuk does not come home one night.
At first, Dokja does not notice. The television murmurs softly in the background, volume turned low out of habit. He scrolls through his phone without really reading anything, eyes drifting to the door every few minutes, his body responding to a pattern his mind no longer questions.
By midnight, the apartment feels wrong. Unsettled. Like something has been shifted slightly out of place and left there.
He checks his phone.
Nothing.
No running late.
No crashing somewhere else.
No sorry.
Then again. He tells himself he is not waiting. He is only sitting because there is nowhere else he needs to be.
One o’clock passes. Then two.
The city outside quiets into something thinner, the rain fading into a damp hush. Joonghyuk’s jacket hangs over the chair, carrying the faint smell of cigarette smoke and something unfamiliar sweet, clinging. Dokja notices it and looks away.
When the message finally comes, the sky is already beginning to lighten.
YJH: We should talk.
Dokja stares at the message for a long time.
We should talk—the sentence people use when everything’s already decided.
Joonghyuk comes home around eight.
He looks tired. Not guilty. Just worn down. His hair is still damp from the rain. He slips off his shoes and lines them up neatly by the door, muscle memory intact even now.
They stand there for a moment, facing each other across the living room, neither of them closing the distance.
“Did you sleep?” Joonghyuk asks. His eyes narrowed sharply.
Dokja lets out a soft, humorless laugh. “You really want to start there?”
Joonghyuk exhales and rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t plan to stay out.”
“You never do.”
The silence stretches, heavy and familiar. Dokja gestures weakly toward the couch.
“Sit.”
Joonghyuk hesitates before sitting on the edge, posture tense, like he might leave again at any moment.
That hurts more than anything else.
“I’m tired,” Joonghyuk says eventually. “Of feeling like I’m doing something wrong all the time.”
Dokja’s fingers curl into the fabric of his sleeves. “I never said you were.”
“You don’t have to,” Joonghyuk replies. “I can feel it.”
There it is. The thing Dokja’s been swallowing for months.
Something in Dokja finally gives.
“I stopped saying things because you looked annoyed every time I did,” he says quietly. “I stopped asking because you kept saying you were busy. I thought if I didn’t make it hard for you—if I made myself smaller—you’d stay.”
Joonghyuk looks at him then. Really looks.
“That’s the problem,” he says. “I don’t want to be someone you shrink yourself for.”
Dokja swallows. “Then why did you keep letting me?”
Joonghyuk has no answer ready. When he finally speaks, his voice is softer.
“I didn’t notice,” he admits. “Or maybe I did, and I didn’t know how to fix it.”
“So you just… left?”
“I didn’t leave,” Joonghyuk snaps, then softens. “Not all at once.”
Dokja nods. “I know.”
That is the cruelest part. They both know.
“I care about you,” Joonghyuk says. “But I don’t think I can give you what you need.”
Dokja exhales slowly. “I never asked for much.”
“I know,” Joonghyuk replies. “And that’s why it feels worse.”
They sit there, surrounded by all the things they share—the couch, the coffee table, the quiet routines that once meant home.
There’s no yelling.
No tears.
Just exhaustion.
Joonghyuk stands. “I’ll pack some things.”
Dokja does not stop him.
He watches as Joonghyuk moves through the apartment, pulling clothes from drawers, pausing occasionally like he’s remembering something and deciding to leave it behind. The hoodie stays. The sticky note on Dokja’s laptop stays.
When Joonghyuk reaches the door, he hesitates.
“Take care of yourself,” he says.
Dokja nods. “You too.”
The door closes.
And that’s it.
No dramatic goodbye. No final kiss. No song swelling in the background to tell Dokja how to feel.
Just this.
Just the quiet click of a lock, and the understanding that something has ended without ever fully beginning again.
Quietly, alone, his heart fractured without mercy, with no idea how to stop loving someone who’s already gone.
END