Chapter Text
He sometimes didn’t understand Yoo Joonghyuk. Out of nowhere, he fell from his graces and only Lee Hyunsung’s deduction managed to make him understand, and even then, he still didn’t.
Romance? From where? Not to mention, with Yoo Sangah-ssi? Did Yoo Joonghyuk think that highly of him? Because there was no way in the world he was in the same league as her or even the one below her.
For Kim Dokja, it would have been more understandable if Yoo Joonghyuk had a crush on Yoo Sangah-ssi than to believe she and him were in some kind of relationship or romance-induced partnership.
Honestly, can’t Yoo Joonghyuk see that there was nothing romantic between the two of them?
Kim Dokja stepped next to the regressor and watched the five grooves in the crystal, knowing what they had to do.
“You came.” Yoo Joonghyuk said, mild as milk.
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
“It doesn’t matter if you sit this one out.” Kim Dokja turned his head so fast towards the other man at the unexpected words that he almost felt his neck snap, but he did not look back at him. “You have a woman you love.”
“…What?”
“It’ll be hard.” He just stared at Yoo Joonghyuk and said nothing. “It could be the last time.”
He really didn’t understand Yoo Joonghyuk. But instead of keeping quiet, he managed to pull the words out of his mouth like he was pulling his own teeth out.
“Yoo Sangah-ssi is nothing more than a friend, I could never see her that way.” At his words, the regressor turned his head slowly to watch his face.
[The character ‘Yoo Joonghyuk’ has used the ‘Lie Detection’ skill.]
[The character ‘Yoo Joonghyuk’ has confirmed that your words are true.]
He almost rolled his eyes when the messages appeared in his peripheral vision.
Did this sunfish really think…?
“Last night?” Even though Joonghyuk asked, it sounded more like a demand than a question.
He didn’t want to answer in the open with so many incarnations and constellations watching, so instead he pulled ‘Midday Tryst’ and sent a message to the regressor.
—I was trying to contact ‘The God of Wine and Ecstasy’.
—I needed to go to the Underworld.
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him for a long time, but instead of speaking, a message appeared in front of his face.
—Shin Yoosung’s soul?
He didn’t even hesitate before responding.
—Yes.
He didn’t even notice how tense the regressor’s shoulders were until they minutely relaxed.
—You got her?
—Not yet, I have to do something for Persephone.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression soured, and his eyebrow twitched, but he nodded, he called both teams to them and Kim Dokja had began arranging them when a Dokkaebi interrupted.
[Wait a minute. I’m really sorry, but I have an emergency announcement.]
From there, it all went to shit.
Kim Dokja managed to pull the protection symbols with Yoo Joonghyuk and Nº406, and instead of forming four different portals, only one opened.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t going like in the novel.
When all of them stepped inside at the same time, they all went flying everywhere. He tried grabbing at Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung at his sides, but the dizziness was too much for him and the kids, and as soon as he lost their hands, he just crashed into someone’s chest the next moment.
Not even a second later, he crashed to the hard floor with the unknown person below him, cushioning his fall. He felt dizzy enough not to react immediately, but he was forced to when a large hand pushed him to the ground.
His breath escaped his lungs, and he raised his head in indignation, an insult already on the tip of his tongue when he saw the person beside him.
Yoo Joonghyuk.
He had fallen into Yoo Joonghyuk.
He wanted to die.
The regressor was glaring at him with clear murderous intent, so Kim Dokja smiled sardonically and rose to his feet. Yoo Joonghyuk quickly followed.
They were standing at the beginning of a forest with young-looking trees and alarmingly close to the drop of a long hill that ended in a precipice.
He was going to say that they should start the mission when he felt something around his ankles. When he looked down he saw small people with some kind of rope and before he could react, the small people pulled the rope around his ankles and too late he realized the rope was not only around his ankles but around Yoo Joonghyuk’s too, with sudden mortification he found himself pulled chest to chest with the regressor and falling backwards into the drop of the hill behind him.
Both of them fell into a mess of limbs and coats as they tried to stop their descent to the bottom of the hill, but they only managed to somehow knock their weapons out of their respective holsters, barely escaping injuring themselves in the process.
After a solid minute of rolling down hill like a bad pun in a drama—since the grass was too slippery for any type of proper hold—they finally managed to slow their descent to a stop, too close to the precipice for Kim Dokja’s comfort, but at least they managed to stop.
Kim Dokja somehow ended up above Yoo Joonghyuk, again, so he naturally raised to his knees, one hand was on the regressor’s thigh to use as leverage to try and sit up while his ankles were very much still tightly roped together, his other free hand was clutching his forehead, he had bumped his head too many times against the floor and into some rocks making him develop a worst headache than losing his kids was.
He was going to say something when he finally opened his eyes and saw the surprised—surprised?!—expression of Yoo Joonghyuk.
He had risen into his forearms and was watching Kim Dokja with a mix of mortification and surprise. His eyebrows were raised minutely, his eyes opened wide with his pupils blown, and his mouth was slightly opened with an unsaid word.
Probably his name, he thought.
Kim Dokja thought he was hallucinating from hitting his head one too many times against the floor when he finally spied the slight red in the regressor’s ears.
At the same time as Yoo Joonghyuk, he slowly lowered his gaze down to where his hand was, supposedly, resting on the man’s thigh, only to find it in the regressor’s crotch.
Kim Dokja, for a solid second, did not move, he didn’t breathe, he didn’t blink, he didn’t even think. He was too shocked to react properly, but soon his thoughts came crashing back to him, and he quickly snatched his hand back, letting both hands up in a surrender gesture with a mortified expression.
That lasted very little before he was once again falling backwards, making him flail his arms around to grab something of purchase that did not exist. His back hit the ground hard, forcing his air leave his lungs, and his head hit the ground again. Not even a second later, Yoo Joonghyuk followed suit and managed to put his hands beside Kim Dokja’s head to not crash directly into him, his ankles hurt from the too-tight rope.
Kim Dokja barely was able to wince before the ground bellow his head was crumbling and falling down the precipice, he opened his eyes in panic and managed to pull both Yoo Joonghyuk and him to their side and rolling a few times to get away from the ledge, it was barely enough since a solid meter of ground crumbled and fell into the bottom of the precipice since it couldn’t handle both of their sudden weight.
He moved out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s body and dropped beside him in an awkward position, their ankles too tied up together to move properly on his side, having to lie slightly in his stomach as a result.
They stayed in silence for a while before, surprisingly, Yoo Joonghyuk broke the silence first.
“Not a word.”
Kim Dokja wasn’t sure if he was referring to being tied up together or the misplacement of his hand before, but he did not ask and only hummed in response.
“We need to grab our weapons before the small people or someone else attacks us.”
Yoo Joonghyuk sat up with the help of his forearms and grabbed the ropes to try and pull the rope hard enough to snap it. Instead, Kim Dokja felt the rope tighten painfully to the point it began stopping his circulation. He gasped in pain and slapped the regressor’s back and shoulder several times.
“Stop! Stop! Joonghyuk-ah! Stop! It fucking hurts, you goddamn sunfish!”
Yoo Joonghyuk stopped and turned slightly to stare at Kim Dokja with an unreadable expression.
“What did you call me?”
Kim Dokja sagged in relief to the ground at being finally free from the pain that he barely paid attention to the question until it sank in.
His whole body tensed, and he turned his head to give the regressor a sheepish smile.
“Ah… Joonghyuk-ah?”
The only response was a murderous glare, but the regressor, instead of saying something else, just turned around.
“We have to stand. I don’t think we can roll our way to our weapons.” Kim Dokja said before they could slip into another uncomfortable silence.
“Use the Way of the Wind.”
“I can’t, if I use it now, I won’t be able to use it if we get attacked, it doesn’t have a cool down, but I don’t have that much mana.”
Yoo Joonghyuk turned his head towards him with a scowl.
“Then level it up.” He gritted out.
Kim Dokja rolled his eyes this time and just sighed, pulling himself to his knees, kind of straddling one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s legs because of their tied-up position.
“I can’t, I need the coins for something else.”
Kim Dokja didn’t need to read Yoo Joonghyuk’s mind to know the regressor was calling him stingy with his coins.
He looked around, and his gaze finally landed on a nearby tree.
“Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk, if we roll to that tree, we can use it to stand, and then we can shuffle our way to the closest sword.”
He saw the regressor’s eyebrow twitch, but he nodded nonetheless. They “hugged” each other and awkwardly rolled their way towards the medium-sized tree closest to them, and with way too much grumbling and pinching, they managed to stand upright.
He has never been more grateful to not be in the presence of the constellations in this moment, like he was now. He could already imagine Uriel throwing a hundred fits for their predicament if she could see it.
“Now what.” Yoo Joonghyuk demanded with a vicious scowl on his handsome face. Seriously, this guy was going to get wrinkles at this point. Kim Dokja thought, letting his gaze wander around.
“Since you loosen up the rope a little, we can walk to your sword, which is the closest or, at least, I think it is your sword.”
Kim Dokja hesitantly put his hands on the back of Yoo Joonghyuk’s coat, grabbing the belt of the coat as a handle.
“Is… Is this okay?” Kim Dokja asked hesitantly.
The regressor grunted as an answer, and Kim Dokja felt it in his chest more than heard it. He gulped saliva and tensed when Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands grabbed one of his shoulders and the other positioned itself at his waist, grabbing the belt from his coat too.
Kim Dokja felt heat creep up his neck, but he began moving in an awkward kind of shuffle towards the closest sword with Yoo Joonghyuk.
He would be lying if he said that the position and predicament he was stuck in wasn’t flustering him, but because he was a liar, he told himself it was because the force proximity was making him anxious, especially with a man who wanted to kill him.
He tried not to think about all the parts of their bodies rubbing together and certainly he didn’t think of how he had Yoo Joonghyuk’s face barely a few centimeters from his own even when he put his face specifically more in the man’s shoulder than face to face, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand to watch Yoo Joonghyuk’s face from so close, not without his knees getting weak.
Nope, he wasn’t thinking about that, ever.
Finally, after a few minutes, they managed to get to the first sword in the middle of the hill, and it indeed was Yoo Joonghyuk’s.
“It’s yours,” Kim Dokja said, nudging the regressor in the shoulder with his own. “Pick it up.”
He got a glare in response.
“I can’t, if I crouch down, we’ll fall again.”
Kim Dokja frowned at that.
“Then how are you going to pick the sword and cut the rope?”
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him for a few tense seconds before speaking again.
“You’ll do it.”
…
Huh?
“Pardon?”
“You’ll do it. You are slim, and I can keep you from falling with a hand on your shoulder.”
“I could do the same!”
“Even with your strength leveled up with coins, we would surely fall again if I lose my balance.”
“Then don’t lose it!”
“Kim Dokja.” The regressor growled, and he knew then and there that there was no way he could convince the man from going down himself instead of him.
He ignored how the growled traveled down his spine with a tingle and instead he huffed and grabbing the coat belt with more strength than necessary as he lowered himself down into a crouch, having to move one of his hands further down into the side of Yoo Joonghyuk’s thigh grabbing the harness there, even with the regressor’s hand on his shoulder he didn’t trust him not to let them fall again.
He, intentionally, moved his head to the side so as not stare at the man’s crotch when he lowered himself. When he was confident he wasn’t going to wobble precariously, he bent to the side, managing to catch the sword with his fingertips bring it to him slowly until he could grab it and cut their ropes.
They were harder than normal ropes, but soon after, they snapped, and finally set them free.
Kim Dokja thought that the moment they were free, the regressor would push him off of him and make him roll into the precipice, but surprisingly, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t do that, he waited until Kim Dokja cut all the ropes pulling them off of them, sitting safely in the grass before stepping away from him. And even instead of just ripping the sword from his hands, he waited until he offered it for the other man to take.
Kim Dokja sat on the grass, rubbing his ankles with a balm that he had in his inventory to heal the rope burns.
“Did you want some?” He asked the regressor, he doubted he needed it, but he offered nonetheless to be polite and in hopes to win some brownie points back after the whole fiasco that for once—for once!!—wasn’t his fault.
“No.”
Kim Dokja looked up and noticed that the rope, instead of being tied around the regressor’s ankles, as it was for Kim Dokja, was tied around the man’s boots. He felt stupid for offering the balm, but at least he was being polite and generous, that should make him a more reliable companion in Yoo Joonghyuk’s mind, right? Right.
“Did you get the scenario?”
“Yes, I got it when we were rolling downhill, Yoo Joonghyuk.” He replied dryly, barely able to control the roll of his eyes.
He got a glare in return.
“We should regroup with the others as soon as possible.”
“Why? Aren’t you going to let your group with me and just take Lee Seolhwa to do hidden scenarios?” He didn’t mean anything by that, but even by his own ears, he sounded bitter. He wasn’t jealous of the female lead, not at all. Why would you think that?
Yoo Joonghyuk turned to face him—when did he turn away?—and stared at him.
“Do you resent that?”
Kim Dokja rolled his eyes and stood from the grass.
“I don’t, but I will just accompany them to the little people’s castle. I have my own plans too.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him for a few seconds before turning away and walking up the hill. Kim Dokja held the insults inside his mouth and just followed the regressor until he found his sword, putting it back in his scabbard.
Yoo Joonghyuk surprisingly waited for him at the start of the forest. When he stepped in front of him, the regressor stared at him some more. Honestly, how much can this guy stare?
“Survive, Kim Dokja, you still owe me.”
He gulped at the slightly veiled threat but nodded.
“Don’t give up, Yoo Joonghyuk, I still have to show you the end.”
They stared at each other for a second too long before turning to the forest. There were things to be done.