Work Text:
It's the law of the universe. What goes up goes down. At least, that was how it was in Dokja's life.
He should've known. It was by miracle that he survived that fall from his school window. A further abnormality that was when he discovered that novel, Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse.
Sitting under the staircase, phone in hand, eyes locked on the screen—moments before his world turned upside down.
His best friend, his only friend, gone. Left. A companion in exchange for a companion. He got Yoo Joonghyuk and the world took away Ryu Gunwoo.
They were a fitting pair weren’t they? An orphan—emotionless, they whispered behind his back; talented, others said in envy; caring, Dokja murmured in his heart—and a murderer’s son.
Kim Dokja isn't one to mourn. Not when his abusive dad died, not when his mom got put in jail, not even when that book—the one that ruined his life—got published. But now, when the world takes away not only Gunwoo, but his parents too, the ones that were so good to him, even when they found out about his family situation—opened their arms to him even. Kim Dokja, probably for the first time in his 15 years of life, mourns.
Ten years of friendship exchanged for thirteen years of reading TWSA. In the end, the universe really hated him didn’t it? Disaster followed him even to the end of the world.
Maybe he finally came into terms with it, the fact that the world would only continue to take, and take, and take from him until the day he dies. So he did what anyone else would’ve done. His companions’ lives were worth more than his anyway.
Even now, thirteen years later, at the brink of death at the hands of his company and his precious protagonist, the reader thinks back to that boy—the boy who protected him from the bullies, who’s parents welcomed and cared for him like a second son, who was his closest friend for a decade, who left, left, taken by fate itself.
Fate will allow no more interactions between the two. The reader paid the price for its savior. A friend in exchange for a companion in the form of a three thousand chapter long novel. Just like intersecting lines. Meeting once and never crossing paths again.
To the very end, Dokja was right. Maybe not fully, but he understood. For the universe would never give back what it took. He knew that at the bottom of his heart. In fact, hadn’t he himself known that for years? Hadn’t he spent days, weeks, months, in search of that friend, only to always end up on a dead end.
Ryu Gunwoo would’ve never known. He established himself in Dokja’s life. Even after years and years of separation, he still haunted the reader’s narrative.
However, fate was cruel, wasn’t it?
Perhaps, in another universe where fate wasn’t so cruel to them, they could have a happy ending. A universe where there was no Ryu Gunwoo, but where there was a Park Moondae.