Chapter Text
TW: Suicidal Thoughts, Referenced Suicide Attempt
“I have finally fanged you. The toxins have now gone in your bloodstream, and soon, they will spread and paralyse you. You won’t be able to move a limb or even a finger, and you’ll start suffocating. Your blood will lose all its clotting properties, and you’ll bleed internally. You’ll choke on the blood and -”
“Are you sure I… I am supposed to b… be the antagonist, wh- when you are monologuing”, the words were interrupted by a fit of coughing, “and… explaining all your evil intentions out loud like a… badly written villain?”
The assailant was caught off-guard by his words, but then started laughing loudly. “Even in death, you are interesting, Kim Dokja. Our rivalry was legendary, and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. But you marked yourself up for death the moment you dared to lay your eyes on Lee Seolhwa. Are you remorseful now?”
“Remorseful? Hah, I’d spit in your face if I could. Why would I ever feel remorse for loving someone? Is… is it fair, that if I loved someone who… who you loved as well, you kill me in the end?”
“Don’t act innocent, Kim Dokja. You make my blood boil. You’re not naive. Do you not remember all your violent sabotages, the plans of trickery, and all your evil ambitions?”
“Evil ambitions? We were eighteen when our rivalry started. It was… was purely an… academic rivalry.”
“Can you truly look me in the eye and say you spoke the truth? You are capable of lying even in your dying moments? ….. Do you have any last words to say?”
“Will it matter, Yoo Junghyeok? Wasn’t fate decided since the day I, a gamma, crossed paths against a delta like you? Wasn’t this bound to happen? If I say what I really want to, would you listen?”
“I’m brutal, not heartless, Kim Dokja. If you truly have any grievances, just say them. I did respect you as an enemy.”
A teardrop slid down the dying man’s glassy eyes, and he took a deep breath and whispered, “I… I don’t want to die. I want to live…”
His breathing quickened, but his face looked the calmest it ever had in his life.
Suddenly, his breathing stopped, and his chest heaved up. His mouth parted, showcasing his fangs, and his head lolled to the side, and his chest suddenly fell.
Kim Dokja had died.
Yoo Junghyeok sighed and put his palm over Dokja’s eyes, closing them. He slowly picked his light body from his lap and set him on the ground, looking at his neck where two puncture marks from his fangs were left.
Giving one last glance to Kim Dokja, Yoo Junghyeok went away from there, ready to enter his own life as a different person.
Different person? Hah, more like murderer.
Kim Dokja kept his phone aside, and just placed an arm over his eyes, sighing.
He just listened to the ticking of the clock in his lightless apartment. He had been unable to pay his electricity bill on time, so his apartment was completely dark for the time being.
His life was currently shit.
Well, it kind of always had been, just this time, it was a more profound brand of shit.
He should have tried again, after his attempt at fifteen had failed. If he could have tried again and succeeded then, he wouldn’t have to suffer now.
Instead, he had found a webnovel.
He clearly remembered that day.
He was in the hospital, only his phone by his side. Others stared at him in pity, but he wanted none of that. Some tried to counsel him, but he wanted none of that.
What he really wanted was peace and to be left alone.
He had been the centre of attention for long enough, after his mother’s handwritten notes from the prison had gained worldwide traction.
He hadn’t really wanted to live. It was tiring. A life like his was tiring.
However, he had searched online for something like that. He didn’t remember exactly what he had typed into the search bar on a whim, but he did remember being overwhelmed by the amount of websites and helpline messages that had popped up, overwhelming him.
They all seemed to be like the people surrounding him. They seemed to want to save him, guide him.
But he knew, salvation for him would only come in the form of an end. These sites promised the opposite. Besides, he didn’t want to be saved.
He knew, he wasn’t worth saving.
He didn’t know what he had felt that day, a pricking sensation in his conscience, an intuition of sorts. He had scrolled down to the bottom of the page, something he rarely did while browsing normal things.
But he had scrolled down anyway. Past helpline numbers, past mental wellness websites, past psychological analysis forums.
And at the very bottom of the first page, he had seen it.
‘Three Ways to Survive in a Deltaverse’
The webnovel, TWSD for short, was new at the time he had discovered it. In fact, the first chapter was uploaded on the day of his attempt.
The premise of ‘Deltaverse’ - a vampire alternate universe inspired by ‘Omegaverse’ - had brought in a lot of curious readers at the beginning. He was one of those who read it.
The protagonist was a perfectionist Delta, the highest type of being in the Deltaverse hierarchy, Yoo Junghyeok. Even his name screamed of heroism.
It was a dark academia sort of story.
He had been lingering around the novel as a casual reader at the beginning, not very attached to it at first.
However, the author introduced the antagonist of the story, and he got hooked onto it.
The antagonist had the same name as him.
While all other readers rooted for the righteous Yoo Junghyeok and resented the evil Kim Dokja, Kim Dokja the reader rooted for the antagonist.
There was no deep reason to it. He had just wanted at least one Kim Dokja to live a good life.
He knew that being the antagonist, he’d be defeated in the end, but he wanted to live, if only to stay by the antagonist Kim Dokja’s side as long as they both were alive.
While the story had started as a dark academia, a lot of drama and cliche tropes had taken hold of it a few chapters later, and the toxicity in it was high. The chapters were also very detailed, way too much for its own good, as if it was not a novel, but an actual step-by-step instruction manual.
The chapters were very convoluted, and the timeline made zero sense, because flashbacks would be shown suddenly, or random exposition in the name of lore would be dropped, and there would be sudden large time skips, and it would be shown in later chapters as fillers, what did happen between the time skips.
All in all, the plot was twisted and tangled like a spider’s web, and extremely hard to follow.
Which was why almost every reader had dropped it by the fiftieth chapter.
In the end, Dokja was the only remaining reader of the novel.
He stayed, but only because he felt a sort of solidarity with the novel itself.
Both him and it were abandoned. Left in a corner because they were too difficult to be understood, and others had more important things in life to tend to.
He was the sole reader of a messy webnovel which had been going on for more than a decade, the reason he lived each day, his ‘I want to see what happens next, even though it will be something nonsense’.
He was the reason the writer finished the story, and the story was the reason his life span was increased by a decade.
Now, however, the novel had reached its end.
Well, almost. The one he had been reading was the penultimate chapter, the eradication of the ‘evil’ by the ‘good’.
The epilogue was the only chapter remaining, and it would come out the next day.
And in the dark, Kim Dokja saw the irony of it all.
Just when the novel had been nearing its end, so did his job contract. He was laid off half a month ago.
As it was, his meagre salary had made him late on rent and utility bills. What would he do now?
He didn’t even have any friend or family to ask for help.
Perhaps this was meant to be.
The novel had saved him at one time. His story continued because another story had started. It was destined to finish the moment the other one did.
After reading the final chapter tomorrow, no matter how bad it could be, he would have no qualms. The story that saved him would end, and he would bear no responsibility to the author that saved him. He would have completed his job of reading, and then, it would matter little to anyone whether he existed anymore or not.
Deciding that sitting here pitying himself was just bringing his thoughts into a dangerous territory, he sighed and decided to go outdoors. It would be better than being holed up in an apartment with no electricity.
He locked the door and went outside. Not that it would matter if anyone broke into his house, since there was nothing valuable, but still. He wanted his personal space to remain his own. At least as long as it could.
When he stepped outside the building, he immediately regretted stepping out.
It was raining cats and dogs.
Still, he ventured out of the gates, too exhausted to turn back and face the same darkened rooms again.
He walked in the rain without a raincoat or an umbrella, the pattering water droplets drenching him in seconds.
He shivered, but internally scoffed when the physical cold did nothing to overpower the cold he felt from within his heart.
He walked without purpose, just staring at the empty streets he was drifting through.
Not even a stray cat was hiding anywhere.
He then realised how it meant to be truly alone.
When he realised he had been walking for the greater part of an hour without any reason, he decided to head back.
He had nothing to hold onto, but he was an adult now. He could no longer just try to end his life like when he was a naive teenager.
He was fatigued, and he should go back to his apartment, so that he could get ready for going on a job-hunt the very next day.
He would also soon have to sort out his rent and bills, otherwise he wouldn’t even have a roof over his head.
…
Suddenly, while he was standing in the middle of the road, he realised how pointless and unfair all of it was.
He had never asked to be born.
He had never asked to be born in a family with problems. He hadn’t wanted an abusive father, or a mother who publicized their shared trauma and fears for fame and money.
He had never wanted to be bullied, had never asked for a webnovel that gave him a second chance, that made him neglect his studies, his college, his days in the military, his job, all because he had a naive belief that he would survive only one more day to read the next chapter.
He hadn’t wanted to survive beyond that day.
But he had. And it wasn’t his fault.
It wasn’t his fault that he never was brilliant anywhere. It wasn’t his fault that he was always struggling.
It wasn’t his fault everyone only ever judged him.
Why was he being burdened with the responsibility to live like a well-functioning adult? Why couldn’t he act like his teenage self?
Why was he required to go job-hunting? What was it all for? What was he looking forward to?
Nothing.
That was the matter of fact. He was alone, always had been, always would be. His father had cemented that fact into reality when he had named him ‘Dokja’.
Just then, a notification from his phone broke his reverie.
He slowly picked his phone up.
An email.
From… tls123?
He was the author of TWSD. Was he going to give Dokja a guide about how to survive in a real world, and not a fictional alternate universe? That would be useful.
He opened it, and found an attachment.
It was the entirety of the TWSD novel.
Why, though? What was the need of sending the novel to him? He could easily access it on the website.
He decided to read the message attached with it.
‘Sync this attachment to your phone. And best of luck. You’ll be needing it.’
Sync his phone? Why? And best of luck for what? Did the author somehow know he was struggling?
After waiting for a few seconds and watching the rain fall on his screen, making the screen control move around randomly, he prepared to wipe it off with the handkerchief in his pocket.
Abruptly, however, he felt a profound sense of unease from within when he felt his stomach drop.
He turned his head towards the right, not quite sure why he did, but there it was.
Headlights shone on him, making him flinch away, but he was unable to move.
He was just a deer trapped in the headlights.
Time seemed to dilate at that moment, as he stared at the truck seconds away from hitting him.
The driver was probably drunk and asleep, and the truck had become uncontrolled.
He spared just a glance at his phone, where the attachment had been synced with it because of the raindrops manipulating the screen.
He wished to know why the author had said what he had said.
He wished to know the epilogue tomorrow.
As much as he had wanted to die earlier, he was scared in the face of it.
And a millisecond before the truck hit him, he thought, “I don’t want to die…”
And just before he lost all consciousness and delved into the darkness of death, he thought, “I want to live…”
——————
[Welcome to ‘Three Ways to Survive in a Deltaverse’. You are now Gamma Kim Dokja.]
And silver eyes snapped open.