Chapter Text
“Can we please lock the door before Joonghyuk gets here,” Dokja pleads. “If I have to hear his voice one more time, I’m going to throw him out the school window.”
Han Sooyoung motions him over and drops a stack of novels in his arms to carry. He almost tips over at the sudden weight. “I doubt you could, and Yoo Joonghyuk stays in book club.”
The title of book club was rather vague, with how the overall pitiful interest from their school had led to the few who joined becoming tight group of members, and resulted in the reading being anything they wanted.
For a month, they had just read through Han Sooyoung’s novels to give her feedback as unpaid proofreaders.
Now, Dokja had finally gotten them all onto Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World.
He would have been celebrating his victory with unhindered glee if it hadn’t been for a certain sunfish bastard.
Yoo fucking Joonghyuk.
“He’s the actual devil.”
“He’s not the devil, you are,” Sooyoung corrects lazily, cross-legged on the table with the assigned reading laid across her lap. “Besides, you’re just too easy to tease.”
Dokja drops the stack of books beside her, spreading them out in front of each empty chair. “I am not,” he protests.
“Yes, you are.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“He’s so annoying,” Dokja drags a hand down his face miserably.
“Because it gets your attention,” Sooyoung grumbles before slapping a hand over his mouth.
“What does that mean?” His eyes narrow suspiciously.
“Nothing!”
Kim Dokja rubs the bridge of his nose. “Sooyoung, please.”
“Oh,” her eyes slit gleefully as members of the club trickled in. “Too late.”
“In my opinion, the book was terrible,” Yoo Joonghyuk intones drily.
Dokja’s eye twitched. He claps his book shut and slides it onto the table. “In my opinion, you should die.”
“Here we go again,” Jung Heewon groans under her breath, checking her watch and sliding a couple wads of won under the table to Yoo Sangah.
Sangah accepts the money without hesitation, giving Heewon a sympathetic smile.
If only they had lasted ten more minutes, though Heewon would have known better than to get her hopes up.
“Like Yoo Joonghyun did in the fourth chapter to regress like a coward?” Joonghyuk raises an eyebrow.
Kim Dokja forces himself to breathe to prevent himself from jumping over the table and throttling their newest book club member or from passing out from sheer anger.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked infuriatingly proud when Dokja shifts a venomous glare at his smug, annoying mug that he wishes he describe as ugly.
Han Sooyoung has the audacity to say Dolja was crazy when he insists that Joonghyuk is peeving him off on purpose for shits and giggles, but he can tell by that stupid little twitch of right eye that he enjoys it.
(He had tried to explain the tics that he had noticed all accumulating to that conclusion to her on multiple ocassions, but she would always get that weird look on her face like he was saying something crazy.
He wasn’t obsessed, no matter what she said. Kim Dokja was just attentive. He’s surprised that Sooyoung hadn’t noticed it for herself.)
“I hope your personality regresses, Yoo Joonghyuk.” He seethed furiously. “I hope that it goes through one thousa— no, fifty thousand traumatic lifetimes until it’s less stupid. Yoo Joonghyuk, I hope it chokes on it’s own spit on the fourth, trips over its own shoelaces and stabs itself in the stomach on the sixth, and watches the entire city burn down a hundred times over—“
Despite being a humble reader without much eloquence to his writing nor interest in publishing like Sooyoung, Kim Dokja could easily fill a hundred pages of writing on how Yoo Joonghyuk was the bane of his existence.
Ever since this guy joined the high school book club, the only place Dokja gets any peace, his life had been set on a trajectory to rock bottom.
He’s not entirely sure why Yoo Joonghyuk of all people had decided to join the high school book club in the middle of the year, but he sure as hell was complaining about it.
Kim Dokja had thought that maybe Yoo Joonghyuk had been some kind of gift from the gods with his unbelievably handsome features and incredible grades. Now, he kind of wishes that the heavens would taken him back. Did they do refunds?
The fact that this guy was handsome, smart, or that he engaged Dokja in conversations where everthing else seemed to lose time and meaning to the intoxicating feeling of being heard meant nothing when his opinions were an incarnation of a devil on earth put into words.
Not a single thing Joonghyuk said about their books had aligned with Dokja’s point of view. It was almost like it was on purpose. Like he was looking for a reaction from him.
Any time Kim Dokja found a twist compelling? Yoo Joonghyuk states that it had bored him to sleep the night before.
A character’s demise so gruesome that Dokja found himself tearing up about it? Yoo Joonghyuk rolls his eyes and shrugs, commenting that they had deserved it.
A trope that Kim Dokja adored? Yoo Joonghyuk seemd to be miffed by the lack of complexities and called it predictable beyond enjoyment.
And every time, without fail, he got this satisfied look in his eyes when he managed to rile Dokja up.
He hates Yoo Joonghyuk.
“The narriative is dry and mundane.”
Kim Dokja tilts his head sharply with something close to predatory intent. Joonghyuk seems to perk up, realizing his words had pulled Dokja out of his thoughts.
Lee Hyunsung flinches, a flash of pure horror bleeding into his features in a way one would typically only see on war veterans. “Oh no—“
“This book is the finest piece of literature your stupid brain will ever process, you are lucky to be living in a life where you can read this story, Yoo Joonghyuk!” Kim Dokja swings his arms out and almost slaps Lee Hyunsung in the face.
He doesn’t notice, immediately invigorating into defending his beloved story with his life. Dokja points animatedly towards Joonghyuk with an intensity better suited of accusing one of murder (or, with how crazed Kim Dokja was feeling, genocide) than literature slander.
Joonghyuk raises his forearm, checking the time on his watch without breaking eye contact.
“A single sentence of TWSA is five times more eloquent than any monologue your protagonist ass can spew and if I hear one more piece of slander out of your ungrateful mou—“
Unbeknownst to Kim Dokja, the corner of Joonghyuk’s mouth twitches.
“Joonghyuk-ssi,” Hyunsung whispers meekly, his face draining of all color.
Sooyoung stares at him with an unspoken threat radiating in her eyes.
Jung Heewon’s already left the room, predicting the outcome from the way Yoo Joonghyuk had eyed the reader when he had first entered the room and decided not to waste her time with witnessing another verbal brawl that she’s seen countless times before.
Sangah closes her eyes and exhales slowly.
“The writing is like a middle schooler,” Joonghyuk intones unapologetically. “My sister could write better prose.”
Dokja jumps over the table in a mad scramble. Lee Hyunsung stands up in a frantic hurry to keep him from bodying their classmate.
“YOO JOONGHYUK—“
He hates Yoo Joonghyuk.
Kim Dokja’s habit of lingering after meetings was known by all members, which is why he deems that it was not his fault he overheard two familiar voices down the hall from his seat in his literary haven.
“Joonghyuk, I don’t say this often, but please. You need to stop using my club to flirt with your stupid crush.” The exhaustion in Sooyoung’s voice is audible even from behind the library doors.
What? Not only was Yoo Joonghyuk triggering Dokja relentlessly, but he was using this time to try and get with somebody?
“I’m aware that I said literature is the way to go if you want a chance, but you have to know that this not what I meant by that,” Sooyoung’s voice pitches frantically and Dokja could clearly imagine her pacing back and forth.
”But it’s working,” Joonghyuk’s voice resounded clear, flat, and proud.
“It’s really not.”
The audacity of this guy was genuinely absurd. If Kim Dokja’s blood boiled any further, his body would become a soup.
Footsteps clacked against tile, closer than before. Dokja scampers off behind the bookshelves before he could overhear the rest of the conversation.
Yoo Joonghyuk…
He clasps a fist against his chest, heart racing.
It must be Lee Seolwha; he couldn’t think of anyone else it would be, though she typically arrived late because of the HOSA club she typically attended prior. Some meetings she had to miss completely due to schedule conflicts, so perhaps the reason why Joonghyuk spent all his time at the club annoying him was because of sheer spite from missing a chance to talk with her.
He’s not sure why the thought makes something sharp and awkward fill his chest.
He hates Yoo Joonghyuk.
“She was unnecessary to the plot.”
“She was tragic, a prelude to upcoming problems, and her character development was beautiful,” Kim Dokja immediately shoots back. “You’re unnecessary to this room, get out.”
Jung Heewon nods along to each point, thumb swiping across her phone as Han Sooyoung watched Heewon play tetris over her shoulder. Hyunsung sat on her other side, a little more interested in sneaking glances at her concentrated expression than the high score.
(Yoo Sangah would have helped combat Joonghyuk’s view alongside him if she was here. She had a strange fondness for side character development and Joonghyuk only seemed interested in pissing Dokja off rather than anyone else for some reason.
Unfortunately for Kim Dokja, Sangah had student council responsibilities to complete and left him to fend off an infuriating headache named Yoo Joonghyuk alone.)
Joonghyuk rests his face against his palm, eyes slowly trailing up to meet his indignant glare. “Source?”
“What the hell do you mean source—“ he forces himself to breathe before he could faint. “She represented the impact of Joonghyun’s failures in past rounds, of how his detachment caused by years of suffering had impacted his companions and—“
“So what?” Joonghyuk doesn’t blink.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked a little too proud of himself for someone causing Dokja so much grief. He swears that the bastard was smirking to himself, like a nefarious schemer of sorts. ( All he needed was a fluffy white cat on his lap and a drawled monologue for that iconic, devilishly handsome villain appearance.)
Who knows what the hell goes on in Yoo Joonghyuk’s brain? Well, obviously not much, since his takes on WOS were painfully half-baked and idiotic to the point where Kim Dokja ended up complaining until his face was bright red (which would make Joonghyuk preen harder and start the whole process all over again).
“You’re the reason I’m going to set this school on fire. I hate you, I hate you so much.” Kim Dokja uncrosses his legs. “What the hell did you just say to me.”
Expression unchanged, Yoo Joonghyuk gives him a thumbs up as his only response.
Han Sooyoung chokes.
Dokja would cry out of sheer bewilderment if that didn’t mean giving that bastard a win.
Kim Dokja hadn’t really noticed it before Yoo Joonghyuk had decided to make his existence the bane of his life, but the guy was everywhere.
Not only that, but it seemed Yoo Joonghyuk had realized that as well and decided to make the most of it.
God damn it.
Honors Chem class? Yoo Joonghyuk had moved from the back of the class to take the empty spot next to him. He hadn’t even realized that he was in the same class, and now the bastard was his lab partner.
Joonghyuk was annoying competent, though they would have worked better together if he would stop running his mouth with stupid opinions whenever Dokja was trying to measure out their experiments.
Math class? Yoo Joonghyuk stares a bullet into the back of his head from his assigned seat. Sometimes, they got into petty arguments just because of that. The teacher relocated them to opposite ends of the classroom.
It didn’t stop Dokja from chucking a pencil in his direction.
Fine arts? Yoo Joonghyuk.
Health? Yoo Joonghyuk again.
Band? At least Joonghyuk wasn’t enrolled in it, but his tech class was right across the hall and he’d wait for Dokja to finish right outside the classroom door.
Kim Dokja can’t stand it.
Hell, he was even on the debate team. Car rides to tournaments quickly became practice rounds with the two of them bickering in the backseat until their team snapped at them to shut the hell up (Heewon included. Mostly Jung Heewon, actually).
The torment didn’t even stop at school.
“Hyung, I caught a ladybug today, but our teacher made me let it go!” Lee Gilyoung tugs on his sleeve.
“Ahjussi,” Yoosung pulls him the other direction, “Ahjussi, we’re reading a new story in class. I’m going to reread the chapter to my puppy at home.”
Dokja smiles, “Ah, that’s quite nice, Yoosu—“
Gilyoung presses against his side. “Hyung, my book is much better! It has beetles in it!”
“Let me talk first! You liked the class reading too! Nobody cares about your stupid beetles anyways, Gilyoung!”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up!”
“Both of you be quiet,” Dokja admonishes abruptly, pausing and crouching down between them. He taps both of them on the nose and claps his hands together. “Still bodies, remember? We talked about this last time. Too much energy and you’ll burst!”
He throws his hands arms out to mimic an explosion, following by a mediocre sound effect.
Yoosung gasps. Gilyoung hangs his head.
“Okay, Hyung.”
“Sorry, Ahjussi.”
Kim Dokja places a palm against both of their heads to ruffle their hair fondly. His neighbor’s kids were a handful, but he could never really be upset with them.
“It’s fine,” Dokja assures them, standing up. “I like hearing about your day, both of you. Now, tell me more.”
The two prattle on in tandem, competitively raising their voices over the other until Dokja has to put in the mandatory reminder to play nice.
He’s content to listen with the ocassional compliment or nod of his head until—
“Hey, Hyung, who’s that sooty bastard that’s behind us?”
“What.” Kim Dokja forgets to correct Gilyoung’s language as he whirls around and meets the eyes of Yoo Joonghyuk.
You have got to be kidding me.
He hurries them forward with a nervous laugh. Gilyoung almost trips over his untied shoelace. “Kids, forget what I said earlier about still bodies. Go faster.”
Joonghyuk speeds up behind them like a man on a mission. Dokja accidentally lets a couple words he shouldn’t say around impressionable children slip out as he realizes this.
It’s not really embarrassing that Yoo Joonghyuk catches up with them immediately due to the fact that the reason he hadn’t been able to escape was less about his own athletic capabilities and moreso to do with the fact he had two bickering middle schoolers in tow.
Both of the children were distracted by Yoo Mia’s arrival. Apparently Joonghyuk’s kid sister was in their class, which meant they unintentionally abandoned him as they raced ahead in a little clump to leave the two high schoolers in awkward silence.
“Kim Dokja.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” Dokja intones in the same passive manner.
Joonghyuk doesn’t seem impressed.
“Why did you leave club so early today?” He asks.
“What?” Kim Dokja’s pace slows for a moment as he thinks before he matches Joonghyuk’s stride. “I left at the usual time.”
“Exactly,” Joonghyuk frowns. “You always leave fifteen minutes or so later after the meeting ends.”
Kim Dokja tilts his head to give Joonghyuk a questioning glance.
How did he know that, did he time Dokja? Why did Yoo Joonghyuk know that?
Whatever.
“I should be asking you something similar,” Dokja replies. “Wasn’t Seolwha-ssi at club today? Shouldn’t you be walking her home instead of tormenting me?”
He very clearly remembers her being present, since she had helped lead the discussion with him on the underlying themes of this week’s chapter with gentle enthusiasm.
A miracle in itself, Joonghyuk hadn’t attempted to piss him off during today’s meeting. Maybe it was how Lee Seolwha carried a kind of presence that demanded cordial words.
Perhaps it was his affections for her that made him attempt to be polite for once (even though it seemed as if Joonghyuk didn’t have a single braincell capable of thinking before he spoke).
Though he seemed rather disgruntled as Dokja conversed animatedly with Seolwha for what was basically the entire time. His expression had been unusually dark, even for his deadpan attitude.
Dokja would have assumed that with Joonghyuk’s fat crush on the beautiful girl, he would have jumped at the chance to accompany her home like a gentleman for once.
“It’s not torment, this is conversation.” His brow furrows. “What does Lee Seolwha have to do with anything?”
Dokja opens his mouth to answer, but the only thing he manages to say is a surprised wheeze when he’s suddenly pulled down to his right.
“Ahjussi,” Yoosung’s bright smile greets him innocently. “Hold my hand!”
Gilyoung, who was crouched on the ground next to Mia to watch the ants trickle by, suddenly snaps to attention like a bloodhound and quickly maintains position at his other side once more.
“Hey! Hyung, no!” He wails, as if Dokja was in mortal peril. “Don’t listen to her!”
Dokja sighs. He had been a fool to assume that they’d stop arguing in the presence of Yoo Mia.
“Ahjussi,” Yoosung whines, which makes Gilyoung’s hands wrap around his wrist tighter.
He exhales, exhausted. “Kids—“
“It will be neither of you,” Joonghyuk decides. His voice suddenly comes closer from behind, right behind Dokja’s ear. “Because I’m going to hold Kim Dokja’s hand. Relinquish your claim.”
He was going to what—
Dokja jerks his head to analyze Joonghyuk’s expression. Dread pools quickly up down his spine when he realizes the guy was dead serious.
All three of them immediately started to protest.
(Yoo Mia rolls her eyes and skips ahead, popping a bubble with her gum.)
“No way, you get him all day at school!”
“Hey, wait, Joonghyuk-ssi—“
“Not fair!”
“We will take turns,” Joonghyuk relents gruffly, reluctant. “Split between us throughout the week. Acceptable?”
The children go quiet to process the compromise.
“Wait, what—“ Dokja splutters. “This is not going to become a thing.”
(It does. Yoo Joonghyuk manages to catch him every day after school, even without the kids there to slow him down, and walks him back to their neighborhood despite his protests.
The afternoon companionship quickly becomes a routine after Kim Dokja realizes Joonghyuk really wasn’t going away.)
The others (other than Han Sooyoung, who had fallen asleep halfway through and was still dead to the world) had left a while ago, the meeting officially ending roughly ten minutes ago.
Kim Dokja stayed behind to tidy the space back up, clearing the chairs and books left scattered over the table surface.
As usual, he stays a little later than everyone else to read up on some novels. He took a seat at their table once more with a couple new books.
Yoo Joonghyuk, unfortunately, hadn’t left.
“Can you wait somewhere else if you’re going to wait for Lee Seolwha?” Dokja complains. Joonghyuk was uncomfortably close to the back of his chair.
Dokja could feel Joonghyuk watching. Was he really reading over his shoulder so unashamedly?
People reading over his shoulder without asking made his blood boil.
He turns to glare at Yoo Joonghyuk but the words die on his tongue when he finds Joonghyuk’s eyes had focused been on him instead.
He continues to stare, unabashed.
“Why do you like that guy so much?”
Dokja didn’t even need to ask for clarification on who Yoo Joonghyuk was talking about with the blatant disdain in his tone.
Joonghyuk’s favorite critiques with Ways of Survival were always about the main character, Yoo Joonghyun.
It always riled Dokja up, which he supposed may be the point.
“Why don’t you?” He counters, eye twitching.
Joonghyuk continues, “He’s overpowered for a good while of the story, repetitive, and his internal problems are never resolved.”
“That’s the point,” Dokja’s voice was strained, “it’s the irony, tragedy, and the fact that no matter how strong he gets or how far he gets, Yoo Joonghyun never escapes his cycle.”
“Okay, and? Weak.”
“It’s sad and beautiful,” he objects before adding pettily, “you’re just stupid. So stupid, I pray for your braincells. No, braincell, as in singular one. If you have any left, you absolute disaster of a human being.”
”He’s an idiot.”
”You’re literally an idiot. I will hit you in the head with this chair and laugh as your concussed ass fails midterms,” Dokja warns.
“The stakes mean nothing because he can regress again,” Joonghyuk adds on ruthlessly.
Kim Dokja leaps forward to shakes his shoulders. It does little to actually move the other, but his eyes widen a fraction for some reason. The question of why is hindered by the words that spew from his mind.
“The stakes mean everything because he’s an idealist. Yoo Joonghyun starts every regression somehow, no matter what, with the intention of reaching the end. Everytime he fails, he’s closer to giving up but he never does.”
It had never failed to make Dokja’s heart beat faster whenever the next chapter began with a new start, eyes darting across the page pleadingly with the fear of Joonghyun’s surrender.
(There was been a time where Kim Dokja had been almost fifteen and hopeless, where he had promised himself that if Joonghyun ever abandoned his dedication towards a happy ending, Dokja would follow suit on the third floor of his junior high school building.)
But it had never come.
Yoo Joonghyun never failed to keep going, despite seeing the ghosts of his past regressions in his renewed companions as the cycle continued on.
Dokja kept that reminder with him on his darkest days.
Joonghyuk falters, perhaps feeling the shivers of truth in Dokja’s hold of his shoulder.
“Okay,” he relents for the first time. Dokja’s eyes widen as Yoo Joonghyuk looks away. “…I’ll agree with you.”
Kim Dokja gaped like one of the dead fish at the market. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, but only on this,” he warns. “I have another problem. Everyone seems to like Joonghyun despite his personality being equivalent to bar of soap in his later regressions.”
“Due to trauma,” Dokja frowns. “Man, did you even read the book?”
“Soap is soap,” Joonghyuk deadpans. “It’s still nonsensical.”
“I can… see how you may think that,” Kim Dokja grumbles reluctantly. His companions had no recollection of earlier rounds, and therefore no explanation to why Joonghyun isolated himself, never allowing them to get close from what they believed was their first meeting.
“But I find it comforting. I think he deserves unconditional devotion, even if it’s unconciously given, from the people he’s trying so hard to protect,” he adds immediately after before Joonghyuk’s ego would explode the school library.
It also meant that someone like Dokja could find people who would love him unconditionally as well.
Dokja’s eyes softens. “His actions never prompt doubts of his care, even if he can’t say it.”
“This is usually the part where you would threaten to hate-crime me for talking shit,” Joonghyuk noted.
“I don’t do that,” Kim Dokja denies feverently.
He pulls away from Yoo Joonghyuk to cross his arms over his chest. Joonghyuk deflates a bit, a dissatisfied flash pinching his features.
A moment of silence passes.
“I dislike Yoo Joonghyun.”
“Say that again, I dare you,” Dokja threatens, tension spiking through his body, like a live wire. “Say another damn thing about Yoo Joonghyun and you die, Joonghyuk.”
Joonghyuk seems less smug about the sudden interest he had sparked in the other today. Instead, his face sours even further at the sudden defense.
He scoffs, crossing his arms. “I see no reason for you to be so interested in him. He’s boring, failing continuously as throughout each regression without much change in his performance.”
“That’s because you have no taste,” Kim Dokja chides. “Seriously?”
Yoo Joonghyuk studies him for a moment, a little longer than necessary, before sighing.
“I might have to agree with that,” he grumbles.
Dokja raises an eyebrow. Two agreements from Yoo Joonghyuk in a day? First time for everything, though there seemed to be an implication that he was missing.
He takes advantage of Joonghyuk’s apparently amicable mood to continue talking about his beloved protagonist.
His proceeding ramble of the intricacies of Yoo Joonghyun’s character fades as he feels a sudden wave of sheer displeasure radiating off of his classmate.
“You like me more than Yoo Joonghyun,” Joonghyuk spits out the protagonist’s name with an unexpected hatred, which said a lot with how openly he disliked the character, “right, Kim Dokja?”
Dokja blinks.
He taps his chin thoughtfully, leaning so far back in his chair that Sooyoung is able to kick him in the back of the head with her boot from behind.
“Touch choice,” he sighs forlornly, a teasing grin painting his face.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes darkened. “Yoo Joonghyun is now my enemy.”
“What?”
“I can’t believe you really think that the character writing was cheap at the end. We have three protagonists, split in one series with clear motives then a resolution, or lack of, that doesn’t ridicule their growth and story.”
”Plus, the development throughout went with clear themes of regression, reincarnation, and dimension hopping without losing their plot,” Sangah adds.
“Exactly!” Kim Dokja would hug her if he wasn’t pacing all over the room. “That barely ever happens with one protagonist, and somehow we got an amazing ending for three! Can you count, Joonghyuk? Do you know that’s more than one?”
“Okay, but did you drink water today?”
“—so it… huh?” Dokja almost trips over his own shoe.
Heewon pulls him back upright by the back of his shirt without looking up from her phone and shoves him down in a chair before he could fall over again.
“What the hell are you—?”
Yoo Joonghyuk puts up a hand, placing a water bottle onto Dokja’s lap wordlessly before dropping both of his hands on the table.
Joonghyuk nods. “Continue.”
Dokja wasn’t sure if it was a new intimidation tactic or not. Regardless, it took him a couple seconds to remember what he was saying.
“I—“
“Wait,” Joonghyuk interrupted, “drink first. Your throat is going to get dry.”
He opens his mouth, clenches his jaw as he looks down at the plastic bottle, then beelines out of the library furiously, beet red.
Jung Heewon’s eyes dart between Joonghyuk and Dokja’s retreating form before snickering at the sudden despair that flickers over his typically stoic features.
Sangah looks up. “…Shall we continue?”