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There’s a shadow that lacks a tangible figure of a boy that darts across Kim Dokja’s room. It’s dark figure moves through the pale slits of moonlight that fall in beams across his floor.
There was a fairy tale that his mother had told him, among the thousands of stories she had whispered to him during nights where the darkness seemed to swallow the both of them whole.
The particular story that comes to mind, as he watches the shadows of his room dance with curious movement, is the one he knows best.
Kim Dokja loved stories from the day he had learned that they carried a reality that was far better than the one handed to him. He had loved how they carried his mind away from the stinging hopelessness of his mom’s eyes when she smiled and the shake in own his hands when he hears the front door shuffle open.
So it’s no wonder that he had latched onto the story tale of Yoo Joonghyuk, the boy who never grew up.
While the idea of remaining small had never been appealing to Kim Dokja, the dreams of running far away to an adventure he could call his own had been something he had clung to for years.
(Before she had been taken away with the blood of his father’s body on her hands, Dokja had quietly begged for another retelling of the story he knew by heart. It always seemed a fraction more real when he heard it in his mother’s weary voice.
Lee Sookyung had always fallen to his eager pleas, joking that he probably knew the words better than she did by now. She used to call him the keeper of Yoo Joonghyuk’s stories.
He wishes he could still remember how her voice had smoothed, stringing sentences into gold just for him. Now all that remained of his memory that coordinated with his mother’s moving mouth were the demands she had whispered to him that night with a knife scattered between the two of them.)
Kim Dokja watches with wide eyes as the shadow crept closer, pausing as it felt his stare imbedded to its movement.
It was entirely impossible for a shadow to move all on its lonesome. Dokja marvels at the display of a quieter magic, the shape of a boy draped over his wardrobe as it turns left and right.
A cool night breeze exhales smoothy through the room like a mist. Kim Dokja goes rigid as his window creaks open, not daring to hope that the painstakingly light footsteps that followed after were from who he thought it was.
His breath flutters, heartbeak impossibly fast as he hears whispers of a voice he had never heard before, yet one that seemed so familiar.
“Where— What the hell are you doing?” Yoo Joonghyuk hisses. Kim Dokja cracks one eye open to see the light flash against the wall as the shadow moves across the room with childish abandon.
Joonghyuk curses pettily under his breath and taps his foot against the carpet with tangible annoyance. “I’m not playing this game with you.”
“Hey, no!” A frantic patter of footsteps sound across his room, possibly a chase. “Get back here, you little—“
He wonders from the sheer impatience in Yoo Joonghyuk’s grumbling if this kind of situation occured often.
Kim Dokja, faced with the boy that he had fantasize about since he was small enough for his mother to wrap her arms around in hopes that the world could leave them both alone, couldn’t help but sit up from his cot to see if this could be real.
“You’re Yoo Joonghyuk,” he breathes.
Yoo Joonghyuk, he notes with mild disbelief, was handsomer than he had imagined. There’s less of an impression of boyishness in his face, as the story would suggest, but an intelligence haunted by the years that’s gone by that’s settled underneath the youthful glow of his skin.
Wow. Dokja’s heart stutters like it was gasping for breath or recovering from an electric shock.
His mother had always described him as a leader, kindhearted even when his stance was a bit guarded, and matured after lost children had begun to seek him out for guidance or care instead acting as the reckless star of of his earlier advantures. Still, there’s less of an impish mischievousness to him than Dokja had pictured.
It feels more real, tangible. He seems more real.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked about his age, with dark hair and strong features that would have grown devastatingly handsome in his adult years. There was a strange feeling of being around the same age as someone he had looked up to for so long.
It’s disconcerting, yet exciting, like he could be Joonghyuk’s equal.
Dokja’s sure that he’s seen him in his dreams. Maybe he was dreaming now, the visage of his longtime hero only true in his imagination.
Joonghyuk and the shadow both turn towards him in tandem. Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes widen and he freezes mid-step with his arms out like he was about to strangle his wayward silhouette.
“…I am.” His eyes narrow as he awkwardly crosses his arms. “You know who I am?”
Yoo Joonghyuk, unmistakably real, stands in the middle of his drafty, dingy bedroom. Kim Dokja pinches himself.
“Of course,” Dokja nods, feeling a little faint. “Your story is my favorite.”
“Story?” Joonghyuk echoes.
“Yeah,” Kim Dokja’s face reddens as Yoo Joonghyuk sits down at the corner of his bed curiously.
Without thinking, he starts spewing the words that had been encased into the broken crevasses of his heart that had always been weak to fantastical literature.
He mumbles of Joonghyuk’s origins, voice growing stronger as he speaks of the lost boys with an undertone of vulnerable jealousy at the belonging that each of them had found under Joonghyuk’s lead, and swings his arms out with a reckless smile when narrates the defeat of the dreaded pirate captain, Nirvana.
It’s easy to repeat the stories he’s kept for himself. Dokja’s thought of them so many times, he no longer needs the worn storybook to remember each tale.
(He used to imagine those same adventures daily in his mind’s eye, chanting to himself that he was Yoo Joonghyuk when school days seemed to drag on forever or a biting remark dug too deep.
Because Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t cry, Yoo Joonghyuk never faltered or failed without a fight. Not against pirates, or villians, or those who looked down on him.
Joonghyuk just dusted himself off and got back up.)
Yoo Joonghyuk tilts his head, unblinking, as Dokja dwindles to an embarrased finish, realizing that he had literally gushed about Joonghyuk to the boy himself. He ducks his face into his hands.
“I— I know I lot of stories.” Dokja peeks hesitantly through his fingers.
A spark of interest is born in his eyes like a fire. “Like the one you just told me?”
“Yeah.”
Joonghyuk goes quiet, thinking to himself before taking hold of Kim Dokja’s wrist.
“Tell me more,” he implores seriously.
Kim Dokja does, because how could he refuse? He talks about lying fairies, plentiful treasure, soaring dragons, and faraway lands until his voice grows hoarse and the sun threatens to glimmer in the distant morning.
They lapse into a silence once the glow of a shared fantasy had trickled to an end. Joonghyuk sourly eyes the shadow that had laid itself docilely across Dokja’s blankets during the storytelling session.
Kim Dokja places the cup of water on his nightstand and clears his throat. “You should take better care of your things.”
“What?” Joonghyuk looks up.
Dokja gestures toward the shadow. “Maybe he’s lonely or something and now he’s mad at you. Why else would you lose your shadow?”
Joonghyuk huffs. He throws a glare over at the shadow as if daring it to commit more insolence behavior.
The shadow bearing his figure signs pettily, stupid, and darts onto his ceiling with Joonghyuk stands abruptly with the force of a storm trembling in his frame.
“I know how to sew,” Dokja adds. Joonghyuk falters to give him a questioning look. The silhouette shivers and angles its head toward him, radiating betrayal.
“I could sew your shadow back on, but only if you both make up.” Something cold and sharp skitters down his spine at the thought of attaching anything to someone it hated, even if it was for Yoo Joonghyuk.
Dokja shivers.
It was wrong. The action reminded him too much of how his mother had been tethered to his father until the floor was stained with a deep, crimson red. Even then, neither of them had been able to find a true release.
“Fine,” Joonghyuk relents.
Yoo Joonghyuk makes his way against the corner of Kim Dokja’s ceiling and communicates with the dark 2D version of himself in rough whispers.
Dokja readies a needle from the abandoned pouch stuffed in his drawer beneath his notebooks.
Lee Sookyung had taught Dokja how to sew once his hands had become steady enough to hold a needle without pricking himself. She had said it was an important skill to have, in case his clothes tore and she was too busy to mend them immediately, or if he ever wanted to make a stuffed animal by himself.
She had made it sound fun, like all the nedles with be used for was fabric and maybe a couple buttons for decor. She coaxed the lessons with silly jokes and promises of the two of them starting a little project, just the two of them, out of their old curtains.
He had been taught medical stitches a few weeks after and practiced against his mother’s arm after a rough night that reeked of alcohol as she cried silent tears, facing away so he wouldn’t bare witness.
Dokja had still noticed the tremor in her shoulders as she gave her gentle instructions. He could always tell.
He hadn’t found much interest in sewing afterward other than from necessity. His aunt never seemed interested in replacing his uniforms if they grew tathered.
Joonghyuk floats down with the shadow in tow, a begrudging agreement apparently settled between the two of them.
Dokja gets started once he settles over his blankets. The shadow twitches every once in a while, but attempts to be relatively patient.
Joonghyuk gets antsy after a few minutes. Dokja wouldn’t expect less from the boy who fought pirates and ran around with a group of wily children for most of his life.
“Hey, stay still,” Dokja taps Joonghyuk over the head. “Here, I’ll tell you a story about the Prisoner of the Golden Headband if you stop moving,” he bargains.
Joonghyuk pauses abruptly, the green bycocket cap slipping down the front of his face. He frowns, pushing it back up with one hand but remains silent as he watches Kim Dokja expectantly.
The narriative falls smoothly off of his tongue into the gentle embrace of the night. Yoo Joonghyuk remains still until Kim Dokja finishes with gentle precision, just has he had been taught.
Joonghyuk analyzes him with an unreadable gaze before standing up.
“I’ll be back.”
Kim Dokja had heard promises before, but somehow one from Yoo Joonghyuk holds more merit that he ever thought he could believe.
The two of them were sprawled on the floor, staring upward at the ceiling. Yoo Joonghyuk places his hands over their heads, folding them together to create a shadow that resembled a small bird. He flicks his index finger to make the bird’s silhouette nip at the curls of Dokja’s bedhead, making the boy laugh.
“Most of the stories I know are about you,” Kim Dokja admits.
Joonghyuk hums in acknowledgment, his eyes gleaming from the sparse lighting of Dokja’s lamp. They seem to glitter ethereally bright as he turns his head.
He doesn’t look away. “I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?” Dokja sits up on his elbows, a motion which Joonghyuk quickly mirrors to maintain eye contact. “It must be boring to hear stories about yourself. Especially if you’ve already experienced them, you know?”
“I don’t mind,” Joonghyuk repeats stubbornly. “Do you have any more to tell?”
“Of course, there’s endless adventures of Yoo Joonghyuk,” Dokja responds immediately before pausing indignantly, pointing an accusing finger at Joonghyuk. “What— do you just like hearing about yourself?”
“I like hearing you talk about me,” he corrects.
Dokja leans his cheek into his palm with a sigh. “Ah, so you’re narcissistic,” he teases lightly.
Joonghyuk frowns, eyes narrowing as he flips mindlessly through one of Dokja’s abandoned magazines that he had left on the carpet. “Anyone would be if you you spoke about them the way you do about me,” he remarks.
He scans over a couple stock images and ads before deciding that paging through it wasn’t worth his time. “You talk like I’m a hero.”
“You are,” Dokja agrees, trailing a finger against the grain lines of the wooden floor. “At least to me, that is. I think you’re great.”
“I like you too. I like your voice,” Joonghyuk hesitates before adding, “I like your face too.”
“I feel the same way about you,” Dokja offers in return. He likes everything about Yoo Joonghyuk, a feeling that had done nothing but increase in truth after meeting the magical boy.
He brightens, a change that’s so miniscule that Dokja only finds it because he knows each description of Yoo Joonghyuk by heart.
“You should go to Neverland with me! Han Sooyoung doesn’t talk the way you do.” He shrugs, “she writes okay, but some of the boys can’t read and she doesn’t tell her stories like you.”
“They’re illiterate?” Dokja whispers, aghast.
“We’ve tried to teach them,” Joonghyuk grumbles, “but they won’t sit still.”
“I’ll have to make a lesson plan,” Kim Dokja sits up and rubs his face. He can’t think of a world where he didn’t know how to read. It sounded like a nightmare.
When he looks up, he finds that Joonghyuk is watching him with a satisfied expression. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe you’ll have better luck getting them to listen.”
“My mom says— said that you’ve defeated a hundred monsters.”
“She’s right.” Joonghyuk nods proudly, miming stabbing a beast in the chest with a broom. “You talk about her quite a bit.”
”Yeah, she’s the one who taught me all about your adventures.” Dokja wrings his fingers together as his heart feels uncomfortably heavy, like it was bleeding into his ribcage. “She’s the reason I like reading so much.”
Lee Sookyung had left him too soon. There had been so many things she hadn’t been able to tell him, the lives of princesses and knights that she hadn’t been able to explain before their time together had run out.
Everyone had moved on, but sometimes it feels like real life had stopped the moment they had been seperated by a prison glass wall.
“She must be a heavy sleeper too,” Joonghyuk casts a glance over to Dokja’s door. The two of them forgot to keep their volume down at times between Kim Dokja’s excited narrations and Yoo Joonghyuk’s tendency to fly around the room.
They both wince, remembering the frigid dread that had frozen their bodies when Joonghyuk had accidentally toppled Dokja’s top shelf with a loud clatter.
“This is my aunt and uncle’s house. They go out a lot.” Dokja shakes his head. “Mom doesn’t live here. They, uh… took her away.”
“What?” Joonghyuk’s head snaps up and he bounds to his feet on top of Dokja’s bedframe. “We can rescue her! I’ve saved a bunch of people from pirates.”
He wants to believe in him. The tales of how Yoo Joonghyuk had vanquished every foe with a sucessful ending swirls in his mind. He lets himself think about having that kind of ending for them that results with his mother beside him and happy.
“I know,” Dokja says, amused. The light fades from his smile as he rubs his neck. “But this isn’t that kind of story.”
He wilts, suddenly feeling her loss all over again.
Yoo Joonghyuk tilts his head, face lit by the warm radiance of the single light illuminating the room.
He wraps a careful hold around Dokja. “Is this okay?”
Kim Dokja leans into the impossibly real touch of another. He feels like he’s shaking as the world caves in for just a moment longer than he could handle.
It fades away to just a pull against his thoughts as he revels in the newfound care he’s found in someone he hoped would be real forevermore, not just a figment of his starved hopes.
“Yeah,” he chokes out. “More than okay.”
Joonghyuk doesn’t stop holding him, even as Dokja begins telling his nightly story.
(Kim Dokja realizes halfway through that Joonghyuk had stopped coming by simply for storybook narration.)
Waking up in the late hours of the night to a persistent rap at his window becomes a new normal for Kim Dokja.
He doesn’t mind. Yoo Joonghyuk is Dokja’s first friend. He seems to puff up with pride when Dokja tells him that much when they stargaze on the flat roof of the house.
(“See, right over there?” Joonghyuk points off towards the right at a shining star, perfectly molded into the sky’s hold. “That’s the way to Neverland. I’d like to show you.”
Kim Dokja stares for a long moment at the enticing light that seemed to promise freedom. “Maybe some other time.”
Joonghyuk shrugs, sitting up to ruffle his hair with a knowing grin. “I can wait.”)
After the first three times, at the end of every visit, Joonghyuk begins asks him the same question just before the sun rises.
“Will you come to me to Neverland?”
Without fail, Kim Dokja hesitates and answers, voice quiet, “No.”
(He occasionally offers an excuse, to which Joonghyuk simply shakes his head to like he knew they were flaky at best.)
Joonghyuk goes silent after his denial, promises to come back, then flies off into the night.
He always arrives again, with the same question in mind.
“Why won’t you come with me?” Joonghyuk throws his hands up and almost knocks a couple books off of Dokja’s nightstand.
Somehow, he knows that Joonghyuk hadn’t lost his patience, but the need to understand had simply gotten too strong after listening to another yearnful retelling of his own adventures told in such a quiet, reverent way.
“We’ll have a great time every day. There’s always something to do, so you’ll never be bored. We can go see the mermaids that you talked about yesterday,” he offers. “Would you like that? We can go do anything you want!”
“All of those adventures that you love, we could do them in real life instead of just speaking about what I know you wish you could experience!”
Kim Dokja criss-crosses his legs and watches helplessly as Yoo Joonghyuk starts pacing across his bedroom floor. “Joonghyuk—“
“And the lost boys!” He adds. “You always talk about them with such reverence. Don’t you want to be one of them? You could teach them how to read like we said and tell the stories that Sooyoung wrote. Jihye would teach you how to use a sword if you’re worried about the pirates. I’ll thrash them anyways if they scare you.”
His eyes narrow sulkily as he wavers. It’s the closest thing to a pout he thinks Yoo Joonghyuk can make.
“I know you want to, but you refuse every time I ask. Why are you being so difficult?”
“I— I don’t know,” Kim Dokja answers helplessly.
He really doesn’t. It’s the opportunity that he had dreamed of since he was young, now offered to him in a reality he thought was too cruel to offer such an escape. It’s almost everything he could wish for.
There’s nothing for him here, trapped in a daily routine for a world that never held him gently.
So why was he so hesitant?
“I’m scared.”
Joonghyuk’s eyes snap back to him at the fragile admittance. His face softens, the tension in his shoulders releasing slowly.
“Well, that’s an easy fix,” he muses. “There’s no reason to be scared since I’ll be there with you.”
“You will?” Dokja asks.
“Forever, if that’s what you’d like.” He stands, opening the window and sliding himself out.
There’s something in the way Joonghyuk offers so easily, earnest like there was no doubt in his mind that spending forever with Kim Dokja would be his new best adventure that steals the breath from Dokja’s lungs.
Yoo Joonghyuk turns back to him and holds out a hand. “So, would you like to go to Neverland, Kim Dokja?”
Kim Dokja looks over towards the scattered collection of stories tucked lovingly in the corner of his shelves, the chipped paint of his walls, and the home that had never learned to love him.
There was nobody who would notice such a gap carefully filled with his presence. It would have been like he never existed at all.
The thought makes him smile somehow.
“Yeah,” he places his hand in Joonghyuk’s. “Let’s go.”
His feet leave the ground and Dokja stiffens at the sudden weightlessness. Yoo Joonghyuk chuckles at the alarm that flutters across his face, holding Dokja’s hand in his.
“Trust me,” he says, and Kim Dokja does exactly that as he starts his own story at the second star to the right.