Archive of Our Own

Dokja, to be frank, wasn’t expecting much out of tonight. 

Four PM was when he realized that progress reports were due this Friday, and four hours was the amount of time he took to painstakingly grade the rest of his students’ assignments one by one. There’s something so inherently draining about working late on a Friday and watching coworkers clock out one by one. He had ended up staying in that rugged building two hours later than usual, and had dragged himself out at 8:00 PM just to barely catch his subway line.

This happens on a Friday night, that is, when most people like Dokja would already be clocking out or going out. Heading somewhere with their friends to celebrate the weekend, to bars and clubs and whatever. Not like it particularly mattered to Dokja, who had no friends and even less interest in going partying. Still, the extra hours Dokja had spent furiously scribbling away and gulping down an overdose of caffeine wasn’t his idea of a better alternative either. 

It’s around a forty-five-minute commute from his workplace at Seocho to his apartment across the Dongho bridge. At around eight, there weren't many people using the subways anyway, so he earned himself a seat there and subsequently spent the rest of the ride on his phone reading webnovels. It does seem pathetic to be a twenty-eight-year-old man reading webtoons for fun, but there’s nobody to judge him so who the hell cares. He’d started a new one a few weeks ago, and it’s fun to follow a storyline when there's nothing else to do.

He made it home around nine because he had to walk to his apartment and everything afterwards. He had showered, ate a few leftovers from the fridge, and had prepared to flop back onto his bed to scroll until he fell asleep, when his eyes landed on the overflowing laundry bag next to the wall, and the realization cliocked into his head that today was laundry day.

That’s right, Kim Dokja spends his Friday nights doing his laundry. The true life of a dysfunctional adult man like him.

Sullenly, he looks down at his clothes. Usually, he does his laundry before changing into his comfortable but ugly-looking rags. Dokja really didn’t want to bother changing back into something wearable before heading outside, where it's cold and damp and gross. It’s far too inconvenient. And also— ew.

But it wasn’t like he had any other time to wash his clothes anyway. So, Dokja shrugged on a coat, grabbed his laundry bag, and headed outside without thinking much about it.

The laundromat was a three-minute walk away from his apartment, and was usually near empty at night, which was precisely why he liked it. Usually, it was just him shoving clothes into a dryer, making it so that he could go back to his apartment while his clothes were washing without worrying that someone was going to steal his clothes or whatnot. Well. Empty except for a few regulars.

Dokja grits his teeth as the cold winter air bites against his face. He didn’t change his clothes at all except for putting on a coat, because it’s not even that far of a walk. But even the coat doesn’t seem of any use, because he can clearly tell the weather is getting worse and worse by the second. The wind is getting stronger and stronger: even the tallest trees are swaying. All Dokja can hope for is to be able to get to the laundromat before it starts thundering.

Thankfully, he can see the building in the corner of his eye– a very small light against the darkness of the sky. He pushes open the door with a lot more effort than it should take, and immediately, a relaxing warmth washes over his entire body.

It’s damp in there. The yellow fluorescent lights fill his entire vision. The machines line the walls in their usual rows. He trudges across the linoleum floor towards a machine before scanning the room briefly.

And, of course, there’s someone here.

Somehow, Dokja thinks, he would’ve preferred for there to be more than one person rather than there to be exactly one person. A handful of strangers he can disappear into seems much nicer than this. 

But, unfortunately, the “regular” that Dokja always ends up bumping into at this exact time at night is here. Dokja doesn’t even know the man’s name– all he knows is that the man always wears a black puffer jacket, and the man is billboard-level model handsome. Suddenly, Dokja is incredibly aware of the fact that he’s standing here in sleepwear and slippers with tangled, damp hair and a laundry bag that has seen better days.

Great. Handsome model puffer jacket guy just has to see Dokja in his ugly rags. 

He takes a deep, slow breath through his nose. It’s fine. The man doesn’t talk at all anyways. He just has to load the machine, then he can go back to his apartment. 

He tears his gaze away and turns his attention back towards the machine in front of him. He dumps his clothes inside without really thinking and pops in some detergent. He does most of this while his brain is still on autopilot mode. He can’t think clearly after a full day of work. All he wants to do is to go back home and sleep. He reaches into his coat pocket for his wallet as he closes the drum lid, and

Oh.

Oh shit.

His wallet isn’t in his coat pocket. 

Dokja doesn’t even need to check the rest of his pockets to know that he has completely forgotten to bring his wallet, but he checks anyway just to make sure. He pats his left side, his right, then everywhere on his body, and retraces his steps. 

Before he left, all he had done was put on a coat and bring his laundry. He had assumed his wallet was in his coat pocket. Instead, a brief vision flashes through his head, and he sees his wallet laying on the bedside table, completely untouched and three minutes away.

Dokja sighs because that’s really annoying, and prepares to head out again to get his wallet or whatever, until a loud crack of thunder completely splits his thoughts in half.

He looks up and slowly turns towards the glass-panelled door.

It’s, frankly, pouring outside. The rain crashes down in pitter-patter formation, forming large puddles that look like lakes streaming down towards the drains. The rain is so strong that it comes down in waves of white wind, brewing across the streets like a hurricane that had just formed in the two minutes since Dokja arrived at the laundromat. Dokja, to put things into perspective, is wearing slippers.

He stares at the window for a moment, a shiver already running down his spine. Then he turns back towards his machine. His fully loaded, yet completely useless machine, because he can’t go back to his apartment, because he forgot to bring his wallet, because he doesn’t have any coins, which means he cannot wash his laundry, which means he came all this way for nothing.

Dokja’s not sure if he was lucky or unlucky. Lucky enough not to be caught outside in the storm, or unlucky enough to not only forget his wallet, but also not have the capability of even getting it back. 

He paces up and down the room, hurriedly trying to find out what the hell to do. The only humble thing he asked for tonight was for him to be able to wash his freaking clothes and head home. He probably looks absolutely crazy, but he genuinely doesn’t care. It’s been a long day, okay? And it’s been a long week, or, if he’s being honest, a long several weeks. He just wants to wash his clothes, but of course he has to fuck something up, and then–

“W-What?”

The words slip out of Dokja’s mouth when the handsome puffer jacket guy sitting in the corner of the room barges up towards Dokja’s machine, jams a few coins inside rather aggressively, and slams his hand on the start button.

The room fills with the sound of Dokja’s washing machine running.

Oh.

Dokja stands there dumbfounded as he stares at the man storming back to his seat in the very corner of the room. If anything, he looks absolutely pissed for some reason, even though he did something nice, and somehow that’s the most irritating thing Dokja has witnessed this entire week.

In that case, the man definitely didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. The man probably just wanted him to shut up or something, which is fair. Dokja feels his ears go hot before he turns towards the man again.

“T-thank you,” Dokja stutters out, “You didn’t need to– erm, what’s your name?”

“Yoo Joonghyuk,” The man says flatly. His voice is quite deep. 

“Ah,” Dokja nods, “My name is Kim Dokja. Thank you, Joonghyuk-ssi.”

Dokja bows awkwardly before, unfortunately, stumbling backwards when his foot catches the edge of his laundry bag.

Thud.

Joonghyuk looks at him like he’s a piece of rubbish. Dokja wants to bash his head against the wall.

Instead, he smooths out his coat, clears his throat, and walks to the only bench in the entire room (which, to his mortification, is also the one Joonghyuk is sitting at). He sits down at the very edge of the bench to put as much distance as possible between themselves, opens his webnovel, and stares at the words on the screen without processing them

“I’ve been forgetting a lot of things at home recently, heh….” Dokja tries to fill the awkward silence, “...Stupid me, I guess. I just moved here so—-”

“Hm.” 

The stranger blatantly ignores the self-deprecating comments Dokja just made for the sake of erasing the awkwardness. He doesn’t even look up. He goes back to his phone. 

Dokja figures he shouldn’t elaborate further. He’s already said too much. If the stranger wasn’t going to budge, why should he? He would have to sit with this mildly irked guy, no matter how attractive he is, for the next hour anyways. 

He looks back down at his webnovel. Chapter 1049 of the most grueling, slow burn romance he’s ever read (that’s right, Kim Dokja spends his Fridays reading romance novels). The words swim around in his brain like swarms of fish flopping in shallow puddles. Ugh. And, on top of everything, Dokja swears that he can feel Joonghyuk staring daggers into the back of his head. It’s starting to drive him insane.

He reads the same three lines over and over and retains nothing, then tries scrolling back up to refresh his mind on what exactly was happening. 

“Are you even reading or what?” 

The sudden voice that rises from the sounds of the pitter-pattering rain is so startling that he almost falls off the bench. 

“...h-huh?”

“You’ve been scrolling up and down for the past minute,” Joonghyuk demands. “Are you even reading for real?”

“Well, I was…rereading,” Dokja replies clumsily. 

He’s tempted to shoot back with well, I was, except you were staring at me the whole time and I couldn’t focus, but figured not to.

“...It’s a good part,” Dokja adds, which somehow makes the situation worse. 

“Which chapter?”

Dokja opens his mouth for a brief second, debating on whether or not to tell Joonghyuk. He’s half surprised that Joonghyuk actually wanted to initiate conversation with him, and half mortified that he was so ready to outright tell the handsome puffer jacket guy that he was reading a romance novel. Damn. He really is pathetic.

“Chapter…1049,” Dokja ends up saying.

The rain fills the empty sound beside them.

“...of the book,” he clarifies, “It’s a very long book. It’s not finished.”

Surprisingly, Joonghyuk doesn’t seem all that rattled by the 1000+ chapters part of what he said. He just nods. Politely or indifferently, Dokja cannot tell.

It’s his turn to stare at Joonghyuk now. Truthfully, he had started seeing the man ever since he moved to Seoul a couple of months ago. Every week, it was the same guy at the laundromat at 9:00 at night, and yet Dokja had never gotten this close of a look at the man’s face until tonight. Joonghyuk is objectively incredibly handsome, as he’d noticed before. Chiselled features, dark eyebrows, mysterious eyes, full lips. Dokja would be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little attracted to him.

“Joonghyuk-ssi, it feels like I’ve seen you before.” The thought comes up rather quickly in his mind, and Dokja immediately regrets that he had said it out loud.

“I’m a streamer.”

Oh, right.

Oh, right.

He’s not sure if he’s actually fully watched any of Joonghyuk’s streams, but he definitely recognises the face from online. He’s pretty sure Joonghyuk plays League of Legends or something. His videos are fairly popular, because the game itself is popular. They always appear on Dokja’s algorithm.

“Should I know who you are?” Dokja asks.

“No,” he says, “I don’t care.”

Dokja hums, and looks back at his webnovel, though he has no plans of reading it now. The rain keeps going outside, with the laundry machine humming in the background. It’s kind of comfortable here now, which is a strange thing to realize about some old laundry place at eleven in the night, especially because Kim Dokja usually associates silence with the fact that he has nothing else to talk about. With Joonhyuk, there’s no pressure to say something else. Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the thirty minutes.

Eventually, a loud beep cuts through the room. It startles Dokja even though he knows perfectly well that it’s his own machine.

“Ah.”

He stands up, shoves his phone back into his pockets, and begins to pull his wet clothes from the washing machine. The laundromat does have dryers, but they also cost another 4000 won, and Dokja doesn’t feel like asking Joonghyuk for more money. He’ll just hang them up in his bathroom and let them air dry.

Dokja stuffs his last shirt into the laundry bag and awkwardly swings it over his shoulder.

When he glances outside, the rain has mostly lightened. It’s only drizzling now, the puddles outside slowly emptying out into street drains, leaving behind wet pavement that dazzles yellow from outside lights. It’s still drizzling, but Dokja can make it home without getting too wet. Besides, he can clean up at home again if he wants to.

As Dokja makes his way towards the glass panelled door, he pauses.

When he looks back, Joonghyuk still remains seated behind him in that corner bench next to the dryers. Joonghyuk is looking straight at him with a steady gaze boring deep into his eyes. For a brief second, Dokja wonders if he should say something

Thank you again.

See you around.

Goodnight?

“Goodnight, Joonghyuk-ssi,” Dokja eventually decides.

“Hm,” is all Joonghyuk replies with.

It isn’t much of a response, but Dokja’s grateful even for the acknowledgement.

When he steps out into the freezing night air, he finds himself looking backwards once more before starting his retreat back home.

____________________________________________________

Monday morning eventually rolls back around, and Kim Dokja finds himself ushering one of his students into the nurse’s office no more than three hours into the school day.

Mia, the student’s name, apparently threw up somewhere on the field. Dokja had been standing closer to the cluster of students, thankfully, so he intervened rather quickly. After getting the group of kids pointing and staring to disperse, Dokja had crouched down next to the completely unbothered girl sitting in the very middle.

“Mia-ya, are you okay?” Dokja asked, “Can you tell me how you feel?”

“I’m okay,” she said simply. “Teacher, you have something on your shirt.”

Dokja looked down. There was nothing on his shirt. 

When he looked back up, Mia had already stood up, brushing off specks of dirt from her uniform 

“Has anyone told you that you look really tired all the time?”

“No,” Dokja sighed. “I need to take you to the nurse’s office, Mia. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mia replied.

Now she’s sitting on the nurse’s cot, kicking her legs slightly and looking across the room idly like she’s passing through. The nurse is taking her temperature, and has sent Dokja to call Yoo Mia’s guardian so that she can be sent home. So, Dokja steps out into the hallway and pulls up Mia’s student file with his phone as he goes.

He scrolls to the emergency contact section without really looking for a name– it’s a Monday morning after all, and he’s not fully awake either. He just finds the number, hits the call button, and lifts his phone to his ear.

It rings four times before the line is picked up.

“...Hello?” Dokja says cautiously.

There’s a little bit of rustling in the background, and the sound of keyboard keys clacking is all Dokja can hear before a voice finally responds.

“...Yeah?”

The man on the line has a very deep voice. The voice feels oddly familiar, but for Dokja, the voice is vague and unplaceable. He thinks he has heard it somewhere else, but he shakes his head. He’s barely awake, he’s probably projecting.

“Your…” Dokja looks back at Yoo Mia’s student transcript to find how exactly her guardian is related to her. But his eyes, instead, catch onto something else.

On the line, written in very faint ink next to “Guardian:”, is the name Yoo Joonghyuk.

Yoo Joonghyuk, the handsome, aloof man from last Friday, the handsome black-puffer-jacket guy that Dokja always sees in the laundromat on Friday nights, is Yoo Mia’s older brother. Why is he listed on Mia’s guardians list? Is the first question that pops up in his mind. It makes Dokja realize just how close Joonghyuk really is to him despite how far away they are at the same time. They don’t talk to each other at all, but for some reason, Dokja sees him everywhere nowadays.

After a second thought, it makes perfect sense. Mia, similar to her older brother, also always has an angry resting face, and now Dokja realizes that he has been on the receiving end of that look from both of them. 

Suddenly, Dokja feels very wary about everything. What if Joonghyuk had mentioned him to Mia? What if Mia knows about whatever happened in the laundromat? What if Mia knows that Dokja forgot his wallet, paced around in a small room, and tripped on a laundry bag? What if she was sitting in his class the entire time, knowing that her brother had to pay for this man’s laundry because he forgot his wallet like an absolute idio-

Wow, Dokja thinks to himself, he really isn’t looking forward to having to explain what happened to Mia at school today to Yoo Joonghyuk.

“Your…sister threw up in school today,” Dokja continues after a brief moment, trying to act professionally. “Can you pick her up?”

More rustling in the background.

“Yes,” Joonghyuk says simply. No other words, nothing like is she okay, which is kind of what Dokja expected from the man at this point.

The call goes dead immediately afterwards. Dokja stands there in the hallway, his phone still up to his ear, staring at the air blankly in front of him.

Presumably, Joonghyuk is on his way. Dokja tucks his phone into his pocket, then heads out of the hallway

____________________________________________________

Joonghyuk arrives in eleven minutes.

He looks exactly the same as Dokja remembers. Black puffer jacket, dark eyebrows, stern expression. The only difference is that it’s eleven in the morning rather than eleven at night, and the lighting at school is somehow worse than the laundromat’s fluorescents. Yet he still looks like that, which Dokja thinks is really unfair. 

His eyes go to his sister first, which is expected. From as far as he can tell, Joonghyuk looks fairly worried for the girl. Dokja thinks that’s kind of sweet, honestly, considering that the only side he’s ever received from Joonghyuk was his cold, irritable side.

Then, his eyes move towards Dokja himself.

And there’s a brief pause in his vision as his brain recalibrates the whole situation. Joonghyuk’s gaze moves from Dokja’s face to the lanyard around his neck with his school ID, to his awkward posture standing there waiting for a response, any response. The weird laundromat guy, his expression seems to say, is a teacher. His sister’s teacher, specifically. Is this guy even the slightest bit qualified? He can’t even remember to bring his wallet.

Joonghyuk looks very, very surprised. Dokja wonders to himself: has Mia never talked about her teacher ever to her brother? Does he really need to be that shocked about this whole thing?

“Joonghyuk-ssi,” Dokja cuts in, acting professionally in the moment, “Thank you for coming quickly.”

Joonghyuk says nothing at the moment. He still looks like he’s in a daze. Then, when he finishes taking the whole thing in, he finally turns back towards Mia.

“Are you okay?” he asks his sister.

“I’m fine,” Mia replies, a lot less coldly now for some reason even though Dokja asked the same exact question half an hour ago. “I told the teacher that, but he kept hovering over me.”

Joonghyuk turns towards Dokja.

“I was doing my job,” Dokja says.

Joonghyuk turns away from him.

“...you’re not going to say anything?” Dokja asks.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Dokja shrugs, because he really doesn’t know. 

Instead of saying anything further, however, Joonghyuk simply grabs his sister’s hand, leads her off the cot, and turns towards Dokja and the school nurse beside him.

“I’ll take her home now,” he says in the same deep, clipped voice of his. “Goodbye.”

Before Dokja can say anything back, the two of them have already left.

____________________________________________________

Dokja gets home at around seven PM.

He flicks his room lights on, sets his bag down, takes out his laptop, and opens Twitch. He doesn’t have anything specific in mind to watch. He just needed something to decompress, something he could idly focus on to take his mind away from the rest of the day. 

And as usual, the first video that pops up on Dokja’s algorithm is from @supremekingjoonghyuk. 

Usually, Dokja would ignore the man’s videos, mostly because he himself isn’t a big League of Legends fan. Joonghyuk is streaming live tonight, like most other nights, and there’s already well above five thousand people watching him play that damned game. Today, however, Dokja decides to click on the little icon out of a kind of newfound curiosity.

The screen changes. He listens to an ad about toothpaste playing in the background before the stream finally loads in.

The first thing Dokja is met with is the image of very intense fighting. He doesn’t know much about League of Legends, but it seems like Joonghyuk is attacking people. In the bottom right corner of the screen is Joonghyuk himself, the same as always, dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration, but with a fairly calm demeanor despite everything that’s going on in the game itself.

Joonghyuk is obviously good at the game. Dokja watches him destroy the rest of his opponents successfully and effortlessly. The stream chat to the right is moving fast, too– almost like a hundred messages per minute of people repeating his name over and over in hopes the streamer would notice them. Joonghyuk, as expected, doesn’t read any comment aloud. Not even in between matches.

Joonghyuk’s mannerisms during the stream are all expected, technically, because Dokja has seen the man constantly at this exact time of day, for the past few months he’d started using this laundromat. But, this time, the man Dokja sees is entirely the same and entirely different. It’s strange seeing a man who seems so far away and so unconnected and irrelevant from Dokja’s life, suddenly reveal himself to be relevant.  He still doesn’t know much about Joonghyuk, but truth be told– he kind of wants to know more about him now. And frankly, it’s fascinating to him.

Dokja watches him for what seems like a few minutes before he checks his phone to look at the time.

7:40. He’s been watching this man’s stream for a total of forty minutes.  How is he not bored yet? He doesn’t even like LoL.

Maybe because it’s Joonghyuk, the back of his mind tells him. Fascinating, he thinks, may be an understatement.

____________________________________________________

The first thing Kim Dokja does when he arrives at the laundromat this Friday is walk up to Yoo Joonghyuk and shove 4000 won worth of coins into the man’s hand.

When he got home from work, he had skipped dinner and everything and had arrived straight at the laundromat. Dokja had stalked up to the man rather confidently, but now, caught in the middle of the act, he absolutely blanks out. Joonghyuk’s wrist is cold to the touch. Dokja’s hand is wrapped around it, and his other hand is frozen in the motion of dropping the coins into Joonghyuk’s palm. It’s a little flustering, considering the whole situation and whatnot. 

Moments pass. Dokja feels his heart thudding against his ribs faster and faster. Joonghyuk looks back at him quizzically but doesn’t pull back. 

Dokja finally clears his throat, straightens, and steps back. He shoves his burning hands into his pockets.

“It’s…uh, for the laundry last time,” Dokja explains rather awkwardly.

Joonghyuk stares back at him.

“...I don’t need this,” the streamer says.

“No but–”

“4000 won is not a big deal.”

“Just–”

“I’m not poor.”

“I know you’re not poor,” Dokja stops. Then he starts again. “Just take it, okay? Please. It’s been bothering me all week.”

There’s a small beat of silence. To himself, Dokja wonders if he had said too much. Technically, the situation itself hasn’t bothered him all week, but Joonghyuk himself had, and Dokja wonders what he would feel if he had said that. He’d probably feel creeped out, wouldn’t he?

But Joonghyuk doesn’t say anything. Instead, he looks back at the coins sitting in his palm. Then, without ceremony, he closes his hand and puts it into his jacket pocket.

“Okay,” he says simply.

Dokja exhales a breath he had been holding since Monday.

“Okay,” Dokja parrots.

He turns around and walks back towards his machine with as much dignity as he had left, which tonight is a moderate amount. Good, he’s improving.

He loads his laundry, adds the detergent, and starts the machine. He sits back down at the bench next to Joonghyuk and prepares to get out his novel. It’s not raining today, but Dokja doesn’t have a reason to return to his apartment anyway. It’s not a long wash cycle– just forty minutes at most. And it’s fairly comfortable in the laundromat. Dokja takes out his phone, scrolls to the page he was on, and begins to read.

Surprisingly, the silence doesn’t last long.

“How are you liking Seoul?” The streamer asks.

Dokja looks up.

Joonghyuk looks at him.

This is the strange thing about Yoo Joonghyuk, Dokja is realizing. The questions he asks indicate he wants to continue talking, yet the answers he gives shut Dokja down completely. It’s the most confusing combination of signals Dokja has ever encountered in a person, and he’s read thousands of characters and their thoughts across thousands of stories, and none of them have managed it quite like this. Joonghyuk is either very socially inept, or he’s doing something else. Not that Dokja’s any better, anyways.

The other surprising thing, or maybe the most surprising part, is that Joonghyuk actually remembered. The little offhand comment Dokja had made purely out of fluster and embarrassment had been made a whole week ago, and Joonghyuk somehow still remembered. He honestly didn’t even think the man was listening at that time. 

He must have a good memory, Dokja thinks to himself.

“It’s…okay,” he replies honestly, “I don’t know much. I don’t have many friends, and I haven’t figured out where to eat around here yet, so I can’t say much about it.” Then, as a side note, “I haven’t eaten dinner yet, and it’s almost eleven.”

Dokja’s not sure why he’s telling the truth to this guy– it would be easier to lie. He’s not sure why he’s even saying so much in the first place, especially that last part. It was honestly meant to be…maybe a relatable conversation tactic? Or maybe hunger had simply been on his mind for a very long time. He hasn’t had a real meal in forever.

“How long have you been living here?” he asks, hoping to divert the conversation away from his own oversharing.

“Three years,” Joonghyuk says.

Dokja nods. To himself, he tries to imagine what it would feel like to be completely settled here, but he can’t quite picture it. Three years. Long enough to truly know the city properly, which brings up another question. If he’s lived here for so long, what was he still doing at an old, dirty laundromat like this? Isn’t he a famous streamer who’s rich enough to afford something cooler? 

“Then why do you still come here?” The question blurted out of Dokja's mouth before he could stop himself.

Joonghyuk looks at him for a second. Dokja regrets the question a little. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked something so personal.

“Nobody will recognise me,” Joonghyuk says at last, though Dokja thinks that’s not the full answer.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he adds, “I don’t have many friends either.”

Oh. 

That's almost the exact opposite of what Dokja would’ve expected a streamer to have. Most Korean streamers he watches nowadays have a group of friends they play with. Joonghyuk, in that way, is different. Dokja doesn’t know much about his streaming career, but he knows that Joonghyuk has always been known for being solo. And he’s decently good at it, too.

Another part of Dokja wants to laugh quietly. The sentence is a little soft and completely at odds with the face this man has been wearing all evening. A total absence of acknowledgement around what was probably meant to be comfort. It’s kind of cute how Joonghyuk tries to approach things like this. Maybe Joonghyuk cares a little.

A brief silence fills the room once more. All that can be heard is the sound of the washing machine spinning round and round, a dull, repetitive sound. Dokja listens to the cars outside whooshing by. He can feel Joonghyuk’s eyes on him.

“Ah…okay,” Dokja finally responds, a little robotically because he also doesn’t know how to talk to people, apparently. “It does make me feel better, actually. Thank you, Joonghyuk-ah.”

“Joonghyuk-ah?”

Dokja blinks. 

“What?”

Joonghyuk glances towards him with an unreadable face. “You said Joonghyuk-ah. Instead of Joonghyuk-ssi.”

Dokja opens his mouth, and closes it stupidly, like a squid.

“Are we close?” Joonghyuk asks again.

Dang it. He shouldn’t let himself slip on his words like this so outrightly. For the second time this week, Dokja wants to bash his head against the wall.

Obviously, they weren’t, but it’s something Dokja wanted. He has to remember that he’s talking to a guy he hasn’t met for so long– someone he can’t really consider a friend (even though Joonghyuk is the closest thing Dokja has to one in the entire city, mostly because he has never talked with anyone else outside of work). If Dokja’s slip-up somehow portrayed him as some desperate guy without friends, which he technically is—-

“W-well, we could be,” Dokja blurts out.

Damn, Dokja thinks. I suck.

“...Sorry,” he whispers.

There’s a brief silence. Dokja closes his eyes tightly and wishes that the ground could magically swallow him up.

“Okay,” Joonghyuk says finally.

“...Oh. Okay, then.”

He realises mid-sentence that he has been looking at his own hands during this whole conversation. He looks up, expecting Joonghyuk to be making eye contact with him, and instead finds Joonghyuk simply…looking in his vague direction. He’s not quite meeting his eyes, but the man’s gaze lands somewhere in the vicinity of Dokja’s face. It’s half strange and half charming. It makes Dokja want to know what he’s thinking. Dokja needs to get a grip on himself.

“There’s a gukbap restaurant still open now,” Joonghyuk says after a long time. “If you haven’t eaten. It’s not far away either.”

“H-huh?”

“You said you haven’t eaten dinner. You also said you haven’t figured out where to eat around here yet.”

“Okay,” Dokja replies, not really sure where this conversation is going. Is he just…giving me restaurant recommendations? “I’ll…keep that in mind then.”

“I was offering to take you.”

Oh. Joonghyuk really doesn’t know how to word his offers properly, does he?

Joonghyuk is already looking somewhere else, his jaw set like he’s bracing himself for something. Like something bad is going to happen, and he let himself take part in that exact thing. 

“...are you sure?” Dokja ends up asking, because for doing a really nice thing and whatnot, Joonghyuk sure doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. Well, Joonghyuk doesn’t seem like he’s particularly enthusiastic about anything, but the last thing he wants to do is force a really handsome guy into feeding him dinner. 

Joonghyuk’s gaze cuts back towards him. “Didn’t you say you wanted us to be close?”

A part of this whole situation feels straight out of some web novel– isn’t this technically a date? But in real life, things like this happen so ordinarily. Dokja knows that if he had read the exact scene he was in right now, he would be smiling from ear to ear. But here, actually experiencing the scene in real life, the request isn’t all that overwhelming, and he doesn’t mind it to be like that. The request, with the added context, seems casual and comfortable.

Maybe it would be more comfortable if Joonghyuk didn’t look perpetually pissed off, Dokja thinks to himself. Joonghyuk looks three seconds away from telling someone off despite his generosity. It’s strange. The offer, though, is also a little hard to say no to.

Dokja has learned his lesson. He’s not going to ask if this is a date or not. He won’t ask things outright anymore.

“I’ll go,” he says instead, because who wouldn’t pass up on an offer like this? “Thanks.”

Joonghyuk side-glances at him again.

“Your laundry.”

Dokja blinks, then turns around. The machine has been finished for a while now, blinking at him patiently. He feels his ears go hot as he crosses the room to retrieve his dried clothes, stuffing them into his bag hastily so he wouldn’t have to keep Joonghyuk waiting. Joonghyuk probably doesn’t mind, but he definitely acts like he does. He’s tapping his foot on the ground and staring at his watch every five seconds, which feels unnecessarily stressful.

“I’m ready,” Dokja quickly announces.

Joonghyuk doesn’t say much in response. Instead, he huffs and waits by the door as the two of them step outside.

____________________________________________________

Joonghyuk walks very fast. Dokja has to take extra-long strides to keep up with the taller man. He doesn’t bother making conversation because if he did, he would lose his breath. The streets are surprisingly empty at night, considering it’s Friday and whatnot, and the wind gets colder with every second that passes by. Dokja grits his teeth, tucks his chin into his scarf, and follows.

Joonghyuk ends up leading him to a 24-hour gukbap place. Dokja has definitely seen the storefront before on his way to work, but he’s never bothered going inside it because the store never looked open. Even today, Dokja was fairly surprised when Joonghyuk pushed open the rickety door, and there was actually light coming from inside the building. From what Dokja could see on the outside– the broken sign and the scuffed wood made this whole thing seem like a trap. 

But, thankfully, there are people inside the shop. For somewhere Dokja had never seen before, it didn’t look too sketchy. At least, not as sketchy as the outside impression.

Dokja takes a seat across from Joonghyuk and sets his bag full of clothes down.  The air is warmer in here, and it smells like bone broth. For a city as busy as Seoul, sitting here feels alleviating.

Cautiously, he picks up the smooth laminated menu, but really just glazes over the options. For some reason, his head is in a daze.

A woman comes over after a few minutes. Joonghyuk orders without really looking up– two bowls of gukbap and a side of kimchi, which Dokja appreciates because he hasn’t quite decided yet and would’ve spent another thirty seconds stuttering if the woman had asked him directly instead.

She leaves. Joonghyuk sets his menu down. Dokja sets his menu down. He listens to the sound of dishes clanking in the background.

“...Do you come here often?” Dokja asks because he has to say something.

“Yes,” Joonghyuk answers.

“Do you come alone?” 

Joonghyuk looks at him with a pointed look, like “what did you expect?”  To be fair, it was also a fairly pointed question.

“Usually,” Joonghyuk says. “Didn’t I tell you I didn’t have many friends?”

“...Right,” Dokja says.

He cups his hands around the small cup of barley tea in front of him and tries to think of something else to say that isn’t a stupid question. The cup is warm. He hadn’t realised how cold his hands were.

“Why do you teach elementary school?” It comes from Joonghyuk this time, breaking the silence. 

Dokja looks up. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you would teach at a university.”

Dokja blinks a few times. It takes him a second to realise why Joonghyuk would’ve made that assumption. “Because of the novels I read?” he asks.

Joonghyuk looks at him, which probably means yes.

“I like kids,” Dokja finally answers. It’s a rather simple answer to his dismay– he doesn’t know how to elaborate on it in an articulate way, which is also presumably a reason why he’s not a literature professor right now. “They’re also easier to talk to than adults. Maybe in another life, I would teach at a university, though.”

“You’re not good enough, are you?”

“W-well hey. I’m a decent teacher,” Dokja protests. “My students like me.”

“Mia hasn’t mentioned you at all.”

“Your sister doesn’t mention anything,” Dokja says defensively. He’s probably going straight back on what he said about being a decent teacher. “She probably gets that from you.”

A hmph of laughter escapes Joonghyuk’s mouth. Cute sound, but his lips don’t lift even the slightest bit. Even though Dokja didn’t make Joonghyuk smile, he still feels unreasonably pleased with himself for making him laugh, if you could call that a laugh.

He wraps his hands tighter around the teacup. “You play League of Legends, don’t you?”

“I thought you didn’t know who I was,” Joonghyuk says.

Dokja files his brain for a conversation when he had mentioned not knowing who Joonghyuk was. After a bit of thinking, he finally remembers. The first night they talked, Dokja had asked him should I know who you are? And he had answered probably not. Damn. This guy’s memory really is good.

“Well, I’ve seen your streams before…” Dokja says sheepishly, “I’ve just never clicked on them. I’ve also just never realised it was you.”

“Scratch that,” Dokja corrects himself, “Never mind. I’ve watched you stream once.”

“You have?” Joonghyuk seems surprised, knowing fully well he’s pulling in a decent amount of viewers every time he goes live.

“...yes,” Dokja mumbles. “Only once. I don’t usually watch League of Legends. I don’t play a lot of video games.”

“Then why did you watch my stream?”

Dokja feels his ears go red. It feels like he’s been caught in something, even though he technically has not. It’s not wrong to watch a man stream just because you find him hot.

“Just to know who I was talking to,” he ends up saying. “I watched forty minutes at most.”

Joonghyuk hums in response. 

The food arrives then. Two bowls of gukbap, and a small plate of kimchi set between them. Steam curls softly above the little trays, and Dokja feels his stomach respond immediately. Even the smell alone— the beautiful aroma of pork and garlic– is enough to make him realise just how long it’s been since he last ate properly.

He reaches for the kimchi at the same time Joonghyuk does.

Their fingers briefly brush against the edge of the plate at the same moment. The touch feels like a little spark, even though it’s so brief. Dokja immediately pulls his hand back.

Wow, is this a scene straight from a romance novel or what?

“Sorry,” Dokja says automatically.

Joonghyuk doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t seem fazed by it, or at least he pretends not to be. He takes a small portion of it and pushes the rest closer to Dokja’s side of the table.

Dokja stares at the plate for a second. Then, he picks up his spoon and starts eating.

The umami flavour instantly hits his tongue, and it tastes heavenly. As his first “real” meal of the week, it’s really not bad. For a while, neither of them say anything and simply focuses on eating. Dokja takes another spoonful, then another, and for a moment he completely forgets that there’s someone right in front of him, a guy that’s probably staring daggers into his head again.

“...This tastes really good,” Dokja mumbles in between bites.

Joonghyuk gives a small hum in response. 

“You know,” Dokja starts, trying his best to word his sentences so it doesn’t sound too pathetic, “Thanks for taking me. I really appreciate it, considering I don’t know many people around here.” He turns his spoon over. “It’s nice, I guess. To be somewhere with someone.”

Joonghyuk is quiet for a long time, which makes Dokja kind of regret saying that last part because it made him sound too lonely. Joonghyuk is quiet for so long that Dokja is prepared to change the topic entirely.

“You sound like someone with a lot of friends,” Joonghyuk finally says

Dokja blinks. “What? No. I literally told you I don’t know many people around here.”

“Here,” Joonghyuk comments. “But it seemed like you had friends before you moved here.”

Dokja tilts his head.

“...Well, I’ve had people I cared about, definitely,” he says honestly, “But that’s—that’s just normal. For being a person.”

“...And you?” Dokja asks, “You’ve had people you’ve cared about, too, right?”

There’s a brief pause.

“Yes,” Joonghyuk replies flatly, “and they don’t exist in my life anymore. So.”

Dokja looks at him. “So what?”

“So what’s the point?”

What’s the point? It’s a rather vague question; it could mean a lot of things coming from Joonghyuk, and he’s not sure which one it is. “What’s the point?” could be “What’s the point of asking?” “What’s the point?” could also be “What’s the point of caring?” In both scenarios, the question makes perfect sense. And in both scenarios, Dokja isn’t sure of the answer at all.

“What’s the point of paying for my laundry then?” Dokja asks instead.

Joonghyuk narrows his eyes. “What does that have to do with anything? You were being irritating.”

“If that was the case, then what was the point of bringing me here, then?” Dokja continues. “What was the point of remembering anything about me? If you think that people aren’t worth getting to know if they’re temporary, then nothing about me was worth knowing. I don’t really know what the point is either, but I think you’re contradicting yourself. Maybe you don’t truly believe that philosophy as completely as you think you do.”

Then, as an afterthought: “Sorry. I don’t want to come off as unfriendly. You’re a cool guy. Really handsome, too.”

For a long while, Dokja turns back to his half-eaten food, and focuses on finishing the rest as Joonghyuk stays silent. Even though he’s not really hungry anymore, he still finishes the rest, because it’s good food he doesn’t want to waste. As he chews spoonful after spoonful, he wonders if he said too much. He probably has, hasn’t he? Sometimes, he has to remind himself that Yoo Joonghyuk is only a man he’s just started talking to. A few weeks earlier, his mind only knew Joonghyuk as the handsome guy with the puffer jacket.

Dokja sneaks a look upwards mid-bite.

Joonghyuk is looking at him again. Not looking vaguely in his direction, but he seems to be staring intensely at him, trying to decode anything about Dokja, or maybe trying to decode something about himself.

Finally, Joonghyuk straightens.

“You’re done with your food, aren’t you?” He glances briefly at Dokja’s empty bowl. “Next time,” he says simply, “I’ll take you somewhere better.”

Huh? Joonghyuk really does have a way of changing the topic, huh?

“N-Next time?” Dokja asks. He had half thought Joonghyuk would’ve gotten pissed at Dokja’s overanalyzing of a stranger. And yet. There will be a next time now, apparently. A second…date?

“Are you–” Dokja stops, “Are you asking me out?”

Joonghyuk just looks at him with an unreadable gaze.

“Tell me, Kim Dokja,” he begins, “if I had continued asking myself what the point of this was, would we be here right now?”

The restaurant itself is very quiet. The other customers have long disappeared. The only sound that can be heard are the clanking dishes in the very back. It’s an arcane sentence, but it seems like Joonghyuk only speaks in crypticity. Dokja has never been scared away from abstruse things like this, however. 

If I had continued asking myself what the point of this was, would we be here right now? The answer is no. If Joonghyuk had thought Dokja was never worth it to approach, they would be nowhere near now. They would still see each other every week, but proximity is not connection, or at least it does not guarantee it. Dokja has never been the one to start a conversation. But, if anything, he really does want to know more about Yoo Joonghyuk. He wants to understand him and his philosophies, and his arcane way of speaking. He wants to know what he is thinking.

“No,” Dokja answers.

Joonghyuk holds his gaze for a second longer. Then, almost as if he’s flustered, he looks away.

“Your number,” he says, “Give it to me.”

“...What?”

Joonghyuk is already holding out his phone, not making eye contact. Dokja stares at it, then takes it and types his number in rather clumsily. He hands it back, and Joonghyuk puts it in his pocket without checking anything else.

“So…” Dokja says slowly, “This was a date, then?”

Joonghyuk stands up, reaching for his jacket along the back of the chair.

“Yes,” he says simply.

“Okay,” Dokja replies. The word feels good coming out of him. Going on his first date at the ripe age of 28– and for his first date, it was very intriguing, to be honest. He ducks his head down to smile, wonders to himself how he managed to gain the interest of a handsome man like Joonghyuk, and then, when he looks up–

“W-wait no–”

Before Dokja can even stand up, Joonghyuk has already paid for the two of them, and now looks at him from beside the door, waiting.

“Are you coming?” he asks.

Damn it. Dokja thinks to himself. I can’t let him pay next time. He’s given me too much at this point. I need to repay his kindness somehow.

“Oh, yeah. Yes, I’m coming,” Dokja says as he stands up, grabbing his laundry bag and following Yoo Joonghyuk out of the door.

As they walk back together, Dokja looks beside him, at Joonghyuk's eyes. Dark, deep, a little mysterious, the same eyes that have never failed to make him wonder what the man is thinking right now. Even after their small conversation tonight, Dokja has not one clue what is going on in that mind of his.

Maybe someday, he will. 

Dokja hopes that someday, he will.

____________________________________________________