Chapter Text
The stars around him didn’t weep.
But he did.
The constellation known as ‘Secretive Plotter’ watched the ruins from beyond the veil.
Ash choked the sky. The ground split open like an old wound. And in the center of it all, a man knelt — head bowed, spine curled in on itself, unmoving. Yoo Joonghyuk. Bloodied. Hollow. Breaking.
Secretive Plotter should have turned away.
He should have left the screen to rot.
But he didn’t.
He watched.
He watched Yoo Joonghyuk’s grief unravel in the dust, slow and deliberate as a confession. He watched the scream burst from his throat like it had nowhere else to go — as if Joonghyuk wanted the pain to echo back, to punish the world, to make the universe flinch.
He hated him for it.
How dare he scream now?
How dare he cry for the one he failed?
But Yoo Joonghyuk was still on his knees, sobbing like grief belonged to him, and Secretive Plotter could no longer stand it.
It clawed at him — that image. The soundless scream, the cracked knuckles digging into scorched ground. The way Joonghyuk’s shoulders trembled, grief wrapped in rage, wrapped in something deeper.
“How dare he…”
[The constellation ‘Secretive Plotter’ is looking at incarnation Yoo Joonghyuk in contempt.]
Because Kim Dokja is gone.
And the one who let go is the one on his knees, shaking as if he deserves to mourn.
No.
No, he doesn’t.
He doesn’t get to weep for the man who loved stories more than himself. He doesn’t get to mourn the man who stood between death and everyone else until his knees gave out.
He doesn’t get to kneel in the dirt and pretend his hands weren’t the last ones to let go.
Kim Dokja had always been fragile — not weak, never weak — but fragile in that infuriating, stubborn way. The kind of person who held the weight of the world with trembling arms and still smiled like it was a gift. The kind of person who would die quietly, without fanfare, so long as his companions lived.
And Yoo Joonghyuk let him.
He let him walk into the collapse alone.
He watched.
He watched, and now he grieves?
Secretive Plotter’s contempt sours into something colder. Sharper.
He watched Joonghyuk tremble and hated the way his hands twitched in response — wanting, for just a moment, to reach through the veil and strangle him.
If the system weren’t in place, if the veil weren’t between them, he would’ve reached through and—
[A constellation is attempting to send a private message outside sanctioned channels.]
This wasn’t a constellation’s decree.
It was a blade.
Words scraped through the starstream, brittle with rage and mourning.
Every letter a fracture.
Every line a scream.
[Bypassing restrictions…]
[Message received.]
Yoo Joonghyuk flinches. His eyes are glassy, red-rimmed. There’s a tremble in his hands — from blood loss, maybe. From grief, more likely.
The message stutters onto his screen, crooked and glitching. It reads like a wound.
[The constellation ‘Secretive Plotter’ speaks.]
[“You failed him.”]
His breath stops. He stares, jaw tightening.
[“I watched you let him fall.”]
[“Do not look for him now. He is not yours to lose again.”]
The screen fractures — a second of red static, jagged across the corner — then clears.
[“You broke what you were supposed to protect.”]
[“This is not your story anymore.”]
[End of message.]
⸻
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.
The message hangs in the air like smoke, searing into his vision. It doesn’t feel like a system notification. It feels like a voice — raw and furious — like it tore itself through the stars just to reach him.
Not yours to lose again.
“…Then whose?” he whispers, and the words taste like ash.
The only reply is the low crumble of distant fire.
But something inside him coils — cold and hateful. Not at the message.
At himself.
Because Secretive Plotter isn’t wrong.
Maybe he did fail. Not in the way of battle, not in the way of dying, but in the most human way possible: by letting someone go when they needed to be held.
Kim Dokja had made his choice.
And Yoo Joonghyuk had let him make it.
⸻
Somewhere distant — outside of time, beyond the rules of regression and scenario — a constellation sits alone.
No observers.
No sponsors.
No gods.
Just the silence of aftermath and the name burning through his chest.
The constellation ‘Secretive Plotter’ stares into the fold of borrowed space, fists clenched so tightly they crack the void beneath him.
He remembers Kim Dokja’s voice. Not the one from the stream.
A boy. The one he spoke to the stars with. Innocent. Quiet. Unheard.
The voice that once whispered, “Do you think they’re watching?”
The voice that had believed. That had hoped.
He should have answered. He should have said, I’m here. I’m always here.
But he waited.
Just a little longer, he told himself.
Just until he finished the story.
Just until the end.
And now the end has come.
And it wasn’t him who stood at his side.
It was Yoo Joonghyuk.
Because it’s always Yoo Joonghyuk.
The thought turns bitter on his tongue.
He squeezes his eyes shut and speaks — quiet, ugly, broken:
“Liar.”
He clenches his fist.
“You said I was your favorite story.”
The words echo. But there’s no one left to reply.
And maybe it was true. Maybe, for a moment, it had been him.
But now all he has are fragments. Shards of a soul scattered across the pages of a book no one else read. A name written in silence. A love stitched into margins.
He was the first to witness him. He remembers the child in the library, curled in a corner, whispering encouragement into an uncaring void.
He remembers every moment of that boy becoming a man who smiled for others, who gave everything, who disappeared without even a body to mourn.
He remembers him.
All of him.
And he has nothing left.
He has no shrine.
No grave.
No voice.
Just one truth:
“He was mine.”