Chapter Text
You're bad at fighting.
Kim Dokja could barely make out the dark splotches on his arm as words. At first, he thought they were just more bruises.
But even at six years old, hiding in the bathroom as he pretended not to hear his father shouting just outside the door...
Kim Dokja could read.
Yeah, that was all he could do, growing up here.
He'd read about this, too. The ink stains that appeared on his skin were in a wobbly scrawl. A handwriting too uneven and effortful to have been written by anyone in this apartment that someone from the outside looking in might mistakenly call a home.
The ink on his skin, the message it transmitted, it came from somewhere else.
Someone else.
...
Kim Dokja had been hoping he didn't have one.
A soulmate.
The kids in his class talked about them sometimes, he was pretty sure. They'd mention being excited about learning how to write this year, or make a big fuss about an unexplainable splotch of dark that didn't hurt like a bruise should. Expectation and evidence of that special connection one had with someone who would bear the marks of this world with them.
Kim Dokja wasn't one of the kids who talked about it. Thanks to his mother he already knew how to write, and thanks to his father he knew where all his bruises came from.
He was more familiar with the concept from novels he had read. A fantasy where a man woke up with strange sigils on his skin and realized his soulmate was a demon, a sci fi where two protagonists kept in contact with their skin when they were planets apart, or a romantic side plot where two characters got a tattoo together to show their devotion to one another...
Yes, a soulmate was just another type of relationship in this world. You were born into the world having a soulmate in much the same way one is born into the world having a mother or a father. Except your soulmate was tied to you by marks on your skin, rather than blood in your veins.
And even though it was something one was supposed to expect in this world, Kim Dokja had never really thought about the fact that he must have one.
"Dokja," his mother told him once, "I always thought of your name as one of a reader, but your father insisted you be called only child. Someone who could exist in this world standing on his own... Without a need for..."
His mother didn't finish that sentence. His father and mother were both people who had different soulmates, at one time. But those people didn't exist, anymore. Dokja was pretty sure of that. At the very least, his mother's bruises never found their way into his father's skin. Or anyone else's either. Or maybe someone out there did see the signs of his mother's injuries on their own skin, and they just didn't care.
That was right. A soulmate who wanted to contact you when they saw you were hurt... It would have to be someone who cared.
And because no one had ever cared before about Kim Dokja and his mother's situation, Kim Dokja did not expect his own soulmate to be any different.
And yet, there were words someone had bothered to write to him on his very own skin. Skin that someone out there must have noticed was blemished with pain.
Dokja stared blankly at the words. If he were the protagonist of a story, he might respond. Write out something smart and cool sounding like... I'm probably better at fighting than you... Or something...
...
Or maybe that was too much effort. Maybe Dokja was too tired. Maybe he should just pretend he wasn't alive and then his soulmate wouldn't end up grieving him when he really did end up dying.
Kim Dokja knew he probably wouldn't even make it to 7, let alone 13 or 15, the far off teenage years when most people would end up actually trying to meet their soul mates...
Honestly, what was the point of getting someone else's hopes up just to-
Oh. More writing.
Dokja had probably stood here a few minutes now without replying. But it seemed whoever was his soul mate wasn't someone who gave up right away.
I already know you can't fight good. The message said. Don't tell me you can't read good either.
Kim Dokja frowned.
Suddenly he was looking around his bathroom for a pen.
Kim Dokja spotted the paper calendar that his mother had been marking off days on next to the sink. He slid the ballpoint she had used off of the page it was clipped to.
The pen pressed into his skin. It took some pressure to make the ball point of it roll ink onto his flesh. The tissues of his skin pressed against his bones with each stroke.
I can read. Was all he wrote.
It was all he wanted to say.
His soulmate didn't let it end there, though.
The black marks started appearing almost right away. His pen was thicker, Dokja noticed. Probably something like a sharpie, rather than a ballpoint. A nice ink pen that Kim Dokja might see at school, but that his parents probably wouldn't have bought for the house.
You can't fight good. His soulmate repeated himself again. Don't get into fights anymore.
Oh, that made sense. Kim Dokja thought to himself. His soulmate was contacting him suddenly because of the bruises Dokja had just earned himself. Of course it would be inconvenient to find those marks suddenly on your skin.
And yet, even though Kim Dokja felt like he could understand this reasoning, he couldn't help but feel a little indignant.
I already don't get into fights . He wrote slowly, having to retrace some of his lines as the ballpoint pen stalled on the surface of his arm.
You're a liar. The response was quick.
Am not. Kim Dokja replied at the same slow pace.
If you're just gonna lie there's no point in talking to you. Said this next part. Not even if you're my soulmate or whatever.
And even though Kim Dokja thought he had no expectations, somehow his heart managed to sink just a little.
Ok. He ended up writing, resigned once more to being alone.
He put down the pen where he found it, looking at his extended arm, covered in ink.
A new line appeared over the words. And then another. And another. Until these slashes started to form a furious scribbling that covered all of the words that had been written.
And it was later that night, looking at those scribbles, when Dokja felt properly sad.
Those words, even if they were short, rude, and he had no intention of replying...
Even still, those words were ones of someone trying to reach out to him...
And he had wanted to read them again.
Kim Dokja had read novels where the protagonist's life could revolve around that legendary fated meeting with a soulmate.
But Kim Dokja could hardly call himself such a protagonist.
He was gingerly rolling up the sleeve of his middle school uniform to hide any rips that might earn him some scolding about the cost of his clothes, when he saw the first message in over half a decade.
I thought you had stopped getting into fights. It said. Are you some sort of delinquent, now?
No, Kim Dokja thought to himself. I'm a murderer... Murderer's... I'm a murderer's son... Yeah. That was what those kids who pushed him down thought, wasn't it? That was their justification for beating him bloody. One could hardly call what he did today a fight.
Kim Dokja shrugged his backpack off his shoulders a bit, sticking his hand into the backmost pocket to fish out a pen.
He ended up grabbing a thin felt tip, this time. He ignored the way the ink itched slightly as the point of the pen poured it into his skin.
I told you, I don't get into fights. He wrote.
There wasn't a reply by the time Dokja reached the door of his relatives' house. He ended up pulling down his sleeve over the letters and enduring the scolding.
"We can't afford you a new one." The cousin saddled with him at that time had said.
Dokja accepted this. He didn't eat a lot at dinner, not wanting to poke at the money troubled thoughts of this cousin that his torn sleeve had stirred up.
But when he was settling down on his futon that night and getting ready to scroll through his phone to find something to read online, he found more words written on his arm.
I can't believe my soulmate is a stubborn, lying bastard like you .
And that was what Kim Dokja read that night.
He read it over a few times. Thinking about each word repeatedly in his mind, trying to imagine the person behind them.
The words implied that the writer had some kind of hope. Some kind of expectation. Some kind of idea in their head of the kind of person their soulmate was supposed to be.
And this person was right to resent him, Kim Dokja thought. They were right to think that it was unfair for their soulmate to be someone like him.
Someone who probably wouldn't live to be fifteen.
The next time Kim Dokja wrote to his soulmate, he had been planning it for quite a while. He hadn't quite intended to make it this far into highschool without doing so sooner, but there were a couple web novel serializations that he waited to be finished with before he actually picked out the date.
When Kim Dokja opened the window in that third story classroom after his cleaning duty was done, he held a coloring marker from the school supply in his hand. It was something he could write quickly with. Something that would clean away easily when his body no longer belonged to his soul.
I can't apologize for the bruises. Was what he wrote on his arm. That would be up to my father or my classmates. I accepted a long time ago that I have no control over what people like them do to me. There's nothing I can do to stop it, other than this. And I am choosing it. And for that I'm sorry. Sorry we were tied together like this. Although, maybe that's out of my hands too, anyway. But because of it, my decision is going to affect you. I'm not sure what it's going to look like. I think that stuff about feeling when your soulmate dies and the last marks staying forever is just made up for books, but I'm not sure. So if it hurts or I mess up your skin with this, sorry for that, too. At least I won't inconvenience you with new bruises everyday, though.
He adjusted the pen in his grip a bit. He turned his arm at an awkward angle to write further.
We don't really know each other, and I'm sure you don't need a soulmate like me, anyway. So even if everyone tells you this kind of thing is important, please try not to care too much about this or think about it too much.
You're the only person I have to ask this of, Kim Dokja thought to himself. He hoped that his soulmate was the kind of person who could be stronger than his mother or his father. Someone who could live and have a good life where they didn't have to hurt or hurt others without their soulmate in their life.
He didn't have much more room to write, though. Just the very edge of the back of his hand and a little spot on the back of his thumb.
Kim Dokja wrote one more Sorry. In that first space.
And then, in the last space on his thumb.
Goodbye.
He capped the pen with a click that echoed through the empty classroom.
Beep.
The next sound he heard was a high pitched, short tone.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
When Dokja opened his eyes he saw black and white where his body used to be.
He hadn't expected to wake up.
Maybe he had been wrong about there not being a heaven.
But then the whites separated before his eyes. One white clarified into that sickly fleshy color of his arm. The other was the sheet of an unfamiliar bed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He felt heavy. Like his bones were being weighed down by the entire world.
Except he didn't really feel the bones.
He only felt the weight of them.
Kim Dokja didn't move his head. He let his bleary eyes wander in the same spot they had opened on.
He saw bandages on his arm. The kind for cuts rather than broken bones.
What kind of cut bled black, Kim Dokja wondered to himself as he peered towards the smudges of dark between the bandages.
And then he recognized them as words.
Someone had written all up and down his arm.
The words started out big in the middle.
What are you doing. What choice?
Those were the words that were easiest to read.
Hey, your letters disappeared, all of a sudden. That means you washed them off, right? Were you joking, before?
Hey. Answer me. I know you're still alive.
There's red on my arm and I'm not bleeding so it's not mine. If you're bleeding I know you're still alive.
Listen, I don't mind people who get into fights. Even I get into fights sometimes.
I'm really good at fighting, actually.
The best.
I could show you if you don't want to get beat so much. You don't have to make up excuses like that, just don't lie to me.
I don't like liars and people with secret motives .
Kim Dokja read these things and did not think about them. He just read them.
Were you not lying? At this point the writing had gotten cramped and to the side.
The next part was crossed out, a half finished thought.
Are you really-
Wait I'm sorry.
This part started a bit farther up the arm. Like his soulmate had rolled up their sleeve for more room.
I should have believed you, you're my soulmate, please don't die.
If you're dead, I'll KILL you.
"Kill" was written in all caps and doodled over a bit. Like the writer had paused to give it a certain accentuation.
A little further down the arm, in smaller handwriting to cramp around the cuts.
Please, please don't leave me here alone.
Kim Dokja winced, turning his arm a bit to see the next part. He didn't feel any pain, but moving was just.. it was hard.
I promise I'll listen to you this time.
He read.
Just give me another chance.
Kim Dokja thought that was a strange thing to want.
Let's pretend none of this happened and start over.
Starting over... Yes, it was strange wasn't it.
If Kim Dokja were to start his life over he was almost certain that nothing would have changed.
He simply had never had the power to change his life, like that.
Starting over would just mean going through it all again.
Why was he even still here.
Kim Dokja blinked. He was forced to notice this blink through its effortful slowness. His head was stuffy. Pain killers, probably. He had jumped three stories. He survived, somehow. There was... Oh. He must have hit that tree first, huh.
Maybe he understood his soulmate's request now. A chance to redo something.
If Kim Dokja had another chance, he would be dead by now.
Kim Dokja closed his eyes again.
He didn't know if the next moment was seconds or days later.
Hi. My name is Yoo Joonghyuk. I'm 14. I live in Seoul. I like video games.
The words were written on his other arm.
Was his soulmate ambidextrous?
Maybe not. The handwriting was more crooked on this arm.
It had probably taken more effort. More time than the other hand.
You didn't have to do that. Kim Dokja thought to himself.
And then he must have closed his eyes again.
When he woke up again it was for real. It didn't feel like it, though. His body felt unfamiliar. As if it barely remembered that it belonged to him. Sitting up felt strange. Any other movement caused pain. He couldn't even track down where the pain came from. It just hurt.
A nurse noticed him, eventually. She paused and explained to him that it had been about a week since he checked in and that he was lucky to have survived the fall. After that, she did some check ups to see if he had lost any memories or something like that. She told him his head was fine and he was on a course to a full recovery. If things went well, there wouldn't be any permanent damage.
"You should think things through, in the future." She said. "All this equipment, your parents' money, it could all be used for other things right now if you hadn't decided to do this to yourself. If this kind of thing happens again, the injuries might not heal as well. Think about your future."
And then she left to spend the time she seemed to value so much elsewhere.
Kim Dokja couldn't help but think this nurse was a bit stupid, as she left.
When he had thought about his future, of course he didn't imagine ending up here.
He had imagined being finally, finally dead.
Dead like he was always supposed to be.
He looked around the hospital room but the windows had bars on them. There weren't any hooks on the walls to make his bed sheets any use. He didn't even see anything sharp laying around.
Wait didn't he have a...
Kim Dokja reached for the IV in his arm.
He had seen protagonists rip it out in movies and the like. It should be sharp, shouldn't it?
It seemed a little daunting. The needle looked almost as though it were connected to his skin. The needle must be going into his vein, right? But maybe it didn't matter how roughly he ripped it out, since he was just going to use it to-
Kim Dokja realized that there was more than just the IV on his arm.
That writing was still there.
Hi. My name is Yoo Joonghyuk. I'm 14. I live in Seoul. I like video games.
The nurse said it had been weeks, but the writing barely looked faded. Kim Dokja noticed that the lines looked crisper, actually. Less crooked than before.
As he watched them, one by one the lines of the letters became darker.
It dawned upon Kim Dokja that his soulmate was writing.
Not writing, actually.
Rewriting.
The letters that had faded slightly became bold and black again.
Kim Dokja thought that his soulmate must have been retracing these few sentences for the past few days now.
Maybe they perceived that Kim Dokja would be sleeping for a while, after what he did. They wanted to make sure he had a chance to see this message.
They... It was probably a he, wasn't it? Joonghyuk... Yes, that was a boy's name, wasn't it...
Protagonists in novels would usually be soulmates with pretty girls who would end up being their sweetheart later on.
Kim Dokja wondered if that was who this Yoo Joonghyuk imagined his soulmate to be. A pretty girl that might be a great romance later in his protagonist's journey.
Again, Kim Dokja knew deeply that he would be a disappointment to this soulmate of his.
He himself may have gotten unlucky with parents in this life... But the same inexplicable force of existence had brought misfortune to this Yoo Joonghyuk in the form of a wretched soulmate who did nothing but stain his skin with bruises and blood.
If Joonghyuk, wherever he was in Seoul, retracing these letters on his arm, were to see blood suddenly bloom forth from Dokja pulling the IV... What would he think then?
No! Stop! He would probably write. Hey, if you hurt yourself anymore, I'll kill you.
... Yes. If Kim Dokja read him right, this soulmate was this sort of aggressive kind of person. Someone who felt very deeply. Experienced such despair at his helplessness that he would write on his arm every day to deliver the same message, because it was all that he could do.
Kim Dokja didn't know if he could bring himself to hurt this person like that again. The fear he had read in that " Are you really- " scribbled out before the conclusion could be pondered. Subjecting his soulmate to that again by trying to stab his throat in with a needle... Wasn't it a bit too cruel?
Kim Dokja let his arms fall away.
He couldn't bring himself to do it. Not when his soulmate was still writing just now.
He'd wait until Yoo Joonghyuk stopped refreshing the words on his arm. Maybe then he would assume that Kim Dokja was already dead. And then Kim Dokja would find some way to die for real. Some way that wouldn't leave any evidence. Maybe if he got his hands on some pills…
These were what his thoughts consisted of for the duration of his hospital stay.
When he was moved out of the treatment room, he had to stay a few weeks in a psych ward on suicide watch.
When Dokja was checked out of the facility, the letters were still there.
Still, he waited for them to disappear. For his soulmate to realize he was probably already dead and give up.
It was when Dokja was getting ready to start going to school again that the words changed.
Not in the way he expected them to, though.
Well, I don't like all video games. The follow up sentence to the introduction was written a little bit lower on Kim Dokja's arm. I'm playing one right now that I really hate. It's called Ways of Survival. It's super impossible to beat and I keep dying to the 32nd demon king.
The next day, instead of the same refreshed letters, Kim Dokja found more of the story.
I thought about it and I think if I go back and pick a different dialogue option I can skip the fight.
Kim Dokja frowned. Was that really something a video game would allow?
He found his answer the next day.
Didn't work. I still have to fight him. This damned bastard.
Kim Dokja wondered why Yoo Joonghyuk played this game, if he hated it so much.
And once more, the story answered his question the next day.
I beat him. Is what was written. Now I get to fight the 31st Demon King.
And then the next day, Kim Dokja got to hear about how awful of a bastard that demon king was. And the next day, the writing was about how many tries Yoo Joonghyuk had gone through to defeat him. And then he fought the rest of the demon kings after that, and wrote of what other parts of the game he had yet to complete.
And over the course of a few months, the story that Yoo Joonghyuk wrote out on his arm evolved. He began to tell of other aspects of his day. Teachers that had made him angry, other kids he thought were stupid, or even that rare something that had made him just a little bit happy that day. He wasn’t a talented writer, but somehow he managed to take the time out of every day to give Dokja a little piece of his story.
Yoo Joonghyuk was a person who didn’t give up, Kim Dokja realized about half a year later. He would play an impossible video game until he beat it. He would argue with people bigger than him until they accepted that he was right. He would write on his arm with a story every day until his soulmate finally, finally responded.
Except, Dokja didn’t respond.
Because he had made a decision to kill himself when Yoo Joonghyuk gave up. To quietly remove himself from this protagonist’s story.
… but somehow this decision had faded into a resignation. A realization that this story would never stop, because Yoo Joonghyuk was not the kind of person who just stopped.
And so, his story became the one that Kim Dokja lived for.
Every day he read a little bit more about Yoo Joonghyuk’s life.
While Kim Dokja struggled through highschool, Yoo Joonghyuk struggled through his favorite video game, Ways of Survival. Some fights were easy, some were hard. Regardless, Yoo Joonghyuk would approach them with the same level of intensity.
When Kim Dokja was struggling at a third rate college, Yoo Joonghyuk was managing to make an income as a professional gamer in the WoS competitive league. Even though their financial situations were probably similar, Kim Dokja always imagined Yoo Joonghyuk to be much happier because of his career, and imagining that happiness made the days just a little more bearable for him as well.
When Kim Dokja was on the front lines during his mandatory military service, Yoo Joonghyuk was exempt due to a wrist injury that was crippling his career. A lot of his writing those days consisted of exercise plans for his recovery. He started using his other hand. Kim Dokja once more admired his persistence.
When Kim Dokja managed to just squeeze into a limited contract at Minosoft, Yoo Joonghyuk’s little sister showed up on his doorstep. Many of his messages became about her, as well as other people who had appeared in his life, many of whom he desired to take care of the best he could.
On one of these days when Kim Dokja was about 29, a message came through.
Yoo Mia is upset today. I'm not sure why.
Kim Dokja would read this and think of the answer to himself.
It was two years ago today that she was dropped off at your doorstep, and you spent the day at a game tournament instead of with her, you stupid sunfish bastard. You're 28 years old, shouldn't you have learned to deal with dates and times by now?
But he didn't write this on his skin. Send the message out for a reply.
It was because no matter how stupid Yoo Joonghyuk felt like being on any one particular day, how inconsiderate, bullheaded, or foolish...
Kim Dokja knew that he didn't have a right to change his story.
He wasn’t allowed to be a character in his soulmate’s life, anymore.
Not after all this time.
As that year went on, Yoo Joonghyuk brought up more concerns about Yoo Mia and their mutual origin. Parents that they had never met, but must have existed out there somewhere for them to have had the lives they had had.
When Yoo Joonghyuk wrote down details of this search, Kim Dokja wondered if there were parts that he was leaving out. If perhaps in his searching, he had casually googled obituaries for teenagers who died by suicide back when he was in his first year of highschool. Or maybe he didn’t search for obituaries. Maybe there was no need, if he still believed Kim Dokja to be alive.
… did he really think that?
Kim Dokja wasn't sure how he really could.
Maybe he had caught evidence of paper cuts, ink stains, or black and blue spots from Kim Dokja's clumsiness at work.
Certainly there had been school fights after his hospital stay where Kim Dokja would proudly declare, "I am Yoo Joonghyuk!" And try to fend off a beating he previously would have just taken.
But even if Yoo Joonghyuk knew his soulmate was alive, surely he should know they were a useless one, by now.
Kim Dokja tried to imagine who exactly Yoo Joonghyuk thought he was writing to. Who exactly it was that a person like him would deem worth all of the effort of sharing almost half his life in ink.
He should know by now, Kim Dokja thought, that soulmates weren't all they were cracked up to be.
Having grown up reading webnovels, Kim Dokja could understand the impulse that a lot of young people had to automatically assume a soulmate was some sort of fated lover. In reality, out of all of the friends he had made in adulthood, none of them had ended up in long term relationships with their soulmates.
Well. Saying that Kim Dokja had friends was a bit of a stretch, actually.
It was more like he had three acquaintances that just decided he was going out for drinks with them sometimes.
"Ah, my soulmate?" Jung Heewon had responded to a question from Yoo Sangah once, when Kim Dokja had been dragged to the bar where she worked. "Well, sure, we dated for a while. Things got serious for a bit, but then he went off to the military and we broke it off. We said it was just for the time being, but it’s been quite a few years since we were actually close…"
When she handed him his bill after that, Kim Dokja double checked the math. Sometimes, Jung Heewon would "forget" to charge him for some of his drinks and he would have to make an effort to correct her. He suspected it was for the same reason she was generally friendly towards him, even though he had a rather awkward personality. Kim Dokja was fairly certain that Jung Heewon thought she owed him something for their first meeting, when he had found her crouching figure in an alleyway behind a convenience store, barely breathing, and had taken the initiative to call an ambulance for her. It was because of this circumstance that Kim Dokja assumed Jung Heewon had a favorable impression of him, even if he felt that he hadn't done anything in particular to endear himself to her.
"Oh, dating your soulmate in your school years… that story has such a nostalgic feeling to it, doesn't it?" Yoo Sangah had commented in that genuinely interested way of hers. Kim Dokja had known her since his first days at Minosoft, but they hadn't really spent much time together outside of work before Dokja's contract at the general QA department ended. "Hmm…" Yoo Sangah tapped her chin. "Let me see what I can remember about my soulmate… Well, I'm pretty sure they introduced themself to me as a big strong man with a six pack and 'a quadrillion awesome muscles-'"
"Stop telling people about that!" Han Sooyoung interrupted the retelling of her and Yoo Sangah's fated first introduction. "I should really get a free pass for anything I said before age 8… wait, actually make that 13…"
Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah were good examples of soulmates who barely seemed to get along most days. Whenever they were present at the same company meetings, they always seemed to have some sort of disagreement to bring out, and there were days where Dokja was dragged out drinking just to sit between the two of them so that they weren't at each other's throats the whole night.
… but even on those nights, when the heat of whatever argument had died down into that sleepy after drinking atmosphere, Han Sooyoung was always the one who would order a car to drive Yoo Sangah home, insisting that the train at that time of night just wasn't safe. There was that implicit trust there, between them. A bond that was built up from having to share the marks of the world their entire lives.
Kim Dokja thought he could understand Han Sooyoung's embarrassment at those first few soulmate greetings. Ones initiated by a child she no longer was.
"... Hm." Kim Dokja spoke up, as if considering the clemency she had just requested. "... But if you were to be forgiven for everything from before thirteen, you couldn't be brought to justice for plagiarizing your first web novel from-"
"Ah! Shut up about that!" Han Sooyoung had rebuked his teasing, "I told you, if you call it plagiarized one more time, I really will fire you!"
Kim Dokja didn't really think she'd follow through on that threat, but he took a sip of his drink instead of prodding her further anyway.
After all, Han Sooyoung was basically the woman who single handedly saved his career.
When she was put on as the director of a new game project based on some of her successful written work, Han Sooyoung had trouble with some of the older executives at the company. Kim Dokja had done some work from what he could in the QA department to take care of some of those troubles, and after his contract had expired Han Sooyoung had essentially made up a high ranking quality assurance position on her project just for him.
She had said some kind words about how he was a good reader and that was what she needed for this project, someone who could really appreciate the story, but Kim Dokja suspected that, once more, fortunate circumstances had befallen him from some misplaced sense of gratitude others had for him giving it the bare minimum rather than any particular merits he had as a person.
"Ah, what about you, Dokja-ssi?" Yoo Sangah had turned the particular line of questioning toward him this time. "What's it like with your soulmate?"
Kim Dokja had just shrugged.
"I haven't spoken to him since we were young." He explained.
"Oh, I see." Yoo Sangah had a way of nodding that didn't make Kim Dokja feel too awkward for his strange answer. "Not that close, then? Well, I'm sure that happens to a lot of people as time goes on…"
And the conversation had carried on after that, mostly with Yoo Sangah leading the topic, Jung Heewon interjecting with teasing as she went between customers, and Han Sooyoung grumbling about betrayal with her head down on the table.
But as Kim Dokja gulped down his last drink for the night, he thought about what Yoo Sangah had said.
Not that close… he had rubbed the arm of his long sleeved white business shirt, a bit self conscious. What would Yoo Sangah say of his and his soulmate's relationship if he were to roll up his sleeve and explain that Yoo Joonghyuk wrote to him everyday? Would she think that they were, perhaps, very close? Or maybe she would perceive that they were close only one sidedly. Perhaps, she and the others would even encourage Kim Dokja to finally reach out in return.
… this was the reason why Kim Dokja always wore long sleeves at the office, regardless of weather conditions.
Even if Yoo Joonghyuk had at one time fallen into the romanticized soulmate notions that real people had shown Kim Dokja the errors of, surely he would have been dissuaded of them by now. It would be foolish if he wasn't, actually. Hell, the man was engaged, of course he wasn't expecting romance from his soulmate connection.
…
Then what did he expect, Kim Dokja wondered. What standard was Kim Dokja himself forced to hide from in fear of disappointing Yoo Joonghyuk? And if there was no expectation, then…
Why did Yoo Joonghyuk keep writing?
…
Kim Dokja wondered this almost every night.
And yet, he genuinely never expected to ask that question.
He never even expected to meet the man named Yoo Joonghyuk.
.
.
.
The first time Kim Dokja saw his soulmate in person, Yoo Joonghyuk kicked him off of a train.