Chapter 1: kim dokja's "extenuating circumstances"
Chapter Text
Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel is, much to his chagrin, a decent otome game.
It shouldn’t be. Like many other games in the same genre, TWSA’s main character—Yoo Sangah—is nothing more than a Mary Sue self-insert. Most reviews complained about Yoo Sangah being “too perfect” or “archetypal”. Personally, he liked her character even with all her flaws, but he’s not exactly the target audience, so his opinion is irrelevant.
The graphics are…of questionable quality, to put it lightly.
(Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’ll wake up and laugh for half an hour about the CG that was supposed to be a sex scene but ended up looking like a botched exorcism. Poor Lee Hyunsung. It’s clear the creators and artists weren’t the biggest fans of him.)
The three—well, two, because Lee Hyunsung’s route might as well be comedic relief for the heaviness of the others—romantic routes are the only things that are remotely palatable, other than Yoo Sangah doing “hot girl shit” (the words of a random reviewer, not him, but he wholeheartedly agrees with the sentiment).
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t cry at least once while playing each route. Maybe even more than once. That wouldn’t be an exaggeration either. Whatever the case, the game writers really wanted to bring people to tears, and it shows.
Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk saved the reputation of TWSA (along with Yoo Sangah, in his humble opinion), landing it a solid 4.5/5 in his mental review and a 3.8/5 on the Dokkaebi Shop.
(It was mostly Yoo Joonghyuk.)
That being said, for all his praises of TWSA, he would’ve chosen a different game to enjoy if he knew he’d be waking up in one.
“—ja-ssi? Dokja-ssi?”
He blinks. “Yoo Sangah-ssi?”
She smiles at him, and damn—having it right in front of him makes the mental damage tenfold. Everyone who said Yoo Sangah was a horrible protagonist would eat their words if they saw her smile. Hell, he’d eat their words so Yoo Sangah wouldn’t have to see them.
“Can you take these files to Department Head Han?”
“Ah, sure.”
About a week ago, he’d woken up after getting four hours of good-for-nothing sleep, in his own apartment. He commuted to work on the subway, skimmed through another apocalypse novel with a particularly naive protagonist, clocked in at work…
...and promptly realized he didn’t know anyone in the office.
At that moment—and he prides himself on this, because anyone else would’ve panicked and revealed their memory loss—he came to the conclusion that he probably had amnesia. And that he had to hide it from everyone until he figured out what the hell was going on. Which was, for obvious reasons, not the best idea, but being uniquely the coward named Kim Dokja, it was the only course of action for him.
It wasn’t until he got back home and saw a pretty girl that he definitely had never met getting into the elevator and making small talk with him that he started thinking about, well, everything . Life, the universe, and what alternate Kim Dokja these people had met.
From her name card, he deduced that: a) her name was Yoo Sangah, which sounded awfully familiar; b) she worked at the same company as him, which he belatedly realized had changed their name to Mino Soft, which also sounded awfully familiar; and c) she was definitely not someone that he knew well enough to small talk with.
Then, he was hit with the next earth-shattering fact: that his neighbor, who was previously a cranky old man, had somehow turned into an undeniably beautiful female protagonist overnight. And unless a person like her was, for some god forsaken reason, dating the 50+ divorcee with two kids the same age as her who was supposed to be living next door, she had moved in. Quietly, without his knowledge. Which would have been near impossible, due to the amount of time he spent holed up in his apartment on the weekends.
As one does when their worldview has been completely shattered, he, in true Dokja fashion, shut himself up in his apartment and reevaluated his memories for two days—using up his precious few sick days—only to come to the conclusion that he had all of his memories intact. It was just that everything else had changed.
With that, he was able to come to terms with the fact that he, Kim Dokja, had been transported into what seemed to be the world of TWSA.
…
Yeah, right. Coming to terms . That’s funny. Real funny. Now he has to live with the knowledge that Yoo Sangah, his next door neighbor, is the protagonist of a third-rate otome game. How is anyone supposed to live with that...
...knowing there’s a chance she won’t end up with their favorite character?
Yes, that’s right. He made a resolution: he’d make every effort to ensure Yoo Joonghyuk would be the one getting it on with Yoo Sangah!
(Might be a bit of an unrealistic goal, considering he’s a character only mentioned as “Awkward Neighbor” and portrayed with a grayed out silhouette, but still . A man can dream, okay?)
And that brings him to now. Getting chewed out by Han Myungoh, the finance department head, for bringing the wrong papers.
“Yoo Sangah-ssi told me to bring them,” he says, ignoring all the drivel coming out of Han Myungoh’s mouth.
“Yoo Sangah-ssi...is that so? Then, hurry along. I’ll read them now.”
The way Han Myungoh is clearly, blatantly biased towards Yoo Sangah would be funny if it wasn’t creepy as hell to experience firsthand.
(Not really firsthand, since he’s not Yoo Sangah nor anyone emotionally invested in Yoo Sangah, but same idea. It sucks that Human Resources hasn’t fired the greasy bastard yet.)
It’s a good thing he still has the same position as he did in his last life. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he woke up as the CEO.
Haha. As if.
He slumps into his chair, letting a soft sigh escape from him. It would’ve been nice if he got transported into a game where he wasn’t in the clutches of capitalism. But looking at his situation now, it’s likely going to be the same as it was before. Just with the added bonus of seeing an otome game unfold while sitting on the sidelines with a bucket of popcorn. Which isn’t that bad, honestly. It’s not like he had friends, or, god forbid, a lover. It was just him, Kim Dokja, against the world. So maybe watching Yoo Sangah get herself thoroughly entangled in the world of angels and demons won’t be too bad. Who knows, maybe he can even become friends with some of the main characters. That would be nice.
This company, Mino Soft, operates more or less the same way as his old company, so he clocks out at his usual time, rubbing his sore neck as he boards the elevator. He selects the ground floor, pressing the button to close the door and pressing himself against the back wall. The door starts closing, the gap getting smaller and smaller until—
“Excuse me, please hold the door!”
Startled out of his thoughts, he leans forward to stop the doors from closing, poking his head out. It’s none other than Yoo Sangah, seemingly out of breath as she half jogs towards him, heels clicking against the hallway tiles.
“Ah, it’s you, Dokja-ssi,” she gasps, slipping into the elevator. “Thank you for holding the door for me.”
Even when she’s tired and out of breath, she still maintains her protagonist aura. Impressive.
“No problem, Sangah-ssi,” he responds, taking his hand off the doorway and letting the doors slide shut. With a jolt, the elevator starts its descent. They occupy opposite corners of the elevator, an uncomfortable silence in the air.
“What are you planning to do this evening, Dokja-ssi?” she asks, giving him a slight smile.
“Oh, I’ll probably just sleep.”
The silence thickens.
Yoo Sangah clears her throat, covering her mouth with a dainty hand. “Did you know that rain sounds are effective for promoting good sleep? It’s raining tonight, so maybe I’ll follow Dokja-ssi’s example and sleep early.”
He doesn’t bother to tell her that he’ll probably be sleeping at his usual time of 3 in the morning, instead nodding absentmindedly. He sneaks a glance at Yoo Sangah, who looks as if she wants to talk more, but the elevator gives a soft ding! and the doors open.
“I’ll be heading off, Yoo Sangah-ssi,” he says, giving her a wave as he exits the elevator. “Have a good evening.”
Just at the moment that he tears his gaze from her, he hears her voice again.
“Wait, Dokja-ssi, are you commuting by subway?”
He turns back to face her, halfway down the stairs already. “Yes. Why?”
“It looks like it’s starting to rain already. I came by bike, so”—she makes a complicated face—”I think I may have to take the subway back home. Since we live in the same building, we might as well go together.”
The first scene of TWSA starts on the subway. Yoo Sangah would never take the subway unless it was raining, since she commutes by bike. Which means…
They’re now entering the main storyline.
Having difficulty finding the right words, he sighs, adjusting the strap of his bag. “I guess so.”
TWSA opens with Yoo Sangah deciding to take the subway. On the subway, she’ll meet the first love interest, Lee Hyunsung. They’ll sit next to each other, in carriage 3807 (don’t ask why he has the number memorized) and then Lee Hyunsung will drop his transport card on the way out, prompting Yoo Sangah to get off the train one stop early to return the card.
He doesn’t know if his existence changes anything. Clearly, in the original game, he existed—as “Awkward Neighbor”—but they never mentioned him being Yoo Sangah’s coworker. Assuming that he’s not supposed to be on the subway when the fateful encounter happens, if he wants Lee Hyunsung and Yoo Sangah to meet, he should find a way to remove himself from the situation.
It’s probably best to avoid changing the game settings completely. For all he knows, if he prevents the two of them from meeting…
“Yoo Sangah-ssi?”
“Yes?”
He puts on an awkward smile. “I just remembered that I need to buy something before going home. You should go first.”
Yoo Sangah gives him a quizzical look. “This late? There’s a convenience store near the apartment building, if you have to buy—”
“No, I—” He coughs after seeing Yoo Sangah’s bewildered expression. “It’s something that I need to pick up. Urgently. From a specific location. It will take a while, so Sangah-ssi can leave without me.”
Without hearing Yoo Sangah’s reply, he turns and jogs away. After confirming that she isn’t following after him (highly unlikely, but just in case) he pauses to catch his breath, taking a few steps backwards before—
thwack!
“Hey, watch where you’re going, you—”
Crap. Of all the people to run into, it had to be—
“Han Sooyoung?”
She pulls the stick out of her mouth, revealing a yellow lollipop. “Eh? Have I met you before?”
She blinks from behind her glasses, scanning him from head to toe. When he doesn’t respond, the corner of her mouth turns up. “Are you a fan of mine, then? I don’t recall sharing any photos of myself online, but—”
He won’t interfere in Yoo Sangah meeting the love interests. That much is certain.
That doesn’t mean that he can’t mess with the love interests themselves. Han Sooyoung’s babbling on about something, something, autograph, something, something I’m kind to my fans. What bullshit.
“You’re shorter than I thought.”
“Hah?!”
He pushes past her without so much as a word, making a beeline for the next subway station.
“Hey, you son of a bitch, get back here!”
Pretending not to hear, he speeds up, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Maybe this won’t be as bad as he thought.
It is as bad as he thought.
He sighs, using the tip of his shoe to nudge the body. “Can you get out of the way?”
No response. Maybe it was a bad idea for him to take a shortcut in order to arrive at the complex before Yoo Sangah. If she arrived first, she’d be the one—
ding!
Yoo Sangah’s surprise at seeing him changes to horror as soon as her gaze travels to the ground.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
She takes a step back down the hall, and he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I just found him like this,” he amends, sidestepping to allow Yoo Sangah to see the unconscious man on the floor.
“Dokja-ssi...you’re not the one who—?”
He plasters a smile onto his face. “Do I look like I have the ability to incapacitate someone this big?”
“...Indeed. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
The two of them stare at the body for a bit longer before Yoo Sangah pipes up again. “It’s a bit cold out here, isn’t it?”
Just at that moment, he sneezes, the sound echoing in the hallway.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, a hint of amusement coloring her voice. “Should we help him? I’ll see if he has any saved numbers on his phone…”
“That won’t help.”
She looks up at him from her crouched position, and he coughs to dispel the awkward atmosphere. “What I mean is, he doesn’t have a phone. I checked already.”
Why would a demon king need a mobile phone, after all?
“I see…” She trails off, pressing her fingers against the man’s neck to feel for his pulse. “Should I call 119, then?”
He sighs, digging into the side pocket of his bag for his keys. “I think that’s a bit excessive. Let him rest in your apartment, and I’m sure he’ll wake up soon.”
Just as he inserts the key into the lock, he feels a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Are you trying to leave all the responsibility to me, Dokja-ssi?”
He breaks into a cold sweat. Shit.
Somehow, the two of them and the body on the ground end up in his apartment.
He drops the man at the doorway with an unceremonious flop , kicking off his shoes and gesturing to Yoo Sangah to do the same. As expected, she takes her shoes off with care, placing them near the door before taking a couple cautious steps in.
“Our apartments have the same layout, but yours looks…” She seems to struggle for a word to describe it. Not that he blames her. There’s books piled up in haphazard stacks, random articles of clothing scattered on the ground (thankfully, there’s nothing too bad—it’s just some socks), and his bedsheets are bunched into a pile at the foot of his bed. Yoo Sangah’s apartment must look like heaven compared to this pigsty.
“It doesn’t normally look like this,” he mumbles, though it’s more trying to convince himself than her.
She nods after a moment. “That’s right. Dokja-ssi was sick.”
“You can sit”—he clears a couple books off a cushion, dusting it off—”here, if you want. Do you want anything to drink? I have water, and”—he pulls out a tin of instant coffee, which he quickly discovers is empty by dropping it on the counter—”water. That’s too bad.”
“Water is okay,” she says, giving him a smile as she sits on the offered cushion. “I’m planning to sleep early, so I should avoid coffee.”
“Right.” He nods, portraying the image of a man that doesn’t regularly drink coffee at this time of night. “Water it is.” He pretends he isn’t getting her water straight from his kitchen tap, and hands it to her, glancing sideways at the prone body at his doorway. “Do you think he’s waking up any time soon?”
The man gasps, sitting up and staring at the two of them with caution in his eyes. Speak of the devil—or demon, in this case.
“Speak. Who are you?” he growls, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them.
“Dude, you’re literally sitting in my apartment,” Dokja deadpans, unable to stop his ridiculous sarcastic mouth. “Shouldn’t you thank me before you start asking questions?”
“I’m Yoo Sangah, and this is Kim Dokja. We found you passed out outside our apartments.”
Dokja resists the urge to roll his eyes. Ah, the protagonist’s diligence isn’t too bad for keeping them alive, but can’t he mess around a little?
His favorite love interest—Yoo Joonghyuk—doesn’t lower his guard, straightening up to his full height and glowering down at them. “You two—”
“Do you want some water?” Dokja asks, fully aware of Yoo Sangah’s eyes trying their hardest to communicate what she perceives as impending danger. Yoo Joonghyuk’s brows furrow. “Joonghyuk-ah, it’s not polite to not answer people’s questions.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Ah…” Crap, that’s a great question. How did his secret nickname for his favorite love interest just slip out? “I’m a lucky person, so I guessed so. Anyways, do you want water? It’s fresh from the tap. I’m sure it’ll make you calm down.”
Minutes later, Yoo Joonghyuk is sitting cross-legged on the floor, cup of water in hand as he continues to glare at them.
“Alright.” Dokja claps his hands together, and both of them look at him. “So, now that we’re all settled, a reintroduction is in order. I’m Kim Dokja, temporary office worker at Mino Soft.” He gestures at Yoo Sangah. “Yoo Sangah, another office worker at Mino Soft, and my next door neighbor.” Finally, he looks at Yoo Joonghyuk, who’s staring at Yoo Sangah with intent. Perfect. “Yoo Joonghyuk, the man who was passed out on the floor.”
Oh, now he’s staring at him. “How did you guess my full name?”
“Luck,” he responds, watching his frown deepen. God, this guy’s going to get wrinkles before he turns 30. “Mind telling us why you were passed out on the floor?”
“I’m a demon.”
Yoo Sangah spits out her water. Which, okay, is an appropriate response to such information, but she wasn’t this surprised in the original game. “A what?!”
“The man said he’s a demon,” Dokja says, shrugging. “Anyways, I think that explanation quite suffices. So, if you want to talk to Yoo Sangah more, Joonghyuk-ah, you should ask her—kindly—to lend her your apartment for the night—”
“She’s a woman.”
“And?” Dokja crosses his arms. “I don’t know how it is in the demon world, but here in Korea we’re trying to not be misogynistic, Yoo Joonghyuk. Your attitude is shameful, honestly. She deserves your respect as much as anyone else does—”
“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk hisses with far more force than necessary. “I will return back to my home.”
Well, for reasons only evident to a player of TWSA, that cannot happen. Seriously, why didn’t Yoo Joonghyuk just leave?
Right, because he was—
“You’re too injured to return anywhere.” Dokja runs a hand down the man’s unfairly muscled back, and Yoo Joonghyuk flinches hard, hissing like a wet cat. “See? What did I tell you? My place is a mess, so go stay with Yoo Sangah-ssi.”
“Uh.” She raises her hand.
“Yes, student Yoo Sangah, speak.”
“I don’t think it’s safe for a single woman like me to house a strange man who is—as he says—a demon,” she states, clearly skeptical about the whole demon thing. Poor her. She’ll realize the truth soon enough once she sees the monstrous size of his co—
“Then I will stay here.”
Dokja’s head whips around to face Yoo Joonghyuk. “Absolutely not. Get out. And, Sangah-ssi, please take him in. I can’t due to extenuating circumstances, so—”
“What extenuating circumstances, Dokja-ssi? Staying home on a Saturday?”
God, that hidden mocking tone is so strong.
Chapter 2: the exchange of bodily fluids is painful (as expected)
Notes:
this is rated mature and god so help me if i don't take advantage of that
as always, unbetaed
(written mostly in one afternoon)
also slight cw: lots of blood
Chapter Text
“You can sleep on the floor.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him. He stares back.
“Kim Dokja.” The seething glare in his eyes is just as he imagined from the game.
“Fine, what do you want me to do? I only have one bed, asshole.” Dokja shrugs, watching the already irritated expression on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face twist even more. “Unless you want to squeeze into the same bed as me.”
This would be easily solved if Dokja himself decided to sleep on the floor, but unlike a certain someone, he actually pays for and owns this apartment. So really, he deserves the bed. Unlike Yoo Joonghyuk, who would have slept on a nice couch had he just gone with Yoo Sangah when he still had the option.
(Is he being petty? Yes, extremely. As long as Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t stab him in the middle of the night for ownership of his bed, he’ll live.)
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Fine, then I’ll do that.”
Dokja’s halfway through formulating a sentence in his mind, but Yoo Joonghyuk’s agreement scatters any thoughts he had. “I’m sorry, what?”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, looking dangerously close to bursting an artery. “I’ll sleep in your bed.”
Well, those are words that he never imagined his favorite character ever saying.
“God, I was—” Dokja chokes back the word joking. Damn it, even if he says no, this bastard won’t agree to sleep on the floor with how stubborn his character settings are. “Fine, have it your way. I’ll go buy an air mattress tomorrow morning.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks exceedingly pleased with this arrangement, crossing his arms and looking around the room. “Your home is a mess.”
“What an understatement,” Dokja mumbles under his breath. “Hey, if you have the time to complain about it, why don’t you do something about it?”
“It’s not my home.”
God, he forgot how much of an asshole Yoo Joonghyuk was before being loved by Yoo Sangah.
Dokja sighs. “Fine. Do whatever you want.” He steps over a pile of socks to grab the glass of water, the condensation on the side of it virtually untouched. “I’ll just be over here drinking water.”
“It’s your home,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, but he sounds a little unsure of himself—or as unsure as a 184 centimeter demon king can sound.
(His actual canon height is pretty debatable because the game says 184 and 185 in two separate scenes, but Dokja’s more inclined to believe the official character info sheet, which does say 184 centimeters.)
“Yeah, it is my home,” Dokja agrees, “and you’re intruding on it. I’m letting you stay out of the graciousness of my heart, and you expect me to wait on you like one of your kkomas?”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “How do you know about the kkomas.” It really should be a question, but Yoo Joonghyuk’s threatening tone makes it sound like a statement.
Also, he really has to stop accidentally dropping information he’s not supposed to know. It’s definitely making Yoo Joonghyuk suspicious—he can see it on his handsome face—and that doesn’t lend well to him staying alive. Who knows if he’ll return to his original world once he dies? He’d rather just live well here.
Maybe he can even see Yoo Sangah and Yoo Joonghyuk’s half-blood children that didn’t get featured in the game.
“I’m just—”
“Don’t tell me you’re just lucky.”
Dokja coughs. “Ah, well, I read about them.”
“You read about them.”
“Of course—doesn’t everyone know about kkomas?”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns to face the door. “I’ll go ask that woman then.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’s referring to Yoo Sangah.
“Wait, don’t—” His foot lands on a stray sock and slides out from under him, and he nearly slams his head against the table. The only thing that stops him from knocking himself unconscious is Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand, which has magically teleported to cradle his forehead.
“This is why you should clean.”
This damn bastard. He really needs him to fall in love with Yoo Sangah soon, before he loses his sanity.
Dokja wakes up on the floor, which is not where he fell asleep.
Blinking back bleary tears, he sits up, at which point the worst headache he’s ever suffered hits him.
“Fuck,” he hisses, looking down at his white shirt with a suspiciously dark stain spreading across the front. He bites down a groan. The substance on his lips is wet and slimy against his teeth, and stings with the same metallic bite that hangs in the air. “Where is it coming from?” he whispers, using his tongue to swipe across the back of his teeth. At least all of his teeth are still inside his mouth—Minosoft doesn’t have dental insurance. A drop of something dark drips onto his shirt, blooming and melting into the rest of the stain.
“Yoo Joonghyuk?” he calls out, pushing himself to his feet. His vision spins, and he grabs onto the nearest object blindly, nearly retching at how metallic everything smells and tastes. The carpet below him is soaked with blood, squelching under his feet and coating them with cold slick.
He squints at the bed. His poor bedsheets are also covered with dark stains, although some seem…darker than others? He can’t tell apart the stains in the dark, but there is evidently a lack of Yoo Joonghyuk in his bed.
“Yoo Joonghyuk?” he says again, taking small steps around the bed. He takes a step, and a sharp pain shoots up his leg. He lifts his foot. It’s a glass shard, sparkling in the moonlight from the now broken window. Looking closer, the entire area of floor within a meter radius of the window is covered with glass shards, glittering like a fine snow.
Damn it, did something like this happen in TWSA? He tries to focus, but the throbbing pain in his head breaks up any coherent thoughts about the game.
“Yoo Joonghyuk, you’re paying for the damage if I catch you,” he mumbles, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. It comes away a smear of dark red, still shining wet.
“I will.”
Dokja nearly jumps out of his skin.
“What the fuck did you do to my apartment?” He tries to sound as pissed as he is on the inside, but by the end of the sentence, his voice is already petering out to a whisper. Damn it, he should have eaten dinner. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so weak on his feet if he had.
Yoo Joonghyuk stands near the entrance, his dark wings disappearing in a puff of smoke with a snap of his fingers. “You’re bleeding,” he observes.
Dokja would roll his eyes if it didn’t hurt so bad to be alive right now. “No shit,” he croaks out, tasting his blood on his lips. “What happened?”
“Are humans supposed to lose this much blood?”
“How would I know?” Dokja snaps, swaying as he takes a step towards Yoo Joonghyuk. “But…probably not…?”
He stumbles forward. He swears Yoo Joonghyuk has some kind of teleportation power, because his face crashes right into Yoo Joonghyuk’s stupid muscular chest even though he was still a few steps away. Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms wrap around his waist, holding his limp body up, and through the muddled mess that is his mind right now, he thinks it feels kind of nice. Having Yoo Joonghyuk hold him like this.
“You need a healer.”
“Wha, a doctor?” Dokja slurs out, using the tiniest bit of strength left in his arms to push himself away from Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest. “No, iss fine, just gonna—gonna sleep…it’ll be fine, I swear—”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs. “Dokja, you’re going to die.” He seems…resigned, somehow?
(Resigned to what, he doesn’t know. Just because he knows the most a fan could about Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t mean he knows everything. He’s not so stupid to think he could understand a character based on how they were shown in a game.)
“Am not,” he mumbles, watching as Yoo Joonghyuk’s face draws closer, “not gonna die, ‘nd even if I do, why would you—mmf—!”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips meet his with enough force to bruise, his tongue taking advantage of his half-open mouth to slip in.
Dokja’s hands scrabble feebly at Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest for some kind of purchase, fingers curling weakly around his jacket lapels. He can still feel the hot blood streaming from his nose, smearing over both of their lips. Dokja half-gags, half-sobs into the kiss when Yoo Joonghyuk’s teeth knock against his and he tastes scrap metal on his tongue. It hurts. He wouldn’t have imagined that his favorite character wouldn’t know how to kiss properly—do demons not kiss down in hell?
Yoo Joonghyuk pulls away for a split second, and through his teary, pain-filled vision, he sees him bite something and visibly wince. Then, he grabs Dokja’s chin with one hand, and presses their lips together again.
This time, it’s a bitter taste that makes Dokja jerk away as soon as it hits his taste buds. Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand blocks his path of escape, keeping their lips together for just a second more before he lets go.
Dokja’s knees give out, and without Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms keeping him upright, he collapses to the ground in a heap, coughing and wiping blood from his lips. Yoo Joonghyuk takes a step back, looking sick to his stomach.
“Wha—what the fuck, bastard?” Dokja sputters, glaring at him. He can hardly feel anything in his mouth at this point except for that bitter taste. If Yoo Joonghyuk’s trying to poison him, he’s definitely going to drop dead any second now.
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t speak. He coughs, and a mouthful of black comes dribbling past his lips.
“Yoo Joonghyuk—”
“I’m fine,” Yoo Joonghyuk responds, complexion improving despite the liquid dripping onto his shirt without inhibition. “I apologize for what I just did. I didn’t have time to explain it to you.” He stares down at Dokja. “Are you feeling better?”
“Huh?” Dokja belatedly realizes his nose has stopped dripping all over his white shirt. “Yeah, I think so.” He stumbles onto his feet, but thankfully he’s steady enough now to stand on his own. His head splitting headache is fading as well. “What did you do?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent, and Dokja sees him avoiding eye contact, so he says it again. “What did you do, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls, looking like he’d rather punch the living daylights out of Dokja than explain anything to him. “I made a life force contract between us.”
“A life force contract?” he echoes, trying to search through his memories of the game for a similar term. “I don’t—”
Shit. How could he have forgotten? The first night Yoo Joonghyuk stayed with Yoo Sangah, a demon from an anti royalist faction broke into her apartment and tried to kill Yoo Joonghyuk. Yoo Joonghyuk killed the demon, but was fatally wounded, which forced him to extend his stay with Yoo Sangah. Supposing these events also happened tonight…none of these events were supposed to injure Yoo Sangah, and of course never led to anything like a life force contract. How the hell did he get injured instead of Yoo Joonghyuk?
“What’s a life force contract?” he asks instead, hoping that once he explains it, he’ll recall when Yoo Joonghyuk formed one with Yoo Sangah.
“You don’t seem to know everything.” Yoo Joonghyuk crosses his arms. “It’s a contract that’s made by swapping blood between two individuals via mouth-to-mouth contact. In essence, our life forces are now linked, meaning that if I die, you will die as well, and vice versa. It also mitigates injury and distributes pain evenly to both parties. If we didn’t have the contract in place, you would be dead already.”
Damn it, that sounds nothing like anything he’s seen in TWSA.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says. “Is there a way to dissolve the contract?”
At this, Yoo Joonghyuk turns around and starts to ignore him in the most childish way possible.
“Hey, you have to tell me,” he grumbles, poking Yoo Joonghyuk right where he knows his injury is. “I’m not going to dissolve it right now; I just want to know.”
“—course.” His response is so quiet that Dokja has to strain to hear the end of it.
“Say that again?”
“—trative intercourse.”
“Wha—”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns around and grabs him by the shoulders. “Kim Dokja, if you make me say it again—it’s penetrative intercourse. If you want to dissolve the contract, we are going to have sex on your bed, and I am not doing that.”
Dokja chokes on his spit. “Fu—Do you have to say it like that, Yoo Joonghyuk? What’s wrong with my bed? Not that I want to do it on my bed either, but—”
“Shut up.” Yoo Joonghyuk actually seems to be blushing, shockingly, but before Dokja can get a closer look at his face, he’s picked up and thrown unceremoniously back onto his bed (the exact one that apparently Yoo Joonghyuk cannot, for one reason or another, fuck him on). “Go to sleep.”
“The bed is bloody,” Dokja complains, watching Yoo Joonghyuk pace around the room like a prisoner.
“Too bad.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes are flashing red and Dokja decides this is the perfect signal for him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. Which he does. But not before asking Yoo Joonghyuk one more question—
“Are you sleeping with me?”
“Kim Dokja.” Yoo Joonghyuk looks one word away from murder. “Go to sleep.”
He does. He swears he does. But maybe he’s also awake when the weight of Yoo Joonghyuk settles on the right side of the bed, and awake when Yoo Joonghyuk’s body settles down to lie next to his, and can’t help but feel the slightest bit jealous of Yoo Sangah for getting to enjoy this for the rest of her life.
Chapter 3: the most prominent feature of yoo joonghyuk
Notes:
yes it's been 2 months. no my next update will not come much sooner than that.
ALSO 1k KUDOS??? i have to be dreaming guys ilysm i know i never reply to your comments but i read every! single! one! of them! and it makes me happy
again this is unbetaed and mostly written in one sitting, save for one section
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The briefest summary of what’s happened to Kim Dokja so far is this: he reincarnated into the body of the neighbor of the protagonist, was persuaded (definitely not coerced and shamed by said protagonist) to pick up his favorite love interest, somehow went through a near death experience, and deviated off the known plot immensely (more on that later).
Oh, and the demon king love interest also signed an extremely predatory contract with him that would almost certainly have been used for a sex scene had Dokja been the protagonist.
(It’s a good thing he isn’t—it’s not like he’s a stranger to BL games since they aren’t all that far from otome games, but judging from the most prominent feature of Yoo Joonghyuk sex CGs, he doesn’t think it’s going to work with anyone other than Yoo Sangah and her special protagonist body.)
Speaking of said protagonist…
“Dokja-ssi?”
Dokja nearly spills water all over his hand, slamming his knee into the cabinet below with a force enough to make Yoo Sangah wince in sympathy as he crumples to the floor.
“I’m fine,” he hisses when she makes a move to help him up. “You just startled me. There’s never anyone in here at this time.”
“How is Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi?” she asks, looking both ways down the hall before entering the break room.
“Ah.” Dokja sighs. How to even start with the subject of Yoo Joonghyuk? “I still think it would be better if you took him. Do you want some coffee? I was going to make myself some.”
“Yes, thank you.” Yoo Sangah takes a seat at the table, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear absentmindedly. “I’m sorry if you were offended by me the other day. I would have taken him in if he wasn’t—” She makes a vague gesture.
“No, I understand,” he explains in a hurry, resting his back against the counter to face her. “It’s a safety issue. I’m sorry for trying to push it on you. It was just…a little inconvenient for me to house another person. I’m used to living alone, you know?”
Understatement of the year, if he’s being honest. Even though the weekend has been pretty uneventful after the whole life force contract thing, Yoo Joonghyuk is still a pain in the ass to deal with.
Yoo Sangah nods. “Of course. It’s hard to live in a different environment than what you’re used to.”
Is it just him, or does she look…sad? Melancholy? Wasn’t Lee Hyunsung supposed to ask her out for a coffee date over the weekend to repay her for returning his transit card?
“Did something happen?”
It’s only when Yoo Sangah looks at him that he realizes he said it out loud. “Please don’t misunderstand me,” he blurts out, waving his hands in front of him. “You just made a sad expression, so I was wondering. You don’t have to talk to me about it—but you can, if you want to.”
She’s silent for a moment, and Dokja kicks himself mentally for interfering too much. Damn it, she’s a fictional character—from a fantasy otome game, no less. Why would an irrelevant character like him be privy to the protagonist’s worries?
“I had a partner,” she begins haltingly, “who was living with me. They disappeared almost two weeks ago without any warning, and…it’s been difficult to deal with their absence.”
What?
“Yoo Sangah-ssi, you have a partner?” He tries to hide the shock in his voice.
Yoo Sangah nods. “I did,” she murmurs. “We had an argument the night before about their work, and when I woke up...”
Yoo Sangah. 26 years old. Brown hair, brown eyes. Single. And more importantly, never had a long-term partner before the events of the game due to her strict upbringing and bad experiences with men.
It doesn’t add up. Although the person in front of him is evidently Yoo Sangah, she’s also not the Yoo Sangah he remembers from the game. No, she’s definitely not the Yoo Sangah from the game, because the original Yoo Sangah barely had any interaction with his character at all. She wouldn’t be comfortable telling him any of this about her personal life.
But then, who is she?
“Did they not answer their phone?” he asks, trying to gauge Yoo Sangah’s facial expression.
“No.” She bites her lip, frowning. “Their contact disappeared off my phone, and I tried it from memory and someone else answered the phone.”
Yoo Sangah certainly doesn’t seem to be lying, judging from the tears welling in her eyes.
“And even all my photos with them are gone. It’s like they didn’t exist…I just don’t understand what’s—”
The coffee maker beeps, and Yoo Sangah seems to snap to, pulling a handful of tissues from the nearest box. Dokja turns around to pour two cups of coffee, but by the time he turns around, she’s already gone.
It’s after work when he finally sees Yoo Sangah again. And he doesn’t know what possesses him, but he breaks into a run and—
“Yoo Sangah-ssi!”
He grabs on to her shoulder, and she flinches, looking tense until she sees his face, at which her face starts turning red. “O-oh, Dokja-ssi! I’m so sorry about this morning, I can’t believe I said all of—”
“About that,” he pants, letting go of her to fix his hair that’s been blown askew by the wind. “I thought about it, and—have you tried looking for your partner in places that they commonly go to? Like, a restaurant they like, or their old apartment?”
Yoo Sangah blinks, wide-eyed. “I—Dokja-ssi, you really didn’t have to think about it for me. I spoke too much—”
“No, I”—he sighs—”I have my own reasons for this, so it’s not like I’m doing this because I’m a nice person or because I want to help you.”
She seems to hesitate for a moment, but then she smiles. “Well, thank you anyways. To answer you, I didn’t have the bravery to go looking for them. I think it’s better for me not to know what happened to them..”
“What if it’s a misunderstanding?”
“...Dokja-ssi, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” he breathes, “shouldn’t you at least talk to them before you decide on what their intentions were? Don’t you want to ask them why? I think you deserve to know why, Yoo Sangah-ssi.”
“This used to be their apartment before we moved in together,” Yoo Sangah explains, pointing at the destination marker on the map screen. “I never thought to ask, since I thought they sold it, but it’s possible they didn’t.”
“It’s close by,” Dokja notes, “but it’s getting late. We don’t have to look at all the locations today if—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupts, shooting him a small smile. “This is the last place I can think of, so if they aren’t here, I’ll give up for good.”
That dazzling protagonist aura is still blinding even in the darkness, illuminated only by the flickering streetlights. Dokja sighs. “It’s just a few blocks ahead.”
Together, they trudge down the road, consulting the map at each intersection. When they finally reach the apartment complex, it’s actually nice looking, way better than their current apartment block, which makes him wonder: why didn’t Yoo Sangah just live here with her partner?
“Are you sure this is the number?” he asks her, pocketing his phone.
“I’m sure.”
Dokja knocks on the door lightly with his knuckles, hearing a crashing sound from inside along with a long string of curse words. The footsteps approach, and the door swings inward, revealing—
“Han Sooyoung?”
“Eh?” Yoo Sangah’s staring at Han Sooyoung like she’s seeing a ghost. “Sooyoung-ah?”
Eh?
“Eh?” Han Sooyoung garbles through the lollipop in her mouth. “Why are you people at my house? Which son of a bitch leaked my address online?”
…
“Uh,” Dokja says, because that’s really the limit of his intelligence at the moment, “you know each other?”
“Yes,” Yoo Sangah says at the same time that Han Sooyoung says “No.”
Han Sooyoung looks Yoo Sangah up and down. “I’ve never met this woman in my life,” Han Sooyoung declares, pulling the lollipop out of her mouth with a pop and pointing it at Yoo Sangah, who’s biting her lip and frowning much like she was in the break room. “Have I finally gotten popular enough to have crazy fans?”
“Han Sooyoung, just shut up,” Dokja grumbles. “Are you crying, Yoo Sangah-ssi?”
“Hey, don’t take it out on me. What kind of shitty question is that?” Han Sooyoung mutters under her breath, watching as Yoo Sangah buries her head in her hands. “And, who are you people? Are you really that amazed by my presence? I can sign something for you if you promise to leave.”
(Han Sooyoung is proof that writers don’t have to be good with words.)
Yoo Sangah lets out a sob. “Sooyoung-ah…why did you disappear? What happened? What am I doing here?”
Dokja and Han Sooyoung exchange a look. Sooyoung-ah again … so familiar, almost as if—
“Don’t look at me,” Han Sooyoung quips, shoving the lollipop back into her mouth with the faintest hint of pink on her cheeks. “I told you, I don’t know her. Have never seen her before in my life.”
“I knew you named the protagonist after me,” Yoo Sangah mumbles, her pitiful voice barely above a whisper, “but I didn’t know you modeled her after me too. And even though you also exist in this world, the same person I remember, we’re just strangers? Sooyoung-ah, why…?”
“Wait, Yoo Sangah-ssi.” Is his brain actually starting to function again? “You know this is fiction?”
“I don’t know,” Yoo Sangah sniffles, staring at him with teary eyes. “I just—I just woke up and my girlfriend was gone. I thought it was reincarnation, but I had—I was the same, so I started thinking this could be the world of Sooyoung’s game. But”—she gestures at Han Sooyoung with a miserable face like a kicked puppy—”I didn’t want to try to find her because of this…” She trails off, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.
Ah. He doesn’t really know where to start with all that.
Han Sooyoung’s turning all sorts of weird colors now, jaw dropped as she stares at Yoo Sangah.
“So Han Sooyoung is your girlfriend in the real world,” Dokja says, finally connecting the dots, “and she’s the creator of this game, Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel, of which the protagonist is based on you in the real world.”
Yoo Sangah nods, rubbing at her eyes. “I think so, yes. I’ve never played the game, so I don’t know for sure.”
“Then what the fuck,” he says, forgetting about his polite speech and whatnot in the action of pointing at Han Sooyoung, “is she doing inside this game?”
Yoo Sangah stares at him, oddly pitying. “She’s the type to insert herself into her games as a character.”
…
Yeah, that makes sense for Han Sooyoung’s character.
Dokja sighs, messing up his hair with his hand. “This is an absolute mess. Han Sooyoung, you don’t know what we’re talking about, right?”
“Nope.” She shrugs. “Listen, you two just randomly knocked on my door, so I don’t think I have an obligation to do anything, but I’ll do it out of the goodness of my heart. I think it’s very flattering that you think”—she makes a motion with her chin at Yoo Sangah—”that I’m your girlfriend. It’s sweet, it really is, but I’m not your girlfriend. Not to mention, you’re not really my type—”
“Han Sooyoung!” he hisses, smacking her across the back of the head.
She wheezes at the impact, snapping back up almost immediately and grabbing his tie. “What the hell?” she shouts, jerking him down to eye level. “Listen, you ugly squid, it’s one in the fucking morning and I don’t know what the hell you two are trying to pull, but I’m about to miss my damn deadline because of your interruption and you have the gall to hit me like we know each other personally. Which we don’t—let’s make that clear. I don’t know you or the ridiculously beautiful woman, but you both need to fuck back to where you came from and leave me alone.”
Before Dokja can even retort (what kind of insult is ugly squid?), Han Sooyoung shoves him, making him stumble backwards into Yoo Sangah, and slams the door loud enough that the sound rings in his ears.
“Dokja-ssi, are you okay?”
Yoo Sangah’s hands are on his shoulders, steadying him. He rights himself, backing away from Yoo Sangah and trying to avoid the stupid thoughts running through his mind. Something along the lines of she smells good or her hands are so small. Normal stuff for his touch starved brain.
“I’m fine,” he murmurs, “but Yoo Sangah-ssi, are you fine? After Han Sooyoung—”
“Wait.” Yoo Sangah stops him mid-sentence. “You’re also from the outside world, right?”
“Yes?”
“How did you enter this game? And how did you figure out this was a game?”
“I—” He actually has to think about it. Damn, he’s starting to lose track of how long it’s been. “I think it was about a week ago, give or take. I was actually playing this game before I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I went to work like usual, and then I discovered that the name of the company I worked at and my coworkers were all different. When I ran into you, it was obvious what game I was in, since you look exactly like the in-game character.”
“I see.” Yoo Sangah frowns in thought. “So you didn’t have a partner or anything like that?”
Ouch. That one hurt. “I guess I’m lucky that I didn’t,” he says, gesturing to Han Sooyoung’s door. “How did you enter TWSA?”
“TWSA?”
Dokja exhales. Right, she didn’t play the game at all. “It’s the name of the game Han Sooyoung made,” he explains. “Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel. Did you really not play it, even though your girlfriend was producing it?”
“I didn’t,” she responds, shaking her head. “Sooyoung-ah was a scriptwriter—she’s an author, if you didn’t know—so she wasn’t very involved in the actual game design. Plus, she was secretive about the plot of the game, but she did ask if she could use my name for the protagonist.”
“So you don’t know anything about the plot?”
“I only know that the protagonist was named after me.”
Hm. Not that Dokja knows anything about relationships, but it feels like real life Han Sooyoung was hiding something by not letting Yoo Sangah read her script.
“I’ll just give you a brief summary of the game,” Dokja says. Brief might be hard for a diehard fan like him, but he’ll do his best for poor Yoo Sangah. “You—Yoo Sangah—are a regular office worker, but you’re actually a fallen angel who’s been stripped of most of their powers and reincarnated into a human vessel.”
“A fallen angel?” she murmurs to herself. “You said ‘most’. Am I supposed to have some powers left?”
“Well, yes, but that’s for later on. You have three potential love interests in the game—Lee Hyunsung, a half demon, who you met a couple days ago—”
“Lee Hyunsung…” she echoes, frowning deeply. “I’ve never met someone with that name. What does he look like?”
“Uh…tall guy, muscular, recently in the army?”
Yoo Sangah shakes her head. “I don’t think I met anyone with that description recently.”
Fuck. How is the entire plot unraveling in the span of a week?
“Okay,” he says, trying not to betray his increasing anxiety about what the hell he has to do next to fix things, “we’ll deal with that later since that might be a problem. There’s also Yoo Joonghyuk, king of the demons, who’s currently living in my apartment, and Han Sooyoung, a nephilim, or half angel half demon.”
Yoo Sangah doesn’t interrupt, so he continues on. “Every love interest has their own separate ‘story’ with you. For example, the Han Sooyoung route involves hiding her from nephilim hunters and resolving her angelic side with her demonic side, while the Yoo Joonghyuk route involves healing his injuries of the body and mind and fighting a demon revolution.”
She stops him. “So I can theoretically go the Han Sooyoung ‘route’,” she says, making air quotations with her fingers, “and that’s a viable route where I end up romancing Han Sooyoung and reach an ending?”
…Fuck, he has to be stupid. Of course if Yoo Sangah was dating Han Sooyoung in the real world, she wouldn’t want to be with Yoo Joonghyuk. How did that not click in his head?
…
But then, what should he do with Yoo Joonghyuk?
“Theoretically, you can,” he hears himself say, “but the Yoo Joonghyuk route is the ‘true route’ of the game, so to speak. We’ll have more success in getting back to the real world, since that’s our goal, if we play through Yoo Joonghyuk’s route.”
Yoo Sangah looks crestfallen. “So it’s a better idea if I try to follow Yoo Joonghyuk’s storyline,” she concludes, a bitter smile on her face. “How much do I have to do with Yoo Joonghyuk? I don’t know if I can pretend well if I have to do intimate things with him.”
Damn, she’s not going to like the truth then. “In the game, you and Yoo Joonghyuk”—he coughs to clear his throat and the awkwardness in the air—”you two sleep together. Multiple times. I’m sorry, it’s an R18 game. But, none of these scenes are actually part of the main story if you don’t pay for the premium story. Now, I don’t know whether we can affect whether or not this goes with the free story or premium storyline, but it’s worth a try. If it’s the free story, it’ll probably just be kissing at most.”
Uncertainty flits across her face. “I suppose we can try it,” she says. “At least until the first…intimate scene, and if it doesn’t work out, we can find a different method.”
He really hopes those Yoo Joonghyuk sex CGs do not happen in real life to Yoo Sangah.
Notes:
i have a feeling my next update will not come any time soon. just on the basis of college apps (which btw are the bane of my existence) and also exams and whatnot. life is busy and my procrastination is chronic
i mean i'm writing this like 4 days before a major deadline of mine lmao so i don't have the right to speak. who knows maybe i will update again before my next major deadline. maybe this is how i can force myself to write.
thank you for supporting me and my guilty pleasure fic though! see you in like 3 months
Chapter 4: against the wall (against me)
Notes:
hey so...kinda disappeared for a good *checks date* three months? yeah. i'm so accurate in my predictions. happy winter break everyone.
...
sorry lmao, life got pretty hectic. school got super busy, i had to apply to universities and then I KINDA GOT INTO CORNELL but yk, it's getting better since I GOT INTO CORNELL. (btw, did i mention i got into cornell??? i'm so humble haha but no i'm actually very happy)
lolol yeah i'm hoping things will clear up a little by february and i'll be able to update again :D
in the meantime please enjoy this chapter that's been haphazardly thrown together for your enjoyment :)
slight TW for implied suicidal thoughts
Chapter Text
“Kim Dokja.”
One foot out of the elevator, Dokja glances in the direction of the voice, and promptly trips over himself.
“Joong—Yoo Joonghyuk?!” he stutters, righting himself just as Yoo Sangah steps off the elevator behind him. “Why are you outside?”
If anything, Yoo Joonghyuk’s murderous glare seems to worsen when he sees Yoo Sangah. “You’re late,” he utters, eyes leaving Yoo Sangah to bore into him.
“I—uh”—he fumbles in his bag to locate his phone, the screen persistently dark even after spamming the power button—”sorry? I didn’t know it was this late. I was helping…”
He turns around, the marked lack of Yoo Sangah behind him throwing him for another emotional rollercoaster. Damn it, how did she already slip into her apartment?
“You were helping that woman?”
Dokja nods once, twice, turning back to face him. “She had a…uh, a personal issue. I didn’t expect it to take so—!”
The distance between them shrinks to nothing as Yoo Joonghyuk approaches him, grabbing his collar with one hand and hoisting him up like a piece of meat on a hook before approaching the door of his apartment.
“Yoo—Yoo Joonghyuk!” he sputters, hands flying to the grip on his shirt and trying to loosen his fingers to no avail. “What are you—”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t even seem to process his protests, punching his door code in—0803, Yoo Joonghyuk’s birthday, but thankfully he doesn’t seem to have made the connection yet—and slamming the door open with enough force that Dokja fears for his door hinges.
“Hey, can you put me down?” His request sounds pathetic, soft and almost pleading, and he cringes internally at the thought, hitting Yoo Joonghyuk on the arm with a fist to compensate. “Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk, I’m talking to you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Yoo Joonghyuk finally seems to snap to, flinging him straight into the wall. His nose is the first thing to hit it.
The groan he lets out echoes in his ears as he collapses into a heap on the cold tile of the doorway. “What the fuck,” he chokes out, glaring up at Yoo Joonghyuk.
Yoo Joonghyuk crouches down next to him, scowling from what has to be the pain shared from throwing him into the wall. Stupid bastard. “You—did you tell that woman about this?”
“About what?” Dokja grumbles, glad that at least his nose isn’t bleeding again—he only owns one nice shirt, and he’ll be damned if he has to buy a new one because Yoo Joonghyuk is ruining his normal, admittedly dull and somewhat depressing life. “You throwing me into a wall?”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs in exasperation, covering his face with one hand. “The life force contract,” he grits out. “Did you tell anyone—”
“—about the fact that an over 180 centimeter tall, conventionally attractive otherworldly creature decided to lower himself into a sexually exploitative contract to keep me, poor little human Kim Dokja, alive?” Dokja finishes, relishing in the little twitch of Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth that’s visible even in the comfortable darkness of his apartment. “No, I have not. I hope you can see why that’s a ridiculous idea, even if I wanted to tell people. Which I don’t, but thanks for believing in me, bastard.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks mildly apologetic, which is probably the closest he’ll get to a real apology for this incident. “Don’t call me conventionally attractive ever again.”
Dokja blinks. “What, that’s your takeaway from this? Come on, it’s a compliment, and it’s not even your first time hearing that.”
“Get up.”
“Wow, so demanding,” he responds, sarcasm dripping off his tongue as he staggers to his feet. “You injure me, Yoo Joonghyuk, and—”
Then, Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers are pressing against his cheeks with uncharacteristic softness. Somewhere between him standing up and Yoo Joonghyuk grabbing his face, the lights were turned on, the sudden harshness of the lights causing Dokja’s eyes to go teary from the sensitivity.
“What is it now?” Dokja sighs, allowing Yoo Joonghyuk to tilt his face up towards the ceiling. The brush of the calluses on his hand against his cheek makes him twitch, the sensation foreign but gentle. He can’t see anything beyond a blur of the man’s shadow towering over him, which actually makes the whole thing easier on him now that he can’t see his stupid handsome face in all its detailed glory.
The heat of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand lingers on his cheek for what feels like an eternity before falling away. “You’re not bleeding,” he says. “That’s good.”
The sudden absence of it almost makes Dokja do something incredibly stupid (like grabbing Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand and pressing it against his face), but instead he rubs at his eyes to clear them, squinting against the light. “How weak do you think I am?”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs. “You nearly died from an attack that would have simply incapacitated me for half a day, and made me use the life force contract.”
“I—Can you stop bringing that up all the time? That’s besides the point.” Dokja sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. “ You made that decision, and now we both have to live with it. Stop blaming me for being ‘inherently weak’. For the record, even if I was as weak as you say, you shouldn’t have used the contract if you thought I wasn’t going to be trustworthy.”
“You would have preferred to die.”
Dokja could nearly scream. “Yes, thank you, that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. Why are we still arguing about this?”
“I don’t understand.” Yoo Joonghyuk looks terrifyingly calm even as he exudes his trademark threatening aura.
“I—” Dokja pinches the bridge of his nose, ignoring the shooting pain that comes from it. “What don’t you understand?”
There’s a beat of silence. Yoo Joonghyuk exhales. “Never mind.”
“No, continue.”
“You…” Yoo Joonghyuk speaks like the idea of him being perceived as an idiot is near offensive to his identity. “I don’t understand why you, a human whose lifespan is finite, would so brazenly prioritize my own interests over your life.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” The words slip out before Dokja can help it. “I’m just—I’m just some guy who works a dead-end job at a software company, you know? There’s hardly any hope for it to ever get better for me. But you have a future: you’re a demon king and you’ll end up finding someone to rule your kingdom with you and live happily together.” He hums. “Besides, you’re the only reason I…”
Dokja doesn’t dare to finish his sentence, with how he imagines he would finish it. The only reason he didn’t decide to end it all. The only reason he could make it through each day, no matter how badly life hurt him. It’s almost pathetic how much he relies on fictional character Yoo Joonghyuk, how much he owes this fiction-turned-reality standing in front of him, scowling at him.
“Tch.” It’s comedic actually, with Yoo Joonghyuk dressed in just a plain loose black t-shirt but still acting all above him. “Fool. Are all humans like this? Prioritize yourself.”
He doesn’t seem to be looking for an answer, as he steps away, and Dokja releases the breath he was holding, head throbbing from the sudden release of tension.
“Why didn’t you go to sleep?”
Yoo Joonghyuk gives him a disgusted glance. “I can’t sleep unless you’re back.”
“I didn’t say that,” Dokja mumbles, tugging his jacket off and throwing it on the floor. “Look, just sleep and don’t wait for me to get back next time, okay? I don’t care if you sleep before me.”
He swears he can hear Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes rolling in his skull, even though he can’t see it clearly. “Hurry up,” he says, picking Dokja’s jacket off the floor and hanging it on the coat rack that he swears wasn’t something he owned before Yoo Joonghyuk arrived.
This time, it’s Dokja struggling to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine. Patience is a virtue, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
It’s some ungodly time of night when Dokja staggers off the elevator and onto his floor, the world swirling in all kinds of ridiculous patterns with each step he takes towards his apartment.
(Damn Han Myungoh and his old-fashioned drinking etiquette. He already slept poorly last night due to Yoo Joonghyuk not allowing him at least two hours of webnovel reading before bedtime, and it looks like he’s set up for another hellish day tomorrow with a killer hangover.)
“Zero, eight, zero, three,” he mumbles under his breath, focusing every bit of his fraying concentration on keying the numbers into his electronic keypad. “Wonder what that bastard’s doing right now…probably sleeping…”
The keypad flashes red, and Dokja frowns. “Ah, shit,” he curses, hissing at the pressure that’s starting to build in his head. He tries it another time, this time trying to align his finger with the number key before pressing down. Just as he’s about to press the second zero, the door swings open.
“Kim Dokja.”
“Joonghyuk-ah,” Dokja tries to say (it comes out sounding more like Joo’yuk-ah). Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t seem to care, though, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him inside, the door clicking shut behind them. Dokja nearly crashes into him from the force of the tug, but Yoo Joonghyuk steadies the both of them, fingers tight around his shoulders, the heat of his grip seeping through layers of cloth.
“You’re drunk.”
Dokja looks up, and finds him frowning down at him. “Yeah,” he agrees, the words slipping past his lips where they would have normally become something along the lines of no, I’m not or another similar phrase. It’s ridiculous how alcohol makes him this weak—even Yoo Joonghyuk’s bare insinuation of concern makes him feel warm inside.
“Where’s that woman?”
“Sangah-ssi left before the drinking party. But, hey, I said just yesterday that you shouldn’t wait for me to get back to sleep.”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, annoyance flitting across his face as he undoes the buttons of Dokja’s jacket. It feels strangely domestic, having someone to greet him at home and take his jacket off.
“Wait, wait,” Dokja slurs out, pushing back at Yoo Joonghyuk’s movements with weak hands. “It feels weird, Joonghyuk-ah, let me do it myself.”
Yoo Joonghyuk seems to disregard him, slipping his hands underneath the jacket and against the sides of his ribcage. Dokja shivers at the fleeting touch, shying away from it.
“Stay still.” Yoo Joonghyuk uses one hand to cradle the back of Dokja’s neck, keeping him steady as he tugs his jacket down his arms with the other. His hands are hot against his skin, Yoo Joonghyuk close enough that by taking one step, their bodies would press against each other and—
“Joonghyuk-ah,” he whines, and Yoo Joonghyuk’s progress in taking his jacket off stutters, his fingers lingering on the fabric as if time has stopped. “I told you, I can do it myself. Why do you never listen?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes flicker red, blown wide. In an instant, he takes several steps back as if burned, shock soon replaced with his usual trademark scowl.
“Do it yourself then.”
Pleased, Dokja shakes his jacket off, letting it fall on the floor. “See, I told you to let me do it myself,” he tells him, grinning in a way that must look stupid, judging from Yoo Joonghyuk’s horrified expression. “I’m going to bed.”
Yoo Joonghyuk manages to pull himself back together in time to catch him by the back of his collar. “You have to shower.”
“I’m tired.”
“You reek of alcohol.”
Dokja pouts halfheartedly, allowing Yoo Joonghyuk to drag him into the bathroom. “Mean. Joonghyuk-ah, you can trust people, you know?” He’s well aware that he’s starting to ramble, as he tends to when he gets drunk, but he continues. “It was sad when you destroyed yourself in the bad ending because you thought Yoo Sangah betrayed you. Don’t let that happen again, okay? She’s definitely someone you can trust.”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, but surprisingly not out of exasperation. “What are you talking about? Get in the shower.”
Dokja steps into the shower, still talking. “You absolutely can’t trust any of the demons who say Yoo Sangah is trying to trick you. Even if they give you evidence, don’t believe them. Especially if they try to make you or Yoo Sangah drink something, don’t drink it.” He reaches out, grabbing Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm and pulling him close. “Are you listening, Joonghyuk-ah? I’m telling you—”
Yoo Joonghyuk pushes him hard enough for the back of his head to hit the tiled wall, turning the showerhead on and dousing Dokja’s still clothed body with cold water.
“What the fuck?” Dokja sputters, pushing his bangs off of his forehead and glaring at Yoo Joonghyuk through wet eyelashes. Well, he should thank Yoo Joonghyuk for stopping him from spilling the plot of the entirety of TWSA to him, but it’s fucking cold and he still needs to wear these clothes for work because they’re kind of his only set of work clothes .
Yoo Joonghyuk turns the water off with far more force than necessary, keeping a respectable distance between them. “Have you sobered up?”
“Yeah, you damn bastard, and now I’m going to catch a cold on top of having a hangover.” Dokja tugs at his now translucent shirt, pulling it away from where it sticks to his skin and feeling the chill set in. “How am I going to wear this tomorrow? I swear—”
“Why do you know so much about me?”
Dokja looks up, meeting Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze. His eyes are darker than they’ve ever been, if that even makes sense.
“I—What do you mean?” Dokja frowns, letting his hands fall back to his sides. “I don’t know that much.”
“What were you saying just now? About a bad ending, and that woman.”
Shit, he should have known that Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t let his stupid rambling off the hook that easily. He shrugs, trying to play it off. “It’s nothing. Sometimes I just say things without having any meaning behind my words. Besides, you don’t trust me anyways, so why would you put any value behind what I say?”
He moves to step out of the shower, but before he can, Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his wrist, pulling him out and cornering him against the door. “You know that’s not what I mean,” Yoo Joonghyuk growls, and crap those are his stupid awesome demon horns materializing in his hair. “A human like you isn’t supposed to know anything about this. About the existence of demons and angels. About me.”
“Hey, hey, put the horns away,” Dokja says, raising his hands in front of him in surrender. “I told you, I’m just lucky. There’s plenty of books about demons out there—did you really think you could hide the existence of otherworldly races when you demons and angels keep coming down to earth and procreating with humans? You just need to know where to look.”
“That’s not true.”
“What, like I would lie when I’m being threatened by a demon king who could kill me in an instant if he wanted to?” Dokja laughs, unsure of where his sudden crude bravado is coming from. “Oh, wait, we have that ridiculous life force contract in play, so you’d have to sleep with me before you kill me, and you would never do that.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand reaches up, and in one brusque, fluid motion, he pulls Dokja’s face to his, their foreheads knocking together in a paradoxically gentle fashion. “Don’t provoke me,” he warns, eyes flaming red with something that Dokja belatedly recognizes as the game’s telltale sign of overflowing, uncontrollable arousal.
Fuck, did he mess up the game’s genres? How did he mix up the signal for anger with that of arousal? Is he hallucinating? He has to be seeing things.
(Things being the demon equivalent of a raging boner.)
The neon sign in his brain is flashing “HELP” at an alarming rate.
“Let go.” His voice falters for a moment, but then it all comes spilling out. “Yoo Joonghyuk, I’ll give you five seconds to let go or I swear I’m going to kill myself while this damn contract is still active.”
“You wouldn’t.” There’s an undercurrent of command in his tone. By the time Dokja realizes he’s using a truth-telling spell on him, it’s too late. “Kim Dokja, tell me. How do you know so much?”
“Let me go.” He’s sounding more pathetic by the minute. “You fucking demon king, I don’t know anything, stop using your damn demonic arts on me…”
“Hah.” The demon’s breath is hot against his neck, and he squirms against his grip, trying to pull back. “Kim Dokja, what are you trying to achieve? Why are you doing all of this?”
His cheeks are probably flushing from Yoo Joonghyuk’s stupid burning gaze, but he ignores it, glaring straight back at Yoo Joonghyuk. “I just want you to be happy,” he says frankly and rather miserably.
“What does that woman have to do with that?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Dokja spits out, the spite rising when he sees how Yoo Joonghyuk grimaces in intensifying the spell. “It’s not like you would believe me, since you think of me as someone who would sell out your secrets. I’m your damn supporter, you idiot.”
“What does that human woman Yoo Sangah have to do with supporting me?”
“Fuck,” Dokja curses, the words slipping from his mouth even as he wants to stop himself. “Yoo Sangah’s a fallen angel who can destroy all your enemies if you ally yourself with her. As long as you take her as your lover, you can unlock her powers and use them to destroy the anti-royalist faction once and for all.”
“A fallen angel? How do you know that?”
Dokja clenches his teeth in a useless effort to keep his mouth shut. “Stop,” he grits out, watching as Yoo Joonghyuk completely disregards him and adds another layer to the spell. “Ah, fucking damn it, I played a stupid game! I played a game, you’re a character, Yoo Sangah’s a character, you people are all characters! Is that enough for you?”
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue, clearly displeased, and without a word the spell breaks. Through the sickening twist and blur of his vision, Dokja can barely make out Yoo Joonghyuk stepping away as he staggers on his feet, falling forward into oblivion.
Chapter 5: soup is emotional, right?
Notes:
in the name of holiday spirit, i have gifted everyone with an extra long update with actual good feelings! enjoy this unprecedented event because it will never happen again :D i've never written so much in just a few days, this thing rivals my extended essay lmao
merry christmas for those who celebrate, happy holidays for everyone else, hope you enjoy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
For the fourth time since he’s met his favorite character in the flesh, he wakes up with a massive splitting headache.
(That’s probably a sign the bastard should stop being his favorite at all, but it’s a little late to decide that when the guy has already moved into his apartment and owns an inflatable mattress on the floor right next to him.)
Sitting up, he nearly slams his head against the wall when he makes direct eye contact with said favorite from across the room.
“What…” he rasps, squinting at him just to make sure he’s not hallucinating after receiving a couple doses of severe cranial trauma. “What time is it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t speak, instead approaching him and seating himself on the side of his mattress. He maintains eye contact throughout the entire process, which is enough cause for concern when it comes to Yoo Joonghyuk, but he’s also wielding a knife in his right hand, making the entire thing thoroughly creepy.
“What do you want?” he asks, gathering his blanket around him as some form of protection in the event that Yoo Joonghyuk decides it’s time to end his pathetic mortal life with a dripping wet kitchen knife (which he would be well within his rights to, Dokja concludes, since he’s more or less revealed himself to possess some form of omniscience through his stupid big mouth).
“Does it hurt?”
“Huh?”
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue, raising the knife, and Dokja cringes, fingers fisting into the sheets. “Yeah, it hurts like hell! Can you stop slamming my head into things when you throw your little demon king tantrums? Seriously, I’m not that smart to begin with—you can’t be knocking off a couple IQ points every day because you feel like it.”
“You’re already an idiot,” Yoo Joonghyuk states.
He swears he can feel a vein pop in his head. “Okay? And I’m the one who knows about the future. What are you going to do if I forget about it because you hit me too hard?”
Yoo Joonghyuk stands up, and for a brief moment Dokja thinks he’s about to pin him to the bed and stab him, leaving him to bleed onto his brand new bedsheets. Luckily, he heads towards the stove instead of towards him, placing the knife down on the nearby cutting board (ah, so that’s why he was holding it) and turning the stove off.
“I made soup. For you.”
All of a sudden, Yoo Joonghyuk’s standing in front of him (again with the teleportation power that Dokja swears he has to have) holding a steaming bowl of, well, soup.
“For me?” Dokja echoes, staring up at Yoo Joonghyuk. Damn, soup? When was the last time he ate anything hot that wasn’t from the convenience store or an instant noodle cup?
“It’s soup.”
“Yeah, uh, I know. I just didn’t know my stove still worked since I haven’t used it since…”
Right. He was planning to make Yoo Joonghyuk cook for him at some point (since he was canonically able to make Michelin-star-level dishes), but he never got around to it since Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t have to eat as a demon and he kept forgetting to go to the grocery store. Speaking of which…
“Where did you get the ingredients?”
The soup nearly spills onto Dokja’s hand with the force that Yoo Joonghyuk puts the bowl into his hands. “Shut up and take the soup.”
“Thanks.” It’s a quiet acknowledgement, and one that feels foreign in his mouth, considering that he’s thanking the guy who made him feel this sick.
Unfortunately, the fleeting gratitude he feels disappears as soon as he sees what’s in the soup. The red chunks, floating in the soup, make him hold back what would be an embarrassingly loud gag.
“What?” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles, seeming to pick up on his unease.
“Are these tomatoes?”
“I got them from that woman,” Yoo Joonghyuk tells him, handing him a spoon.
“From Yoo Sangah?” Dokja makes a face. “I don’t like tomatoes.”
Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles something sounding like a curse word under his breath, reaching out to grab the bowl again, but Dokja dodges his hand, the soup sloshing dangerously close to the edge. “No, wait, it’s fine, I’ll just…avoid the, you know...”
Yoo Joonghyuk crouches down next to his mattress, holding his hand out. “Give it.”
“I said I’ll eat it, you—”
“Give it.”
Dokja hands it back to him with reluctance. Well, whatever. He wasn’t that hungry anyways.
To his surprise, Yoo Joonghyuk hands it back after doing something near the sink. Dokja looks down.
“You removed the tomatoes,” he mumbles, staring at the soup like it’s been possibly poisoned. Who knows, maybe Yoo Joonghyuk is actually trying to kill him right now and he’s just mistaking it as a sign of goodwill.
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs. “Hurry up and eat it.”
“Thanks,” he chokes out, and fuck, it’s weird to be getting emotional over someone removing the tomatoes in his soup, but it’s also his favorite love interest from an indie otome game and happens to be the first hot meal someone else has made for him since he became an adult.
He takes a spoonful into his mouth and it nearly burns his taste buds off, but he could care less. “It’s good,” he utters, biting down on the last half of the word so that his voice doesn’t betray how close he is to tears. Damn it, why is he getting so emotional over soup, of all things?
Instead of sounding frustrated and irritated like he always does, Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, sitting down on the floor next to him.
“I…” He makes a complicated face—one that even Dokja, for all his obsession with TWSA and Yoo Joonghyuk, can’t parse because the combination of the almost rhythmic twitch of his eyebrow with the wry quirk of his mouth is distracting enough to make Dokja’s mind go blank. “I didn’t want to injure you,” he says, the admission coming out stilted but oddly quite sincere.
Dokja blinks, halfway through another spoonful of soup. Well, it’s not like he thought he was doing it on purpose. Of course, Yoo Joonghyuk is an asshole of a demon, but he’s not so far gone that he would injure people senselessly and without a good reason.
“How would you know that?”
Shit, did he say that out loud?
“Can I finish the soup first?” he asks, already mentally planning how he’s going to explain a dating simulator to a fictional character within said dating simulator.
Yoo Joonghyuk nods, and they settle into a comfortable silence, interrupted only by the clink of Dokja’s spoon against the bowl and the occasional slurping sound.
“Alright, so”—Dokja places the bowl on the floor next to Yoo Joonghyuk, folding his hands together—”how much did I tell you?”
The glare returns (which is fantastic, because he was really missing having death wished upon him by a handsome guy). “You don’t remember.”
“No, I don’t.” He’s not lying when he says that, but he also isn’t really telling the truth. He can somewhat remember saying something incriminating, but what exactly it was is a secret to his brain. Maybe memory loss is a side effect of the truth-telling spell?
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t insult him this time, looking resigned to the fact that Dokja’s been dropped on the head as a child. “You said this is a game.”
“Ah, I did say that.” Shit, why did he say that? Out of all the things to reveal, that one has to be the worst. “How do I explain this? It’s a game, as in a video game?”
“A video game.” He can tell Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t get it.
“Basically, you control a certain character’s actions, and that affects how the story progresses,” he explains. “Something like a story, but more immersive since you can influence it based on your own decisions.”
“A story where you can change the ending by making different decisions.”
Dokja nods. “Right, that’s exactly what it is. What I’m saying is, this world is part of such a game that I played in my world. In my world, we don’t have demons or angels or anything like that—just the human realm—but in this game, the story covers all three realms, so I naturally have a better understanding of them than you would expect.”
“That woman and her…relations with me, how does it fit into this story of yours?”
“I said that to you?”
“Yes.” He looks irritated by it, frowning hard enough that the temperature of the room seems to drop by a few degrees.
That truth-telling spell is too powerful to be used flippantly. Why did he say any of this? “Well, Yoo Sangah—the original one from the story, that is—is the character you play as. There’s three separate stories bundled into the game, one for each character that you want to explore.” He conveniently leaves out the fact that they’re romantic interests. “If the player chooses to explore the character Yoo Joonghyuk, which is you, then—”
“That’s enough.” Yoo Joonghyuk stands up, picking up the bowl.
“I’m not done explaining—”
“—I’ve heard enough,” he says, his tone leaving no space for protest. “I refuse.”
“What are you…” Before Dokja can even think clearly, he’s getting off his mattress, wobbling to his feet in a weak effort to chase after Yoo Joonghyuk. “What are you refusing? I didn’t ask you to do anything.”
“The implication is enough. I refuse.”
“What did I imply?”
Yoo Joonghyuk puts the bowl down in the sink, glaring at him. “I don’t care for human women.”
“What the—” Dokja could cry. He could seriously cry. “I’m not saying you have to be with her. And who says she wants this either?”
Damn it, why is nothing going the way it was in the game? Now he’s stuck with a Yoo Sangah who pines for the Han Sooyoung route, a Yoo Joonghyuk who refuses to even refer to Yoo Sangah by her name, a Lee Hyunsung who’s gone missing from his role as Yoo Sangah’s potential love interest, and this stupid, pitiful, suffocating ball of feelings tangled in his chest. What went wrong? Why won’t any of them do what they’re supposed to do—that is, play their role correctly?
He doesn’t realize tears are dripping down his face until Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand lands in his hair, pulling him in until he collides with his shoulder.
He slumps against his body, not caring about how badly Yoo Joonghyuk will be disgusted at the amount of liquid coming out of his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he mumbles. “Why can’t you just act like you do in the game?”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t speak. Instead, he gives a comforting hum, letting his hands rest awkwardly against Dokja’s waist; it’s something he would never imagine him to be able to do, especially in comforting someone other than Yoo Sangah, but it’s strangely fitting to his character.
“Y’know, I really like you.” As a character, Yoo Joonghyuk has always been it for him. All the way back from when the game was still in beta, the first time Yoo Joonghyuk appeared on screen, he was enamored. It could even be characterized as “love at first sight”.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms seem to tighten around him, even if it’s just a figment of his imagination. “Okay.”
“Yeah, I really like you,” Dokja murmurs. “You’re my favorite. Even if you’re an asshole all the time.” He chuckles, but it comes out depressing and melancholy. “This is really not what I expected from you when I came into this game. You’re supposed to be with Yoo Sangah.”
“I—”
“—You refuse,” Dokja finishes for him, sighing. “Fine, okay. Both of you are horrible people for defying the plot of the game. You’ll have to come up with a different plan to send me back.”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent for a moment. “You’re going back.”
Dokja exhales. “Well, yeah. I can’t stay forever, since I’m not supposed to be here. I figured I’d go back once we finished one of the storylines, but it’s all messed up now.”
“You don’t have to go back.”
Dokja chokes up an incredulous laugh, leaning away to look at Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression. “Are you planning to freeload off my apartment forever? You have to go back to the demon realm anyways. I don’t know why you would care about me going back or not—I’m not even a major named character in the original game.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks pensive. Which is shocking, with how often he looks irritated and angry at the world (and mostly at Dokja himself).
“Is the demon realm really that depressing?” he asks him. “I mean, if you want, you can stay with Yoo Sangah once I leave. Or you can even ask the original owner of this apartment, but I don’t know how kindly he’ll take to learning about the existence of otherworldly beings—”
Yoo Joonghyuk cuts him off. “Stop. Stop talking.” He looks horrified, the same way he did when Dokja came back drunk yesterday. “...shouldn’t have…”
“Shouldn’t have what?” Dokja asks, at the moment that the spell breaks again. This time, Yoo Joonghyuk is there to catch him when he drops, but he doesn’t want him to be.
“Kim Dokja—”
“What is wrong with you?” Dokja hisses, trying to extricate himself from Yoo Joonghyuk’s embrace. Damn it, he should’ve seen it coming when Yoo Joonghyuk got close to him. The spell only works when they’re that close, after all. Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t have comforted him like that otherwise. “I told you the truth; I don’t understand why you keep doubting what I’m saying.”
“I needed confirmation—”
“—let go—”
“—it was a lighter spell this time—”
“—you bastard—”
“Kim Dokja.”
Dokja stills in his struggle, staring up at Yoo Joonghyuk. “Yoo Joonghyuk. Why?”
“I want to trust you.”
“Then trust me, you stupid demon king.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eye twitches. “If you knew anything about me from your little game, you’d know why I can’t.”
Dokja scoffs. “I’m not your damn sister, so can you stop projecting? For the record, though, she didn’t betray you. She’s actually hiding in the human realm as we speak. If saving her makes you trust me, then—”
“What?”
Dokja smirks. “You heard me right. I know where Yoo Mia is. You want proof that I’m telling the truth? I’ll show it to you.”
The Yoo Mia subplot is probably the most depressing in TWSA (even more so than the bad ending where Yoo Joonghyuk commits suicide after being led to believe that Yoo Sangah betrayed him).
To condense it all into a summary, before the main storyline, Yoo Mia was taken by one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s trusted advisors, Anna Croft, who then convinced poor Yoo Joonghyuk that his own sister had betrayed him and joined the anti-royalist faction. After that, Yoo Joonghyuk gave up on searching for her, believing that she had left of her own will, while Yoo Mia was led to believe that her brother was dead. During the events of the game, Yoo Mia escaped from captivity into the human realm and eventually learned that Yoo Joonghyuk was alive, and tried to reconnect with him, only to end up being murdered in cold blood by her own brother for a misunderstanding perpetuated by the very same Anna Croft who kidnapped her in the first place. The worst part is, Anna Croft ended up being an anti-royalist herself and taunted Yoo Joonghyuk about being the one to kill his beloved, completely innocent sister, which drove him insane in yet another bad ending.
(The guy can really never catch a break, can he? It borders on hilarious how many of these plot points are solved in the good ending because Yoo Sangah does the right thing or says the right words.)
He would have mentioned all of this to Yoo Joonghyuk earlier, but it would have been telling of his supposed “clairvoyance”. Now, with all the cards on the table by accident (also known as Yoo Joonghyuk’s stupid truth-telling spell), he can finally act. They’re still early enough in the game that they can save Yoo Joonghyuk the grief and keep Yoo Mia alive, provided that Dokja does not fuck this up.
That’s easier said than done, though.
“You’re telling me that Anna Croft has been lying to me about Mia?”
Dokja exhales, frustrated beyond belief. “Yes.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “Anna Croft has always been a reliable subordinate.”
“You—” Dokja slams his hands on the table. “I’m telling you, she’s lying to you about everything. Yoo Mia thinks you’re dead because Anna Croft is telling her so, and you think Yoo Mia has betrayed you because of Anna Croft. Did Anna Croft even provide reliable evidence that your sister betrayed you?”
His silence is telling. Dokja scoffs. “Didn’t think so. How are you so trusting of Anna Croft when you won’t even believe me? Anyways, you cannot trust what Anna Croft has told you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk glances at him. “How sure are you of your ability to see the future? You couldn’t predict that I wouldn’t become involved with that woman.”
“Anna Croft’s betrayal happened before my arrival in this world, so I’m 100% sure that nothing about that event has changed. Listen, can we just retrieve your sister first, and then we can talk about whether or not Anna Croft is a liar?”
“Fine,” Yoo Joonghyuk concedes, folding his arms across his chest. “Where is she hiding?”
Dokja pulls out his phone, searching through his notes. “As I recall, she’s hidden quite close by—close enough to take the subway to. Are we going to act now, or do you want to—”
Yoo Joonghyuk grabs him by the arm, dragging him to his feet. “We’re going. Now.”
“At least let me grab a jacket,” he protests, looking down at his unsightly house clothing, “and change my clothes, okay?”
Yoo Joonghyuk thankfully lets go of him, grumbling something under his breath. “Hurry up.”
Dokja pays him no mind, grabbing a random set of clothing from the pile collecting on the floor and taking his shirt off. He catches Yoo Joonghyuk looking at him from the corner of his eye.
“Can I at least have some privacy?” he asks, fighting the urge to cover himself. Every time he gets dressed to go to work or for bed, Yoo Joonghyuk has the decency to look in a different direction or pretend to be busy, so it’s a weird experience having Yoo Joonghyuk staring him up and down as he gets dressed. Speaking of which…
“By the way”—he tries to keep his tone casual—”did you put these clothes on me?” Clearly, he’s no longer wearing his soaking wet work clothes from last night, which seems to imply that Yoo Joonghyuk actually cared about his well being enough to put him in new clothes (doubtful, but it seems that miracles can and do happen). “Wait, did you tell Yoo Sangah I wasn’t coming into work today?”
“I told that woman that you were sick.” No elaboration on the clothing issue, which is fine by him.
Dokja shrugs, pulling on his sweater. “Okay. As long as that guy Han Myungoh isn’t on my ass for not coming in to work.” He doesn’t think it’s too much of a stretch that Yoo Sangah will think of some brilliant excuse for why he’s not at work. That’s part of her skillset as a protagonist, of course. “Let’s go.”
The ride on the subway goes as planned, save for the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk looks murderous enough that all the seats on their side and section of the subway stay empty after he sits down.
It’s not too bad, considering that it’s the middle of the workday and most people are at work, where he’s supposed to be. It’s mostly old people and some teenagers skipping class, except for two people that get on halfway through their journey.
It’s a man and a woman, about his age, chatting animatedly about something that he can’t quite hear. He looks up at their faces, and does a double take.
“Lee Hyunsung?”
The man looks down, confused expression materializing on his face. “Sorry, have I met you before?”
Out of all the places to run into the so-far-missing-in-action love interest…
“Hey, I swear I’ve seen you before…”
He tears his eyes away from the man that is definitely Lee Hyunsung to focus on the woman who’s currently leaning down to look straight at his face. Is she a model? She could almost rival Yoo Sangah in the looks department, but more as an action protagonist than as an otome game protagonist.
She stares harder. He can feel himself sweating internally, glancing at Yoo Joonghyuk in an effort to communicate his plight. He gets ignored. Damn bastard.
“Ah!” She straightens up, snapping her fingers. “Right, your company came into our bar and ordered a ton of drinks. I was the bartender that day, and I was almost worried for you when you walked out of there, drunk and all by yourself.”
Dokja blanches. “When was this?” he asks. It can’t have been the most recent time they had a company drinking party, because he recalls the bartender at the time being a tall man, not the woman standing in front of him.
“Hm, I don’t know.” She scratches her head. “Maybe a couple months ago? It’s been a while, so I don’t know how I recognized you. I stopped working there recently, but if you remember going to—”
He doesn’t even hear the name of the place with the way the blood is roaring through his ears. A couple months ago? That’s definitely before he was sent into the world of TWSA. If that’s the case, and the woman is remembering correctly, then there’s a chance that…
“By any chance, have you heard of a game called Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel?”
The woman blinks, looking startled. “That’s random. But yes, I have.”
“Are you aware that…” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Are you aware that we’re inside that game?”
“Huh?” Her eyes widen. “Well, no, but that would explain some of the odd things that have been happening recently. Who are you?”
Yoo Joonghyuk seems content to sit by and listen, while Lee Hyunsung is regarding him with what can only be described as innocent confusion. He sighs. “I’m Kim Dokja. Why don’t you sit down?”
She sits next to him, motioning Lee Hyunsung to sit on the other side of her, which he does almost obediently. “I’m Jung Heewon. What do you mean, we’re inside that game?”
He prepares himself to explain yet again (he’s been doing that pretty often these days, it seems), but before he can, Jung Heewon interrupts. “Does this have anything to do with how weird that guy”—she motions to the unaware Lee Hyunsung—”is?”
“Ah, maybe,” he replies, wondering what Lee Hyunsung’s done to warrant that kind of reaction. “How did you meet him, by the way?”
Jung Heewon sighs. “Hah, it’s ridiculous. He dropped his subway pass and I picked it up as he was leaving, and had to chase after him. And for some reason, even after I gave it back to him, he wanted my contact number to repay me. Even now, after we’ve gone out multiple times, he still insists on meeting up all the time to go job hunting together. Not that I mind, but”—she makes a disgruntled face—”I’ve never met a guy who acts like that.”
That explains why Yoo Sangah didn’t meet Lee Hyunsung; it turns out that this woman, Jung Heewon, ended up slipping into the protagonist role by accident. Clearly, she hasn’t played the game at all, because otherwise she would have recognized the opening sequence of events leading to Yoo Sangah and Lee Hyunsung’s meeting.
“It’s probably just part of his character settings,” he says. “You didn’t notice anything else wrong in these last few days?”
She hums. “Well, I did notice that my old workplace suddenly changed its name, but I didn’t think too much of it. I don’t have many friends in this area, but I did notice that some people, like my neighbors and people I see every day, disappeared. Like I said, I didn’t think about it too much, but that’s probably because of being inside such a game.” She pauses. “I’ve actually never played this game, so I don’t know too much about it. Is there anything—”
“There’s nothing you need to worry about,” he reassures her, taking his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll give you my phone number, and we can talk about this later.”
“Sure,” she replies, looking baffled but pulling out her own phone as well. “I’m sorry if my reaction is a little off—I’m not quite sure what to make of this information.”
“It’s okay.” He texts her a quick hello just to confirm the number. “There’s another woman I met who’s in the same situation, more or less, so I can also put you in contact with her if you’re interested.”
“Heewon-ssi, the next stop is ours.” For the first time, Lee Hyunsung speaks, watching him with some wariness now.
Jung Heewon sighs. “I’ll contact you later,” she says, standing up and following Lee Hyunsung. “See you.”
“See you,” he replies without thinking.
Beside him, Yoo Joonghyuk finally decides to start talking again. “Another person from your world?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know there would be more than Yoo Sangah and I.” He fidgets with his phone, resisting the urge to pull up a webnovel and use that to pass the time. “We still have a few more stops until the location.”
Yoo Joonghyuk gives him a hum in acknowledgement. The rest of the ride is silent. It’s oddly comforting, with Yoo Joonghyuk sitting by his side.
“It’s this warehouse.” Dokja points to the dilapidated metal structure that’s little more than a large shed.
Yoo Joonghyuk looks at it with critique in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Can you stop questioning me and just look inside?”
Yoo Joonghyuk exhales, seemingly choosing to suspend his disbelief in favor of stepping towards the door. “If you’re wrong—”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll compensate you accordingly and allow you to slam me against as many walls as you’d like.” Dokja rolls his eyes. “Just break in; I’m pretty sure no one owns this place anyways.”
Yoo Joonghyuk nods, and crouches down, gripping onto the bottom of the door and lifting up. With an ear-piercing screech, it crumples, leaving an empty space near the floor for them to enter.
(Once again, Dokja is reminded of how easily Yoo Joonghyuk could crush him like a soda can.)
Dokja bends down to follow Yoo Joonghyuk into the warehouse, using his phone as a flashlight to illuminate the dark interior. It’s surprisingly large for how small it looks from the outside, but also bare, the only objects inside being a few oil barrels, a large pile of what looks like granola bar wrappers, and a stack of cardboard boxes.
“There’s someone in here. Alive.”
He can’t be hallucinating the slight hope in Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice. He coughs, feeling the dust seeping into his lungs. “Should we split up to look for her? Or—”
Yoo Joonghyuk uses his arm to stop him from taking another step forward, looking around. “There’s a magic trap in here. Don’t walk around carelessly.”
Yoo Joonghyuk clears his throat. “Yoo Mia. If you’re in here, show yourself. I am your brother.”
“You need to prove to her that you’re actually her brother,” he murmurs, tugging on Yoo Joonghyuk’s sleeve. “Remember, she thinks you’re dead because of what Anna Croft told her.”
Yoo Joonghyuk sneers, but does as he’s told. “For your fifth birthday, I gifted you an infinite storage bag. Come and show yourself if you are Yoo Mia.”
There’s a shuffling sound, and then sudden movement from one of the corners of the warehouse. Dokja turns his phone to light up the corner, revealing a head popping out from behind a box.
“Mia.”
“O-Oppa?” The girl takes a few steps out, her steps tentative. “Is that really you?”
He swears he can hear the relief from that stupid demon king. “Mia.”
“Oppa?” The girl tries again, sounding close to tears. “You’re not dead?”
“I’m not dead.” Yoo Joonghyuk actually spreads his arms, much to Dokja’s mild horror. “Come over here.”
The girl starts by creeping over, then breaks into a run, crashing into Yoo Joonghyuk and sobbing something unintelligible. Yoo Joonghyuk simply hugs her, not saying a word. All of a sudden, it feels like Dokja’s intruding, so he shifts back a little bit and allows them to have their moment.
“I thought you were dead,” Yoo Mia wails, clutching onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s jacket. “I—Anna said the anti-royalists got rid of you, uuuu…”
Yoo Joonghyuk pats her on the back, playing the role of a doting older brother surprisingly well. “It’s okay now, Mia.”
She sniffs, calming down almost immediately. “Anna is a liar,” she mumbles with a viciousness that confirms her relation to Yoo Joonghyuk. “Who’s this ugly human with you, oppa?”
“He’s the one who helped me find you,” he tells her.
He then turns to look at Dokja, and if his phone flashlight wasn’t on, he would’ve missed the way his eyes soften almost imperceptibly. “Thank you.”
Notes:
uhhhhh i predict my next update to be around march. so in another three months. haha...
(i swear i'm coming back, unlike that one orv author who got into princeton, no shade)
Chapter Text
It isn’t until all three of them are on the subway back that Dokja realizes a fundamental error he’s made.
“Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk.” He pokes him in the unfairly muscular bicep, feeling him grunt in acknowledgement. “What are we going to do about the sleeping situation?”
Yoo Joonghyuk tears his eyes from his sister, who’s currently using his arm as a pillow and his coat as a blanket. “What do you mean?”
“We only have my bed and your air mattress,” he whispers, gesturing at the three of them. “I mean, we could have Yoo Mia stay with Yoo Sangah, but—”
“Not happening,” he grumbles, glancing back at Yoo Mia. “I don’t know what Anna Croft will do next, so I have to keep Mia close.”
Dokja rolls his eyes. “Oh, so now you believe me about Anna Croft’s betrayal. Anyways, if all three of us are going to live in my apartment, how are we splitting the beds?”
The question is more or less cursory, since the most logical solution is for Yoo Joonghyuk and Yoo Mia to share the air—
“Mia will sleep on the air mattress by herself.”
Huh?
“Ah, okay,” Dokja responds, surprised at his altruism. He supposes Yoo Joonghyuk has a soft spot for his sister, which is kind of sweet. “Are you sure sleeping on the floor is good for you?”
“I’ll sleep in your bed.”
Dokja chokes on his spit. “Wha—I told you from the start, I’m not giving up my own bed for you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls. “I didn’t say you have to give it up.”
It takes a stupidly long moment for Dokja to process that. Sleeping in the same bed as Yoo Joonghyuk surprisingly doesn’t sound all that bad.
“You really love your sister, don’t you?” Dokja sighs. “Fine, we’ll do that. As long as I don’t wake up covered in blood again, okay? I don’t want to buy new bed sheets again.”
That night, once Yoo Joonghyuk gets Yoo Mia to sleep (she’s surprisingly childish and clingy for a girl who looks around twelve, but he supposes it might be the side effects of the revelation that your presumed-to-be-dead brother is not so dead), the two of them stand awkwardly around Dokja’s bed.
“Uh, I’ll take the left side, like last time,” Dokja mumbles, all of a sudden realizing what he’s getting himself into.
Yoo Joonghyuk nods, waiting for Dokja to slide closer to the wall before he lies down, shifting until their shoulders collide in the middle.
“Sorry, I don’t have an extra pillow.” It’s weird to be saying that, especially since the last time they slept in his bed, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even care and Dokja himself didn’t bother to ask.
“It’s fine,” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles, folding his arm under his head and turning away from him.
Dokja does the same, turning to face the wall and closing his eyes. Tomorrow they’ll figure out the Anna Croft thing, he decides. And he’ll have a talk with Yoo Sangah about pursuing the Han Sooyoung route, now that both Yoo Joonghyuk and Lee Hyunsung are clearly not available as love interests. And he’ll…
Dokja opens his eyes. He’s holding a knife—the same one that Yoo Joonghyuk was using to cook earlier in the day—but instead of tomato juice, it’s...
The dark red coagulates on the blade, dripping into a large stain at his feet. He can feel his hands shake as he turns them towards himself, the knife falling out of his grip. Bloodstained hands greet his vision, the liquid still fresh enough to glimmer in the light.
“Dokja.”
He looks up. It’s Yoo Joonghyuk. Somehow the knife is back in his hands. He tries to call his name, but his mouth doesn’t obey. Instead, it’s his legs that move, stepping closer and closer to Yoo Joonghyuk, until the tip of the knife grazes right above his heart.
Stop. Stop. He’s pulling back with all his strength, but the knife betrays him, plunging into Yoo Joonghyuk and tearing through his body at a diagonal. He lets go, hands trembling so hard that he doubts they’re ever going to stop. There’s blood all over his white shirt, all over his arms, all over him like he’s been dipped in it, like he’s bathing in Yoo Joonghyuk’s blood, and oh god it’s too much, it’s too much, it’s—
“Did you enjoy that?”
The room goes white, but he’s still there, covered in blood and filth. He collapses to the floor, retching and trying to avoid the sight of how he leaves red handprints all over the blank canvas of the floor.
“Get up.” The female voice is devoid of emotion, factual and almost robotic in its intonation.
He curls into himself, dry heaving. What is he doing, what has he done, what is happening? Shit, he has to calm down. Yoo Joonghyuk can’t be dead—there’s no way he’d still be alive if he actually killed Yoo Joonghyuk, which means this has to be a—
“Get up.” A hand grabs him by the hair, pulling him until he’s upright on his knees.
“Anna Croft,” he garbles out, recognizing her by her iconic blonde hair.
She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “So you do know who I am.” She lets go of him, taking a step back. “Then I suppose I’ll skip the self-introduction.”
“I assume you know who I am as well,” he says, his vision clearing as the panic from killing Yoo Joonghyuk begins to settle.
Anna Croft laughs. “Presumptuous.”
“Am I wrong?”
She tilts her head. “Well, you are correct. But the very idea that a mere human is important enough to a demon to be addressed by name is presumptuous. Yoo Joonghyuk treats you far too well in that aspect.”
The canon Anna Croft was not only an anti-royalist, but also a devout demon race supremacist. It seems that even in this warped version of the game, she remains the same, which is a mild comfort considering that all the love interests have been messed up by some weird butterfly effect.
“Why are you here?” he asks. “You’re gracing this mere human with your superior demon presence using the Great Demon’s Eyes, so it must be for a reason.”
She taps her foot against the floor, the sound echoing through the endless white room. “You know quite a bit,” she says, sounding intrigued. “I am already aware that you have rescued Yoo Mia. This is a warning. If you interfere any more than this in the affairs of the demon realm, you will not be let off lightly.”
“What will you do if I don’t?”
Anna Croft chuckles. “At best, we’ll give you a merciful death when we come to retrieve Yoo Joonghyuk and Yoo Mia. At worst, that vision that you just had will come true.”
“Okay. Then I refuse.”
“You don’t have the right to refuse.”
Dokja stands up, taking a step towards the much shorter Anna Croft. He must look insane, with the blood all over his body still, dripping off his fingertips in a splattered trail of red dots. Yoo Joonghyuk’s blood is technically supposed to be black since he’s a pure blooded demon, but clearly Anna Croft saw the red as a stylistic decision to inflict the maximum psychological damage on a regular human.
What a sadist. It’s really too bad, though—he’s probably the one person for which such a tactic would be less effective.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Of course I have the right to do whatever I want to do, and if that happens to be interfering in your plans to overthrow Yoo Joonghyuk, I can do that without your permission, o great demon Anna Croft.”
“You—presumptuous!” Anna Croft takes a hasty step back. “You’ll regret making a mockery of me. If you truly decide to interfere, I’ll know, and I’ll control you to kill Yoo Joonghyuk!”
“You can’t do that.” He takes another step.
“How would a human like you—”
“If you could actually control humans as easily as that,” he murmurs, “you wouldn’t have had to monitor his daily movement through my eyes—that is what you did, no? You could have just killed him the night we made the life force contract, or as soon as we retrieved his sister, or any time his guard was down against me. Am I right, Anna Croft?” He pulls back, flashing her a smile that he hopes comes across as confidence, bordering on arrogance. In reality, he has no idea what he’s talking about. “You can stop bluffing.”
Anna Croft looks pale enough to rival the color of the room. “You—You—”
“Kim Dokja!”
His eyes snap open. Yoo Joonghyuk’s face hovers over his, the light from the window highlighting what seems like…concern?
“Are you okay?”
He sits up and pinches himself on the thigh hard enough to bruise. “This is real, right?” he asks him. “Not another one of Anna Croft’s delusions?”
He can hear the sharp intake of breath from Yoo Joonghyuk. “You saw Anna Croft?”
“Yeah. Shit, she’s good at making delusions.” Dokja looks straight at Yoo Joonghyuk, but he can hardly see anything except for his silhouette in the barely illuminated room. “She came to threaten me to stop interfering.”
“What did she show you?”
“I—Nothing,” he lies, wincing at how the area he pinched aches when he shifts his leg.
The shadow of Yoo Joonghyuk seems to draw closer. “What did she show you?”
“I told you, she didn’t show me anything.”
“That’s impossible—you just said she showed you a delusion. What did she show you?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice is insistent.
“What do you mean, impossible? That’s what I’m saying; she didn’t show me any images. It was just a white room and I had a…civil conversation with her.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs. “Anna Croft doesn’t have that kind of respect for humans. Tell me what you saw in the delusion.”
Seems like Yoo Joonghyuk does have some awareness about his subordinates and their views. Shocking considering how self-absorbed he is.
Dokja sighs. “I killed you with a knife. It’s okay, it’s nothing new.”
“Nothing new,” Yoo Joonghyuk repeats, and all of a sudden he realizes that Yoo Joonghyuk really doesn’t know anything about him, even though he knows nearly everything about him. That’s probably a good sign to tone down the self-deprecating humor around him.
“I don’t mean killing you,” he clarifies. “Just, ah, I’ve done something similar in real life before, so dreaming about it isn’t too bad. It was a long time ago.”
“What did you do?”
Shit, he’s really pushing it with the interrogation today. Since when did Yoo Joonghyuk care so much about him?
Dokja makes a strangled sound in his throat. “Do you actually want to know? It’s not even relevant, and like I said, it happened a long time ago.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t say a word, simply staring at him.
Dokja mumbles a curse under his breath. “You really want to know?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s going to regret ever asking. Dokja takes a deep breath. “I may or may not have stabbed my own father to death. I was nine, maybe ten years old at the time. So it’s not anything new, for me to dream of killing people by accident with a knife.”
The silence is stifling. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t move, and for a moment, Dokja thinks maybe he’s back in Anna Croft’s delusion, but he can hear Yoo Joonghyuk breathe. He clears his throat. “Alright. I’m going back to sleep.”
“Do you…”
Dokja stops. “What is it?” he asks, the words coming out with an unintended harshness.
He’s never hated silence more than he has in this conversation. He sighs, pulling the blanket back over himself and preparing to suffer the entire night with the self-hatred already running through his head, cursing himself for even talking about it. Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t care, after all—he’s never really had parents, so he wouldn’t understand some complex human experience like trauma and guilt. Why did he think it was a good idea to bring it up, even jokingly?
“...Do you still have dreams of that?”
“Of what?” he finds himself responding, keeping his eyes closed in the irrational fear that Yoo Joonghyuk will be able to read him like an open book if he looks in his eyes.
“Of killing people close to you.”
Dokja forces a laugh. “It’s not something that goes away. But I’m not that weak, to be unable to deal with something that happened all those years ago.”
“That’s not what weakness is.” Yoo Joonghyuk sounds oddly indignant.
“What, so weakness is me almost dying because of a demon attack, but not me being unable to get over killing my own abusive father?” Dokja snorts. “Ah, for the record, both of those things are pretty weak of me. I know I keep arguing with you over the first one, but it’s true that I’m physically and mentally weak, especially compared to you. Sorry, I’m just petty like that to keep arguing with you over meaningless things.”
He finally dares to open his eyes and look up at Yoo Joonghyuk. The light from the window casts across his face, painting it blue. For the first time, Yoo Joonghyuk looks at him like he’s afraid he’ll break. It’s an ill-fitting expression on his face, to the point where it makes something uncomfortable unfurl in Dokja’s chest.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Yoo Joonghyuk seems to notice that he’s looking at him, and schools his features back into his signature scowl. “Fool.”
“Bastard,” he shoots back.
“Take care of yourself more.”
Dokja rolls his eyes. “You know I’m horrible at doing that. Just look at the state of my apartment.”
He grumbles something under his breath, then reaches over. Dokja’s vision goes dark, Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand settling on his face.
“Go to sleep,” Yoo Joonghyuk grunts, voice uncharacteristically gentle for all the yelling and growling he’s done at him over their short cohabitation.
Dokja chuckles, using his hand to pry Yoo Joonghyuk’s away from his eyes. “What are you going to do if I don’t? Kill me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, pulling back. “Go to sleep,” he repeats, softer this time.
“I don’t know if I can,” he confesses, but he rolls over anyway. “Thanks for waking me up, Joonghyuk-ah.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t acknowledge that, but he feels the mattress shift and creak as he lies back down. He doesn’t know when he falls asleep.
Notes:
shorter chapter this time because i had it sitting around and i didn't want to wait for march or for more ideas to continue the scene
but the next update will definitely be march. miracles can't happen every day
Chapter 7: your dearest salaryman in distress
Notes:
...
so. it's been 7-8 months since i last updated. turns out i did not have the ability to follow my OWN updating plan, which is very funny and in-character of me. yes i'm sorry, no i did not have a good reason other than procrastination and my own fleeting interest in finishing any given fic.*skip this part if you don't want to read my bs excuses*
basically i:
1. accidentally got sucked into another fandom
2. wrote a 10k+ anon fanfic for THAT fandom in a state of fever hyperfixation that i will never be able to replicate again
3. nearly fucked up my exams
4. did alright on my exams after stressing to hell and back
5. started suffering writer's block
6. went through weeks without wifi connection
7. reread the entirety of the ORV novel to refresh my memory and torture myself*****
so yes. i am now back after all of that. also this chapter is short because i'm still packing my bags for uni but contrary to popular thought i DO have the rest of this fic planned out and am in the process of putting it into words. just thought i'd publish this short snippet of a chapter now to remind everyone that i am actually very much alive and somewhat well :) i'm not gonna make another promise about publishing by some date because...that ended well last time...but please be assured i'm doing my best and i also want to finish writing this fic.
this was a very long and rambly message but please enjoy this for now :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s funny, really. Ironic, and so funny. Dokja could seriously burst into laughter right now, sitting in this jail cell.
(Okay, it’s not that funny. He actually wants to cry right now, but when has crying ever helped him?)
All his life, he’s lived with the memories of that night—the dark puddles and bloodstained knife on the floor, the soft smears of red on his fingertips, shadowy faces fading in and out, the way his mother coerced him into promising to keep a secret that still haunts him to this day. His only tether to sanity was his own vow that he’d never be so irresponsibly stupid to even think about letting his emotions get the better of him again.
And yet now, he’s sitting here, harsh metal biting into his wrists, hearing the phantom laughter of his high school classmates ringing in his head. They’d be laughing, for sure, laughing at how the murderer’s son finally snapped like they’d predicted. Murderer’s son Kim Dokja, lunatic Kim Dokja, accident-waiting-to-happen Kim Dokja. Kim Dokja, that quiet kid sitting in the corner with the too-big school uniform, head buried in a book, omnipresent bandage on his cheek, but don’t be fooled by the pitiful look because he has the blood of a murderer running through his veins, seconds away from disaster, on the verge of following his mother’s footsteps if they don’t keep him in check by reminding him how powerless he is.
He takes a deep breath in, feeling the edge of the bench dig into his thighs. The pain acts as an anchor, pulling him back to the reality of his situation. Behind bars, handcuffed, being accused of a crime that he thinks he didn’t commit but hits far too close to home for him to deny it with confidence.
At this point, he can only hope that they won’t remember being murdered in their sleep.
Looking at it now with a calmer frame of mind, it couldn’t have been him who killed them, even if he had conveniently wiped the memories of stabbing three people from his mind. He was sleeping in the same bed as Yoo Joonghyuk last night, on the inner side facing the wall no less. Yoo Joonghyuk would have noticed if he got out of bed—he’s such a light sleeper that he grumbles whenever he hears Dokja sit up in bed, so he would have complained if he tried to crawl over him to reach the floor.
Besides, he doesn’t even know where Jung Heewon or Lee Hyunsung live. Even if he did, Lee Hyunsung was canonically much stronger than the average man (which, in turn, is way stronger than Dokja and his below average, scrawny self) and would have been alert enough, even in a drowsy state, to know if someone was breaking into his home. Jung Heewon looked strong enough to not go down without a fight. As for Yoo Sangah…he wouldn’t have been so delusional as to kill the female protagonist and the only ticket back to his world, right?
The only other possibility is Anna Croft.
Although she can’t control humans from afar, she’s never been the type of character to fear getting her own hands dirty. As for the fingerprints that were found on the knife, they could easily be some of her illusion magic. Maybe he went too far with his mockery last night, and she decided to get back at him by playing off his trauma.
Whatever the case, he’s in some deep shit right now. With no escape in sight, and Anna Croft likely planning her next move, he almost wishes he had some form of magical communication with Yoo Joonghyuk. He’d probably glare at him and call him an idiot, but it might be preferable to the way he’s getting periodic flashes of unpleasant memories right now.
Unfortunately, the demon king is probably still sitting in his apartment with his kid sister, waiting for him to get off work. He won’t realize his absence until much later, when he doesn’t come back at his usual time. And with Yoo Sangah, the only other person who Yoo Joonghyuk has willingly communicated with, dead…
Dokja takes another shuddering breath in, shivering at the chill in the cell. It’s starting to feel colder, which is a good indication of night setting in, but without a window to see the sky or a timekeeping device around, he can’t be sure of it. It would be great if it was night though, because then Yoo Joonghyuk would realize something might have happened to him (and, although an unlikely fantasy, might come and help him out).
The faint sound of footsteps echoes down the hallway, increasing in volume as the person gets closer. Only, once they’re close enough that Dokja expects them to be visible…
“What the…” Dokja mutters to himself, squinting through the bars of the cell at what appears to be thin air. “Is someone there?”
“Fool.” With that, Yoo Joonghyuk materializes in front of him, dressed in his full demon king garb, and complete with his ridiculous long black cloak that Dokja is maybe a bit ashamed to admit he tried to buy a replica of a couple years ago.
(It’s still stashed in the back of his closet. He fervently hopes Yoo Joonghyuk hasn’t looked back there.)
Dokja snaps his fingers. “Your cloak’s invisibility powers, right,” he whispers, nodding to himself. “Where have you been keeping that thing? You didn’t have it when you came.”
Yoo Joonghyuk answers his question with a nasty glare. “Why are you here?” he asks, but it comes out more like a threat.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Dokja quips, shrugging as best as he can with his hands cuffed behind his back. “According to the police, I killed three people last night while we were having a deep conversation about my childhood trauma. Insane, hm?”
Yoo Joonghyuk mutters something under his breath, soft enough that Dokja only catches a few words despite straining to hear it.
“What did you say?”
“Obviously you didn’t kill anyone,” he snaps, a bit louder than necessary. On the surface, he looks as murderously irritated as ever, but there’s something in his gaze that gives Dokja reason to pause, eyes flicking to the line of his mouth, then back up to meet his eyes, which seem to flash gold under the failing fluorescent lights. But he can’t trust what he’s seeing, yet can’t look away, because gold is—
“Stop thinking, Kim Dokja. It doesn’t do you any good.”
Dokja jolts out of his daze, throat feeling impossibly dry as he swallows. “What are you talking about?” he asks, knowing full well Yoo Joonghyuk can’t read his thoughts—canonically Han Sooyoung is the only character with the Lie Detection skill, although many other characters have skills that imitate it. The golden flash means something…special, for Yoo Joonghyuk, but it was certainly just a trick of the light.
(It would be bad if Yoo Joonghyuk knew what he assumed when he saw it, if he knew the way his heart jumped traitorously at the very thought of it. Very bad.)
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs out a frustrated sigh. “We’re going back to the apartment.”
“I don’t know if you forgot,” Dokja scoffs, “but I’m still handcuffed. Can you at least get these off of me before we leave?”
He seems to contemplate it while applying pressure to the door lock with his bare hands.
“I’m more useful with my hands free,” Dokja adds.
“...That’s not true,” Yoo Joonghyuk points out, the lock finally crumbling to pieces in his palm. “You’re weak, even for a human.”
“I thought we were over this,” Dokja groans. “I’m just an average civilian, you can’t hold me to your ridiculous demon standards. Now, can you please break the handcuffs off me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk pushes the door open and reaches towards him, and for a second he thinks he’s finally getting Yoo Joonghyuk to obey his whims, but then he’s getting swept off his feet and into Yoo Joonghyuk’s stupidly firm arms.
(Which, by the way, is happening a little too often for Dokja to not notice his arms. Sue him, he’s not only physically weak like Yoo Joonghyuk claims, but also mentally weak.)
“What the—”
“Be quiet,” he whispers, his face horrifyingly close to his. “And hold on tight.”
Dokja barely has the time to register Yoo Joonghyuk’s slight smirk before the world blurs into a dizzying vortex.
Notes:
oh and before i forget for the nth time: here's my twt (no i will not call it X like it's my calculus homework ew) where you can uh...see my sporadic apologies for not updating? or i guess threaten me into updating? yeah.
Chapter 8: these are the eyes of a man in love
Notes:
oh my god gonisango updating twice within a month??? the world is ending
(actually this was supposed to be one chapter with the previous one but i split it because i was afraid i'd actually quit writing this fic if i tried to write something decently long)
please enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“You damn…damn sadist,” Dokja chokes out, vision spinning even as he dimly registers the shadows of his apartment. “I didn’t even have my hands free, what the fuck do you mean ‘hold on tight’?”
Instead of speaking, Yoo Joonghyuk chooses to watch him writhe on the floor where he dropped him like an insignificant worm.
The handcuffs are pressing right against the inner side of his wrists, painful enough that he imagines them bleeding, two horizontal gashes blooming on the canvas of his skin as Yoo Joonghyuk watches him like he didn’t go through all of this trying to protect him. Because of course he’d be the only person silly enough, delusional enough, to try and protect an otome game character who’s stronger and better than him in every way. And one that doesn’t even like him to boot.
“Have you ever tried having a bit of empathy?”
“...I have.”
Dokja squints at him, trying to make out the expression on his face. Is he frowning? Annoyed? Is his eyebrow twitching like TWSA says it does whenever he makes his mind up about something? Maybe he’s made up his mind to kill him, even if it kills him too.
“Kim Dokja.”
“What?” he asks, maybe harsher than he should. “Can it wait until later?”
He can feel Yoo Joonghyuk’s stare even though he can’t see it.
“What do you think?” he finally says, the soft noise of his shoes scuffing against the floor coming to a stop when the toe of his boot bumps into Dokja’s knee. There’s something there, something in the way he says it like he’s asking for permission.
The pounding of his heartbeat in his ears is unwarranted, as is the way his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I don’t know,” Dokja murmurs, hoping it’s too quiet for Yoo Joonghyuk to hear how wobbly and uncertain it is. Again, unwarranted. “What do you have to say? Please don’t make it something ridiculous.”
“...I don’t like humans.” Yoo Joonghyuk barrels on before he can even get a witty retort in. “Things like empathy, excessive emotion, those are weaknesses in the demon realm. You saw how caring for and trusting others can be easily taken advantage of. I’ve tried to avoid being partial to anyone, but you…” He pauses, and again Dokja tries to search his face in vain.
“...It’s true,” he continues, rather abruptly, “that golden eyes mean something special.”
“I don’t—what are you talking about?” Dokja asks, and if there’s an edge of desperation to figure out what’s going on when he can’t use his eyes to see Yoo Joonghyuk’s facial expression, he hopes it doesn’t come off too strong.
He can hear him sigh. “You were thinking about it. That golden eyes mean—”
“—that you’re in love,” Dokja finishes for him, “but that’s ridiculous because you were looking at me, and we established that you would rather die than, you know, fuck me in any kind of loving way.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he hears Yoo Joonghyuk snap, and the toe of his boot drives harder into the bone of his knee.
“You said that yourself, bastard,” Dokja hisses, shifting his legs away from Yoo Joonghyuk. “What, you’re not admitting it now?”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t back down, his clothes rustling as he crouches down next to him, close enough that Dokja can hear him exhale.
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, a veneer of patience coating his words. “Stop deflecting.”
“Because you’re being ridiculous,” Dokja seethes, but it comes out weaker than he wanted, a whiny complaint rather than an accusation.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Yoo Joonghyuk retorts, much like a bratty child would, which is pretty much what Yoo Joonghyuk is anyways with the lack of communicative competence. “All you have to do is look at me. So look at me, Kim Dokja.”
“What are you talking about?” Dokja hisses, even as his eyes search for Yoo Joonghyuk. “I don’t have night vision like you demons, I can’t see you in the da—”
The words get stuck in his throat as he meets Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze in the dark. Glowing impossibly gold, the soft light illuminating his face just enough for him to see the way his expression seems to soften when their eyes meet.
“You—” Dokja manages to strangle out, still staring straight at Yoo Joonghyuk. “You don’t like me, though?”
Yoo Joonghyuk makes a noise, something between a sigh and a huff of laughter. “Who said that?”
He reaches past Dokja, behind him, snapping the handcuffs off with one hand. Finally free of the restraints, Dokja sits up. And it occurs to him. The silence. The dark apartment.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” he says, the off-hand thought becoming more and more plausible with every second that passes, “where’s your sister?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent. Then:
“I don’t know.”
“What…” Dokja breathes in, a harsh sound in the quiet of the apartment. “What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know?”
“...It was an oversight on my part.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice goes cold, like flipping a switch, as his eyes go dark and plunge the world into oblivion again. “I just left her here before I—”
“You—how could you leave her here alone?” Dokja pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the way Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t move from his crouching position. “Seriously, why would you—”
“Because of you.”
Dokja stills in the middle of fumbling for the light switch, turning back in Yoo Joonghyuk’s direction. “What?”
“Because I was worried about you.” He sounds furious now, undercurrents of anger barely contained under his voice. “Because you’re constantly getting yourself into trouble, so you’re always on my mind.”
“Who told you to be so concerned about me?” Dokja hisses, finally locating the light switch and hitting it. The sudden illumination nearly blinds him, but now he notices just how disarmingly close Yoo Joonghyuk has stepped to him while he wasn’t keeping track.
“I can’t not think of you.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice is a bare whisper, full of some emotion that Dokja can’t quite place. Irritation? Frustration? Hatred?
“Why?” Dokja taunts. “Just because of that stupid life force contract? Are you that scared of dying?”
“No.”
Liar.
“Do you regret it, then?”
“No.” Yoo Joonghyuk grabs him by the shoulders, spinning him to face him directly. “Kim Dokja, I—”
“We don’t have the time for this,” Dokja interrupts, lifting his hand up and peeling Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers off his shoulder. “We have to find your sister first. I’ll bet it’s Anna Croft back at it again, so you track her down and I’ll—”
Yoo Joonghyuk reaches out, hand cupping the back of his neck, and pulls him in. It’s over before Dokja can even make a noise of protest, the heat of the mouth against his gone before he even registers the fact that they kissed.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s tongue flicks over his wet lips as he gazes at him, his irises glowing a subtle, undeniable red. “Let’s go,” he says, using his thumb to absently wipe the spit from Dokja’s lower lip as he turns away. “We have to save my sister.”
Here’s the problem with Anna Croft; not only is she adamant that overthrowing Yoo Joonghyuk will solve everything wrong with the world, she’s also very fixated on making Yoo Joonghyuk suffer to the greatest possible degree. Anna Croft is the big villain in every single Yoo Joonghyuk plotline, the one who’s always aiming for his demise. But as revealed in one of the Anna Croft-centric side stories (which Dokja mournfully paid for despite not liking her one bit because the description of it promised details on Yoo Joonghyuk’s early life), she wasn’t always against Yoo Joonghyuk ruling over the demon realm.
In classic otome game fashion, Anna Croft was portrayed as an absolute victim in her side story. A tumultuous upbringing in the long-time royally linked Croft family, where every person around her was scheming for the privilege of being young Yoo Joonghyuk’s close aide. The power-hungry avarice of the adults around her, aiming to put a member of their branch of the Croft family in that so-coveted position, stopping at nothing to claw their way closer to the source of power. When her own family, her blood relatives, even those she trusted most in the world, turned on her when she, the child that no one even considered a threat, received the summons to the palace. Burning hatred at the boy who ruined her life, who made it impossible for her to turn back to simpler times, when she was only known as the little girl who was uncannily good at games of chance, not as the demon prince’s future aide. She knew it wasn’t his fault. It was the irrational hatred of a young girl, directed toward someone who didn’t care enough to know how she felt about him.
Such a feeling should have faded over time, but that irrational hatred formed into something else when Yoo Joonghyuk’s parents died at the hands of the Zarathustra. Watching Yoo Joonghyuk, not even of age, rise to power and order everyone with ties to the Zarathustra to be killed without batting an eye, was chilling enough to witness as a young girl. Then Yoo Joonghyuk called her into the execution room. She went in a simple child and came out as the last living member of the Croft bloodline.
She never forgot the words he said that night, the blood on his sword dripping onto black-stained tile as he beckoned her closer to him.
Watch yourself, or you’ll be next.
With that, simple hatred became something that festered in her with every passing year. Yoo Joonghyuk thought her an ally, because in his eyes, she would never dare betray after witnessing her family being murdered in cold blood in front of her. Others thought her a coward for not taking retribution for the Croft bloodline. Still others thought she deserved it all, and praised Yoo Joonghyuk for being a wise leader.
And Anna Croft? She would rather die than pledge true allegiance to such a man. When the chance to absorb the remains of the Zarathustra under her sole leadership came, she took it without a second thought. How could a leader who only resorted to violence in the face of opposition ever be a wise leader? In her warped and twisted mind, she had always been right about Yoo Joonghyuk. She had known since the start that Yoo Joonghyuk would never amount to a good leader, that he’d grow up to be a cruel man and unjust king. The very idea of being the one to end Yoo Joonghyuk gave her endless joy, and consumed her every waking thought, and made her eager to torture him at any given opportunity.
So really, Anna Croft deserved sympathy with such a harsh backstory, right?
Wrong. Despite all of this backstory meant to draw pity from him and other players, he doesn’t feel a thing for Anna Croft.
(Actually, he does feel one thing. Pure dislike. And that’s saying a lot, since he likes every other character to some degree, but it rubs him the wrong way when people act like Anna Croft’s cruel actions were justified because she suffered so much in life. He’s always hated that otome game special where they’d add the villain’s poor life circumstances in the side stories as an afterthought of sorts, meant to make the audience see them as some kind of nuanced character with a blurry moral compass. TWSA is no different. Even with its small fanbase, people get into online arguments regularly about whether or not Anna Croft is a true villain, or just a victim of her circumstances. For the record, Dokja’s firmly in the former camp—his childhood was pretty fucked up as well, but he didn’t turn out to be some extremist nutjob like Anna Croft did, so she has no excuse, does she?)
What does Anna Croft’s backstory mean, then?
It means that Anna Croft will definitely not treat Yoo Joonghyuk’s sister all that well.
Case in point: the fact that they turn up at some random warehouse that Yoo Joonghyuk’s little demon senses say is Anna Croft’s hideout, and Yoo Mia’s locked in a dog cage.
Dokja lets out a low whistle. “I bet you’re really regretting doing all that trauma-inducing stuff to Anna Croft now, hm?”
Yoo Joonghyuk grimaces. “She deserved it.” He stares at his sister, currently unconscious in the cage, and adds, “And she still deserves it.”
As soon as they step past the threshold of the door, Anna Croft turns towards them as if alerted. “Took you long enough, Joonghyuk,” she sneers, her eyes flicking towards Dokja briefly before returning to Yoo Joonghyuk, “And I see you brought your little pet too. How is it, raising a human?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes narrow at the clear disrespect of using only his given name. “Watch yourself, Anna Croft. Do you forget what happened—”
“—to my family?” she finishes, cocking her head. “I would never dare, Joonghyuk. To forget about such an injustice done to my own blood would be cruel, no?”
“Then you would understand why I did it,” Yoo Joonghyuk responds, unsheathing his sword.
Anna Croft stares at him. “Do you mean to say that the lives of two people were enough to kill hundreds?”
“It was my mother and father,” Yoo Joonghyuk says quietly, pointing his sword straight at her. “Not just anyone. I watched my own parents die.”
“As did I,” Anna Croft spits out, “yet I am not allowed to harbor a grudge? I am not allowed to harm those dear to you in retribution?” She barks out a laugh. “Yoo Joonghyuk, you are a bold-faced hypocrite to say those words to my face. The Zarathustra may have made you an orphan, but you made me an orphan. And for that, you will suffer.”
Finally, Anna Croft looks at him once more. “I will allow you one mercy,” she says, words dripping in mockery. “I’ll let your little human leave. I understand he’s quite important to you, even if I don’t understand why you’d want to raise it as a pet, but I’m not interested in dirtying my hands with subpar human blood again after last night.”
Last night. An admission of guilt to killing Lee Hyunsung, Jung Heewon, and Yoo Sangah. The faint smirk lingers on her face without a trace of remorse as she talks about killing people like it’s a regular Friday night activity. This is the Anna Croft of TWSA, the woman that drove Yoo Joonghyuk to insanity and a torturous death in countless bad endings. A traitor to the core, willing to sell her morality and soul to avenge the death of a family that never truly cared about her.
“Don’t call him that.”
Anna Croft cocks her head. “We don’t have to mince words, Joonghyuk. I call it as I see it.”
“He’s not a pet,” Yoo Joonghyuk declares, shifting until he blocks Anna Croft from view. “He’s…my companion.”
Companion. A special word in TWSA, reserved exclusively for the dazzling, beautiful protagonist Yoo Sangah in Yoo Joonghyuk’s rather limited lexicon. In the game, it was a special climatic moment—Yoo Joonghyuk finally accepted Yoo Sangah’s offer of aid in a dramatic showoff against the Zarathustra forces, and referred to her as his “companion” in front of his own allied demon forces. An emotional scene through and through, the male lead’s icy cold heart melting, at last, at the warm hands of the altruistic protagonist. For it to be used on him, some irrelevant minor character who hasn’t even done much to aid Yoo Joonghyuk…
“Companion?” She makes a thoughtful sound. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you want to call him”—Anna Croft waves her hand dismissively—“just make him leave.”
“Uh,” Dokja pipes up. “I don’t think I will—”
The two of them look away from their conversation to glare straight at him.
“Leave.”
“Uh,” Dokja tries to start again, doing his best to ignore the piercing gazes of the two demons who could rip him to shreds within seconds, “Joonghyuk-ah, remember our…deal? You know, like…I can’t leave because…I’ll die?” He makes a vague gesture with his hands, hoping that, against all odds and Yoo Joonghyuk’s very apparent lack of critical thought, he’ll somehow understand what he’s saying.
Clearly, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t get it, judging from the intense furrow in his brow as he stares at him waving his hands around like an idiot. Unfortunately, Anna Croft is much better at reading the room, and her eyes flash with recognition as her lips curve into a terrifying smile.
“Ah, this is interesting,” she says. “You really meant that he isn’t a pet, Joonghyuk? How low you have fallen, to tie your own life to a pathetic human.”
He can see Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip on his sword tighten. “I meant what I said, Croft.”
“Of course you’d be the type to care more about a human than your own kind, my liege.” A ball of swirling red ether begins to form in the palm of her hand, sending eerie colored shadows across the pale plane of her face. “I must admit, this development does make it much easier to kill you.” A tight smile. “A shame. I was looking forward to seeing you beg at my feet, but now I don’t think this will last very long at all.”
Notes:
do not expect any updates soon! don't know if you knew but academically rigorous institutions are indeed academically rigorous!!! who would have thought huh (i, for one, did not think)
anna croft's backstory (100% crafted by me) is just inspired by the fact that i myself hate when they try to make villains in media be "morally gray" by giving them a half-assed sad backstory. this is a very meta fanfic anyways so interpret her character and her backstory how you like. whether you think she's in the right or not is not all that important because in the end she's meant to be wrong since this is told from dokja's unreliable narration.
tldr; i don't care if you think this anna croft was justified or not in her actions, dokja thinks she's wrong so she's wrong
oh and reminder that you can indeed find my twt on my profile :)
Chapter 9: a kiss to start and end it all
Notes:
happy (belated) new year to everyone! i would make a new year's resolution to update more but i never make resolutions and i know i'd break this one lol
(warning: long emotional a/n)
we're getting close to the end of this fic now (maybe 1-2 chapters left to write?) and wow. just looking back at the fact that it's been almost two years since i started writing this fic makes me feel things. i know i'm not a great updater but it's insane how this fic and all its readers have accompanied me through the hardest times in my life. thanks to everyone who's still sticking around to see the end of this, i'm incredibly grateful for you. this fic started out as a silly self-indulgent idea combining my mobile otome game phase with my orv brainrot. i never intended to post the first chapter, and in fact it was sitting in my drafts for over half a year before i ever considered polishing it up and starting a multi-chapter fic. historically i have been (and still am) horrible at dedicating myself to multi-chapter fics, and whether it's undiagnosed ADHD like someone commented, another mental thing, or just how i am, it's amazing (to me) that i've been able to stick to this fic for such a long time. a testament to how much i love the orv fandom tbh <3. writing this fic was like improvised therapy for me (hence why i often wrote and published chapters during times of extreme stress or major life events) and i'm glad that something that i enjoyed writing also made other people happy.
(end)ew feelings. anyways please enjoy this update and hope that my next (and possibly final!) update will come sooner than this one did
TW: slight body horror, character death, mentions of suicide
Chapter Text
Like Anna Croft said, it doesn’t last very long at all.
It happens fast. One second he’s eyeing the rickety door to the warehouse, wondering if he should heed Yoo Joonghyuk’s uncharacteristic concern and leave him to fight it out with Anna Croft (knowing full well she has the advantage over him since his sister is her hostage). The next moment has his cheek pressed flat against the cold concrete floor, vision darkening around the edges. He swears he can hear Yoo Joonghyuk yell out his name, somewhere behind the deafening white noise in his ears.
He pushes himself into a sitting position, acutely aware of the bitter taste in his mouth. He coughs into his hand. It comes away shockingly black, fluid splattered across his hand like ink from a broken pen. He’s not sure if it’s the way his vision is swimming, but it seems to twitch and wriggle on his palm with a mind of its own, like some kind of disgusting parasite.
A parasite. Right, this is something very familiar to Dokja. This happened in…one of the bad endings.
(He can’t quite remember which one, which is a testament to how much it’s making his head spin. It hurts to even think, let alone try to recall something that specific.)
Regardless, he remembers that this was the curse that Anna Croft used on Yoo Sangah in that ending. He can’t remember the name, but the curse was a parasitic type that ate Yoo Sangah from the inside and reduced her to black goo. A horrible way to die, but it’s also extremely efficient, killing in a matter of minutes of in-game dialogue.
Which is basically the same amount of time in real life, give or take, so he’s pretty fucked if that’s the case. After all, it’s a bad ending, so obviously Yoo Sangah didn’t survive getting cursed, and he has no idea if there’s even a way to reverse the effects. A few minutes isn’t long enough to figure out a plan, especially not with the way that black liquid is starting to drip out from the corner of his mouth and into his open palm.
And…fuck. If the curse is affecting him so badly, then Yoo Joonghyuk’s body has to be at least somewhat affected. And if he dies…so does Yoo Joonghyuk, right? If that happens, everything up to this point has been for naught, and all because he wouldn’t leave when Yoo Joonghyuk and Anna Croft told him to.
It’s pathetic that he thought being here would be helpful to Yoo Joonghyuk.
Dokja coughs again, black dripping onto the pavement. Isn’t the life force contract supposed to divide the effect of physical injury more evenly than this? From the little that he can make out through his failing vision, Yoo Joonghyuk seems to be holding up just fine, yet he’s here leaking black like the infamous broken printer ink cartridge that terrorized the Mino Soft office for two weeks before anyone thought to get rid of it. Stupid demon king constitution.
Even then…
Last time he hurt himself by getting his head slammed into the wall, Yoo Joonghyuk was at least visibly affected, and that was nothing compared to a whole demonic curse. Which means one of three things:
One, it’s possible that he’s seeing it wrong. The black vignette filling his peripheral vision has started pulsating in time with his heartbeat. Maybe he’s not seeing how it’s affecting Yoo Joonghyuk, or maybe he’s hallucinating him being fine to comfort himself (which he wouldn’t put past himself, with how strong his emotional attachment to him is).
Two, it’s possible that he remembered the curse wrong. Maybe this is something that never appeared in the game, much like the life force contract, and only targets humans, and doesn’t manifest in demons even with the presence of the life force contract. That’s a lot of conditions that he’s never considered before, but there’s a chance that he’s assuming, wrongly, that it was a curse featured in the game.
Three…
He looks up just in time to see Yoo Joonghyuk’s sword pierce through Anna Croft, carving a diagonal path from her shoulder to her hip. It plays frame by frame like some shitty stop-motion animation, his vision blinking in and out of existence. Yoo Joonghyuk pulling his sword out. Anna Croft staggering forward, hands staining with black as she presses them against her wound in a futile attempt to stay alive. Anna Croft falling face first onto the concrete floor, her blonde hair covering her head like a golden funeral shroud. Yoo Joonghyuk turning to face him. Yoo Joonghyuk’s rapid approach. The look in his eyes, the unmistakable despair written in his features that becomes clearer as he gets closer. He’s now sinking to the floor in a state not unlike that of Anna Croft, who’s most certainly dead, but still manages to keep his eyes up, if only to see Yoo Joonghyuk.
He looks all the more distressed, and for a moment he wonders if he’ll miss him. This irrelevant, unnamed side character who was never meant to meet such an important love interest, let alone receive his trust and care and…well, if he so much as thinks about it, he’ll cry, and his vision’s already blurring to the point that he can barely make out Yoo Joonghyuk’s face above his as his arms pull him into his lap.
Then, as if ordained by fate, the world tilts on its axis, and goes out.
The piercing noise in his ear jolts him back to consciousness as he gasps for life. There’s a pain in his chest that accompanies his every breath with a stab, and he clutches his chest as he sits up, coughing.
One look around the room confirms it. He’s back.
Back in his apartment. It’s silent save for his shaky pants as his eyes dart around the space. No air mattress taking up half the available floor space. There’s a bulk box of instant noodle packets on the kitchen floor, but he hasn’t purchased the same box since he was transported into TWSA. The coat rack that he still doesn’t remember buying is gone, his coat thrown over the back of his chair instead. There’s only one pair of shoes at the doorway—his own, thrown haphazardly instead of neatly placed as Yoo Joonghyuk has been forcing him to.
Yoo Joonghyuk.
He fumbles for his phone, blood roaring in his ears as he struggles to shut off the alarm.
Instead of cooperating with him, his phone seems to glitch as if in response to his stress. The alarm screen fizzles to black, lighting back up with the title screen of Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel. Dokja watches in mute horror as the soft piano of the opening music begins playing. Yoo Sangah and the three love interests are still depicted as usual, but there’s two ominous red gashes across the screen: one over Yoo Sangah’s face and the other over Lee Hyunsung’s. He swears he hears the background music meander out of key for a moment, before the title screen selections fade into existence.
There’s a red dot on the Index selection, indicating a new entry. It seems to pulsate with a slow rhythm, prompting him to click it.
So he does. Among the hundreds of other entries, there’s one entry at the top, with a similar red dot.
Life Force Contract (Life and Death Companionship): a demonic contract that can be made between two individuals to bind their life forces to each other. The physical state of one individual will affect the physical state of the other individual in the contract. Contract is formed by mutual blood exchange via mouth-to-mouth contact, and can be broken by mouth-to-mouth contact.
Dokja reads it again. And again. And it dawns on him.
“That damn bastard,” he curses, feeling his hands shake as they clutch onto his phone. “Did he really have to lie about that?”
He tries to click the back button, if only to go back into the game and see if Yoo Joonghyuk is still alive. Only, the entire game freezes, the music cutting out. Dokja shakes his phone, as if it’ll make it come to its senses and start working.
In response, his phone dies.
“Fuck,” he grits out, holding down the power button as hard as he can to make it restart. For good measure, he connects the power cable too, waiting for his phone to start up again.
It flickers back to life, and Dokja unlocks it, swiping to the screen with the game icon. Only…
Where is it?
Where the icon of Yoo Joonghyuk’s face used to be is a blank space. He stares at it.
Well.
He sets his phone down, sighing as he rubs a hand across his face.
Since when has anything related to this game been remotely easy for him?
“Yoo-Sang-Ah,” he mutters to himself, typing it out on his keyboard. “Filters…Region, South Korea…Branch, no idea…Department, let’s try HR…”
Would Yoo Sangah be employed at the same company as him? Given that they were both present in the game world as Mino Soft employees, and Yoo Sangah never mentioned being confused at her new workplace, it’s reasonable to assume that they both work at the same place in the real world, right?
He presses enter, holding his breath in a way that makes the ache in his chest start again.
The page begins loading, then refreshes. There’s one result in the employee directory.
Yoo Sangah.
He keys the number listed on her profile into his phone, and dials, pressing the phone to his ear so hard that he can feel the vibration in his skull as it rings.
Once.
Twice.
There’s a click shortly after the third ring, then a shuffling noise on the other end.
“Hello, this is Yoo Sangah speaking. Who is this?”
Well, that eliminates the possibility of her being as dead as she was in the game. Dokja clears his throat. “Hi. Um. This is Kim Dokja? Do you remember me?”
There’s a long silence on the other end, and Dokja mentally slaps himself. Fuck, he was too impulsive—what if this is a different Yoo Sangah (rather unlikely, since her company profile picture looks as too-good-to-be-true as she did in the game world) or, even worse, what if Yoo Sangah doesn’t remember anything? What if he’s the only one who remembers, and Yoo Sangah now thinks he’s one of those garden variety creeps like Han Myungoh and reports him to management and he loses his job and dies poor, homeless, and without Yoo Joonghyuk—
“Dokja?”
Dokja laughs, a nervous sound. “Yeah, that’s me…uh, on second thought, if you don’t know who I am, then—”
“No, no, I know who you are…” There’s another crackle on her side. “...I—sorry, I’m just a bit overwhelmed…”
“That’s okay, Sangah-ssi.” He can’t help the soft smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
There’s an unmistakable emotion choking up her voice when she finally speaks again. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you for the past day, searching online and in my company’s employee directory…but I couldn’t find anyone with your name.”
“Really?” Dokja glances at his laptop screen. “I found you almost immediately through the directory. It could be because I died in the game just a few hours ago. Maybe if you search it now, you’ll see my profile?”
He listens to the clicking sounds of her keyboard, then a soft gasp. “You’re right. I guess while you were still in the game, your existence was erased in the real world? I’m just happy you got back, even if it took you longer than expected.”
“Have you checked on other people who were transported into TWSA? Like Jung Heewon? Or, uh…Han Sooyoung?”
She goes silent, and for a moment Dokja curses himself for stepping on the landmine of Han Sooyoung. Then, Yoo Sangah clears her throat.
“It’s strange. I’ve been thinking about this while you were gone, Dokja-ssi. For you, it seems like you’re a singular existence that swapped between worlds, since you don’t exist in the game. For me, since my character existed in the game, it should imply that there’s two separate existences of ‘Yoo Sangah’, right? Yet both of us can recall what happened in the game while being in the real world.
I tried to contact Jung Heewon-ssi to ask about her experience, since she should’ve had the same experience as you, being a real world person and not a character. But it seemed like she had no recollection of the game world, as she didn’t recognize me even though we exchanged photos while communicating in the game world. Just by Jung Heewon-ssi’s experience, ‘singular existences’ like her and you shouldn’t remember anything, yet you remember while she doesn’t.
As for Sooyoung, although she should have the same experience as me by my theory, having two separate existences…it seems like the game character and real life Sooyoung have no knowledge the other world exists, other than Sooyoung having created the game itself. I asked her a lot of questions but it seems like she’s back to how she was before we got transported into the game. So, it seems like you and I are the only ones who have a clear memory of what happened in the game.”
“It could just be because you’re the protagonist,” Dokja says. “You’re a special existence to the game. You’re also special to the real world—although both of us can remember what happened, time in the real world stopped when you left and started when you came back, regardless of whether I was present in the real world or not. Both the game world and the real world seem to revolve around you, and that’s why you can remember.”
“Doesn’t that make you special too, Dokja-ssi? You’re not the so-called ‘protagonist’ of the game, yet you’re the one that changed the direction of the game’s plot and you were allowed to return to the real world with memory of it. Somehow, you’re different as well.”
“Well…I’m not sure about that. But that’s not important right now. I have something I need to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know if any of the characters from the game are real people?”
There’s silence, then muffled mumbling between Yoo Sangah and someone else on her end. Then:
“Dokja-ssi, is it okay if I pass the phone to Sooyoung? I don’t think I’m the most qualified to answer this question.”
He nods, even though he knows she can’t see it through the call. “Sure. Thank you, Sangah-ssi.”
Despite having talked to Han Sooyoung in the game, nothing could have ever prepared him for talking to the real Han Sooyoung.
“So,” Han Sooyoung drawls through the phone, “you think I’m short?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You told me. Inside TWSA. You said I was shorter than you thought, you fucking bastard.”
Dokja winces. “Did you lie to Sangah-ssi about not remembering anything?”
There’s a soft scoff. “Well, it’s a small white lie…I don’t think she’d be very happy with me admitting that I can remember forgetting her, cussing her out, and letting her cry and break down at my front door. I already got my fair share of punishment for making her the protagonist of an otome game with male love interests and ‘stressing her out’.” There’s a beat of silence. “Please don’t tell her I remember anything. You’ll never get the answers you want if I’m dead.”
“I thought you didn’t die in TWSA yet,” he responds, grimacing.
Han Sooyoung cackles. “Have you ever heard of suicide?” She pauses, voice losing some of its wicked joy. “It wasn’t my decision, though. I had no control over the Han Sooyoung in TWSA, only fragmented memories after coming back. Han Sooyoung of TWSA does have a suicidal theme with her bad endings, so I can only assume something went wrong. I woke up, back in the real world, the same day Sangah came back. Anyways, don’t say anything to Sangah.”
“...What if I just pretend we never had this conversation?”
“That works. Shoot me with it, what do you want to know? Sangah already filled me in on most things, so just say what you need to.”
“Are the characters in TWSA based on real people?”
There’s a hum from her. “Well, yeah. Obviously the protagonist is based on Sangah. Han Sooyoung is based on me, which is why she’s as amazing as she is. Lee Hyunsung is based on a guy I am tangentially acquainted with. And—”
“Yoo Joonghyuk?” he prompts.
She snorts. “Okay, Yoo Joonghyuk simp. I guessed you’d be the type to think you could fix that bastard.”
He can feel a headache coming on. “Just finish answering the question.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk is based on this asshole I know from university,” Han Sooyoung gripes. “I talk to him sometimes, and by sometimes I mean once a week when he texts me to complain about one of my games. Unwarranted complaints, I might add, because my games are perfect and he knows it.”
“Can I—”
“Before you ask,” she says, “I don’t think he remembers much at all, if anything. I talked to him in person just yesterday when the fucker took all the cilantro Sangah asked me to buy from the store, and he didn’t try to strangle me upon sight like he would if he knew TWSA was my game.”
Dokja sighs. “I figured. Last I checked, he was still alive in TWSA, so his memory hasn't been transferred over yet if Sangah-ssi’s theory is true.”
“...I wouldn’t be too hopeful about his memory if I were you.”
“Hm? Why?”
“Well…” Han Sooyoung coughs, almost as if embarrassed, even though her personality suggests that embarrassment is near impossible for her. “I know it’s not mentioned much in TWSA, but demons can live naturally for hundreds of years unless killed. Yoo Joonghyuk, as a demon king, definitely has a lifespan on the higher end of the range. Meaning his memory won’t transfer until well after all of us are dead, unless he just happens to get murdered in the next fifty years. Which, being as unlikable as he is, is likelier than you think.”
Dokja blinks. “So I’m fucked.”
Han Sooyoung cackles. “You’re the opposite of fucked. You’ll never get your demon boyfriend or his monstrous demon king cock back in this lifetime—”
“Han Sooyoung,” Dokja seethes through gritted teeth, “you’re asking for me to expose you to Sangah-ssi, aren’t you?”
“Why? Can’t take a joke, demon fucker?”
“I’m going to text Sangah-ssi—”
“Oh, fuck you, you’d better not—”
“Then give me Yoo Joonghyuk’s contact info. Or arrange a meeting for us.”
“...Did everything I just said sound like bullshit to you? He doesn’t remember you.”
Dokja shrugs. “So what? That doesn’t mean he won’t like me in this world too.”
Chapter 10: your honor, he's only human (and real)
Notes:
warning: long author's note, skip to end for tldr;
disappearing for over nine months is so normal. it was so expected. dare i say disappearing for nine months is actually a completely regular and healthy thing to do.
okay, now that i'm done being ridiculous, i'm actually very apologetic if you can believe it. for the record, i don't have ADHD like a very kind and unintentionally funny commentor assumed, or anything else that would justify me not updating for large amounts of time. or at least i am not aware of any such condition, feel free to enlighten me. i simply did not feel like writing the rest of this, so i didn't. i did try multiple times but everything i wrote during that period ended up being subpar and didn't even make it to what you're about to read, so lol what a miserable series of attempts.
anyways...i lied lmao, this is not the final chapter. i was actually going to write one chapter and release all of you from the suffering of waiting for me to put this fic out of its misery, but then the word count shot up without my consent and i just. yeah i had to split it. i was going to wait and do a double update but i realized nine months is a long time for radio silence.
so this is a solid 5k and i foresee the next (and actually last) chapter being a similar length based on my shitty and not-evidence-based projections. and for anyone who would like to know, i actually have 2k of the last chapter written so no i'm not bluffing about the last chapter existing. when it gets completed is a whole other story because while i work best under the pressure of looming exams, having adequate free time is essential for actually working on the last chapter, which i find myself sorely lacking in due to said looming exams. and i would still like to be an academic weapon in my daily life, so yes while i apologized for disappearing for 9 months, that's probably the most likely outcome for what happens between now and the final update. begging for forgiveness now, don't hunt me down and shoot me for sport.
with that out of the way, thanks for reading, will always appreciate your dedication :)
tldr; OP is sorry for disappearing and lying, sorry that they will be a repeat offender of those two cardinal sins, and thanks everyone who's still reading and looking forward to the finale <3
Chapter Text
Against the odds, he was hoping that Han Sooyoung’s evident dislike of Yoo Joonghyuk had somehow interfered with her interpretation of him, leading to the creation of his evil fictional doppelganger, TWSA’s Yoo Joonghyuk. Or that maybe she had taken some creative liberties with the worst facets of his personality to make him more fitting to be a demon king.
That hope crashes to the ground and burns in spectacular display the second he takes a good look at Yoo Joonghyuk. The scowl, the furrow of his brows, the lack of proper greeting.
That’s his Yoo Joonghyuk, alright.
“Who is this?”
“Only your situationship from another world,” Dokja remarks, taking the seat across from him and accidentally, maybe purposefully, kicking him underneath the table.
Yoo Joonghyuk shoots him a dirty look, then directs his attention to Han Sooyoung. “Who is this?”
Han Sooyoung looks like she’s watching a bad reality TV show play out in front of her, lips pursed like she’s trying to hold back one of her witch cackles. “He’s an…acquaintance,” she manages, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Listen, Joonghyuk-ah,” Dokja starts, leaning across the table.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s scowl deepens at the name. “Han Sooyoung,” he grumbles, like he’s trying to order her to remove this trash from his sight. God, Han Sooyoung really didn’t cut corners when recreating him as a character in TWSA. He’s fucking perfect.
“I know you don’t remember anything,” Dokja says, “but you have to believe me. We were… ”
Shit, what can he say? It’s not like they were actually lovers or anything, and real life Yoo Joonghyuk surely has better prospects than someone like him. But they were close, right? And it’s only right that they should be as close in the real world as they were in the world of TWSA, since he invested so much time and effort into taking care of Yoo Joonghyuk in TWSA.
“...we were close friends,” he amends, but the look on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face says he’s already reading between the lines of his words, and is not enjoying the implication.
“...I’m not interested in men,” Yoo Joonghyuk grits out, but Han Sooyoung’s odd choked-off snort after his statement says otherwise. His gaze turns upon her. “Han Sooyoung. What is the meaning of this?”
“Not interested in men, you say,” she snickers, “but didn’t you have that fling with Nirvana? And at the time, they were—”
“I didn’t—”
“They proclaimed their love for you in front of our entire graduating class,” Han Sooyoung says, shooting Dokja a quick look as if to check if he’s still there, “and then when faced with your rejection, accused you of using them as a…what did they say?” She clears her throat, and with as much dramatic flair as she can muster while dodging Yoo Joonghyuk’s murderous hand, starts affecting an accent that Dokja can only assume is meant to imitate this Nirvana. “Yoo Joonghyuk, you took advantage of my pure feelings for you and led me on for four years, and slept with me to humiliate me! To you, I’m nothing but your human fleshli—”
“Shut up.”
Han Sooyoung laughs, swatting his hand away as she settles back into her seat, ignoring the disgusted looks of the other patrons in the cafe. “Well, you get the idea. Anyways, Yoo Joonghyuk, this is Kim Dokja.”
Dokja blinks to find both of their gazes turned on him.
“Kim Dokja?”
Yoo Joonghyuk saying his name in that all too familiar tone makes his leg twitch hard enough that his foot slams into something under the table. Presumably Yoo Joonghyuk’s leg, if the slight flinch of his scowl is anything to go by.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk stands up abruptly, nearly knocking the table over. He glowers down at Dokja for just an instant, indecipherable look knitting his brows, before he turns tail and leaves.
Dokja turns to Han Sooyoung. “What the hell was that?”
She scoffs in response. “You’ve played TWSA. You know what kind of rude bastard he is. Either he really hates you, or he really likes you. It’s anyone’s guess as to which.”
Okay. Yoo Joonghyuk in the real world is exactly as insufferable as Yoo Joonghyuk from TWSA. Back to square one it is.
Fate has a strange way of working its magic, and by strange he means downright sadistic.
He runs into Yoo Joonghyuk on the subway. The only empty seat is right next to him, and rightfully so, as he’s sending off his typical don’t-touch-me-you-peasant vibe complete with the little omnipresent furrow in his brow. It’s oddly comforting that he’s no different in real life—it’s almost like they never left TWSA.
The glare that Yoo Joonghyuk adopts upon recognizing him is enough to freeze his blood in his veins. Dokja ignores this clear sign for him to preserve his own life, and squeezes past a few people to sit his ass right on his left, even making an effort to wedge his knee against his to curb Yoo Joonghyuk’s dominance-asserting manspreading habit.
“So—”
“Shut it,” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles, ever the perfect image of eloquency.
“...I didn’t even say anything?”
Yoo Joonghyuk shoots him an even dirtier look, which he didn’t think possible until faced with it (except Yoo Joonghyuk always finds a new way to express his increasing disdain, as he’s found over the past few months cohabiting with him). “What do you want?”
Dokja sighs, leaning back in his newly acquired seat. “If I tell you, would you listen? Or is this another one of your edgy rhetorical questions to express how you think I’m a disgusting little pervert who’s using Han Sooyoung’s connection to you to satisfy my impure desires?”
Yoo Joonghyuk goes silent, suspicion still creasing his brow. In return, Dokja stares back, trying to make himself appear as innocent as possible. What do all those otome game protagonists do to melt the love interests’ cold hearts? Doe eyes? Flutter their eyelashes? Put on that classic “earnestly entreating” look and clutch the love interest’s hands between theirs?
(Alright, maybe not that last part considering Yoo Joonghyuk already thinks he’s approaching him with less-than-upright intentions. And he’d probably look like a stroke victim attempting the other things on that list. Curse being a tired, depressed, and mildly unattractive salaryman and not a pretty, enthusiastic, kira-kira girl.)
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs out his violent version of a resigned sigh, averting his gaze. “Fine. What the hell do you want?”
He has to stop and think about it. Really think about it. If he voices his previous spiel about them being “close friends” in another world, Yoo Joonghyuk will shut him down for good and will forever think of him as an escapee from a mental hospital who deserves a restraining order (which is probably what that Nirvana person Han Sooyoung mentioned is in Yoo Joonghyuk’s heart). It’ll have to be something adequately pushy so that he can naturally get Yoo Joonghyuk to develop some goodwill towards him, yet not so far-fetched that Yoo Joonghyuk will crush his skull like an overpowered claw machine would the second he hears it.
“Hurry up.”
“Fine, fine. I want to be your…friend.”
Wow. So much for putting thought into his request.
“My…friend,” Yoo Joonghyuk repeats, eye twitching. “Just a friend?”
Dokja snorts at that. “Oh my god, you really thought I fell in love with you at first sight?”
With that, he’s silenced again. Of fucking course he’d think that, being Yoo Joonghyuk. Then again, being that handsome your entire life must be a burden that someone like Dokja would never understand. Maybe people just fall in love with Yoo Joonghyuk when he passes them on the road.
(Dokja could definitely believe that, with that god-given face and build. There’s a reason why Yoo Joonghyuk was the fandom favorite, even with his nasty personality, extensive abandonment trauma, and generally unrivaled issues. Facecons are bountiful in otome game fandoms, and Dokja is no exception, but he’d really like to think he’s better than those I-can-fix-him fans who couldn’t even be bothered to understand him properly.)
“I don’t know,” Dokja continues, shrugging and accidentally hitting Yoo Joonghyuk’s elbow in the process. He doesn’t seem to mind, so he lets a bit of the tension seep out of his body, his shoulder coming to rest against Yoo Joonghyuk’s frankly unrealistically muscled arm.“It’s just…something about you that makes me think we should be friends.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns as he stares into space, with no response forthcoming. Dokja sighs, shifting his attention to watching the stations blur past through the windows opposite his seat. With every station that passes, the throng of passengers thins, the bustling rush hour of the city fading moment by moment. Not for the first time since coming back, he wonders how the world of TWSA managed to perfectly imitate real life Seoul when Han Sooyoung probably didn’t build that into the code.
Then again, it’s not very logical for multiple people to get temporarily transmigrated into a game, so he supposes TWSA as a whole defies any logic he could possibly apply to it.
“Oh, this is my stop,” Dokja mutters, mostly for Yoo Joonghyuk’s benefit. He stands up, giving Yoo Joonghyuk a small glance. Yoo Joonghyuk looks back finally, something indecipherable in his gaze.
“...See you later, then, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s silence continues for a single, tantalizing moment, dark eyes searching his face for…
Dokja tilts his head in question, and Yoo Joonghyuk seems to snap out of his reverie, giving him a curt, begrudging nod in acknowledgement.
Whether the warm feeling that accompanies him on the way home is from the spot their arms were touching on the train, or from his small victory in gaining Yoo Joonghyuk’s favorability, that’s only for him to know. For now, at least Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t seem opposed to him, and that’s all the opening he needs.
Thankfully, in this world, Yoo Mia is not dead or in any danger of being exploited by a third-rate blonde villainess with a grudge against her brother. Or at least he hopes so, for the sake of everyone’s happiness.
“Oppa,” he can hear Yoo Mia grumble, tugging at her brother’s sleeve and shooting Dokja a look that makes her instantly worthy of being Yoo Joonghyuk’s younger sister. “There’s a pervert staring at us.”
And, fuck. Yoo Joonghyuk whips his head around to glare straight at him, hand tightening on Yoo Mia’s. “You.”
Is it just him, or does Yoo Joonghyuk look slightly relieved at the fact that it’s him and not some random lecher creeping on his sister? Either way, Dokja greets him with a small wave. In response, Yoo Joonghyuk comes stalking towards him, Yoo Mia keeping up with his long strides surprisingly well for someone whose head only comes up to his waist.
“Stop looking at me.”
Dokja blinks, craning his head slightly to meet his eyes. “What?”
“Oppa,” Yoo Mia says, staring straight at him with the same unnerving gaze as her brother, “who is this?”
“No one.”
“His friend.”
Yoo Mia gives him a once-over. “You can’t be his friend,” she declares after her inspection.
“Why not?”
“Well—”
“Mia.”
She gives an unimpressed look in response to her brother’s not-so-hidden warning. “Sooyoung-noona is his only friend,” she finishes. “And you’re obviously not her. Plus, my oppa has high standards, and you’re too ugly, ahjussi.”
Dokja pointedly ignores the second half of her explanation, latching on to the first part. “Han Sooyoung is your only friend?”
“We’re hardly friends,” he bites back.
“Semantics,” Dokja scoffs. “But seriously? Her? What happened to having ‘high standards’, hm?”
“Shut it.”
“You can’t make me.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s face darkens. “If I hit you—”
“—you’ll definitely get arrested,” he finishes for him, shooting him a disgustingly sweet smile. “And who’s going to bail you out? Han Sooyoung, your only friend?”
“...I have other friends,” he tells him, a semi-pained look on his face.
“Oh yeah? Name one person that’s not Han Sooyoung.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s facial expression cycles through the five stages of grief before finally settling on a combination of denial and anger.
Dokja reaches out and pats his shoulder. “See,” he says, “if you’d just accept me as your friend, you wouldn’t be having this hard of a time.”
“Go die,” Yoo Joonghyuk seethes, turning on his heel and dragging Yoo Mia away.
“Not a nice thing to say to your friend!” Dokja quips, just loud enough that he’s sure Yoo Joonghyuk can hear it.
Despite his efforts, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t even turn back to look at him, but Yoo Mia does, giving him a brief look of scrutiny before turning back to her brother and saying something to him.
Dokja dearly hopes it’s something positive and not another insult to his pitifully average face. But then again, he doesn’t expect much at all from someone related to Yoo Joonghyuk.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Dokja tells him, “but I’m really not stalking you.”
In return, Yoo Joonghyuk shoots him a placid look. Well, placid for Yoo Joonghyuk—paste that look on anyone else’s face and he’d think they were about to commit mass murder with him as their first victim.
There’s no empty seats this time, so he opts instead to hold onto the handlebar conveniently located right in front of Yoo Joonghyuk’s seat.
“You’re blocking my view.”
Dokja fakes a shocked expression, making a show of looking behind and then turning back to Yoo Joonghyuk. “What view? I am the view.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s facial expression... Dokja forces a laugh. “Ignore that. Where are you headed?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s look of disdain lessens only marginally. “...Home.”
“What do you do for work?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s back to his default scowl, but he still answers as if he’s been programmed to. “...Games.”
“What, like Han Sooyoung?”
“...No.”
“So, not making them, but…?”
“I play them.”
Dokja lets out a soft oh in response. In a strange way, it makes sense, even though his sharp appearance would suggest something more glamorous.
(To be fair, Yoo Joonghyuk does have hands that would look nice holding a game controller.)
He coughs, if only to fill in the awkward silence. “Well, Han Sooyoung probably told you what I do for work, but—”
“She didn’t.”
Looking down at Yoo Joonghyuk, he can tell that he’s avoiding his stare on purpose, focusing on some point in the distance with an unapproachable, mysterious air that only fictional characters can pull off. Once again, he begrudgingly has to give credit to Han Sooyoung for seeing the potential in this bastard.
“She didn’t?” he opts to parrot, his voice pitching at the thought that Yoo Joonghyuk might actually care about him?
Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze shifts, excruciatingly slow, until it meets his. He watches as he heaves a sigh so heavy it could contain all the world’s sorrows, closing his eyes. “...No.”
“Well,” he begins, slightly unnerved by how he can see Yoo Joonghyuk’s very long, very dark eyelashes in high definition, “I work at a gaming company, doing QA. Desk job, you know, just testing new features and whatnot.” He swallows, belatedly realizing how dry his mouth has gone. “Your job is way more fun, I’d imagine.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t respond, but Dokja can see the corner of his mouth quirk the slightest bit. Maybe he’s reacting to the fact that they both work in the gaming industry?
“I’m getting off at this stop,” Dokja informs him, readjusting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Uh, say hi to your sister for me, if you want?”
Eyes fluttering open, Yoo Joonghyuk regards him with a look that he can only really describe as hazy—half-lidded, his eyes dark with some emotion that Dokja isn't confident enough to guess. He proceeds to mumble something under his breath that he can’t quite parse amidst the clamor filling the subway car, sighing as he lowers his head.
His heart’s still beating erratically as he makes his exit. Even as he breaks into a brisk walk, he can’t get the sight of Yoo Joonghyuk out of his mind.
Dokja’s never experienced deja vu before, but he’s pretty sure this is it, in the flesh.
“Yoo Joonghyuk?” he calls, nudging the man’s leg with the tip of his shoe. He doesn’t respond, so he resorts to kicking him in the shin with as much force as he can. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t even flinch, but the resulting stab of pain in his foot is enough to make him recoil, choking back a string of expletives.
Looking at him now, curled up in a loose fetal position on the floor much like the first time they met in TWSA, he understands why the fictional Yoo Sangah forgot her common sense and dragged him into her apartment. Without his permanent scowl, he’s so damn near perfect that he could believe him incapable of committing any sort of crime.
Thankfully, he’s already aware of Yoo Joonghyuk being a complete and utter bastard, so he won’t be repeating the events of the game. Crouching down, he pats each of Yoo Joonghyuk’s pockets as methodically and respectfully as possible, finding a work badge, wallet, and a USB before finally extricating his phone from his back pocket.
Glancing at him to make sure he’s still out cold, Dokja turns the phone on. It asks for a fingerprint, so he picks up Yoo Joonghyuk’s right hand from where it lies on the floor and maneuvers it in his grip until he can press his thumb against the sensor. It takes him a few tries before the screen flashes and reveals Yoo Joonghyuk’s home screen.
It’s a photo of Yoo Mia.
He has to look away for a second to will his eyes to stop stinging. God, it’s strange to react this way about characters that he now knows are real, living people, but he can’t help it. The catharsis that comes with knowing that the most traumatic character subplot in TWSA is just fictional lore, and that the actual people are happy in the real world…
He takes a deep breath, clicking through Yoo Joonghyuk’s pitifully empty contact list. There’s his sister, a few people labeled with the prefix “Teammate”, and Han Sooyoung. A survey of his call history reveals that, besides his kid sister, the only other person he called recently was Han Sooyoung three months ago.
Sighing at the thought of having to deal with Han Sooyoung again, he clicks on the contact and dials her number. It takes a few rings before she picks up.
“If this is about SSSSS-grade Infinite Regressor, you could’ve just texted me, you son of a bitch.”
Dokja clears his throat. “Is that another game of yours?”
He can hear her snort on the other end. “What the fuck? Don’t talk like that, it’s giving me goosebumps. Whose voice are you imitating?”
“I’m imitating Kim Dokja’s,” he replies, straining his voice to match Yoo Joonghyuk’s lower timbre. “Does it sound accurate, Han Sooyoung?”
There’s a pause. “Fuck. Is this actually Kim Dokja?”
“What do you think?” he asks, sarcasm dripping off the question. “Anyways, I’m not calling you for fun. Yoo Joonghyuk’s here at my apartment, and—”
“There’s no fucking way.” He can hear the beginnings of her witch cackle, which he’s become far too acquainted with since coming back to the real world. “I thought you were, like, a massive virgin with no game, but—”
“—what the—”
“—I underestimated how much that guy is into freaks.”
“Fuck…” Dokja mutters under his breath. “No, I worded it wrong, can you listen to me for one damn second?”
“I mean, sure, but I don’t know how you can word ‘Yoo Joonghyuk and I fucked’ in a different—”
“He’s passed out,” he grits out, “in front of my apartment, and I don’t even know how he knows my address.”
“...huh. Okay, you really didn’t word that right.”
Dokja exhales, casting another glance at Yoo Joonghyuk. “Well…what should I do with him? He won’t wake up, but I don’t think he’s sick or anything.”
Han Sooyoung’s end of the call is silent for a bit, and then he hears shuffling noises. “Do you know if he picked up his sister? From school, I mean.”
“Uh…” He pulls the phone away from his ear, intending to click through Yoo Joonghyuk’s messages to check, but an incoming notification answers the question for him. “I guess not; Yoo Mia’s asking where he is.”
“Ugh, this shitty bastard…listen, you just stay with him for now, I’ll go pick up Mia first and then come get him—send me the address later. And if he wakes up, tell him he’s a son of a bitch and fucking owes me.”
“I—okay?” he replies, a little bewildered when she hangs up immediately after. Putting the phone back down, he sighs, poking Yoo Joonghyuk in the arm. “Joonghyuk-ah, you’re such a pain in the ass,” he complains to himself, standing up and wincing at the way his joints crack at the action.
Leaving Yoo Joonghyuk lying on the cold concrete floor is too cruel. It’s not that he’s looking to be a second Yoo Sangah, but it’s just not humane to leave him like that. At least, that’s what he tells himself as he keys in the code for his door.
There are no ulterior motives behind his choice to throw Yoo Joonghyuk onto his assortment of cushions instead of the floor like he did the first time this happened. None whatsoever.
After exerting himself enough that he feels confident his entire body will feel sore the next morning, he extricates a cushion from the stack beneath Yoo Joonghyuk, sitting on it and loosening his tie with a sigh.
(God, how did Han Sooyoung nail Yoo Joonghyuk’s weight in TWSA? Did she weigh him? He doesn’t seem like the type to volunteer that information, but he can’t imagine her being able to manhandle him into getting on a scale, being as short as she is. He has to ask her when she comes by to pick up Yoo Joonghyuk, sans the height comment that would get him gutted like a fish by a sushi chef.)
Beside him, Yoo Joonghyuk still lays unconscious. Idly, he watches the rise and fall of his chest beneath his jacket. In this lighting, his dark circles are startlingly prominent, painting his face like ink bleeding across untouched canvas. Did the character in TWSA ever have dark circles? He can’t quite remember, but with Yoo Joonghyuk like this, so vulnerable and human in his exhaustion, it doesn’t matter.
There’s a stray lock of hair stuck to his forehead, still wavy from whatever hair styling product the real Yoo Joonghyuk uses. He reaches over as if possessed, brushing the lock of hair off his face. Despite looking styled, his hair is soft—and oddly ticklish—against his fingertips as he shifts it away as delicately as he can.
In the process, his nail scrapes against his brow bone, running over an uneven portion of skin. Pulling his hand away, he sees it. A jagged line runs from his brow to his cheekbone, barely visible unless he focuses on the way it catches the light, glinting a faint silver-white.
This, he knows: Yoo Joonghyuk of TWSA didn’t have such a scar. Nearly invisible—although the location is cool in a morbid way—all it does is remind him of the similar ones that linger on his own hands, cut by broken glass. Maybe Yoo Joonghyuk has a cooler backstory than he does for his scars, right?
Even as he tries to convince himself of that, his chest aches traitorously. It was comforting, at first, that the real Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t have the tragic, made up story that the game character did. But now, looking at him, with all the little flaws and oddities…
He doesn’t sleep well. He has anger issues. He takes the subway every day. His wallet’s worn out from use. He cares about his hair. He has his sister’s photo as his lock screen.
His sparse contact list, filled with numbers he’s never called.
All of it is horribly human, in a tragically charming way. And it’s sobering, to realize he’s not the fictional love interest from TWSA. The same, yet so different that he’s ashamed of acting like he knows everything about him. Putting on a confident act, claiming that he’d make him like him again, as if it was a game, but Yoo Joonghyuk is real. A real person, and he’s just been treating him like—
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes snap open.
The yelp that comes from his mouth is so loud that he nearly misses Yoo Joonghyuk’s strangled gasp.
What he doesn’t miss is the punch aimed straight at his face.
“Holy fuck,” Dokja coughs out, hand hovering over his stinging cheek. “I—ugh—I help a guy out, and—”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s on his feet, dark eyes blown wide as he stares at him sprawled on the floor. Even through his wobbly vision, he can see his knuckles already turning an angry red from the impact; he can’t imagine his cheek is looking any better.
“What…” Yoo Joonghyuk mumbles under his breath, eyes roaming over the entirety of the small apartment. “Where—”
“—are you?” he finishes for him, wincing as he tests his jaw. “My apartment, asshole. If you’d—fuck—if you’d sit back down and let me explain…”
Yoo Joonghyuk still looks frazzled, not even pretending to consider his instructions. Dokja picks himself off the floor, biting back a groan as he pushes past him to get to the kitchen. Pouring two glasses of water, he shoves one towards Yoo Joonghyuk. Whether out of shock, actual thirst, or guilt for punching him in the face, he takes it.
Dokja gulps his glass down, making a face at the metallic taste on his tongue. “Are you just going to keep standing?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes snap to his face, and not for the first time, Dokja’s struck by the depth of his irises, so bottomless that it takes a moment for him to register that they’re shaking from the shock.
“...Why am I here?”
Okay, he obviously has no desire to sit down. Dokja sighs, absently wiping his fingers across the condensation on his glass. “Listen, this is going to sound completely unbelievable—and you’re well within your right to think I’m a complete liar, because even I think this is ridiculous—but—”
“Get to the point.”
“—and I was going to,” Dokja grumbles, “until you punched me in the face. I’m so sorry I can’t formulate a streamlined story while my brain’s still reeling.”
There’s a silence, and then—
“...I’m sorry.”
“Hm?”
“Sorry,” Yoo Joonghyuk repeats, actually sounding semi-repentant for once in his life. “I shouldn’t have…punched you.”
What?
He must say it out loud, because Yoo Joonghyuk pulls a even more constipated face, clutching his glass of water so hard he’s afraid it’ll shatter in his grip. “I’m sorry for punching you.”
“I—?” Dokja picks his jaw off the floor. “It’s—it’s okay. I know you didn’t punch as hard as you could have.”
“What?”
This time, it’s Yoo Joonghyuk’s turn to be confused, and Dokja’s turn to repeat himself. “You didn’t punch with your full strength,” he says, not fully comprehending why Yoo Joonghyuk is confused over the statement until he sees the tight flex of his jaw.
“How do you know that?”
“I—” The explanation dies the second he thinks about it more. “I mean, I just assumed because it doesn’t hurt that much—I’m just joking around, you know—and you’re pretty muscular so you probably have more power—”
He shuts his mouth, partly because saying more would incriminate him further. The other part is because Yoo Joonghyuk’s looking at him with a certain gaze, something alien yet so familiar it makes his skin crawl. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t know him like that. This Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t the one he told his past to, isn’t the one that he saw looking back at him with moonlit eyes on that night.
But then, why…?
He tears his gaze away from Yoo Joonghyuk, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I found you in front of my apartment,” he manages to get out, pretending to be awfully invested in the design of the floor tiles. “You were unconscious, so…” He shrugs, gulping down the rest of his glass of water.
Racking his brain, he adds, “Oh, and I called Han Sooyoung to pick your sister up. She’ll be here soon.”
“...Han Sooyoung?”
“Yeah, Han Sooyoung.”
Dokja bends down to put his empty glass on the table, then chances a look up at Yoo Joonghyuk. And freezes.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s staring right at him, with a look he can really only describe as stricken. Dokja blinks and, ever so slowly, straightens back up.
He’s still staring. What’s wrong with him? Did Han Sooyoung suddenly become a sensitive topic for—
“Did I know you?”
The words die in his throat. Dokja scans his expression, finding nothing but those dark eyes trained directly on him.
Fuck, he’s serious.
What is he supposed to say? Here, in the real world, they wouldn’t even know of the other’s existence if not for Han Sooyoung’s intervention. Maybe in TWSA, they knew each other, but Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t remember any of that. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that maybe he’ll never remember it at all, because he’s not the same fictional demon king from the game. The real Yoo Joonghyuk is only human. Lonely, angry, stressed, and has enough problems on his plate without Dokja forcing his way into his life.
Maybe he’ll be better off without someone like him.
He cracks a smile. “Maybe in another world?” he teases. “What, are you reusing my own setup to hit on me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t respond to that, so he takes the opportunity to pick his cup back up again and flee to the kitchen.
Before he can even make it past the table, there’s warm fingers wrapping around his wrist, tugging him back.
“Wait.”
“What?” Dokja asks, turning halfway. “Yoo Joonghyuk, what do you want?”
The pressure of his grip increases like a vice, his pulse pounding hard against his fingers. “Yoo Joonghyuk,” he reminds him, attempting in vain to pull his hand away.
“...To remember.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s stare is searing as it fixes on him. “I want to remember.”
Before he can respond in a sufficiently articulate way, Yoo Joonghyuk is grabbing his forgotten phone off the table and stalking out of the apartment. Looking down at the table, with his empty glass, he can’t help the laugh that bubbles from his throat.
(Later that night, he realizes that Yoo Joonghyuk took his glass of water with him. It’s much too strange to ask him to return it, right?)
Chapter 11: in the light of the aftermath
Notes:
happy (somewhat belated) kdj day! i was planning to let this chapter marinate longer in my drafts, but i realized it was actually kdj's bday a few days ago and i could do something fun by updating :D it's nice, long, and packed with feel-good moments for once, so i thought it was suitable to celebrate a character bday. hope you enjoy :)
(as for the updated chapter count. you do not see it. it has always been out of 13. this has nothing to do with the fact that i grossly underestimated the complexity of my own awful planning notes from a year ago)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Even after his little spiel about remembering, Yoo Joonghyuk certainly does not remember anything. Honestly, it’s for the better that he doesn’t, because it’s about time Dokja starts moving on with his dreadfully boring life.
That fact doesn’t stop them from constantly meeting in some twisted form of serendipity. On the subway, at the store, on the street, even in the random alleyway that serves as a shortcut from the subway station back to his apartment building. Yoo Joonghyuk does live in one of the nearby neighborhoods, apparently, but he doesn’t even see the people in his own neighborhood this often. And if Yoo Joonghyuk used to spend all this time in his neighborhood, why did they never meet before the TWSA fiasco? It’s just ridiculously impossible, by any means, and intensely uncomfortable to boot.
Why? Because, strangely enough, Yoo Joonghyuk actually tries to greet him, in his horrible brooding yet earnest way. He’ll nod at him, or call his name in response if he greets him first, or make excruciating eye contact with him like it’s supposed to mean something. He shouldn’t even recognize him, because he’s never been someone particularly recognizable, but without a fail, Yoo Joonghyuk always sees him. And maybe it does make him a little (just a little!) happy when he sees him, but anyone would be happy if a guy with a face so beautiful it could slap A-list movie stars ten times over paid them any sort of attention.
Such is the situation he finds himself in when he enters the convenience store and makes direct eye contact with Yoo Joonghyuk.
He snaps his gaze away, pretending to check his pockets for the keys he knows are in his bag. By the time he looks back up, Yoo Joonghyuk has disappeared into the aisle.
He breathes a shallow sigh of relief, making a beeline to the instant ramen selection and going for the cheapest option available. He makes quick work of checking out, dropping his haul into his bag and stuffing his wallet back into his pocket. If he’s lucky, maybe he’ll have a few wilting vegetables at the back of his fridge to add into his inherently unhealthy dinner.
The sliding doors open, and with it comes the sound of rain, chaotically splattering against the pavement. Dokja sighs, staring at the darkening sky. Of course, with his luck, it has to start raining before he makes it to the safety of his home.
“Here.”
He startles out of his thoughts at the umbrella that appears in his field of view, following the hand that holds it back to the person. Yoo Joonghyuk stands there, dressed in black from head to toe, glowering at him as he holds it out.
“Are you taking it or not?” Yoo Joonghyuk hits him on the arm with it, just heavy enough to sting but light enough to know he’s being considerate about his strength. “Kim Dokja. I’m leaving.”
“Don’t you need it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk gives him a look that’s probably meant to be quizzical, but comes off like he’s about to bash him over the head with the umbrella. Dokja cracks a smile at that, shrugging his jacket off his shoulders. “It’s not that far back to my place. I’ll survive getting a little wet.”
When he looks back, Yoo Joonghyuk’s staring at him. Or, more specifically, at his back.
“What?”
His mouth flattens into a line as he averts his gaze. “Do you eat properly?”
Ah. Dokja laughs, hand tightening on the strap of his bag. “Does it matter?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes flit over him once more, but he doesn’t answer his question. Dokja takes that as the natural end of their conversation, and holding his jacket over his head, he heads into the wet night, leaving Yoo Joonghyuk behind at the entrance of the convenience store.
Sighing, he checks the time displayed in the corner of his phone screen, above the gratuitous power fantasy webnovel he’s been reading for the past hour. It should be about time; by his estimates, his coworkers should be about “delirious drunk” at this point (the sweet spot, as opposed to “tipsy drunk”, which would get him chewed out for being in the bathroom too long, and “blackout drunk”, which would lead to him becoming the designated taxi caller). His patent strategy, as he calls it, for avoiding excessive drinking at company parties. Works like a charm at his actual workplace, unlike in TWSA when Han Myungoh caught him trying to slip out of the restaurant and punished him by dragging him back in and filling him up with cheap alcohol. Ugh.
He unlocks the stall and slithers out, yawning. He catches his reflection in the mirror, but right there, drying his hands is—
“Yoo Joonghyuk?”
“Kim Dokja.” Yoo Joonghyuk gives him a once-over. “Why are you here?”
“I could ask you that,” he shoots back, stuffing his phone back in his pocket. “Do pro gamers also have boring company dinners they have to avoid?”
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs out something suspiciously like a laugh, except everyone knows that emotionally constipated bastards don’t laugh. “Something like that.”
Dokja chews on his lip. “Well, I should really head back, but…”
“But?”
Yoo Joonghyuk has a weird gleam in his eye as he leans back against the wall, crossing his arms as he waits for him to continue. Dokja, in an effort to fill the silence, hums thoughtfully despite not having a clue what Yoo Joonghyuk is expecting from him.
“Well,” he begins. “I have a proposal.”
He doesn’t, actually, but he lays it out as he speaks. “I don’t want to be here, and I’m assuming you don’t either since we’re both hiding in the bathroom. Neither of us can leave the restaurant alone without being seen through by our respective coworkers—I say this from experience—but what if we pretend to be together and slip past them?” Yoo Joonghyuk parts his lips, presumably to respond, and he hurries to cut him off. “Before you say no, I think that we arguably have a better relationship than whatever you have with your coworkers, if you’re avoiding them and choosing to stay here and hear me out.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth snaps shut. After a moment of what seems like rare, thoughtful contemplation, he says, “Okay.”
Dokja presses his lips into a line. Maybe Yoo Joonghyuk’s more reasonable than he thought, huh? “In that case…”
Two minutes and one crazed speedwalking session later, they’re standing in the stairwell outside the restaurant, catching their breaths. Well, Dokja is, at least—Yoo Joonghyuk still looks unfairly unfrazzled, as perfect as he can be standing in front of a dingy concrete backdrop with the yellowest of incandescent lights painting his face in gold and shadow.
Time seems to stretch like molasses, sticky sweet as he drinks in the sight of him standing there, dazzling despite the normalcy of it all. It takes another moment for him to realize that Yoo Joonghyuk’s looking at him too.
“Have you eaten?”
“I—what?”
“Did you eat?”
“Uh”—and he actually has to think about this—”I had a kimbap for lunch earlier, if that counts.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffs. “I meant dinner.”
“Dinner, right,” Dokja agrees, choosing not to reveal the fact that dinner’s not exactly a regular thing in his vocabulary. “That’s what I meant, of course.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t look convinced, crossing his arms across his chest and staring daggers through him. Whether it’s from the earlier exertion or the pressure of Yoo Joonghyuk’s silence, he can feel the sweat gathering at his collar.
“Um,” Dokja mumbles, “have you eaten? Dinner, I mean.”
“No.” After a moment of seeming deliberation, Yoo Joonghyuk turns away from him, uncrossing his arms. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” he asks, following him down the stairs.
The only response Yoo Joonghyuk deigns to offer him is a little throaty sound. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he was actually tolerating him.
“I thought you were taking me to, I don’t know, a convenience store or something?” Dokja mumbles, standing in the doorway as he peers into the apartment.
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs. “Get inside,” he seethes, looking predictably pissed as he holds the door open.
“Fine, fine,” Dokja says, holding his hands up in a placating motion as he shucks his shoes off at the door. “Is your sister around?”
“She’s at a sleepover,” he replies, side-eyeing him warily as he walks towards the kitchen. God, when will he stop thinking that everyone has ulterior motives towards him and his sister? Asking about his sister’s whereabouts is a perfectly normal question that has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t feel like being called ugly by a twelve year old girl again.
The kitchen is built like something out of a furniture store catalog—metal appliances shiny enough to reflect his distorted face, perfectly organized cooking utensils, and pristine marble counters, complete with a monochromatic color scheme. Yoo Joonghyuk fits right in, with his black slacks and his black turtleneck with the sleeves pushed past his elbows, revealing his unfairly muscular—
Dokja coughs, peeking over his shoulder to look at the inside of his fridge. “Are you going to cook?” he asks. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s generally considered rude to bring someone to your home to watch you cook when you have no intention of feeding—”
“What do you want?”
Blinking, he finds himself face to face with Yoo Joonghyuk. “I—um, what?” he manages to get out, taking a step back.
“What. Do. You. Want?” Yoo Joonghyuk repeats, enunciating every word like he suspects Dokja has a traumatic brain injury. Which he might actually have, if all the damage he took within TWSA carried over, but still, he could stand to be a little more kind considering he’s the reason for it.
“Food-wise?” Dokja clarifies, to which he receives a curt little nod. “I’m not…I’m not actually that hungry, really. Really. I was—”
“You’re not answering the question.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Dokja complains. “Fine, make whatever you want. If you have leftovers, I’ll take them.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scrutinizes him, frown deepening the longer he looks at him.
“What?” Dokja asks, staring back at him while considering if he’ll end up with a permanent deep wrinkle between his brows when he’s older. Probably—not that it would detract from his generally drop-dead handsome face at all. Aging must be like a joke to people like him.
“Annoying,” he concludes, turning back to the fridge.
“All according to plan,” Dokja shoots back with a sardonic grin, watching as he selects a collection of ingredients with frightening efficiency and slams the fridge door. “Why’d you even bring me here if you’re just going to complain about me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s complaints don’t end there. Dokja manages to convince Yoo Joonghyuk to let him dice the onions, only for him to critique him for his poor knife skills and “not peeling all the skin off”, which seems incredibly fake and like something Yoo Joonghyuk made up on the spot just to be a miserable bastard with a stick up his ass. Regardless, he spends the rest of the time picking shreds of translucent skin out of his pile of lopsided cubes of onion while sulkily fighting back onion-induced tears.
Eventually, the meal finally gets cooked, though not without him accidentally elbowing Yoo Joonghyuk in the stomach when he, without warning, reaches around him to grab a bottle of sesame oil. Still sporting a murderous grimace, Yoo Joonghyuk pulls out two plates in an (almost overly) appropriate matte black, and portions out the food with excruciating attention to detail, wiping off the little spots of oil that inevitably splash onto the edges of the plate.
Dokja tilts his head at the plate Yoo Joonghyuk slides across the table to him. “Wow, you really do know how to cook,” he comments. Not exactly surprising given that Han Sooyoung wrote in TWSA that Yoo Joonghyuk was a master cook, and everything else she wrote about him was mostly correct, but now he wishes she’d omitted these horribly voyeuristic personal details that added nothing of particular value to the story.
“Eat.”
He takes the proferred chopsticks, taking a small bite. Glancing up, he finds Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes on him.
Yoo Joonghyuk clears his throat, eyes snapping away. “How is it?”
“It’s…good,” Dokja concludes, not willing to admit it’s probably the best thing he’s ever had. “Just wish the chef was less of an obsessive asshole. Come on, you can barely even taste the onion! A little bit of skin wouldn’t have hurt.”
Yoo Joonghyuk makes a derisive noise at that, but he swears he can see the corner of his mouth quirk the slightest bit before he ducks his head down to eat. The smug bastard.
The triangle kimbap is nothing if not a pinnacle of human invention. Cheap, simple, and neatly wrapped in clear plastic to ensure no mess. An unassuming outer shell of compacted cold rice, covered with a stale sheet of flaking seaweed, with various fillings to suit any buyer’s tastes, be it mayonnaise-drenched tuna or mystery meat offcuts. It’s his go-to, ready-to-eat meal after a hard day of overtime and dealing with insufferable managers, eaten straight from the wrapper as he sits at the side of the river to contemplate his poor life choices.
Except, somehow, his regularly scheduled meal looks a bit offensive today.
Shaking off the thought, he turns to go to the register. Except he doesn’t see the register, because he slams straight into someone.
There’s a hard grip on his shoulders, and—
“Kim Dokja?”
He blinks. Yoo Joonghyuk is disconcertingly close, hands steadying him, and he’s also very close. He’s frowning, it’s distractingly attractive, and did he mention that his face is extremely close to his?
“Fuck,” Dokja blurts out, a beat too late to be a convincing kneejerk reaction. “Sorry about that. Overtime has seriously fried my brain.”
Yoo Joonghyuk releases his arms, hands falling back to his sides. “Watch where you’re going.”
He nods, and moves to slide past him in the aisle to get to the register, but then Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes land on his mildly squashed kimbap. He has the gall to open his mouth and ask, “Is that your dinner?”
Dokja snorts. “What, this?” He waves it in front of Yoo Joonghyuk’s stupid ridiculous face, watching his facial expression darken. “Yeah. Sorry we can’t all be culinary prodigies like you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk makes this strange, complicated expression that Dokja can only attempt to parse. Luckily, he probably won’t have to, because Yoo Joonghyuk’s fall into deep thought is nothing if not an opportune moment to sneak past him.
Or, it would be, if Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t suddenly holding his forearm in a vice grip.
“Let go,” he hisses, flailing his arm in the very cramped space between them and hitting Yoo Joonghyuk in the side by accident (on purpose). “Fuck, Yoo Joonghyuk, I’m seriously going to get mad.”
Yoo Joonghyuk, in typical Yoo Joonghyuk fashion, doesn’t even pretend to lower himself to the same level as him. Instead, he wordlessly drags him down the aisles, doing his own shopping so quickly it’s hard to believe he’s doing it all with one hand, the other hand staying clamped around Dokja’s arm.
Finally, Yoo Joonghyuk seems to be satisfied with his haul. His eyes travel back to the now noticeably more distressed kimbap still in his hand.
“Put it down.”
Dokja narrows his eyes. “Why should I?”
They stare at each other for a moment more. Then, Yoo Joonghyuk sets his full basket down on the floor.
“Give it to me,” he says, holding out his free hand.
When Dokja doesn’t respond, he makes the motion again. “Give it.”
“Don’t wanna,” he drawls, really just to be petulant and irritating about it. “Why do you even care?”
He can see the vein pulsing in Yoo Joonghyuk’s temple. Then, without any warning, he lunges at him.
He yanks his kimbap-containing hand back right before Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers close around it.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s glare is forceful enough to execute a man on the spot. Dokja smirks in response. It’s apparently the wrong answer.
On his next pass, Yoo Joonghyuk manages to catch his wrist, wrestling the kimbap out of his hand. It’s crushed beyond saving at this point, but Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t seem to care, a glimmer of righteous victory in his eyes as Dokja scowls (no, he doesn’t pout, god damn it) at him.
“You’re such a bastard,” Dokja grumbles, letting him drag him towards the checkout. “At least compensate me if you’re going to throw my dinner on the ground.”
Yoo Joonghyuk finally lets go of him so he can grab his bags as the cashier hands them over the counter. The warmth from his hand still lingers, and he absently rubs his thumb over the skin. Is he allowed to leave now that Yoo Joonghyuk has thoroughly ruined his dinner plans? Or maybe he should insist on sticking to him as payback?
“I’m making omurice.”
Dokja would be more embarrassed at how fast his head snaps up if it weren’t for the fact that his hunger is overpowering any other emotion his brain can conjure up. “Omurice?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth twitches, in what he would guess is some semblance of a smile. “Omurice.”
It becomes a bit of a pattern after that. Every time they run into each other, there’s a good chance he ends up at Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment, shoveling gourmet food into his mouth. Yoo Joonghyuk never seems so inclined to make much conversation either beyond the odd question here or there, so he figures this is how he likes it.
The why of the whole situation is the one thing he can’t figure out.
He’s in Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment, having finished another disgustingly good dinner (murim dumplings—Dokja simply cannot fathom how he’s pulling the time to handmake them out of his ass), and he takes the opportunity of Yoo Joonghyuk being distracted with washing the dishes to finally take a good look around the apartment.
It’s fairly minimalistic and void of decoration, as expected of someone who seems to wear exclusively black basics on an everyday basis, although there’s a stack of colorful math workbooks on the coffee table that he can only assume belongs to Yoo Mia. Speaking of which, he hasn’t run into her since their encounter in the park, which just serves to confirm that Yoo Joonghyuk has been sneaking him over specifically when his sister is out of the house. Again, why? It’s not like he’s a secret fling that Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t want to introduce to his young impressionable kid.
“Kim Dokja.”
He turns around. Yoo Joonghyuk’s wiping his hands with a dish towel, staring at him with unnerving intensity. In return, he engages him in a staring contest.
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs. “Kim Dokja.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” he parrots back, holding back a laugh when Yoo Joonghyuk makes an exasperated face. “What? You keep calling my name, but you’re not even talking.”
“Why can’t you just be quiet?” he grumbles under his breath, throwing the towel on the counter.
He rolls his eyes at that. “Then don’t call me, bastard. Why don’t you come over here and shut me up yourself if you want it so bad?”
Yoo Joonghyuk strides over, seemingly about to take him up on his offer. The back of Dokja’s knees hit the edge of the couch in his attempt to back away, and before he can even think of an alternate escape route, Yoo Joonghyuk’s crowding into his space.
“Ah, wait, Joonghyuk-ah—!”
With a merciless look, Yoo Joonghyuk gives a light shove to his shoulder. With minimal flailing and a squawk of surprise, he goes down, body sinking straight into the couch cushions.
He has to squint at Yoo Joonghyuk because of the angle, the lights from the kitchen backlighting him, fittingly, like a protagonist’s halo. “What the hell was that for? You know, if you don’t want to hear me talk, you can just kick me out of your apartment instead of shoving me around.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s still staring at him, and he’s more than a little sick of it. God, can’t the world let a man mourn what he’s lost in peace, instead of testing him by having Yoo Joonghyuk make ambiguous eyes at him all the time? Stupid handsome love interest with his stupid pretty eyes.
“Is there something on my face?” He rubs at his cheek with the back of his hand. He can feel the heat from Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze burning uncomfortably under his skin. There’s sweat beading at his collar, and it paradoxically gets worse when he reaches up to loosen his tie.
“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk answers, after a pause so long it takes a moment for him to remember what he was asking in the first place. “No, there’s nothing on your…face.”
“Then what are you staring for?” Why is it so warm all of a sudden? He reaches up again, fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, and—
“Don’t undress in my house.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he snaps back, still fiddling with his collar. “And besides, I wouldn’t do that for free in this economy."
Why won’t the buttons on his shirt just come apart? Why is Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment so fucking hot all of a sudden? Why is he even here to begin with? With every thought, he can feel the cold sweat on his skin, his thin shirt sticking uncomfortably as he shifts against the couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” Dokja seethes, giving up on his shirt with a huff, “is that you keep staring at me, and making me eat your stupid delicious home cooked dinners, and—and Joonghyuk-ah, I don’t know what you’re thinking at all.”
“You keep calling me that.”
“What?”
Yoo Joonghyuk seems to choke on his words, which leads to a violent bout of coughing. After he recovers, he squeezes out a strained “Joonghyuk-ah. You keep…”
Damn it, since when did he slip back into calling him so affectionately? “Force of habit,” he explains, trying his best to appear apologetic. “I, uh, call everyone like that.”
“Do you?” he says, and shit, why does he look more pissed off than before?
“I’m…sorry?” Dokja ventures, watching his expression carefully. “I won’t—I mean, I’ll try not to do it again, but old habits die—”
“Did you call me that before?”
“—hard, what?”
He tries to rise off the couch, but fails to remember that Yoo Joonghyuk’s still standing in front of him. Yoo Joonghyuk just shoves him back down, glowering the entire time.
“Tell me the truth. Did I know you?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“Who said I’m lying?” Dokja grumbles, fanning himself vigorously with his hand.
“Kim Dokja.” He can feel the frustration in the way he calls his name, and it’s so viscerally taunting he can feel the headache coming on.
He sighs. “Yoo Joonghyuk. Listen to me—”
“No, you listen to me,” Yoo Joonghyuk interjects, and the undercurrent of command in his voice is enough to make his mouth snap shut. “I don’t like liars. It’s a simple question. Have I met you before?”
“It might be a simple question to you, but—”
“Answer the damn question.”
“Ha. What are you going to do if I don’t?” he taunts. “You’re going to make me?”
“Sometimes,” Yoo Joonghyuk seethes, gripping the headrest of the couch, “I want to choke you to death. You are infuriating.”
Dokja smirks, making it as brazen and mocking as he can. Judging by the flicker of disgust on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face, it achieves its intended purpose. Good. Now to drive it home.
“And you like it,” he replies, enunciating every last word, “don’t you, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
“Why can’t you be quiet?” he grits out, leaning into his space and blotting out the light.
“Think of something more original than what my father would say, will you?” He attempts a snicker, but it rings hollow at the core, knowing the line that inevitably follows. “You should be worried, you know, since I killed him. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t.”
Yoo Joonghyuk recoils at that, eyes widening the slightest fraction. The taste of victory is oddly bittersweet, cloying at the base of his tongue.
Yoo Joonghyuk scrubs his free hand through his hair, looking only a thread away from snapping. “Fuck,” he hisses, letting his hand drop as he suddenly develops a vested interest in a stain on the wooden floor. “Why would you say that?”
Dokja shrugs. “Well, there you go.” He swallows the lump in his throat, willing his voice not to crack at the sight of his reaction. “That’s what you wanted, right? Isn’t that why you kept bringing me around? You thought there was something off about me, and you had to know what it was. Now you know.”
“Are you joking?”
He scoffs. “Okay, sure, let’s call it that. My father’s alive and well, my mother’s not in jail. Happy?”
Yoo Joonghyuk stands there, the shock of it wearing off and leaving an inscrutable look on his face. As if he doesn’t know what to make of it all, of him. It makes something underneath his skin squirm, heat coursing through his veins. Yet beneath the surface of burning irritation is a tightness in his chest, pricking at his eyes.
Why did he ever let himself hope that Yoo Joonghyuk was starting to get his memories back?
“Just ignore me,” he sighs, crushing the emotion into a pit in his stomach. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “You’re lying again,” he says, like it’s a fact and not his unwanted opinion based on the vaguest unfounded idea that he’s a compulsive liar.
“I’m not fucking lying,” Dokja grits out, palms sweaty against the couch as his fingers dig in, “and even if I were, why do you care? Who are you to know?”
There’s a flash of something in his eyes. “Kim Dokja,” he says, in that condescendingly patient way that makes him want to sock him in the jaw, “I’m asking because I—”
“Fuck you,” he seethes, his entire being aching at being around him—or rather, the ghost of him, lingering in corners and granting him the slightest flicker of hope every time he wants to deem it a lost cause. “I don’t want you to ask. I don’t know you. I’ve never known you. Whatever memory you think you have, it’s false.” He has to kill it off, this ridiculous idea that his memories will come back, if only for his own sanity and peace of mind. “We’re nothing. Don’t act like you know me. I’m nothing but a irrelevant, passing character in your life.”
The silence that follows stretches so long that he looks up to check if Yoo Joonghyuk’s still breathing.
He’s staring at him, something aflame in his eyes. “An irrelevant, passing character,” he repeats, jaw tightening. “Is that what you think?”
A beat of hesitation. Dokja nods. His hands are trembling in his lap, pulse stuttering under his skin as the cold creeps up his spine. This is it. Yoo Joonghyuk will give up, and—
A hand curls around his neck. Maybe he’ll actually make good on his promise to choke him.
Then, he tilts his face up, and comes crashing in.
With one fluid motion, he’s caged against the couch, mouth captured by Yoo Joonghyuk’s. Hands splayed against his chest, he can only fist his hands into the fabric of his sweater, eyes fluttering shut as Yoo Joonghyuk’s other hand comes up to cradle the back of his head. Frustration, anger, punishment, conveyed with the pressure of his lips against his that’s so desperate he’s afraid of being consumed by it, by him.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s teeth graze against his lower lip. He digs his nails in and hopes he can feel them pierce through the fabric. The bastard responds by letting his hand drift lower, touch leaving icy trails on the nape of his neck, mouth burning hot as his tongue traces the seam of his mouth, rough and wet and so oddly loving that he can almost forget he doesn’t remember a thing about him.
Something in his stomach twists as his knee slots between his legs, fluttery and weak as he groans into the kiss. Yoo Joonghyuk towers over him, slowing the pace as his fingers creep under the collar of his shirt. He doesn’t know how much longer they’re there, mind turning to mush as he presses him bodily into the couch. It’s with a daze that he recognizes Yoo Joonghyuk pulling away, their lips separating with a lewd squelch and a shimmering string of spit straight out of a raunchy TWSA graphic.
Catching his breath, he blinks his bleary eyes, head reeling from the pleasure. Fuck, if there’s one thing he has to give the real Yoo Joonghyuk credit for, he’s way better at kissing.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze roves over his face, his scowl undermined by the wet redness tinting his lips. He has an urge to reach out and wipe it away with his thumb, but with the darkness of his eyes, he’s more than a little scared that he’ll bite it off.
“You are a god awful liar,” Yoo Joonghyuk snarls, letting go of his face as he stands back up, “and you’re running a fever.”
“I’m—I’m not,” Dokja contests, “because like I’ve said too many times today, I’m not fucking lying, and I’m also not sick.”
One minute and a forcibly taken temperature later, he’s proven wrong on both counts, at least in regard to his health.
“Take this.” Yoo Joonghyuk deposits a pill bottle on the table, walking to the kitchen and back to get him a glass of water.
Studying the glass of water, Dokja says, “Oh, this is my glass.”
Yoo Joonghyuk freezes in the middle of wrestling with the child safety cap. “What?”
“Yeah.” He cups it in both his hands, feeling the subtle warmth on his palms. “When you, uh, showed up at my apartment out of the blue? And then you punched me and ran away with the glass of water I gave you?”
“That…” He grimaces. “You can have it back.”
Dokja shrugs, the demerits of their earlier position on the couch making itself known with the crick in his neck. “You went through a lot of trouble just to steal it from me. You can have it if you want.”
“I don’t,” he responds, finally managing to get the bottle open. He shakes a pill into his palm, dropping it in Dokja’s hand.
“Speaking of which”—he washes the pill down, making a face at the bitter taste—”how did you know my address?”
“I don’t know.”
“You liar,” Dokja gloats, reveling in the murderous exasperation written onto his face.
“I’m not lying,” he grits out. “I don’t know how I—”
“—ended up at the doorstep of some pervert that you keep accusing of being a compulsive liar?” he finishes for him. “In any case, you’d be the pervert, considering you’re the one who lured me into your apartment with food so you could take advantage of me on your couch.”
(Dokja pointedly does not bring up the fact that such a plan worked on him, nor the fact that he might’ve enjoyed it.)
“I didn’t do that.”
“Sure,” Dokja agrees, “believe that if you want.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.”
“Kim Dokja, you—”
“How does it feel to be a liar?”
Yoo Joonghyuk goes silent at that, the bare suggestion of something akin to guilt flitting across his face. No, it is guilt, he realizes, as he watches him turn away and engross himself in reading the ingredients panel on the pill bottle.
“Are you…actually—?”
“Shut it,” Yoo Joonghyuk bites out, as eloquent as ever as he throws the pill bottle back onto the table.
“Well, I—”
“Go home.”
Dokja sighs, giving up on explaining himself. “Alright, fine. I’m going home, then.”
“...No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Is this entire conversation a damn fever dream? “You literally just told me—”
“You can rest in the bedroom.”
Well…that does sound pretty enticing. Does he have work tomorrow? He can’t quite remember, brain scrambled enough as it is without Yoo Joonghyuk glaring at him like they weren’t just kissing a few minutes ago.
“I can’t take your bed,” he murmurs, because he was raised right before his childhood went to absolute shit. Also, because he’s simply better than Yoo Joonghyuk.
“Take the bed.”
“I can take the couch.”
“Bed.”
“Couch.”
“Kim Dokja.”
“What? I’m not going to steal your bed from you. Who do you think I am?”
It’s not the strongest protest, since he’s yawning, blinking the sleepiness out of his eyes. When he looks over at Yoo Joonghyuk, he sees him snap his gaze away, one second too late to avoid being noticed.
“I’m lending it to you,” he finally says, sighing. “Stop arguing.”
“I’m not arguing. Where are you going to sleep?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Yoo Joonghyuk snaps, grabbing the empty glass (which is still not his?) from him. “Consider it as clearing a debt.”
“What debt?”
“...Shut up and go to sleep.”
Dokja clears his throat in a last ditch effort to make Yoo Joonghyuk less of a prickly brooding bastard. “For the record, uh, I—” He coughs. “I was joking about the…I mean, what I said was true, but I didn’t mean it in—”
Yoo Joonghyuk bestows him with the most long-suffering look he’s seen on his face, in TWSA or otherwise. “Stop talking.”
Aaand he blows it.
Dokja, gifted with hindsight, decides to shut the fuck up, as he’s been recommended to do. Much later, when he’s safely cocooned in Yoo Joonghyuk’s blankets, wearing lounge clothes that smell faintly of his laundry detergent, staring at the thin frame of light outlining the door separating him and Yoo Joonghyuk in the living room, he finally figures out what the better course of action would have been in that moment.
He should’ve just killed himself on the spot. Damn it.
Notes:
okay here's the full (long) rundown of what's to come for this fic, because i have to make some hard promises to fulfill my new years resolution of finally putting this fic to rest:
1) 12th chapter (aka the official end). i have about 3-4k for this currently written, so i expect to be able to produce this around...april is my guess, but end of may is the hard deadline i am setting, unless unforeseen circumstances come up and hit me across the back of the head.
2) epilogue (potential). if i finish writing the 12th chapter and feel like i've done enough in regards to the characters and their relationships, i may not write the epilogue as a separate chapter and just append the "epilogue" scene to the end of the last chapter. this is especially important since i'm currently not decided on the exact contents other than one specific scene, so it would be a waste to write as a separate chapter if that's the only thing that i add. to this end, i'm taking suggestions in the comments for epilogue ideas, so offer something.
Chapter 12: a crippling fear of being happy
Notes:
final chapter final chapter final chapter! can't believe we've made it here!
(i say, knowing i intend to write an epilogue scene that does not exist yet)regardless of what happens with the epilogue, i hope this comes as a good resolution to the past 3 years. didn't really intend for it to take this long, but also didn't expect myself to actually make it to this point. there's a lot of things about this fic that i'd probably do differently if i were to write it now, reading it as someone who's 3 (almost 4 later this week) years older than i was when i started, but i wouldn't change this journey at all. i think this fic will forever hold a soft spot in my heart, as something i wrote as pure indulgence that randomly blew up. i love everyone who's stuck with me while i struggle to update on a regular schedule (lol as if i have a schedule at all), and everyone who comments, and [REDACTED FOR BREVITY]
ok cheesy time over. enjoy this and wait endlessly for the epilogue scene mwah
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
They don’t talk about the kiss.
“Kim Dokja.” Yoo Joonghyuk pauses. “About the…”
“The what?”
He stares at him as if prompting him to read his mind. “You know what I mean.”
Okay, correction: apparently only one of them doesn’t want to talk about the kiss.
“I don’t,” he lies, shooting him an insincere flash of teeth that only serves to deepen his scowl.
“Kim Dokja.”
Dokja lets him struggle with it. It’s a little amusing, maybe even cathartic, to see him like this—brows knitted, taking deep breaths like it’s the one thing preventing him from reaching across the table and making good on his desire to choke him to death. Ah, the schadenfreude.
“You,” he begins.
“Me,” Dokja agrees, steepling his fingers in front of him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a fascinating conversationalist?”
“Shut it.”
“Don’t be upset with an invalid. I’m just trying to keep the conversation going since you clearly can’t.”
“Don’t distract me. You’re perfectly fine.”
Damn it, is Yoo Joonghyuk actually catching on to his tactics? Dokja blows a piece of hair out of his eyes, leaning back in his chair. “I’m not trying to. Distract you, that is.”
Yoo Joonghyuk makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Do you ever stop lying?”
He shrugs, crossing his arms. “Get used to it if you’re planning to keep me around.” Key word, if. He seriously doubts Yoo Joonghyuk actually has genuine interest in him beyond…whatever possessed him to kiss him yesterday.
Yoo Joonghyuk is…well, for lack of a better description, he’s practically perfect minus the bitter asshole personality. But even that quality of his would probably be appealing to a certain subset of women (judging from the large majority of Yoo Joonghyuk fangirls within TWSA’s small fanbase) and that’s not even mentioning how he’s caring in his own brusque way once you get past his defenses. He’s everything, really, and Dokja’s just…nothing. He’s barely getting by. What could he bring to Yoo Joonghyuk’s life besides an unhealthy dose of secondhand childhood trauma?
“What do you want?”
Dokja blinks, refocusing on the situation at hand. Across the table, Yoo Joonghyuk leans against the back of his chair, arms crossed with a pensive frown on his face—an unnervingly accurate mirror of his own position. The question is most likely being asked because he’s been inadvertently staring (read: spacing out) at Yoo Joonghyuk for the past thirty seconds without speaking, but in the back of his mind, there’s an inkling that he might be asking for reasons more profound.
“What do you mean?”
Yoo Joonghyuk drags a hand through his hair, fingers raking through unruly locks. It occurs to him, then, that Yoo Joonghyuk’s hair might naturally be like that without product, inky strands falling perfectly over his forehead as his face screws up into something indecipherable. “You’re so difficult. What do you want from this?”
Dokja blinks. “From what? I don’t want anything from you.”
“...Why not?”
“You don’t like me much anyways,” he grumbles, fiddling with the split in his nail instead of suffering through the ordeal of meeting Yoo Joonghyuk’s piercing stare. “And you don’t owe me anything. I just want you to be happy.”
“For me to be happy?” Yoo Joonghyuk parrots all slow, like he’s relearning the language word by word.
Damn it, did he really say that without thinking?
Unclenching his jaw, he sighs. “Is it that unbelievable? Your opinion of me is awful.”
“Why would you want that?”
He laughs, an incredulous edge to it. “What, for you to be happy? Last I checked, I still have free will.”
“I asked what you want from…” Yoo Joonghyuk studies him with an intensity that forces him to suppress a shiver, then scoffs under his breath. “Forget it. I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
“And you think I want to talk to you at all,” Dokja mutters under his breath.
Yoo Joonghyuk pauses halfway through getting out of his chair. “You…”
“Me,” Dokja says again, just to be ridiculously annoying. Maybe then, Yoo Joonghyuk will dislike him enough to leave him alone. There’s only so many times he can hate-kiss him before he gets sick of it, right?
He exhales, heavy and frustrated as he leans his body across the table. “What do you want me to do?”
“I—what?” Why is it that every conversation with Yoo Joonghyuk makes him doubt his own sanity? “I told you, I don’t want you to do anything. I don’t know why you keep asking me like the answer’s going to change.”
“Why did Han Sooyoung introduce us?”
“You’re asking that now?”
“Answer the question.”
“You can ask her that. I”—his eyes dart from the dip between his collarbones to—“I don’t”—his sharp eyes, to—”I mean, I don’t really know what she was”—the slight flash of teeth from behind his lips, his hands gripping the edge of the table, the—
“You’re nervous.”
“Of course I am, you’re in my space, and I’m still a little sick, and I don’t want to infect you, obviously, and—”
“—and you like me,” Yoo Joonghyuk finishes for him.
“Yeah, that— no.” He sucks in a sharp breath, fast enough to sting his throat. “No, definitely not that. Absolutely not. I don’t know—don’t know how you got that idea.”
Yoo Joonghyuk tilts his head. It’s a little (scratch that, horribly) attractive. “You’re still here.”
“You made me stay the night,” he replies, a little hysterical and fraying at the edges. “That’s hardly…it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t think it means anything special.” Please don’t, he doesn’t add, the words burning holes into his throat as Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes do the same to his face.
He’s silent for a moment. Then—
“You’re still here.”
It’s the same phrase, yet there’s something different the second time. Softer. A little quieter. Something bordering on un-Joonghyuk-like, hesitant and imperfect like he doesn’t really believe the words he’s saying.
It’s wrong. It’s all wrong—Yoo Joonghyuk, tilted into his space, questioning him like any of his answers even matter. They shouldn’t, and they don’t, but then why—
“Are you going to leave?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks, a strange urgency to the question.
And it all makes sense, after that. All of the kindness he showed him, the uncharacteristic actions, the kiss fueled by something other than passion. It’s all been a chore to him, simply Yoo Joonghyuk indulging him the way a stranger does for a selfish child. This confrontation is simply the last straw for him, a sort of disbelief that he could be so stupid to still intrude on his life and continue to demand more than what he’s already been given. Maybe he’s always known that.
But if he’s always known, why does it twist like a knife with every shallow breath he feels himself take?
“I should leave,” Dokja manages to get out, voice astonishingly steady as he averts his eyes. “Right? That’s what you’re saying? You want me to leave.”
Somehow, he can’t bring himself to look up, to check what expression Yoo Joonghyuk has on his face. All he can see are the knuckles of his hands, pale as his fingers tighten on the corners of the table, veins webbing blue under paper thin skin.
“I have things to do, and—and you’re busy too, right? I’m wasting your time.” He laughs, and it’s all wrong, so dry it sticks in his mouth and leaves his voice as a mere rasp. “I’m sorry. I can’t—god, it’s my fault, I…”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands linger on the table for just a moment more, then slip out of his field of vision.
“Then leave. Get out.”
Just like that, the moment breaks.
“Yep, I’m leaving,” Dokja repeats. “I’m—yeah, of course, I’m leaving. Thanks for everything.”
Trying his best to not look at Yoo Joonghyuk, he flees the scene, the lock clicking shut behind him.
It’s complicated.
“No, it isn’t,” Han Sooyoung garbles through the neon yellow lollipop in her mouth. “Why do men always have to overcomplicate things? Like I said, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t do stuff like that.”
Dokja shoots her a look that’s meant to convey as much disgust as it does disbelief. “How would you know that?” Maybe Han Sooyoung is even worse of a voyeur than he’d predicted.
“Because,” she starts, as if she’s about to narrate a grand epic and not something to do with Yoo Joonghyuk’s love life that she probably has no business knowing about, “he’s just not like that. Did I tell you about Nirvana? Well, Nirvana said all that bullshit at graduation, but even they know, deep down, that Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t be capable of doing anything that they accused him of. Everyone who knew him at all knew Nirvana was talking out of their ass, but that son of a bitch Yoo Joonghyuk only knows how to glare at people and ruin the social buff of having a stupidly perfect face. He didn’t even defend himself, because he thought it might’ve been his fault! That guy…I’ve known him for the longest out of anyone, and of course he’s an asshole to everyone, but trust me when I say he’s…not intolerable when it comes to people he allows into his life.” She shudders. “Ugh. I can’t believe I just said all that nice crap about him. All I’m saying is, he’s not the kind of guy you’re implying he is.”
“Are you two actually friends?”
“He wishes,” she scoffs. “We only stay in touch because he needs an emergency contact. Although…”
“What?”
“Maybe I won’t have to do that for much longer.” She cackles to herself. “I’ll finally be free from his endless bitching.”
He sighs. “I told you, he’s only been doing all of this to humor me. The only reason he went that far was because he was angry at me for—”
“I’ve known him since our university days, when even I did things on a whim, and I’ve never seen him kiss someone because he was pissed at them,” she quips, biting through her lollipop with a crack. “Listen, I’d really love to move on to something more productive than going in circles to convince you that your boyfriend is actually into your freak ass. I’ll be witness to the fact that his taste in people is utter trash, and you’re no exception to that.”
“He doesn’t—”
“Okay, that’s it.” She waves her hand at him, groaning under her breath. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do not tell me that two grown men can’t communicate properly. Sangah and I figured it out just fine without help, so I don’t see why you’re struggling so badly with the idea that that bastard could be interested in you.”
“Well, Sangah-ssi told me that for the first three months of your relationship, you didn’t even know she was your girlfriend, and wholeheartedly believed she was an assassin hired by a fellow writer you plagiar—”
“—and that was ages ago,” Han Sooyoung hisses, slamming her palm on the table. “When did she get the time to tell you that? I swear, that woman...she’s lucky I even love her.”
“You’re lucky she even tolerates you. I don’t know what she sees in you.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know I’m a catch. You don’t know shit about our relationship.”
As if. Even in TWSA, where Han Sooyoung was a much less insufferable character, she was the least chosen love interest, below even the poorly written Lee Hyunsung in popularity. It could have been because she was a female love interest, considering the demographic of the average player, but it also could’ve been because she didn’t exactly match Yoo Sangah or the game’s vibe. Fans with nothing better to do complained about her having a smoking habit, about her never dressing sexily despite being half demon, and about her never being openly affectionate to Yoo Sangah even in the side stories (that, mind you, were marketed as insights into their romantic relationship). Not that Dokja would know about that last point, since being frugal, to him, meant spending his hard earned money on solely Yoo Joonghyuk’s side stories.
“Are you thinking about something stupid again?”
Her face is propped on her hand, lollipop stick wedged at the corner of her mouth.
“In TWSA, you wrote yourself as a chainsmoker, didn’t you?”
“Hm?” Her eyes widen. “I thought you were thinking about that son of a bitch still. What are you getting at?”
“You don’t seem to smoke in real life.”
She scoffs. “Yeah, sorry to disappoint. I quit during the development of the game, and left that detail in because the concept art was already finished. The new apartment Sangah wanted didn’t allow smoking, so I figured I might as well.”
“Speaking of Yoo Sangah-ssi…” Dokja clears his throat. “Why would you make your own girlfriend the protagonist of an otome game?”
“Why does everyone want to ask me that?” Han Sooyoung sighs, drumming her fingers on the table. “I dunno, I just thought it’d be fun to base a character off her. Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel didn’t even start out as an otome game, you know? There’s nothing strange about wanting to recreate your girlfriend as a regular game character.”
What?
She continues. “Actually, I based all the characters off people I knew in real life because it was supposed to be a dark fantasy adventure game, not a contrived piece of raunchy garbage.” She pauses, pulling the now disintegrating lollipop stick out of her mouth. “Not that I have anything against the genre, but…it just wasn’t what I intended, you get me? That’s why the main demon and angel plot is so much better than the romantic subplot. It’s because I did all the worldbuilding, and the investing board bastards forced the other writers to shovel a bunch of romantic nonsense on top of it.”
“I thought you were the main writer of the game?”
“Yeah, but that sure didn’t stop them from going behind my back and doing whatever the hell they wanted,” she grumbles, brow knitted as she digs another candy out of her pocket. “I didn’t find out until launch that everyone on the development team was keeping secrets from me. Bunch of sellouts.”
That does explain a lot of inconsistencies about the game. The three romantic routes all suffered from the exact same problem: sudden deterioration of the actual plot halfway through in favor of romantic development. It was a common complaint in the Dokkaebi Store reviews, but it was also a pitfall characteristic of the average otome game, so he never found it strange back then. But looking back at Yoo Joonghyuk consistently acting like an asshole around him in TWSA, compared to how nice he became in actual gameplay when he supposedly fell in love with Yoo Sangah…it is obvious how out of character they made him in the later game, just to fit the narrative. So then…
“Do you regret it?”
“What are you talking about?”
He chews on the inside of his cheek. “I mean, the way TWSA ended up being developed.”
Han Sooyoung gives him a strange look, like she can’t quite believe he’s capable of critical thought. “Really? You’re asking me that, even though it’s your favorite game?”
“No, I”—he takes a deep breath—”I do admit, I might be biased towards TWSA, but I don’t just play it for the romantic parts. I like it because of the characters and the worldbuilding, and the emotional impact of the storylines, and—are you laughing? Stop laughing.”
“You are such a brainless TWSA fan!” she cackles, wiping at her eyes. “Oh my god. I didn’t even know it had male players, let alone a guy like you. Oh, this is so good. So you’re actually only a fan of the parts I made? You’re my personal fan?”
“I didn’t say it like that,” he insists, pressing the back of his hand to his face in an effort to curb the rising flush of his cheeks.
“You so did. You’re actually a fan of mine. Just admit it.”
“I’m not! I just—” He starts coughing from the exertion, and Han Sooyoung just smirks at him from across the table. Damn it, maybe this is why Yoo Joonghyuk refuses to admit that she’s his friend. Give her just a morsel of praise or kindness, and she becomes absolutely insufferable. Not that she wasn’t already.
“So, Number One Black Flame Empress Fan—”
“Black Flame Empress?”
“Long story,” she says, a little too quickly to be casual. “Forget that. I’ve got some good news for you.”
“What?” What Han Sooyoung considers good news may very well be horrible for him, judging from her sense of humor.
She grins at him, holding a freshly unwrapped lollipop in her hand.
“Are you going to s— hghkughubwa???”
He nearly chokes on lemon flavored spit, teeth vibrating in his skull from Han Sooyoung colluding with the healthcare system to put him into debt over a piece of candy.
“So dramatic,” she mumbles, unwrapping another fresh lollipop. “As I was going to say, I finally won my lengthy lawsuit against that shitty company, and I’m planning to reproduce the game in its original form using the settlement money.”
He rolls the candy around his mouth, the sweetness clinging to his tongue. “You sued them? I didn’t know anything about that.”
She nods. “They already took the TWSA server down a few weeks ago, and they’re deleting all the game files by the end of next month. Damn it, you know, I didn’t even get my choice on the name—what kind of name is Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel? You asked me if I have regrets? Of course I do. I wish I killed those fuckers right then and there on launch day, but I can’t go back into the past. That’s why I’m going to do everything the way I want this time, and I want you to be on the team.”
“Okay, sure, you want me on the—” His jaw goes slack, and the lollipop almost falls from his lips. “The what?”
“The development team,” she clarifies, like it makes her intentions any less opaque. “Come on, you’re a big fan of mine—”
“I said I’m not a fan of—”
“—and I know for sure you’re getting underpaid in your current job position, if it’s anything like Sangah’s before she got her promotion.” She grimaces. “And you don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d have a good reputation with upper management. You’re pretty mouthy.”
“Wow, thanks for that.” He slumps in his seat, throwing his head back. “You’re right, I guess, but…why me?”
“I need someone who actually cares about the game.” Her chair squeaks against the floor. “Someone who’ll watch and make sure that the rest of my team doesn’t backstab me like they did last time. You can do that for me, since you’re good at blending into the background. And you work at a game company, so you already know the basics of developing a game. Plus, you said you liked the plot-heavy elements of TWSA.”
“So?”
“I didn’t have an editor I trusted with my vision back when I first started writing this game, but I think…”
She’s silent for long enough that Dokja sits back up to check that she hasn’t abandoned him in the cafe. “You think?” he prompts.
She lets out a long groan, pressing a hand to her eyes. “Don’t make me say it. I’ve said enough nice things for one day.”
“I’ll think about it,” he tells her, but he already knows his answer, the smile threatening to split across his face. “I’ll definitely think about it.”
For once, his luck seems to take a turn for better.
A month passes without a single trace of Yoo Joonghyuk. And he should be glad, since it means he won’t have to confront Yoo Joonghyuk or the fact that he’s disgusted by him and his greed, but…
He shrugs the thought away, adjusting his bag strap on his shoulder. It’s alright. It really is. Maybe he’s lucky in that it’s always turned out okay for him, even if nothing went the way he wanted.
What he wanted was, decidedly, not Yoo Joonghyuk standing in the lobby of his work building.
He still looks as annoyingly beautiful as always, leaned back against the wall near the entrance like a model posing for a photoshoot. Dokja chews on his lip, glancing between his own position near the elevators and Yoo Joonghyuk’s position near the only exit doors. He can’t avoid getting within Yoo Joonghyuk’s area of perception, unless he feels like getting fired today by shattering one of the very expensive floor-to-ceiling windows. Such an action, drastic as it is, still wouldn’t resolve his problem, because Yoo Joonghyuk would definitely notice if a rat of a man broke a massive window trying to get away from him.
So, in summary, there is one (reasonable) exit, and one very dangerous threat near said exit that will probably exterminate his meaningless existence if he’s noticed.
Solution? If there’s one thing he is good at, it’s blending in.
He waits for a group of workers—maybe the HR department?—to pass him, and affixes himself to the tail end of their group, covering the side of his face with his hand. As long as he looks down, and keeps his face hidden, and follows the group without looking too suspicious—
A vice-like grip latches onto his wrist, and—
“Kim Dokja.”
Damn it. So much for being lucky.
“Joo—Yoo Joonghyuk,” he breathes, averting his eyes. “Uh, nice to see you?”
His fingers tighten, pressing hard into bone. “Let’s talk.”
“Here?” He casts a furtive glance around him. “I mean, be my guest, but I might lose my job if you cause a scene. Or break something. Please don’t break anything. Specifically the windows.”
“Fine,” Yoo Joonghyuk bites out. “We’re leaving.”
“I didn’t know you knew where I worked,” Dokja rambles, tripping over his own feet as Yoo Joonghyuk storms out of the building with him in tow. “You never asked, so I figured you didn’t care, and—”
He nearly crashes into his back, cheek narrowly brushing his jacket. He stumbles back, face burning with an inexplicable heat. “What was that for? Seriously, I don’t—”
“I had to ask Han Sooyoung.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulders rise and fall as he exhales. “You don’t talk much about yourself.”
“Where are you going with this?”
For a moment that seems to stretch beyond its means, he’s silent. Then, he makes a choked noise, somewhere deep in his throat.
“I don’t know.” He swears he hears him huff out a curse beneath the layer of evening traffic diffusing through the air. “I don’t know why I came here.”
Somehow, it’s a little pitiful. He can’t help it—Yoo Joonghyuk’s here, and he came looking for him, the pads of his fingers pressed hot against his pulse, skin clinging damply to his. There’s a certain desperation clawing at his chest, dull and achy as he leans his forehead against Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder.
He can feel him stiffen at the contact. “...Kim Dokja.”
“Joonghyuk-ah,” he begins, keeping his voice soft enough to be washed away by the sounds of passing vehicles. Maybe it’ll be better if he doesn’t have to hear this. It’s selfish for him to be saying this at all, but…
“Do you remember anything?”
His fingernails draw a line across his wrist. “Some of it,” he finally mutters, the low register of his voice penetrating to his bones.
Some of it. So he is remembering. Does that mean Yoo Joonghyuk in TWSA died? But if he did, why doesn’t Yoo Joonghyuk remember all of it? And how could that have happened, considering Yoo Joonghyuk’s personality and strength?
“Okay,” Dokja says to himself, mostly to keep himself from losing his mind. “Okay. That’s what I suspected. How much can you remember?”
“Not much.”
“So you don’t remember me.”
“No.” The muscle below his head tenses momentarily. “I can’t be sure.”
“It’s fine,” he says, but even he doesn’t believe it, weak as it comes out. “Did you only come because of that?”
“...No.”
“You don’t have to lie about it.” He lifts his head off of him. “You”—he wets his lips—”you have the right to be curious about it, I guess.”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns his head, gaze meeting his. “Were you—” He pauses, uncertainty flitting across his face in a way previously unfamiliar, so deeply unlike himself except it is him. He’s staring at him, making that expression, and somehow, for the first time, he can reconcile those two images of Yoo Joonghyuk. That man from the game and the one standing here in front of him are one and the same—a clumsy superposition of Han Sooyoung’s stilted caricature and his own reading of her muse.
“What?” Dokja says, voice breaking despite his best efforts. “I—don’t make that face, seriously, Joonghyuk-ah, I—”
“Do you want the other version back?” The words are nearly lost to incoming traffic, only the barest suggestion of them crossing the space between them.
“No.”
The answer seems to surprise Yoo Joonghyuk as much as it surprises himself, his eyes widening enough to reflect the passing lights in his pupils. “No?” he echoes, his grip slackening by the slightest fraction.
“No,” Dokja repeats, this time with a little more conviction to it. Maybe it’s to convince Yoo Joonghyuk, but it might also be to convince himself. To stop hoping that Yoo Joonghyuk will ever get his full memories back, yes, but also to cement a fact into his head.
The fact is, Yoo Joonghyuk is right here, and he’s still stupid enough to be in love with the bastard.
Said bastard has an all-too-familiar scowl etched into his face now, his strange emotional state from earlier dissolving into the night as he says, “Then why did you leave?”
“Leave? What do you—”
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. You’re such a fool.”
With that, the moment breaks. “Unwarranted,” Dokja quips, following him as he stalks down the sidewalk towards the subway station. “But I’m glad we figured that out. So, what, you don’t hate me anymore? Or is this some weird symptom of your emotional repression, and you actually—”
He collides with a suddenly stationary Yoo Joonghyuk, face hovering mere centimeters from his as he steadies himself against his arms. “Can you stop doing that? What’s wrong with—”
“Kim Dokja.”
“What?”
His hand comes up to grab his tie, keeping him anchored in place. “You’d better be sure about this.”
“I—what?” he manages to get out, nerve endings frying from the proximity.
Yoo Joonghyuk stays silent, staring at him with an unbearably intense frown on his face. Maybe a passerby would think him a murderous thug torturing a hardworking salaryman, but somehow, there’s a certain pathetic edge to it, a softness underlying that piercing gaze. Like he actually cares about his answer, even though it’s coming from a good-for-nothing whose bones would break if he wanted to break them. Like he’s important, somehow. It’s ridiculous, but what if he’s not misreading Yoo Joonghyuk?
There’s only so many times he can think something before it starts feeling like the truth.
“Listen,” Dokja mutters, averting his eyes, “you’re a crazy bastard. The fact that I’m still here means I’m being honest.”
He drags his gaze back up to his face. Instead of the cold hatred he’s grown to expect, he’s met with subdued delight, something golden despite the cool tone of the streetlights.
“Alright,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, and the gruff fondness in it is shockingly familiar.
Dokja’s focus flicks down to his mouth. There’s the slightest, most distracting quirk to the corner of his mouth, and before he can make his usual attempt to parse what his expression means, the gap between them shrinks to zero.
It’s softer than last time, the movement tentative despite the death grip on his collar. The slightest scrape of teeth against his lips, the heat between their bodies, the indulgent sigh that escapes him by complete accident—all of it is mortifying enough that he wants to melt into the ground and die on the spot. Maybe he already has, clinging onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms for dear life in the glow under a flickering streetlight.
“You’re insane,” he gasps when Yoo Joonghyuk releases him, scanning the vicinity for any scandalized members of the public.
Yoo Joonghyuk graces him with a look of suffering, but there’s something oddly soft in his regard. “You said that already.”
Maybe, for once in his life, he can have a little hope. Can he? Does he deserve it?
“Do you actually…?”
“What do you think?” Before he opens his mouth, Yoo Joonghyuk grabs him by the collar again. “Don’t answer that. We’re going home.”
“We?” Dokja laughs, hand covering Yoo Joonghyuk’s at his neck. “What, so I don’t get a say? I’m not lying anymore.”
“I know.” Yoo Joonghyuk looks away, but even he can tell there’s a ghost of a smile on his face. “Let’s go back home, Kim Dokja.”
“Let’s go back home,” he agrees, grinning. “But it’ll have to be your place. My place is a mess.”
Time passes.
He enters the elevator at work for the last time, watching the numbers go down. Despite the fact that he’s hated this job since the first time he walked into the office, there’s a strange bittersweetness to the finality of it.
He’s always hated endings, whether it was his own life, the games he played, or the stories he read. Leaving things behind, or being left behind, it’s all the same—-at the end of the day, he’d be alone again.
There’s no time to think about that, though. Yoo Sangah’s texting him their location, Han Sooyoung’s probably gloating about all the envious looks people are shooting at her car parked at the curb, and he can already imagine Yoo Joonghyuk’s scowl as he sits in the backseat. Everyone’s waiting for him, and he can only laugh to himself and run for the door, the overwhelming sweetness tickling at the back of his throat.
Time passes.
Han Sooyoung has been working him like a slave. From corporate slave to Han Sooyoung’s own personal slave, worked to the bone editing her drafts and explaining that no, it’s not possible to render this in full 3D unless you want to burn every player’s hands off with the heat of their smartphones and no, you can’t keep killing characters and bringing them back to life if you want people to keep playing and no, Joonghyuk will genuinely throttle you with his bare hands if you keep me up past midnight again. It would be a downgrade if not for the fact that it’s work on TWSA—or, rather, not-TWSA since Han Sooyoung keeps getting mad at him for calling it that. It’s ridiculous, really, because she still hasn’t come up with a replacement name—what else is he supposed to call the project? So TWSA it is, until that faraway day comes.
The characters are different now. Different names, different personalities, different appearances. Yet sometimes, he’ll see a glimpse of Yoo Sangah here, a little bit of Lee Hyunsung there, and the odd emo bastard characteristic that makes him recall times that Yoo Joonghyuk behaved the exact same way. It’s impossible to erase them from the game that was originally created from their likenesses, and Han Sooyoung gripes over that near daily, head in her hands as she stares at her laptop screen, glasses askew on her nose in that way that he’s learned Yoo Sangah is particularly fond of, if the way she smiles at her is any indication.
Both of them know Han Sooyoung doesn’t really mean it. After all, she’s a “genius writer”, by her own admission.
Time passes.
Yoo Joonghyuk is still here. Still here, bustling around his immaculately clean kitchen as Dokja works on his laptop at the table. He’s still in Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment, except now his clothes populate their shared closet, his phone charger is buried somewhere in Yoo Joonghyuk’s couch, and sleeping in the same bed as Yoo Joonghyuk is no longer some novelty.
“Eat.”
Dokja looks up. Yoo Joonghyuk is hovering over him, a bowl in each hand.
“Did I ever tell you I don’t like tomatoes?” Dokja mumbles, peering at the contents of the bowls. Huh. Soup.
“I remembered,” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles, handing him the one that’s blissfully tomato-free.
It looks almost exactly like the one that TWSA Yoo Joonghyuk made for him. Funny how that works out—maybe he’s served this exact dish to Han Sooyoung before, and that’s why it tastes the same? But he can’t imagine him ever treating Han Sooyoung that well unless she were on her deathbed, so maybe not.
“Remembered what?” he asks through a mouthful of scalding hot soup. God, it’s so good. Even the taste is the same as he remembers, perfectly savory and seasoned the way he swears only Yoo Joonghyuk knows how.
Yoo Joonghyuk sets his own bowl down on the table, idly stirring it with his spoon. “That you hate tomatoes.”
“Mhm? When was that?”
It takes an embarrassingly long moment. Dokja shoots upright, eyes meeting Yoo Joonghyuk’s.
“You”—he has to pause to cough, no doubt looking disgusting as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand—”you, you’re—!”
There’s a smile blooming on his face, soft and a little uncertain but so undoubtedly beautiful. “I’m back, Kim Dokja.”
He’s out of his seat, nearly tripping over himself in his rush to walk over. He doesn’t need to make a fool of himself, though, because Yoo Joonghyuk’s in front of him to catch him.
His eyes are dark, glimmering like the stars in the night sky, as he says it again. “I’m back, Dokja. I remembered you.”
He’s probably crying, but he couldn’t care less. He grins, cradling Yoo Joonghyuk’s face in his hands. “Took you long enough, Joonghyuk-ah.”
Notes:
epilogue scene *finger guns* it's coming some time to an ao3 tab near you
Chapter 13: epilogue: three ways to seduce an (ex-)amnesiac
Notes:
actually made good time on writing The Epilogue (trademark) ??? well actually i wrote all of this in the past week but just pretend i worked super hard for the last two months to put this out for you guys. regardless please enjoy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Took you long enough, Joonghyuk-ah.”
Yoo Joonghyuk does a once-over of him, sprawled out on their bed in the same lounge clothes he was wearing fifteen minutes ago. “You’re not even dressed yet.”
“I know.” He flashes him a sardonic grin, which widens with every extra iota of irritation that Yoo Joonghyuk exudes through his glare. “Just felt like saying it.”
Sighing, Yoo Joonghyuk drags a hand down his face. “What time is it?”
Dokja glances back at his phone. “There’s still half an hour before we have to leave.”
“Good.”
With that, Yoo Joonghyuk reaches down and grabs him by the collar, with the clear intent of hauling him up and out of bed.
“Wait, wait, wait, Joonghyuk-ah—”
Yoo Joonghyuk bats his flailing hands away with all his typical nonchalance, crowding over him with his body. “We have to go,” he informs him, as if it isn’t his employer’s party to celebrate the launch of the game he worked on.
“Just—fuck—just one more chapter!” he pleads, clutching his phone to his chest. “I just got to the good part! You can’t be seriously asking me to stop reading right now.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stops in the middle of attempting to pin down all four of his limbs, scrutinizing him so intently he can feel the sweat beading on his skin.
“...Read it on the subway.”
(Damn it, he’s right about that.)
He sighs, going boneless in preparation for Yoo Joonghyuk’s next move. If he has to be bodily dragged to his feet, he’ll make it as difficult as possible for him to—
In the time it takes for him to register the cold brush of fingers against the exposed skin of his stomach, he goes from clothed to decidedly shirtless. He manages to get out a half-strangled shriek a beat too late, arms thrashing from where they’re still stuck in the sleeves of his shirt. “Yoo Joonghyuk, you bastard!”
The bastard in question sits back on his haunches, a phantom of a smile catching on his lips. “Got you.”
“What”—he writhes in place, successfully pulling his arms out from his shirt—”the”—Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his ankle when he tries to kick at his chest—”hell is wrong with you?”
Yoo Joonghyuk rubs his thumb against the bone of his ankle, almost absentmindedly. “You have to get ready.”
“You didn’t have to strip me,” he grumbles, propping himself up on his elbows. “I’m perfectly capable of taking my shirt off myself.”
“Didn’t seem like it,” Yoo Joonghyuk deadpans, the valley of his thumb and index finger slotting perfectly against the back of his knee as he shifts forward.
“So what? It’s my shirt, not yours.” He kicks at his shoulder, to no effect. “And there’s not much to look at, so I don’t know why you’re so adamant on getting my clothes off.”
“You,” he grinds out, “are such a fool.”
“You should”—his breath catches in his throat, Yoo Joonghyuk’s touch ghosting up his thighs now—”should really get some new insults. I’ve heard that one already.”
His fingers toy with the elastic waistband of his pants like a threat. “Kim Dokja.”
Dokja laughs, grabbing those wandering hands with his. “Okay, fine, fine, you win. Maybe I should get dressed before you decide to take my pants off, hm?”
Yoo Joonghyuk goes quiet. Then:
“How much time do we have left?”
He considers, gazing at him through lowered lashes. His eyes slide over to his phone screen, dimming with every passing moment. Yoo Joonghyuk’s palms are hot against the jut of his hip, and when he looks back at that handsome face that somehow belongs to him now, there’s no mistaking what he sees in those eyes.
“Hm…” Dokja hums. “Enough?”
“How the hell are you an hour late?”
Dokja plasters a smile onto his face, breezing past Han Sooyoung to make a beeline for the drink table. “Overslept,” he tells her when she follows him over to watch him pour himself a liberal dose of something that looks dangerously friendly and fruit-flavored.
She scoffs. “Okay, su—” She pauses, eyes narrowing. “That guy would never let that happen. He’s got a stick up his ass for timing.”
“What, Joonghyuk?”
She nods to herself, slowly. Then, her face twitches like she’s just taken a shot of pure vinegar. “Oh. Oh. Gross. I didn’t need to know that.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he retorts, taking a sip of the drink. Hm. It tastes exactly like he thought it would. At least it’s pleasant.
“Then stop making that face!”
He tries to force himself to stop grinning, but all it does is give him a muscle spasm. “What face?” he asks, ever the image of innocence as he bats his lashes at her.
“You”—she points a shaking finger at his face—”are a menace. You’re telling me, every time you came into the office with that stupid expression, you were—”
Dokja shrugs, taking another swig of his drink. “I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”
She stares at him, seemingly lost for words, then sighs. “Damn it. This is my fault, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he agrees, patting her on the shoulder. “What’s in this drink, by the way?”
She peers into his cup. “Oh, that? I have no idea. Sangah mixed that one.”
Huh. Even more right to be concerned, considering Yoo Sangah’s history of mixing salt into people’s coffee in TWSA. Regardless, it tastes fine, so it can’t be that bad, can it?
“Speaking of Sangah-ssi, where is she?”
Han Sooyoung looks around the room. “Eh, I dunno. Last I checked, she was with—”
“Sooyoung-ah!”
Han Sooyoung lets out a dramatic grunt as Yoo Sangah half-crashes, half-drapes herself over her back, seeming well on her way to total inebriation as she grins at her. “Found you.”
She snorts to herself, pulling Yoo Sangah’s arms off her. “Your timing is impeccable, as always. Kim Dokja and I were just talking about you.”
At that, Yoo Sangah perks up, peeking over Han Sooyoung’s shoulder. “Oh! Dokja-ssi, you’re finally here!”
“Hey,” he greets, giving her a halfhearted wave. “Sorry about being late.”
She shakes her head, smiling sweetly. “Nonsense. It’s nice to see you looking better now that the game is done.”
He lets out a dry laugh, looking down at his sweater (that, mind you, he’d haphazardly pulled on before bolting out the door with Yoo Joonghyuk in tow). “Did I really look that bad during development?”
Yoo Sangah hums in thought. “Maybe? Well, I’ll apologize on behalf of Sooyoung for that.”
“I can’t believe my girlfriend is throwing me under the bus for my employee,” Han Sooyoung mutters. “You’d think, for a party celebrating the launch of my game, everyone would be a little kinder to me.”
Dokja rolls his eyes. “We’re only holding a party because it’s tax deductible,” he reminds her. “But seriously, congratulations. Everything worked out in the end, somehow.”
Han Sooyoung eyes him, as if she’s trying to decide if it’s a trap of well-hidden wordplay. “...Thanks to you,” she ends up saying, lip curling, “my biggest fan, Kim Dokja.”
“Black Flame Empress.”
“Oh, screw you! I mentioned that one time, and now you just can’t let it—”
“Dokja.”
He glances back at Yoo Joonghyuk, who has apparently materialized right behind him. “Oh, Joonghyuk-ah. You got food?”
He nods, holding a forkful of food towards him. In tacit understanding, Dokja leans in and takes a bite, chewing gingerly. “Hm. Not bad. I guess we spent all our budget on catering, huh?”
Han Sooyoung makes a retching sound. “God, you two make me homophobic. As if it isn’t enough to be wearing couples sweaters, you have to feed him like he’s your child?”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns on her with a frosty glare. “Han Sooyoung.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” she mocks, intentionally lowering her voice to match his. “I never thought I’d live to see the day you’re so whipped that you’d willingly wear couples clothing.”
“We’re not matching,” Dokja retorts. “They’re completely different colors.”
It’s not like they cared enough to coordinate. Han Sooyoung must be blind if she can’t tell the difference between cream-colored and Yoo Joonghyuk’s trademark shade of black.
Turning to her girlfriend, Han Sooyoung—making no effort to hide her disgust—stage whispers, “Hey, Sangah. They’re totally matching, aren’t they?”
Yoo Sangah giggles, pressing her cheek against hers. “If you say so, Sooyoung-ie.”
Han Sooyoung coughs, as if that’ll make her look unfazed by the situation. “Fuck… Ah, whatever. You’ve really had too much to drink, haven’t you?”
He and Yoo Joonghyuk watch as Yoo Sangah leans in to whisper something into her ear. Han Sooyoung chokes, whipping her head around to stare wide-eyed at Yoo Sangah. “Seriously? You’re not?”
Yoo Sangah shrugs with grace unbefitting a supposedly drunk person, detaching herself cleanly from Han Sooyoung’s body. “You know my tolerance is high.”
“Why, you—!”
With a borderline devilish grin, Yoo Sangah saunters away, leaving Han Sooyoung a fuming mess.
“That woman,” she grumbles under her breath, pressing a hand to her forehead, “is so dead once we get home.”
“Ew, I didn’t need to know that.”
“Oh, shut up. Anyways”—she holds her hand out—”I’ve been lenient so far, but you two should pay up.”
“Hah?”
“What.”
“You two should be thanking me for getting you together,” she explains, lips curling into a smug smirk. “C’mon, people pay bank for bad matchmaking. You have to admit I did a good job, better than those scammers could ever dream of.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls. “You’re lucky I haven’t killed you for making that ridiculous game.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know, that game is the reason why you—!”
Yoo Sangah reappears like an angel, dragging Han Sooyoung back with an unpleasant screech. “Sooyoung-ah,” she admonishes, “what did we say about extorting our friends?”
She throws her head back, gnashing her teeth. “...They’re off limits,” she grumbles, and is that a pout he sees on her? “God, Sangah, you’re no fun.”
“I’m plenty of fun,” she tells her. “Apparently someone brought my old manager as a plus one. Want to go tell him you’re my girlfriend?”
“From the company? The one who was always hitting on you?” she asks, to which Yoo Sangah nods. “Holy shit. That’s golden. I take back what I said—you’re so fun.”
With that, Yoo Sangah leads her away, winking at them. A woman like her is truly, genuinely wasted on a gremlin like Han Sooyoung. Maybe this is how disappointed mother-in-laws feel about their child’s choice of partner.
“Right, you two haven’t met. Kim Dokja, this is Jung Heewon. She’s one of our motion capture models.”
He shakes the hand she offers him. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kim Dokja. I don’t really have an official area of expertise, but I guess you could call me Han Sooyoung’s assistant?”
Han Sooyoung’s face scrunches up at that. “That’s an awful way to put it; don’t associate yourself with me like that. You’re more like a consultant.”
“I don’t think a consultant would go on daily coffee runs for you,” he points out, “or comply with your awful working hours.”
She groans. “Okay, fine. You’re part consultant, part assistant, and full on pain in the ass.”
Jung Heewon laughs at that. “Well, it’s nice to meet you as well.”
Han Sooyoung leaves the conversation with the excuse of going to find someone (likely Yoo Sangah), leaving him and Jung Heewon alone.
In the silence, he can finally take a good look at her. She looks about the same as she did when they met in the game, intimidating aura and all, but there’s something…softer about her, here.
“So…motion capture, hm?”
She smiles at him, if a bit warily. “Ah, yes. I do kendo, so I was hired to model the fighting stances for the female characters.” She pauses, eyes flicking to the direction of Han Sooyoung’s departure. “This is a bit off topic, but about the boss…”
“What, Han Sooyoung?”
“Yes, her.” She bites her lip. “Actually, I think one of my friends is close with her. Would you happen to know her thoughts on, uh, Lee Hy—”
“Heewon-ssi! I was looking for you.”
A tall, muscular man waves at Jung Heewon, and she lights up, grinning at him. “Hyunsung-ssi! I was wondering how you got lost.”
He groans, crossing the room to her. “I looked away for one moment, I’m so sorry. Are you—”
Lee Hyunsung finally registers his presence once he makes his way over. “Oh! Sorry, were you two having a conversation? I shouldn’t have interrupted—”
“It’s fine,” Jung Heewon says, patting him on the shoulder. “Kim Dokja-ssi, this is the friend I was talking about earlier—he’s also a motion capture model. Hyunsung-ssi, this is Kim Dokja-ssi. He’s a consultant for the game.”
“Nice to meet you,” Dokja says, sticking his hand out. Lee Hyunsung gives him a firm handshake, peering down at him, and—
“Sorry to ask this out of the blue, but have I met you before?”
At Lee Hyunsung’s question, Jung Heewon blinks, then leans in, studying Dokja’s face with an intensity that makes him sweat and take a small step back. “Now that you mention it… I swear I’ve seen you before…”
The two of them glance at each other questioningly.
Dokja laughs, the sound surprisingly easy to make now that the alcohol is kicking in in full force. “No, I don’t think I’ve met either of you before.” It’s a lie, of course, but what does it matter?
“Hm.” Jung Heewon is the first to speak. “Ah, maybe I saw you at the bar I used to work at. Does that ring any bells?”
He pretends to think about it. “Maybe,” he finally says. “I’m sorry, my memory isn’t the greatest…”
“It’s fine,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “But, Hyunsung-ssi, he’s also familiar to you?”
Lee Hyunsung perks up at the acknowledgement. “Oh, yes. Kim Dokja-ssi, I feel like I’ve perhaps met you on the subway before?” He frowns in thought. “Although, my memory is also—”
“Dokja.”
Yoo Joonghyuk is back again, food and cup in hand, glowering at…something? He follows his gaze, and finds Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung on the receiving end, except that can’t possibly be right.
“Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi,” Lee Hyunsung greets. Yoo Joonghyuk nods at him, a strange vengeance in his expression.
“Do you two know each other?” Jung Heewon asks, gesturing between Lee Hyunsung and Yoo Joonghyuk.
Lee Hyunsung laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t say know, but we were in the same year at university.”
“Then…” Jung Heewon frowns, scratching her head. “Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi, did you also work on the game?”
“No.”
“Strange. I thought this party was only for company employees,” she mutters to herself. “Ah, wait. That must mean you’re someone’s plus one, then?”
Yoo Joonghyuk grunts in the affirmative.
“But you also know Kim Dokja-ssi?” She hums appreciatively. “Wow, the world sure is small. If so, then it’s definitely possible that we’ve met Kim Dokja-ssi befo—”
Before Dokja can get in a word edgewise, Yoo Joonghyuk speaks up. “Kim Dokja is my companion.”
Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung blink in stunned unison, eyes darting between the two of them like they can’t quite figure out what to make of them.
“You haven’t met him before,” Yoo Joonghyuk tells them, willfully ignoring the correct interpretation of their silence.
“Ah… Okay,” Jung Heewon mumbles, grabbing Lee Hyunsung by the bicep, to which he makes a noise reminiscent of a dog chew toy, a red flush crawling up his neck. “Hyunsung-ssi, let’s go. Somehow, I feel like we’re intruding on something.”
After Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung disappear back into the crowd, he leans in.
“What was that about?”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks away, glaring in the direction of their retreat. To anyone else, he’d look like he’s planning a terrorist attack in his head. Fortunately, Dokja is well-versed in Yoo Joonghyuk expressions now, and can’t help the silly smile breaking across his face.
“Are you upset?” he coos, taking his cup back from Yoo Joonghyuk.
“I’m not upset,” Yoo Joonghyuk mutters, “and don’t talk to me in that voice.”
“You don’t even know them that well,” Dokja comments. “Why are you upset?”
He hears him mumble something under his breath, and leans in closer to listen.
“What?”
Yoo Joonghyuk makes an exasperated noise. “I said, don’t let other people say they’ve met you somewhere before.”
Dokja stares at him. “You’re ridiculous,” he settles on saying, poking his cheek. Yoo Joonghyuk lets him, though not without a healthy dose of scowling and sulking under his breath.
As the party winds down, he can feel the alcohol hot in his veins. He’s always been on the lightweight side of the spectrum, and whatever drink Yoo Sangah mixed is surely deadly based on its apparent taste to alcohol content ratio.
“We’ll leave in ten minutes,” he promises Yoo Joonghyuk, who’s making his (potentially selfish) concern for him rather evident with the hand firmly tethered to his hip. “I need to talk to Han Sooyoung.”
“Fine,” he acquiesces, detaching himself with a frown. “Make it quick.”
“I told you, ten minutes,” he emphasizes, throwing in a smirk for good measure. “You can time me if you want. Want to bet?”
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs. “Whatever. Talk to her and come back.”
With that, he makes his way across the room, searching for Han Sooyoung. It’s a difficult task, considering her pitiful height, but he finally spots her at the balcony, nursing a cup of something while staring out at the night sky.
“Han Sooyoung.”
She turns, blinking disorientedly before a languid smile makes its way onto her face. “Kim Dokja. How nice of you to detach yourself from your boyfriend to talk to your boss.”
“Detach?”
“Saw you and that son of a bitch literally attached at the hip,” she drawls, tilting her cup back. “He’s absolutely done for. Never thought it’d happen, especially not with someone like you.”
He snorts. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She waves her hand in a vague gesture. “You know. Weird. Although maybe I should’ve expected it; his taste in people is really bad.”
“Yourself included.”
Instead of cursing him out or throwing a snide comment back like she’s wont to do, she just sighs. “I don’t know who’s more pitiful,” she mumbles, “you, for being stuck with that bastard for the rest of your life, or Yoo Joonghyuk, who’s stuck with a guy who started liking him through an otome game.”
“It was a good game,” he retorts, ignoring her jab, “wasn’t it?”
She scoffs. “Black Flame Empress’ biggest fan, huh?” she muses. “But this game, our game, is a thousand times better than that trash, right?”
“Of course,” he replies without thinking. In response, she grins at him, nudging his elbow with hers.
“Hey, Han Sooyoung?”
“Hm?”
“I’m curious about something.” He wets his lips, the edges of his vision blurring as he blinks. “What title did you end up choosing for the game?”
The day before launch, when he’d asked her about the title, she’d shrugged and told him she’d deal with it day of. Surely she didn’t publish it without a proper name, did she?
She sighs again, leaning against the railing. “Right, you weren’t here at the start when I announced it. It’s…”
“What?”
“Shut up,” she snaps, before seemingly collecting herself, brushing a stray strand of hair out of her face. “You can’t laugh, okay? I couldn’t think of anything, and the original name I came up with didn’t fit the theme anymore, and…” She groans. “I’m notoriously bad at naming things, if you want to believe Sangah on that front.”
“Just say it,” he tells her.
“You promise you’re not going to make fun of it?”
He grimaces. “You’re making it really difficult to promise.”
She whacks at his arm halfheartedly. “Oh, shut up. It’s—”
“Oracle of the Realms’ Viewpoint,” he tells him, hysterical edge to the last word. “I thought she was being dramatic when she said it’d be a bad name.”
Yoo Joonghyuk huffs out something that’s not quite a laugh and more like exertion, slowing his steps as they approach the door. “Stop leaning on me for a second.”
He obliges, watching him key in the code for his door. With a soft beep, it unlocks, and Yoo Joonghyuk proceeds in his efforts to get him inside, arm tight around his waist.
“I mean,” Dokja mumbles into his shoulder, “I guess it’s an accurate name. The protagonist is a human who’s been gifted with visions of the future interrealm war, so they’re an oracle of the realms. But viewpoint? She couldn’t find a more descriptive word?”
Yoo Joonghyuk throws him onto the couch, flopping down beside him and exhaling. “...That’s different from the original game, isn’t it?” he finally responds.
“Hm?”
“The protagonist. It’s different from how it was before.”
Dokja nods, pressing his cheek against the backrest of the couch as he turns to look at Yoo Joonghyuk. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “She changed a lot when she went back to revise it. What’s up?”
He scowls. “I can’t believe she named a character in that awful game after me.”
Dokja sits up, near scandalized. “It was not an awful game. It was a masterpiece. You just don’t get it, it’s—”
He gets about fifteen minutes into his programmed rant about the merits of Three Ways to Sacrifice an Angel before he realizes Yoo Joonghyuk is frowning. ‘What? Why are you upset?”
He crosses his arms. “So it’s not just a character named after me,” he grumbles, “but everything about him is based on me.”
Dokja squints at him. Man, Yoo Joonghyuk sure is cute when he’s pouting about something unimportant. “Well, yeah? I told you before, Han Sooyoung put a bunch of unnecessary personal details into the game. It’s not just your character. She did the same to everyone.”
Yoo Joonghyuk grits his teeth. “I’m going to rip that woman to shreds.”
“Aw, come on. Calm down.” He reaches out, patting him on the arm. After a moment of drunken consideration, he squeezes his bicep, the muscle hot against the pad of his thumb even through the sweater. “Besides, it’s not like she copied you exactly. There’s still a few differences between real life and the game.”
(He really does try to keep his eyes level, but there’s only so much self-control he can exert as someone who’s just a little too far gone beyond the threshold of tipsy and alone with their disgustingly attractive boyfriend. So, okay, maybe he does take a few looks, but who can blame him?)
His boyfriend frowns. “What are you talking about?”
Dokja coughs. “So, otome games have these illustrated graphics, or CGs—you’ve played dating sims before, haven’t you? You know what I mean—and TWSA was rated R18 for its uncensored scenes…”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him, expression blank. Dokja laughs. “You get where I’m going with this, right? Please don’t tell me I have to say it out loud.”
He can pinpoint the exact moment the implication clicks in his brain, eyes going dark. With complete seriousness, he asks, “How is it different?”
He feigns regret, throwing himself flat on the couch in the opposite direction. “Ah, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s not talk about this right now. It’s been a long day for both of us, and—”
“No. Kim Dokja. Tell me right now.”
Hook, line, and sinker. Dokja resists the urge to cackle and give the whole charade away, instead faking a yawn to cover his rising smirk. “Well, I don’t know. I can’t really remember.”
With that, Yoo Joonghyuk is dragging him to his feet and off the couch. “Then…” He tugs just a little harder on the neckline of his sweater, no doubt stretching it out as he draws him into his space, all hot and thrumming with coiling tension. “I’ll make you remember.”
“Nooooo,” Dokja whines, looping his arms around Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck despite his verbal complaints. “Please, I”—he plants a kiss on his cheek—”just want to”—on the corner of his mouth—”sleep”—on the underside of his jaw—”Joonghyuk-ah.”
He can feel his jaw shift under his ministrations, twitching as Yoo Joonghyuk (unsuccessfully) holds back a smile. “Fool. You brought this upon yourself.”
With that, he drags him into the bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.
.
.
.
(All things considered, “monstrous” is still the word he’d use to describe it. He tells that to him after the fact, and gets a punishing bite on the shoulder for his efforts. He bruises in the pattern of his teeth, as always, and catches Yoo Joonghyuk tracing the shape of it with his fingers the morning after. In return, he rolls over and bites him in the same location, relishing in the rough hiss that escapes his very real and very pissed off boyfriend.)
(Maybe life and death companionship does transcend the boundary between fiction and reality.)
.
.
.
end.
Notes:
aaaaaand that's a wrap! thank you to all of my readers for sticking with my disastrous updating habits over the years. it would be a lie to say i enjoyed every bit of writing this fic (lol) but it holds a very dear place in my heart, so letting it go like this feels surreal. big extra thank you to all of you who commented, because without that motivation this would have never been completed (and i probably would've quit fanfic for good but that's a different issue)
feel free to ask any lingering questions (about the fic, my writing, anything really) or just share your favorite parts in the comments! i'll try my best to reply to everything <3
and please check out some of my other orv fics on my profile if you're interested! i specialize in AUs that accidentally get too deep :)
Pages Navigation
BalconyGardenSamurai on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 05:01AM UTC
Comment Actions
BalconyGardenSamurai on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 05:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
Artistic_bookworm on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 06:11AM UTC
Comment Actions
aafia_amra on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 08:51AM UTC
Comment Actions
URANUSVJ09 on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 01:12PM UTC
Last Edited Sat 12 Mar 2022 01:14PM UTC
Comment Actions
ComeCryWithMeInTheTargetParkingLot9 on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 05:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
YajuV23 on Chapter 1 Sat 12 Mar 2022 10:59PM UTC
Comment Actions
ChopStyle on Chapter 1 Sun 13 Mar 2022 12:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
shinelile on Chapter 1 Sun 13 Mar 2022 02:39AM UTC
Comment Actions
cloudy016 on Chapter 1 Sun 13 Mar 2022 08:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
Sayena on Chapter 1 Mon 14 Mar 2022 01:54AM UTC
Comment Actions
cherryousama on Chapter 1 Mon 14 Mar 2022 11:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
Taroro on Chapter 1 Tue 15 Mar 2022 09:26AM UTC
Comment Actions
Nero_363 on Chapter 1 Wed 30 Mar 2022 10:50AM UTC
Comment Actions
Sarourat on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Apr 2022 03:58PM UTC
Comment Actions
Mikaaa (Guest) on Chapter 1 Fri 08 Apr 2022 04:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
Alex (Guest) on Chapter 1 Mon 06 Jun 2022 05:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
xX_Potato_Xx on Chapter 1 Sat 02 Jul 2022 05:39AM UTC
Comment Actions
pretzalcoatl on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Jul 2022 08:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
Liu_Su_Mian_Hua (Dragonica_the_mini_dragon) on Chapter 1 Mon 18 Jul 2022 03:05AM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation