Work Text:
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
The tired sunsets and the tired people—it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.
Charles Bukowski
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
“Han Sooyoung. Kill me.”
She didn’t even bother to turn around at the sudden unwelcome intrusion, choosing to take a drag of the cigarette between her fingers instead. He shouldn’t have been able to sneak past the nightwatch. Or the 34 protective spells specifically created to drive him away. But, well, as expected. That man had always been someone who never did what he was supposed to. She stared at the expansion of ruined landscape beneath the rooftop that stretched out as far as the eye could see, exhaling grey smoke.
“Haven’t I already told you, that if I could have, I would’ve done so ages ago?”
“I have a plan.”
She finally tilted her head to face him. Yoo Joonghyuk. The regressor. This world’s protagonist, and the strongest, most noble, infallible being in all the universes.
He looked tired.
“Oh? Hopefully one that yields better results than the last one, yes? The one I specifically told you only had a 0.06% chance of working, and yet you went through with it anyway, wasting an enormous amount of probability, forcing Eden to put a bounty on both our heads and causing great annoyance?”
He scowled at her, but chose to lay out the details of his idea in response instead. It was, in fact, plausible. And with enough refinement, it was an idea that might actually end up working. Han Sooyoung narrowed her eyes slightly and activated her skill, deciphering within seconds every path she’d need to take in order to achieve that goal. Yoo Joonghyuk took that time to close the gap between them and stand next to her by the balustrade.
After a while, she said, with all the vigour of a scientist that had just invented a way to cure cancer, and not like she’d just discovered a way to kill the man that was simultaneously her companion and archenemy: “...It’s going to work.”
Yoo Joonghyuk permitted himself to let out a small sigh in relief. “I thought so too.”
“If I’m going to do this, you’re going to have to become the enemy of this story. Do you understand that?”
He gave her a small nod of acknowledgement. He had expected as much—all that meant was that the companions he’d once loved so dearly would despise him in this turn. It wouldn’t be so great of a sacrifice.
“I won’t have time to save First Murim. It would be a choice between that or Earth, and I’m sure you know which I’d choose.”
Which meant that his master was going to die.
If Han Sooyoung said that it was necessary, then he knew it was. There was no choice. His master had died again, again, and again; and lived again, again, and again. One more death mattered little now.
She sighed a little at his lack of reaction. He thought he might’ve seen a glint of guilt in her sharp eyes, but it was gone as soon as it went, replaced by the typical cold, unfeeling calculation.
“...And I won’t be able to save your sister.”
His expression, body language, and gaze didn’t change at all upon hearing that, but she knew him well enough by now to see that it had him frozen in uncertainty. His breath hitched, pupils shrank, and his grip around the railing tightened ever so slightly.
“I…” His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “I see.”
“Is that a sacrifice you’re willing to make?”
They peered deeply into the other’s eyes, searching for the slightest hint of hesitation, of remorse, of regret, anything other than the sheer determination and willpower that had driven both their hands to committing unforgivable acts.
He found nothing.
“Yes.”
Han Sooyoung sighed again, then blew cigarette smoke into his gorgeously scarred face, earning yet another murderous scowl for her efforts. She took the stick out of her mouth and slipped it in between her index and middle fingers, holding it out in front of him. A peace offering.
Yoo Joonghyuk did not smoke. He protested vehemently against the idea of it, and had pressured all of his companions away from picking up the habit. Not once did he inhale from the little square death packet, the white cylinder that could’ve taken an edge off of everything he’d had to go through. Not once in over a thousand lives.
He ripped the cigarette from her expectant fingers, violently took a drag, and choked immediately.
That was definitely his first time, Han Sooyoung thought, when he coughed and tried to hide it and she pretended not to notice. This ancient relic of a bastard was really attempting to smoke for the first time. It was a little cute.
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.
Euripides
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
Han Sooyoung had just been knocked out momentarily by a spear of magical energy from a hostile constellation she hadn’t managed to dodge, thanks to the sudden onslaught of memories.
…What?
Why now?
She looked down at her own trembling hands. A feeling of dread permeated her entire being as she finally grasped the full meaning of what she’d done.
“I’m… I’m Ways of Survival’s...”
Yoo Joonghyuk—who had just hit her on the head none-too-gently in order to wake her up and was currently supporting the small of her back as she gained her bearings—deflected an incoming attack with his sword, then dropped her onto the ground unceremoniously.
“Stop wasting time with unnecessary remarks, and let's head out.”
Damn bastard.
Distracted by his irritating attitude and the splitting headache that was starting to form in the back of her head, Han Sooyoung did not notice the way his hands shook when he took up his sword once again.
She compartmentalized the horrific information she had just received, and tucked it into the back of her head to turn inside out and analyze over and over again, later. Right now, there were more important things to worry about.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“You two. Why have you been keeping quiet until now?”
[ Their plan was perfect. With this plan, they couldn't have failed. ]
Their entire world had just been shattered. Of course they were lost for words.
“Sooyoung-ssi?”
She wanted to run back to the wall and grab the dokkaebi bastard by the neck and torture him over and over until he gave their Dokja back.
She wanted to run at Yoo Joonghyuk with a knife and stab him over and over, and scream why didn’t you fight harder, why didn’t you save him, why did you fail. You were supposed to be his protagonist. She wanted him to hold her in his arms and sob until her soul bled out, because no one else could possibly understand this unfathomably deep well of grief.
“Joonghyuk-ssi?”
He wanted to hunt down that 4th wall bastard and kill him in every world-line he existed in.
He wanted to kill Han Sooyoung. He wanted to squeeze the life out of her tiny neck and cry, again and again, why did you write such a story, why couldn’t you give me a happy ending, why didn’t you make me save him, why did you fail. You’re my writer, aren’t you, couldn’t you have done at least that? He wanted to hold her in his arms and watch her tears fall down, because if even the god of their universe had failed to save their Dokja, this couldn’t possibly be his fault, and he was allowed to hate her.
[ This plan was the one where they couldn't afford to fail. ]
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
Vivamus, moriendum est.
(Let us live, since we must die.)
Seneca
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
“....Then all stations to Singil. Change at Line 1 for Incheon…”
Han Sooyoung stepped off the platform and into the train car. She had an interview for a job as a scriptwriter for some video game company in less than an hour, and she was already running late. She didn’t have a driver’s license yet, as the one she had currently was just about twenty-five years expired—so there was no choice but for her to take the metro.
A video game company.
To think the world had already healed to the extent that it could afford to create such leisurely entertainment.
Sooyoung didn’t really want the job, if she was going to be honest to herself. The job description sounded dull, and script-writing had never been her forte besides. But of course she was a genius writer and the pay was good, so it should be easy. It was a normal job, something that normal people with normal lives did.
She needed to get out of that suffocating Complex anyway. Whether it was yet another screaming match between the only couple in the company, the way Jihye was constantly crying because she was failing in all her classes, or Yoosung waking everyone up screaming again in the middle of the night—she needed out.
It was difficult to keep pretending not to hear that the arguments only ever ended in tears.
It was difficult to ignore that the girl who had conquered the seas was unable to conquer a textbook because she couldn’t stop drowning.
It was difficult to ignore the fact that the little girl that had once reached for the sky could no longer look up at night, not in fear of the stars, but in fear of the darkness that pervaded the absence of one.
Four months had passed since Kim Dokja Company’s return from the 1865th turn.
The train lurched into movement. Han Sooyoung was trying to move on.
She pulled her hoodie over her face and found a seat next to a man dressed in all black that also had the hood of his jacket pulled low over his face. They didn’t make eye contact.
“This is kind of like, really disconcerting. Never thought I’d see you taking the metro.”
He didn’t even spare her a glance. “And why would that be.”
“Well, for one, you can run faster than it,” she scoffed.
“It’s illegal to do that now.”
“And second,” she continued as if she didn’t hear him. “This is the first time I’ve taken the subway since the day we returned.”
He deigned to look at her then, and his lips twisted into something that might’ve been a derisive smile had it been anyone other than Yoo Joonghyuk, who’s facial muscles Han Sooyoung had always believed were physically incapable of forming real expressions.
“And why is that?” he asked, cruelly, like they both didn’t know full well why.
Very uncharacteristically, Han Sooyoung did not snap back with a perfectly crafted, just-the-right-amount of snarky comeback. Instead, she let out a quiet huff, her fingers twitching with the urge to hold something between them. “Because everytime I think of stepping onto one, I wish I could’ve been allowed to remain on that other subway forever.”
Yoo Joonghyuk fell silent, discomfited by this rare display of honesty.
He averted his eyes to glare instead at the normal commuters going about their day, glued to their normal phones, living their normal lives. A few of them felt a cold shiver run down their backs, scuttling away in fear and giving the large, muscular, suspicious hooded man a wide berth.
He didn’t tell her that this was his first time taking the subway too.
“You gotta job yet?” Sooyoung asked casually.
“What’s it to you.”
“Fucker. We haven’t seen you for four whole months, you know.”
Joonghyuk stared at her, indifferent, trying to convey that he couldn’t give a damn if they didn’t see him for four months or a hundred years.
Sooyoung scoffed in annoyance. “We lived two lifetimes together, didn’t we? Least we could do is check up on each other once in a while.”
Seeing how his face remained impassive and he didn’t answer, Han Sooyoung looked away scornfully, about to stand up and look for another seat.
Damn bastard. She’d barely gathered the courage to take the subway for the first time today and by some sort of twisted fate had to run into Yoo Joonghyuk of all people. Why did she even bother…?
“…I’m in a pro gaming team.”
He didn’t ask what she’d been up to, because he already knew. Mia gave him overly detailed, unwanted updates on what all the companions had been doing every time she visited the Complex.
“You’re missing them,” said Yoo Mia one day, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And you’re missing her.”
“I am not,” he’d replied automatically.
“You are.”
“Why would I care about people that have nothing to do with me? Especially that horrid woman.”
“Never mentioned who ‘she’ was, did I?”
Since that day, rather than twice a month, Yoo Mia started visiting twice a week.
“Ah, well. Of course you took up gaming again,” Han Sooyoung settled down again, opening a lemon candy and popping it into her mouth. “You don't even have any practical skills not related to killing, so what else could you possibly do?”
It was meant to be a joke, just another baseless insult as per usual, but she started a little in surprise when Yoo Joonghyuk lowered his eyes and tilted his head a bit, which she knew meant he agreed.
“Yes. I tried. There wasn’t anything else I could do.”
There was a silence that stretched for an uncomfortable length of time.
“I guess that’s expected. Honestly, I can barely imagine you working with a partner,” Han Sooyoung attempted to alleviate the heavy silence by bringing up a topic guaranteed to piss him off. “You’re probably just as useless as you were back in Kaizenix, yeah?”
The uneasy atmosphere dissipated when he hissed in annoyance. “We do not talk about Kaizenix.”
“Touchy,” she snickered, relieved that he was back to being irritable again. “Don’t worry, that’s staying my secret. But, in any case, the others will be happy to hear that you finally have a real job.”
“You say that as if you aren’t unemployed yourself.”
“I’m a freelancer, there’s the difference. Besides, I’m on the way to a job interview as we speak—hey, wait, how do you even know that anyway?”
He shuffled away from her, the tips of his ears brushed with an ever so slight hint of pink, grateful that he had chosen to wear a jacket with a hood. He ignored her question and rested his head against the window, signalling that the conversation was now over. Sooyoung, for her part, got the hint and muttered something about how assholes with shit personalities deserved to die horrible deaths.
They both fell silent for a period, and the train soon entered a tunnel. It was dim all over, lit up only by a couple overhead lights.
If he squinted a little, he could pretend it was the vast, endless darkness of the universe, and that the light was coming from the only star he’d ever wish to see again.
Han Sooyoung stiffened slightly beside him. He knew she was thinking the same.
“Oi, Yoo Joonghyuk. You wanna know something stupid?”
She always did that. In order to avoid acknowledging feelings she did not want to feel, she acted like nothing in the world actually mattered to her. It was pathetic.
“What.”
“Did you know that the very first subway was opened in London in 1863?”
He froze at that.
“Yeah. Coincidence? Probably not.”
He stayed quiet, face remaining inscrutable, but she could tell that he wasn’t as unaffected as he looked.
“Fucked up when you think about it, right? How we were just so casually thrown into a nonsensical loop by some goddamn fate or will of the universe. Or whatever,” Sooyoung continued rapidly, knowing full well that she was making a mistake. But she was suffocating, and she needed to breathe somehow, and the man beside her was the only one who’d understand. “Right?”
“Han Sooyoung,” said Yoo Joonghyuk, his voice a low warning. “What is your point in telling me this?”
“My point…” Han Sooyoung let out a slightly breathless, slightly mocking laugh. “My point, Yoo Joonghyuk, is that this train’s next stop is Gwanghwamun, where the Scenario Museum was built.”
His fingers automatically curled, looking for the sword hilt by his side, only to be met with emptiness. As they finally made it out of the tunnel, the train teetered slightly, and some of the lights in the train started to flicker, causing a few of the passengers to look up in confusion.
“My point is that the next exhibit to open within ten months will be a perfect replica of the Final Ark,” she ignored his reaction and willingly dug her own grave. “They’re even consulting the incarnation of Noah for it.”
Han Sooyoung hadn’t moved on. The train suddenly lurched to a stop.
“What does that have to do with me,” he spat, expression still utterly unchanged, but his voice was a little too tight to be casual.
“You know exactly what. Stop pretending you don’t.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stood up in one rough movement, breathing heavily.
“He’s gone,” he said, in a voice that came out far too loud, far too desperate than he’d intended. Several nosy people looked up at the two of them in curiosity. “The sooner you accept that the better.”
He roughly shoved past the confused and murmuring passengers towards the train car door, as a voice from the conductor’s voice floated in from the speakers overhead, urging them not to worry.
“Hey— Yoo Joonghyuk!”
He stood in front of the tightly shut doors and shoved it open in one smooth movement, causing everyone standing near it to scream or stumble back in shock as they realized that this was someone from the scenario-age who still had the blessing of the system.
He looked ahead into the Seoul he didn’t recognize, the Seoul that was not in devastation, the Seoul he’d never seen before, and stepped onto the train tracks.
“Are you really just going to give up like that?” Han Sooyoung yelled angrily, running forward and bracing against the opened doors. “Yoo Joonghyuk!”
He didn’t look back as he hopped off of the railway and onto the nearest rooftop.
“Weren't you his protagonist?”
Her last plea pierced straight into his heart as he leapt from rooftop to terrace to balcony, wanting to get away, somewhere, anywhere away from here.
Her eyes followed the lithe dark figure that vanished into the city jungle without another word. She slammed her fist into the side of the train car in frustration, crushing what little was left of the doors and causing passengers to scream again.
Spoken like a true goddamn coward.
Han Sooyoung stood there, trembling in shock and anger.
"Did she just call him Yoo Joonghyuk? As in, that guy from Kim Dokja Company...?"
"Then is that...?"
This was soon to be a logistical nightmare that she didn’t feel like dealing with, so she leaped out of the train as well and fell several stories onto the street below, startling several commuters as she landed on her feet, then she crouched and curled into a ball in the middle of the busy footpath.
“Uh… you okay, lady?” a young man nearby asked with some concern. He was just a normal teenager, hanging out with a group of friends doing normal teenager things.
Born after the scenario, she thought.
Instead of replying, Han Sooyoung watched as the flow of people continued on in a circle around her, barely a minor disturbance in their oh-so-important daily lives. She stared into the Seoul that had healed from its wounds, staring at the normal people that forged on, absorbed in their normal fucking lives.
Life simply continued to flow on around her, when loss of that one reader had frozen her in time. As if nothing had ever happened, when the world should have ended the day his soul dissipated between her fingertips.
She wanted to burn it all to the ground.
She could have.
She created this world. Would it really be so difficult to destroy it?
Just as the tips of her fingertips started to spark with the heat of the flames of hell, Yoo Joonghyuk’s belated response flew into her head using Midday Tryst. “I’m not.”
She’d thought that Yoo Joonghyuk, at the very least, would understand her. The Regressor—the man who lived perpetually in the past.
“I am no longer a protagonist.”
It seemed like even he had chosen to move forward.
Han Sooyoung stood up, put her hands in her pockets, and walked off without glancing back.
Tls123 died that day, at the hands of the man she would call her biggest failure and her greatest masterpiece.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“I am no longer a protagonist.”
That’s right. He’d seen to that himself when they’d regressed for the final time, doing the impossible to attempt something even more impossible. He’d seen to that himself the third time he opened his attribute window today, leaning against an archway on a veranda, trying and failing to remain steady in the knees. Yoo Joonghyuk sat down, panting heavily and eyes fluttering shut.
Sponsor: None
The title of [Regressor] had vanished completely, like he’d confirmed the first hundred times he looked at the display window. How ironic it was. He’d read that one sentence with seething rage for millennia upon millennia, envisioning with sadistic pleasure all of the ways he’d end the life of the being that ruined him. But now, all he could do was wish the name would appear once more, as it would at least be proof that star still existed somewhere in some universe.
And he wouldn’t be so lost.
He wasn’t a protagonist anymore.
If he wasn’t a protagonist, Yoo Joonghyuk was no one.
He was supposed to play in the national league today, for some ridiculous shooter game he couldn’t care less about. Everytime his scarred hands so utterly used to clasping a sword gripped a mouse instead, it didn’t feel real, it never did. It was just a dream that could vanish any moment.
He attempted to get into pro gaming because that was the “setting” his writer had assigned him, the personality trait Han Sooyoung had tacked on to pretend like he had some semblance of an existence before everything began. To pretend like he knew how to do anything other than survive in a ruined world.
As if he had a life. As if he had a family. As if he didn’t simply start existing a fully grown fucking adult. As if he wasn’t simply created to be the protagonist of some terrible novel.
Did you know that the very first subway was opened in London in 1863?
She didn’t just look that up in curiosity out of nowhere, no, Han Sooyoung wasn’t the type of person to do that.
He could tell she only knew that because one day, tls123 thought, wouldn’t that be a fun fact? Imagine Yoo Joonghyuk ending his regression turns on that number?
Everything was predestined to begin one day in the subway, and everything that transpired in the thousands of years hence was predestined as well. Whether it was by her or Kim Dokja, all that he had done was already decided for him. Nothing he ever did meant anything.
Even the choice to die had never been a choice at all.
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
Death is a gift you haven’t yet earned.
Leigh Bardugo
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
It took two more years before he made a decision that had never been fated.
“It seems that you too couldn’t forget anything.”
Yoo Joonghyuk hated Han Sooyoung. He truly did. She was the reason he’d been forced to endure and fight and live and die for so, so long, all because she’d wanted to save the pathetic life of the pathetic man that was her one and only reader.
"You wrote my story. In that case, you should also know where my story is supposed to end.”
He hated her. Because he, too, had wanted to save the pathetic life of the pathetic man that was his one and only reader, and she didn’t make him good enough to do so.
His creator. His god. The existence that had written his first sentence into being. There was no one in the world as hateful as she was.
“Hit me with everything you’ve got, Han Sooyoung.”
Han Sooyoung hated Yoo Joonghyuk. She hated him because his entire existence was a reminder of all her failures, all her grief, all her selfishness, and all her cruelty.
“Screw you! You've never, ever done what I wanted from you, so what the hell! You fucking hypocrite!”
The protagonist she had created for a world of suffering. The living manifestation of the fact that she hadn’t been good enough.
“I made you perfect. I made you perfect, infallible, I made you everything for him. You can– you can– shit, you can walk on walls, I don’t know!” tears were pooling at her eyelids, as she tried to unload every conflicting emotion she was feeling into her fist instead. “You’re my protagonist! And you still failed to save him!”
She hated herself, too, because she could tell he wished to die in this place. She could tell that this desperate attempt at fighting back was his way of asking her to kill him. And who’s fault was that?
She didn’t even ask him how he’d been doing all this time.
He swung his fist again, and waited for her to say it. Waited for her to justify every desperate, horrible feeling he’d harbored these past two years, emotions harbored in the heart he so badly wished to rip out.
“Why would you even come back when you’re not good for anything else?” She was full on sobbing now, and all the hateful thoughts she’d repressed in order to move on were spewing back up in a futile conversation they were having with their fists instead of words.
With some twisted mutual understanding, they hated each other so much because they were so, so alike; alike in too many ways, but especially in their shared desperation.
Of course they were alike. Of course they were fucking similiar, because every single author in existence puts pieces of their soul into every character they make. And the main character? The protagonist? The one she’d spent decades of her life lovingly writing about, crafting every aspect of his life, and imagining every single thought, every action, every word, every idea he’d have in every situation?
In similar fashion to her putting a piece of herself into every Avatar she’d created, she’d also unknowingly gave him her soul when they’d journeyed through those 3149 chapters together.
She hated him, and she hated herself just as much, because he was the one that had been left behind after they had both loved so, so painfully. They’d loved with the violence of an explosion of colliding stars, they’d loved with the force of the creation of universes and the destruction of it in the process. They’d loved so deeply they had sacrificed worlds for it.
And it still hadn’t been enough to save him.
Death might be the only way to end their mourning.
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
Author’s Notes.
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
Chapter 295: Ep. 56 - Reader and Writer, I
hey asshole, you alive? how long has it been for u already?
It’s been a while.
oho~ so he lives. anyways, im here to tell u i fucking fell asleep on my keyboard last night and didn’t get to edit todays chapter edit it tnx xoxo
Are you serious. Han Sooyoung.
Han Sooyoung?
Chapter 375: Ep. 71 - 50 Years Later, III
There are mistakes in today’s chapter again. You are very lazy.
shut thefuck up@ i just dont like thinking about kaixenix ok
However unpleasant, accuracy is necessary.
also I haven’t slept in 4 days
Why?
cuz writing obviously stupid
You should rest more.
why?? u worried?
Your writing is poor enough as it is.
bastard
I cannot fathom the changes that may occur in our reality once the fragments read the novel and create issues caused by grammatical errors.
o
fuck i hate that u make a good point. goddammit. die.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“Oh, wow? Captain, I didn’t even know your facial muscles could make a smile like that?”
Yoo Joonghyuk looked up from the screen at the smirking Biyoo. He immediately settled back into his comfortable frown. “I merely read a section of the novel I found amusing.”
“Sure. I guess telling Han Sooyoung-unni to go and rest is an integral part of the novel too, right?”
“…Be quiet. We are about to make the launch into the next world-line.”
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Chapter 472: Ep. 90 - One Person, I
jihye got a 89 on her calculus exam today
Okay.
okay???? oh plz i know ur proud of her
hey
admit it
I am.
see how hard was that?? idiot
why r u such a dry texter omgnhhrbfjjf
What?
whats what
What is “omgnhhrbfjjf”?
its a keyboard smash
How do I do it?
just press anything
7
LOLOLOL ur so stupid
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
They’d figured out that the Cloud System tended to accept them communicating via the manuscript as long as they didn’t reply immediately, as warping space as well as time seemed to be pushing the probability of it. Han Sooyoung allocated an Author’s Note section at the end of each chapter now, and Yoo Joonghyuk was tasked with editing and deleting them for the final publish.
He didn’t tell her he always kept a copy of every draft.
Sometimes it was important, and they risked a probability storm for it. But most of the time it was completely innocuous information, nothing more than simple proof of life, like Gilyoung celebrating his 18th birthday, or Yoo Joonghyuk complaining about how this one author was an airhead and he doubted his ability to finish serializing the novel correctly. Usually it took hours, or even days, for a reply to come back.
Once it had taken three years.
He had reread all of her words to him by then so many times he saw the letters everytime he closed his eyes.
Perhaps it had only been a couple hours for her. Time flowed differently everywhere, after all.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Chapter 493: Ep. 94 - Beginning of the End, I
do u think this will rly work?
its just
what if all of this ends up being for nothing anyway
yoo joonghyuk?
hey
r u alive?
Han Sooyoung.
fucking helldont do that i thought u were dead
what took u so long ? its been a month
There was an issue with a red caped magician who fashioned himself a doctor.
wtf???
Irrelevant. I took care of it.
ur so weird. anyway ignore that i was js saying stupid shit . just checking tht u arent dead bye
Han Sooyoung.
This will never be for nothing. I have to believe that it will work.
Otherwise it will prove difficult for me to carry on.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The story of Kim Dokja saved Yoo Joonghyuk from drowning in his anguish. He clutched at each sentence like it was a lifeline, embracing the few passages he loved to reread over and over. Sometimes, if he detached himself from his reality and let the story overwhelm him, he could believe that he was back with them again.
The words of the author behind the story, too, with her half-finished sentences and cutting insults and abysmal grammar and slang he did not understand, he clung onto just as desperately.
He knew that each time they communicated he wasted more and more probability, hastening the failure of the system and their ability to travel. Somehow, he could not bring himself to care.
Couldn’t he have at least this much?
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Chapter 516: Ep. 99 - The Oldest Dream, V
hey
u haven’t typed anything in awhile.
dont be dead, okay?
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Han Sooyoung averted her eyes from the bright glow of the laptop screen in the darkness of her room, blinking rapidly.
[ But then, just as the subway's doors closed, Han Sooyoung looked behind her with a slightly unsure, hard-to-read face of someone that left something behind. ]
[ Even Yoo Joonghyuk looked back, too. ]
[ The only person who didn't was Kim Dokja. ]
She looked away from the sentences she had typed herself and convinced herself she was exhausted from lack of sleep when a tear trickled down the side of her face.
Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t edited the manuscript in three months. She told herself it was likely due to the difference in their space-time, nothing more. He was probably busy beating up some artificial intelligence system in a futuristic world-line that didn’t produce physical novel copies anymore. That bastard wouldn’t die from something as small as this.
He couldn’t die.
This had to work. There was no way she’d be able to carry on otherwise.
┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐
I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk.
Atticus
└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘
Kim Dokja did not wake up.
Well… yet. Aileen had told the companions that his body would need time for each piece of his soul to find their way home, but that was going to happen soon. It was just a matter of time.
Han Sooyoung had gotten into a habit of smoking ever since the day she remembered. Perhaps it was because she was now more of 1863rd than she cared to find out. Perhaps after she died, her soul had returned to this one. Who knows. Who cares. Certainly not her, all she cared about right now was something to fill her lungs with to replace the burning anticipation and impatience.
“They kicked you out again.”
She didn’t need to turn around to see who that was. Actually, he didn’t even need to speak up, she’d been well aware of the familiar presence since a while ago.
“They did not. I went of my own free will ‘cause I needed a smoke break,” she lied smoothly, turning her head to face Yoo Joonghyuk and exhaling a breath of smoke along with it. “Get over here. Stop standing in the dark like a weird stalker, you’re creeping me out.”
“There is no need to hover. You’re disturbing our doctors. He’s going to wake up,” he blatantly ignored her jibe and walked over to stand next to her by the balustrade. He attempted to snatch the cigarette out of her mouth but she smoothly dodged him, anticipating that already.
“You don’t need to tell me things I already know.”
“You should stop smoking. It’s going to kill you.”
“Didn’t I just say not to tell me things I already know?”
They both glared each other down in one of the usual mental stand-offs. Surprisingly, Joonghyuk chose to back down first, opting instead to brace his elbows against the banister with an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
The words “then just leave” died in her throat.
Instead, she opted to take the stick out of her mouth and point it at him like it was a weapon. “If you try it just once, I’ll stop smoking for a week.”
It was a stupid joke, so she expected him to scowl murderously and slice it in half with his sword or something, but instead he looked up at her with an expression she didn’t know how to interpret.
“Well?” Stop looking at me like that.
“...A month. You stop for a month,” he said, snatching the cig from her waiting fingers and glaring angrily at it like it was trying to kill him.
Well, technically.
He put it in his mouth and awkwardly took a drag, immediately coughing afterwards. Unbelievable. He actually tried it out. When he’d never even thought of touching one in all of his 1865 lifetimes—
[ “Han Sooyoung. Kill me.” ]
[ “Haven’t I already told you, that if I could have, I would’ve done so ages ago?” ]
Yoo Joonghyuk choked again, this time spitting the cigarette out as they both staggered unsteadily and blinked at each other in surprise. It fell to the terrace floor, going unnoticed by the pair now gaping at each other like confused fish.
“Did you see that?” Sooyoung demanded as Joonghyuk blurted out: “the 1863rd turn.”
He opened his mouth first. “I didn’t… see that in the records.”
“I would’ve only used the record for strategies and plans,” she replied automatically, trying to quell the heart that suddenly pounded like it was going to leap out of her chest. “I guess that didn’t count.”
Yoo Joonghyuk of the 1863rd round had asked Han Sooyoung to kill him. She had replied, with a cold smile: I will, but I need to kill your sister, your surrogate mother, and your companions’ love for you too.
And he’d agreed to it. Because he trusted her.
Oh god. Oh god. The Han Sooyoung of this turn knew now that none of that had been truly necessary. She’d done so to isolate him, to weaken him, to take advantage of his depression and make it easier to take him out of the picture. The proof of it was the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk was standing before her now, alive and well, because Kim Dokja had managed to save him.
Save him from her.
She started to feel short of breath, and she leaned on the banister to regain her balance and try to push back down what was threatening to come up.
“Han Sooyoung.”
She didn’t like how gently he said her name. She didn’t like how immediately when she stumbled backward, he wrapped a steadying arm around her waist, and prevented her from falling. And she especially didn’t like his expression. Stop looking at me like that.
They stood frozen, locked in a strange stance, halfway between a ballroom waltz and a lover’s embrace. Searching in each other’s eyes for something that had long since been lost to time.
“I’m sorry,” said Han Sooyoung, and it was barely above a whisper.
He didn’t reply at first, watching her so intensely she thought she might burst into flames.
“…You’re not sorry for writing that story.”
[ “…Because of your story, I was able to survive until now.” ]
[ She glared at him with reddened, tearful eyes. “That’s not something I wanted to hear from a bastard like you.” ]
That was a cruelty she deserved.
“I’m not,” she said, and she tried to make her voice sound as uncaring as possible. It was a fruitless effort, given that she couldn’t stop shaking. He waited expectantly as she took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m sorry because if I were given a chance to go back, I would make the same choice, every single time.”
His grip on her waist tightened a little, but he didn’t break eye contact, still unable to find whatever it was he was looking for. “I know. And I know you’re not asking for forgiveness.”
Her eyes fluttered shut as she nodded slightly, unable to bear the heat of his gaze any longer. “I’m not.”
“And you also know that I would let you make that same choice, every single time.”
She still didn’t open her eyes. She was far too cowardly for that. “I know.”
He didn’t say anything more.
[ “I always hated you. And regretted it, too. Why did I write the story of someone like you with my own hands?" ]
[ She'd never have said these words in any other times. Even then, she continued to spit out everything anyway. ]
She opened her eyes again, but averted her gaze to glare instead at the clearly much more interesting blank billboard down the street. Deflecting was the answer here. “Yeah. I know. I just wanted to hear you say it. To alleviate my guilt, of course, since I’m selfish like that.”
She thought she could see a flicker of disappointment in his eyes, but what he said next caused her to freeze in dismay.
“Okay.” He didn’t let her go. “You’re forgiven.”
“Yes, you— what ?”
“I forgive you,” he repeated calmly, like he didn’t understand at all what she could possibly be so confused about.
“No? No, you…” Han Sooyoung sounded panicked now. It couldn’t end up like this. This was wrong. This was all wrong. “You can’t.”
“What exactly can’t I do?” Yoo Joonghyuk sounded calm. Too calm. It made everything a lot worse.
You can’t forgive me. Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, eyes darting to look somewhere, anywhere but him. This continued for some time, until he impatiently pulled her in even closer, forcing her to look at him.
“Han Sooyoung. Answer me.”
“You can’t !” Sooyoung shrieked finally, as she viciously shoved him away. The tears that had been threatening to prick at her eyes finally started to fall. “You can’t forgive me. I don’t deserve to be.”
“Hate me, please, Yoo Joonghyuk. Hate me. Hate me so much you want to kill me the amount of times I killed you and we both know it still wouldn’t be enough. Hate me so deeply you can’t stand to look at me.”
She still couldn’t understand the expression on his face, even now. She wiped away some tears, but they just wouldn’t stop falling. “Hate my existence. It’s what I deserve.”
She fell silent then, sniffling and wiping on her sleeve and attempting to breathe normally.
Then he smiled.
The bastard really smiled, for what must’ve been the first time in millenia, and it was far too gentle and too understanding and too loving and the worst part—it was directed at Han Sooyoung, the miserable, powerless god that had destroyed his life far too many times to count. He closed the distance between them and tenderly took her face in his hands.
“It might be what you deserve,” he wiped a tear away with a thumb. His hands were so callused and scarred it should’ve felt rough, but it felt like a gentle embrace, like that warm cup of tea he’d brought her while she was writing, like the first ray of sunlight at dawn after a long sleepless night. She couldn’t help but lean into it. “But I forgive you still, because I could never hate you, Han Sooyoung. My writer.”
The dam broke at that, and she crumpled onto his chest, violently sobbing her soul out. He just let her cry onto his shirt, soothingly rubbing circles into the back of her head.
“Shut up. Shut up,” she bawled, then started hitting his stomach, her already weak punches just slowly getting lighter and weaker. "You goddamn sap."
She really couldn’t stand the thought of him being hurt anymore. It was even worse to think that she would be the cause of his hurt. Not her protagonist. The noblest soul in all the worlds that had to go through too much, far too much for anyone to bear, all because of her.
“I hate you,” she sniffed, feeling her knees getting weaker, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she crumpled entirely onto the floor. Yoo Joonghyuk noticed and put a stop to that before it could happen, though, as he lifted her up and sat down against a wall, with her nestled in his admittedly comfortable lap.
…Sooyoung didn’t even pretend to protest to being manhandled.
“You’re so useless,” she said softly, when he rested his chin on top of her head. “Useless protagonist that can’t do anything right. Couldn’t even save Kim Dokja properly. Bastard.”
He used the other hand that wasn’t currently propping up her waist to gently run his fingers through her hair. “You think so?”
“Yes. You’re stupid,” she started to trace the patterns of some of the scars on his hand. “You, and… me. But mostly you.”
“That’s true. And now that sleeping beauty bastard is still there in the hospital because we couldn’t even save him properly.”
“Yeah, we’re both… stupid… and useless. We can’t do anything right.”
Joonghyuk started to twist a few strands of hair around his finger, let it unravel, then did the same thing over again.
“I can at least walk on walls,” he commented idly.
Sooyoung actually laughed out loud at that. Dumb protagonist. Did he really just make a joke? Idiot, foolish, bastard protagonist, what was he so endearing for?
“Aside from that. Stupid Yoo Joonghyuk,” she poked his chest, very angry at how cute he was being. “Stupid perfect protagonist. Why are you so… so…” Endearing? Caring? Forgiving?
How could you love me? Why would you ever love me?
Yoo Joonghyuk let her poke at his chest a bit more, then he laughed. “…You made me like this. I’ve long since accepted so.”
He actually laughed, and Han Sooyoung thought she was going insane, because she’d never heard a more beautiful sound. He was really laughing? All those years in space really made him have a screw loose. “What nonsense are you even talking about. Accepted what.”
“That you created me to love, Han Sooyoung.”
That Yoo Joonghyuk was the thousand-chapter long love letter Han Sooyoung had written for Kim Dokja.
“Not to suffer. It had never been about that.”
For what would all the grief, the resentment, the hatred, and the persevering have been for, if it had not been for love?
If she hadn’t been already seated, she would’ve been knocked off her feet. “That… day on the subway. You told me that you were no longer a protagonist.”
“I did.”
She felt an uncontrollable urge press her lips onto his gorgeous, unfairly beautiful ones. She pushed the craving back down immediately. Absurd. Ridiculous. Impossible. There was no way she could do that.
“Then… did you… figure it out? Who you are now?” Han Sooyoung was reeling with unknown emotions so overwhelming it was proving difficult to speak.
He gazed at her for a while, and it felt like he was seeing straight into her soul.
“...I do not have my ■■. Even now.”
It felt like he’d finally found exactly what he had been searching for.
“But, the conclusion I have come to after all these years, Han Sooyoung, is that I no longer have to be something to continue existing.”
The regressor died here today, and Yoo Joonghyuk continued to live on.
“I am just Yoo Joonghyuk. I am Kim Dokja’s,” he lifted her chin a little to look him in the eye. “And I am yours.”
He pressed his lips onto hers, with all the inevitably of the creation of universes, with the inevitability of the inviting embrace of death, with the inevitability of the meeting of two subatomic particles intimately linked even separated by billions of light-years of space.
She kissed him back slowly and tenderly, and it seemed that every cruel thing she’d ever done had all been only for up to this point.
She kissed him back, and he felt like he’d let her toy with his life over and over and over again as many times as she wished just as long as she would touch him like this again. His fingers that brushed gently through her hair felt like everything she wanted and everything she hated and everything she needed.
He decided right then that she was the only god he’d ever bow down to, when she ran her tongue on his lower lip and bit it. He hoisted her up onto the terrace handrail, thighs wrapped precariously around his waist.
That movement made him break their point of contact, so he pressed his lips against her clavicle and swept a stream of soft, featherlight kisses from her neck to her jawline, which left her breathless and wanting more. And also fully, thoroughly aware that anything a slight bit rougher would send her over the edge and down the ten storey building.
“If we fall off this balcony, I’m really going to kill you,” Sooyoung hissed into his ear, but there was no real bite to it.
“Okay,” Joonghyuk kissed her again, and wished there was real bite to it.
She permitted him to explore her mouth a little more before grabbing him by the hair and pulling him away from her face, wanting to see him better. And god , he was so damn gorgeous when he looked wrecked like this, the slightly greying hair a mess, lips swollen, eyes unfocused and mouth slightly ajar. She’d never seen him like this before. She was weighing the benefits of simply just having him right then and there, on the cold terrace concrete, when he pushed her off the rooftop.
She let out a confused huff, but before she could yell at him angrily he had already caught her, and was now standing. On the side of the building. With a very surprised Han Sooyoung on top of him.
Damn bastard protagonist was really walking on walls.
“What the fuck. Since when can you do that.”
“Since just now.”
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. This son of a bitch really just bought some shitty sticky boots item or whatever from the dokkaebi bag just to prove a point. She was really going to kill the unexpectedly cute bastard this time just to wipe that arrogant half-smile off his face.
But the killing part can happen later. Instead, she roughly grabbed at the back of his head and angrily kissed him again, then pushed him down. They managed to lever themselves into the nearest window, which happened to be Sooyoung’s bedroom.
“I see, stabbed to death in my sleep. A unique way of dying this time.”
“Shut the hell up. You’re not funny. Stop trying,” they stumbled backwards towards her bed, messily shedding off clothes in the process. In her eagerness to get his shirt off, she accidentally managed to rip it in half.
“Relax. I’m not going anywhere,” Yoo Joonghyuk laughed again, falling backwards onto the bed. Again. The stupid bastard. It should’ve been made illegal to do that. He didn’t even smile at all for like, thousands of years and shit, but now he was going to do that thrice in the past few minutes just to make her go crazy? So crazy he was even making her now think in clichés. She climbed on top of him, mounting his nonsensically gorgeous body, and bent over to run her teeth down his neck.
“I hate you,” she breathed, viciously biting down.
Was it her words, the way her bare lower body was straddling his stomach, or the current of pain that ran through his neck that made his breath hitch, made him shiver in delight? “I know.”
She noticed that. She absolutely did, as she tried fervently with shaking hands to unbutton her shirt, and he reached under it to unhook her bra.
He looked up at her now perfectly bare body. She couldn't fathom the meaning of his expression. Full of awe. Obsession… like she was something worthy of worship. Unable to form coherent words with his mouth, he said it straight into her mind instead.
“You’re beautiful.”
His creator. His god. The existence that had written his first sentence into being. There was no one in the world as incredible as she was.
Not that he would ever admit that. The bastard already had an ego so over-inflated she’d made a universe from it.
Yoo Joonghyuk gently ran a thumb from her navel to under her breast, tracing a scar that had been left behind after a particularly nasty battle. He didn’t ask why she would keep the evidence of all the struggles they’d triumphed in throughout all these years. He didn’t ask why she would, when she could easily craft a perfect new body for herself anytime. He didn’t need to.
The roving hands stopped at her thigh. A stab wound. This one looked a bit fresher than the others.
…He’d given that one to her that day at the museum.
He bent his head to kiss it.
Goddamn annoying prodigious writing skill. He was so damn beautiful for what. She needed to crawl inside his skin. She needed to devour his soul right now or she was really going to go insane.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s body was just as heavily marred as Han Sooyoung’s was. More, even. She felt like she could faintly see the ghost of scars from his other lives, too. She started to trace constellations between them, as if each one was a star.
He grasped her hand and guided it to a particular one on his left shoulder. That one… she’d given that one to him that day at the museum.
His blood ran hot. He didn’t know why it excited him this much, when they’d genuinely been trying to kill each other back then.
“I love you.”
The idea that she’d left a lasting mark on him in ways other than his soul. That she had written her story right into his skin.
“I know.”
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“What are we going to do about that idiot.”
Han Sooyoung rested her forehead onto the crook of Yoo Joonghyuk’s warm neck. Her legs were squeezed around his waist, arms wrapped around to reach his chest, and he had her hands grasped in his, entwining their fingers. Both were heaving in exhaustion and sweaty like they’d just run a marathon, but they’d just spent several hours clawing at each other’s skin, so that was to be expected.
“Bury him in a coffin,” he answered automatically.
“Stringing him up by the front of the complex seems more fun.”
“Both.”
“Yes. So when he can finally walk properly again, I’m going to beat him up a little,” she pressed her lips onto his skin, tasting salt. “And then you’re going to propose to him.”
“What?” his blood was growing hot again at the feeling of her tongue on his neck, but he ignored it to face her angrily. “No. I will be the one to teach him a lesson. You propose.”
“Excuse me?” she frowned and then pinched his back lightly. “Didn’t I suffer for 13 years and then died just for that idiot?”
“And which one of us died 1862 times more…”
“Didn’t you say, you chose to do that, so technically it wasn’t his fault?”
“Then the 100 years I just spent in space?”
If Sooyoung didn’t know better, she’d think that he was pouting.
“...Fine,” she pinched him again, annoyed at how cute he was. “Really, we both deserve it. Let’s beat him up first and then propose to him together after. Got it?”
“Okay,” Joonghyuk agreed, then impatiently bent his head to bite at her neck.
“...Again? Are you serious? We just— mmph,” her protests were muffled when he caught her lips with his own.
“Damn protagonist stamina,” Han Sooyoung muttered when he flipped her onto her back and clambered on top, but it wasn’t a complaint.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“Joonghyuk-ah.” Don’t you dare make a big deal out of it.
“Mhm,” he kept his eyes closed, pretending like he didn’t notice that she called him by name for the first time.
“Um…” Han Sooyoung started to stammer. She pressed her face into the pillow to slightly muffle her voice and lessen the embarrassment. “I’m glad my story saved you too.”
Yoo Joonghyuk pulled the comforter higher, trying to cover himself up, but there was no way Han Sooyoung would miss the way his ears flushed the prettiest shade of scarlet. It was the dead of night and there wasn’t a single light on, but he was practically glowing.
“...Stop making unnecessary remarks. Go to sleep.”
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────