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“We’re getting off together, right?”
Kim Dokja’s eyelashes flutter.
“Of course.”
[‘Lie Detection’ has confirmed ‘Kim Dokja’s’ words as truth.]
Kim Dokja smiles, then laughs softly. Yoo Joonghyuk and Han Sooyoung stare at him quietly. It was the first time they’d seen him smile like this, with the weight of a universe finally pried from his hands.
Finally, Kim Dokja was free.
“Let’s go.”
Behind them, the subway doors slide shut.
I want to live with everyone in one big house.
“Why does Gilyoung get more than me?” Shin Yoosung whines, shouldering Lee Gilyoung aside to inspect their plates closely.
Lee Gilyoung squawks at the treatment. “Hands off, they’re the same!”
I want to eat every meal together with everyone sitting around one big table, with bright lights and homemade food.
“Just bring the damn plates over,” sighs Jung Heewon, setting two down with soft clinks against the wooden surface. She bats away the hand reaching for one. “You too, Sooyoung-ssi.”
Han Sooyoung stretches with an exaggerated groan, heaving herself to her feet.
I want to eat good food, as much as I want, without worrying about money being wasted.
“Isn’t that a bit much for a child?” Lee Hyunsung says anxiously.
Lee Jihye waves him off. “You worry too much. These shrimps need to eat to grow.”
“You too, Dokja-ssi. Make sure you’re eating enough, okay?”
I want…
Kim Dokja blinks.
“Okay,” he says softly, a smile curling his lips.
Jung Heewon tilts her head, scrutinizing him. Kim Dokja tilts his too, offering her a mild but somewhat confused smile.
She shrugs. “I thought you’d fight us on that, honestly.”
Kim Dokja doesn’t know what to say to that. Jung Heewon is distracted by Lee Hyunsung gesturing for her to sit down, as cutlery is passed and plates are pulled closer.
“Hey! Hands on your own food!”
“You stole from me first, remember?”
“Isn’t Sooyoung-ah too small to finish all that?”
“Then we can save the leftovers.”
“Fried rice won’t be good anymore if it’s refrigerated and microwaved.”
“So picky! Then I’ll eat it, no one’s forcing you to.”
Kim Dokja simply reaches for his own spoon, as if tuning out the bickering around him—but he’s listening, more closely than anyone, to the words being passed around him.
His lips close around that steaming spoonful, as do his eyes. It’s blissful, the flavors so expertly woven by one Yoo Joonghyuk. He goes in for more.
Between muted conversation, a lull.
Kim Dokja looks up to see his companions watching him with curious expressions.
“Dokja-ssi,” says Yoo Sangah gently. “That’s not your plate.”
Kim Dokja looks down at his own serving, of golden rice with egg and peas and diced tomatoes. He looks at his hovering spoon, the falling clumps of rice mottled with red.
“Joonghyuk-ssi portioned one without tomatoes for you, like usual.” She smiles patiently, gesturing to where Yoo Joonghyuk is loosening his apron with one hand and setting aside the plate with the other.
He meets Kim Dokja’s eyes, unreadable.
“Ah,” says Kim Dokja. He sets his spoon aside and pushes the plate away with a small laugh. “I guess Yoo Joonghyuk’s cooking has advanced so much that I couldn’t tell.”
“That’s Master for you,” says Lee Jihye proudly.
Jung Heewon jabs her with an elbow. “Why are you speaking like you’re the one being complimented?” Lee Jihye opens her mouth in indignation.
“Stop dawdling and eat,” comes Yoo Joonghyuk’s gruff voice. Lee Jihye shuts up instantly.
Like that, they move on.
“...That Dokja, he’s behaving strangely.”
“Isn’t he always a bit strange?”
“But he has been a bit spacey lately, hasn’t he? Like he’s always thinking about something, or maybe not at all.”
“He speaks softly. Maybe it’s always been that way.”
“He stutters more, too. I think it’s a little endearing.”
“I like the Ahjussi who can stutter around us.”
To Kim Dokja, the stars had always felt like a second world to him. Where books are loud and bright and enough to overwrite the things he doesn’t want to see, the stars are quiet and make his thoughts feel not so scary. Where words on pages are ink-black on fields of white, the stars in the sky are speckled white upon endless black.
Their large house with bright lights is everything Kim Dokja had never dared to want. The happiness he feels is too strong, too constant, that sometimes it makes it hard to breathe.
When Kim Dokja is too happy for too long, his thoughts start to become a little scary. That’s why, Kim Dokja decides he wants to see the stars.
“Hyung? Where are you going?”
When Lee Gilyoung calls out and Kim Dokja stops, so do the rest of his companions. Jung Heewon pokes her head in, Lee Hyunsung stands from his armchair, Shin Yoosung takes two steps closer. Yoo Joonghyuk is reaching for his sword, flanked closely by Lee Jihye. Han Sooyoung is staring at him cautiously, Yoo Sangah by her side.
It happens all at once, a ripple of quiet movement like a pack turning inwards.
Kim Dokja falters under the sudden scrutiny, fisting lightly at his scarf as he turns to face them. His eyes lowered, his voice small, like his soft admission is a shameful confession.
“I, um…” He shifts his weight uncertainly, holding the fabric close to his heart. His face feels warm. “I wanted to see the stars.”
They are quiet, but not for long.
Jung Heewon laughs. “Why didn’t you just say so? Let’s go, let’s go.”
“Good call, Dokja-ssi. Tonight’s a good night for stargazing.”
“Yoosung-ah, don’t leave without a coat!”
It happens all at once, this ripple of movement.
“Are you all coming with me?” asks Kim Dokja, eyes slightly wide.
Yoo Sangah looks at him as she zips up her coat. “Don’t you want us to?”
Of course he does. “I guess so.”
“Then we’re coming with you.”
She makes it sound so easy.
Even though it was Kim Dokja who had brought it up, he’s the last to leave the house, rooted to his spot like he’s a bit dazed. It’s only when Yoo Joonghyuk fixes him with an impatient glare over his shoulder that he’s jolted from his reverie, blinking rapidly as he follows everyone towards the back porch.
“You’re slow,” murmurs Yoo Joonghyuk as they fall in step, though it sounds more like a question than anything. Kim Dokja shivers when those words ghost against his ear, in tandem with the sudden coldness of the late night.
Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung hop down from the porch with twin beaming smiles, flopping down into the grass despite Lee Hyunsung’s protests. They kick and stretch as if the grass was snow, before slowly falling quiet as the stars gently prickle against wide eyes. As if each one contained a world on their own, they count and count and count, trading words with muffled whispers that are blown too quickly by the night’s breeze.
The remaining companions follow suit far more slowly, though Han Sooyoung sprawls herself on the grass in the same exact manner. She’s teased by Jung Heewon, who rolls her eyes when Han Sooyoung bites back with a retort.
Kim Dokja hangs back, leaning forward against the porch railing. As does Yoo Joonghyuk, turned around and leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest.
With all the lights inside the house turned off, dark for as long as the still lake stretches, the closest stars come to light. As if emerged from draining waters, they speckle the faultless sky with what once were the eyes of the gods, now stripped down to their barren forms, cold but free.
How pretty, thinks Kim Dokja. Familiar, somehow, in a strange way. These are the stars that had followed Kim Dokja for a long, long time.
For as long as…he can remember.
Kim Dokja watches the stars with eyes like these.
He turns to Yoo Joonghyuk with his mouth open, to say something like, ‘aren’t you going to watch them too?’ but finds that he doesn’t have to. Yoo Joonghyuk is already looking up, his head tilted comfortably back on low shoulders. With a satisfied feeling, Kim Dokja turns forward again, then up at the stars.
Mimicking the young ones, he counts them too. He counts up and he counts down, without rhyme or reason. Up from one-hundred, down from one-thousand. Skipping the numbers he doesn’t like, repeating the ones he likes. He counts names, the letters inside them. He counts the mornings lived and the nights lost to sleep. Chapters then paragraphs then words. The birthdays and ages of his companions.
His own, too. Twenty-nine now, twenty-eight when the scenarios started. Twenty-eight still in the days before the scenarios, twenty-seven when…twenty…
For some reason, his mind is feeling a little muddy.
He jumps back, further back. Eighteen when he graduated high school. Seventeen when he bought a birthday cake with his own money. Sixteen when he ate it by himself. Fifteen when…wait, reverse seventeen and sixteen. Or were those on the same day? Maybe it was twice that it happened?
…What else was there? Hang on.
Agitated, he starts again. He remembers—most vividly he remembers being a bit lonely, in the middle of the ruined world, with fallen buildings and overgrown greenery, this world losing life by the seconds yet overrun with it.
But, but there was a similar moment before that, wasn’t there? When Kim Dokja would be lonely, and sit and watch the stars—Kim Dokja had always done something like that. When he was younger, lonelier—right?
He remembers his mother, and the other one (father), and the people who would leave bruises on his skin if he stared for too long. Memories so dark he couldn’t have possibly survived them alone—
He remembers—He remembers—all alone—
“Kim Dokja.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice is low, quiet. It still startles him so badly that he squeaks.
He buries the lower half of his face into his scarf, embarrassed. “J-Joonghyuk-ah?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is watching him carefully, instead of the stars. It’s strangely comforting, even if it does make him a little nervous. “You’re shaking.”
“Oh.” Kim Dokja looks down, gazing dazedly at his curled fingers resting against the railing, trembling. Sheepishly, he curls them further under his sleeves, hiding them from sight, and wears a plastic smile over his lips. “It’s cold, isn’t it?”
There isn’t much else he can think to say, so he turns back to watch his companions beneath the stars.
Some are watching quietly, some are whispering back and forth or laughing loudly. Kim Dokja doesn’t feel alone.
So why does he feel something so lonely in this nostalgia? There was someone there with him—there should’ve been someone there with him. A person that dressed in black, tall and broad and quiet, who would sit with him—under the stars—
A family, too, they existed, they existed! His family with him, sitting there with him when he was small and bruised and hurting, holding him as he reads in the dark until he starts going blind—
He can’t see their faces.
Kim Dokja looks up. His eyes jump from star to star to star, as if he could find the answers there.
Lonely, the stars seem to say. Lonely, lonely thing.
I wasn’t lonely, Kim Dokja insists. I had—him—them, the whole time, I had everyone—
Who? says the stars.
…Who? says Kim Dokja.
Something is very wrong.
「 THREE WAYS TO SURVIVE IN A RUINED WORLD: SKILL GLOSSARY
— “Avatar” 」
There’s this—gap in Kim Dokja’s memories, a hole where something important should be. He pries open his mind, sifts frantically through those disordered shelves despite how much that havoc hurts his head, opening that wound wider and wider.
Before, before, where’s the ‘before’?
Who was Kim Dokja before the scenarios? Why, why is there nothing?
Why was he lonely? Why is he afraid of heights, of small and dark places? Why does he freeze when Yoo Joonghyuk and Han Sooyoung begin to argue, why does he gather his children close in his arms and cover their ears from the pettiest of squabbles?
「 The exclusive skill “Avatar” allows its user to split off clones of themselves. 」
In that mind palace he comes across a shelf, with a name that’s familiar yet faintly foreign all the same. Maybe he should check this shelf. He hasn’t checked it in a long time, despite how many times he’s read this story. It was as if he’s grown tired of it.
「 The only condition is that the clones must be supplied with one or more memories belonging to the original user of the skill. The more memories a clone is given, the greater its autonomy. 」
Remember, Kim Dokja. Reading is how you lived.
「 Given enough memories, clones may become indistinguishable from their original persons. 」
“Dokja-ssi?”
Kim Dokja goes so, so still.
It’s Yoo Sangah this time, watching him from over her shoulder with the trailing gazes of Jung Heewon and Han Sooyoung. “You look a bit pale.”
Kim Dokja can’t breathe. He stares back at her dazedly. There are words in his tightened throat, so heavy they won’t dislodge.
“I’m fine,” he says instead with a smile. Maybe it’s because it’s so dark and they’re so happy that they don’t notice. They turn away, satisfied with Yoo Joonghyuk standing steadily by his side.
Han Sooyoung takes a moment longer to look away. Yoo Joonghyuk hasn’t looked away once.
Liar, liar, says the stars. You lie.
His nails carve crescents into the railing.
“Yoo Joonghyuk, did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That guy, he enjoys his tomatoes now.”
Han Sooyoung stops him before he can reach his bedroom, leaning against the hallway wall.
“Kim Dokja.”
He tilts his head quizzically. “Han Sooyoung.”
She sneers. “Don’t play games with me. I need you to tell me something.”
Her posture is loose, her shoulders relaxed, but something in the way she says these words makes Kim Dokja answer patiently. “I’ll answer the best I can.”
“Then tell me, how many times did Yoo Joonghyuk kill Asmodeus in the novel?”
Kim Dokja pauses. He thinks back, and back. He tries his best, like he always does.
“Sooyoung-ssi,” he ends up saying, gently as if calming a feral animal. “Why bring this up now? The scenarios are over, don’t you think it’s okay to…move on…”
He trails off slowly at the expression she makes.
“What kind of answer is that?”
He flinches at the quiver in her voice. “I—”
“What kind of answer is that?”
Kim Dokja goes quiet. His eyes fall, and his hands link uncertainly.
“I always thought it was strange, you know?” Han Sooyoung pushes back her tangled hair, lips drawn back in a mix of a snarl and an uncanny laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Sure the scenarios are over, but the differences are just too great. It was just the damn tomatoes, at first. And then I thought to myself, ‘why doesn’t this bastard talk about his favorite story anymore? Why is he never the first to speak anymore, despite how insufferable he’d always been?’” She paces, fast and loud. “It felt wrong, wrong wrong wrong, and then I understood why. The Kim Dokja I know doesn’t sit around and wait for the world to keep turning. Kim Dokja is someone who makes it turn.”
She rounds on him. He takes a single step back, the first of many, his face crumpled into a devastated expression.
There’s only one word for it, something they can both place.
Guilt.
“Don’t tell me,” she says in a quivering voice. “You knew?”
“I didn’t,” he says as if he’s begging. “Not until recently, I didn’t know, I really didn’t—”
“You didn’t even think to tell us? Is this your noble sacrifice?” She’s breathing heavily, eyes wide and deranged. “To let us grow old and die in blissful ignorance while you rot away in space? Don’t you know how fucking sick I am of these stunts? All the bullshit meant to make us happy and all it ever does is the opposite? Did you really think this would make us happy, this knockoff version of you?”
Kim Dokja opens his mouth, but the only sound that comes out is something tiny and feeble.
“How much?” She’s stopped talking to him, starts talking to herself. Paces back and forth, back and forth. “How much of him did he leave with you? A fifth, a quarter? Three months, three fucking months we’ve been lazing about with nothing but a fragment, living life like happy-ever-afters exist when he’s all the way out there!” She points to the sky, past the stars and endless worldlines where the universe’s sole reader still sleeps.
Kim Dokja fights the urge to look up. His voice is small, unsteady.
“But I’m here.”
Han Sooyoung stares at him. Her eyes shake.
“Are you?”
Did the real Kim Dokja cry like this?
Would the real Kim Dokja curl in dead silence and darkness under the fragile safety of his covers, shaking and scared of the lifeless star-things so far above him?
You’re wrong, Kim Dokja wants to say. It’s not a sacrifice, not to this version of me. I care about myself, I care too much. I care too much to give up everything I have now, I’m the constellation that traps you all in the fantasy of my choosing.
This chance is far too precious to him to give it away. He’s terrified, more than anything, that Han Sooyoung will tell everyone, shatter the daydream they all live in. It’s a selfish thing, to wish that she would keep it to herself and deal with it all alone, and damage her psyche beyond repair. This is what happens, when Kim Dokja is selfish.
Selfish, selfish. Something that the real Kim Dokja must’ve been terrified to be, so he passed on each ounce of selfishness to this paper copy of him, creating a version of him that thinks selfish things like isn’t it okay for me to live, just this once?
He resents the Kim Dokja who stayed behind. More than anything, he hates the Kim Dokja who chose to give away so much of himself that in the end it would never be enough. This unfinished person that was left behind might not be so pitiful that he’s all alone, but the ending he’s looking for would never be complete. This would be his tragedy.
He knows the question they all will ask. How much of him was left in that subway? Where is it now?
…Is there a chance, any chance at all, that this unfinished Kim Dokja could still be the real Kim Dokja? That maybe, there’s enough of him left to live out the life he was supposed to?
(He already knows the answer to this.
The Kim Dokja who doesn’t want to be saved will always be the real Kim Dokja.)
Kim Dokja hugs his arms to his chest. His feet are cold under the covers, but his skin and breath are still warm. If that was all it takes to be human, maybe he wouldn’t be so crushed in guilt and fear.
Liar, liar, says the stars.
He pulls the blanket over his head and covers his ears.
“Joonghyuk-ah.”
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t turn to look at him, eyes fixated on the stars above them. A nice view from the balcony—almost romantically so.
Kim Dokja tells himself this, even as he’s shaking quietly.
Small under the gazes of hundreds of thousands of eyes, beckoning him closer like they’ll drag him skyward if he doesn’t. Kim Dokja feels deeply unsafe without a roof to hide under, but he fears hiding even more. To hide would be to let the stars know that they’ve taken everything again.
Maybe he dragged them both up here just to prove that he hasn’t yet gone back to them.
“Joo—Joonghyuk-ah.”
“I heard you the first time,” says Yoo Joonghyuk, not unkindly.
Kim Dokja looks everywhere but the stars. He fixes his eyes on his linked fingers.
“Yoo Joonghyuk.” He’s still trembling. “I’m in love with you.”
With how quiet they both become, you would forget that someone’s supposed to be speaking. Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t playing his part properly, and Kim Dokja grows anxious. Then,
“...I don’t think you are.”
Kim Dokja stiffens. He feels warm, not in a good way. In a horrible, stifling way. His eyes mist with angry tears.
“If you’re going to reject me,” he says tightly, “then just say it outright. These are still my feelings, you don’t have to ignore them like—”
“Listen,” Yoo Joonghyuk cuts in. He takes a small breath, and looks up at the sky. Kim Dokja doesn’t mirror him. “I…”
His eyes flutter shut, and his lips press together.
“I’m supposed to be the one who asks.”
Kim Dokja stares at him. His heart threatens to fill, and he forces it back down. This hope is too tragic. “I don’t understand.”
“You aren’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk slowly, carefully, “because you told me.”
Kim Dokja goes still.
It’s a quiet realization, no dropping in his stomach or coldness on his skin. Such a thought should’ve been so catastrophic that it’d break him down right then and there, but instead it’s a numb feeling.
Yoo Joonghyuk knows.
Likely not the details, only just as much as Kim Dokja himself knows, because for a regressor carrying the memories of the world itself, it was always going to come down to this. That Yoo Joonghyuk knows, somewhere in his heart, that the Kim Dokja before him isn’t whole. Such a fragile story was always bound to break.
Yoo Joonghyuk was already in love with Kim Dokja who existed in entirety, the person who would have never said it first.
It’s not fair.
“I’m the one who’s here,” he whispers. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t hear him.
“Why come tell me?” Yoo Joonghyuk says, eyes not moving from where he looks beyond the balcony, beyond them. “Why here, why now?”
Because I want to be happy, thinks Kim Dokja. Because, look at us. We’re so happy, all these survivors of the apocalypse, living together in one big house. We’re so happy, and I want to be happy with you.
“Because I’m going to die soon,” is what he says instead.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s head snaps around to stare at him. Kim Dokja flinches, his mouth dry after speaking on its own.
His companion’s voice is low, careful, like speaking too loudly would lift the fragile Kim Dokja away. “…What makes you think so?”
Kim Dokja stares at him. He doesn’t know what to say.
“The stars told me so.”
In truth, it’s intuition.
Because Kim Dokja is a selfish person, and this is what happens to selfish people.
Kim Dokja has stopped reading.
His companions have gifted him many books, altogether. Story upon story, because they’ve always seen how much he loves them. They pile up in his room, filling shelves until they have to be stacked horizontally on top of them. Entire worlds and retold histories, sitting on that bookshelf.
Kim Dokja has not read a single one of them.
All of them have been opened. All of them sifted through, each page touched by his fingertips.
Kim Dokja has not read a single one of them.
If there was one sentence in the world that should not exist, it’s a simple one; Kim Dokja no longer likes to read.
But the real Kim Dokja is a reader, so that’s what he becomes.
That’s how he passes his time—he sits on the sofa, sometimes cross-legged, with a book open in his lap. He turns the page, and turns again. Turn, turn, turn. Through it all, his eyes are unseeing and his mind is blank. He sits there and turns as the world turns around him.
He’s still happy.
“Why,” says Jung Heewon slowly, “has Yoo Joonghyuk been getting into the habit of touching Dokja-ssi?”
Kim Dokja jumps, jolting oddly with the urge to snap his hand away from Yoo Joonghyuk’s. He hadn’t even realized their hands were slid together, Yoo Joonghyuk rubbing circles into the back of his hand like it’s second nature.
At this point, it really is second nature. Ever since he confessed, Yoo Joonghyuk’s never really let him go.
“Don’t say it like that,” he hisses weakly, mortified on Yoo Joonghyuk’s behalf. “You make it sound so…foul.”
“You care more about that than answering the question?”
“They’ve really started dating,” says Lee Jihye with too much confidence.
Kim Dokja flushes red. “That’s—you’re wrong!”
“Look! He’s blushing!”
“Are you even listening? I said you’re wrong!”
He huffs and puffs, but deep down, it gives him a little thrill.
(Because, to be mistaken for lovers…it’s close, isn’t it?
He is so desperate.)
Kim Dokja sneaks a glance to Yoo Joonghyuk. Yoo Joonghyuk isn’t looking at him, but instead directing a half-hearted glare at Jung Heewon.
He continues to hold his hand.
The world keeps turning.
“You’re eating well, Ahjussi.”
Kim Dokja looks at Shin Yoosung. They’re standing side by side in the kitchen, chopping and peeling vegetables together. Yoo Joonghyuk may not let them do much, but he recently began to relent for simple things like this.
Her comment makes him reach down to absently trace a line up the side of his thigh, where he knows faint stretch marks are forming underneath fabric. He lets out a small laugh. “Are you making a jab at my weight?”
Shin Yoosung looks so scandalized that Kim Dokja almost feels bad. She huffs petulantly when she realizes he’s joking. “Look at you. I’m sure I’ll be jealous of your body someday.”
Kim Dokja bumps shoulders with her affectionately. “Don’t say that, Yoosung-ah.”
She nods in exaggerated obedience, then looks off to the side as her lightheartedness trails off into softness. “I’m just a bit surprised, still. After everything, I thought…I thought it’d take much longer for things to end up this way. It still feels like a dream sometimes.” She looks up at him. “Things were especially hard on you, Ahjussi. I’m happy that you’re happy.”
Kim Dokja looks at her warmly. “That’s kind of you, Yoosung-ah.”
“No,” Shin Yoosung shakes her head. “It’s just how I feel.”
She trails off then, lips parted like she still wants to say something, so Kim Dokja stays quiet to let her do so. But she never ends up saying anything after that, just watching him with quiet eyes. For the first time, Kim Dokja finds himself unable to read those honest eyes, and it takes him a while longer to realize it’s because they’re searching. Looking for something, a something that she’s yet to find.
An unreadable, but no longer unrecognizable expression. Everyone has it, these days.
It kills him to not know. That it could’ve been Han Sooyoung who whispered her realization, and the whisper turned to wildfire that spread amongst his companions. Maybe it’s the way Yoo Joonghyuk seems to hover by his side, with lingering eyes and hands that make Kim Dokja feel warm inside, even though he knows it’s because he fears for him and for that lonely outburst he’d made under the stars.
Or maybe—more likely—it was nothing at all, and his wrongness had spoken on its own. Family, chosen family, know each other best after all. It might’ve hurt more, been more strange if they hadn’t noticed a thing.
Kim Dokja is a doll. Sewn with loving hands that leave a piece of its artist with him, but he is still stuffed of cotton and woven of cloth. He plays pretend with his chosen family in the loveliest dollhouse one could ever find. A doll’s face doesn’t change unless you pull at loose threads; like that, Kim Dokja continues to smile, hanging threads all over, and no one dares to touch him and pull him loose.
He finds himself crossing off the days like this, a countdown without a conclusion.
“It’s a nice night for stargazing. Dokja-ssi, will you join us?”
Kim Dokja freezes.
“No,” he says with a thin-lipped smile. “I’ll pass.”
How dare you, says the stars. How dare you.
Yoo Joonghyuk finds him like this, curled small in the furthest corner of his room, clutching himself like he’ll fall apart if he doesn’t.
His companion idles uncertainly, standing before the Kim Dokja who shakes and shakes. The real Kim Dokja may have told Yoo Joonghyuk to go away—Kim Dokja thinks to do so, just as one more feeble attempt to convince everyone of the story that won’t come true, but his selfishness is too much. His mind is hazy and barely-there, but above all else he doesn’t want Yoo Joonghyuk to leave him alone under the stars.
Several minutes. Kim Dokja finally lifts his uglied face.
“Is it selfish of me to want to be happy?”
Yoo Joonghyuk watches him.
“Yes,” he says. “Is that so bad?”
Should he know the answer to that?
Kim Dokja makes a strange sound, between a whimper and a cry, and continues to be small in that far corner of his room.
“What are you thinking?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice is quiet.
I want to live, is the first thing he thinks. I want to live. I want to live.
He doesn’t dare say it.
Kim Dokja, who had lived all the way up to twenty-nine when he never really wanted to. For his labor, the world continues to turn, even if he wishes it wouldn’t.
“I want it to be me,” he says breathlessly.
Too many words and not enough. I want to be enough for everyone. I want to be the one who gets to live. I want to be the one you love. Me, me, me.
He waits for Yoo Joonghyuk to ask for elaboration. None of his words make sense, even to himself. None of his thoughts make sense. He is falling apart.
“Kim Dokja is Kim Dokja,” is what Yoo Joonghyuk says instead.
Ah. His heart is being cored open.
Kim Dokja closes his eyes. His brow quivers, and his parted lips begin to tremble.
“Will you wait for me?” he says softly, shaking.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes are frighteningly gentle.
“Hyung.”
Kim Dokja jolts. He looks up from the book, laying open but unread in his lap.
“…Me?” he says uncertainly.
Lee Gilyoung nods with a strange expression, before it eases back into something carefully neutral but somehow a bit soft. It doesn’t seem quite right to call it so, but Kim Dokja gets this feeling, nonetheless.
“Dinner’s ready,” says Lee Gilyoung.
He reaches out to give his sleeve a small tug when he does nothing but blink at him, so Kim Dokja closes the book and sets it aside. Lee Gilyoung doesn’t comment on the fact that he hadn’t saved his page.
“You better be there,” Lee Gilyoung says over his shoulder, even though Kim Dokja has never once missed sharing a meal with everyone. He bounds away to shout something down the hall, and leaves his hyung to follow.
Kim Dokja takes a moment to come back. He’s gotten good at disassociating, fingers flipping pages as his mind fades for hours on end. Sometimes it takes him a moment to recollect himself, like a spirit settling back into its corporeal self.
It’s easier during mealtime, because of how good it makes the house smell. How lively everyone sounds, those most familiar voices reaching through walls to settle by his side.
Kim Dokja wanders down the hallway, dragging his fingertips along the wall. He watches the shadows of his companions moving back and forth, their figures casting across the floorboards under warm light and reaching his feet. Like this, they’re still touching.
He stops at the entrance.
I want to live with everyone in one big house.
“Yoosung’s stealing from my plate!”
“Are you blind? I did not!” She flicks Lee Gilyoung’s forehead, who‘s late to dodge.
“Yoosungie, you’re getting too manipulative,” Jung Heewon sighs. “I did see you take some.”
“…Snitch.”
I want to eat every meal together with everyone sitting around one big table, with bright lights and homemade food.
“Helping for once?” Yoo Sangah muses as Han Sooyoung sidles up beside her to rummage through the drawers.
The chopsticks clack in Han Sooyoung’s fist. “I just don’t want anyone’s grubby hands touching my utensils.”
I want to eat good food, as much as I want, without worrying about money being wasted.
“Master, I’ve always wanted to know, how do you plan out meals for each day? Don’t you worry about suddenly not having enough for everyone?”
“It’d be easier if people weren’t constantly rummaging through the fridge,” Yoo Joonghyuk says gruffly as he unties his apron.
“You biased bastard!” Han Sooyoung shouts from across the kitchen. “I’ve seen you watch Kim Dokja do it and say nothing about it!”
I want…
He wants too much.
It’s hard to enter, for some reason. He finds himself stopped at the doorway, with his heart hurting and his eyes slightly warm.
Is it okay for him to be here?
Even though he’s here every day, is it okay?
Sometimes, being with everyone like this is a lonely feeling.
“Kim Dokja.”
He startles, feeling as though he’s been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. A bit timidly, he steps out from behind the corner and under the chandelier’s light.
“Mm,” he says softly. “What is it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk takes his wrist. “Come eat.”
And Kim Dokja, guided so gently to his seat beside his companion, feels these thoughts go quiet.
Shin Yoosung greets him as he scoots his chair forward, and he greets her back. Then Lee Gilyoung greets him too, loudly as if he doesn’t want to be left out. And then Lee Jihye greets him with a giggle although it’s starting to become redundant, and Jung Heewon, catching onto the bit, also greets him with a dramatized flourish. It continues through the table in a circle—Yoo Sangah pretends to bow as if they’re meeting for the first time, Han Sooyoung rolls her eyes but throws up a hand in a wave—until Lee Hyunsung, hiding his smile behind his chopsticks, nudges at Yoo Joonghyuk to finish it off; Yoo Joonghyuk only offers a deadpan stare and a slightly embarrassed grunt.
Kim Dokja laughs. His heart has stopped hurting.
Ah, he thinks to himself. He wouldn’t mind staying like this, even just for a little longer.
Even if Yoo Joonghyuk always treats him like he’ll break and Han Sooyoung treats him like he already has. Sometime soon, his children will have to mourn him again. His companions will grieve for a corpse without a body.
And Kim Dokja is really, truly happy.
The world keeps turning.