Chapter Text
"Ahjussi," Yoosung whispers and her voice is small, not just quiet—terrified; sleep drains from Dokja as he goes to his elbows in alarm. Yoosung swallows, blanket bunched in her hands, and her eyes flash unevenly in the darkness, and then she says, "I thinkimdying."
It's understandable that Dokja scrambles in ill-managed panic for the better part of the night, at least until Yoosung's troubles turn out to be benign news rather than bad—it is also for this reason that Dokja finds himself knocking on Yoo Sangah's room at barely a quarter to three in the morning: no one is dying, but it is urgent enough to warrant dragging his ex-coworker from bed while Yoosung waits in the bathroom wrapped up in her and Dokja's blanket and nursing tea Dokja made for her.
"Dokja-sshi?" Sangah says from the doorway, rubbing her eyes but alert. Nobody has the luxury of owning sleepwear these days, but she's wearing her undershirt at least, not her full Olympus-sponsored gear get up. "Did something happen? Is everyone alright?"
"It's nothing dangerous, but I need your help, Sangah-sshi," Dokja says, and he might not quite trust her with planning the progression of the third timeline, but he knows well enough that he can trust her with a little girl who needs a kind unnie to help her through her first steps into becoming a young lady. "I feel a woman's touch is necessary in this particular case. You see..."
It's a full hour later, when Yoosung is taken care of and tucked into bed that Sangah wishes him a good rest of the night and closes her door with a yawn. Dokja lets out the long sigh he'd been holding in and leans his forehead against the wooden frame, allowing himself just a tiny moment of weakness. God, that first hour until he'd finally coaxed Yoosung into telling him in a terrified and embarrassed rush what exactly scared her this much...
Dokja detaches himself from the door and almost bangs his head against it because there are horror movie jumpscares and there is Yoo Joonghyuk standing at the end of the hallway with a glower dark enough to suck in light. In the next second he teleports a scant couple of feet away from Dokja so that Dokja can regard his expression in yet more grotesque detail: handsome features even in this lighting, they are no less petrifying than the stare of the Gorgona herself.
"...Jesus Christ—Joonghyuk-ah," Dokja cringes at the way his voice cracks with lack of sleep. "Why are you up at this time?"
Joonghyuk continues glaring at him for a full minute and then his eyes flicker to Sangah's closed door and back to Dokja. Impossibly, his face darkens further. Typical joonghyukism #41 through #43, Dokja notes absently. What in the name of god is a joonghyukism, thinks not Kim Dokja.
A yawn fights its way out of Dokja's mouth before Dokja can suppress it—his jaw cracks from how badly he needs to catch up on his own rest. Joonghyuk watches it with a strange look but when Dokja tries to skim Joonghyuk's thoughts a small error pops up out of nowhere. Dokja frowns—[Character understanding update required], the window reads, and below, [Update available in five business days]. Dokja rubs a knuckle over his eyes. Yoo Joonghyuk is right—Kim Dokja is not well, thinks not Kim Dokja caustically.
Dokja ignores it as always and dismisses the window. "Well, whatever kept you up so late, I hope you get some rest," he yawns again and stretches his back until it pops loudly. Dokja makes a small relieved sound—something pinches in Joonghyuk's expression—then waves over his shoulder, "G'night." He turns his back on the eldritch anger that Joonghyuk sputters through.
Yoosung is miserable and small when he finds her—she's reading the packaging on the pads Sangah gave her with a look between worry and nausea. Despite the bags purpling under her eyes her face still lights up when Dokja comes in.
"Can I stay with you, Ahjussi?" Yoosung says, already cuddled under both of their blankets.
"You may—but only if you put your socks back on," Dokja says with very theatrical exasperation and combs a hand through her freshly drying hair. He'll need to find another flat with water by the end of her period, because being constantly on the move also means occasionally going weeks without showering, an unfortunate side effect of the end of the world—but Yoosung is Dokja's, and what is Dokja's will have everything he can possibly give them. "Does it hurt a lot right now?"
"It's a little better," Yoosung pouts as she pulls on the socks she'd shucked off, and then curls into Dokja's front—Gilyoung-ie will have a fit come morning, but a girl is entitled this kind of favoritism under circumstances as difficult as these. Dokja throws the rest of the blanket over her legs and shoulders and pulls her up close so she's warm, because Sangah had stressed, how badly the cold exacerbates the pain. He rubs her lower back in slow circles while the painkillers do their work, and Yoosung buries her face in the crook of his shoulder with a pained sound. Starved as Dokja is it comes almost too easily, fitting his incarnation against the jagged edges of himself. He knows they're sharp and yet Yoosung is out like a light in minutes.
Despite how troubled of a sleeper he is, so is Dokja.
"Character understanding update," Dokja mumbles as he flicks through the TV channels while he waits for the next scenario in a subspace that looks absurdly enough exactly like a dentist's reception room. He has nothing to do but hope his pre-scenario foreplay pays off: Sangah has wandered off to find a way to break out—she won't find it, the doorways between incarnation cells are skill-proof until the scenario is in session—and his children are with Jung Heewon if everything has gone according to how he'd set this event up. Lee Hyunsung is stuck with Han Sooyoung but only because the additional presence of an underage Lee Jihye will counteract Han Sooyoung's indecent antics.
Dokja swipes through the endless messages of constellations and their tinkling donations, long since muted—Dokja only ever checks his income at the end of the day to see how far he is from the atrocious sum needed for the final scenarios. Under all the relevant windows, the small red error window pops up again and Dokja's hand stills over it.
It's the only part of the skill related to Joonghyuk that's been disabled—all of the skills Dokja bookmarked off of Joonghyuk, knowing his general emotional levels, the point-of-view hopping, all of that is still at his disposal—he just can't read Joonghyuk's mind like an open book anymore. It can only mean that at this point in the story there are things about Yoo Joonghyuk that Dokja doesn't explicitly know. That can't be right, thinks not Kim Dokja sarcastically, Kim Dokja has a diary where he writes down the angle at which Yoo Joonghyuk picks his nose and numbers it so obsessively he's reached triple digits.
"Yoo Joonghyuk does not pick his—what did I even do to you," Dokja moans, like a spoiled brat because he's not the one who has to sit and listen to this fanatical drivel every single calendar day about a perfectly average control freak with PTSD and depression. "Shut up," Dokja hisses and sinks petulantly into the corner of the uncomfortable fake leather couch until his chin digs into his clavicle, knees curled up to the side so just his shoes hang off. He turns off the TV and thumbs his phone on instead, the action comforting and familiar.
Dokja re-reads the newest revision of The Three Ways of Survival to the point that he comes to physically despise whenever his existence is even slightly mentioned, usually in less than passing, a deliberate spit in the face of Dokja's insignificance. Sick of that, Dokja gives in to his old vices—he's currently engrossed in scrolling through saved videos from the old, non-apocalyptic internet when he hears steps coming up.
"Sangah-sshi," Dokja says without looking up and scoots to give Sangah her seat back. He swipes through the folders and leans to show her the screen, "This is the video I meant before—look," it's one of his favorites, the young woman who streams with her dog, the tiny dachshund with a huge attitude. She asks the dog to put its snout through her heart-shaped hands but it sits on its bum instead and whines evocatively, profoundly puzzled and horribly cute. Dokja doesn't really understand English apart from popular vocab or prominent slang but Sangah wields a whopping C1—this should be right up her alley.
"This is Pea the dog," he explains with a half-forgotten enthusiasm because Sangah loves dogs and she's always wanted to get one but then the apocalypse happened and most of the dogs were eaten by monsters. He'd dreamed a very long time ago, that perhaps a puppy would fix his broken family, but then his mother went to jail for murdering his father which put a damper on eleven-year-old Dokja's optimistic canine plans.
"She's cute, isn't she?" You should shut up, thinks not Kim Dokja. "Don't you think she's the sweetest little—..." he turns to Sangah and trails off.
Yoo Joonghyuk stares back. He hovers like an omen of certain demise and looks between Dokja and the phone in Dokja's hand—frankly, something he's never once been described as in the novel—like a deer caught in the headlights. 'New joonghyukism acquired'—Kim Dokja is very very ill, thinks not Kim Dokja. Stop digging through my very ill mind then, snaps Kim Dokja. Joonghyuk stares at Dokja's face with this jarringly unfamiliar expression, then slowly backs away while keeping eye contact and disappears into the neighbor cell doorway without so much as a sound.
They're supposed to be unbreakable to incarnations. Dokja blinks, uncomfortably slighted.
'Right—do you have anything you want to add to this conversation?' says the girl streamer from his phone as Pea whines into the mic. Dokja pauses the video, frowns, then turns on the frontal camera. There's nothing out of the ordinary, except for Dokja's very average six point three face. Does Kim Dokja mind? snarks not Kim Dokja.
I don't, thinks Kim Dokja and turns his phone off.
"Do you like dogs," Joonghyuk asks him much later, after the scenario has been completed with Dokja two fables richer and Asgard several degrees more hostile. Even though the question is quiet and surprisingly civil it still turns heads from the rest of their company, and yet nobody addresses it: Dokja's chummy friends carry on with their conversations because they're little traitors, every single one of them; they think Dokja is designated by law to micromanage Joonghyuk's Moods. Isn't Kim Dokja Yoo Joonghyuk's encyclopedia? thinks not Kim Dokja dryly. Dokja doesn't bother with a response.
"What the hell is a hear me out cake?" comes Heewon's disgruntled voice from the other side of the camp.
Joonghyuk either doesn't hear or doesn't care and instead rakes his eyes over Dokja's face, like there's something on it that greatly disturbs him. Dokja spoons some of the rice into his mouth so he doesn't have to think about offending the protagonist of this universe simply with the way he looks. Even half-cold the jjigae tastes good because it was made by Yoo Joonghyuk. "What?" Dokja says instead of all of that because he genuinely doesn't understand where this is coming from.
"Do you like dogs," Joonghyuk says again and his inflection doesn't change, which is more than a little unnerving because Joonghyuk doesn't keep a habit of repeating himself to other people.
"Why are there animals on it?" Hyunsung's worried tone carries over the children's shrieking laughter at the kids' table.
"...Who doesn't like dogs?" Dokja ventures carefully, because he doesn't understand what the correct answer is yet.
Joonghyuk says nothing but glares thinly at Han Sooyoung who notices and immediately flips him off, then returns to her heated discussion with Heewon over the topic of anthropomorphic foxes and Disney horses. Dokja laughs placatingly and moves a hand over Joonghyuk's where he's began unsheathing his sword. It's furnace-hot, the way it's always been—Dokja still remembers how Joonghyuk's fingers burned around his throat. Joonghyuk stares at where Dokja's hand barely covers his own.
"That is a vegetable," comes Han Sooyoung's scandalized commentary.
"You were," Joonghyuk makes an Expression, then discards it and frowns instead. He's still staring at Dokja's hand and Dokja snatches it away like burned and returns to nursing his dinner. "The video," Joonghyuk tries again and looks at Dokja like that explains everything. Kim Dokja needs to stop driving the Fourth Wall up the wall thinking about Yoo Joonghyuk's eyebrows, thinks not Kim Dokja. Shut up, thinks Kim Dokja.
"Pea," dawns on Dokja eventually as he scrapes the spoon against the bottom of his bowl. Joonghyuk makes a Joonghyuk noise which translates to something vaguely agreeable in normal people talk. Dokja is so good at this. "I mean, she's a very polite dog," he hums, stirring the stew. "She's very likeable, even though she's got a strong personality."
"I thought," Joonghyuk begins as soup plops sadly from Dokja's spoon and then Dokja's bowl is abruptly confiscated as Joonghyuk leaves the table with a rattle. Dokja stares at his empty hands.
He isn't surprised by how quickly he's learned to annoy his companion, per se—he's read this man have every possible reaction on Earth over tens of thousands of pages spanning millenia, packed into thirteen miserable years of Dokja's life. He doesn't mind the stew either because he isn't even hungry, but this was still a weird conversation to have. Joonghyuk is a weird person when he's not busy being a terrifying one.
Dokja is thumbing his phone mindlessly when Joonghyuk returns as suddenly as he'd disappeared—just to shove Dokja's bowl back hard enough that Dokja almost drops his phone. The bowl is hot again too, because apparently Yoo Joonghyuk had actually gotten up to give Dokja seconds.
"I thought you only read on that damned thing," Joonghyuk mutters as Dokja takes a somewhat wary sip, and also, "is it dog videos you like or Yoo Sangah?"
What in the loving name of Jesus, thinks not Kim Dokja.
"...I like dog videos," Dokja says once his coughing fit subsides—really, Yoo Joonghyuk and his habit of making Dokja choke. Nevermind the preposterous notion of Kim Dokja liking anyone else right now, it wouldn't matter even if Dokja did, he thinks numbly, and coughs again: there’s the fact that Sangah isn't Dokja's type, and the other, far more important detail—disregarding her being universes out of his league, Kim Dokja isn't Yoo Sangah's target demographic in the first place. None of that is anything Dokja has business airing though, which is why he keeps nursing his seconds in uncomfortable silence. It's disgusting how good they are.
Joonghyuk is silent for the rest of dinner and then disappears back to whatever he'd designated as his own territory in a dramatic swirl of black coat and gloom. Dokja would venture to say his protagonist's expression had been dark enough to qualify as #99 on the joonghyukism scale.
The next scenarios spawn consecutively and ultimately result in: a) Dokja almost dying from probability constraint violations, b) Dokja almost dying from a spat with the Papyrus nebulae, and c) Dokja dying from a high altitude fall, which is both embarrassing and traumatic because the last thing he sees are Gilyoung's and Jihye's horrified faces over the cliff break, and he thinks during the obscenely long fall, that someone is going to have to fish his body out of the piranha-infested Amazon river if he wants to resurrect in one piece; it wouldn't be quite so bad if the piranhas weren't greater fifth grade monsters. It's all white after that, the moment his head breaks the water's surface.
It hurts and then it doesn't, like getting shot in a dream and jolting awake before the pain can take. It's a novel, thinks not Kim Dokja, of course it feels like dying in a dream.
"It doesn't," says Kim Dokja because dying in a dream had always felt like relief but dying in this world feels like he's signing up for unpaid overtime. Then again, this probably doesn't feel like actual, definitive dying, like the kinds of deaths Yoo Joonghyuk has gone through eighteen hundred and sixty three times. The pain is there, and the fear, but it's faded like a half-forgetten memory almost immediately after Dokja is ejected from his earthly vessel; it's amazing what the Fourth Wall can do to dampen the shock any person would normally go through, facing these challenges first hand, thinks not Kim Dokja.
"Do you want me to praise you?" Dokja's patience snaps and he whirls at the white nothingness. "Is that what you're asking for?"
That would be nice, yes, thinks not Kim Dokja.
"Can you stop it? Using my name."
Is Kim Dokja deaf or stupid? thinks NOT Kim Dokja.
"Just—stop, it's grossing me out. I need to get back to the scenario. Is there any way to speed up this whole," Dokja gestures around awkwardly, "death thing?"
Here's a thought—Kim Dokja can go fuck himself, thinks Not the Most Ungrateful Asshole in the Entire Universe and goes silent.
There's nothing here, no phone, no books nor items, only Dokja and the bare stripped-down system—he can't even access the dokkaebi bag to window shop. Dokja sits down with his legs crossed and pulls up the skill folders. For a lack of anything better to do, he screws around, reading the full, long winding skill descriptions.
He's engrossed enough that he only notices something's wrong when his hand starts to pixelate away around the edges, crumbling into floating bits. Unlike the demon realm's dumping grounds there are no fable pieces lying around here to stitch himself together with.
[Even your massive ego will dissolve if you exist here for long enough in narrative isolation], says the Fourth Wall sullenly making Dokja jump. [It's not a fast process but if that's what you're aiming for then sure, be my guest].
"I don't know what you're talking about," Dokja mutters and watches his fingers gain tangibility again from just that short exchange. Ignoring the Wall he scrolls through the system message log. The 'Character understanding' pop up is still there with its very vague update deadline information, and the rest of the skills related to Yoo Joonghyuk clustered around. "What is up with this update. What could I possibly not know about Yoo Joonghyuk that warrants this kind of restriction?"
[Do you need your diary back?] the Fourth Wall mocks. [A princess pen perhaps, for your nine hundred and ninety ninth entry about the way some random guy scratches his balls? No wonder you were bullied in school.]
"If you're referencing the number of Yoo Joonghyuk's regressions you should know by now that there's been eighteen hundred and sixty three of them," Dokja mutters. The silence from the Fourth Wall is stunned.
[...You're irredeemable], says the Fourth Wall eventually. [Whatever is wrong with you—it's not treatable.]
Dokja snorts under his breath and says nothing because it is, after all, right on the money. "I want to see my companions," he demands instead. The option to activate the Omniscient Point of View is greyed out, inactive. "Why isn't the skill available?"
[You're a reader], says the Fourth Wall, slowly. [Read].
Dokja glares over his shoulder but the Wall stays stubbornly silent. Dokja makes a face and unfolds the skill description—[1st person point of view: activated when Stage 3 is used while user is in active phase of dying or dead. User can immerse in a character, exerting partial or full control over the character's body, and speak to them within their minds.]
"I don't get it," Dokja says, perplexed. "I meet all of the requirements. Why can't I check on Yoosung-ie or Jihye-yah?"
[Lord help me—maybe it's because you're not dead], the Fourth Wall says like Dokja is stupid. Dokja goes still.
"What do you mean I'm not dead?" [Why do you sound offended by that], "don't interrupt me. If I'm not dead then—then what am I even doing in this place?"
[I brought you here], the Fourth Wall says.
"Why?"
The Fourth Wall is quiet for a long time. [I took pity on you], it says like it physically pains it to admit.
"...Why?" Dokja asks again, genuinely stumped.
The following silence is palpably disbeliving.
[You are an idiot], says the Fourth Wall. [You just suffered extensive injuries and almost drowned. You are completely incapacitated but sure, go back—see if I care.]
Dokja throws his hand in a rude gesture and accidentally smashes the taunting [return] button.
[You absolute moron—] he hears before the world explodes, this time with searing pain.
Sound registers first, the sound of a drumming hail and trickling water; his head is hanging back against a hard, cold surface, hands folded into someone's stomach. He's hot and cold at the same time, his lungs feel bruised inside and out, his right wing is definitely broken and the piranha bite hurts most of all. It's surprising that he only feels one, just on the outside of his thigh, and that the poison still hasn't killed him, potent even to demonkind. Something prods carefully at the surrounding skin and among the sensory confusion and agony Dokja feels something soft and hot close around the meat of his thigh with an odd sort of pressure. He can't help the sound that he makes—needy and vulnerable. The prodding stills before resuming its actions, more firmly.
His visuals don't fare any better than his hearing does but when Dokja struggles to open an eye he's able to discern a mass of blurry darkness, black and smeared red. He squints with a faint whimper and recognizes the bottom of Yoo Joonghyuk's face, turned to him, lips stained with blood. Joonghyuk is saying something because his mouth is opening and closing over stressed vowels, and his teeth are also red, god he has little fangs, but all Dokja can think of right now is how much he fucking hurts.
The image distorts and goes askew as Dokja curls on his side, gasping through a wave of convulsions. The fits blur together in what must be hours of real time because next thing Dokja knows he's outside and the rain is gone and if he weren't in so much pain he'd be at least mildly resentful about getting bridal carried in broad daylight as a twenty eight year old man. His wing is splinted and tucked, but it still jostles because the terrain they're moving through is rocky and unforgiving. Someone sobs intermittently.
Dokja blinks and it's late nighttime and a glass pushes against his lips insistently, "drink, drink Kim Dokja," says a rough baritone voice right next to him. Dokja curls his fingers tighter into leather lapel. Whatever was in the glass makes Dokja slip into something resembling fever-bright sleep; there's no recollection between these snapshots of clarity, as if someone has deliberately removed them from his memory. Kim Dokja, thinks not Kim Dokja, rest.
He comes around to methodical hands preening his wing. Dokja shuffles away with a small sound and then sneezes violently and sneezes again, and that wakes up all of the aches in his body. He kicks further into the safety of soft covers while someone mandhandles his demonic limb, backing away until he hits a wall which—ow. Oh dear, thinks not Kim Dokja, if only Kim Dokja had listened to a smarter entity, this situation could have been avoided entirely.
"Ssssshut up," Dokja slurs, putting arms over his ears. "Dun wanna talk t'you r'nuh."
"I wasn't saying anything," rumbles Yoo Joonghyuk's displeased voice and also, "stop moving."
"J'nghyuk?" Dokja says and finally unglues his eyes. Joonghyuk, who is knuckles deep into his matted plumage, scowls at him. A measure of sobriety trickles into Dokja's mind—"G'lyoung. G'lyoung?" he asks immediately and tries to sit up to no avail, "Is Lee G'lyoung—is Lee Jihye 'lright?"
"Kim Dokja," Joonghyuk growls, like his name is an expletive, and a single firm hand pushed over Dokja's bandaged chest has Dokja folding like wet paper; Dokja isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Dokja squints dazily—a mixture of frustration, anger and fear war over handsome, David-esque features. "Just—stay still. They're fine," Joonghyuk says while he makes a valiant effort to finish detangling Dokja's feathers. "We've cleared the scenario and your companions are resting now. Stop worrying," Dokja can't stop worrying—Joonghyuk is touching Dokja's wing. With his hands. Dokja wants to reach over and smooth out the wrinkle between his eyebrows.
It dawns on him. " 'm I drugged?" Dokja fights the way his tongue gets in the way of speaking. " 'm I drugged, J'nghyuk-ah?"
Joonghyuk stares at him and slowly lets go of Dokja's healthy wing, which folds back against Dokja's back obediently. It's the same unnumbered Joonghyuk expression that he gave Dokja in the not dentist room. Something cold slithers into Dokja's stomach and settles at the bottom like silt. He backs further away into the corner of the bed, burying himself in the pillow just so that Joonghyuk doesn't have to get upset over Dokja's face. It's hard to breathe so he turns to the wall.
"I dun like drugs," he tells the wall. There's old wallpaper chafing off of it in clumps.
Behind, someone goes still. "They're painkillers," Joonghyuk explains, and there's a tangible pause before he adds, almost hesitantly, "you wouldn't stop screaming."
"Oh," says Dokja. He closes his eyes and thinks hard about it. His throat hurts. "I wan'my phone."
[I'm taking you out], "Absolutely not."
"Y're both such d'ckheads," Dokja complains and stuffs his face back into the pillow.
"...Both?" Joonghyuk asks, carefully blank.
"You and the fucking wall," Dokja mumbles.
He must doze off because his mouth tastes even shittier than before and the sunlight filtering into the room has turned golden with the evening hour.
"You need to drink," Joonghyuk says overhead and when Dokja blinks his eyes open the protagonist is hovering over Dokja with a cup. This is impossibly out of character and as a loyal reader Dokja refuses to accept this kind of sloppy characterization. He turns away.
Joonghyuk mistakes this for distrust, "It's Lee Seolhwa's medicine," he says, and on Joonghyuk it looks almost sympathetic, "it's for what's left of the poison."
Dokja's thoughts move sluggishly—he feels like he's missing something. What's left of the poison? "Whuh'bout the, the," but it's too difficult to actually get to the end of what about the rest of it with his misbehaving mouth so Dokja gives up and lets Joonghyuk feed him the liquid. It tastes anything but pleasant but Joonghyuk's other hand cards through the hair on the the back of his head and supports his neck so he doesn't choke and Dokja thinks, Joonghyuk-oppa, so good at taking care of people, because these are the hands that took lives but also took care of Mia's numerous colds and flus. He can't help it—there's fondness and then there's the immeasurable, unruly thing that lives permanently inside of Dokja. Joonghyuk-hyung, would you take care of me until I die? It probably wouldn't even be that long.
Dokja finishes the medicine with difficulty and his head lolls once Joonghyuk lets go of it. "Dun like pain," Dokja whines into Joonghyuk's shoulder instead. It's nice. Joonghyuk smells really nice for a man. And he's warm; Dokja nuzzles before he can think any better. Joonghyuk is quiet for long enough that Dokja begins drifting off.
There's a quiet clink of the cup against the bedside table, a whisper of fabric against a plastic chair followed by a long sigh. "Why is it then that you do everything within your abilities to make sure you get hurt?" Joonghyuk says so softly Dokja knows he didn't mean to be heard. Under the covers, Dokja's hand grips the bedsheets, then goes slack.
He's never felt safe in his entire life—not in pre-apocalypse Korea or post-apocalypse Seoul, not at home or school or work, never in his own mind, and if at times there wasn't an external danger, well, there was always Dokja himself. In spite of all that, right now, not even halfway through the scenarios, in the eye of the storm, in the hands of the very heartbeat of this grand story—Dokja is as safe as he can ever be.
[Good night, Kim Dokja], says the Other Dickhead as Dokja slips into sleep.