Chapter Text
“You were his protagonist,” Sooyoung says, like it should explain everything. “You were his unshakable, invincible protagonist.”
He knows that. Of course Joonghyuk knows that. He has known it since the first day he found out he was living a life Kim Dokja read, but it is only in recent years has he begun acknowledging it. For far too long, he’s only known it beneath the blinding, incandescent rage and cold fear. For far too long, he’s masked it under the desire to just kill his only reader.
Sooyoung’s fingers feel like ice on his cheek, and he resists the urge to grab them. Instead, Joonghyuk leans into the touch, letting her hand slot against his jaw perfectly, as if made to fit together.
Joonghyuk closes his eyes. I am yours too.
Because who is a protagonist and who is a reader without an author to bring them together? Who are they, without a writer to give them life?
■■
All we see of a star is the way it was years back.
■■
There is absolutely no reason why Joonghyuk shouldn’t be gripping his sword when someone throws open his door at three in the morning.
First, it’s his room. Second, it’s his room. No one normal appears there at any given time of the day. And no one especially shows up there at three in the goddamn morning.
“Put the sword down,” a low voice calls, thick with sleep and rumbling with all the irritation of someone who is frequently inconvenienced by their own decisions. Only one person he knows—only one person he knows that’s alive and moving —would have the audacity to pull a stunt like that. “Literally no one would come here if they valued their life.”
Yoo Joonghyuk does not put the sword down but his hold loosens. A bout of all-too familiar exasperation swells in his chest. “You’re here.”
“I think we’ve long established that I harbor little value for my life,” Sooyoung snorts. As his eyes adjust to the faint glow of the hallway outside, he can make out her figure more clearly. And that she’s hauled with her a pillow. Joonghyuk gapes. Was she really…? Sooyoung steps inside without further prelude, slamming the door closed behind her, and pads over to where he’s sitting on the bed. “Move.”
“...What?”
“I sleep on the right side,” she says, like it’s an undisputed law of the world that Joonghyuk should clearly be aware of. “Move.”
Her legs are bare beneath an oversized t-shirt and the thin throw she’s draped over her shoulders. Joonghyuk cannot make out the expression on her face, and he isn’t so sure he wants to. He sets his sword back against the side table. “No.”
“Like I’ve ever given a shit about your opinion.” Sooyoung nudges his thigh with her knee, the way turtles jut their head out defensively. There’s no real fight in it, though. “Move, or I’ll make sure your night is as awful and sleepless as possible.”
More than it already is? Riddled with forged memories and countless what-if scenarios? Joonghyuk doubts it, bitterly, but there is something about the way she says the baseless threat that stings more than the threat itself. He suspects it might have to do with the rasp that’s taken home in her throat and the tremor that creeps over it all. He swings his legs back onto the mattress and shifts over to the other side without a word.
He positions his back towards the middle before Han Sooyoung crawls into the bed, and he can only feel the mattress dipping when she slips into the covers. It’s silent for a brief moment until she tugs, and Joonghyuk’s comforter disappears from over him.
Joonghyuk grunts.
“It’s cold," he receives in the form of a hiss. “Why the fuck is your room a freezer box?”
Joonghyuk ignores her, squashing a you can always go back in his throat, and reaches back to tug. Not hard enough, clearly, because the blanket doesn’t budge. A slow, deep exhale goes out his nose, frustration in every length of it. “What is your problem?”
The silence that follows almost makes Joonghyuk feel guilty. Almost.
Because then Han Sooyoung shifts and her body is snug right up against his back and Joonghyuk can feel absolutely nothing at all.
“I can’t sleep.” It’s a quiet confession, pressed into the width of his back and spoken underneath the blanket, like she’s afraid it could escape out and anywhere else. He can feel her forehead against the base of his neck, and her breaths soft and steady over his shirt.
Finally, finally, Joonghyuk remembers to breathe. This kind of… close contact? It’s been too many regressions since he’s allowed himself such kind of respite. He clears his throat, body unconsciously tense. “I thought you were sleeping in there.”
He feels a warm huff of air—a light, arid chuckle—and nearly shivers. “I don’t think we can really count that as sleep.”
That’s fair enough. More often than not she’d be slumped in the chair, neck in concerning angles, or passed out, half her limbs on the hospital bed. She’d be in there more than any of them combined, and they’d all given up trying to convince her out. He wonders what changed.
Joonghyuk grunts again, and it strikes him, then, that it’s really come to the point where Han Sooyoung can storm into his bed in the middle of his night without fear of consequence. It’s come to the point where she can untangle all his different expressions and sounds. She’s proficient enough in them to know that the last one was adequately agreeable that she can toss an arm over his waist as well.
She pulls the covers over the both of them and now that she’s glued herself to the back of Joonghyuk's body, he can tell that Sooyoung wasn’t lying about feeling cold. Her fingers feel like ice when they brush below his navel where his shirt creeps up. The tingling feeling in his stomach grows and he sighs.
“Han Sooyoung,” he says tiredly, one last irked plea that is shut down immediately.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Sooyoung’s fingers curl around his shirt, clenching tightly.
Joonghyuk grits his teeth. Alright. He’d only be the biggest hypocrite in all the regressions if he tried to make her share her feelings.
She does offer him an olive branch. “I only came because I knew I wasn’t the only one.”
If she feels Joonghyuk stiffen beneath her hands, she doesn’t say anything. “Okay,” he mumbles, closing his eyes. He tries to tune out the rush of memories that flood his brain, where he thinks his nightmares have taken inspiration from. He focuses on the steady thrumming of Han Sooyoung’s heartbeat instead.
He doesn’t dream of anything that night.
■■
Joonghyuk doesn’t know why he expected it to be a one-time thing.
They might have completely skirted around the incident during the daytime and Joonghyuk did wake up alone, but Han Sooyoung’s tone had made it quite clear that she could not continue sleeping in that room. Perhaps she never stated it explicitly, but he was no stranger to fear and all the forms it took; he knows that Sooyoung wouldn’t have dared to attempt what she did if she hadn’t been so desperate.
Still, he figured surely there must be someone else willing to be roommates. Someone more appropriate.
Someone who’s better at… whatever the hell it was they were doing.
Even so, Joonghyuk doesn’t really have it in him to argue when Sooyoung shows up at his doorway right when he’s unwinding for the night, like clockwork, like a demon. He silently shifts himself to the left half of the bed and Sooyoung wiggles in, immediately clinging to his backside like some sort of oversized koala.
“You’re hot,” he complains unnecessarily, because the silence is wrapping around his lungs, its vines squeezing, choking. The statement isn’t quite true, because he’s learnt that no one quite has a metabolism like his own, but something needs to be said to quench this leaden air.
“You’re the one who’s hot.”
“You’re making me hot.”
“I don’t care.”
More silence. Joonghyuk shifts uncomfortably. He’s already getting tired of sleeping on this arm; he doesn’t know if he can hold this position for the rest of the night.
“I want to turn.”
“No.”
Yoo Joonghyuk tries in spite of her refusal and feels a sharp pain in his side. “Did you just… pinch me?” The space below his ribs tingles in answer.
“I did say no.”
His teeth grind against one another, a rough sound ready to erupt in his throat.
“Just sleep, Yoo Joonghyuk,” she continues, voice softening. Sooyoung throws an arm over his waist, and this time she’s shameless enough to tangle a leg in as well.
But it’s not bad. Maybe a little tiresome on his neck, but there is something about being so close to a heartbeat that makes Joonghyuk go limp in what he’ll never admit as relief.
Alive. She’s alive.
And that’s more than he can say for other people with heartbeats.
Sooyoung’s hand slips from his stomach and he catches it, threading his fingers over hers and resting them both over his heart. She must not be fully asleep because her chest hitches, the action startling her.
Then—because she’s no less a bastard than Kim Dokja is—Sooyoung quietly snickers.
Her fingers speak differently, though, and when she squeezes his hand, Joonghyuk matches his breaths with her own.
■■
Kim Dokja’s face makes fewer appearances in his dreams. He’s not sure whether to be grateful for it or terrified, but in the moments he seldom shows up, he looks happy. Wide, toothy smiles and surrounded by the people he loves. Free of swords in his chest and blood spilling from his mouth. Few of them are memories, and the rest are things Joonghyuk has never seen before. He wonders where they’re from because something that bright, something so hopeful, certainly couldn’t have been conjured by his bitter subconscious.
Joonghyuk glances at Sooyoung’s sleeping frame beside him. It’s morning and she’s still here, slotted against Joonghyuk’s chest, arms looped around his waist.
He stares at the ceiling and blinks a couple times to clear his head. Joonghyuk closes his eyes; he could use a bit more sleep.
■■
“I’m going to turn,” he says, one night, without room for argument because he thinks his neck is more likely to cause his death than any fight Sooyoung can put up.
But surprisingly, she just hums, too ridden with sleep to notice or to care, and Joonghyuk comes face to face with a Han Sooyoung free of frown lines and narrowed brows. It feels wrong to have access to this. Feels way too open, too vulnerable, and faintly, he can understand why they don’t sleep face to face.
How can they ever dare to be so carefree after everything they’ve done?
Something about his position, or the helplessly tense body language he’s fixed in, must give him away. Sooyoung blinks blearily, eyebrows pulling together. “What?” she croaks, and in true Han Sooyoung fashion, smacks a hand across his face.
Joonghyuk lets out a low noise between his teeth, half a hiss and half a groan. “What was that for?”
“Go to sleep.” So she’s not upset. Surely there was a better way of transpiring that than assaulting him while half-asleep.
“Han Sooyoung,” he murmurs, fixing his grip around the soft of her waist, “why do you keep coming here?”
She’s already closed her eyes but Joonghyuk knows better than to assume she’s asleep again. She carefully maneuvers a single eye open, lips downturned. “Why do you keep letting me?”
It is undoubtedly his fault for assuming she’d make it easy. He sighs, intentionally blowing hot air over Sooyoung’s face and she wrinkles her nose like a cat. Her knee sinks into his stomach and he groans again.
“I let you,” he begins slowly, frowning back at her scrutinizing gaze, “because I seem to sleep better with you.”
It’s quite possibly the last thing Sooyoung expects him to admit. Joonghyuk can almost hear the thoughts flooding her head, but she doesn’t grow taut under his hold. Instead, it’s as if he’s cut a marionette’s string with his words, and her entire body goes boneless. “Yeah, well, obviously I feel the same.”
“Why can’t you sleep?”
Sooyoung opens her mouth like she’s about to throw the question back in his face. But she hesitates when she meets his eyes, and trains her gaze down. “There are bad dreams,” she admits, tucking her face into the crook between Joonghyuk’s arm and neck. “But the worst is… in there, it’s like sleeping next to a corpse.”
Joonghyuk shudders unconsciously. He tucks his chin over her head, gripping her tighter.
“I didn’t want him to be alone,” she continues quietly, muffled by his clothes. “Feel alone,” Sooyoung corrects after a moment’s pause. “It felt unfair, after everything we put him through. But it’s not… easy.”
“I know.” Perhaps not in the wavelength she does, but he knows all the same of a guilt that wasn’t really theirs but was mounted on their shoulders anyway.
He knows Han Sooyoung especially feels the worst. That maybe if she hadn’t pushed him, that damn avatar, then maybe they could’ve at least had some piece of him left.
“Go to sleep,” Joonghyuk mumbles, and for once, she listens.
■■
Even Han Sooyoung is not a miracle worker, despite doing wonders to Joonghyuk’s quality of sleep in recent days. There are some things that will make their way into places locked shut, settling in like a pest, despite all the precautions taken.
Joonghyuk wakes up to a sharp smack in the face and grabs his assailant by the throat. It takes a claw to the brow and a punch to the neck before he releases his hold, grasping his surroundings. He’s not banging on shut doors, not fighting invisible monsters that hold him back, not chasing after a train with a destination he can never reach.
No. He’s in the safety of his room, sweat cold all over his body and breathing hard, his jaw aching. Kim Dokja is long gone. Next to him, Sooyoung clutches her throat, coughs heaving out of her frame.
It takes both of them several minutes to collect themselves before they lapse into silence. Joonghyuk finally gathers the courage to look her in the eye.
His vision has adjusted enough to see that her hair is wild on one side, like it’d been wrenched from her scalp. There are faint red finger marks around her throat, and Joonghyuk has no doubt they’ll be visible and here to stay for a couple days. His fingers tighten around the bedsheets.
“Are you alright?”
Sooyoung waves it off with a snort. “Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried to kill me.” Joonghyuk can see her roll her eyes, even in the dark, but her throat is still hoarse.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” She’s eyeing him like he’s an idiot. Like he should know better than to think he had autonomy over any of those actions. Like he shouldn’t be feeling guilty for trying to murder someone who’d stupidly placed enough trust in him to stick around for things like this. Sooyoung always says so much without ever saying anything at all. He prefers that; not many people around him speak his sort of language, nor do they know how to respond to it. Han Sooyoung always does. “You’ll never know when I might do the same. We’ll call it even then.”
Joonghyuk stays silent, canting his head down. He hears a deep sigh.
“You want to talk about it?” Sooyoung asks.
“No.” He keeps his gaze trained on the sheets. “It was the usual.”
“This is going to sound crazy,” Sooyoung solemnly says, “but I have no idea what the usual is.”
What bubbles at his lips is somewhere between a smile and a sob. He doesn’t dare let it escape, for fear of it transposing into something more vulnerable. Joonghyuk brings a hand up to massage his temple, and gets reminded that he’d taken a hit to the jaw. An unequivocally, unrestrained hit to the jaw. He winces.
Sooyoung sighs again and this time, moves. She crawls over to seat herself right in Joonghyuk’s space, legs looped around his waist. Both hands come up to cradle his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. Her gaze is fierce. “It wasn’t your fault.”
The room goes dead silent save for the steady ticking of their wall clock. Joonghyuk can’t breathe; he doesn’t know how to breathe. “What?” he chokes out, because Sooyoung makes the declaration like she expects acknowledgement.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats, voice quieter but no less intense. Han Sooyoung may no longer employ the Black Flame Dragon, but there are certain things you learn that meld into your very core. This sort of strength, however dire, however riddled with fear, is something that Sooyoung will never lose. “What happened was none of our fault.”
Joonghyuk clears his throat, eyes shifting to the side. It’s suffocating again; the vines have made their way back into his lungs. “I know,” he mutters.
Sooyoung tugs his face back like she doesn’t believe him. Her fingers are gentle on the side of his face where he was struck. “You better,” she spits out, eyes glossy. “You know what he’s like. It wasn’t our fault.”
“I know,” he repeats, pretending like he can’t hear the raspiness of her throat. He brings his hand to the middle of her back and pulls her in. “I know.”
Sooyoung holds on for dear life. She clings to him like a squid, arms unyielding around his neck and oddly, Joonghyuk feels like he can finally breathe. He can’t remember the last time someone held onto him, like a lifesaver for emotional support. He isn’t usually the person they seek.
“Han Sooyoung,” he starts, with no idea where he intends on going with it, but Sooyoung cuts him off with a fervent shake of her head.
“No.” Her nails dig into his shoulder blades. “I don’t want you to apologize for anything ever again. Not even for what happened tonight. It doesn’t suit you, it’s creepy.” She hesitates. “If you do, I’ll make you sleep on the floor.”
Joonghyuk grunts. “In my own bedroom?”
“I don’t give a shit if this is your bedroom or not.” Sooyoung still hasn’t pulled her face away. Joonghyuk doesn’t even want to let go. His fingers hover over her hair, where he’s sure the scalp is tender. “You can try and kill me in your sleep all you want. Just don’t—”
“Alright,” he mumbles, finally settling his hand on the base of her neck. She’s shaking. Joonghyuk grits his teeth, tasting acid in the back of his mouth. “I won’t.”
If Joonghyuk can feel wetness near his collarbone, he chooses not to comment on it. Sooyoung’s shoulders tremble and Joonghyuk holds her tight, glad there was someone willing to cry for the both of them.
■■
Jung Heewon raises a questioning eyebrow the second they show up for lunch. Sooyoung has not so discreetly thrown on a high-collared shirt from Joonghyuk’s wardrobe to cover up her most incriminating marks, but Joonghyuk hadn’t bothered. Heewon’s lips pull up into something shy of a smirk. Joonghyuk wouldn’t be surprised if she knew and refused to comment on it. The woman had tact in the most unexpected places, even if she couldn’t hold her tongue anywhere else.
“Are you alright, Joonghyuk-ssi?” Hyunsung asks politely. Joonghyuk is sure it’s because he thinks it would be rude to ignore, to not follow up, when it’s so plainly visible. “Your face…”
Sooyoung snickers, then clears her throat when Joonghyuk shoots her a dark glare. He pours himself some tea Sangah had left brewing.
“Stray cats,” he says flatly, glowering at his mug. “You know how they are.”
Jung Heewon doesn’t even try to hide her snort.
■■
Yoo Joonghyuk distinctly remembers the first time Han Sooyoung made the accusation.
He likes tomatoes now, she’d told him off-handedly. There was no implication behind the words. She’d filed it into one of their very few conversations casually, like it wasn’t all that note-worthy but just a mere observation. It wasn’t intended to fester, but it did anyway.
It had planted a seed in his head, and days later, when she’d thought of bringing a blade to test the theory, Joonghyuk could understand why.
The rest of their party squared up defensively, brushing aside her concerns as if they were a fool’s words. She would certainly sound it, if Joonghyuk hadn’t remembered the minuscule detail about the tomatoes. If Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t already put two and two together and pretended it equaled nothing.
Joonghyuk watched the scene apprehensively, masking any tension behind the steady chopping of vegetables. But then Sooyoung had turned to him, eyes pleading to offer even a single word.
I told you, he could hear her screaming with her mouth shut. I know you wouldn’t miss it.
He had turned away, but that look of utter devastation, of unadulterated anguish would haunt his dreams to come.
Sooyoung threw the dagger anyway, and for a moment, the party had watched with bated breaths. The avatar bled, because of course it would be stuffed with enough memories, even if it threatened his very being. Kim Dokja, that idiot. As if he hadn’t done enough.
“We’ll know once we cut his head off.”
She should’ve never said that, however true it was. It effectively sent the rest of them spiraling into defense, posturing like protective wolves. Kim Dokja’s Company was loyal to one another, but that loyalty was only contingent on a man they’d been holding onto the ghost of. That day, Joonghyuk learnt just how tied they were to that reader.
Joonghyuk had felt her eyes on him, and he didn’t dare turn. The second he met that gaze, he knew all self-resolve would come crumbling under it.
It didn’t matter, though, because that Kim Dokja fell unconscious anyway and their facade of happiness collapsed right with him.
The nightmares came in ten folds not long after.
Only three days later, Han Sooyoung sought his company, despite his earlier betrayal. Joonghyuk had wondered if it was punishment, to make up for the reassurance he’d failed to provide before. He doesn’t stop her and it proves to be beneficial for him too.
Things happened quickly after Sooyoung’s attempted murder. She had clearly expected her outburst to have gotten nowhere because she looked stunned when he was the first to reach out.
“You want to solo that crazy thing all over again?” More than stunned, actually. Han Sooyoung had looked at him like he’d lost his goddamn mind.
“No.” Joonghyuk trained his gaze away. He knows better than that. “It’s impossible alone.”
The proposal of the Group Regression skill visibly startled her, but it’s his next words that made her stagger back.
“I need your help, Han Sooyoung.”
Immediately after that, things went hazy. Sooyoung was scowling when he returned, mostly confused. He is no less than her. The last thing he’d expected was to regain the 0th turn’s memories. He told her that, and she promised to listen to it all when they return in one piece, successful.
It was an oversight on their part to have expected everyone to join them. They knew. The two of them knew that while the body they had was part of Kim Dokja, it wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough. Nothing but the whole. Yet to convince the others of that fact, to outweigh their belief that the Dokja they had was still their Dokja, was difficult.
But Kim Dokja’s Company came around, eventually. There was no doubt they would; they were not irrational, even if they’d been trapped in a whirlwind of emotions. And thus, their Project Capture the Squid had begun its planning.
It’s hard to believe that all of that was only a couple weeks ago. They’d gotten their Dokja, lost him, and remembered some hidden truths along the way. In the midst of all the chaos of planning and arguing, the only solace Joonghyuk had found was at night, in his bed that had been commandeered by a woman who’d been a stranger for the longest time. She was the last person he expected to be on his side, but perhaps their time together provided more than just physical comfort.
The final day before their planned regression is restless. Sooyoung is antsy, and her unease rubs onto Joonghyuk.
“Stop fidgeting.”
“I’m nervous,” Sooyoung snaps, elbow digging into his side. She’s pillowed against his chest, head resting on his bicep, as the both of them stare at the cracked paint on the ceiling. “And I’m allowed to be nervous.”
Silence is choking. Joonghyuk can always count on Sooyoung to break it.
“Why did you never say anything, then?”
“When?”
He can hear her swallow. “When I first tried telling the others about the avatar.”
Joonghyuk tenses. “What difference would it have made?”
Sooyoung’s anger fills up all available air in the room in an instant. Joonghyuk is about to suffocate. “Don’t say that,” she snarls, and Joonghyuk feels smaller than he ever has on the receiving end of it. “Of all the people, you don’t get to say that.”
A thousand regressions, the truth about his existence, and two people so vital to his very being aren’t enough, sometimes, to remind Joonghyuk that he was created to have influence, whether he likes it or not. A single sentence, a single word, shouldn’t harbor so much power, but wasn’t that the very reason he was here?
Han Sooyoung was living proof of that.
But while he may not resent her for the fact, he doesn’t owe her either, so he doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t do apologies, not in the ways that matter to most people. Instead, he inhales deeply through his nose and turns on his side so he’s facing her.
“Everyone knew,” says Joonghyuk quietly yet firmly, making sure that it gets ingrained in her head. “Not for sure perhaps, but most had their suspicions by the time you brought it up.”
Sooyoung is silent for a long moment. “And you thought,” she stares at him, carefully controlling her temper, “that not saying anything, while everyone pounced on me like some sort of criminal, wasn’t going to do anything to mollify them?”
Joonghyuk blinks owlishly. He hadn’t necessarily thought…
Sooyoung sighs, as if she expected nothing more, and her eyebrows ease. She takes in a deep breath and throws a leg over Joonghyuk’s thigh. “It would’ve made me feel less like I was going insane,” she admits. A carefully strung bubble of guilt bursts inside Joonghyuk’s chest. A thousand regressions and it’s still not enough to learn the simple truths: that sometimes, people aren’t using you, and sometimes, people just want to know you have their back. “Like I wasn’t the only one feeling something… wrong.”
Joonghyuk slides a hand up Sooyoung’s neck, cupping her jaw. He sees her throat bob, feels the steady thumping of her jugular against his palm. Warm. Real. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, letting faint smoke and saccharine lemon saturate his lungs. Alive.
He has promised no more verbal apologies to her, so he hopes she can feel this one.
■■
Things go expectedly wrong. While regressing, the two of them get momentarily trapped in a state of limbo between world-lines, and the entanglement tempts Sooyoung of all they could’ve had. When they finally arrive, the Kim Dokja they find is in a far worse state than their original, glitched and confused. Things just go splendidly.
And then Sooyoung gets a wave of memories that nearly send her keeling, gasping for air she never lost and stuttering a half-baked confession. “I’m… the ‘Ways of Survival’s’...”
Joonghyuk doesn’t push it, but the words that do make their way out of her mouth are enough to form a suspicion he doesn’t want confirmed. “Stop wasting time with unnecessary remarks,” he snaps, turning away from her, “and let's head out.”
His heart hammers in his chest. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. They had the Final Wall to face.
The fight is bloody, it is brutal, and they are forced to face creatures of every caliber. It calls for them to pour their everything into it. Han Sooyoung asks him not to die, which is all the more proof that this battle was really their last resort. Joonghyuk doesn’t plan on dying this close to success, but he engraves her words into his heart anyway.
They run through door after door, demolishing everything in their path, leaving chaos in their wake. They are so close. So, so close.
They are told they are not allowed to do this. Han Sooyoung does not care and does it anyway.
She vomits blood as she rewrites, pouring every ounce of every story she has left into it. She reaches for him, the concept of him, and Joonghyuk returns her call.
Their Dokja comes to them in the form of a child. The same child they’d seen earlier, when they’d first made it past that Final Wall. The Oldest Dream, the creator of this worldview, who had cherished this novel so much that he’d seen it into existence.
They can’t take him. They can’t replace him either, because neither of them love this story enough. It is such a devastatingly unassuming condition that Joonghyuk almost cracks when he knows he cannot meet it. He sees the grief in Sooyoung’s face when she is told the same. It is so like Kim Dokja to keep things so simple, yet so out of reach.
Things grow worse. The Fourth Wall’s warning is ominous, and Joonghyuk wants to destroy the damn thing because how dare it pin everything on them, after all that had happened? This could not be Kim Dokja’s conclusion, it couldn’t. Kim Dokja might have acted selflessly, but they were all far too selfish to ever let it happen.
When it returns them all back to the 1865th turn, the others are fussing over the child. It should be the least of their problems.
But he turns to Han Sooyoung, face pale and frame trembling. She knows.
“His soul is damaged.”
She gets more precise with it by the end of the week. Her confession feels as heavy on him as it does her.
“…Kim Dokja's soul has been scattered throughout the whole universe.”
■■
There are a couple of ideas. Impossible, impractical, insane ideas.
They don’t have the resources for any of them. More importantly, what no one is willing to acknowledge, is that not a single one of them has the spirit.
Their failure of an attempt was more than just a mere incomplete mission. They’d thrown their everything into it. Poured the last of their stories, spilt blood on every surface available, pleaded and bargained until they were stretched to previously unexplored extremes.
Only to be told they can’t, that they should’ve never interfered in places they didn’t belong. That if they’d left things as they were intended, the way their reader wanted, and had been satisfied with the Dokja they received, everything would have been better off. None of this would’ve ever happened if they weren’t so goddamn selfish.
If they wanted their epilogue, they would have to fight the entirety of the universe for it.
Yoo Joonghyuk considers it, briefly.
Then he learns he is no longer a protagonist.
The regression stigma that he spent so many lifetimes resenting was stripped from him, and through that, so was everything that made him the main character in the story Kim Dokja loved. Joonghyuk doesn’t miss it, per se, but he feels incomplete. Even when he thought all hope was lost, the ability to regress that the Demon King of Salvation bestowed him was his own, unique final resort. And now that he knew what that stigma truly meant, he almost does not want to lose such a precious gift.
But it is not his choice anymore.
They go home, back to the regression they belong in, and Joonghyuk feels so utterly defeated. Even so, he is not done. Not yet. Maybe, just maybe.
He didn’t think he was the only one, but Han Sooyoung never shows up in his new bedroom. He waits a day, another, a couple more. Then he leaves.
■■
Yoo Joonghyuk is not proud of what he did.
They catalogue him as an irresponsible older brother, an unfeeling terrorist, a man still rooted to the past whilst everyone had accepted their reality. They paint him as a scapegoat for all that the others had failed to do. Perhaps his actions were a bit excessive, violent, but besides the brewing guilt in his gut, he couldn’t find it in him to care all that much.
He wears the title of villain without shame; for him, it was proof that he had never given up.
Joonghyuk knows the best way to get her attention is to make a scene, because she is the only one still capable of subduing him. Perks of the system.
They fight like children. Exchange words like “loser” and “coward” and “giving up” and Han Sooyoung had been so mad, so tired of him. Their stories erupt like a poorly conducted science experiment, spilling and melding and weaving together, just as irate and animate as they were. The sparks took fire and exploded; Sooyoung punches him in the face and he strikes her back, and it goes back and forth, as if it were the only form of communication they knew.
But despite all that had been lost between them, certain connections could not be severed. She was his writer, his creator, his author. She understands his plan in a matter of few words when they’re lying collapsed on the ground, before they’re dragged to the hospital by a chiding Lee Seolhwa.
As soon as she’s done treating them, the ward falls quiet. Silence is still choking.
“I was afraid you were dead, for a while,” Sooyoung says quietly, as casually as she can.
There is nothing casual about that statement. Joonghyuk still feels uneasy, put off by her tone. It is not like her to be serious. “If you had hit me harder, I might be.”
“No. No, shut up.” She glares at him, trying to channel her three years worth of rage in a single expression. She fails; Sooyoung’s eyes always betray her, glassy and afraid. “I thought you were dead, you bastard!”
It’s fear in her voice. Joonghyuk stiffens. “You knew where—”
“I didn’t know anything for that first year!” She throws her hands up, scoffing. “You’d left your sister and ran off the radar. All my messages went unanswered. No one heard from you in months. How could I possibly—” Sooyoung’s voice breaks and Joonghyuk watches, horrified, as she begins crying.
He’s not equipped to deal with tears, not when they’ve spent so much time apart. “Han Sooyoung…”
“Shut up.” Sooyoung sniffles, rubbing her nose. She looks nothing like the woman that had beaten him to a pulp not even an hour ago. Who’d wrestled on the dirt with him, arguing and fighting over morals and mistakes and regrets that had pounded their grief into something gross and dark. “I never want to hear your voice again.”
Joonghyuk swallows. “You cannot write the story without me.”
He is afraid Sooyoung is ignoring him, or just simply hadn’t heard him. But the intermission is broken by a soft, bittersweet sigh. “Of course not. How can I possibly write the story without the protagonist?”
Joonghyuk’s brows furrow together. “I am no longer a protagonist.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Her gaze is sharp. “Of course you’re the protagonist.”
“Not the protagonist of this story.” And what other stories mattered if not this one, the one of their whole truth?
Sooyoung’s lips part, expression falling into something unrecognizable. “Is that what you think?” Joonghyuk thinks if they both weren’t lying on a hospital bed, Sooyoung would punch him again. “Do you think Kim Dokja went through all that, insisted on making that his conclusion, because you weren’t his protagonist?”
“That’s not—” Joonghyuk grits his teeth and they make a harsh, grating sound against one another. She keeps putting words in his mouth. “I don’t mean…”
“What did you mean, then?” She shakes, furious. “Once you lost your ability to regress, you fall into another type of depression? Is he the only person you care about?” Sooyoung looks away, hissing. “Are you- are you not also my protagonist?”
All the air in Joonghyuk’s chest is punched right out of him. His heartbeat roars. “Of course,” he manages, head hanging low. Something unravels in his stomach; the admission lets him breathe, and he takes gulps of air like he’s been drowning for the past three years. It’s not so far from the actual truth. “Of course I am.”
“Then fucking act like it,” snaps Sooyoung, eyes teary. “If you ever leave again…”
“You weren’t there,” he accuses before he can help himself, petulant, voice shaking. Joonghyuk has had this contained for three years too long. “You weren’t there when…” When I needed you, goes painfully unfinished.
“You weren’t either!” Her voice goes sharp. “Gone when everyone needed you most, hiding like some coward—”
“You were the coward,” Joonghyuk says, with no real fight because he is tired and she is so close and he does not want her to leave again. “You gave up when it mattered. I wasn’t hiding, I had to do something.”
“You didn’t think to share that with the rest of us?”
“What was I supposed to think,” he pronounces, slowly, trying to keep the censures out of his tone, “when all of you settled down?” Scared. They were scared. Joonghyuk is sure Sooyoung will kill him if he throws that in her face.
He is not afraid of death anymore; the fear of disappointing her triumphs even that, it seems.
“It was what looked best!” But Sooyoung seems exhausted too. She leans back, head resting against her pillow. “The Fourth Wall said that—”
“Do you really believe that?” Joonghyuk’s voice is drained. He has done his best; surely that has to count for something. “Kim Dokja never did something because he wanted to. He did things because he should, no matter the cost.”
Han Sooyoung knows Dokja well enough to fall silent at that indisputable truth of the universe. The humidifier hums in the background. Sooyoung makes a wet, choking noise in the back of her throat. “Come here.”
It’s the invitation Joonghyuk had wanted for so long. The one offer he thought would never recede, the one he could always return to and be himself. He’d been deprived of this solace when he needed it most and no matter how much he resents Sooyoung for making him wait, he gladly slides into her narrow bed.
Sooyoung grabs him by the collar, pressing her face into his chest. “God, I fucking missed you, you sunfish bastard.”
“I can no longer reset though.”
“You’ll always be a sunfish to him.”
The same way I’ll always be a protagonist to you, it seems.
She has changed in ways most people wouldn’t notice since he last saw her. The system may have been kind to her but the world they were in was not. Burdens weigh heavily on her face, on her shoulders, tightened with lines and muscle; Joonghyuk wonders when she last smiled and meant it.
“We’re really going to do this, then,” Sooyoung murmurs into the curve of his neck. “It’s going to be difficult.”
“You will have to do what you do best.”
“Writing, huh?” She raises her brows. “Do you… do you really think this will work?”
“Why?”
“Rewriting things… they just-” Joonghyuk brings a finger to poke at the knot between her eyebrows. Sooyoung rolls her eyes. “They just haven’t seemed to work all that well for us.”
Han Sooyoung is not the sort to be critical of her own writing. She is more than satisfactory as an author; her activities pre-scenarios are a testament to that.
This is a different matter, and Joonghyuk chooses to be honest. “I don’t know.”
Sooyoung’s lips part. It could be a light-hearted joke, were it said in any other context. She sighs, leaning forward and resting her head against him again. She smells like dust and debris. “We don’t have a choice, do we?”
They will always have a choice; their answer just always seems to be the same.
They lapse into silence again, and it is no longer suffocating him.
Very timidly, just when Joonghyuk was sure she’d fallen asleep, Sooyoung raises her voice. “Are we okay, Yoo Joonghyuk?”
It isn’t the average question. They don’t really ask things like this so explicitly. These kinds of queries are laced beneath banter and insults, hidden through touches and nights alone. Joonghyuk isn’t quite sure what it means. “I don’t think we ever will be.”
“No,” she shakes her head, lips pursed. “I meant, are we okay?”
Joonghyuk gazes down at her. Sooyoung’s eyes are round and wide and open in a way he hasn’t seen since he spent his nights with her. His throat is bursting with cotton and rocks and everything feels like a haze. “If you’ll let me.”
He brushes her hair back, tucking it behind her ear so he can see her face more clearly. Joonghyuk has known Sooyoung was a crybaby, but he hates being the reason for it. All I’ve done is be shitty. He closes his eyes and breathes her in, everything familiar and everything home.
Sooyoung caresses his face, carefully tracing the newest scrapes and scars, recalling him slowly. She pushes back his unkempt hair, sweeping off dirt, and nudges closer. Joonghyuk sighs into the crook of her neck, pushed by memory and need. When she rests her forehead against his, he knows he has been forgiven.
■■
Han Sooyoung does not rest the days leading up to his planned departure. She spends the week condensing her entire soul, and all of the party’s, into a story of Kim Dokja’s life. It doesn’t cover as much as she would’ve liked it to, and Sooyoung laments that it’s rushed, unpolished.
She’s also fretting over Joonghyuk, even if she never outwardly says so. Sooyoung’s face gives away a lot, about how she hasn’t taken all the precautions she should. The novel isn’t ready. This isn’t their best idea. What if it doesn’t work? What if you never reach your destination? How long will it take? Will you come home? Will he come home—
Joonghyuk drags her out and away from the assiduous atmosphere, to the rooftop where she’ll escape when she wants an occasional smoke. “How do you know about this place?” she demands while they’re going up the stairs, Joonghyuk’s fingers firm around her arm. “I never told you about this place.”
“Shut up.”
The break does her some immediate, visible good as her shoulders and the muscles of her back finally ease. Sooyoung extracts and lights a single cigarette, by permission of Joonghyuk, who threatened to kill her himself if she continued to smoke a pack a day. She leans against the railings, carefully blowing away from Joonghyuk’s face.
“Everything’s all set? Packed your suitcase?” Sooyoung can’t make quips like she used to, without it being betrayed by her voice. “Hope you packed extra underwear. You could have an accident; it is a scary trip.”
“Shut up," repeats Joonghyuk, with no real bite.
The wind threads through her hair as she stares long and hard at her cigarette. “Be honest with me,” Sooyoung starts, like they both aren’t known to be chronic liars, “are you sure you want to do this?”
This is not so simple as a yes or no question, and Han Sooyoung is a bitch for trying to make it seem like it is. It is easier not to answer, because Joonghyuk doubts she will push him during a time like this. She sighs after a couple minutes, as if expecting this, and her hands grip the side of her head.
“You must hate me.” An old antipathy drips from her mouth, lips downturned.
Once, he did. Joonghyuk resented her existence long before he knew she was responsible for drafting up his entire life. But he shakes his head. The gesture stuns her.
“I ruined your life for him,” Sooyoung says plainly. Her voice is steady but it’s her gaze, trained unwaveringly at the horizon, that gives her away. “I would do it again.”
“I know.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
“I know,” he repeats. “You’re asking permission to do it once more.”
“This barely counts as asking for permission.” Sooyoung finally turns to him, the cigarette balanced between her fingers. Her eyes are glossy, but she keeps the tears contained. “I should’ve asked the first time.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I wouldn’t have,” she concurs, laughing a little. “But I should have. Maybe- maybe things would have—”
“They wouldn’t have.” His own conviction is a stranger to him.
“Okay. Good to know,” she snorts softly. The wind blows, and her hair flies back. It’s longer that it usually is, below the curve of her shoulders. Joonghyuk makes a note to trim it before he goes.
“I wanted him to survive, the first time,” Sooyoung confesses. It sounds overdue, rehearsed, as if it needed a shot of courage to make it out. “That was all I ever cared about.”
She’d told him. Over three thousand chapters for a decade of her life, a life that wasn’t fully her own. A story written for a single reader, just so he wouldn’t throw himself out of a window. A story that destroyed one’s life to save another. It had overwhelmed him when she first narrated her story aloud. What kind of desperation was that, to commit the rest of your life for a man you barely knew? What sort of devotion?
“Now, I just want to see him,” she says quietly, ashamed. “Doing all of this just so—”
“It’s not selfish.”
“It is. Don’t lie.” She snorts. “And that’s exactly why we’re doing it.”
Joonghyuk did not have the intention to lie. What Kim Dokja did was selfish; they were merely balancing the scales. It’ll cancel out, Joonghyuk justifies to himself. He’ll forgive us, once we finish forgiving him.
Even after all their time spent discussing, Sooyoung throws a curveball at Joonghyuk right when he’s about to leave. He stares at the empty sponsor label under his attribute window, lips twisted. “You fool, are you really…”
“You think I’m enjoying this idea myself?”
It is so like Han Sooyoung to spring everything on him at the last moment, so there’s no way he could refuse.
“Once I make my way back, I’ll kill you first and cancel this ridiculous contract,” Joonghyuk says, and it comes out as a vow.
“Try it if you can," She replies, and it comes out as an order.
Sooyoung tells him not to die, as she has always done. Joonghyuk thinks he can do that one, but it is finding his way home that seems more difficult. He thinks about reaching for her shoulder as a final reassurance, where her freshly trimmed hair sits. Joonghyuk decides against it, and chooses to reiterate his first promise instead. “I’ll be back soon.”
Joonghyuk prays to his god, to his reader, that her dreams are of only good things while he’s gone.
■■
Joonghyuk is grateful for Biyoo. If it weren’t for her, he would’ve lost a couple limbs and perhaps sight of his mission completely, but he is most grateful to her for ensuring he didn’t lose his mind. He has learnt over the years that the most threatening entities are your own thoughts.
The novel helped with that too. It kept him grounded while floating in space. Joonghyuk cherishes every word, every sentence and paragraph that Han Sooyoung threaded together. It feels intrusive, but he supposes it is no worse than Kim Dokja reading every minuscule detail of the life and the world he lived in.
He changes the novel. It’s more of a heavy-handed editing than any actual erasures, though he knows Sooyoung will be furious all the same. But her depictions aren’t accurate. She writes about things she wasn’t there for, and her details about Joonghyuk are a bit horrendous and biased. What stands out most, what itches at him most, is that her occupational flaw sometimes affects her narration. Han Sooyoung writes as an author would, so Joonghyuk edits to make it sound like a protagonist, the only thing he’s ever been good at. After all, Kim Dokja should be the main character of his own story.
It’s a small activity to pass time, and doesn’t really matter in the long run. What matters is that he gets the job done, which he does. He even comes home to boot.
It is a modest celebration. Everyone is too eager for what his return might implicate.
Joonghyuk urges her to open the door, offering a slight nod. He watches her inhale slowly, chewing on her lip, before she finds the courage to push it open.
This is it.
This has to be it.
Inside, Kim Dokja lies unchanged, motionless and asleep.
■■