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[Tell me a story, Yoo Joonghyuk.]
“Does it not bore you?”
[Would you deny me?]
Never, he does not say. But it must be written on his face, cradled as it is in this god’s hands, open and bare for his Salvation to read. The wry smile he peers up at is telling enough; this god already knows the answer, and Yoo Joonhyuk can only clench his jaw around the irritation that cursed smile never fails to incite.
So he closes his eyes and breathes, organizing his thoughts and willing ancient memories to surface.
His god is still, for Salvation is patient, always; his thumb merely massages a circle into the crest of Yoo Joonghyuk’s cheekbone as he waits, making for a picturesque image of a mortal resting within the embrace of the higher divine. They have all the time in the world, they both know. An eternal moment, then —
Yoo Joonghyuk gazes into a starlit void.
“Long, long ago,” the girl starts, picking up a stickman and waving it in the air, “there was a god. It was very dark, and he was all alone for a very long time. But he got bored of the dark, so he made stars and planets and all sorts of shining things.”
He tells a story.
So this is how it ends — spilling his guts out across these ancient stones. Yoo Joonghyuk vaguely thinks how it must be a waste. He’s here, bleeding out like an obedient sacrifice, yet judging by the age of these ruins, whatever deity was once worshipped here is no more; and thus, no one left to appreciate the last, waning light of a dying man.
Bitterly, he laughs, blood tinging his lips. In due time, no one will remember him. No one will remember his kingdom. It’ll all fall to ruins just like these sad remains of what looked to be a grand temple.
“Go, Captain! We’ll fend them off here, so go!” Yoo Joonghyuk never retreats — he would rather die than turn his face from the enemy — but Lee Jihye screams at him with such desperation (a desperation that is matched by only the resolution in her eyes) that it's enough to trust his back to his protege. And so Yoo Joonghyuk flees, his heart in his throat, the fate of the kingdom on his shoulders outweighing the grief and guilt clawing into his chest.
“Then, foolishly… ambushed.”
He doesn’t know when his quiet thoughts become whispered but spoken words, syllables fading in and out between staggered breaths and a barely-there voice. He must be delirious, he thinks, to be speaking to nothing but the wind and trees and a blue sky above, all an uncaring and empty audience. But he’s a dying man from a soon-to-be dead kingdom, simply re-telling his life that is flashing before his eyes. He should be allowed an excuse. A moment of weakness.
So, with what little time and what little breath he has, Yoo Joonghyuk talks of his life in broken pieces and in disjointed orders. How he had has a little sister, Mia, and how they were both orphaned at such tender ages. How he later picked up an aspiring knight, her talent with the sword rivaling her own fiery determination to have Yoo Joonghyuk as her master. How he became an honorable knight in the first place, but that in his youth, he had stolen and colluded with the other street urchins, staking out for whoever looked to be an easy target.
How his Queen and King were killed, the Princess stolen as some trophy.
How he found himself here, bleeding and nearly sliced in half, following the remnants of a broken trail, literally stumbling upon the mossed-over ruins of a temple far too large and ornate to be a simple shrine.
“And here I am — a fool, cursing my regrets,” he spits out both blood and words like acid. A bad idea, as it only starts the cascade. His lungs fill with blood and its own secretions, and he knows he’ll either drown in his very body or bleed everything out. Everything is just so
heavy.
The guilt, the shame. His body, his eyes. He feels the cold creep in. Farther, deeper. Settling into his bones and burrowing itself into the very marrow, numbing him from the inside out. He goes slack, back limp and slouched against the cracked marble slab behind him, the coolness of it not unlike the one systematically pervading through his body. His eyes close, against his will — though they had long gone blurry and dry and unfocused — and his chin tucks itself against his chest, no longer having the strength to even keep his head up.
A fool, a fool. Such a fool. What use is it to mull over regrets?
Yet Yoo Joonghyuk does not realize just how much of a fool he truly is until the slow, fragile pounding of his heart continues. His breathing, laborious and wheezing, continues. What should have been a scant few minutes of life left, continues.
What should have been a world aloof to a single man and his countless woes, does not continue.
Only now does he notice that outside of his own heartbeat and shallow breaths, there is an eerie, almost terrifying silence that swallows — or rather, has already swallowed — his senses and all that is beyond.
And everything is still.
[Yoo Joonghyuk is an awful storyteller.]
Voiceless words ring in his head, echoing off the inner chambers of his skull and vibrating throughout his bones. He is… going insane. In the last throes of life, Yoo Joonghyuk tries to convince himself, that he must not have perceived his own death, his mind tricking itself or. Something. He doesn’t know.
A flicker in his periphery gives him just enough strength to lift his eyes; despite what feels like a monumental effort, he raises his head, which he had already resigned to hang low.
Not even two feet away, he sees the very maw that he (and the world) found himself prey to — in the depthless black eyes that hold the entire galaxy in them. Very few things have left him speechless, and nothing has ever left him thoughtless. But in this stagnant moment, he finds himself simply incapable. He resents the concept as much as he is bewildered by it. For in front of him stands but a boy, hair and eyes as deep as the ocean and dark as the midnight sky. The tremble in Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, it is neither of fear nor of cold.
Large, unblinking eyes gaze back, as if picking him apart atom by atom, reaching into the smallest crevices and even there, sweeping through to leave nothing unturned as the man’s very being is stripped bare. The smile comes quiet and delicate, though with it comes an edge of something infinitely unsettling.
Yoo Joonghyuk is by no means a small man; he towers over almost anyone that dares to stand next to him. And this boy, should Yoo Joonghyuk be capable of standing, would surely be no taller than his waist.
And yet.
And yet he feels miniscule before this small thing. Him, the Supreme Captain, reduced to something trivial. There is a mix of emotions here, indignation and wonder at the forefront, again his sense of reason leaving him.
[But the story’s not half bad, I guess.]
The boy’s eyes crinkle with mirth, and the words rattle inside Yoo Joonghyuk.
“So I have died,” he speaks to himself, a disquieting calm washing over him. He notices the numbness has thoroughly made itself at home now, but his words come easy, breathing no longer a great endeavor. “And death comes as a child.”
[Narrow-minded, aren’t you?]
There is neither tone nor inflection, but Yoo Joonghyuk somehow recognizes the soft exasperation there — disappointed but unsurprised. Yoo Joonhyuk realizes he is wrong. So many things have gone wrong, in such a short time.
[I’m not here to take you away, but I can. Still, I have a feeling that’s not what you want.]
But what isn’t wrong, are the boy’s words. Despite his earlier acceptance, Yoo Joonhyuk does not want to die.
[Anyway]
The boy takes one step.
[Like I said]
Suddenly Yoo Joonghyuk finds himself staring into the very universe itself. In one blink of an eye, he sees stars implode, comets and planets colliding into blazing heavenly bodies; in the second, he bears witness to the birth of dozens of galaxies and newborn constellations, fragile but vast in the infinite beyond held in the eyes of the single being before him.
[Your story isn’t half bad. So]
In the third, Yoo Joonhyuk feels as if he’s cut off from existence itself, and it is not merely for the small hand that covers his eyes.
[Come back again and tell me another one.]
This time, Yoo Joonghyuk stumbles into the ruins not with a torso half cut open but rather whole. He is not pale from the bloodletting but green of poison, lips a dusky blue and the whites of his eyes currant red. His foot catches on the chipped stone of well-worn stairs aged by time and weathered by storms; and he braces for impact, knowing his body will be too slow despite trained instincts.
[Congratulations, you lasted longer this time.]
Spindly arms kindly guide him down. They are cold and familiar. Yoo Joonhyuk is rolled onto his back, thoughtfully placed against where the stairs have lost their steps and were now broken and smoothed into barely a few bumps. Like this, through the shadowy vignette of his ailing vision, he sees the stormy sky, unmoving. The frogs and insects that were crying for the well-loved rain have turned silent.
The world is still, once more. The hairs on the back of his neck would stand if they could. Idly, in… another lifetime, on a sunnier day, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks this would have made for a decent outing. Perhaps he could have eased her worries, could have stolen the Princess away from the politics and grief following her parents' death. She would have marveled at these old ruins at the very least, her appreciation for architecture far exceeding his own. It would have been brief, but it would have been enough. A small respite for Lee Seolhwa.
She's strong in all her own rights, but he hopes for her happiness all the same. Lee Jihye and Lee Hyunsung are more than capable to take his place, besides.
Yoo Joonghyuk had made sure to train them perfectly this time.
[Coin for your thoughts?]
He does not turn away from the static clouds, and he answers with a question of his own, despite his swollen tongue and dry mouth. (He does not know what kind of poison they used to kill him with, but he knows they must have intended for him to at least suffocate on his own throat if nothing else, considering his bodily reactions.)
"Who are you?" He hides no amount of suspicion in his voice, his mere three words holding the weight of a thousand.
[You tell me.]
It’s a command, if anything, but there is something distinctly playful about it. Teasing, in a way.
However, the idea of being made fun of stokes the coals of his temper. He will not banter in riddles and wordplay. He turns to say such, finally deigning to face the voice. He is met with a merry smile, that unsettling sensation still impressed into the lines around an otherwise unremarkable mouth — and of course, those eyes that seem to hold all the secrets of the cosmos, unfathomable just as he had first seen them.
It is in this stare-off he notices that a young boy is no longer before him. At least, in the sense that same youthfulness is no longer there. There is an evidence of aging, if Yoo Joonhyuk should trust his memory. The boy seems to be a bit taller, face still soft and round like that of a child’s, yet older nonetheless. But that is all that is young and innocuous of him.
After all, the truth is not lost on Yoo Joonhyuk. He does not dismiss the fact that reality would willingly cease in the presence of the same boy. The air about him is all wrong, as if it does not belong in this present time but in a bygone era (from a bygone universe, even). The posture, lax but with a certain majesty that seems to extend to the ends of his very hairs, as a dying man is of no dire consequence or concern. He sits to the side, body facing forward, but with his head angled and chin lightly resting atop the knuckles of a loose fist, elbow perched on top of his knee. And all the while, as Yoo Joonghyuk is silent, he is just as patient, quietly watching with an owl’s eye — assessing, dissecting. There is an unpleasant shrewdness in that gaze, like that of a fox.
No, not like of a fox but a
“Demon,” Yoo Joonghyuk concludes, finally answering.
It isn’t such a far-fetched idea, considering the current stagnant state of the world at present. A very real plausibility, as he was gifted this second life by powers far beyond man. (A second life that is soon to end, anyhow.)
There is a pregnant pause, stretching for what seems like an eternity, as those large large eyes blink owlishly back at him. Yoo Joonghyuk recognizes that look as surprise, and he feels an inexplicable sense of triumph until laughter haunts his mind. He winces at the storm of sound and splinters, of smooth chimes and splintered dissonance, and his breath catches in his throat.
[You’re hilarious, Yoo Joonghyuk.]
The boy regards him with a too-wide smile and stark whites for all to see, one that reaches his eyes this time. It looks genuine, almost. Perhaps it is. If not for the circumstances, Yoo Joonghyuk could be fooled into mistaking him for an innocent, gleeful child receiving a brand new toy.
[And here I thought you wouldn’t have a single humorous bone in your body.]
[I’m just a Dreamer.]
“A lofty idealist or an oversleeper,” he says dryly. The creature’s answer reveals nothing. Joonghyuk would love to throttle him.
[You’re not wrong.]
The light in the boy’s eyes dim, the stars hiding back away in the vast darkness. Joonghyuk feels an odd loneliness, one that does not belong to himself.
[So tell me a bedtime story.]
On the third regression, they match in height — the Dreamer seemingly aged again while Yoo Joonghyuk is now the youngest he’s been in his three deaths — and only in height. It’s odd, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, that for a being powerful enough to revive a man and turn back time, he would still be so… thin. Barely there. A ghost that would slip through his fingers if he tried so much as to touch.
The thought leaves him as soon as he is faced with his failure, however. He had acted too quickly. He thought he could stop the coup d'état before the idea could even sprout in the rebels’ minds. If he could assassinate the instigator, then surely things would go a different route this time. He knew how to win the war, his second life proof of it, but there would be an insurrection not even three years after the victory.
[But they believe you’re the traitor. I don’t blame them.]
He waggles his eyebrows at Yoo Joonghyuk, who would very much like to punch the infuriating sneer off the other’s face. Alas, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t care enough to move. He is, after all, dead. Again.
And again, he rests on his back, only this time the sky is painted in the golden orange of dawn. He had been slated to be executed at the break of the sun, by noose in the city square. His neck still aches, the ropeburn still lingering. The Dreamer sits to the side, his legs criss-crossed while leaning back on an arm that supports him from behind, and looks just as smug as last time.
[Not only is Yoo Joonghyuk an awful storyteller, he’s also an idiot.]
Yoo Joonghyuk narrows his eyes, a growl jailed behind clenched teeth. He would shoot a quick-worded retort were he not in agreement. Attempting to kill a powerful duke, one in the inner circle of the court no less — and on the day after Joonghyuk was knighted — was not the most sensible thing he’s done.
They’re quiet, for a time. The Dreamer soaking up and digesting the story, Joonghyuk recovering from the dull ache in his jaw, from playing narrator.
[And you’ll try again anyway.]
The Dreamer breaks the silence.
Yoo Joonghyuk feels a fond exasperation in those words, but there is no time to ponder upon it. Neither is there time to ponder upon the strange twist in his chest, in his heart. (Which is especially curious, as he died by hanging and not by a blade in between his ribs.)
For there is the hand again, splayed across his closed eyes. Through the gaps in between slender fingers, long and bony, he sees the Dreamer lean in, close enough for Yoo Joonghyuk to glimpse the stars shoot across the dark pools of his eyes, leaving ripples of glistening waves in their wake.
They look like tears, unshed.
[You always do.]
He feels the brush of something small, ethereal and fleeting, across his brow.
Sometimes, he is as young as ten; other times, as old as thirty but never older than that, having yet to find the magic formula to make it past that threshold. There is an unspoken deal between them, him and this self-named Dreamer. It does not matter when he dies, as evident by his many ages; neither does it matter where he dies, as he discovered in his third death, having died in the city square but opening his eyes in the temple ruins. For as long as he provides his life’s story, he is promised a new one.
There are lives where he is pure unfettered recklessness, indiscriminate in his methods and cold in his ideologies. Then there are lives where he is meticulous, taking all the lessons of his mistakes and results of his experiments, slotting the intricacies with an artisan’s hand before setting it all into motion.
This life is of the latter, but he knows this too will fail. His comrades have grown cautious of him, Lee Jihye finding uncharacteristic excuses to distance herself or Lee Hyunsung turning extraordinarily meek in his company; even Mia looks at him with a certain melancholy now, her expression more telling than any written confession.
It’s fine.
He’ll just try again.
“Why me?”
[It was only ever you.]
“Do you not get tired of dreaming?”
[A Dreamer is all I’ve ever been.]
“You can be something else.”
[Like?]
“Salvation.”
The god has the audacity to look surprised. He sits up, looking upon Joonghyuk with eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted.
[I know I was humoring you but really?]
He isn’t sure why, but Joonghyuk suddenly feels his patience thinning. These timeless moments — quite literally timeless, in that the world, or rather, the universe falls inert at the beckoning of one existence — have made him soft. In these countless lives, where the course of reality is so easily swayed by a thoughtless action, the Dreamer remains the only constant. While everyone else forgets and will forget, as the hands of time move back for him and solely for him, this god waits through every single lifetime for this one moment.
Surely, a god so powerful to control the flow of time would not spare so much for so little.
For all his apparent omnipotence, would he not find amusement in another? Joonghyuk is but one man repeating the same life, with so little variations, and a life that, among all the masses, would surely be not so special as to garner such favor.
So, to be given such opportunity, to be given these endless turns to reach the ending he hopes for — it all fills him with an odd sense of gratitude that leaves him a bit wistful, in the end.
Certainly, Salvation would befit him. The god who offers him a life for every death, who remains a companion before and after.
But the Dreamer remains unconvinced. Joonghyuk may often choose the blade over words, but he is capable of eloquence should the opportunity call for it; he has not spent so many lifetimes without at least focusing on the skills he lacks.
“Really. You would be Salvation, for —”
The Dreamer slaps a hand over his mouth.
[Don’t.]
Joonghyuk frowns, baffled. For all he’s known, gods would prefer to have their praises sung, but this one…
[I’m not as virtuous as you think.]
“You had companions. They are not… here, any longer.”
It is an educated guess. Joonghyuk knows there were other gods, at least according to legend. He knows a handful of them: the Last Architect, the Silver Heart, the Eternal Flame. Surely the Dreamer knows of them.
Had known them.
[There were others.]
The Dreamer is looking away, observing a still ocean. There is no wind, no cry of the gulls; but the sky above is covered, only a lighter shade of gray compared to the darker waters. The entire world seems washed out. Lonely.
“Were,” Joonghyuk says, not missing the implication. “What happened to them?”
There are no stories that dare to explain their disappearance. Perhaps they had gotten bored, as powerful gods tend to do, and merely looked for new entertainment, leaving the humans behind. Either way, the world simply accepted the gods were no longer, once zealous worshippers leaving grand temples to ruin and rot.
He remembers visiting one, in his first life. The broken monument, though missing an arm and part of its head, would still look colossal before a youth. It looked impressive, imposing and mysterious with the cowl covering what was left of its face; he had not been able to tell if the line running down its cheek was the sculptor’s intention or a fissure made from time. Its name, however, he cannot grasp. It hides in between his teeth, under his tongue, and burrows a hole in the corner of his mind. The more he seeks it out, the deeper it runs, and he feels an ache build at the base of his skull.
[Gods have dreams, too, you know.]
There it is, another cryptic answer. Yoo Joonghyuk learned early on that pressing for proper answers would reveal nothing. But, if played along, he could glean something. So,
“And you? Do you not have dreams as well, then?”
The Dreamer turns to him, finally. If the stars were stolen from above, they would not be in the god’s eyes; nothing reflects in them. Instead, Joonghyuk sees only a vast sea, black waters churning.
If he were to leap, he wonders if he’d ever reach the bottom.
[I dream, so theirs can become reality.]
If he were to leap, he wonders if he’d be swallowed by the despair in them.
It takes him hours into the night and several melted candles, but his efforts bear fruit in the form of old, brown-edged pages. Once again an esteemed knight whose glories earned him the hefty title of an archduke, Yoo Joonghyuk is privy to most luxuries within the palace, the royal library being one of them. It is here, in the lower floors where old tomes and anthologies past their relevance and prime are discarded and forgotten, where he finds the prize among the rubble.
“You’re a liar.”
Yoo Joonghyuk says it as a matter-of-fact, but there is an underlying tone that speaks of uncertainty, of a question. He says it as if he speaks to someone and not the time-eaten ink across delicate parchment, alone as he is with nothing but his last candle to keep away the darkness. He feels once more inexplicably small, caged by rows of old, molding shelves that have certainly not seen the light of day for at least a decade.
However many regressions ago, they had played a game of riddles and wordplay. Something to break the monotony, the Dreamer had claimed. Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t been interested, but the Dreamer had poked at his curiosity and dangled the answer like a fat carrot.
Yoo Joonghyuk had lost, but the Dreamer had offered him a consolation prize, with that same starry-eyed sorrow he sees only in that brief moment before the next regression.
[When you lay your head to sleep, does the world sleep with you?]
The world goes on, naturally. Yoo Joonghyuk would have scoffed at him if given the chance, but he had unceremoniously been thrown into a bed, his eyes blearily opening to the patchy ceiling of a familiar thatched roof — alive and young yet again.
He simply buried the memory ever since, believing the Dreamer to be toying with him as per usual.
It is an accident when he remembered, in the slums where he saw orphans playing with shoddy puppets — if they could even be called that — made from sticks and rags. He must have caught their eye, and they begged and cried for him to watch. He knew their game, played it and mastered the craft over lifetimes; but he had plenty of coin to spare, and just as many, if not more, lives on top of it all. It was only a whim, he told himself.
“Long, long ago,” the girl starts, picking up a stickman and waving it in the air, “there was a god. It was very dark, and he was all alone for a very long time. But he got bored of the dark, so he made stars and planets and all sorts of shining things.” A boy tosses some shiny pebbles across the dirt, probably to symbolize said stars and planets. Yoo Joonghyuk pretends to be distracted, pretends to not notice the tiny fingers heading for his pockets.
“It wasn’t so dark anymore, but he was tired from making everything. He closed his eyes and slept — and for the first time, he dreamed.”
There is a throb in the back of his neck, lodging itself in the junction between his skull and spine, and a quiet but persistent hum in his ears. It was still morning when he emptied his pocket, tossing a hefty pouch of coin on top of the sad stick figures then hurriedly making his way to the palace; and though there are only stone walls and no windows to allow any light from beyond, he knows by the melted stubs of his candles that it is now well past nightfall.
Surely the pain behind his eyes is just that. He reasons that it is from the lack of fresh air, from the dust that tickles a cough, from the strain of trying to make out faded text next to a dying candle.
“You’ve always been a liar.” Yoo Joonghyuk shuts the book and, on the hardcover, notes the marks and trails his fingers made among the thick layer of dust. He looks at it with disdain, resentment.
Yearning.
He does not know from where these emotions well up from or why, but he knows of one who does.
For all the words he thought he had, Yoo Joonghyuk actually has none. The moment the Dreamer matches his gaze, they die on his tongue.
The Dreamer shows him some mercy in this, when any other time he would tease Yoo Joonghyuk relentlessly for it. Or perhaps, he too, must be in need of that same grace; it looks as if an entire nebulae might spill from his eyes, in spite of the weak smile he offers. He is small again, nothing but a wisp of a child, and it prods at one of the few weaknesses Yoo Joonghyuk knows he has.
The Dreamer knows, and it haunts him.
It haunts him enough that stardust indeed falls from his eyes, after welling up at the edge of the galaxy, and he weeps silently, head bowed low and fists clenched at his sides. He screws his eyes shut, cutting the universe off from Yoo Joonghyuk, trying to hide its secrets.
[I’m sorry.]
[I’m sorry.]
[I’m sorry.]
If there could only be one universal truth, Yoo Joonghyuk knows it would be this. He does not know for what the string of apologies is for, why an existence who birthed the world would hold such laments, but that twist from lifetimes past has returned to his chest now. And it seems that for every stardrop that rolls down a cheek, a heavy hand drives that ache ever deeper. The Dreamer may as well reach in between his ribs and wrap dainty little fingers around his heart instead.
For all the lives he's had and all the skills he's honed, Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly wishes he hadn't pushed aside emotions for cold logic, replacing softness for the edge of a blade. Incompetent as he is in the art of consoling, he knows he is at least allowed to push aside formalities that would come with presenting before a god.
That is, he does not resist the yearning, the near need, that seems to turn into instinct. He reaches a hand out — the fine tremble under his skin neatly ignored — and brushes a finger beneath dewy lashes, feather light. The tears feel hot as a thousand suns yet frigid like the darkest, emptiest voids. From the right angle, they shimmer impossibly iridescent.
It’s tragic, as Yoo Joonghyuk can pinpoint the exact moment the dream shatters; yet beautiful, as he sees the universe rearrange itself. Above, a star’s light is snuffed out for every sobbing regret.
[I’m sorry.]
[I’m sorry.]
[I’m sorry.]
The Dreamer splinters like fine glass, and he crumbles. Joonghyuk catches him, holding him and guiding him to the soft grass with a delicate touch he thought had been lost to him. He fears, for the first time in what feels like an eternity. He fears that this pitiful god will truly smatter into fine dust, losing him to the wind as he scatters across the galaxy. How many lightyears would it take, to gather all the grains and arrange them back together?
“Stop,” Joonghyuk says, mouth dry. He does not know if such a god can die, but Joonghyuk may as well be killing him. It feels like it, when the Dreamer flinches and curls in on himself. Shrinking, condensing before a final eruption that will burn him bright but leave nothing behind. Joonghyuk doesn’t think he could handle the emptiness left in his wake. “I don’t need to know.”
I don’t want to know, if this is the price.
But too late, the memories rise, unbidden, even as he refuses. Sharp, disjointed, broken, they scrape across his eyes and leave him blinded, his vision nothing but a hot white sun.
He chooses to forfeit this life.
But when Yoo Joonghyuk opens his eyes again, expecting to see his god — his god, the only one he’s ever known and cared for — he wakes in his bed
Alone and cold.
“Aren’t you tired?”
He levels a stare, not because the question is obscure, but because he already knows what foolish thoughts the god is entertaining.
“Being stuck here, you and everyone else… Spending an eternity with me, all because I had a silly little dream.”
“You’re a fool, Kim Dokja.”
There’s a self-deprecating laugh, the one that sounds like hollow glass — fragile and sharp. Ideally, it would be a lovely sound and not one so melancholy.
He does not know what to do when Kim Dokja becomes like this, as of late. His starry-eyed god seems to only fall dimmer, despite all their efforts, swallowed by the dark of his thoughts; they may be higher beings born from a lonely god, but they’re powerless against the nightmares of the same god whose mere dreams can beget universes. Han Sooyoung’s hand can only write so many stories, and Kim Dokja seems to have adopted an immunity to Uriel’s infectious cheer. Not even Yoo Sangah, the keenest of them all, can seem to coax his hidden sorrows out.
And Yoo Joonghyuk. For the god who can shatter the skies and cleave planets in half, his sword is useless when it comes to the one he was born for.
The humans revere Yoo Joonghyuk as some deity with a schemer’s mind; if only that were true, then he would have surely found a remedy for the distant cold that swallows up his god’s light, snuffing out the fire of life that once lit up his world.
But sometimes, it comes back to him in brief handfuls of time, when Yoo Joonghyuk steals him away and brings him down to the world below.
The world stills into a picturesque landscape frozen within an infinite canvas. Not even the grass bends when he leads Kim Dokja over the verdant fields, and the waves hardly ripple when they cross the great oceans.
“Oh,” Kim Dokja remarks, a small smile gracing his tired face. “That’s you, isn’t it? They even carved the scar.”
He lifts a finger, tracing the line that follows down the face of a great monument.
“This era has many gifted artisans,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, watching Kim Dokja.
Gentle hands brush over the sculpted folds of the veil, gliding over the polished stone, the god’s tender gaze and touch the same as if he beholds the real thing.
Childish, Yoo Joonghyuk feels a pinch of jealousy, and he wraps his arms around Kim Dokja to pull him back. Away.
“There are more monuments,” he says, whispering into the soft crown of Kim Dokja’s hair. The dark strands sway with stardust, tickling his lips. He kisses them away, regardless. “Of us. Of you.”
‘See them,’ he means. ‘See what wonderful things your dreams have become.’
Kim Dokja only hums, staring at the idol. His eyes grow dark for a moment, lost in the expanse of his thoughts; when the glimmer returns, he turns his head, peering up into Yoo Joonghyuk with a cryptic clarity.
“If,” he begins, slow with hesitance, “you — we. What kind of people would be, if… we could.”
It’s easy to parse what he means, but Yoo Joonghyuk takes a moment to think over the words. It is in his sincerity, he makes the grave mistake.
“Perhaps I’d be a knight. You seem to enjoy humans like them, the ones who devote themselves to honor. Han Sooyoung would be a storywriter, perhaps for those theatre caravans. We would all travel together, maybe. Roam the world."
"That sounds nice."
Kim Dokja relaxes in his hold, going limp as he trusts Yoo Joonghyuk to hold his weight and guide them down to the soft grass. He closes his eyes, tilts his face toward the sun like a bloom, unfolding.
"Tell me more," he says, a request more than a demand. "Tell me a story."
And so, Yoo Joonghyuk holds his star in his arms, cradles him close to his heart, and tells him of a lonely god and the ones who love him.
Kim Dokja sleeps. Time moves on.
It is in his love that the god Dreams of a world for them — a world where they may live unbound. Free of him.
“I’m going to find them.”
Here Yoo Joonghyuk stands, among the ruins once more. The wind, it is quiet.
“No matter how long it takes, I’ll find them,” he vows. “And then, you.”
Already he has a lead on Han Sooyoung — the Last Architect — her fame as a talespinner being far and wide. Mortal as they are now, he feels flickers of his old prowess; together, surely they can rouse from their dormancy. Yoo Joonghyuk need only find a way to resurface her old memories.
And if not in this lifetime, then the next. However many it takes.