Chapter Text
Kim Dokja lay still on the sterile hospital bed, the white sheets pulled tight around him like a shroud. The soft hum of machines filled the room, a constant reminder of his fractured body, the price he had paid. His gaze, dull and unseeing, locked onto the doctor standing at the foot of his bed. The doctor's face was a blur, a meaningless silhouette, his words floating past like distant echoes.
"Six months," the doctor said, his voice clipped, professional. "One hundred and eighty days, approximately. With treatment, perhaps slightly more. Without—"
"Without," Kim Dokja interrupted, his voice hollow, as though the life had been drained from it.
He didn't need to hear the rest. He didn’t need hope, and he didn’t need time. He had long since lost both. His eyes, once sharp and full of determination, had turned to cold, empty wells—like the rest of him. He’d fought and survived the war, but what was survival if you lost everything that made living worth it? His body had been shredded by the ravages of conflict, but the war had taken more than just his flesh. It had taken his soul.
The doctor hesitated, as if searching for a way to bridge the gap between them. But Kim Dokja knew there was no bridge left.
He pushed himself up, wincing as pain flared in his chest, but the doctor didn’t stop him. They both knew it was futile. There were no treatments that could bring back what was lost. There was no medicine for the emptiness that had settled into him like a sickness.
With effort, Kim Dokja swung his legs off the side of the bed, his feet touching the cold tile floor. He didn’t bother to look at the doctor again. His time here was over.
Without another word, he stood, ignoring the dull throb of his injuries, and walked out of the hospital room. The sterile, antiseptic air of the place seemed to smother him, a reminder of the life he’d once known—the life that felt like it belonged to someone else.
The vending machine in the hospital lobby caught his eye. He didn’t know why, but he bought a can of coffee. The bitterness was familiar, the taste of something cold and pointless. He popped the tab open, the hissing sound loud in the quiet of the lobby.
He stepped into the parking lot, the cool air hitting his face. He stood there, alone, amidst the rows of parked cars, the weight of the world on his shoulders. The coffee was gone in a few swallows, and with it, his thoughts. But still, he didn’t move.
He counted, slowly, quietly. One hundred and eighty.
The seconds stretched into minutes, the minutes into hours. Time, once so precious, now passed him by without meaning. He counted to one hundred and eighty, the number the doctor had given him.
Finally, he threw the empty can into the nearest bin and walked to the bus stop. The ride back to his apartment was long, the world outside the window blurring as he stared at the passing scenery. The familiar city streets, the faces of strangers—none of it mattered.
He didn’t know how long it had been since he last saw Yoo Joonghyuk. He could still remember the way his boyfriend’s face had looked before the war, before everything fell apart. Yoo Joonghyuk had been a bright spot in his otherwise dull world, a constant, unwavering presence. But during the war, the distance between them had only grown. Yoo Joonghyuk had been injured, hospitalized in the midst of the chaos. Kim Dokja had received letters from him at first, the words filled with affection, with hope, with a promise that they would survive this together.
But then the letters stopped.
Kim Dokja had waited, heart heavy with dread, but no new letters came. Silence had descended between them, and with it, a cold certainty that perhaps the war had torn them apart beyond repair. The silence was worse than anything—worse than any battle he’d fought, any enemy he’d faced. He had spent days, weeks, wondering what had happened. What had changed? Was it his fault? Or was it the war?
The truth was, he would never know. Yoo Joonghyuk had always hated being vulnerable. He hated being seen when he was weak. And Kim Dokja knew, deep down, that he would never be allowed to see him like that—never be allowed to comfort him in his moment of need.
In the end, Kim Dokja accepted it. He had accepted that Yoo Joonghyuk had quietly walked away. Maybe it wasn’t even a breakup. It didn’t matter. It was just... silence. The one thing that Kim Dokja could never escape. And that, he realized, was the hardest part of it all.
Kim Dokja had already made up his mind. What was the point of living when the last person who mattered to him was lost in the void?
When he arrived at his apartment, it felt like nothing had changed. The walls were the same. The air was stale. But it was emptier now—empty like him. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights. He didn’t bother to do anything. There was nothing left for him to do. He sank down onto the couch, staring into the darkness.
One hundred and eighty days.
That’s all he had left. He wasn’t sure what would come after that. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The war was over, but it left him permanently scarred.
The room was dim, the only light coming from the faint glow of a lamp that flickered like it, too, was on its last legs. The clock on the wall ticked steadily. With each tick, the silence seemed to grow thicker, more suffocating.
Kim Dokja sat at his desk, the wooden surface cluttered with scattered sheets of paper, each one a fragment of the thoughts he couldn't fully capture. The bookshelf in the corner stood like an old, silent sentinel, filled from top to bottom with books—books he'd collected since he was a teenager until now that he's nearing his 40s, books that had once offered him refuge, knowledge, and escape. Now they simply lined the walls, dusty and untouched, as though they were reminders of a time before everything shattered.
His fingers trembled as they hovered above a fresh sheet of paper. The pen in his hand felt foreign, its weight too much to bear, as though it carried the gravity of all the words he could never speak aloud. His hand shook, not just from physical weakness but from the sheer effort of trying to put something into the world, something that might, just might, reach Yoo Joonghyuk. But the words never felt right.
He glanced down at the pile of crumpled paper beside him. Each sheet bore evidence of failure, the ink smeared from countless rewrites, the paper wrinkled from tears that had long since dried. His eyes traced the jagged, messy scribbles on a third sheet. The same sentence had been written, erased, and rewritten a dozen times. It was never enough. It never felt true.
The clock ticked again, louder this time, as though it was counting down the seconds until it was too late. His chest tightened. He glanced at the window, where the first faint light of dawn was creeping through the blinds. Soon, the post office would open, and the letter—whatever it was, whatever it could be—had to be sent. But the words, the right words, just wouldn’t come.
His gaze drifted back to the paper in front of him. The ink had dried, but there was a space on the page where the pen had hesitated. A blank spot where his thoughts had faltered. It was familiar, that feeling. He had been stuck in this same moment before, with the same empty space where the words should be.
Outside, the world was still asleep. He could hear the distant hum of the street, the quiet noises of a city unaware that its heartbeat was still going strong. Kim Dokja wasn’t asleep, though. His body was tired—bone-tired—but his mind was restless, unable to find rest. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Yoo Joonghyuk's face. The face he remembered before the war, before it all fell apart. His fingers gripped the edge of the desk harder as his mind drifted to the letters he had received from Yoo Joonghyuk during the war—the words that kept him tethered, kept him going, even when hope seemed impossible. But those letters had stopped. Silence had replaced the words, and in that silence, Kim Dokja had felt himself unravel.
Another paper was pushed aside, replaced by a fresh sheet. He began to write again, the pen scratching across the page in jagged, uneven strokes. The words came slowly, uncertainly, but they came. They weren’t perfect, but maybe they didn’t need to be. Maybe nothing he could say would ever be enough to fill the chasm of distance that had grown between them.
But still, he wrote.
It wasn’t the fear of writing the wrong words that held him back. It was the fear that these words would never be enough—that they would never be enough to make up for the silence, the broken promises, the lost time. That even if he sent them, Yoo Joonghyuk would never read them, never know what he meant, what he felt.
His fingers dug into the edge of the table, the pain grounding him as he forced himself to keep writing. The words blurred in front of his eyes, but he kept going. They weren’t perfect, but they were real, and that was all he had left to offer.
The clock ticked again, its sound now a constant, oppressive reminder that time was running out. Kim Dokja could feel the weight of every passing second pressing down on him, suffocating him. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t walk away without finishing this, without sending something to Yoo Joonghyuk, even if it wasn’t enough. Even if it was never enough.
He pushed aside the mess of crumpled papers, each one a testament to the many attempts that had fallen short. The new paper in front of him wasn’t perfect either. He could see the uneven lines, the words that didn’t quite fit. But it didn’t matter anymore. The words were never going to be perfect. They just had to be said.
His hand moved across the page again. The pen scratched the paper, leaving its mark, and for the first time in hours, he felt like he was moving forward.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
The clock ticked one last time, and the silence that had filled the room was broken by the sound of the pen hitting the desk. The letter was done. For better or worse, it was done.
Kim Dokja sat back in his chair, staring at the paper in front of him. He knew it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. But it was the last thing he could give.
And so, when the post office opened, he would send it.
Whatever Yoo Joonghyuk thought of it, it didn’t matter.