Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kim Dokja is fifteen years old when he jumps—to his death, he had hoped, staring blankly at the harsh pavement and imagining its scrape against his delicate skin… but of course fate has never favoured him, denying him even his desperate final desire of release .  

It's a miracle, the doctors say, that he made it out alive at all. Kim Dokja thinks it’s more of a curse, some god telling him that he cannot run—that he deserves to suffer ever more for what he’s done. He is the son of the murderer and a quiet victim and that is sin enough to his executioners, teenaged classmates who scream at him to repent during his waking hours.   

(They are reduced to a jeering audience in his darkest nightmares. No, the horrors of the dark are reserved for him , the Devil incarnate and the man who holds Kim Dokja's life in an iron grip even now.)  

His body is a canvas, a horrible painting of aching bruises and ugly scabs that will soon re-open. What is insanity but eternity, the same injuries recreated in both day and night? Maybe it hurts, he thinks, or maybe this is divine retribution.  

(Maybe he deserves this, his mind whispers—so quiet, so constant, until the seed takes root and possesses him, a toxic flower blossoming. Its petals trickle into his life, into his thoughts and desires and beliefs and everything until the pain becomes his friend. At least he understands this. At least the pain grounds him, makes him feel anything at all. This is how things should be—)  

So he endures the punches and kicks until his body cannot; he closes his eyes and pretends that this is just the way that the universe chooses to acknowledge him. The harsh impact of a fist to his face is a gentle caress, twisted love that tells him this is all you will amount to .  

After all, if the pain isn’t love, then he’s not sure what he has left to hold onto.  

And so when they surround him, towering over him, and whisper cruel words about death and mercy and forgiveness , all he hears is the promise of freedom. Break free of the cycle of hurt, Kim Dokja, and claim it as your own.   

Waking up in the hospital bed, neutral shades of grey and white filling his vision rather than vivid red ( the colour he knows most intimately ), it’s neither disappointment nor relief he feels. His thoughts, like the world around him, are grey: devoid of anything at all, merely a shade to hide within.  

He doesn’t say anything when the doctors mention the hospital bills in hushed discussion, eyes filled with pity—but pity is not enough, of course, not when all he is is a boy who has succumbed to his demons.  

He doesn’t say anything when his relatives scream at him, a cacophony of failure and useless and disgrace ; it’s a song he’s heard so many times that the lyrics are forever ingrained within him.  

He doesn’t say anything when someone nameless and faceless, long forgotten, places a laptop screen in front of him—their actions are so heartbreakingly gentle, so reverently soft that he thinks it must be a dream.  

A dream… Kim Dokja thinks it would be nice, dreaming about realities that are not his own. Maybe if he closes his eyes and never opens them again, he can awaken in a dreamscape filled with muted sunsets and quiet laughter. Maybe he will finally be able to assign meaning to words he’s only ever read: family , happiness, love .  

It is there that he awakens from the fantasy; it is there that he realizes abruptly that he is still capable of feeling. Hot tears stream down his face, the memory of murmured kindness already fading away. He wants , he longs, he craves: the words mean the same thing, but none of them can truly encompass the depth of his dream. How can he continue going on when there is a beautiful daydream laid out in front of him, just a breath too far to reach from where he is now? How can he possibly survive the hurtful hatred of the world he lives in now?  

A sudden bout of emotion brings him to the laptop, fingers clumsily typing away: 

How to live  

Why am I alive  

How to survive  

Each search brings fruitless results, though: self-help articles and long-lost discussion forums can’t give Kim Dokja the answer he’s looking for. He needs something to maintain him, something to control him—he wants to love and be loved and learn what meaning there is to a life made of nothing but an endless cycle— 

A webnovel link pops up first when he looks up ways to survive , just another rephrasing of the same plea. Like a man possessed, he clicks the link to the webnovel and feels a foreign emotion beginning to rise in his chest. No matter how far he tries to run from the things that remind him of his mother, reading has always been his salvation; despite himself, Kim Dokja begins reading about the journey of regressor Yoo Joonghyuk.  

He heads in with a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s ironic, really, to be reading about the life of a man brought back from death again and again—yet as Kim Dokja reads on, he finds himself enraptured by the story of the protagonist. When Yoo Joonghyuk wins a difficult battle, Kim Dokja finds himself smiling; when Yoo Joonghyuk mourns his losses, Kim Dokja too feels tears burning at the corners of his eyes.  

Where other readers quickly grow bored at the sheer amount of repetitive description dedicated to every part of the protagonist’s life, Kim Dokja finds it to be grounding. It’s like a gentle nudge, a whisper of each lifetime is precious, each lifetime has people who are treasured that wraps around him like a warm embrace.

When he finally closes the computer, it is not because he wants to, but because the nurses worry about the amount of time he’s spent staring at the screen, scrolling mindlessly to reach the next page of the adventure. They don’t understand , he wants to yell—in the stories, he can be who he wants to be. In the stories, he has control.  

( I am Yoo Joonghyuk— ) 

He leaves a comment on that first chapter, a little timid: 

I really enjoyed reading this, author-nim! May I ask how often you plan on updating your novel?  

To his surprise, he already has a response by the time he re-opens the laptop:  

Thank you for your comment. I will release a new chapter each day.  

And so Kim Dokja begins to reanimate himself: he'll live not for his own life but for Yoo Joonghyuk's, to continue reading and cheering him on with each coming day. He is still a boy who rides cars without the seatbelt buckled, still a boy who leans in a little too close to the edges of rooftops, but it’s a beginning.  

The doctors and the therapists and the psychologists, they begin to notice a change in his demeanour. At some point someone suggests that he should write out his feelings to see if that will help him recover: he wants to say that he is a reader, not a writer, but they place a pad of paper and a pencil in front of him anyway.  

(When he looks at the paper, he wonders bitterly if this was what his mother saw—)  

What feelings are there to describe? All his emotions have been pushed back for as long as he has known, hastily compartmentalized and tucked away into the crevices of his mind. It is only alone, with the computer resting on his lap and Yoo Joonghyuk’s lives playing out in front of his eyes, that Kim Dokja lets himself feel something. 

He refuses to talk about himself, refuses to write about the things that led up to this point.  

But he’s written a comment each day without fail to the author, hasn’t he? It can’t be too difficult to complete this task.  

Slowly, tiredly, Kim Dokja picks up the pencil and looks down at the paper. He places the tip of the pencil down, allowing it to linger there: he is a greedy creature, only knowing how to take others' stories without giving back his own.  

Finally, he manages to scrawl a few words down that surprise even himself.  

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk…  

He blinks, but the words are still there. Whispering them under his breath, he decides to continue on, and for once writing does not seem so daunting a task. I will write for you, the protagonist who protects me from myself.  

The words begin to flow.  

My name is Kim Dokja. We live in different universes. To me, you’re a character. I bet you've never even heard of me.  

But I know you. The lives you’ve lived, the regressions you’ve gone through, I've read them.   

You’re so strong, Yoo Joonghyuk. How do you do it? Doesn’t it hurt, staring in the face of eternity, not knowing how many lives you’ll have to continue to go through until you reach the end?  

This is silly. You don’t even exist.  

He pauses, then erases that line. Can’t he allow himself this little piece of delusional happiness, just for a few moments? 

I’m so weak compared to you. Even just one life is too much for me. Reading about you makes me feel strong, though. Is that okay? Even though I’m weak, is it okay for me to want to be strong like you?  

Are you okay?  

The pencil stops abruptly for a second, the words coming out before Kim Dokja even realizes what he’s writing.  

I mean, there must be some things about you that tls123 didn’t mention. No matter how strong you are, it can’t be easy to keep fighting on day after day. Neither the author nor the reader really knows the entirety of how you feel. It’s just you, Yoo Joonghyuk…  

That must be so lonely. Won’t you let yourself make some friends?  

Timidly, Kim Dokja writes the next few words smaller, like he can’t believe he’s saying them himself.  

I could be your friend.  

If we were in the same world, I would protect you and make sure you would never have to regress again! No matter what happened to me, I would always be on your side. I could be your trusted companion, and we could see the end together.  

I think that would be nice.  

He finds himself smiling, almost imperceptibly.  

Even if we're in different worlds, I'll always believe in you. Thank you for never giving up, Yoo Joonghyuk.   

As he begins to sign his name, he hears someone’s footsteps coming closer.  

“Kim Dokja? Have you finished writing?”  

He freezes. Even though he’s technically abiding by the assignment, he feels that the things he’s written aren’t meant for anyone else: the words are for himself (and then one more, separated from him by a screen). Quickly ripping the paper from the notepad, he folds it up and tucks it into his pocket.  

“Kim Dokja? I'm coming in, okay?”  

One of the doctors enters, sighing when they see the blank paper in front of him.  

“Won’t you even try?” they ask quietly. When Kim Dokja only stares blankly at them, they shake their head.  

No one believes in him—not his relatives, not the doctors, not himself.  

But the letter in his pocket burns, an unsigned reminder of the person who saved him. If nothing else, he'll live to deliver this letter, or else to find closure.  

—

Days pass quickly like the flip of a page, chapter after chapter releasing on a daily basis. The seasons change; he goes back to school; he returns to a cold empty house, just like before.  

The difference is the letter that he holds as sacred in his inner pocket, and the webnovel that promises him a beautiful dream.  

When he first came back to school, it was to loud whispers and pointed fingers. His injuries and bruises have faded but not fully healed, and by the time the novelty wears off his abusers are already back at it. They speak harsh, loud words, unhesitating in their beatings; now that they have broken him once, they seem to think they can do it again.  

Yet their weapons are misplaced: they aim for Kim Dokja's heart, speaking of the murderer's son who fails even in death. Their teeth and claws pierce Kim Dokja's skin, but…  

I am Yoo Joonghyuk.  

He hides behind the protagonist, his hero and saviour and most intimate friend. As long as he believes with his whole heart, he can be his own protagonist: reality wishes to be cruel to him, so is it too much to want to carve his own reality?  

Just once, I want the world to be soft for me.  

All he can do is sink into the gentle embrace of the sentences now. Nestled into threadbare blankets, he reads and reads and reads until his books blur into the haze of sleep. The library is his sanctuary; the dim glowing screen of his laptop is his home.  

More than once, he’s considered writing another letter to Yoo Joonghyuk. Of course, he never fails to leave a comment every day per each chapter's release, but then the artist and their masterpiece are distinctly different. He can happily discuss plot developments and character interactions with tls123, but the author is only the creator of the protagonist’s universe: they cannot touch Yoo Joonghyuk's life either, only able to tell its story. It’s the character who saved him, in the end.  

His hands will often seek out a pencil and lined paper, yet when they’re presented in front of him, he ends up at a loss for what to write. A reader, not a writer—a dreamer, not a creator.  

It doesn’t matter what I write. I just want you to know that I’ll always keep reading. I just want you to know that I’ll always keep caring.  

The views on each chapter have long since dropped to the single digits, with few readers and fewer positive comments. That doesn’t deter Kim Dokja: he's painfully aware that a story will die with no readers. He won’t let that happen to Yoo Joonghyuk… and to be honest, it feels nice to be one of the only readers left. The story comes closer and closer to being his , possessiveness rising up in him.  

(Perhaps he just wants something to call his own. Just as he belongs to the story, he wants the story to belong to him.)  

He'll grow up and the story will grow up beside him. When he leaves for military service, he'll imagine Yoo Joonghyuk fighting in his place; when he finds a menial job at Minosoft, he'll imagine Yoo Joonghyuk at his side, still his closest friend even in adulthood. 

( Is it okay to pretend you’re proud of me ?) 

—When the apocalypse starts, Kim Dokja navigates through the subway like a man half-awake. Yoo Sangah issues a slight, shaky compliment towards his collectedness, that which he barely notices. He knows this story by heart, after all; his disbelief is suspended merely by the fact that he knows how this goes, has reread the words time and time again.  

It starts in the subway. It always does.  

( The insane adapt the best to the beginning of the apocalypse , he recalls idly. I wonder what it means, that I can accept this so easily. ) 

He and the remaining survivors who accompany him traverse through the carnage, but Kim Dokja finds himself distracted. Lee Gilyoung tugs on his sleeve, frowning.  

“Hyung, are you looking for someone?”  

Kim Dokja blinks, then offers a crooked smile. “We’ll see.”  

So they continue, infinitely wary; he's not sure how he feels about being assigned the impromptu leader of the group. The responsibility should terrify him, with how little experience he has with leadership, but the truth is that he craves the high of being needed. Lee Gilyoung attached to him, Yoo Sangah and Lee Hyunsung trailing close behind—even Han Myungoh is a reminder of how he has become useful.  

Still something is lacking, the most valuable part of his heart and the wave to set the story in motion. The world of the story has no meaning unless— 

Oh, there you are.  

And there he is indeed, a spectacle to behold in his fluttering black coat. Despite it all, Kim Dokja finds he's never felt more relieved than with Yoo Joonghyuk's hand around his neck.  

He manages to choke out a laugh, causing Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes to narrow. His companions shout his name, but Kim Dokja knows best of all who this man is and what he is capable of.  

My dearest friend, my closest companion, my salvation.  

He's grinning even as he hisses, drop me . It's so surreal, so difficult to believe, and that's precisely why Kim Dokja sinks into this world so easily. As long as it is a story (as long as it is this story), he is fearless. 

He clutches at the worn-out paper that has stayed with him all these years inside his pocket, staring into its recipient's eyes as he sinks into the water. His childhood naivety and his adulthood cynicism protect the contents of the letter in tandem, each sentence as fresh as though he had written it just yesterday. He can taste the words even now as he fights for his life.  

I'll always be on your side.  

I’ll make sure you never have to regress again.  

He'll fulfill his childhood promises and live out those dreams if it’s the last thing he does. With that in mind, he closes his eyes and smiles serenely as Yoo Joonghyuk’s firm grip loosens.  

It’s so good to finally see you, you bastard.  

His actions are a mirror of a thousand Yoo Joonghyuks of a different world, each miracle he acts out just the result of playing the role of the man he’s always admired. It feels a little bit like cheating when he lives , time and time again, only through stealing the experience of someone who’s suffered infinite infinities and stayed standing.  

But then he’s never been a protagonist, never been one so blessed as to have the skill and talent to develop the way Yoo Joonghyuk does. All he can do is read, so he'll make use of his one point of usefulness. To protect you, to protect this world—  

( I don’t mind being the sacrifice. )  

It's gratifying, watching everything play out exactly the way he expects. They meet companion after companion, clear scenario after scenario, and it’s all orchestrated, all the result of Kim Dokja's nudging and guiding. He’ll take the story on the path that he wants most fervently; he admits it feels nice, being in control.  

(It feels as nice as it feels harrowing, like walking on a tightrope. He knows this story like the back of his hand, can recite its passages by heart, but a part of him still worries that something will go wrong—something will deviate from the plot, or he'll make the smallest error that causes catastrophe. I only have one chance , he wants to scream sometimes. How can you all trust me, knowing that? )  

He dies the first time and it’s a calculated risk, just another part of the plan. Burning to death at the whims of the disaster dragon, he has his first realization that death is… something inevitably present, but not necessarily unwelcome. The scenarios pass much easier when he treats his life as a tool rather than something to truly be protected or cherished; at any rate, he’s trained his team well enough that they'll progress significantly through the scenarios even without him.  

(When his eyes shut and his heart stops, he wonders if this is what he should’ve felt all those years ago.)  

His second death comes as a little more of a surprise to him—not because he expected to be able to survive the 41st Shin Yoosung's barrage of attacks, but rather because of Yoo Joonghyuk's reaction. He had expected him to remain level-headed like he had in the novel, long since jaded in the face of his companions' deaths, but the way he goes feral has Kim Dokja panicking. He looks in Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes and is met with a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, fury and anguish and fear almost overwhelming him with their relentlessness. Perhaps he’d forgotten that this regression was only the third. Why else would Yoo Joonghyuk grieve so deeply for the loss of a comrade?  

What happens if Yoo Joonghyuk throws his life away just for a false prophet? Kim Dokja isn’t even his only reliable source of information for the future. Without realizing, he spirals a little:  

Why, for me?  

All at once, he is fifteen again, staying up until midnight trying to read the next sentence without succumbing to the softly whispered temptations of sleep's call.  

I've known you so long, but you don’t know me at all.  

And Yoo Joonghyuk speaks those terrible, wonderful words:  

“He is my companion.”  

You weren’t supposed to care, you weren’t supposed to fight for me, you weren’t supposed to—  

But he’s loved Yoo Joonghyuk for years and years and a little part of him crumbles away at those cherished words, so short yet so meaningful. It’s all he’s ever wanted; it’s all he’s ever dreaded.  

Close your eyes and keep them shut, lest you open them and wake up in that hospital bed again.  

(He doesn’t deserve this, but he’ll hold onto it tightly for as long as he can. Kim Dokja has always been a selfish man, after all, only thinking of himself.) 

So he revives; so he and Yoo Joonghyuk are forced to defeat Shin Yoosung together; so he gets the chance to take a long, deep breath. The events throughout the battle have shaken him, twin swells of guilt and melancholy rising within him. He'd always considered Yoo Joonghyuk his closest friend throughout his teenage years, but that was as a result of their circumstances—Yoo Joonghyuk was but a character, and he was the story's sole reader.  

He and the Fourth Wall tremble in unison now, knowing in full that his childhood saviour stands before him, living and breathing. This man, who genuinely considered Kim Dokja his companion in the heat of battle, is not the same as any of the Yoo Joonghyuks whose stories he’s committed to memory: by all means, he’s an entirely different person.  

( If I don’t know the story, what am I worth?  

If it’s not a story— )  

The word companion rings in his ears. That title was never his to claim: no, Shin Yoosung was the one who struggled for so long just to serve her beloved Captain ( and look how cruel the world has been to her, when she's the one who should be in your position ). Lee Jihye followed her Master steadfastly in each regression; Lee Hyunsung sacrificed himself for him time and time again; Kim Namwoon dirtied his hands beside him; Uriel and Lee Seolhwa and everyone else, they lived and died for him every time.  

And in comparison, who is Kim Dokja? Merely a boy who ran away from fate, who closed his eyes and pretended he could be the one to show Yoo Joonghyuk the love that he never allowed himself to receive; merely a man finally realizing that his actions will inevitably leave an imprint on his protagonist. He knows nothing of the suffering they’ve experienced, or perhaps he knows everything of it… but he’s always been the audience, the reader.  

Even as a child, he’d known that if Yoo Joonghyuk were real, he’d never spare him a glance. Now, he's reeling at the way Yoo Joonghyuk's stare burns into his very soul.  

“Kim Dokja,” he calls— say my name again, say it until it feels real . “Why are you so distracted?”  

The words call him out of his reverie, a strained smile slipping onto his face as he thinks of the girl he failed to save and his peers' faith that he doesn’t deserve.  

“Ah, it’s nothing. Let’s go on, shall we?”  

Turning so he doesn’t have to face the reminder of his sins, Kim Dokja doesn’t notice the way Yoo Joonghyuk’s face twitches.  

When they all stop for a well-deserved rest that night, though, he finds himself unable to sleep. Insomnia is an old friend of his, so it doesn’t particularly surprise him. What does is the sudden urge to pull out a pen and paper, the longing that has haunted him since he first felt that firm grasp around his throat.  

(He’s stored his first treasured letter away safely, only taking it out on occasion when he needs something to ground him.) 

From the Dokkaebi Bag, he retrieves the items and stares at the blank sheet like he has every time since that first day, the only time he’s ever been able to put the pen to the paper. After so long, though, he supposes a second letter is much overdue. There’s so many things he needs to say, so many things he’ll never let himself say aloud.  

Moonlight washes over him gently as his hand trembles, the tip of the pen barely grazing but never fully touching itself to the paper. He looks around at his companions, fast asleep while gathered around him; Yoo Joonghyuk is off on his own somewhere, perhaps training or otherwise marching onward with that straightforward determination of his. Somehow, in the dead of night, his emotions come to him more softly, handling him with a little more gentleness.  

Perhaps he’s just had enough of mourning through the day, but he feels a nostalgic wave of fondness as he cards his fingers through the younger Shin Yoosung's hair. Regardless of what he deserves, regardless of how little they know about him, regardless of the ugly things they’ve seen of him… these people still believe in him.  

Just for tonight, he’ll let himself be okay.  

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk,  

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? So much has changed. I can’t pretend you know everything about me anymore, but you sure as hell are as insufferable in real life as you were in the story.  

He hesitates for a beat, unsure of whether he wants to write the next line. Somehow the pen feels much heavier, knowing that the recipient of this letter is real . If Yoo Joonghyuk were in front of him, would he still be able to speak these words aloud? 

He supposes that’s the point of written word, though—to say all the things that go unspoken aloud.   

I'm sorry I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry I keep having to lie to you. I swore I’d protect you, didn’t I? But when I look at you now, I realize I was a fool. I’m still so weak.  

Isn't it pathetic, that I feel most at peace when half of my companions are characters and the world is collapsing around me?  

I know you’d probably tell me to shut up and stop rambling about useless things if you were here right now. I guess it’s good you’re not—  

…Kim Dokja probably should have knocked on wood. 

“What are you doing?” a low voice rumbles, emerging from the darkness. Kim Dokja jumps, quickly tucking the paper away as his heart races. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t miss the motion, eyes narrowing in suspicion.  

“I’m keeping watch,” he says. It’s not really a lie, given that he's been keeping an eye out for any potential threats in his peripheral vision.  

Yoo Joonghyuk grunts, taking a seat a comfortable distance away from Kim Dokja but still close enough to keep an eye on him.  

“Sleep,” he commands. Any of Kim Dokja's protests are swallowed easily by the persistence of the man who lived a thousand eight hundred lifetimes for one singular goal. Furrowing his eyebrows, Yoo Joonghyuk looks seconds away from manhandling Kim Dokja into a sleeping bag.  

With a final resigned sigh, Kim Dokja allows himself to lie down and close his eyes. It’s definitely not the first time he’s left a letter unfinished, he supposes, as he finds himself drifting off easier with Yoo Joonghyuk watching.  

“Good night,” he whispers quietly, the way he used to wish sweet dreams to the Yoo Joonghyuk of his computer screen. The wind is loud enough to carry his voice away, yet somehow Yoo Joonghyuk hears anyway.  

“Good night.”  

—

…In the end, it takes Kim Dokja a long, long while to finish the letter. He and his companions travel through the scenarios at a fast pace and his hands are constantly busy, be it with his sword or otherwise. There’s rarely a moment of peace for him to rest and find the headspace to write again, especially with Yoo Joonghyuk's piercing eyes on him more often than not. He almost caught sight of the letter once; something tells Kim Dokja that he won’t let it slide twice.  

But then again, death via expulsion from the scenarios does give him quite a lot of quiet alone time.  

He planned it, of course. All the Yoo Joonghyuks gave him a plethora of information on how to act in any scenario: he’s aware that the ascension to Demon King and subsequently his inevitable exile were the most optimal paths to take, given the situation. Nonetheless, it's unspeakably painful to tread onwards with only the Fourth Wall to keep him company in the space outside scenarios. A single wrong move and his very essence could dissolve into nothingness with none of his companions knowing any better. Even with the Fourth Wall’s assistance, he has to actively ensure that his sanity remains intact. 

There’s an ache in his heart as he thinks of his companions. He has no way of reaching out to them, of reassuring them of his continued vitality (for now): despite his best efforts, he ends up wondering how everyone is doing.  

Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung, he knows, mourned even the deaths they knew to be temporary. Lee Jihye, too, is still barely more than a child—no matter the way she acts, fueled by bravado, the three of them are so young . Even though they’ve all surely killed before, even though the apocalypse does not discriminate between adults and children, he still can’t help but wish they could be spared.  

(After all, he knows from experience that childhood nightmares don’t leave quickly.)  

How are Lee Hyunsung and Yoo Sangah, then? The two of them are always brimming with hopeful optimism, never failing to cheer the group on. He can only hope they’re keeping everyone afloat; if only he’d had more time to warn everyone about the implications of his Fate, maybe he’d worry less about their reactions.  

There’s Jung Heewon, his loyal sword wielding some of the strongest offensive capabilities of every one of his companions. Though he hadn’t known her in the past, and she’d never been a character, he finds that his trust in her abilities is unwavering.  

Han Sooyoung knows enough about both him and the story, he imagines, to expect him to navigate his way out of this one too. Maybe that’s just false hope, though—the result of him having another person who knows this world as a story.  

And then…  

[Kim Dokja was a coward.] 

[He was scared of the people he loved.] 

[He thought to himself, maybe it would be better if I just stayed here .]

[As he walked on, he thought, surely that sunfish can take care of everyone without me .] 

[He was a fool and a liar.]

He doesn’t interrupt the Fourth Wall's insulting narration, aware of the truth of its words. It radiates a faint aura of irritation when its provocative words draw no reaction out of him, though that’s partly as a result of the environment’s draining effect on him.  

[Kim Dokj a] 

It addresses him by name, no longer narrating but instead speaking directly to him.  

“Yes?” 

A pause. 

[Fi nish wr iting] 

“...Why?”  

When it’s just the two of them, it’s easier to be honest. How can he lie to the Wall that reads his every thought, anyway? His arguments with it are generally theatrical, but he doesn’t have the energy to be sarcastic at the moment.  

[I diot]

[T hey are also you r stor y]  

[Keep you rself ali ve]  

He’s aware of what the Fourth Wall means: the letters, though not the same as a Fable, are equally a core part of who he is. Here in the realm beyond scenarios, even something so seemingly trivial may provide some relief. 

Still.  

“…I don’t have any paper.”  

[I will reme mber fo r you]  

In any case, his arguments are weak and half-hearted. After all, he has so many things to say to Yoo Joonghyuk, so many things he wants to know. More than anyone else, it’s Yoo Joonghyuk who he wonders about.  

Maybe it’s a good thing he left the last letter unfinished—he was apologizing then, wasn’t he? Now he has another point to add to that list of never-ending apologies.  

Though it’s a little awkward at first, Kim Dokja settles into thinking the words he’d ordinarily scrawl onto paper, noting the Fourth Wall’s uncharacteristic silence. Though it stops telling his story, he doesn’t immediately start fading like he did when he tried to turn it off—perhaps it’s true, then, that his letters can sustain him to an extent.  

Hey, it’s me again.  

—I don’t really know how to say this. I’ve never really been good with words, you know? But I’ll ask you again. Are you okay?  

…I hope you are, because if both of us disappear I’m not sure who can lead the group.  

(I hope you aren’t. I hope killing me hurt you, I hope the thought of losing me permanently broke you as much as it did the first time—  

Don’t record this part.)  

It’s a stupid question. Forget I asked. I know I promised to live to see the end with you but, well… only so much I can do about this. It’ll be temporary, I think—not that it matters, given that you’ll only read this if I end up coming back in the first place.  

So much for dying at the hands of the one I love the most. I think a little part of me knew it was going to be you all along. Who else could it have been, anyway? It’s you, you know—there’s no one else. There’s never been anyone else, not from the moment I first met you.

Oh, that sounds so cheesy. But you were my hero forever ago, and I love you to death here too. Your story kept me alive, you know? Just like you kept going on for your companions' sakes, I lived to see the end by your side.  

(More than that, though—)  

I’m sorry. It’s selfish of me to tell you these things, even if you’re never going to see this. I don’t expect anything from you, just so you know.  

[Wh y apol ogize]  

Kim Dokja flinches, the Fourth Wall’s voice suddenly interrupting his thoughts. Though he’d known it was listening, a part of him had hoped it would stay silent to spare him the humiliation.  

[If you ha d one chan ce to speak to h im, would you wa ste it apologiz ing]  

“…If I were actually speaking to him, I’d never say any of this.”  

He feels a little zap in his mind—barely painful, but just enough for the Fourth Wall to express its annoyance. Petty.   

He’s not sure whether the Fourth Wall’s interruption is its way of telling him to stop 'writing' or not, and hesitates for a moment until it speaks again.  

[You sa ved hi m]

“I didn’t—” 

[Yo u saved him]

[Jus t like he sav ed you]

[You ar e the onl y one who thin ks you owe a deb t]

“That’s because he’s a—” 

[Y ou’re runni ng away ag ain]

It’s not fair, Kim Dokja thinks, that the Fourth Wall knows all the words he doesn’t say.  

[Lif e isn’ t fair]

[Even in yo ur most pr ivate thoug hts, yo u refuse to sa y the things you rea lly me an]

[A pologize for th at inst ead]

[Or tell your mos t lov ed on e the truth]

“…”  

It’s lonely without everyone, but it’s loneliest without you.  

…God, I really, really hope you never read this.  

I guess I’ve just grown used to you being a constant in my life. I read through more than 3000 chapters of your every regression, you know? You really get to know someone after reading their entire life story, huh. If your world hadn’t come to life after I finished reading, I probably would’ve reread again and again until I couldn’t tell the difference between your reality and my own anyway.  

Maybe me spilling out my thoughts to you is my way of apologizing for reading all of yours against your will. Would you be disgusted if you knew the truth? It’s not like you like me much in the first place—did you hate it, being the one to realize my fate? Do you hate me for loving you, loving your story the most?  

You always hated the Constellations who watched you and your Fables for amusement. I said I would befriend you, protect you, save you… but I’m the same as them, aren’t I?  

I’m—  

[Kim Dok ja, s top a po logizing]  

…Knowing you, actually, you’d probably throw a temper tantrum if you knew everything. It seems to be your default reaction when handling unexpected situations. We're both pretty bad at that, aren’t we?  

(Just a broken little child clinging to his just-as-broken hero—)  

But I guess I’m glad, no matter how you feel, that I’m the one who has to suffer through this. You deserve some rest, you know? Step back from being the protagonist for a while. I know you hated it, when you first became a Demon King. Let me carry some of the burden, you damned masochistic sunfish.  

…Take care. You can do that much, can’t you? If I come back and you’re all depressed and beaten up, I won’t forgive you.  

Don’t give up. I’ll be back, whether you like it or not.  

A few moments of breathless silence, something tranquil settling upon Kim Dokja, then the Fourth Wall speaks tentatively.

[Sig n your nam e ?]  

“No, not yet.” He doesn’t think he’s ready to take that step, to sign his name and finish the letter. As long as it remains incomplete, he can hold onto it a little longer. As long as it remains anonymous, he can pretend those broken-hearted tender words belong to someone else.

He tucks all his most vulnerable thoughts into a corner of his mind, allowing the Fourth Wall to retrieve them once it’s time. When it begins its narration again, he finds its tone to be a little softer, a little gentler.  

(When Yoo Joonghyuk finally finds him in the Demon Realm, a thousand words left unsaid that are understood anyway, Kim Dokja doesn’t cry.  

…He doesn’t cry, but if he stares at Yoo Joonghyuk for a long, long time and turns aside to swallow thickly, no one needs to know.

My saviour, why have you always come to my rescue, when the only one who matters is you ? )  

—

With that first question comes many more, accompanied by a delightful handful of existential crises within the industrial complex. The man Kim Dokja grew up beside—the man he grew up for —is nigh unrecognizable. He often catches Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze trailing after him, muted sombreness taking the place of the usual glacial frigidity. 

It’s a little off-putting, being stared at so blatantly, and he’s really not sure how to handle the recent development. Stubborn mule that he is, Yoo Joonghyuk always averts his eyes and denies watching him at all when confronted, only to slip back into it when he thinks Kim Dokja’s attention has been successfully diverted elsewhere. 

Still, a small part of him understands the sentiment—the very same part of him, he imagines, that had spent half an hour burning Yoo Joonghyuk’s face into his memory when they’d reunited. It’s a feeling he gets around the others too, when Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung hug him tight or when Yoo Sangah takes him out on a late-night stroll or even when Jung Heewon tries to smack some sense into him after a particularly risky endeavour. 

It always starts as a small, tickling sensation rooted deep within his heart, whispering is this real is this real is this real until it’s all he can do not to reach out, to touch them and hold them and make sure they’re truly present , made of flesh and blood with steadily beating hearts. 

( Not a dream, right…? ) 

The world would truly end before anyone sane called Yoo Joonghyuk soft , but there’s something undeniably… delicate about those lingering glances. Like he’s scared to look away, to turn aside and watch Kim Dokja fade out of sight. 

( Me too , his heart cries, me too .) 

In a rare show of self-indulgence, he finds himself meeting Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes when he can—they are dark as shades of night, mirroring his own. He knows he’s reaching for something that doesn’t exist, but he’s always been good at pretending, hasn’t he? Pretend that all the world’s a stage, pretend that you can fill the hole where his heart was, pretend that you’re the protagonist, cradled so gently in the hands of the universe. 

I’m here , his eyes say, because in his made-up little story he is beloved and that is his line. 

Please never leave again , Yoo Joonghyuk’s reply, because in his made-up little story he loves him and that is his line. 

And the world will go quiet for a moment, and the two loneliest men in the universe will be a little less lonely. 

The scene ends, the curtains are drawn. With a tired huff, Kim Dokja leans against the wall. It’s… nice, imagining himself being wanted. Believing that the protagonist cared enough about his wellbeing to worry about him. Still, he’ll just end up in a haze of self-loathing if he continues down this fantastical train of thought and allows himself to hope—better to stay grounded, to remind himself of his worth. 

So long as he keeps moving, so long as the plot continues to push forward, he won’t have time to sink into his delusions. After all, his ability to think is his only asset, isn’t it? If he loses that, he’ll be of no worth at all. 

They progress to the Demon King Selection. Kim Dokja can’t deny that his shoulders feel a little lighter, seeing his companions again—even death, that which feels so familiar these days, does not distract from that. Everyone fights side-by-side in a comfortable rhythm, and he feels a swell of pride at the sight. 

And then— 

Everything goes so wrong. Everything goes so right. 

[Incarnation ‘Yoo Joonghyuk’ has refused to regress.]

In life and in death, I just can’t let go of you, huh , Kim Dokja thinks, slightly hysterically. There’s no time to dwell on this, though, because suddenly everything is happening so fast : Uriel descends, the giant story begins emerging, he faces off with Surya… It’s a good thing, he supposes, that he has so many things to keep himself occupied.

All he knows to do is run, run, run —his thoughts are his greatest asset, yes, but also his greatest weakness. Better to battle a god than to peer into the darkest depths of his mind. In a sense, the quietest days are the most dangerous to him: after all, no author ever writes about the days that the hero spends staring at the ceiling, searching for a single reason to get out of bed. 

He’d go insane in different ways if he could do nothing but face battle, though. The Demon King Selection comes to a conclusion and he has a peaceful few days in the industrial complex, guiding the reconstruction process and truly reuniting with his companions. 

Daytime is tolerable. Everyone is constantly putting in their best effort to finish rebuilding the industrial complex, and it’s hard not to be swept up in that work ethic. He engages in cheerful conversation with the people he’s grown to see as friends and it almost feels like everything could be okay, like nothing has changed. 

…At night, he pays Yoo Joonghyuk’s unconscious form a visit. It affects him more than he thought it would, seeing the protagonist in such a weakened state: it’s a reminder that they exist in the same world now, that Kim Dokja can’t just sit back and watch Yoo Joonghyuk regress until he reaches the solution. 

[The story, ‘Life and Death Companions’, wants to keep going.] 

In his heart of hearts, he knows that this is their one and only chance. He can’t die, and he can’t let Yoo Joonghyuk regress. In this single regression, they’ll make it together—they have to. 

…Before he realizes, a single stray tear slips down his cheek. He doesn’t cry so often anymore, but the wetness on his face and the lump in his throat is still something he remembers oh-so-well. 

Guilt swirls in his stomach. The Fourth Wall is present but silent—he imagines it understands that he needs to do this right now. 

He rips out a sheet of paper and a pencil. 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry— 

How can I hold onto you when I can barely hold onto myself? 

I can’t do it. I’ll fail. I’ll lose you, I’ll lose myself. 

You kept living—why—for me—I can’t— 

How can you ask me to do anything more than adore you? 

Please, please, please, throw me away, tell me you don’t need me, cast me aside. 

I can’t save you. I’m not enough. 

But it’s as he writes this last sentence, vision blurry and paper tearstained, that he glances up at Yoo Joonghyuk: his hero in past and present and future, lying so pale and sweaty. He’s always known himself to be a selfish man, but rereading his own words, he feels a wave of disgust at himself. 

This world is not one where he can sit aside and pretend that he is just the reader, some poor soul cursed with omniscience. There’s no wall that separates him from his companions: slowly, hesitantly, he brushes his fingers against Yoo Joonghyuk’s. It’s his proof of their mutual existence. No longer is he a child and Yoo Joonghyuk his god: they are companions , in life and death the same. 

He unfolds the paper that he had meant to crumple up and throw away. On the wrinkled, nearly-illegible page, he adds one more line: 

But I have to be. For you, I will be enough.  

For the sake of his most cherished story, for the sake of guiding it to its happy epilogue, there is no sacrifice too great. And so—

He’d read the latest revision. He’d heard Kyrgios and Breaking the Sky Sword Saint’s words, their descriptions of the insurmountable force they had faced and miraculously escaped from—though ‘escape’ would be too generous a word, for it was not of their own virtue that they survived. 

Just delaying the inevitable , Kim Dokja had thought, a sense of dread sinking in. Still he had hoped for it to be a lie, something he could simply run away from. 

He remembers being young, begging the world to wrap itself around him in a soft cocoon. He scoffs at the memory now—the world has never given him anything he has asked for, so he’ll pry those things out of its hands now if he has to. A world where his companions are safe, a world where Yoo Joonghyuk is happy: that’s all he needs, so he doesn’t hesitate as he hurls himself into the oblivion that is the Indescribable Distance. 

(They scream anguished, broken words at him from the ground, begging him to stay, not to sacrifice himself again. His fragile little heart whispers, I wish I could . 

But he’s doing this for them. He’ll do whatever it takes, again and again, always for them.) 

—

Kim Dokja doesn’t even have time to be surprised when the Secretive Plotter sends him to the 1863rd regression: there’s a sword aimed at his heart and a hand around his neck and he thinks huh, you really never change . 

Thankfully, the scenarios have truly drawn out his talent for improvisation and thinking on his feet. He can hardly call what he does ‘fending off’ Yoo Joonghyuk’s attacks, but the fact that he didn’t die within ten seconds of provoking the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk is admirable enough already. 

This isn’t the man he’s gotten to know, but it’s the man he knows best of all from a time long gone. His third regression counterpart could never dream to reach the capabilities of this monster—it’s a terrible time to be waxing poetic, but as he looks into those empty dark eyes, he sees the deity that his younger self used to worship. He is untouchable, undefeatable, irresistible… 

and so, so lonely. His sins amount to something greater than the embodiment of Evil itself, a tired repetition of life and death and life and death. How many times has he fallen into despair, into insanity, into resignation? 

An old memory resurfaces—little bits and pieces of words his mother had said, back when he had taken her word as gospel. 

There is a difference between living and surviving, my angel. To survive is to make it to the next day. To live is to dare to hope for the promise a happy future. 

There’s no light in Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes as he kills the Demon Kings mindlessly. Without a doubt, it’s the look of a man who is just trying to make it another day, who is just repeating actions whose meanings are long gone now. 

All the worlds you didn’t save — the Secretive Plotter’s words reach him now, piercing through his heart. A child’s promise to protect Yoo Joonghyuk. His words from such a short while ago: for you, I will be enough . 

He looks at the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk now, this hopeless, tired man, and loves him just the same as he loves the 3rd and all the others.

The Plotter has given him a chance to repair this worldline, and he takes that chance without hesitation. Every single Yoo Joonghyuk is part of the story that he holds dear. Every single Yoo Joonghyuk deserves to see that soft, happy ending. 

Inevitably, the strongest Yoo Joonghyuk will always also be the weakest, and Kim Dokja knows exactly what—or rather who—his Achilles heel is. It hurts him, saying the words that he knows will break Yoo Joonghyuk, but… 

( ‘Have you protected all the things you wanted to keep?’ )

He watches the man he revered (still reveres, even now) crumple onto his knees and then shatter like glass, so very delicate. He watches and knows that this is what he’s meant to do: to teach the Yoo Joonghyuk who has survived 1863 lifetimes how to live. 

It’ll be okay. 

I’ll finish your story for you, so rest. 

—A better man would listen to Han Sooyoung when she proposes her solution to the infinite cycle of regression. A better man would listen to the words Yoo Joonghyuk says, so quiet and filled with despair: I want to die . After all, Han Sooyoung and her uncountable avatars are akin to a god with their endless ability to reach the optimal solution, and Kim Dokja has never been known to reject Yoo Joonghyuk’s greatest desires. 

But Kim Dokja lives for Yoo Joonghyuk , and the moment he hears the whisper of a thought he’s been listening for all this time— I want to live —he knows he would end the world in a heartbeat if that’s what Yoo Joonghyuk asked for. 

You have saved me so many times—you save me every time you keep living. 

The Fourth Wall doesn’t know anything. I owe you the universe and more. 

The ‘optimal’ solution for ending the loop isn’t the solution that Kim Dokja needs in order to guide Yoo Joonghyuk to his happy ending, so he rejects it. In how many lifetimes has Yoo Joonghyuk dared to hope? And in how many regressions was that flickering light mercilessly crushed?

Yet here he stands, just another lifetime spent going through the motions, begging some higher deity for release ( 15 years old, staring down at the gravel )… and still in his mind he manages to think, I want to live. 

I want to live. 

“I want to die.” 

I want to live. 

“I want to die.” 

I want—

It’s too much to take in. The conflicting halves of Yoo Joonghyuk split into two, blinding white against all-consuming black. Their actions mirror one another, identical opposites—the same person, the same desires, the same memories… 

But there’s a newfound light in one’s (or both’s?) eyes, something primal and tragic and painfully human , and all Kim Dokja can do is stare and wonder if he did the right thing. 

I want to live—

—then live, Yoo Joonghyuk. 

And he’s powerless as he’s ever been as he watches one Yoo Joonghyuk die, regress, rebirth into some unknown 1864th regression that was never meant to happen… but somehow it feels okay. It feels right , even, watching his retreating back, watching him escape from the narrative.

He hadn’t saved Yoo Joonghyuk in the way he’d meant to—the promise of ending the cycle of regression still lies unfulfilled, but somehow he feels like he’s done something properly. 

In the following few days, he speaks with Han Sooyoung and the rest of her own companions, freely offering them the information he has on the remaining scenarios. It’s been a couple weeks since he’s arrived at most, but somehow the time feels so much longer: he misses the worldline that he came from, and the individuals in this worldline are undeniably different people. Though he wants to return quickly, there’s one more thing he thinks he should do:

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk, 

Are you well? I’m asking the ‘you’ of the 3rd regression that I know, the ‘you’ of the 1863rd, the ‘you’ of the 1864th… and all the others too.

I hope you’re doing okay right now. To my 3rd Yoo Joonghyuk, I hope you’re getting along well with our party members. I’m sure you’re fine, of course—you’re so much more irritatingly stubborn than the Yoo Joonghyuk of this worldline. Ahh, what I wouldn’t give for you to be so docile. 

Forgive me for being a little sentimental, but I’d almost say I’ve missed you. In the end, the ‘you’ I know is the ‘you’ that I belong with ( belong to ). That worldline, our worldline, is my home. 

A short pause. He could end the letter here, but his hand keeps moving.

Hey. 

Since you won’t read this…

I can say this, right?

Will you tell me I did well? 

Tell me I made you happy? 

Tell me I did the right thing?

…This feels stupid. Never mind. It doesn’t really matter how I feel anyway, as long as you’re content.

I’ll be home soon.  

…Three years.

Compared to Yoo Joonghyuk’s many millennia, three years is laughable—it would pass in the blink of an eye or shorter. But Kim Dokja is not a regressor, and this life is the only one he has: three years is precious, precious time stolen. Things have changed, things have broken, and it doesn’t feel fair that he didn’t even have a chance to be there to fix them. 

He knows what he’s done in the 1863rd timeline is crucial in its own way, though he’s not quite sure how yet, but everything in that world was brief: a transient thing, never meant to be permanent. He touched it like the fall of a single feather, then returned to his own home. 

Tense animosity stews between his group members now. Though they smile and greet him with teary eyes, he can see that something about his last departure had torn apart something vital. In saving the other worldline’s Yoo Joonghyuk, has he broken his own worldline? 

The kids—which includes Lee Jihye, because regardless of her actual age, her mental age is still that of a child—have grown somewhat taller. Though they’re all still playful and easily the brightest of everyone in the group, there is a darker shadow cast over each of them: the mark of bloodshed and unforgettable memories, experiences that will haunt them in the dead of night. 

Lee Hyunsung, unfalteringly kind but hardened by close calls and near-tragedies—for better or for worse. Lee Seolhwa, as devoted to her craft as always, but a little more jaded: three years is an eternity when each patient is her responsibility, when all the lives are in her hands. Difficult decisions have to be made, sometimes. 

Jung Heewon. Han Sooyoung.

…He’s not sure what’s happening between them, but the rift between group members is most blatantly obvious there. From the start, their personalities were never particularly compatible; their chosen constellation sponsors represented Good and Evil respectively. As a whole, their group had been able to keep them civil, but a single piece had fallen out of place and now Kim Dokja is home but not home , because they’re all walking on eggshells. 

Yoo Sangah. 

It sickens him that he’d known what she’d done the moment he’d seen her, pale and half-conscious on the hospital bed. What decisions, what sacrifices had she made? Knowing that he would have to pay a price to send his companions back to Seoul, he’d prepared to put her in his place as a leader: privately, he’d always wondered how the story might go if she had been the one to lead a reader’s life instead. In his life, would she have made better decisions? Or is his life the result of his circumstances, independent of who he is as a person?

One way or another, he had given her too much responsibility for a single person, much less one who had never read Ways of Survival . Even with Han Sooyoung at her side, it would have been terribly difficult, planning ahead for each scenario without his prior knowledge as guidance. 

Intentionally or not, he had abandoned them, and for that, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness. 

In comparison to the rest of his companions who flock around him, barraging him endlessly with questions, Yoo Joonghyuk is… quiet. He lingers in the background, though his silence could hardly be mistaken for tranquility. No, a single glance at him and Kim Dokja sees the fiery-hot rage stewing within—like an echo of his first meeting with the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk, except this anger is directed at him personally. It hardly helps that Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint is choosing to malfunction now of all times—it has to be an ability malfunction, lest he be forced to consider the alternative. 

( ‘Not a character’— )

Everyone has changed, shifted just a few millimetres to the right, and it’s only a matter of time before someone explodes, before something irreversible happens. With all this in mind, it’s a pretty terrible time to enter the 46th scenario. 

There’s a brief period of respite right before they’re sorted into their groups, where Kim Dokja could almost believe that nothing has changed. Everyone declares their participation as a nebula, and for a second everything is okay. 

A taste of happiness, just to have it stolen away again—that’s how his life has always operated, hasn’t it? He thinks perhaps he should be used to it by now. If only. 

He’d thought he’d learned everything there was to know about his protagonist—after all, he’d influenced some of Yoo Joonghyuk’s characteristics and actions, back when this world was just a part of Ways of Survival . Of course it’s not that easy: the ‘character’ he had known has diverged from his original path, taken the story into his own hands. 

Still, Kim Dokja had assumed that Yoo Joonghyuk would at least know better than to reach for the star.

“Bastard, what do you think you’re doing?”

Kim Dokja flinches when he sees the look on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face, carefully molded into something cold and unaffected. It stings, knowing that despite everything he’s done, Yoo Joonghyuk still distrusts him enough to want to take his rights to life and death. 

…Maybe it was always going to end up this way. It doesn’t matter how much of his soul he’s poured into loving Yoo Joonghyuk, after all, not when Yoo Joonghyuk has tasted loss and betrayal too many times to ever really trust him. It’s been one-sided from the start, hasn’t it?

(The words life and death companions taste a little bit like ash in his mouth.)

Everyone leaves. That’s his fate, he supposes, as lonely only child Dokja. 

[Idio t] 

And just as he’s about to fall, sink into the depths of scars both old and new, the Fourth Wall pulls him back up. Its voice in his mind sounds equal parts exasperated and impatient. 

[You loo k but do no t see] 

Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint opens before Kim Dokja can ask what the cryptic words refer to, and he reels at the words he reads. There’s a steely expression on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face, and he realizes with a start that he looks the spitting image of his 1863rd round self, post-regression depression—a look of exhausted determination, of pained persistence. A difficult decision made, but one that he’s wholly devoted himself to. 

[This world needs Kim Dokja.]

[I’m not the one who can clear the scenarios to the end.] 

Tired. Broken. Scared. They’re not words that are usually associated with the formidable Yoo Joonghyuk, but Kim Dokja can’t think of a better description for the despairing words. Still the faintest sliver of hope remains, fragmented thoughts that come and go.

[not again] 

[protect]

[companion] 

And in that moment Kim Dokja realizes it’s not him that Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t trust, but rather himself. What is an infinity of trial and error, after all, when Kim Dokja stands in front of him with all the answers he’s been looking for? Yoo Joonghyuk stands at the edge of a cliff, and all it takes is a single push for him to fall. 

Even three lifetimes is too many, once he realizes that he’s the only constant between timelines. A lesser man would have snapped much sooner, facing the realization that he’ll always be the only one who knows everything. 

Oh, poor soul. 

In Yoo Joonghyuk’s position, would he not also give up? Wouldn’t he hand the reins to the person who seemingly effortlessly knows everything about the world, about him—past, present and future? 

(Wouldn’t he try to control him, hold onto him and make sure he doesn’t disappear?)

But the fact remains that Yoo Joonghyuk is the protagonist, is still the stronger and better of the two of them, even if he doesn’t know it yet. This isn’t where your story ends , Kim Dokja thinks. You can’t give up yet. 

Three regressions just aren’t enough to unlock all of Yoo Joonghyuk’s full potential, regardless of the startling pace of his growth in this changed timeline. Kim Dokja’s heard quiet resentful thoughts sometimes, wretched bits and pieces picked up from Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint: how can that man, who hasn’t appeared in past regressions, know everything when I know nothing? 

He never comments on the thoughts he picks up. In the first place, he doubts Yoo Joonghyuk would enjoy such a blatant invasion of his privacy. Besides, he also thinks it’s unfair: he knows everything because he lived in Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoes, because he read his story religiously again and again. He’s done nothing but watch, surviving because he knows more about Yoo Joonghyuk’s future than the man himself does. 

Even if his grip on the character Yoo Joonghyuk is slipping, he didn’t read thousands of chapters detailing the smallest things about his life for nothing. Some things change. Others don’t. Right here, right now, he still knows what Yoo Joonghyuk needs to see and hear from him.  

The 41st Yoo Joonghyuk was notable for his cold flavour of cruelty—each regression was brutal in its own way, but the 41st was unique because he was… as rational as he could get. In that lifetime, he’d tried to separate his companions from himself, using and discarding them like pawns on a chessboard. He was hundreds of lifetimes too young to make it to the end, still, but that particular regression was extremely significant to his growth. 

Cruel , Kim Dokja thinks as he looks at the 41st Yoo Joonghyuk who he’s summoned as his true adversary, but just as tragic. At some point while reading that Yoo Joonghyuk’s part of the story, he’d realized that the ruthlessness had just been a mask, his twisted display of love towards his companions. He’d simultaneously been the least and most emotional Yoo Joonghyuk of all.  Kim Dokja doesn’t blame him for shutting his companions out—who could bear losing them again and again, taking them in his arms and watching them dissolve into nothingness? 

The Yoo Joonghyuks spar, exchanging scathing words with one another. Kim Dokja watches on grimly, watches as the third regression stumbles ungracefully against himself. It’s no surprise that the 41st Yoo Joonghyuk’s words are as piercing as his spear: in the end, each of them are just talking to themselves. The hateful words they speak are directed to their own selves, barbed insults towards all their failures.

Thirty-eight lives of hope offered and then stolen. The third Yoo Joonghyuk can’t hold a candle to the person he’ll become… 

But then Kim Dokja knows that this Yoo Joonghyuk, his Yoo Joonghyuk, has long since surpassed the bounds of the original third round. It’s not a surprise when he defeats himself, when the two of them sink into a pointed silence broken only by short gasps for breath that slowly even out. 

See? You didn’t give up. You’ve grown beyond yourself in strength. 

Don’t you realize just how much you’re worth?

Eventually, they turn to speak to one another. It’s quite possibly the closest thing to a civil conversation that they’ve ever had, murmured words and hushed tones. There’s a soft smile on Kim Dokja’s face that he doesn’t bother disguising, and Yoo Joonghyuk holds himself with a relaxed posture, eyes closed.

“The me of the 1863rd regression. Did I fail?”

Always so blunt, cutting straight to the point. Kim Dokja supposes it can be a bit of a charming trait at times. 

Softly, like he’s trying not to scare him off, Kim Dokja answers. 

“You succeeded.”

Eyes widen near-imperceptibly, just the slightest hitch of breath easily disguised. The daunting number seems to mean nothing to Yoo Joonghyuk compared to the realization that there’ll be an resolution, someday in the far far future. Maybe he’d understood that reaching his ‘end’ would take an infinity of smaller infinities. Whatever the case, his nonchalance in regards to the large number feels… familiar. 

Almost reverently, Yoo Joonghyuk murmurs, “It wouldn’t be so bad to see the end there.”

Kim Dokja had considered it for the briefest moment. His companions would adapt to his loss in time. Yoo Joonghyuk would have Han Sooyoung as his replacement. He could let go of the difficult regression that he’s been managing, join Han Sooyoung’s avatar in that peaceful completed story. 

But, well. He has a growing stack of letters to deliver when the time comes, and all those vulnerable words belong here in this timeline. 

“That wasn’t my world,” he says with the barest quirk of the lips. “My world is here.”

When Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him for just a moment too long, it’s not quite forgiveness, but it’s something. 

—

…But for a person like Kim Dokja, forgiveness has never been more than a fantasy. His father never forgave him for being born. His classmates never forgave him for being the murderer’s child. Life itself never forgave him for trying to run away from it, punishing him with trial after trial. 

It’s no surprise that Yoo Joonghyuk’s forgiveness is just as fickle, he thinks bitterly. He’s always been unforgivable, hasn’t he? In this pretty little world where he’s valued, he’d forgotten his place. He never learns.

This world is but a story, and you are nothing more than a reader. 

Things had been busy. Tentatively, things had even gone well: slowly but surely, everyone had settled back in together, the threads of comradeship tying them all to one another more now than ever. Thus came and went the battle against Olympus; thus he managed to save Yoo Sangah’s weakened self to the best extent that he could. 

(To an extent, the scenarios were progressing well.)

With an appropriate balance of determination and caution, their group had entered the Duet of Good and Evil.

(And then, of course, they weren’t.)

A single man’s conviction can be broken so easily by another turning his back—or perhaps it’s just Kim Dokja, who has done nothing but follow in the footsteps of his favourite protagonist until now. It had been pathetically easy for him to lose sight of everything he’d believed so firmly in in just seconds, when Yoo Joonghyuk had glared at him with a shadowy expression and hissed out those damning words in front of everyone. 

“Will this scenario end safely if I follow your words?” 

No… 

“Is this the way I will be used in the future?” 

No, no, no…

“Is this how to survive in this ruined world?”

A horrible oversight. He berates himself—what had he expected? That the news of Ways of Survival would simply never come up throughout the entirety of their journey? Had he really planned on lying to everyone from the start to the finish?

( Yes , the part of himself that pushes him to self-sacrifice every time says.)

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes burn with fury, the raging flames of betrayal. 

[You’ve deceived me.] 

With a sweeping gaze cast upon their companions, all wearing shades of confusion and indignation, he adds with ferocity, [You’ve deceived all of us.] 

And Kim Dokja’s heart sinks, because how can he defend himself from this? It’s true, it’s all true—he’s stayed up late before, wondering if he can carry the burden of all this knowledge with him for the rest of their journey… no, for the rest of all their lives. Time and time again, this scenario had played out in his mind: the terrible truth exposed, the whole world crumbling down in front of him. He couldn’t let it happen, but he couldn’t stop it from happening in the first place. Helpless.

…Because Han Sooyoung had learned early on that speaking of Ways of Survival would only result in censorship, he’d kept his mouth shut, but hadn’t that just been a convenient excuse for him to take advantage of?

You just didn’t want them to know, a voice in his head taunts. You just wanted to keep them all to yourself, and look where that’s gotten you. 

He almost doesn’t dodge when Yoo Joonghyuk lunges, Black Demon Sword aiming straight for his neck. One part of him is in shock. The other part thinks that maybe he deserves this.

(After all, Yoo Joonghyuk is undoubtedly the one he’s hurt the most by withholding this information, and Yoo Joonghyuk is the one person who he never wants to hurt. 

His trust is the most precious thing Kim Dokja’s ever held in his hands, and to break it like this is the most unforgivable thing he could’ve done.)

But Yoo Sangah’s voice speaks from within him, frantic and concerned. 

[Dokja-ssi, wake up!] 

He blinks and barely avoids the near-fatal attack, entranced by the way that Yoo Joonghyuk’s narrowed eyes are fixed on his own. All around them, the group lets out various exclamations and expletives, rushing to his defense. It’s a sweet sentiment. He wonders if they would act the same way if they knew what Yoo Joonghyuk knew, and judging from the look in his eye, he’s wondering the same thing. 

Still, he doesn’t utter a word, dead-set on striking Kim Dokja down instead. For now, everyone listens to Kim Dokja as he issues commands to them, and he suppresses the urge to think about how long that obedience is going to last for after this. 

Around them, Constellations and Demon Kings alike watch with open amusement, entertainment glittering in their eyes. Some even send messages, cheering one side on or catcalling the other. Stay out of this, you voyeurs , Kim Dokja thinks. It’s endlessly frustrating how these beings, who would have been worshipped as all-powerful at the very beginning of the apocalypse, are now reduced to a jeering audience that knows nothing of the true nature of their battle. 

At the very least, the wiser and stronger stars stay quiet. If information on Ways of Survival has been uncensored, they’ve undoubtedly grasped at least some of the graveness of the situation. It’s a small mercy that only the most ignorant of Constellations are trying to make use of the conflict. 

Staring Yoo Joonghyuk in the eye as they face off against one another, Kim Dokja suddenly feels a strong pang of hopelessness. It’s the first time he’s ever felt it radiating so strongly within him, but the reason—however much he doesn’t want to acknowledge it—is obvious. From the start, he’d always believed that Yoo Joonghyuk would walk beside him; even in death, he would return to him, because he understood intimately how the character behaved in any situation.

But it’s never been like this, the lack of knowledge turned against him, the person he follows truly believing he’s betrayed him.  

(‘ As long as it’s a story—as long as it’s this story—he is fearless. ’)

It’s not the first time they’ve faced off against one another. It is the first time Kim Dokja hasn’t been sure he can win Yoo Joonghyuk back. 

And what would that mean for him? Losing his companion, to be sure, but more than that—if Yoo Joonghyuk disappears, then so does Kim Dokja’s world. It’s a story. He’s a character. It’s not a story. He’s not a character. Kim Dokja is at his strongest when surrounded by the words he loves; he is at his weakest when he is surrounded by the people he loves. To separate Yoo Joonghyuk from the sentences on the screen is to mercilessly cast Kim Dokja into the darkness, a world that even he doesn’t know how to navigate. 

He looks around. His vision blurs a bit, desperately scanning faces—for what, he’s not sure. He sees characters. He sees people who should never have made it this far. He sees himself reflected in their eyes, a pitifully average man with a hollow expression.

He sees a god, or an angel, or a devil, or a man. 

And then he sees Han Sooyoung in all her fiery glory, descending mercilessly to knock Yoo Joonghyuk out and make the sweeping declaration of a story beyond Good or Evil. As edgy as she looks, there’s a curious look in her eye as she glances at Kim Dokja, enough to pull him out of his hazy trance. 

Here is someone who knows , he thinks hysterically. Here is someone who will tell me I am not insane.  

Thus the hidden scenario comes to its conclusion, Constellations and Demon Kings all excitable and chattering over one another. By all means, things have gone according to plan—he’s prevented (or perhaps delayed would be the better word) the disasters that would have come with either Good or Evil coming out on top.

Yet he sees Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm sticking out of the rubble and feels sick to his stomach—feels like he’s lost a vital part of himself, something he doesn’t know the name of. All around him his companions linger, concerned but unwilling to step in front of their leader. That’s enough for him for now, the realization that there are still people following him who he needs to protect. Deep breath, in and out: Han Sooyoung watches him carefully, an unspoken question between them. 

Together they pull his unconscious form out of the wreckage, though that’s all Kim Dokja can manage before averting his gaze. Some excuse for a leader he is, but leaving Yoo Joonghyuk’s treatment as someone else’s responsibility is obviously the best solution for everyone involved. 

Until this fateful moment, he’s kept his walls up, sturdy and unfaltering: no matter how much he’s ached to reach out, break the glass that stands firmly between himself and the others, he’s restrained himself. There’s a reason he can’t walk the same path as them. There’s a reason he’ll never burden them with the knowledge he has. 

Except now Yoo Joonghyuk has shaken the walls to their very foundations, blurring the line between ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’. As everyone gathers supplies in preparation for the following scenarios, pretending not to be shaken by the dispute between co-founders, Kim Dokja finds himself visiting Yoo Joonghyuk’s hospital room. 

It’s only for a brief few moments. Unlike the last time he sat next to an injured and unconscious Yoo Joonghyuk, he has nothing to write, though that’s not for a lack of things to say: there’s simply too much that he can’t record in words, so many thoughts and feelings and ideas too difficult to express when he is hardly a writer. 

For the short handful of minutes that he lingers at his bedside, Kim Dokja stays close to Yoo Joonghyuk, saying nothing, making no move to act. As he is about to stand up and leave, he almost presses two fingertips to Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck, but ultimately stops just a hair’s breadth away from the touch. 

Conflicting thoughts wage war in his mind. If he touches him and feels warm skin, a beating heart, what does that mean? If his fingers hover above dry lips and he feels a huff of breath against them, does that make this… real ? 

(Is that what he should want?) 

He wonders what he should be thinking right now. Please wake up , maybe, or I’m so sorry , or I still love you . He is and he does, but Kim Dokja has never known how to love in the right way. 

So, in the only way he knows how to show it, he walks out of the room silently. 

If he could fix the things he’d done just like that, maybe he would. Lord knows he wouldn’t deserve it, and Yoo Joonghyuk would never forgive him, but if he can’t fix this then at least he can stop a second incoming disaster. 

Han Sooyoung tells him it’s a bad idea. Kim Dokja ignores her like he always does.

He admits he might’ve dreamed of something like this when he was younger: transmigration into the novel, befriending the characters and joining Yoo Joonghyuk at his side as they reach the merry end of the journey together. It’s close but not quite—the world he’s in is still the same one that has hurt him so many times before, but now he has his companions at his side to weather the storm alongside him. 

His walls are crumbling down. Kim Dokja thinks, to hell with it , and pushes them down all the way. 

Yoo Joonghyuk deserves better than what he’s given him, and so does everyone else. One step at a time: it’s not about forgiveness but repentance, not about obligation but desire. I want this to be real , Kim Dokja thinks.

…When he finally speaks, Yoo Sangah is silent. Han Sooyoung turns aside. He’s alone—but he’s not. The room is filled with people who have saved him, and in turn it is filled with people he has saved. 

Everyone watches him with bated breaths, clinging onto his every word. 

“Some of you are characters in a story.”

To an outsider, maybe the news wouldn’t be so extreme. What difference is there between originating from a ‘novel’ written by an author and originating from a ‘universe’ created by a god? In a ruined world like this, filled with monsters and disasters, it hardly seems like much of a concern. 

But no one is so naive as to believe that anymore. The words carry a heavy weight to them: the word ‘story’ is layered with meaning upon meaning, a pocket infinity of wonders and horrors unknown. The scenarios have proven this much. 

Han Sooyoung looks disapproving but voices nothing, so Kim Dokja continues on. He knows this particular story by heart, from the beginning to the end, after all: if he were so inclined to, he might sit down and retell all 3149 chapters to a willing audience. 

What’s important isn’t so much the contents of the novel, however, as much as the things he learned from it—instead, he tells his companions about the novel he spent years of his life reading and how it turned into reality; he tells them about the things the novel said about the characters within it and how he used them without censoring a thing. It hurts him. It hurts them. But if he doesn’t do this now, he knows he’ll never be worthy of anyone’s trust again. 

There is not so much of a difference between being a regressor and being a reader, Kim Dokja thinks. A life relived versus a life reread, a story relived versus a story reread—either one knows the words by heart, painstakingly memorized. 

These would have been Yoo Joonghyuk’s words to speak in a different regression, but Kim Dokja will bear his companions’ hurt in this round. It’s only fair, after all: the reader and regressor share the same fate, a pair of parallel lines.

…Parallel, so everything will end the same. Parallel, so when Lee Jihye’s shoulders shake, Kim Dokja assumes it is out of the same fury that her master couldn’t suppress, her hand reaching for her sword—

But not , because instead she goes down with the rest of her body, ducking her head to hide her face as racking sobs shake her body. She’s on her knees, one hand supporting her weight on the ground and the other wiping at her tears in vain, and Kim Dokja knows her but he doesn’t know this . 

“You’re telling me you knew everything about the future?” she asks, voice cracking in the middle of the sentence. “You’re telling me it was all planned, that you used all of us?” 

Kim Dokja nods mutely, unsure of how to act. In the story, though she had been similarly emotional, she’d always acted out in a fit of unbridled rage—looking at her, all he sees is agony colouring her features. 

Another shaky sob is pulled out of her as Jung Heewon’s hand lands protectively on her shoulder. “You knew everything ,” Lee Jihye sniffs, “and you still threw your own life away to save us again and again…?”

The question is unexpected, and so is this reaction. Parallel lines , he thinks, but their lives have never been parallel ever since Yoo Joonghyuk first wrapped his hand around Kim Dokja’s throat. They intersect and merge together, forming a singular, perpetual line. A world neither reader nor regressor knows—a terrible nightmare, or a hopeful dream…?

In any case, Kim Dokja had prepared for many things, but not this. Slowly but surely, everyone exits out of the room, some looking worse for wear than others. They all wear the same blank, helpless expressions, yet they’re all markedly devoid of anger or resentment—don’t they also feel betrayed? Don’t they also feel manipulated? Something must have gone wrong, he thinks, for them to look so sad … but Han Sooyoung clicks her tongue at him with an unreadable expression, and he can’t do much else but listen to her. 

She doesn’t seem nearly as confused as he is. Maybe she understands something that he doesn’t. When it comes to the novel, his knowledge is unparalleled, but just about any stranger understands people better than he does. 

With nothing better to do, he wanders aimlessly within the industrial complex and finds himself back at the hospital. He supposes it’s only natural: the two people who he has hurt and who have hurt him the most both rest here, a place so deceptively quiet and removed from their shared history.

His mother first (always his mother first, despite everything). It’s a visit that doesn’t make up for all those that he missed when he was just a boy and a book, mother and son both hurting in the same ways but unable to reach one another. Still, it’s a start, and he finds they settle into the old routine fast enough. 

“Talk to me. Anything is fine.”

An echo of times long gone, where all he knew to tell her about was Ways of Survival and all she knew to do was nod wordlessly. 

It’s not a story anymore, but he talks like it still is. 

“In the 154th round of the novel,” he says, words coming out just strained enough for a mother to notice, “Yoo Joonghyuk brought up the story of his regression with his party members—”

And this woman, Lee Sookyung, his mother , smiles that easy smile that the two of them share: described by Lee Jihye as ‘a bit unlucky’, a curve of the lips that never reaches those lonely, shadowed eyes. They’re so alike in the way that they love too much but never well enough, understanding one another so intimately in those severed jagged pieces that they’ve both become. All his choices are perhaps the same ones she would have made in his place, a tired woman who just wants a happy family. 

She knows what he’s trying to say before he says it. Perhaps she’s known it since she asked him to speak, since before he walked into the room. 

“Did you tell the group about Ways of Survival ?”

A quiet nod, because he is young again and holds onto each of his mother’s words like a precious treasure; a quiet nod, because he is truly an adult now and he can look her in the eye and wonder how two people can be so similar. 

When she presses her hand to his own, his breath catches—touch is so rare for him, when childhood was filled with nothing but drunken violence and suffocating embraces, when high school was don’t look at him, or he’ll kill you too , when adulthood was coming to terms with turning out to be nothing but a background character…

But here is his mother, bony hand worn with hardened calluses and little bumps and scars, gently caressing the back of his hand like it’s all she wants to do. He loves her a little bit, he loves her the entire world. 

“You don’t know how to seek forgiveness,” she murmurs like they’re words she’s told herself a thousand times. “It isn’t up to you to decide if it is a matter to forgive.” 

I don’t know how to seek forgiveness, he wants to cry out, because I don’t deserve it in the first place. 

Still he suppresses the urge because he knows she knows, knows and smiles at him and strokes his hand anyway. They are a family of unforgivables, but she looks happier than she has in years. Maybe that means something. 

Maybe if they can find it in themselves to forgive one another, then it’s not too much to hope that Yoo Joonghyuk can forgive him too. 

Kim Dokja’s feet feel heavy as he walks out of his mother’s hospital room, but at least he knows which direction he’s going. When the world is set ablaze, he’ll still be walking to Yoo Joonghyuk.

The steady rise and fall of his chest keeps Kim Dokja centered as he takes a seat beside the hospital bed. It’s quiet here, like a secret place for just the two of them. Though Aileen comes in and out on occasion to deliver story packs, she doesn’t stay for longer than necessary and leaves quickly—perhaps it’s been discussed, or perhaps everyone just knows to leave the Kim Dokja Company’s founders alone with one another. 

He huffs out a tired exhale. In the years before the apocalypse, those that feel so very far away now, he’d pull up Ways of Survival and reread a few chapters during his worst days. It would feel as though he were travelling alongside Yoo Joonghyuk and his companions, like he was in another world where his petty troubles dissipated into nothing.

He’s a beautiful man, Kim Dokja thinks, fixated on Yoo Joonghyuk’s long fluttering lashes. His features are sculpted by the careful hand of a loving creator, every last part of him made to draw attention like the protagonist that he is. 

In books, beauty is described as many things: a curse or a blessing; irrelevant, or all-defining. It’s no surprise that it’s a contradictory thing. To Kim Dokja, beauty is transient: the beautiful things in life become ugly, or they fade slowly, or they leave him. 

And here lies the most beautiful person Kim Dokja will ever feel the pain of knowing, permanently etched into his heart and soul but lost to him the moment his eyes open. It’s a heartbreaking kind of beauty. He’d let Yoo Joonghyuk break his heart as many times as he wants. 

His eyes crinkle at the corners as he stares at Yoo Joonghyuk. The two of them both know different kinds of hurt so very well, have lived in it and breathed in it, but neither of them were prepared for this.

With a slow exhale, Kim Dokja brushes a stray curl of dark hair out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. It feels taboo, almost, to do something like this with Yoo Joonghyuk blissfully asleep: Kim Dokja knows that Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t react kindly to his presence if he were aware of it. Still, he lets his fingers linger on his forehead for a few moments—it’s easy to pretend things are okay, if only because pretending is all he knows how to do. 

…Even now, his gaze still subconsciously travels to Yoo Joonghyuk when things get rough. Old habits die hard, and it’s rather therapeutic: he’s ethereal, meant to be admired from afar. 

But Kim Dokja has dared to drift a little too close, Icarus toppling down from the clouds. It feels horribly wrong to imagine Yoo Joonghyuk as a character now, someone created by the hand of an author, made to exist only on a two-dimensional plane. This is real , he mutters to himself again and again, though whether it’s a reassurance or a reminder is up to interpretation. 

This is real, and he’s fucked it up (like he always does). 

Kim Dokja sighs, watching Yoo Joonghyuk’s sleeping form with an unblinking gaze. There’s something about the moment, something about him , that makes Kim Dokja want to talk. There’s so many things he wants to say: apologies, accusations, questions. How many times has he spoken to Yoo Joonghyuk, the person? 

This is real.

He opens his mouth, but no words come out. It’s frustrating. He has so much to say, so much so that he doesn’t even know where to start. 

As he grumbles in frustration, a thought occurs to him. Perhaps not in speaking, but in writing…?

The thought of writing his thoughts down on paper, rather than speaking them aloud to an empty room and a sleeping man, feels right. He’s gotten into the habit of keeping his stack of letters, finished or not, in a coat pocket; in a separate pocket, there are a number of blank papers scattered alongside a handful of pens. 

He starts writing. He doesn’t stop for two days. 

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk, 

Shall we try this again? My name is Kim Dokja… though perhaps you know me by less flattering names. Bastard, don’t think I don’t notice you smirking every time Lee Jihye calls me a squid. 

You know, I’ve known you for a very, very long time, but sometimes it feels like I don’t know you at all. I thought I understood you best, but—well.

In past regressions, you hadn’t made it this far yet, had you? I thought I knew better, but it seems I’m almost as clueless as you now. That’s your fault, you know? Take responsibility. 

You’ve done a lot of strange things. Like during the Disaster of Floods… why did you call me your companion? That’s not like you. 

And the Dark Castle, too. I really thought you’d jump on any chance to deal the killing blow to me. Why did you hesitate? 

The Disaster of Questions, Peace Land, the Demon King Selection, Gigantomachia… Kim Dokja writes about each scenario they’ve been through in painstaking detail, asking questions and voicing his complaints until his wrist grows tired.

…You’ve saved my life a lot. More than you’ll ever know, probably. Like it or not, we’ve been through a lot together. 

So I’d like to think I know you. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t. 

And if I know you, does that mean you know me?

Would you understand the choices I’ve made if you lived my life?

Would I understand the choices you’ve made if I lived your life?

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. If someone like me, who can only live a lonely reader’s life, was put in the place of the protagonist… what would change? Is it my role that defines me, or something else? 

If you were fifteen and tired and had no reason to get out of bed in the morning, would you have done the same things as me?

I wish we had never met. I wish I had never read that damned novel. I wish it had been me, or I wish it had been you. 

I just wish we could talk. A quiet conversation. I’d like it if you would just look at me and listen. If we could take the time to put our weapons aside and ignore the scenarios and just… talk.

What a nice dream, huh? I guess these letters will have to be enough. Even if I don’t understand you, it’ll be enough if you understand me. Read me like I’ve read you, please. Read me until I’m a part of you, the ugliest little part that you just can’t get rid of. 

Kim Dokja forces himself to stop writing before it all dissolves into a plethora of nonsensical apologies, glaring at the selfish words. 

[Stup id Kim Dokja]

“I know,” he says sullenly. 

[No t what I mea nt]

He doesn’t ask the Fourth Wall for elaboration. It doesn’t matter anyway. 

He pauses to look at Yoo Joonghyuk, still breathing slowly and rhythmically. He smiles slightly, though it’s more muted than usual. Maybe, maybe, maybe, it’ll be okay. After all, it’s still Yoo Joonghyuk, the one he’s known for all his life. 

It’s not the longest Kim Dokja’s stayed up without sleeping, but he thinks it’s not a bad time to take a break. Allowing his eyelids to flutter shut, he ignores the sinking feeling that he’s missing something. 

He wakes up with the letter missing, a pocket watch in Yoo Joonghyuk’s place on the bed, and the terrible realization that this Yoo Joonghyuk is no longer the Yoo Joonghyuk he knows. 

Five fiery words are seared into his mind with all the ferocity of a man betrayed. 

I will never forgive you.

—

It’s strange with Yoo Joonghyuk gone. It’s difficult to explain what it is exactly—to call it quieter would be laughable, given how little that man speaks in the first place. Still, there’s something about just having him around that had a strong effect. What’s a story without its protagonist, or what’s Kim Dokja without Yoo Joonghyuk? 

The group dynamic has shifted slightly. Everyone’s still somber and hesitant in their interactions, still reeling from the revelations they’ve been forced to endure. They had believed, all this time, that they were walking the same path as Kim Dokja—he doesn’t blame them for being shocked at the news, for learning of the story that separates them. 

He cares about them, of course, but he doesn’t deserve to show his face amongst them for now. It isn’t up to you to decide if it is a matter to forgive , his mother had said. If he acts, if he forces them to make a decision, it’ll be the same way that he’s used them in the past.

Yoo Joonghyuk left. Kim Dokja doesn’t chase after him, no matter how much he wants to. He’ll watch as many of them leave as he has to, because they deserve to make their own choices. After all, he’s the one who screwed things up; he’s the only one who should be hurting right now. 

…Yet to his surprise, the others are determined in visiting him, coming by in small groups. One by one, they knock at his door: Lee Seolhwa first, unspeaking but with a soft expression under the veil of night. Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung the next morning, eyes darting in every which direction, trembling voices that speak blameless words. Jung Heewon, always straight to the point, shoots him an undecipherable expression and speaks bluntly. Lee Hyunsung grins awkwardly and tells him not to worry too much. Lee Jihye averts her gaze and mutters something quietly.

None of them sound angry, Kim Dokja observes incredulously. None of them yell at him for keeping secrets, for being a coward, for hurting them with his selfishness. Instead, they’re the ones who whisper gentle apologies to him for not realizing the pressure he was under, for not noticing the burden he’s carried all this time. 

It’s not right. They shouldn’t forgive him so easily. They should hurt him—that’s how love has always ended, screaming and crying and no time for goodbyes. 

Not up to you to decide , his mother’s voice chides in his mind. 

He wants to scream. If they laugh it off, isn’t it like saying he didn’t do anything at all? Isn’t it like saying that he never hurt anyone in the first place?

In his mind, he can still see Yoo Joonghyuk’s retreating back. No , he thinks—there’s one person who hasn’t forgiven him, and one person who he absolutely needs to apologize to the most. It was his story, his life, that Kim Dokja wrote himself into, after all.

In the passing days, he’d been more reclusive than ever, only stopping by for meals if Jung Heewon remembered to drag him out of his room. He’ll freely admit that he’d been avoiding his groupmates: he hadn’t been sure what he would do if he were forced to face them all at once, and in any case he’d thought they might need the time to recover from the news without having to see his face all the time.

Everyone seems to be putting in an active effort to drop by and greet him, though. They speak to him, sometimes exchanging small talk—conversation with the others grows less and less tense until things are almost as they were, sans one very important person. 

It’s lonely without Yoo Joonghyuk. Kim Dokja is not emotionally equipped to deal with that thought, so he buries himself into planning for the following scenarios, leading up to the War of Saints and Demons. 

(The two voices in his head like to tease him to varying degrees about his inability to confront his personal problems. He ignores them both.)

It feels strange to continue consulting Ways of Survival for information on the scenarios to come, like nothing ever happened. Now, though, smiles grow a little stiffer when he pulls out his phone; now, everyone knows that he’s callously reading through the lives they’ve never known. 

More than once, he’s considered putting his phone away and proceeding through the scenarios like a regular incarnation would. The only thing that’s saved him all this time has been the novel, after all: maybe it’s time that he lets go of his unfair advantage. Maybe it’s time he joins his companions on their side of the glass wall. 

…Occasionally, Han Sooyoung comes by to offer her thoughts on the upcoming scenarios, though she also has a tendency to be very unhelpful. At the very least, she’s the only one he can talk to without feeling alienated: there’s nothing to feel guilty about around her, because they’re both on the same side of the wall. 

She understands him a little better than he’d like. Perhaps it’s just the essence of an author, being able to easily perceive the expected emotions in others, but it’s rather unnerving to have her pinpoint the exact sources of his personal struggles. 

At some point, in the middle of an argument about something or other, she changes the subject abruptly. 

“You don’t have to feel guilty about continuing to read the book,” she says bluntly. 

Kim Dokja blinks. He hadn’t mentioned a word of this to her, but Han Sooyoung raises an eyebrow at him in question. “What, did you expect me not to notice? You’re awful at hiding your thoughts.” 

“My point,” Han Sooyoung continues, “is that they’re only going to make a big deal out of it if you do too. If you asked for my opinion—”

“I’m not asking,” Kim Dokja deadpans, and receives a flick on the forehead in retaliation.

“ If you asked for my opinion , it’s better to have some source of future information than to close the book just because some of them came from it. Hasn’t everyone all but forgiven you, anyway?”

Kim Dokja stiffens at the word that haunts him. It’s enough for Han Sooyoung to notice, her lips forming an ‘o’. 

“…He was bound to find out sooner or later anyway,” she says, just a touch softer. “You couldn’t have prevented that, and it’s not like you caused the apocalypse by reading. 

“All you did was read, Kim Dokja. That’s not a crime.”

There’s a moment of silence. 

“Are you trying to comfort me, Han Sooyoung?” Kim Dokja asks, in an attempt to lighten the mood. He must seem really depressed if even Han Sooyoung is worried. 

“Hah? Don’t say stupid things. You already look stupid enough,” she grumbles, avoiding his gaze. Still, she shoves a lollipop into his hand before leaving. “Hurry up and stop moping. You’ll make Uriel sad if she thinks you broke up with Yoo Joonghyuk.”

His eye twitches, but he won’t deny that he feels a little better. While everyone else is treating him like he’s made of glass, Han Sooyoung is unrelenting as ever. 

It’s with a little more confidence that he gathers everyone together to discuss the next handful of scenarios. He doesn’t miss the way that a few of his companions glance at one another, small smiles forming on their faces. It’s nice, seeing that they’ve all grown closer together. 

He’s still worried about Yoo Joonghyuk, of course. Nonetheless, he doubts that the kind of person Yoo Joonghyuk is has changed too much: even on his own, it’s difficult to believe that anything up to the 65th scenario could hurt him too badly. He’s a force to be reckoned with—that hasn’t changed, much to Kim Dokja’s exasperation. How things will go when they inevitably meet again, he’s not sure. 

(He can’t have Yoo Joonghyuk as an enemy—can’t afford to, and can’t live with that either.)

It’ll be fine. That’s a lie he’s told himself many times, thinking maybe maybe maybe it’ll be true this time. 

…The Kim Dokja Company has made something of a name for itself too. Under his instruction, they’ve breezed through all the scenarios that they need to finish to qualify for the 80th scenario, the War of Saints and Demons. 

The calm before the storm , he thinks. They’re getting closer and closer to the final goal, but all he feels is dread. He’s read of the viciousness of the later scenarios far too many times, skimming through the brutal deaths that Yoo Joonghyuk had to experience. It’s better to keep everyone’s morale up, but he makes sure everyone is appropriately equipped to enter the battle. 

On the day of, he has to say a few temporary farewells. It’s best to leave a few strong party members in Seoul, after all: Lee Seolhwa, Gong Pildu, and the wanderers all stay behind. 

Before they leave for the scenario, Lee Sookyung stops him. 

There aren’t many words exchanged. Their relationship has always been built off of others’ words, for fear of speaking their own into existence. 

But the silence is telling enough. His mother has watched over him for long enough to understand his nonverbal cues. 

Slowly, she lifts a hand and gently settles it onto his head, tousling his hair a bit. 

“You’ll be okay, Dokja.” 

(She’s whispered those words to him before in a darkened room, the two of them hiding away  from a monster wearing human skin.)

“Yes,” he responds quietly. They turn away from one another. It’s enough. 

He has his chosen family by his side as they enter the waiting room for the 80th scenario. There’s a swell of fondness as he watches them all stare around the waiting room in wonder, and another swell of nausea as he finds himself scanning the area for a familiar face to complete the company and coming up short. 

He looks away, forcing his gaze to the ground. There are more important things for him to be concerned about right now, he tries to convince himself. 

( Who could be more important than the man you’ve lived your whole life for? his traitorous mind asks. He pushes the thought aside.) 

Kim Dokja casts an assessing gaze around the room. All around, there are Constellations he recognizes and others that he wishes he didn’t. Demon Kings watch him carefully, only to scoff when they see nothing immediately striking about his appearance and actions. 

They all must be wary: neither he nor his companions can afford to let their guards down here. He hopes, with a rush of panic, that he’s reminded them enough times of exactly what to do when the scenario begins. Their only advantage is the stage the scenario will be set in: the special rules of Reincarnation Island will be their saving grace here.

A deep breath. Focus, Kim Dokja.  

When they enter the tutorial stage, it’s initially disorienting. Thankfully, he has the advantage of already knowing the restrictions of Reincarnation Island: if nothing else, it gives him the upper hand over overconfident Demon Kings and Constellations who try to take him down. 

…The reduction in stats, however, means he sustains significantly more physical damage. The Fourth Wall only provides relief for a short few moments before even his seemingly-undefeatable skill is significantly weakened. 

With it comes a reduction in his ability to suppress his worst thoughts and greatest worries, all attacking him at the same time as the goblins that surround him. 

Not a story not a story not a story— 

Stop running stop resisting stop trying it doesn’t matter you don’t matter nothing matters you’ll die they’ll all die it’s your fault you’re not enough not enough not enough not enough

You’re going to fail you’re going to die he’s going to die he’s going to regress it will all be for nothing 

You don’t matter you’ve never mattered stop pretending it’s time to open your eyes you’re never going to amount to anything 

This is real this is real it’s all real 

—it hurts it hurts it hurts 

I want it to hurt I want you to hurt I want to stop hurting I want everything to—

STOP. 

It’s a miracle he manages to pull himself up at all, battered and bruised, and continue fighting. The onslaught of thoughts that he had barely managed to hold back scream in his mind, spitting violent toxic words at him as he endures hit after hit from the monsters on the island. 

In front of such powerful incarnations such as Yoo Joonghyuk and Jung Heewon, it’s not hard to understand that Kim Dokja is little more than average. Still, it strikes him just how weak he is without any of his skills—every part of him is so fragile. If he can’t hold his own, how is he going to be of any help at all?

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth as Lee Jihye swoops in to save him. She’s a teenager, for goodness’ sake. How can he look at himself in the mirror, knowing that no one can rely on him?

Really, he’s weaker than her in every regard. Which one of them keeps going every day like everything’s okay, despite having killed her best friend with her own two hands? Which one of them existed only for the sake of being a character to throw into the apocalypse, to fight and live and die by her master’s side hundreds of times without memory of any of those lifetimes? 

All you did was read , Han Sooyoung had said, but now it’s less comforting and more of a taunt. Everyone struggled, facing unimaginable terrors, and all he had to do was flip a page to see the next part of the story. 

He digs his nails into his palms as Lee Jihye sets up camp, unsure where to direct this sudden surge of emotion. Is this how it goes, then? The moment he’s stripped of his usefulness, will he stop trying? Will he finally look reality in the eye and understand that his goals are beyond his abilities?

“…Do you know what happens to me at the end of the novel?” Lee Jihye asks—quiet, demure, nervous. 

It’s enough for Kim Dokja to understand, all at once. How can he think about giving up here? If he’s worthless, he’ll make himself worth something. That’s how he’s gotten this far, after all, warping the future and fighting his fate. Nothing is absolute, or so he has to believe.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s story isn’t complete with just him, alone. Kim Dokja will never be content with a conclusion like that. If he has to rewrite the whole story just to have everyone reach their happy ending, so be it. 

It’s only a lie until he turns it into the truth. 

“You will live to the end and be happy.”

And as Lee Jihye lets just the phantom of a smile show on her face, Kim Dokja knows he’s answered correctly. 

Live and be happy , he thinks as he arrives at village of the forgotten ones, companions close behind. He doesn’t speak to them, simply watching from afar, but all he needs to see is their diligent training and shared smiles. 

Live and be happy , he thinks as he moves on to the next scenario, a little more determined than he was before, even as he watches Constellations of a higher ranking than him mercilessly slaughter one another. 

— Live and be happy , he thinks as Yoo Joonghyuk finally appears in front of him again, sharp edge of his sword leaving no room for discussion. 

A shared wish and this prison of a story have tied them together from the start. Most fervently, didn’t they both want Yoo Joonghyuk to reach the end alongside his companions? Didn’t they both want to see the end of scenarios, the end of all the meaningless regressions? 

I never wanted to hurt you , he thinks as they face off against one another—reader against protagonist, or perhaps just companion against companion. 

I just wanted to see you at peace , he thinks as they swing their swords. 

Live to the end. Be happy. 

He doesn’t speak any of this aloud, but his stories speak for him. Wasn’t it a story that first brought them together? Isn’t it a story that imprisons them both?

Thus, metal clashes against metal; thus, Yoo Joonghyuk’s thoughts come to life as well. 

Tell your story. Let me read your life, just this once.

[Your worldline was here.] Angry, blazing words appear through Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. [Your comrades were here. You told people to live their lives in this world.] 

And Kim Dokja understands, just for a moment, the terrible burn of disappointment and fury within Yoo Joonghyuk. It’s only a fraction of the truth, only a flicker of flame within the wildfire, but it marks him all the same. 

(A few words, written in a teenager’s halting handwriting, come to mind. 

‘ Neither the author nor the reader really knows the entirety of how you feel. It’s just you, Yoo Joonghyuk… ’

It’s just him. Kim Dokja has only ever seen the truths he wants to see, and perhaps that was the first mistake he’s made of many.)

He’s the one who knows Yoo Joonghyuk best of all, but he doesn’t know him at all—he only knows the story he’s read, but Yoo Joonghyuk is more than his story. 

I could never kill you . 

Rather… 

I’ve lived my whole life to try and save you. 

To try and save every life that you’ve lived until every last part of you can rest easy. 

He still doesn’t speak. He doesn’t say anything at all, even as Yoo Joonghyuk bites out the words that hurt him the most:

[Even during this regression, I suppose I didn’t have any comrades.]

An apology, an explanation, a conversation—none of this will be enough, and so Kim Dokja keeps his mouth shut. Forgiveness is not something so easily obtained, and companionship is not something worth so little. 

In the end, he gives in. He’ll always be the one to fall back and let Yoo Joonghyuk see victory. Isn’t that how it’s meant to be? Yoo Joonghyuk always wins, until he doesn’t.

A blade pointed at his chest. 

A small, bloody smile. 

“Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk.”

Yes, let’s try this again. Dear Yoo Joonghyuk… 

“My name is Kim Dokja. I was twenty-eight years old, and the employee of a game company. My hobby was reading webnovels.

“This is who I am. Tell me, who are you?”

…it’s nice to meet you, my most beloved stranger. 

When the world goes quiet, Kim Dokja strains to keep his eyes open a moment longer, staring Yoo Joonghyuk in the eye. He wants to be seen. He wants to break that wall and finally reach out.

Kim Dokja is a selfish man who wants and wants and wants —

But when he wakes up again, he thinks maybe he’s gotten a little closer to the thing he wants the most. 

—Kaizenix comes and goes. It feels as though that particular scenario passes by so quickly, but he knows that it’s only because he was the last to arrive and set the story in motion that the scenario felt fast-paced. How long did he trap his companions in here for, waiting and waiting and waiting for a saviour who never came? 

…But Yoo Joonghyuk is here. Yoo Joonghyuk is here, and where Yoo Joonghyuk goes, there always follows salvation. 

They don’t speak about the events of the previous scenario. There’s no time, and perhaps they don’t need to. There’s trust in the way they follow each other, something that speaks volumes more than a conversation when it comes to the two of them. 

—There’s no time , goddammit. Maybe Kim Dokja’s doing this to himself on purpose, but suddenly everything happens too fast for anything to register as reality. The Great War has never been a slow-paced event in any given regression, but still Kim Dokja wishes everything could just stop for a few beats. 

Naturally, nothing Kim Dokja wishes for ever comes true. 

…The truth is that sinking into the scenarios, allowing them to take over his thoughts and actions, is easy . Submerging himself within the story is often the simplest path for Kim Dokja to take, for at least when his mind is busy with the scenarios, he can’t think about the things that make him more emotionally vulnerable.

Now, Kim Dokja wonders if that ‘simple’ path is one he should be proud of himself for walking. 

The line between story and reality has been blurred and then erased. His heart is the story’s; the story is his heart. There’s no difference, so there’s no running away anymore. 

He’s loved and he’s lost and his heart is so tired and worn from a single life of a thousand lifetimes of loving but still—still he loves. 

Loves enough to lose himself again and again and again, until love and loss are so closely intertwined that he can barely tell them apart. 

There’s no way to win against the Apocalypse Dragon without losing something, Kim Dokja realizes the moment its tail-flick begins; there’s no way to tell a story where nothing precious is sacrificed. At some point, someone must let go of something vital… and from the very beginning, Kim Dokja’s known that this is a story where he’ll be the only one who loses a thing.

Break my heart as many times as you need to . 

What’s his heart worth but the people he loves anyway? What’s the world worth but this story that he loves?

His sacrificial stigma activates the moment these thoughts enter his mind. It’s difficult to lie to his companions who know him so well, but Kim Dokja knows that desperate people will believe anything they want to believe when times are truly dire. He says he won’t sacrifice himself this time. It’s a lie, but he’s told too many to count already. 

One shockwave is barely manageable. By the second, he knows exactly the absurd plan he’ll have to use to save everyone. 

There’s a ghost of a smile on his face as he summons the Indescribable Distance by his own volition, knowing that this is his only option now. 

Maybe this time is really going to be the end. From the first failed attempt, more than a decade ago now, to the handful of almost-deaths he’s experienced in the past few years… isn’t it time he lets go? Move on to some kind of heaven, a soft and happy dreamworld?

But. 

But that dreamworld is an illusion, something that doesn’t exist. Everything he’s ever wanted is right here, in this world; he sacrifices himself for everyone he loves, but just for a fraction of a second he thinks he wants to be there with them still. 

I want to live , said the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk, so Kim Dokja tried to save him. 

Maybe Kim Dokja wants to live too. Maybe Kim Dokja wants someone to try to save him too. 

It’s far too late for something like that, but it’s a nice final thought to have as the Indescribable Distance begins eating away at him for the second time. It’s enough that he has these companions now, so willing to believe in him. 

He’s tasted death on the tip of his tongue enough times that, this time, all he does is wonder with some morbid curiosity what sort of afterlife awaits him. Fading in and out of consciousness, he’s barely aware that he’s awake until he hears a familiar voice ( multiple familiar voices?) by his ear, muttering derisive words. 

…Hm. Maybe heaven is Yoo Joonghyuk. 

Kim Dokja opens his eyes again to an endless swarm of chattering kkoma Yoo Joonghyuks. He closes them again. 

After waking up for the second time to the same scene, he decides he must not be dead, because surely no divine creator would be so cruel as to throw him into an eternal afterlife of only Yoo Joonghyuk—not even the one who seems to hold such a terrible vendetta against him. 

He’s seen enough horrors in his lifetime. Resignedly, he accepts this fever dream as reality. There’s not much else he can do about it, anyway. 

The little ones are… cute, if only in appearance. Alas, their personalities remain as unpleasant as ever, only cementing the impression that this would truly be a terrible place to reside in for a long time. 

(Kim Dokja manages to collect himself enough to comment teasingly on their endearing appearance. He immediately learns the true meaning of fear as hundreds of tiny men spew death threats at him.) 

It’s still nice to see a familiar face in such an unfamiliar setting, though. They’re not the Yoo Joonghyuk of his own worldline, but they’re another beloved part of that story: each regression, numbered 1 to 1862— 

And any (scarce) thoughts of this place, this N’Gai’s Forest, being a pleasant place to relax are immediately put to rest when he faces the 1863rd. 

The Secretive Plotter. One half of a whole being, entirely complete on his own. 

…The man he tried and failed to save, and the last chapter of one story he’d never finished. 

A wave of memories washes over Kim Dokja as he stares into the abyssal void of those too-familiar eyes shining golden, a regression rewritten and corrupted. There was a man he broke, a man he hurt, a man he’d never forgotten. This would have been the ‘future’, or perhaps it should now be referred to as the ‘past’. 

This past flows into a ‘present’ that he hadn’t been awake for, his own Yoo Joonghyuk facing off against the Secretive Plotter in the midst of the Indescribable Distance’s endless fog. The scenes flicker into his mind, and Kim Dokja’s heart swells with a foreign emotion as he watches his Yoo Joonghyuk snarl harshly at a being greater than himself. It’s a nice feeling to think Yoo Joonghyuk still tried to save him from the Plotter’s clutches, though it had been a foolish move.

He’s done nothing to deserve that kind of devotion, especially not from Yoo Joonghyuk of all people. 

…As their fight plays in his mind, he can’t help but feel an odd sense of deja vu, watching the two of them clash. Complete with the contrasting coats, it almost reminds him of that 1863rd regression’s painful conclusion.

The scarred Outer God he faces now wears the same face as Yoo Joonghyuk, has lived the same story, but he’s not Yoo Joonghyuk. 

Nonetheless, there’s something about his presence that carries the same heavy flavour of comfort: though Kim Dokja belongs with his 3rd Yoo Joonghyuk, the Plotter is still one whose story he’s once read and committed to memory. He’s been the Yoo Joonghyuk who Kim Dokja loves, he’s been the Yoo Joonghyuk who Kim Dokja’s hurt, and so Kim Dokja doesn’t falter as they stare each other down. 

In the end, he’s only ever known him as a character, though. It’s the story he knows, not the person; this is something that has been glaringly clear ever since that time his 3rd Yoo Joonghyuk turned his back to him. 

(Has he hurt the Plotter too, without realizing? In raising a perfect worldline where nothing is sacrificed but himself, has he wounded the man who lived and suffered for eons to reach that same goal?

—But the Plotter looks at him with curiosity, not anger. He’s no longer a broken shell in need of saving, and Kim Dokja’s pity would be nothing but an insult to him. To the contrary, he looks tired, like someone who’s waited eternities for something he himself doesn’t even know.)

At any rate, he can’t afford to spend too much time here. The further they progress in the scenarios, the more difficult they’ll get for the Kim Dokja Company—he needs to be there for them, can’t abandon them again. 

…And he misses them, too. He’s not sure how long it’s been since he woke up in the N’Gai’s Forest, but it feels like it’s been too long. 

Before arriving here, he’d all but accepted his death. He’s sure Jung Heewon, Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk all have some choice words to say about that, not to mention the others that he left behind for the sake of their safety. Prior to that, the Apocalypse Dragon’s awakening had taken up all their attention; the Great War right before barely left them any time to breathe. 

Yet again, he thinks it’d be nice for all of them to take a break. Yoo Joonghyuk had always done that in every regression, hadn’t he? A single day of leisure, where everyone is free to be happy. 

He misses his companions. He misses seeing them smile , because it seems like recently all he can do is worry them or hurt them or leave them. Then again, he’s only ever known their tired, strained or worn smiles, always lasting just moments before fading away at the sight of another scenario opening up. How would they have known each other in a world without the apocalypse? 

He might read some of Han Sooyoung’s trashy writing, desperate with nothing to read after Ways of Survival ’s completion. He and Yoo Sangah would maintain their cordial relationship as coworkers, exchanging polite small talk at the office before going their separate ways. Lee Gilyoung would get his normal childhood and grow up to be an insect enthusiast; Jung Heewon might continue living her life happily as a bartender. 

Those born from the book might have never existed at all—perhaps that would’ve been better? Then Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t have had to suffer so much, then the others wouldn’t have to die again and again. 

In the long run, everyone would be happier, he supposes… but that’s not right , because that Lee Gilyoung would never learn to flip coins with Shin Yoosung and Lee Jihye, and that Jung Heewon would never find happiness with Lee Hyunsung, and that Han Sooyoung would never learn to bicker with the stoic Yoo Joonghyuk. 

No, there’s no point in dreaming of other worlds. This is the one they live in, and this is the one he’ll give himself up for again and again. 

He huffs. This realm of the Outer Gods, he supposes, counts as a break for himself… but if no one else is here, then it’s meaningless. 

For now, he has no choice but to linger until the N’Gai’s Forest allows him to escape. Though he gets restless, there’s little else he can do. 

Finally, he remembers to check his pockets, and sighs in relief when he finds his pile of letters miraculously intact in spite of everything they’ve gone through. It’s something of a nervous habit now, pressing his hand to the pocket where he knows that collection of papers rests. 

One of the kkomas comes by as he flips through the individual sheets, making sure each letter is still in its proper spot. He flushes as the kkoma peers at the papers and frowns at him, unable to catch sight of his writing as he shoves it all aside at record speed. Upon closer inspection, this one is 999: the one he’s seen the most of at his time here, and the regression that he’d held closest to his heart while reading the story.

…Thankfully, he hadn’t kept the unfinished letters he’d written before the apocalypse began. There were a number of notes addressed to a variety of regressions, but 999 had undoubtedly received the most embarrassing ‘love letters’. He’d been the kindest, the softest of them all; he’d been the one who Kim Dokja admired the most for his constant unhesitating self-sacrifice for the sake of his companions. I wish I could love like that , he’d thought at the time. 

Now, the manifestation of the Yoo Joonghyuk of that regression squints at him in his smaller form. 

“Are you hiding something?” he asks, gesturing towards the now-messy pile of papers. 

Kim Dokja clears his throat. “Not exactly?”

An arched eyebrow, once intimidating but now almost comical in this appearance. “Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I looked at what you have written here?”

…He may be the kindest Yoo Joonghyuk at heart, but that doesn’t mean he’s not also a bastard. 

“Oi, don’t mess with people’s personal property. Haven’t you ever heard of privacy?” He pokes 999 gently, earning him a bitten finger and a murderous glare. Yep, definitely still a bastard. 

999’s glare softens eventually. “You don’t have to show me,” he says, but the way he says me suggests he’s not really talking about himself. That one sentence communicates enough to Kim Dokja: even if 999 hasn’t read the contents, he can guess the things Kim Dokja’s written. Surprisingly, he doesn’t really mind that. Maybe it’s because their philosophies are so similar that they understand each other better than the others.

999 continues, gaze cast downwards. “…It is difficult to go through a few years, much less a whole lifetime, loving someone so strongly but never saying the words aloud.” These words are murmured, almost too quiet to catch, but Kim Dokja recognizes the familiar ache in them. 

When he finally meets Kim Dokja’s eyes again, his gaze is steely and burns with words unsaid. 

“Nonetheless, to live an entire life and never speak a word of that love is, in my eyes, the greatest form of cowardice imaginable.”

It’s as close to a threat, or perhaps a warning, as he’ll get. Unable to think of what to say, Kim Dokja only nods in response. Seemingly content, 999 hums and leaves. 

He’s right, of course. If any regression would know about a life filled with love, it would be the 999th: the turn where he’d given up on saving himself, instead dedicating himself to ensuring everyone else’s continued lives. The turn, perhaps, where he’d realized the importance of expressing himself to his companions. 

Still, he’d had 999 lifetimes to learn that lesson, and Kim Dokja has had but one. 

(That’s not entirely true: with his companions, indeed, he’s only had this one life, but with Yoo Joonghyuk in particular? He’s been by his side for every regression from start to finish.)

He can’t speak these words aloud, not yet. He’s a coward, but at least he can acknowledge it. The closest he’ll get right now is this.

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk, 

It sure has been a hell of an experience, meeting each of your regression turns. Your lives and ideals may have changed, but that awful personality and stupid face sure haven’t. Haah, you’ve clearly never been a people person. 

Some of your regressions have fallen half insane, you know? It makes me worried, watching them lose themselves in their memories and experiences. I know they’ve led different lives from the you that I know, but they’ve been you, or you could become them. I’m still not really sure what the difference is, but either way I never want to see you lose your grip. I’ve always found a way out before, so I’ll find a way out of here soon, okay? I promise everyone will make it to the end of the Star Stream together. You’ll never have to experience that eternity of misery as long as I’ve got something to say about it. 

At least the library here is nice. Usually no one disturbs me, since the kkomas don’t care much for reading and the Secretive Plotter is busy being king. If you ever get the opportunity, why don’t you try putting down your sword and picking up a book instead? 

I’m sorry for some of the things I said in the last letter. I won’t lie to you here and say I didn’t mean it. 

…It seems I tend to be more honest when you’re not at my side, listening to me speak. 

You’re an enigma to me, but that doesn’t mean my goals have changed. I don’t know you—I’ve never known you, really—but I’d like to, you know? Even if you’re not the character I read about, I’d like to think I’ve grown to understand some parts of the real you. I still want to take you to the end. I still want to save you, protect you, end the cycle of regressions. In any case, the truth is that I’ll never be able to make up for everything you’ve done for me. 

I’m in your debt, forever and always, Yoo Joonghyuk. In that case, will you let me stay by your side, forever and always?

Forget that. Being around so many people with the same face as you is causing me to say strange things. Who decided that someone with a personality as terrible as yours deserves a face so flawless? Honestly, the world’s not fair. 

I hope you’re all doing well. 

…I’m sorry I had to do it again. Sorry I hurt you all again. Lately I’ve been thinking. 

I’d like to stay with you all. I’d like to find a path to the epilogue where I don’t have to watch you all try to save me. A story isn’t complete without the loss of something important, but maybe we’ve already lost enough. 

I’m going to stop now. I can’t afford to think like that. 

Please, take care of yourself.

He folds the letter neatly and tucks it away with the others, a slight tremor running through his body. The words that he’d written on autopilot, they feel almost sacred—like he’s sealed his fate, one way or another.

In the end, he hadn’t managed to say everything he’d wanted to. The word cowardice echoes through his mind, only amplified by 999’s presence at his side when the two of them escape the N’Gai’s Forest. 

999 had been his favourite regression from the story, and for good reason at that. He’d been the one to live so long it’d drive anyone insane, yet even after dying and regressing yet again, he’d chosen to save the people he’d long since accepted would die at the end. He’d been the manifestation of loneliness, not too different from Kim Dokja’s, and he’d smiled at his companions in spite of that. Even when they forgot him in every life, even when they slipped out of his fingers like sand every time…

999 is the one who had seen the burden that comes with loving, and 999 is the one who had accepted it without hesitation.

Thus, Kim Dokja also doesn’t hesitate when he glances at the kkoma, in the middle of their drive between dimensions. 

There’s only the sound of the engine rattling and the occasional curt exchange between them during the drive. It feels slightly ridiculous to be talking to a dumpling on his shoulder like this, but he supposes he’s got nothing left to lose. 

“Do you think I’ve done enough?” He asks the question quietly, staring only at the view ahead of him.

999 doesn’t reply for a short few moments. Finally:

“I cannot be the one to answer that question.”

“Then who can?”

“That depends, Kim Dokja. Do you know how many times I asked myself that, during my own lifetime?”

“…”

“‘Who is the one I have entrusted my heart to? How much have I done to give them the world, and how much more will I have to do?’ To me, it has only ever been enough if those people would never suffer again.

“In the end, that kind of thinking only tells me if I believe I’ve done enough. I never asked my companions.” There’s a bittersweet edge to his words. “I never needed to. No matter what they believed to be enough from me, as long as they were hurting, I would continue onwards.

“Ultimately, it is up to you to choose who can answer your question, Kim Dokja.” 

Words from a man who lost his arm, his leg, his eyes, his life. Words that echo Kim Dokja’s own thoughts, so he doesn’t prod any further—he’s heard enough to understand that 999 understands him.  

Kim Dokja will never be enough for himself. Kim Dokja will have to be enough for his companions.

What a cruel, cruel world. 

—

Stories are written to be interesting, to keep the reader engaged all the way up to the bitter end. Indeed, back when it was only a story, the readers of Ways of Survival all agreed that the main failing of the story was its extreme dedication to realism: pages upon pages of unnecessary description, chapters filled with tedious repetition and little to no action. 

That’s the difference between a story and reality, Kim Dokja supposes. The words are like the strokes of a paintbrush on a large canvas—the finished artwork contains none of the blemishes of the real subject, yet it’s precisely this flawlessness that makes it flawed. The story only shows what its author deems to be worth showing, but what right does this author have to decide which events are important in a character’s life? The writer is merely the medium, the one who puts the story into words. How dare they play God with a universe they’ve never known?

…The non-stop action after Kim Dokja’s return to Earth has him wondering if this all really is just a book, himself another character written into it. How terrible that would be, watching Yoo Joonghyuk escape his narrative only to realize he’s entered a greater one. How painful it would be, finding himself in the position of someone to be toyed with by a greater power. 

It would be a horrible insult to call everything they’ve all been through yet another story. His companions’ lives are precious; the traumas they’ve experienced are very real. This is reality, where there are no heroes that win each battle with a smile, and the only real villain is the Star Stream itself. 

The hero trudges on forward, forcing his way into the next scenario. Kim Dokja is not the hero. Kim Dokja is just tired. 

They’re all tired. No author would possibly describe everyone’s worn, ashy faces; no one would bother detailing the heaviness in everyone’s footsteps. It’s not the fight they’ve just fought that causes them to turn out that way: there are high-fives exchanged once they’re all safe, people patching one another up, light-hearted banter and discussion throughout recovery. At a glance, everyone seems alright—but they’re tired because they know there’s always going to be more, a bigger battle, something ever more unfathomable. 

In the end, it’s never a huge battle that breaks a person. No, it’s little pebbles building up bit-by-bit on one’s shoulders until they realize too late that they’re carrying a boulder: every sleepless night, every close call, every day pondering all the what-ifs that could go wrong. Every little thing that an author would deem unworthy of noting—but it’s not that author’s story to tell. If no one will remember, Kim Dokja will. 

They’ve struggled through the Journey to the West. They’ve learned the truth of Yoo Joonghyuk’s regressions, and the impossible relationship between the 3rd and the 1864th. They’ve faced off against the 999th Uriel and barely made it back unscathed.  

There’s hope, but it’s scarce; the light flickers on and off with every new challenge they face. It’s the knowledge that they’ve faced impossible odds before and won that just barely keeps them going, that just barely keeps them believing. 

…And Yoo Joonghyuk lived like this, day after day, year after year, life after life? 

If anyone deserves to feel happiness, it’s you. 

If not happiness, then the taste of peace. A story would be composed of non-stop fighting, but here in their realities, it’s time for a long-overdue break. 

In his mind, maybe Kim Dokja’s still been treating it like a story. Everyone is content to rest after confronting the other worldline’s Uriel, but his own thoughts are conflicted. Because he’s never had the opportunity to stop and recover, he adapted quickly into that mindset: always keep moving—you don’t deserve to rest—the next scenario is right in front of me . 

It’s the way he’s distracted himself all this time, constantly pushing forwards until there’s nothing in his way but the Final Scenario. But he can’t handle his companions the way he handles himself, can’t push them to their breaking points just to get there a little faster—perhaps Yoo Joonghyuk of some regression has tried that before, but Kim Dokja doesn’t just want to see the end. No, he wants all of them there, perfectly safe and happy and intact. 

Guilt churns in his stomach as he watches everyone frolic on the mountainside, a simulation of how things might have gone if they weren’t always fighting for their lives. By losing grip of himself, he’s also forced his companions to lose themselves: isn’t this ‘worker’s revolt’ evidence of that? He’s never been much of a leader, and that hasn’t changed from before the apocalypse. He’s only ever been by himself because he’s never deserved to have anyone beside himself—

As if reading his mind, Yoo Joonghyuk shoots him an undecipherable look from the grill he’s set up, eyebrows furrowed. At his sides, salivating over the food he’s grilling, are his sister and his student. It’s a scene from another world, somewhere where the only thing to fear is that someone will steal a bite of the food before it’s ready. 

Maybe that’s what Yoo Joonghyuk had felt too, every time he took his companions away for an off-day from the scenarios. Maybe he’d sat in Kim Dokja’s position now, watching everyone laugh happily, and dreamed of a world where they could laugh like that every day. 

Slowly, Kim Dokja takes a deep breath. He meets eyes with Yoo Joonghyuk one more time before looking away. It’s not his place to be mingling around, entertaining himself with everyone else here. 

His job is to make these people happy—a job that, if the sub-scenario recently issued has anything to do with it, he’s not doing spectacularly well at. To satisfy five complaints is easier than it sounds: his companions have suffered all too much on his part, and his stunning incompetence is only further displayed by his inability to provide anything more than the shallowest comforts to those he does speak with. 

He’s facing a world he doesn’t deserve to have, and one he would die to protect. 

Kim Dokja turns away from the scene in front of him and sits down in an unoccupied grassy field. He could close his eyes here, fall asleep to the sound of cheerful conversation and light-hearted games. His heart is a cracked cup, filled to the brim with love for all these people who have stayed with him this whole time, who have been at his side even in the face of the worst disasters. It fills and it fills until it’s near overflowing, the smallest smile appearing on his face. 

Oh, what a wonderful dream. 

He isn’t sure how long he spends sitting there, staring absently into space. Thoughts flow freely in and out of his mind, and he stomachs the cruelty of all of them: invasive little murmurs of still not enough never enough or stressful contemplations of what will I lose next—because there are warm whispers too, they’re happy right now this world is at peace this is my home, and they wrap around him like a ghostly embrace. 

He jumps when an uncharacteristically gentle hand brushes against his back, whipping around and reaching for a sword that isn’t there. 

Yoo Joonghyuk arches an eyebrow. “To think the Kim Dokja Company’s leader would startle so easily.”

Narrowed eyes, a carefully dry tone. “It’s not my fault you decided to sneak up behind me while I was thinking.”

“I wasn’t aware you were capable of such a thing.”

Kim Dokja mock-punches Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder; the man doesn’t deign to do so much as react. 

“Are you just here to insult me? Don’t you have better things to do with your time, Yoo Joonghyuk?”

A grunt. Kim Dokja blinks in surprise as Yoo Joonghyuk settles beside him, their shoulders just barely brushing. Though the situation has only gotten more confusing, he doesn’t quite shift away. It’s not often that they get to be quietly alone together. 

Carefully, he dares to glance up at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face, and shifts his gaze away when he notices him looking back. There’s less tension in Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression than usual, only a slight glint in his eyes.

Ah , Kim Dokja thinks. Though he’d subconsciously avoided his companions beyond a few aborted attempts to reach out to them here, there’s something different about Yoo Joonghyuk’s presence. Here is the man whose company he deserves the least, approaching him of his own volition; here is the man whose company he’s longed for the most. 

A little nudge, the barest flicker of a you’re not alone here . It’s not something Yoo Joonghyuk would ever say, but he feels a little warmer anyway. 

He’s done stupider things before, but Kim Dokja doesn’t think his heart’s ever beat so fast as it is right now, cautiously leaning into Yoo Joonghyuk’s touch just the slightest bit more—nearly unnoticeable, but then it’s Yoo Joonghyuk he’s talking about. An arm presses closer against the other with hesitation; dark eyes quickly flick to his face again. 

It’s the closest he’ll get to asking for comfort. Yoo Joonghyuk huffs but doesn’t move away, shifting closer as well—it’s the closest he’ll get to providing it. It’s a soft moment, detached for a second from the rest of the harsh world. 

It won’t last. It never does, but at least Kim Dokja will have a happy memory to hold onto in upcoming scenarios. Their breaths sync, in-and-out-and-in-and-out, until he dares to gently rest his head on Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder. He feels the man beneath him tense for a second, then relax. 

He knows he’ll never come close to resolving all of Yoo Joonghyuk’s personal demons. Of all his companions, this is the one person whose complaints he could never even hope to satisfy. Still, the two of them are very similar in certain senses. 

They’ve both been leaders, despairing over their comrades’ suffering; they’ve both chosen to hide away their own struggles for the sake of tending to the others’. 

The events of the Dark Castle comes to mind, and a bitter expression forms on Kim Dokja’s face. The one thing they can’t seem to agree on is which one of them should face all the suffering. 

But here, right now, it’s like a compromise; Yoo Joonghyuk leans back against him, and it feels a bit like they’re carrying the burden together. 

Finally, Yoo Joonghyuk speaks. 

“Don’t think so much about useless things.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A disbelieving sound. 

“You’re a fool.” There’s no bite to the words. “Dinner is being prepared.”

“Shouldn’t you be with them, then? Go on, leave me alone.” 

Kim Dokja’s indulged himself for long enough. Though he’d hold onto Yoo Joonghyuk for eternity if he could, this isn’t where he belongs. 

Where he’d let himself be vulnerable for a few fleeting heartbeats just moments ago, he hides back behind his masks again. A vaguely displeased expression forms on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face, calculating gaze scouring Kim Dokja’s demeanour.

With a slight scowl, Yoo Joonghyuk stands up, the sudden lack of warmth against Kim Dokja’s side all too noticeable. 

“You think too much.” The words are clipped as Yoo Joonghyuk turns away. He takes a few steps before pausing and turning back around. Kim Dokja inhales sharply as something is pressed into his hands, though Yoo Joonghyuk thankfully doesn’t stay long enough to notice his expression. 

As he walks away—most likely to protect what little food remains that Lee Jihye hasn’t already eaten—Kim Dokja blanches at the implications of what Yoo Joonghyuk’s left behind. 

There’s a notebook, leagues fancier than whatever scrap paper is nearby that Kim Dokja usually uses, along with a fountain pen. 

Other than that first incident, Kim Dokja’s always been deathly careful to write his letters away from prying eyes: the words he writes are too painfully personal to ever share with anyone, even his closest companions. He shudders to think how they would reel at the disgusting truth of who he is as a person, some pathetically average man who just wants more than he can ever have. 

He can’t have found out just by watching Kim Dokja. Did 999 tell him—? He’d assumed that he understood the private nature of the letters, but perhaps 999 holds more loyalty to a version of himself from an alternate timeline… although that seems rather unrealistic. 

A thought occurs to him then, one that causes him to freeze in a nervous sweat. That day in the hospital room where Yoo Joonghyuk had left without a word and he’d woken up without his letter—he’d assumed Han Sooyoung had picked it up or something, but he doubts she’d have kept quiet about that for so long. 

…And out of all of them, it had to have been the one written in a fit of sleep deprivation and emotional duress. The thought of Yoo Joonghyuk reading that, deeming it important enough to take it from him—no, better to distract himself. 

The notebook is clearly high-quality, lined pages bound by black leather. It’s very reminiscent of Yoo Joonghyuk himself, managing to be attention-grabbing without trying to. He huffs out a laugh, idly running his index finger along the spine of the book. 

It begs a question, though. Why had Yoo Joonghyuk decided to gift him something like this, and why now? He’d call it a taunt, some mockery of the shameful bareness of his heart, but that doesn’t seem like Yoo Joonghyuk’s style. The whims of such a man are truly difficult to comprehend, but—well. The two of them have never been good at communicating through speech, have they? 

Kim Dokja and his secret letters. Yoo Joonghyuk and his nonverbal actions. They keep to themselves, speaking their own respective languages. 

Sighing, he opens the notebook, flipping through the pages. Unsurprisingly, there’s nothing written in it—except?

On the very inside of the front cover, there’s a short note written in Yoo Joonghyuk’s handwriting: blocky and neat, without any flowery details. It’s scrawled in black pen, and given the way it smudges when Kim Dokja touches it, the message was written recently. 

It reads as follows: 

Kim Dokja. 

You make it difficult to have a ‘quiet conversation’ when you constantly distance yourself from everyone. 

Writing seems to be the closest thing to honesty you will offer. This is not a gift. Use the notebook properly and return it when you are ready. 

Kim Dokja snickers at the curtness of the short message, straight to the point as always. The quote only validates his growing sense of dread, though, as he thinks back to the things he wrote in that particular letter. After a moment, he thinks better of it; the less he remembers, the better for his sanity. 

The notion of spilling all of his heart into these inviting lined pages is less appealing when he thinks of Yoo Joonghyuk poring through them. He’s wholly prepared to tuck it away and forget about it, but something possesses him—he flips to the first page, and before he knows it, the pen is in his hand and a hair’s breadth away from touching the paper. 

His breath hitches. He wants to be known; he wants to hide away. The hand holding the pen trembles, neither moving to write nor to retract. 

…He wonders what being ready entails. Some of his oldest letters have been on his person for years and years, and still he has no intention of showing them to Yoo Joonghyuk. Maybe it’s not as big of a deal as he’s making it out to be. 

An exhale. The pen nib touches the paper, leaving a small mark. It’s all he needs. 

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk, 

You know, I really hate it when you get so smug. I hate it even more when you’re right about the things you’re smug about. ‘Use it properly’, really?

Maybe I should just fill these pages with insults towards you. Idiot. Bastard. Sunfish. Don’t be so full of yourself. 

I guess you did give this notebook, though. The least I can do is humour you, even if you are an overgrown brat. 

Where to begin? It’s not that I have nothing to say—more like I have too much to say, to the point where nothing comes out at all. 

The scenery here is nice. Whoever picked this mountainside for this trip deserves to be praised. The kids look like they’re having a lot of fun, you know? I think about that a lot. Is it the first time they’ve gotten to have fun like normal kids since the start of the scenarios? I wish it didn’t have to be that way—not for them, not for anyone. 

What about you, Yoo Joonghyuk? How much of ‘before the scenarios’ do you remember at all? Have you ever known a life of happiness beyond the scenarios? 

I’d like to show you that, if you’d let me. Before you get mad, I’m not saying this out of pity. I just—

The sentence cuts off there as Kim Dokja flushes slightly before continuing on. 

I just think, for me, any happy ending is one where you’re happy. 

We’re nearing the end soon, you know? The Last Scenario is almost here, and then you’ll be free at last. 

Is there anything you dream of having after the scenarios end? It seems that the others want their normal lives back, or at least the closest thing they can get. That sounds nice. A big house where everyone can live, schooling for the kids—and of course, you’re cooking for everyone. 

What do you want, then? Such a domestic lifestyle really doesn’t match your appearance, but you’ve made stranger decisions in the past. I wonder where the protagonist goes after the story ends…?

A happily ever after would be good, I think. If there’s anything you want that I can offer, I’ll give it to you.

Just live happily, okay? 

Such melancholic words… but they’re true, of course. Yoo Joonghyuk holds his heart, so he’ll give him the world and everything else he needs.

A wistful expression crosses his face for a fleeting moment, as quick to leave as it is to appear. He turns to face all his companions, joyful voices overlapping, and wishes he could take a picture of them. They look happy together. They look complete . 

“Hey, you! Come eat supper!” 

Han Sooyoung fixes him with a disdainful look, eyebrow quirked at the notebook in his hand. The others turn to face him, too. 

“Ahjussi, you’re really too thin… don’t tell me you’re going to skip dinner?”

“Dokja-ssi, hurry up and eat before it’s all gone! I hate to say it, but this guy cooks really well.” 

“Come sit beside me, ahjussi!”

“No, sit with me , hyung!” 

One by one, his companions call out to him. Yoo Joonghyuk, standing silently at the grill, also glances at the notebook. His lips purse, and he gives the subtlest of nods before returning to his cooking.

All at once, the spell breaks. Where, for a moment, he stood watching from afar, he now joins them all. The aroma of savoury meat and cooked vegetables envelops him alongside the sound of cheery laughter, and he lets himself sink into the comforting feeling. 

A short rest, a reprieve from cold reality. A gentle daydream, alive for as long as it has to be. Close your eyes…

—

…and open them again.

They’re so close. God, they’re so close , and this last chapter is one Kim Dokja’s never read before. There are people who should have been strangers now standing at his side; there are people who started as characters now living with beating hearts, reaching an epilogue to their story where there wasn’t one before. There are people he loves, despite himself, despite everything. 

It’s a story he doesn’t know, and finally he knows how the others must have felt without Ways of Survival at their beck and call. 

Will this story end as a tragedy or comedy?

…Surprisingly, he’s able to push the thought aside as all the hostile Nebulas raise their swords to him. 

The Enemy of the Story—an apt descriptor for who he is, in the end. Perhaps it’s a title even more fitting than Demon King of Salvation, for the only salvation he’s ever offered was at the cost of himself. 

He’ll never force his companions to kill him again. He’ll be the end of the world, he’ll be the destroyer of the Star Stream, and he’ll be Kim Dokja , a forgettable adult with a forgettable life and a boundless love for the very story he’s sworn to destroy.

It’s the climactic final battle against the last villain. He’s a kid flipping through the pages, mystified at the grandness of it all: all the shining stars in the sky burning with greed and vengeance, and one small Nebula holding their own against the odds, fighting to defend that very villain. 

He’s an Outer God, unrecognizable and incomprehensible, but they won’t hurt him. They can’t hear him, can’t reach him, but they know their roles well enough. Ferocious and unhesitating, they take on the very storytellers themselves. 

He’d die for them. He has died for them, again and again—it’s the consequence of his bleeding heart, the only way he knows how to show it—but he’s opened his eyes and still he thinks, I’d like to live for you too.

The people who believe in him even now, the cluster of stars who would fight a losing battle for his sake, and all the stories they’ve made along the way: he’d like to stay a little longer, linger in the last few pages alongside all of them. 

They all trust him to change the prewritten end. An eternity ago, perhaps he would have cracked under the pressure, but standing here now… it doesn’t seem too terrible a task. If he has to endure the terrible loneliness of eternity, if no one will understand his decision until it’s too late—well, aren’t the words being written by everyone? It’s a story he doesn’t know, but it’s a story they’re all writing along the way—this worldline, and all the others too. 

The Constellations of his channel desperately pour in Coins to fund their Nebula’s Probability. 

All the Outer Gods they’d faced as adversaries not so long ago stand in defiance of the world that has gone beyond their own. 

Even Bihyung, the storyteller who had trailed alongside them for this whole time: it’s a lifetime of promises, of sacrifice and eternity. 

And so it goes. 

Flip the page, read the next sentence, pray it’s not the last. Cling onto precious words like a lifeline, whisper the end like it’s your dying breath. 

It’s the Ark, it’s the Wenny King, it’s the Dokkaebi King. It’s the Final Wall, and it’s two overlapping old promises, to the same-different person. 

Let’s see the end together —a young boy writing to all the Yoo Joonghyuks he’s known, all the Yoo Joonghyuks he’ll ever know. 

I’ll finish your story for you —Kim Dokja’s unfulfilled oath to the 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk, the book’s final regression, the origin of the Plotter, the regression that came before him . 

There was a story he learned to love so long ago, and there’s a man standing at his side now. They’re almost there. Almost at the end of it all, together. 

[The Oldest Dream]. What kind of being would create a world so minutely cruel in the realm of their own imagination? How monstrous must they be, to find catharsis in loss and death? There is but one Final Wall to break, and they will finally stand face-to-face with this sleeping monster. 

He touches the sentences that make up the Final Wall, as intrigued as he is disgusted. Here lies the transcript of one single person’s twisted fantasy, a fairytale deliberately trampled on again and again until it becomes something unrecognizable. 

It’s the Wall that stopped the Plotter once, but this time Kim Dokja has kept his promise. 

This time—

They’re all transported into the Fourth Wall, thankfully intact and unharmed. Yoo Sangah seems slightly more comfortable in this Library of his mind, her gaze flickering across the many books that she once tended to. The others, on the other hand, skim through volumes that spin stories of the entire history of Kim Dokja’s past. In particular, Han Sooyoung and Lee Jihye shamelessly read through titles of things better left unsaid, an uncomfortable sensation going through Kim Dokja’s body. 

It’s no longer a matter of trust. For many of them, he’s read their stories enough times, seen all their traumas and nightmares and secrets and eaten them up like a gluttonous beast time and time again. After that, there’s no way he can deny them from reading his own, especially when he knows that his companions are not ones to hurt him voluntarily. 

Still, there are some secrets of his history that he doesn’t want to remember. Things that shouldn’t be read through the dividing ‘wall’ that a book provides, printed words and paper pages offering little more than plastic comfort.

It’s Yoo Joonghyuk who puts a stop to it, furrowed eyebrows and icy eyes trained on the troublemakers. Perhaps it’s him who knows best how unpleasant it can be to be to be ‘read’ like that, to have all the horrors of his life be summed up concisely in a few sentences. It’s not the author of the book who should decide the things to be shared. 

He exchanges a look with Kim Dokja. There’s something that can’t be expressed in words there, but the two of them understand it well enough either way. 

This story, which has spanned on for eons, will soon reach its epilogue. The Oldest Dream, Yoo Joonghyuk’s captor and the Star Stream’s only god, is all that remains to defeat. 

As everyone crosses through the passageway to the place where the dreamer awaits, a sense of foreboding begins to grow within Kim Dokja. There’s something tickling the back of his mind, the harrowing thought that he’s missed something just out of reach. The Fourth Wall is unnervingly quiet as they finally emerge into the light, facing…?

The end of the story is its beginning. 

His companions all express varying degrees of surprise at the sight of the subway emerging in front of them, the station where Yoo Joonghyuk’s every life began and the place where their stories began to overlap. There’s something so horribly, twistedly nostalgic about this place: its emptiness invokes a sense of liminality, of a world long gone and unperceivable horrors to come. 

An insistent buzzing begins in Kim Dokja’s head, not quite intense enough to be painful but nonetheless very present.

The doors open. Here lies the beginning of the world—a subway that once held uncountable stories, hundreds of thousands of people entering and exiting those doors. Here lies the end of the world, a Nebula’s worth of tired souls boarding for the first and last time. 

The subway begins moving: it’s the same route it’s always gone, the same route it always will go. Though the cabin is filled with colourful conversation, there’s an air of uncertainty that wears on them all. Where will this long journey’s end take them?

“This was once a lonely thing to ride,” he murmurs to no one in specific. Though a few pairs of eyes drift to him, no one speaks. Maybe it’s because they all understand the sentiment he’s trying to express: that one painfully solitary Kim Dokja had once resigned himself to a lifetime of riding this subway with no one to accompany him but his webnovels. 

That that same Kim Dokja now sits here, staring into the darkness outside as the window reflects the determined faces of his loved ones. 

These loved ones whose hands he’s held tightly, who have fought at his side for all of ninety-nine scenarios and counting, who he’s promised to bring to the end. It’s no longer so lonely. 

He finds himself loosening up slightly, a faint smile making its way onto his face. He’s happy here, with this family he loves. 

This family he loves, and—

(as Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung squeeze his hands, and as Yoo Sangah recounts older days with a soft expression, and as Jung Heewon and Lee Jihye gleefully tease him, and as Lee Hyunsung gratefully thanks him for all he’s done, and as Han Sooyoung lingers close at his side, 

and as Yoo Joonghyuk watches him with unreadable eyes) 

Perhaps, yes, this family that loves him back. 

—The doors open. 

His head hurts, fuck . 

The platform is all but abandoned, an impending sense of wrongness striking him. 

One by one, they all step out. Aside, he can hear the sound of a sword clattering to the ground, a sharp gasp, a muttered ‘Dokja-ssi…’, but it all sounds murky and unclear to him in the face of the greater threat. There’s the dreamer, the god, the monster. 

A single figure facing him. A mirror. 

No protagonist nor author could ever look so pitiful. 

Oh.

They all sound so surprised, but for Kim Dokja… perhaps he’s known all along. There’s a child on the subway bench, bruises painting delicate skin an ugly purple, and it’s a scene he knows better than any book. 

Here’s a story he’s memorized, even beyond the scope of Ways of Survival . Here’s a boy who will go home to a cold empty house, who will lose sleep to the dim yellow light of a computer screen, who has first learned how to hurt and has now learned how to tune it out. Here’s a boy who will grow up to the tune of misery that only haunts him, a specific flavour of tragedy that makes him into someone to be absently pitied but never truly understood. Here’s a boy who will go to a forgettable university, accomplish nothing in the military, and finally live life as some nameless employee at some unimportant company.

What kind of being would create a world so minutely cruel in the realm of their own imagination? How monstrous must they be, to find catharsis in loss and death? 

So which one of them is the real monster? He’s a demon, looming above a scared young boy; he’s a reader, condemning everyone he’s ever loved to endless suffering while surviving off of that same suffering. They’re one and the same, and he’s unforgivable in both states.

End the Dream. End yourself, Kim Dokja . 

He points his blade at the child, the Oldest Dream, but the only one in control of this world’s reality is the dream. The sword breaks apart and flies away, but… 

He was this child, and this child will become him. How many tragedies has he been responsible for? There’s this worldline, but he spares a glance at Yoo Joonghyuk’s shocked expression and realizes that that question is unanswerable. The first person he’d ever loved, his one and only saviour throughout his entire life of small miseries—that same person is the one whose eternal pain he caused, whose infinite hell of regression was the result of Kim Dokja greedily stealing his story for his own survival. 

You have saved me again and again, and I have repaid you with the gift of unfathomable tragedy. 

What a monster he is indeed. He grabs that broken blade, revelling in the child’s horrified expression. Slowly, slowly, he lifts it to the height of his neck, stares at the jagged metal, and stabs himself—

Or not, as Yoo Joonghyuk grabs the blade right before it cuts his throat, sharp edges digging into him and drawing blood from his palm. He almost collapses right then and there, faltering under Yoo Joonghyuk’s intense expression.

Will you do the honours yourself? 

Please hurt me, please stop me, please stop this dream. 

They’re all holding him back, even as the Oldest Dream curls up into himself and denies them all. They’re all trying to stop him from following through with the only possible path to the final ending, even though he’s the only villain in this story, even though the burden of his pain has been pushed onto them since the start of the story. 

That family he loves, that family that loves him back—he’s been the source of all their nightmares from the beginning.

Never forgive me. Never forgive me, or I might hurt you more. 

It’s too late to kill the Oldest Dream. He who wraps himself in delusion like a comforting blanket will reject their existence—even his own existence, a creature who has experienced that same agony as himself. Kim Dokja can’t lay a finger on him, nor can any of the others who the Oldest Dream has dismissed as illusions. 

( I am Yoo Joonghyuk, I am Yoo Joonghyuk, I am— )

But. 

But there’s one protagonist who the Oldest Dream had lived his life for, one protagonist whose name he had survived under, one protagonist who he had held the very closest to his sad little heart. This Yoo Joonghyuk is one whose regression had never touched the pages of Ways of Survival , but there’s another entity who encapsulates the entirety of the story that the Oldest Dream loved. 

Another entity who felt all the excruciating pain that the Oldest Dream dealt to him, from 0th regression to 1863rd. 

The Secretive Plotter breaks through the Oldest Dream’s protective mental barrier all too easily with a single sentence: 

[You are not Yoo Joonghyuk.]

The loneliest boy in this world pushed his loneliness onto the loneliest man of another, and here they stand now. The dreamer finally faces his transgressions—everyone watches, unmoving and unspeaking, as a broken child wishes eternity onto his favourite protagonist. 

Thank you for never giving up , he’d written so long ago, hoping that Yoo Joonghyuk’s story would never end until the day his own life ended. That way, Kim Dokja would always find hope in Yoo Joonghyuk’s continued existence; that way, he’d willed those wishes into the reality of a separate universe now united with his own.  

The Oldest Dream hadn’t known a thing, only consuming Yoo Joonghyuk’s story for his own sake. Kim Dokja hadn’t known a thing, but now… now, as the Secretive Plotter lifts the sword that has slain countless stars in the sky, perhaps they’ll both be free. To end this child is to end the regression cycle. To end this child is to end Kim Dokja, to end this world, to end his never-ending debt. 

But the Plotter does none of these things. He who lived through all 1863 regressions, he who lost a thousand times more than the Oldest Dream has, slowly places his hand on the unforgivable tragedy’s head. 

There’s the barest glint in the Oldest Dream’s eyes that can only be described as wonder, still glazed over with fantasy. Both he and Kim Dokja are frozen in shock— why won’t you strike him down? Why won’t you punish us for our sins? 

Those of the 999th regression emerge as well, bitter expressions on their faces. They have lost so much because of him too, yet none of them make any move to end the dream. All of them, who swore to end the Star Stream that caused them all this strife, stare down at the Oldest Dream with unending sorrow. 

[…Oh, you sad, miserable child.]

Uriel’s fingertips graze over the Oldest Dream’s forehead, heartbreakingly soft. She is the 999th Uriel of 1864, each one trapped in their own regression bound only by Yoo Joonghyuk’s suffering. How long has she seeked for vengeance? How long has she wanted to bring this reality to an end? Yet as the answer lies right in front of her, she only smiles at him sadly. 

And this isn’t how it’s meant to go. The Outer Gods treat the Oldest Dream like he’s fragile, like breaking him would break them too. For every lifetime that he’s hurt them, they whisper another gentle assurance. 

What about Yoo Joonghyuk? What about the one the Oldest Dream trapped within this story himself with his helpless cries for a saviour? Kim Dokja’s gaze flicks over to the Plotter hysterically, unable to comprehend the scene in front of him. Despite it all, that Yoo Joonghyuk who has painstakingly seen every regression from beginning to end holds no resentment for the dreamer. 

“Open your eyes,” the Plotter says, and as the Oldest Dream does, Kim Dokja despairs.

Yoo Joonghyuk can only be free if the dream ends, but instead of killing him, he’s chosen to—

Awaken . 

The dream has ended, bleeding into a reality never before seen. That child who had been Kim Dokja opens his eyes to see the characters he’d waited for for his entire life, carrying him with all the love he doesn’t deserve.

This can’t be right. This can’t be the way the story ends… and yet the Secretive Plotter and the Outer Gods all look more content than Kim Dokja’s ever seen them. Like this is the end they’ve been looking for all this time, like he could be the resolution to a never-ending tragedy.

They take the dream away, the source sustaining the essence of this world, and as everyone is sent back into the subway, Kim Dokja realizes what he needs to do. 

Everyone is so… happy. 

(And don’t they deserve to be, after all this time?)

The subway comes to a stop, and these precious people who he loves so dearly step onto the station platform. It’s how the story ends: the heroes return to their original lives, living peacefully until the end of time. 

…But Kim Dokja has never been included in these heroes. Perhaps he never did cross that wall, that boundary that separates them.

He watches half of himself step out of those doors, standing beside author and protagonist. Even he looks happy. That would be a nice start to his dream, his own happiness. 

As long as this part of himself keeps dreaming, everyone will get to stay happy. They’ll get to move on with their lives the way it should be, watching the world rebuild itself when no one has to worry about the Star Stream and its scenarios any longer. They’ll get to watch the kids grow up, watch Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung get married, live together in that big house that Kim Dokja proposed so long ago. 

And Kim Dokja will get to watch. 

It’s a sinner’s punishment, a reader’s atonement. He has loved so dearly that it only makes sense that those he loves would be lost to him; he has read so much that it only makes sense that his eternity would be to watch these loved ones be happy without all of him. 

If all the pain he’ll have to endure means he’ll never have to see them suffer again, it’ll be worth it. 

( Live and be happy .)

49% of himself carries an unassuming white envelope, filled to bursting with a lifetime’s worth of selfish words and broken promises. The remaining 51% keeps a leather-bound journal that cannot be returned anymore, the empty pages now holding so much more meaning. Each page will one day be filled with words, apologies and confessions and thank-yous directed towards just one man and his 1864 regressions. 

They’re all the words he’ll never get to say, a letter for every regression that he unknowingly left scarred. At the end of time, when the ink runs out and the pages are filled to the point of illegibility, maybe then he’ll be forgivable.

With the solitude of the subway as his only witness for the rest of eternity, Kim Dokja begins to write. 

Dear Yoo Joonghyuk…