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Kim Dokja.
"Dokja-ssi?"
Kim Dokja, the voice said again, louder this time.
An inhumane mix of cybernetic enhancements and stellar genetic make-up tossed together to form one of the darkest legends of the Star Stream, Yoo Joonghyuk was a real person.
A real bastard, too.
Well-known across countless organizations, his exploits were on the lips of every nebula with a decent information network. Yoo Joonghyuk had once been an unstoppable force that shook the foundation of their way of life, but it was said that he burned too brightly.
All stars died, and Yoo Joonghyuk was no different.
His death at the hands of Vedas was a surprise, but only because it wasn't the blaze of glory the old tales made it out to be. Instead of flames and violence, Yoo Joonghyuk's death came in the form of needles to the brain, a ruthless AI downloading his psyche, converting all that he was into a multitude of 0s and 1s.
Reading about it in Yoo Joonghyuk’s biographies was one thing…
An unfortunate night of ill-advised overtime led him to discover a project that was undoubtedly not MinoSoft’s usual brain-numbing production simulator. Instead, it was something slightly more insidious.
YJH_1864.■■.exe
He didn’t recognize the file type or the label itself. He wasn’t sure what project this was for either. Unfortunately, curiosity overcame caution.
One executed action and a splitting headache later, Kim Dokja had watched Yoo Joonghyuk’s death as if he were experiencing it himself. Still, he had felt no terror in Yoo Joonghyuk's head. Instead, the needles had pierced his neural port and sent painful shocks throughout his being, but Yoo Joonghyuk had not flinched.
There was only a fury so intense that its insertion in Kim Dokja's brain fifty years later was enough to fry his neural network, damaging it so irreparably that Kim Dokja wasn’t sure of the extent of the consequences.
Despite that rage, perhaps Yoo Joonghyuk thought the companions at his side—his allies, the support of the lives he'd changed— could have kept his legacy alive through memory… But instead, the world shoved him into a video game, destroyed his reputation, and profited off his suffering. No longer was he Yoo Joonghyuk, the scourge of the stars, the merciless Iron Blood Supreme King.
To the world after the fall, he was Yoo Joonghyuk, the Punisher, the regressor and antagonist for MinoSoft's hit video game franchise, Ways of Survival, destined to be felled by any hack who could aim a virtual gun.
To Kim Dokja, he was the hallucination standing at Yoo Sangah's side, arms crossed.
Yoo Joonghyuk and Yoo Sangah stared at him but with significantly different expressions. Perhaps it was the sheer difference in their stature or the splitting headache, but Kim Dokja found the sight hard to process. Mouth parted in surprise, Kim Dokja struggled to remain calm at Yoo Sangah's complete lack of reaction.
"Are you alright?" Yoo Sangah asked.
"She can't see me," Yoo Joonghyuk reminded him, impatient.
"Shut up," Kim Dokja hissed, freezing when he realized he'd said it aloud. Yoo Sangah's eyes widened, and Kim Dokja scrambled to take it back, "Ah! Sangah-ssi, not you, er… I have a small… malware issue."
Yoo Joonghyuk crossed his arms, his iconic black coat stretching over his broad chest and muscular biceps.
Alright, big malware issue, but disregarding one long-dead terrorist hallucination, there wasn't anyone around for Kim Dokja to place the blame. The excuse was flimsy, but Yoo Sangah tilted her head, an understanding expression on her kind features.
"Don't stay too late, Dokja-ssi," Yoo Sangah said, excusing herself, "If you feel unwell, you should go to a doctor."
Kim Dokja nodded his head, eyes flicking towards Yoo Joonghyuk's broad back walking to one of the high glass windows overlooking the city.
"Thank you, I will," he swallowed on a dry throat.
He wasn't sure what an ordinary doctor could do about the aggressive personality implant taking over his body and brain, but Yoo Sangah didn't need to be dragged into this shitshow.
Two clowns were enough for this circus.
Yoo Joonghyuk tched.
When Yoo Joonghyuk first showed up in his home—a tiny, pathetic one-bedroom apartment on the 41st floor that overlooked the bustling city of Seoul—Kim Dokja assumed an incredibly handsome criminal was robbing him.
It wasn’t the worst way to die, he’d thought, being choked on the ground by a hot stranger; better than being shot on the street and left to bleed out. It would be a while before anyone found him. He felt sympathy for whoever stumbled upon his rotting corpse.
He woke up hours later, with Yoo Joonghyuk angrily sitting on his bed and staring at him.
Under his home's dingy, flickering lights, Yoo Joonghyuk’s outline glitched like a shoddy hologram. Kim Dokja’s lips curled down.
That was just the beginning of their cohabitation.
Once upon a time, Kim Dokja considered himself a fan of Yoo Joonghyuk.
If one dug past all the corporate and government propaganda, Yoo Joonghyuk was one of the vigilante heroes of the early century. He cared little for who or what was behind corruption, only displaying a single-minded ferocity for his enemies. Due to his efficacy, they had to thoroughly destroy his reputation to stop the world from martyring him because killing the man barely stopped those that followed his ideals.
Having him in his head… made being a fan a bit harder.
Kim Dokja didn’t really want to talk to the aggressive personality, but contrary to his stoic nature written about in books/portrayed in the games, Yoo Joonghyuk had a lot to fucking say.
"You're not afraid of them. Why take all that work?"
Kim Dokja stared at the extra work messily dropped on his desk with an ambivalent expression.
“It’s not like there’s anything else I have to do,” Kim Dokja shrugged, swirling the last of his synthetic coffee in the bottom of his mug. The sludge had long gone cold, and Kim Dokja rose from his office chair with the creaking of his twenty-eight-year-old joints. Extra work meant extra slacking off.
"Pathetic."
Yoo Joonghyuk looked as if it physically pained him to watch Kim Dokja be a human doormat.
At twenty-eight, Yoo Joonghyuk bombed a corporate skyscraper.
Kim Dokja's smile didn’t falter, but it did twitch. We weren't all overpowered assholes, Kim Dokja thought. Some of us had to worry about rent. Yoo Joonghyuk, able to hear his thoughts, scoffed.
Ah, privacy. Kim Dokja missed it, along with the ability to eat whatever the hell he wanted. But unfortunately, he hadn't realized the value of this luxury until he couldn't eat his convenience store's ultra-processed microwave meal in peace.
Yoo Joonghyuk was horrified at the garbage Kim Dokja shoveled into his body. He felt the same way about the cigarettes that Kim Dokja sucked down during his breaks.
What a bastard. Kim Dokja’s headache throbbed, presumably due to a caffeine deficiency and lack of sleep over the last week.
They quickly realized that as the host, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t kill him, despite choking him out on their very first day together. Kim Dokja had passed out and woken up to an incredibly brusque interrogation without bruises on his neck, even if the sensation had been far too vivid.
Still, the knowledge that Yoo Joonghyuk needed Kim Dokja alive did not stop the man from being an absolute nightmare to share space with. Working for MinoSoft meant that Kim Dokja was a slave to the people that likely had Yoo Joonghyuk killed, and the man had yet to let him forget it.
When he opened the door to the breakroom, he automatically held the door open for Yoo Joonghyuk. Once Yoo Joonghyuk strode past him, he remembered he didn’t actually have a corporal form to bump into things with. This wasn’t the first time Kim Dokja forgot, but it wasn’t Kim Dokja’s fault that Yoo Joonghyuk was a murderous terrorist with massive stage presence.
It didn’t take a genius to read the look of disapproval on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. However, the disapproval quickly turned to surprise. Kim Dokja wanted to express his astonishment that Yoo Joonghyuk could do anything but frown and sneer—but out of nowhere, a sharp pain shot through his head, sending the mug crashing.
Blood dripped down from Kim Dokja’s nose, his vision swimming.
A shrill ringing rattled in his head, and Kim Dokja felt bile rising in his throat. Thankfully, the bathroom was only a few paces away.
Steadying himself on the rim with one arm, Kim Dokja spat out into the sink. He struggled to catch his breath, swallowing around the sour taste.
“I need you to do something.” Really, Yoo Joonghyuk was such an asshole.
“Asking for favors after insulting me? Right now ? Your charm knows no bounds.” Kim Dokja shuddered. Blood smeared over his mouth, and Kim Dokja tried to wipe away the flow with shaky hands.
“I could just take over your body.”
“I’ll fight it the whole time. I’m quite annoying.” They weren’t quite sure what the strain would do on Kim Dokja’s body if the workday were this difficult.
“You are.” Yoo Joonghyuk agreed, and Kim Dokja wished he could hit him. But then, a beat of silence, and Yoo Joonghyuk spoke from where he stood in the corner of the bathroom.
“You’re dying, Kim Dokja.”
You don’t know that—Kim Dokja wanted to say, but the words felt like a lie.
“I know someone you can go to.”
“Go away,” he said.
Remaining silent, Kim Dokja shakily cleaned up the mess he’d left behind in the break room and made his way back to his desk. Each step brought another bout of dizziness, but obstinacy made him fight it. Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes dug a hole into his back the entire time.
Staring down at the papers, he wished he hadn’t accepted the extra work.
"Your aim is shit," Yoo Joonghyuk said, walking fearlessly out onto the range to assess the battered target sheet. "If you rely on the targeting systems, you're screwed the second they toss an EMP or hack your optic implant."
Kim Dokja scowled, shooting off another clip at the man. As expected, the bullets phased through the hallucination of Yoo Joonghyuk to pierce the flimsy target.
Yoo Joonghyuk, the bastard that he was, didn't even flinch. Instead, he turned to look over his shoulder, hummed, and disappeared. He reappeared beside Kim Dokja, scarred hands adjusting his hold on the gun as if correcting a child.
To Kim Dokja's surprise and growing concern, Yoo Joonghyuk was more animated in his actions than his initial download, more forward with how he moved Kim Dokja to his liking.
While he only stood at first, looking menacing, he now stalked across the rooms like an anxious predator. He touched things more often, flipping through magazines, scrolling through network portals, and picking random items off Kim Dokja's desk.
But of course, these were projections of someone bound to his head and therefore had no bearing on real life… right?
"What"—Kim Dokja swallowed, hands shaking as he felt the warmth of Yoo Joonghyuk’s body against his, deepening the chill at his core—“are you doing?”
Yoo Joonghyuk stood behind him, positioning Kim Dokja's arms and holding them still.
They looked through the same eyes. Kim Dokja was mesmerized by the steadiness of his sight, the confidence that Yoo Joonghyuk held him with, flickering in and out of Kim Dokja's vision all the same.
He wore Yoo Joonghyuk's skill like a second coat, a borrowed ability.
“Breathe,” Yoo Joonghyuk instructed. Kim Dokja let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He exhaled slowly, his vision narrowing in on the target. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move or tell him to do anything else.
Now.
Kim Dokja pulled the trigger.
"You have to kill them all, Kim Dokja," Yoo Joonghyuk said, his voice echoing in Kim Dokja's aching head, regardless of his glitching form leaning against a nearby wall. Kim Dokja scowled down at the data pad before him, the evidence glaring him in the face.
It was… disgusting. It was damning.
Or at least, it should have been, but Kim Dokja had seen atrocities a thousand times worse than the information loaded onto the screen, and like those times before, he knew it was futile. Money greased more palms than metal available for cuffs. The roaches wouldn't even scurry away in the light, protected by the organizations behind them.
Then, Yoo Joonghyuk was at his side, his voice louder, deeper, rolling through every nerve in Kim Dokja's body like an electric shock.
"Don't look away," his hand, rough and firm on the back of Kim Dokja's neck, making him gasp even if it was all in his head.
It felt real.
Did it truly matter, then? If this was all in his head? If Kim Dokja had no way of hiding his thoughts, fears, and himself from Yoo Joonghyuk's piercing gaze.
Just as he had looked into Yoo Joonghyuk's life through the brief news articles in the Archives, from the adverts of the Nebulas banding together to stop a common evil in high stakes, immersive, experiential entertainment—Yoo Joonghyuk was looking back into him.
His discontentment. His powerlessness.
His rage, however, quietly simmered under the surface, refusing to break.
A shrill ringing overtook his senses, followed by a sudden wave of nausea. He shoved away Yoo Joonghyuk, too frantic to think about whether or not he felt the firm form of a human body under his hands or if that was another symptom of his mind deteriorating.
Stumbling to the sink of his apartment, Kim Dokja vomited into the porcelain bowl. Once his stomach contents had been emptied, he turned on the faucet to rinse out his mouth.
"You're much more talkative now," Kim Dokja spat out the excess bile in his mouth, grimacing at the sharp taste. Despite the unpleasant actions, Kim Dokja was relieved at some of the clarity the shock of nausea returned to him.
He had… nearly gotten swept up in Yoo Joonghyuk—a terrorist.