Archive of Our Own ^beta

Camp 3. Altitude 7,100 meters.

The altitude of 7,100 meters had nothing in common with the romance described in guidebooks. It smelled of melted plastic from the gas stove, stale sweat embedded in thermal underwear, and the metallic taste of blood that kept seeping from burst capillaries in the nose.

Kim Dokja sat in the corner of a cramped two-person tent, knees pulled to his chest. Outside, the wind raged, turning the nylon walls into a living, vibrating organism. The sound was as if someone was whipping the tent with heavy, wet sheets.

Dokja watched Yoo Joonghyuk fuss with the stove. His movements were economical, almost mechanical, but Dokja could see how much effort each gesture cost him. At this altitude, even the attempt to simply sit up made the heart beat against the ribs like a trapped bird.

"Drink."

Joonghyuk's voice was dry and cracked. He handed over a metal mug with flakes of unmelted ice floating in it. The water was barely warm — at this altitude it boiled too quickly, never becoming truly hot.

Dokja reached out. His fingers, clad in thin liner gloves, trembled noticeably. He tried to hide it by clutching the mug with both palms, but it was impossible to hide anything from Yoo Joonghyuk. He froze, not letting go of the mug's handle, and their eyes met.

There was no sympathy in Joonghyuk's eyes — only a heavy, oppressive attention. He studied Dokja's face as if searching for the first signs of cerebral edema: a hazy gaze, an inability to focus.

"I'm okay, Joonghyuk-ah," Dokja forced out and immediately grimaced. Lying at this altitude was costly — it disrupted breathing. He smiled his characteristic smile, which usually made Joonghyuk grimace bitterly.

"You are not okay. Your resting pulse is too high. If it doesn't drop by morning, we go down."

Dokja wanted to object. He wanted to say they had spent three years preparing, that Base Camp was far below in the sea of clouds, and that the summit was right there, just within reach. But instead, he just pressed the mug to his lips. The water tasted of kerosene and steel.

He closed his eyes, and for a moment the noise of the wind outside transformed. The roar of an avalanche in a couloir turned into the noise of a subway train at Gangnam Station.

Seoul. May. Ten years ago

The air was thick, humid, and sweet with blooming flowers. Kim Dokja stood outside a bookstore, clutching a new volume on navigation theory to his chest. Yoo Joonghyuk waited for him at the entrance, leaning against the wall. He wasn't wearing storm gear back then, just a simple black t-shirt that accentuated the breadth of his shoulders, but his gaze was already the same — separating him from the rest of the world.

"Why do you need that?" Joonghyuk asked, nodding at the book. "You navigate just fine as it is."

"So I don't get lost when you decide to lead us into some wilderness," Dokja replied, squinting in the bright sun.

Joonghyuk didn't answer then. He just stepped closer, taking the heavy backpack from Dokja. His hand brushed Dokja's shoulder for a moment — a fleeting, almost accidental movement. But Dokja remembered how it took his breath away. Not from a lack of oxygen, like now, but from a strange, feverish premonition.

They were two idiots who thought they had forever ahead of them. Joonghyuk made plans, Dokja read books about them. They were friends who shared one portion of ramen in cheap diners, and neither dared admit that it had long ceased to be just friendship.

Present. 7,100 meters

A sharp gust of wind rocked the tent so hard Dokja almost spilled the water. He flinched, returning to reality.

Yoo Joonghyuk had already put away the stove and was now unrolling the sleeping bags. In the tight space, their bodies were constantly touching. Knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder.

"What were you thinking about?" Joonghyuk asked without turning around.

"About Seoul," Dokja admitted honestly. "About how warm it is there now. And how the grilled pork on the corner of your street smells."

Joonghyuk froze. He slowly turned his head, and the light from his headlamp, fixed on his forehead, blinded Dokja.

"You're thinking about food. So your brain is still working," Joonghyuk reached forward and, before Dokja could pull away, touched his palm to Dokja's cheek. Joonghyuk's fingers were icy, but they felt like they were burning to Dokja. "Get in. Tomorrow will be a hard day. We need to leave at three a.m."

Dokja obediently slid into his sleeping bag, feeling everything inside him tighten. He knew Joonghyuk wasn't sleeping. He could feel him lying there, tense as a drawn bowstring, listening to every wheeze in Dokja's lungs.

In this darkness, on the edge of the habitable world, their closeness felt illicit and frightening. Dokja wanted to reach out, touch Joonghyuk's palm, say something important... but the fear of destroying that fragile distance that had allowed them to survive all these years was stronger than hypoxia.

"Joonghyuk-ah..." he called softly.

"Sleep, Kim Dokja. That's an order."

Dokja closed his eyes. Above them were tons of ice and the emptiness of the stratosphere. And between them — all the things they never dared to say at sea level.

[Two months before the ascent. Seoul-Kathmandu flight]

The airplane cabin had a specific smell: a mixture of cheap coffee, antiseptic, and stale air-conditioned air. The sun at this altitude was blinding, aggressive, flooding the cabin with gold, making Kim Dokja squint. He felt strangely alive, even though the phone in his hand was almost smoking from the fury of the person on the other end.

"Do you even realize how pathetic you are, Kim Dokja?!" Han Sooyoung's voice, breaking through the static, was so loud the passenger next to him turned around disapprovingly. "'We're just going for a walk,' he said! Eight thousand meters is not a walk in an amusement park, it's a giant freezer just waiting to spit out your bones in the spring!"

Dokja pressed the phone to his ear with his shoulder, trying to untangle the headphone wires and not drop his passport at the same time. His lips involuntarily stretched into that same smile that Sooyoung called 'an invitation to a punch in the jaw.'

"Han Sooyoung, you're being too dramatic. You should write fewer of your detective novels, it's bad for your perception of reality," he retorted, adjusting his glasses slipping down his nose. "I brought enough books to not get bored while Yoo Joonghyuk plays the conqueror of the elements."

"Books?! You're bringing books to a place where people count every gram of weight so they don't die from lung rupture?!" Sooyoung's voice rose to a shriek, in which, if one listened closely, a poorly concealed fear rang clearly. She always did that: hid her concern behind barricades of insults and threats. "If you don't come back, I will personally find your frozen body and write the worst fanfic in human history on your forehead. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you, I hear you. It'll be a great epitaph," Dokja chuckled softly, closing his eyes. He knew Sooyoung was probably pacing her apartment, littered with drafts, angry at her inability to control his stupidity. "Don't worry. Joonghyuk promised he wouldn't let me fall. And you know he's pathologically incapable of breaking promises."

At that moment, a long, calloused hand reached over from the next seat and snatched the phone from Dokja's fingers.

Yoo Joonghyuk looked as if this conversation personally offended his sense of order. His eyebrows were furrowed, forming a deep crease, and his gaze directed at the smartphone screen could have burned through the titanium hull. He didn't waste time on greetings.

"She's making too much noise," Joonghyuk cut off, addressing the phone more than Dokja. "Sooyoung. He will come back. Sleep."

"Hey!" was all Dokja managed to exclaim when Joonghyuk, with a short, decisive movement, ended the call and, without looking, tossed the phone onto Dokja's lap.

Relative silence fell in the cabin, broken only by the steady hum of the engines. Dokja stared at the darkened screen in shock for a few seconds, then turned to his partner.

"That was rude, Joonghyuk-ah. She's just worried. You know how she is... expressive."

Joonghyuk didn't even turn his head. He sat perfectly straight, his shoulders seeming too broad for the narrow economy class seat. He was studying a trekking map spread out on the folding table, and in this concentrated attention there was more power than in all of Sooyoung's screams.

"Excess emotions waste energy," Joonghyuk's voice was low and even. "You need to learn to cut out the noise. The mountain won't listen to your jokes, Kim Dokja. Only what you truly are will remain there. Without your books and your friends."

Dokja snorted, settling more comfortably, feeling the warmth of the sun on his shoulder beginning to lull him.

"You're such a bore. Sometimes I think you were born with an ice axe instead of a rattle."

"And I think you were born with a desire to test how many times the world will let you survive," Joonghyuk finally looked at him. Something strange flickered in his large, dark eyes for a second — not quite a shadow of future exhaustion, not quite a fleeting, almost painful acknowledgement. "Sleep. It's the only way to make you shut up."

Dokja smiled, softer this time, and closed his eyes. At that moment, bathed in golden light above the clouds, the world seemed vast, safe, and full of possibilities. He didn't know that in two months, this same light would seem like a mortal enemy, and Yoo Joonghyuk's voice would become the only thread holding him over the abyss.

[Present. 7,100 meters]

Dokja gasped sharply, and the cold air, like a razor blade, sliced his throat. He forcefully suppressed the cough that was beginning to form. The dream shattered. The golden light of Seoul vanished, replaced by the deathly pale light of the moon piercing the thin nylon.

He lay in the dark, listening to Yoo Joonghyuk breathing heavily and steadily just centimeters away. Here, at an altitude where life was sustained only by will, that sunny morning seemed like a scene from a long-forgotten book.

Dokja felt his fingers involuntarily searching for the edge of Joonghyuk's sleeping bag. He needed to make sure this man was still here. That they hadn't stayed in that sunny dream forever.

In his sleep, Joonghyuk shifted almost imperceptibly, and his hand, heavy and hot even through the layers of down, covered Dokja's palm. He didn't wake up, but the movement was instinctive — like clipping into a belay.

"I'm here," he answered without words.

Dokja closed his eyes, trying to hold onto the remnants of warmth from his dream before, at three in the morning, they would have to step out into the icy void.

[Three months before the ascent. Preparation in Seoul]

The gear shop in Seoul smelled of rubberized fabric, talcum powder, and something sterile and new. Kim Dokja stood in front of the crampon rack, feeling as if he were choosing not iron spikes for ice, but his own fate.

"These are too light," came Joonghyuk's low voice from behind.

Dokja didn't even flinch. He was used to Joonghyuk appearing like a thundercloud — unnoticed but palpable by the change in air pressure. Dokja turned the aluminum model in his hands — elegant, almost weightless.

"They'll save my strength on the climb, Joonghyuk-ah. You said it yourself, at eight thousand meters every gram turns into a kilogram."

Yoo Joonghyuk took a step forward, invading Dokja's personal space. He unceremoniously took the crampons from his hands and hung them back on the hook. His calloused, strong fingers lingered on the metal.

"Aluminum is good for snow. On blue ice, they'll fail. You're taking steel."

"Steel is heavy," Dokja made a weak attempt at resistance, though he knew he had lost the moment Joonghyuk frowned. "I'm not an athlete, unlike some. My legs will give out before we reach the South Col."

Joonghyk slowly turned his head. His gaze was as heavy as granite. He looked at Dokja not as a weak partner, but as a man whose safety he had elevated to the rank of a personal religion.

"Your legs won't give out because I'll set the pace. But if a crampon breaks on the ice, I won't be able to hold you. You're taking steel, Kim Dokja. That's not up for discussion."

Dokja sighed, his "unlucky" smile touching his lips for a moment. He hated it when Joonghyuk was right, and he hated even more the almost painful fear hidden behind that pragmatism.

"Fine. Steel it is. I hope you'll carry my share of the tent to compensate for the weight."

"I'm already carrying it," Joonghyk cut off, already heading to the checkout.

Dokja watched his back — broad, stretched over a simple black jacket. He remembered their very first climb five years ago. They didn't have expensive gear back then. Dokja had cheap boots that had rubbed his feet raw by the second thousand meters.

[Mt. Bukhansan. Five years ago]

The granite slopes of Bukhansan seemed to Kim Dokja like an endless staircase leading to nowhere that day. The air, saturated with the smell of pine resin and sun-heated stone, stuck in his lungs. It was their third joint hike, and Dokja, intoxicated by the desire to keep up with Yoo Joonghyuk's pace, made a classic rookie mistake: he had ignored the burning in his heel three kilometers back.

Now every step sent an electric shock up his spine. Inside the boot, it was damp and hot, and with every movement of his foot, he felt a characteristic, nauseating squelch.

"Kim Dokja," Joonghyuk's voice, walking ahead, cut through the silence. He stopped on a flat ledge without turning around. His back, stretched over a sweat-soaked t-shirt, seemed unnaturally straight. "Your rhythm broke ten minutes ago. Your left foot is rolling inward."

Dokja stopped, breathing heavily. He leaned his palms on his knees, trying to quell the trembling in his muscles. His face, pale even under a tan, was covered in sticky sweat.

"Just... tired, Joonghyuk-ah. The slope is steep," he tried to force out his usual smirk, but it came out crooked and pained.

Joonghyuk turned around. His face at that time still retained a youthful sharpness, but his gaze was already heavy, piercing. He silently descended to Dokja, who instinctively tried to step back, but Joonghyuk gripped his shoulder with an iron grasp.

"Sit down," it wasn't a request. It was an order that brooked no argument.

Dokja lowered himself onto a grey boulder. Joonghyuk knelt on one knee right in front of him — a pose that held as much humility as hidden threat. He reached for the laces of Dokja's left boot.

"Don't, I'll do it myself..." Dokja jerked, but Joonghyuk pushed his hands away with a short, sharp movement.

"Shut up."

When Joonghyuk loosened the lacing and began slowly pulling off the boot, Dokja bit his lip until it bled. The air touched the heated skin, and the pain flared with renewed force. But the real horror came when Joonghyuk started removing the grey trekking sock. The fabric had fused to the skin.

Joonghyuk froze. A dark, almost black stain was spreading on the grey wool. He didn't tear it — he pulled a water bottle from the side pocket of his backpack and slowly, with frightening calm, began to pour water on the sock, soaking the serum and blood.

When the fabric finally gave way, revealing the heel, Dokja himself almost looked away. The skin had peeled off in a huge flap, exposing raw, bright pink flesh, with lymph and dirt oozing from the edges. This wasn't just a blister — it was an open wound.

Joonghyuk was silent. His jaw was clenched so tightly the muscles in his cheeks were twitching. Dokja expected him to start yelling. To call him useless, to say people like him had no place in the mountains. But Joonghyuk just opened his first aid kit.

Dokja noticed it by chance: the tips of Joonghyuk's fingers trembled noticeably as he opened the ampoule of antiseptic. That small, almost imperceptible detail struck Dokja harder than all the physical pain. Yoo Joonghyuk, this monument of stone and will, was afraid.

"Are you an idiot, Kim Dokja?" Joonghyuk hissed, and there was so much suppressed rage in his voice that the air around them seemed to grow colder. "Why didn't you say something right away? We crossed three streams, you could have gotten an infection. You could have lost your foot."

"I didn't want to be a burden," Dokja replied quietly, looking at his interlocked fingers. "You were so... so determined to reach that summit. I didn't want us to turn back because of some scratch."

Joonghyuk jerked his head up. His eyes, large and black, flared with something inhuman.

"'Because of a scratch'?" He leaned forward, reducing the distance between their faces to a dangerous minimum. Dokja felt the heat radiating from his body and the smell of bitter herbs. "Listen to me carefully. I don't give a damn about that summit. I don't give a damn about all the mountains in the world, if on every one of them you plan to silently rot behind my back. We are a team. If you keep quiet about the pain, you betray us both. Do you understand?"

Dokja swallowed, unable to look away. In that second, he clearly realized: this anger wasn't directed at him. It was the anger of a man who had just glimpsed the abyss of loss and refused to believe in it.

"Understood," he whispered.

Joonghyuk didn't reply. He methodically treated the wound — Dokja flinched when the hydrogen peroxide hissed on his skin and immediately felt Joonghyuk's hand rest on his calf, holding him, grounding him. Then he applied a tight bandage, securing it with tape with such care, as if it were the most important engineering structure of his life.

"Sit on the backpack," Joonghyuk ordered, standing up and slinging both sets of gear — his and Dokja's — over his shoulders.

"What? No, I can walk..."

Joonghyuk simply turned his back to him and crouched slightly, offering his shoulders.

"Kim Dokja. Either you get on my back yourself, or I'll tie you with the main rope and drag you. Choose."

Dokja, realizing it was useless to argue, awkwardly wrapped his arms around Joonghyuk's neck. He was lifted with one powerful, confident movement.

The descent took two hours. For Dokja, that time became the strangest experience of his life. He felt Joonghyuk's powerful muscles rolling under his thighs. He heard his breathing — heavy but rhythmic. Most importantly — he heard his heart. It beat fast, loud, echoing right into Dokja's chest.

Dokja buried his nose in Joonghyuk's hot neck, inhaling the scent of salt, wind, and something he couldn't yet name. It was an absolute, terrifying safety. At that moment, he closed his eyes and for the first time allowed himself to simply... be led.

"Joonghyuk-ah," he called when they were already approaching the foot of the mountain.

"Quiet," the other replied, but there was no steel left in his voice. "Save your strength."

Dokja smiled into the back of his head — that same smile no one ever saw. He realized he would follow this man anywhere now. Even where there was no oxygen. Even where life ended.

Kathmandu met them with a dense, almost tangible haze that Kim Dokja felt the moment he stepped onto the airplane stairs. The air here was nothing like the thin cold of the heights they were striving for; it was thick, oversaturated with the smells of fried spices, exhaust fumes from old Indian cars, incense, and centuries-old dust.

Dokja froze for a moment, stunned by this sensory chaos. After the sterile airplane cabin, the world seemed too loud, too bright, and dangerously unpredictable.

"Don't stand in the aisle," came Joonghyuk's even voice from behind.

Dokja felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. It wasn't a push, more of a grounding gesture. Joonghyuk gave him a slight nudge forward, and Dokja obediently moved into the crowd, feeling how his partner's presence at his back created a kind of protective cocoon. Joonghyuk looked surprisingly organic in this bustle: his "monumentality" hadn't disappeared, he simply cut a path through the human flow like an icebreaker through brash ice.

Their journey to Thamel—the tourist center of Kathmandu—became an endless ride in a tiny taxi that seemed to be held together by faith and the driver's prayers. Dokja watched out the window at the colorful lungta prayer flags fluttering on every corner and the endless gear shops rushing by.

"You look like you're about to faint right here," Joonghyuk remarked when they finally unloaded at the hotel gates.

"It's called 'culture shock,' Joonghyuk-ah. Not everyone is blessed with a nervous system made of reinforced concrete," Dokja wiped the sweat from his forehead. His pale skin didn't handle the Nepali heat well, and he already felt his sticky t-shirt unpleasantly clinging to his back.

Joonghyuk didn't reply, just picked up both heavy duffels with gear, ignoring Dokja's attempts to take his own.

The hotel was typical for the area: narrow staircases with carved wooden railings, a tiny courtyard with blooming azaleas, and a silence that seemed almost unnatural after the street noise.

The room was cramped. Two narrow beds stood so close together their backpacks barely fit between them. The air smelled of old wood and fresh linens.

Dokja immediately collapsed onto his bed, covering his eyes with his hand. His head buzzed slightly—from jet lag or from the realization that tomorrow their lives would change irrevocably.

"We need to double-check the first aid kit and the stoves," Joonghyuk's voice sounded very close.

Dokja opened one eye. Joonghyuk was already sitting on his bed, methodically unpacking one of the duffels. His movements were precise, almost ritualistic. He laid out titanium stakes, gas canisters, coils of main rope on the bedspread. Each item was checked by sight and touch.

"We did this three times in Seoul," Dokja mumbled, propping himself up on his elbows. "Do you really think someone in the cargo hold swapped our dexamethasone for powdered sugar?"

Joonghyuk froze, holding an ice axe. The light from the single bulb under the ceiling accentuated the sharp shadows on his face, making him look like a statue of some stern deity from the local temples.

"In Seoul, we were at home, Kim Dokja. Here—this is the start of the route. Any mistake in preparation at this stage will manifest at altitude as a death sentence."

He looked directly at Dokja. There was no anger in that gaze, only that "existential fatigue" Dokja had learned to recognize. Joonghyuk wasn't just checking gear—he was trying to tame chaos. He was trying to guarantee their survival where no guarantees exist.

Dokja sighed and, overcoming the weakness, slid off the bed onto the floor next to Joonghyuk.

"Alright, let's check again."

They sat on the carpet, surrounded by a mountain of high-tech nylon and metal. It was a strange intimacy—not the kind described in books, with kisses and tender words. Their closeness smelled of glove powder and carabiner lubricant.

Dokja picked up one of the carabiners and began mechanically clicking the gate open and shut. It was soothing.

"Joonghyuk-ah."

"What?"

"If I… if I start to mess up on the glacier, you won't leave me there, right? You'll just tie me to you and drag me, like back on Bukhansan?"

Joonghyuk stopped counting ampoules and slowly turned to him. The distance between them narrowed to a few centimeters. Dokja could see every eyelash, every fine wrinkle at the corners of Joonghyuk's eyes. He felt his heart treacherously quicken its rhythm.

Joonghyuk reached out—Dokja thought he was about to cuff him on the head for stupid questions—but Joonghyuk only touched his forearm. His fingers were hot, and his grip was so tight it would surely leave marks.

"You are not a burden, Kim Dokja," Joonghyuk's voice vibrated with hidden tension. "You are part of my rope team. If you fall, I fall with you. That's not heroism. It's a fact."

Dokja swallowed. His nostrils flared almost imperceptibly—he wanted to reply with something, some sarcastic joke to defuse the atmosphere, but the words stuck in his throat. He saw Joonghyuk's gaze drop to his lips, then rise back to his eyes.

In this stuffy room in Kathmandu, under the sounds of distant car horns, the unspoken thing between them became an almost physical pain. Dokja felt that Joonghyuk wanted to say—or do—something, but he just sharply released Dokja's arm and returned to the first aid kit.

"Check the expiry dates on the antibiotics," he threw out, and his voice was dry and businesslike again.

Dokja obediently took the packet, feeling his fingertips burn where Joonghyuk had touched them.

"Got it, Captain."

He smiled, looking at Joonghyuk's broad back. He knew this man was lying. He knew Joonghyuk was more afraid for him than for himself. And that knowledge was the warmest and simultaneously the most frightening burden Dokja would have to carry to the summit.

Base Camp at 5300 meters was not a place for rest. It was a ghost town built on the living, constantly moving Khumbu Glacier. Under the thin layer of nylon and foam, Kim Dokja could feel the mountain breathing. The glacier lived its own life: it groaned, cracked, and shifted, making sounds like distant cannon shots or the grinding of metal on metal.

For Dokja, every night here became a battle with his own body.

Life in the camp followed a strict, almost military rhythm established by Joonghyuk. Morning didn't start with coffee, but with a raspy cough and the sound of a working stove.

Dokja watched Joonghyuk through a slit in his sleeping bag. He was squatting in the tent's vestibule, methodically melting snow. It was an endless process: to get a liter of water, you had to melt a bucket of dense, sand-dry snow.

"Drink," Joonghyuk handed him a mug.

Dokja stuck his hand out of the warmth. Goosebumps instantly covered his skin. The air in the tent was so cold that the condensation from their breath had turned into frost on the walls and now fell on their faces as fine snow dust.

"This tasteless sludge again," Dokja muttered, taking a sip. The water was empty, devoid of minerals; it didn't quench thirst, only created an illusion of satiety.

"Add electrolytes. And eat the biscuits. You need calories to warm your blood."

Joonghyuk looked exhausted, though he would never admit it. His face had grown gaunt, his cheekbones sharper, and his eyes sunken, surrounded by dark shadows. At this altitude, the body didn't recover. It slowly consumed itself, burning muscle in an attempt to maintain the temperature of its internal organs.

After breakfast came hygiene time—a grand word for conditions where a wet wipe froze into ice in three minutes.

Joonghyuk sat with his back to Dokja, trying to untangle the mats in his hair. During the trek and the first acclimatization hikes, they had turned into a stiff mess of dust, sweat, and frost. His long bangs kept getting in his eyes, interfering with working with carabiners and maps.

"Let me," Dokja said quietly. "You'll just rip them out by the roots."

Joonghyuk froze. His shoulders tensed, but he didn't turn around or push him away. It was silent permission—the rarest currency in their relationship.

Dokja pulled a small folding comb from his backpack. He moved closer, and their thighs touched. In the cramped tent, every movement felt intimate. Dokja felt the heat radiating from Joonghyuk's body—he was always hot, like a furnace, even when everything around was freezing.

He started carefully, from the very ends. Joonghyuk's hair was thick and coarse. Dokja slowly worked through the strands with his fingers, feeling the strong muscles of his neck and the back of his head underneath.

"You're too tense, Joonghyuk-ah. If you don't relax, your headache will get worse."

"Don't lecture me, Kim Dokja. Just do what you wanted."

Dokja snorted, running the comb through the dark strands. In that moment, as his fingers touched Joonghyuk's scalp, the boundary between them thinned. This wasn't about mountaineering or survival. It was about a tenderness that found no place in their harsh dialogues.

"You have a gray streak here," Dokja suddenly remarked, touching Joonghyuk's temple.

"The mountain ages you fast," he replied curtly.

Dokja didn't answer. He gathered Joonghyuk's hair into a neat, tight ponytail so it wouldn't get in the way under his helmet. His hands trembled slightly—not from the cold, but from how close Joonghyuk's face was when he finally turned.

For a second, their eyes met. In Joonghyuk's eyes, Dokja saw not the usual fury, but something resembling quiet gratitude, locked deep inside. Joonghyuk raised his hand and for a moment touched Dokja's wrist, marking this moment, before putting on the mask of the stern leader again.

"Thank you," the sound was almost indistinguishable over the howling wind outside.

The night brought a new round of torture. At 5300 meters, Dokja was hit by "periodic breathing." He would fall asleep for a couple of minutes, then jerk awake in his sleeping bag, gasping, because his brain panicked and forgot how to breathe in the thin air.

"Again?" came Joonghyuk's whisper in the dark.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

"I wasn't sleeping. Come here."

Joonghyuk unzipped his sleeping bag and pulled Dokja toward him. This wasn't up for discussion. In Base Camp, it was called "heat preservation," but both knew it wasn't just about degrees Celsius.

Dokja buried his forehead in Joonghyuk's shoulder. Here, inside one cocoon of down and nylon, the world narrowed to the rhythm of their hearts. Dokja felt Joonghyuk's hand on his back, pulling him closer. The cold retreated.

"Do you remember that cave?" Dokja whispered, fighting the delirium of insomnia creeping in.

[Winter in the Korean mountains. Seoraksan. Three years ago]

A snowstorm caught them on the descent. Visibility dropped to zero, and the temperature to -30. They couldn't continue and were forced to dig a snow cave right into the slope.

It was their first "cold bivouac." Dokja had nearly lost consciousness from hypothermia then. His body shook so violently he bit his tongue until it bled.

Yoo Joonghyuk had acted without a shadow of doubt. He tore off Dokja's soaked storm jacket, stuffed him into a sleeping bag, and literally covered him with his own body. Dokja remembered the taste of snow on Joonghyuk's lips and his feverish whisper: "Don't you dare fall asleep, Kim Dokja. Breathe with me. You hear? One-two. Inhale. Exhale."

Joonghyuk had rubbed his icy feet with his own hands until the skin began to burn. That was when Dokja first felt that behind the facade of steel was a man willing to burn himself to keep him warm.

"I remember," Joonghyuk answered in the tent on Khumbu. "You were even more helpless back then."

"Hey, I'm making progress," Dokja retorted weakly, feeling his consciousness finally begin to drift into sleep. "At least now I can comb your hair."

Joonghyuk didn't answer, just held him tighter. Dokja fell asleep listening to the glacier groaning somewhere deep below, a reminder that their upward journey was only beginning. Tomorrow they would have to tackle the Icefall—the place where the steel crampons bought in Seoul would face their first real test.

[Khumbu Icefall, 5400 – 6000 m]

The departure from Base Camp happened at three in the morning. At this time, the glacier "sleeps"—the frost binds the giant ice towers, preventing them from collapsing.

Kim Dokja walked second on the rope. The light of his headlamp only illuminated the heels of Yoo Joonghyuk's boots and a narrow corridor of jagged, blue-black ice. A dead silence reigned around, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of steel on diamond-hard surfaces. The steel crampons Joonghyuk had insisted on bit into the ice with a dry, reliable sound. "He was right," flashed through Dokja's mind when his foot didn't slip on a steep section.

The Khumbu Icefall resembled a storm frozen in a single moment. Ice blocks the size of multi-story buildings—seracs—loomed over them, threatening to bury them at any second.

"Don't look up," Joonghyuk said without turning around. His voice, muffled by a woolen balaclava, sounded hollow. "Look at your feet. And keep the rope distance."

After two hours, they approached "The Abyss"—a deep crevasse whose bottom wasn't visible even with the strongest headlamps. Three aluminum ladders, tied together with nylon cord, were thrown across it. They looked like a child's toy tossed across a monster's maw.

Dokja felt everything inside him clench. He had experience; he'd crossed crevasses before. But here, at altitude, with his brain already suffering from mild hypoxia, the distance seemed endless.

Joonghyk crossed first. He moved smoothly, almost cat-like, stepping across the narrow rungs of the ladder, while beneath him gaped a void hundreds of meters deep. Secured on the other side, he tightened the fixed rope.

"Your turn," he looked at Dokja. In the headlamp light, his eyes looked like two black holes. "Don't rush. Just walk. I've got you."

Dokja stepped onto the ladder. The metal responded with a nasty, thin ringing. When he was in the middle, the glacier deep inside let out a heavy, visceral sigh. The ladder vibrated. Dokja froze, his fingers in thick gloves clutching the handrail convulsively. His heart hammered in his throat, blocking access to the already scarce oxygen.

"Dokja!" Joonghyuk's voice struck like a whip. "Look at me. Not down. At me."

Dokja raised his head. Joonghyuk stood with his legs wide apart, his figure the only solid object in this chaos of ice. He wasn't just holding the rope—he was somehow transmitting his will to Dokja through that thin nylon cord.

"Three more steps," Joonghyuk commanded.

When Dokja finally stepped onto solid ice, he literally collapsed to his knees, greedily gulping the cold air. Yoo Joonghyuk was immediately beside him. He didn't help him up—that was considered weakness in the mountains—but he placed his hand on the back of Dokja's head, pressing it firmly and confidently for a second.

"You made it. Let's keep moving," he said, but Dokja noticed how tightly his jaw was clenched. Joonghyuk hated these moments when Dokja's life depended not on his strength, but on a damn aluminum ladder.

[Seoul, climbing gym, 4 years ago]

They were in an indoor gym. Dokja was just starting to learn belaying techniques. Joonghyuk had forced him to practice "catching a fall"—the most unpleasant drill.

"You need to feel the moment when I fall," Joonghyuk said, hanging from holds near the ceiling. "If you space out and don't take in the slack, I'll fall an extra three meters and hit the ledge."

"I know the theory, Joonghyuk!" Dokja shouted from below, adjusting his harness. "Just fall if you want to so badly."

Joonghyuk let go. He fell backwards, entrusting his life to the thin rope in the hands of a man who barely weighed more than a backpack. Dokja jerked the braking system; the rope burned his palms even through the gloves, but he held. Joonghyuk hung suspended a meter and a half above the floor.

When Dokja lowered him, he could barely stand from the adrenaline. Joonghyuk came up close, took Dokja's hands in his own, and examined his reddened palms.

"You held," he simply said. "Now you know what it's like to hold my life. Remember that feeling. In real mountains, you won't get a second chance."

Dokja looked into his serious eyes then and understood for the first time the responsibility that had been placed upon him. This wasn't a game. It was a pact sealed in blood and nylon.

[6000 m]

By ten in the morning, the sky over the Khumbu Icefall had faded to a terrifying, almost blackish-blue. The sun, meeting no resistance from dense layers of atmosphere, turned the glacier's cirque into a giant parabolic antenna. Reflecting off the pristine white slopes of Everest and Nuptse, the rays stabbed at their eyes even through lenses with the highest UV protection.

Kim Dokja felt trickles of sweat running down his back under his down jacket, while the tips of his fingers inside his gloves remained icy. This was the paradox of altitude: you were simultaneously burning alive and freezing.

When they finally reached the relatively flat plateau of Camp 1, Dokja simply stopped. He didn't collapse—he lacked the strength for that. He just stood still, watching as Yoo Joonghyuk, like a wound-up mechanism, began clearing a spot for the tent.

"Help... with the stakes," Joonghyuk exhaled. His voice had grown hoarse and unrecognizable during the climb.

Dokja forced his hands to move. Retrieve the tent from the duffel. Unfold the nylon. Five deep, convulsive breaths. The air was so dry the mucous membranes in his nose instantly crusted painfully. Insert the pole into the grommet. Ten more breaths. His heart hammered in his throat, echoing a rhythmic knock in his temples: thump-thump, thump-thump.

They worked in complete silence. In this thin-aired space, words had become excess weight, discarded on the approach. Only when the tent was secured and the duffels thrown inside did Dokja allow himself to crawl into the shade.

It smelled of heated plastic and stale air inside. Dokja sat down, leaning his back against a backpack, and felt the world begin to vibrate finely around him. It wasn't the mountain—it was his own body shaking from extreme exhaustion.

"You need to lie down," Joonghyuk was kneeling in the vestibule. He had already removed one crampon and was now wrestling with the second. His movements were sharp, irritated.

"I... will in a second," Dokja tried to unzip his jacket, but his fingers wouldn't obey. He looked at his hands as if they were foreign objects.

Joonghyuk suddenly reached for him. He didn't wait. His large palms unceremoniously grabbed the zipper and yanked it down. Then, just as silently, he pulled off Dokja's boots. It was that same brand of care that always bordered on roughness with Joonghyuk, and Dokja, usually sarcastic, accepted it now with the resignation of a dying man.

But just as Dokja reached for the sleeping bag, he heard the clang of metal. Joonghyuk was putting his crampons back on.

"What are you doing?" Dokja's voice sounded like the rustle of dry grass.

"I'll go check the slope condition towards Camp 2. The western couloir might be choked with fresh snow from yesterday. If there's wind slab, we'll get stuck tomorrow."

Dokja froze. He slowly raised his head, looking up at Joonghyuk from below. Joonghyuk had already pulled up his mask, leaving only his eyes visible—hard, devoid of any hint of fatigue, though Dokja knew that was a lie.

"Have you lost your mind?" Dokja tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but he swayed to the side. "We just did the Khumbu in five hours. That's a record even for Sherpas. You need rest, Joonghyuk-ah. Your vitals... I saw how you were breathing on the last rise. Your heart rate is through the roof."

"My vitals are fine," Joonghyuk cut him off, tightening the crampon strap with such force the metal groaned. "I'll go light. I'll be back in two hours. Stay here. Melt snow. Drink."

"You can't keep doing everything yourself!" Dokja suddenly shouted, surprising even himself. Anger flared in him instantly, fueled by hypoxia and fear. "We're partners! A rope team! You drilled that into my head five years ago! I'm not your personal Kim Dokja rescue project, and I'm not ballast you have to drag to the summit to check off a list!"

Joonghyuk froze. The hand holding his ice axe went white at the knuckles.

"If you go alone and there's an avalanche on the ridge, or you just trip—I won't be able to help you!" Dokja continued, his voice breaking into a rasp. "I won't even hear you! Do you understand what you're doing right now? You're just... you're just robbing me of my right to be your partner."

Yoo Joonghyuk slowly turned. In the cramped tent, his figure seemed huge, blocking out the whole world. He looked down at Dokja, and for a fraction of a second, something frightening flickered in his gaze. It wasn't rage. It was unbearable, almost painful tenderness mixed with a guilt so profound it made Dokja's breath catch, not from lack of oxygen but from that pressure.

Joonghyuk had always believed that if Dokja got hurt, it would be his, Joonghyuk's, personal failure. His only purpose in this world was to keep this fragile man breathing.

"Then pray nothing happens to me," Joonghyuk threw out.

His voice was colder than the ice outside. He turned and left, sharply pulling the tent flap closed behind him. Dokja was left in the semi-darkness.

A blinding light struck from outside—so bright it shone through the orange nylon, painting everything inside an alarming, bloody color. Dokja heard the crunch of snow under Joonghyuk's receding steps until they finally faded, swallowed by the absolute silence of high altitude.

Dokja was alone. He stared at the small blue flame of the stove he had lit, obeying his survival instinct. The snow in the pot slowly settled, turning into murky water.

"Asshole," Dokja whispered, and his eyes stung against his will. "You self-righteous asshole."

He felt a coldness growing inside him. Not the frost saved by 800-fill down. This was the chill of realization: at this altitude, their relationship had reached a critical point. Yoo Joonghyuk was willing to die for him, but he still wasn't ready to let Dokja stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

Dokja hated him for this self-sacrifice. Hated that Joonghyuk thought him weak. And most of all—for the fact that Dokja himself couldn't even stand up to go after him right now.

He pressed his forehead against Joonghyuk's cold backpack, inhaling its scent—the smell of metal and frosty wind—and began counting breaths. One. Two. Three...

"Please come back," pulsed in his head to the rhythm of his heartbeat. "Just come back, and I'll forgive you everything."

The sun left without a farewell. It simply rolled behind the jagged ridge of Nuptse, and the world instantly lost its color. With the light, the warmth vanished. The temperature plummeted from a torturous +30 (inside the solar focus) to a killing -25 degrees in a matter of minutes.

The tent, stuffy as a greenhouse just moments ago, turned into a freezer. The walls frosted over from the inside. Kim Dokja sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring at the entrance flap.

Three and a half hours had passed.

"If you're not back in five minutes, I'm burning your sleeping bag," Dokja whispered. His voice trembled.

A sound came from outside. Not the clear, rhythmic crunch of snow he was used to. It was a shuffling, heavy sound, as if someone was dragging a sack of sand.

The entrance zipper abruptly slid down halfway, then jammed. Through the gap, Yoo Joonghyuk fell inside.

He didn't enter—he fell, dropping to his knees right in the vestibule. His face was hidden under a mask and hood crusted with ice, but Dokja knew immediately: things were bad. Joonghyuk was breathing as if his lungs were filled with broken glass—rasping, wheezing, with terrifying pauses.

"You..." Dokja began, but the words stuck in his throat.

Joonghyuk tried to get up, but his hand slipped off his backpack. The great Yoo Joonghyuk, the "human machine," couldn't maintain his balance.

Dokja forgot about his aching ribs. Forgot about the hypoxia. A cold, clear fury exploded inside him. He lunged forward, grabbing Joonghyuk by his harness straps.

"Get inside, you idiot!"

He dragged Joonghyuk into the tent with a jerk that seemed beyond his strength. Joonghyuk was heavy as a dead man. His outer down jacket stood stiff with frozen condensation.

"Slope... is clear," Joonghyuk rasped, trying to remove his goggles. His fingers in thick mittens were utterly useless, just sliding over the plastic. "Wind slab holds... we'll make it..."

"Shut up!" Dokja roared. "I don't care about the slope! Look at yourself!"

He yanked the goggles off Joonghyuk. Underneath, Joonghyuk's eyes were red, inflamed, his gaze wandering, unfocused. He was in the first stage of hypothermia—"the fumbles."

Dokja acted on instinct. He grabbed Joonghyuk's hands and started pulling off the mittens. Inside were thin liners, but even through them he could feel Joonghyuk's fingers were icy as stone.

"Into the sleeping bag. Now."

Joonghyuk tried to resist—weakly, more out of habit. "I can... need to melt..."

"You'll die right now, Joonghyuk-ah. And I'll be left here alone. Is that what you want?"

That question pierced the fog in Joonghyuk's head. He froze, looking at Dokja with a dazed gaze. Dokja seized the moment. He unzipped Joonghyuk's jacket, scraping his own fingers on the frozen metal. Pulled off his heavy outer boots, which crashed into a corner.

Then he did something they'd never done. He unzipped their sleeping system—two bags zipped together into one cocoon for weight savings—and literally shoved Joonghyuk inside. Then climbed in after him.

Inside, it was painfully cramped. But it was their only salvation.

"Shiver," Dokja ordered, wrapping his arms and legs around Joonghyuk, pressing his whole body against his back. "Come on, shiver."

Joonghyuk began to shake. It was a deep, uncontrollable tremor that made his teeth chatter. His body was trying to generate heat it no longer possessed. Dokja felt that cold seeping through the thermal underwear, as if he were embracing an ice statue.

Dokja reached for the thermos he'd been keeping under his down jacket for the last two hours.

"Drink."

He turned Joonghyuk to face him. In the semi-darkness, lit only by the dim glow of a headlamp, Joonghyuk's face looked grey. Dokja brought the cup to his lips.

"Swallow. Electrolytes. Warm."

Joonghyuk took a sip, choked, coughed, but Dokja didn't relent. "More. Drink it all."

Joonghyuk drank greedily, spilling water on his chin. Dokja wiped the drops with the sleeve of his fleece—a gesture so full of mundane intimacy it made his own heart ache.

When the water was gone, Joonghyuk slumped back weakly onto Dokja's shoulder. The shaking slowly began to subside, replaced by a heavy, leaden exhaustion.

In the tight cocoon of the sleeping bag, their faces were centimeters apart. Dokja could smell Joonghyuk — the scent of frost, fatigue, and something familiar, musky.

"Why did you go?" Dokja asked quietly. His anger had dissipated, leaving only the fear that was now surfacing. "Did you want to prove you're immortal?"

Joonghyuk slowly opened his eyes. His gaze was conscious now. For the first time on the entire expedition, the mask of the "Iron Leader" had cracked. Lying before Dokja was simply a tired man, frightened not for himself, but of letting others down.

"I wanted... to break the trail," Joonghyuk's voice was soft, a mere rustle. "So you wouldn't exhaust yourself tomorrow in the deep snow. You have weak ankles, Kim Dokja. If there had been powder snow, you wouldn't have made it."

Dokja froze. He looked into the dark eyes opposite him and felt a lump rising in his throat. Joonghyuk had nearly killed himself on the reconnaissance mission, just so it would be a little easier for Dokja to walk tomorrow.

"You bastard," Dokja whispered, his voice breaking. "What an unbelievable idiot you are, Yoo Joonghyuk."

He moved even closer, though there was no space left to get closer. He placed his palm on Joonghyuk's cheek. The skin there was rough, weathered, but finally warm.

"I don't need an easy path," Dokja said, looking straight into his eyes. "I need you. Alive. Here. With me. Understand?"

Joonghyuk didn't answer. He did something that shocked Dokja more than any feat of heroism. He closed his eyes, sighed, and rubbed his cheek against Dokja's palm, as if seeking support in it. It was an admission of defeat. An admission that he could no longer be strong for two.

"Warm me up," Joonghyuk exhaled, barely audible.

Dokja held him tighter, throwing a leg over his thigh, intertwining with him, creating a single circulatory contour.

"I've got you," Dokja whispered into the top of Joonghyuk's head. "Sleep. I've got you."

That night at Camp 1, under the howling wind that tried to tear their tent off into the abyss, Kim Dokja felt for the first time not like a passenger, but a pilot. He held Yoo Joonghyuk's life in his hands, and that burden turned out to be the most precious thing in the universe.

Morning at Camp 1 did not begin with dawn, but with an explosion of light. The sun emerged from behind the peak of Everest and struck the walls of the cirque. In ten minutes, the temperature inside the tent jumped from minus twenty to plus twenty-five degrees Celsius.

Kim Dokja opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut. The light penetrated even through closed eyelids, red and pulsing. He tried to move, and his body responded with a dull, aching pain. His legs felt stuffed with cotton.

Yoo Joonghyuk stirred beside him. After the night's "reconciliation," they awoke intertwined like two embryos. Joonghyuk's arm lay across Dokja's chest, heavy and possessive.

"Up," Joonghyuk's voice was hoarse, but the steely notes had returned to it. "If we don't leave now, we'll boil alive."

Packing up was sluggish. Joonghyuk looked better than during the night, but dark circles, like bruises, had settled under his eyes. He silently checked the crampon bindings on Dokja's boots, tightened his harness, but this time didn't push Dokja's hands away when he adjusted his collar.

"Your neck is sunburned," Dokja noted, touching the red strip of skin above the fleece.

"Trivial. Drink water."

They emerged into the Valley of Silence. It was a giant gorge, its floor lined by a glacier, its walls formed by Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse. These walls acted like mirrors, focusing the sun's rays into the center of the valley.

By noon, the heat was unbearable. The thermometer on Joonghyuk's backpack showed +32°C.

Dokja felt sweat streaming down his back, soaking the thermal underwear meant to warm, not cool. The air was still. Not a breeze. Only the blinding, eye-scorching white and silence. Absolute, cottony silence, in which the crunch of snow underfoot sounded like a cannon shot.

Dokja walked, watching Joonghyuk's heels. Step one. Inhale. Step two. Exhale.

At some point, the rhythm faltered.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Dokja stopped. The sound of footsteps continued for another second before ceasing. He turned sharply. Behind them was only their double line of tracks, disappearing into the haze of the glacier. Emptiness.

"Dokja?" Joonghyuk felt the tension on the rope and stopped too.

"That guy..." Dokja mumbled, licking his parched lips. His tongue felt rough like sandpaper. "The one walking third. He's falling behind. We need to wait for him."

Joonghyuk froze. He slowly turned his whole body. His face, hidden behind a mask and dark glasses, was inscrutable, but his posture expressed extreme tension.

"What guy, Kim Dokja?"

"Well, that one... in the blue jacket. He's been following us since the icefall. He was carrying your second rope."

Dokja was absolutely sure. He had heard his breathing. He had even felt the rope tremble when the "third" stumbled.

Yoo Joonghyuk closed the distance between them. He took off his mitten and gripped Dokja's chin firmly, forcing him to look him in the face. Dokja's reflection in his glasses was pitiful: a sunburned face, cracked lips, and a wild, wandering gaze.

"There are only two of us here," Joonghyuk enunciated clearly, separating the syllables. "You and me. No one else. Look back. Look carefully."

Dokja looked at the tracks again. Two lines. Only two.

"But I heard..."

"It's hypoxia. Your brain is lying to you. There is no one here but us. Do you understand?"

Dokja blinked. Reality wobbled and settled into place, but the sensation of another presence, cold and sticky, lingered somewhere on the back of his neck. It was the "Third Man Factor" — a classic high-altitude hallucination.

"I... I need to sit down," he exhaled.

They sat right on their backpacks in the middle of the scorching snow pan. Joonghyuk pulled out a flask with an isotonic drink. The water was warm and nasty, but Dokja drank it like nectar.

"Dizzy?" Joonghyuk asked.

"A bit. Everything's swimming," Dokja admitted honestly. He leaned his shoulder against Joonghyuk's. That support was the only thing anchoring him to reality. "You know what I'm thinking about right now?"

"About turning back?"

"No. About cold beer. And chicken. The one from the delivery place near your house. With the spicy sauce."

Joonghyuk grunted. The sound was so earthly, so normal, that Dokja felt better.

"You're always thinking about food."

"What else should I think about? The meaning of life? The meaning of life right now is not to die and to eat that chicken."

Joonghyuk fell silent, looking at the looming wall of Lhotse ahead. It seemed an impregnable fortress of black granite and ice.

"When we get back..." Joonghyuk began, and Dokja held his breath. Joonghyuk never said "when," he always said "if" or remained silent. "I'll make you chicken. Myself. No delivery."

"You can cook chicken?" Dokja smiled weakly.

"I can do everything, Kim Dokja. You should remember that. And I'll find a bigger apartment. Mine is too cramped for all your books."

Dokja turned his head, trying to peer behind his partner's dark glasses.

"Are you asking me to move in with you? Right here, at six thousand meters, while I'm hallucinating?"

"I'm stating a fact," Joonghyuk wasn't looking at him, but his hand found Dokja's palm and squeezed it. "You need someone to watch your diet. And I need someone to stop me from turning into stone."

"That's... the most unromantic proposal in history," Dokja laughed, but the laughter turned into a dry cough.

"But honest. Get up. We need to reach Camp 2 before sunset. Otherwise, you'll start seeing ghosts again."

Joonghyuk got up first and offered his hand. Dokja grabbed it. The pull was strong, confident.

"Joonghyuk-ah."

"What?"

"Promise that apartment will have a big window. For reading in natural light."

"I promise."

They moved on.

The heat continued to press down, turning each step into a viscous struggle. Kim Dokja could no longer feel his feet—they moved by inertia, obeying the rhythm set by Yoo Joonghyuk walking ahead.

And suddenly, the air shuddered.

It wasn't a gust of wind, but a shockwave, dense and low-frequency, that traveled through the soles of their boots straight into their spines.

"Stop!" Joonghyuk commanded sharply, throwing up his hand.

Dokja froze, leaning heavily on his trekking poles. The sound arrived belatedly—first they felt the vibration, and only then did the rumble reach them. A deep, visceral roar, like the sound of a freight train derailing, growing louder with each second, filling the entire space of the cirque.

They turned their heads to the right simultaneously, towards the wall of Nuptse.

High up, almost at the very summit, a giant piece of an ice cornice broke off. It looked like a tiny white cloud, but Dokja knew: that piece was the size of a five-story building.

As it fell, the ice struck a rocky ledge and exploded into a myriad of fragments, dragging tons of snow behind it. The avalanche had begun.

It was mesmerizingly beautiful and absolutely monstrous. A white river, foamy and furious, cascaded down the vertical wall, swallowing black rocks. It moved in slow motion—the scale of the mountain distorted the perception of speed—but Dokja understood that this mass was hurtling down at the speed of a race car.

"It won't reach us," Joonghyuk's voice sounded calm, but Dokja saw his back tense. "We're in the safe zone."

They stood and watched. Two tiny people, two black dots in the middle of a snow-white amphitheater, observing an act of creation and destruction.

The avalanche reached the base of the wall and struck the glacier. A huge cloud of snow dust, resembling a nuclear mushroom cloud, shot up hundreds of meters, blotting out the sun. The light dimmed. The valley was covered in shadow.

Dokja couldn't look away. There was something hypnotic about this spectacle.

"You know," he whispered, not hearing his own voice over the roar of the elements. "If we were there... we'd just be erased. Like a typo in a text."

The snow dust—the avalanche's "flag"—began to slowly spread across the valley, reaching for them. The air instantly cooled. The heat disappeared, replaced by a sharp, damp cold.

Tiny ice crystals settled on their faces, eyelashes, and lips. Dokja licked his lip—the taste was metallic and pure.

Yoo Joonghyuk slowly turned to him. His face was covered in this diamond dust, and in the dim light piercing through the snow cloud, he looked like a creature from another world. A Snow King come to collect his tribute.

"Scared?" Joonghyuk asked.

"No," Dokja answered honestly. There was no fear. There was awe. "It's... majestic."

Joonghyuk stepped towards him, closing the distance as if he wanted to make sure Dokja was still here, material and whole. He brushed the snow off Dokja's shoulder—a simple, almost domestic gesture that looked surreal against the backdrop of a kilometer-high snow cloud settling.

"The mountain is baring its teeth," Joonghyuk said, looking at the place where the elements had just raged. Now only a fresh, flawlessly white scar remained on the slope. "It's reminding us who's in charge here."

"And who are we then?" Dokja asked, looking into his dark eyes.

"Guests who've overstayed their welcome," Joonghyuk adjusted the strap of his backpack. "And it's time for us to move before it decides to throw us out for good."

He turned and started walking again, breaking trail through the fresh deposit of snow dust.

Dokja stood for another second, looking at the now-calm slope. The roar had faded, the ringing silence had returned, but now it was different. It was the silence after a gunshot.

'An apartment with a big window,' Dokja thought, forcing his legs to move after Joonghyuk. 'Chicken. Warm floors. All of it seems so unreal compared to this white abyss.'

But it was precisely this unreality that made him keep going. He looked at Joonghyuk's broad back, at the rhythmic movement of his shoulders, and understood: the only thing that mattered in this chaos of ice and stone was the thin rope connecting the two of them. As long as it was taut, they existed.

Camp 2. 6400 m.

They reached Camp 2 by the end of daylight. After the avalanche, the Valley of Silence seemed to hold its breath—the air became sharp and still. The camp was a scattering of yellow and orange tents clinging to the moraine like a colony of lichen on stones.

When Dokja shrugged off his backpack, his shoulders emitted a distinct crunch. He felt like a squeezed lemon someone had forgotten in the cold.

"Inside," Joonghyuk said curtly.

The tent at Camp 2 was slightly larger than their assault tent, but still felt tiny. As soon as they zipped up the entrance, the outside world ceased to exist. Only the hiss of the gas stove and the bluish twilight light filtering through the nylon remained.

The evening passed in a feverish preparation. Tomorrow they were to tackle the Lhotse Wall—two kilometers of pure, blue ice soaring into the sky at a 45-degree angle. This was a zone where mistakes were not corrected.

Dokja sat cross-legged on his mat, methodically checking the teeth of his crampons. He picked up a small file and began to sharpen the steel. Scrape-scrape. The sound of metal on metal in the silence of the tent seemed unnaturally loud.

"Give them here," Joonghyuk extended his hand. "You're ruining the sharpening angle."

"I can do it myself, Joonghyuk-ah. I've done it a hundred times."

"At seven thousand meters, that 'ruined angle' won't let you catch onto an ice lens. Give. Here."

Dokja sighed and handed him the crampons. He watched Joonghyuk work. His fingers, despite the cold and fatigue, moved with surgical precision. This was the essence of Joonghyuk: he believed in rules, technique, and perfectly sharpened metal. He believed that if you prepared 100%, the mountain couldn't break you.

Dokja believed in something else. He looked at their shared rope, neatly coiled into rings in the corner of the tent. He believed in luck and that this thin thread would hold them both if physics failed.

"Check the carabiners," Joonghyuk said without looking up from his work. "Wipe the gates with alcohol. If they freeze on the wall tomorrow, you won't be able to clip into the fixed lines."

Dokja obediently took out the alcohol wipes. He went through carabiner after carabiner, listening to their crisp, metallic click-click.

"You know," Dokja said softly, looking at his reflection in the polished steel. "I really saw that guy today in the Valley. In the blue jacket."

Joonghyuk froze with the file in his hand. His shoulders slumped slightly.

"I know," he answered after a long pause. His voice grew quieter. "At this altitude, the brain starts playing games. It's a defense mechanism. It creates someone else so you don't feel so alone in the face of death."

Dokja looked up at his partner.

"But I'm not alone, Joonghyuk. You're here."

Joonghyuk finally looked at him. In the dim light of the stove, his face seemed carved from the same granite as the surrounding mountain.

"I'm here, Kim Dokja. But on the Lhotse Wall, there will be fifty meters of rope between us. You'll be alone in your rhythm, I'll be in mine. You have to rely only on your crampons and your own hands."

Joonghyuk handed him the sharpened crampon. The teeth gleamed like razors.

"But if you fall," he added, and his voice trembled so faintly Dokja might have imagined it. "I'll cut my own throat if I can't secure myself in time."

They shared one pack of freeze-dried rice with meat. They didn't feel like eating—at this altitude, appetite disappears first—but they forced themselves to swallow every spoonful, washing it down with warm water. It was like refueling a machine: emotionless, a simple necessity.

"Tomorrow will be the hardest day," Dokja said, settling into his sleeping bag.

"Tomorrow will just be a day," Joonghyuk replied, turning off the stove.

Darkness enveloped them instantly. Outside, the wind began to pick up, slapping the tent fly, reminding them they were just a couple of millimeters of nylon away from death.

Dokja felt Joonghyuk shifting beside him as he got settled. A minute later, he felt a large, calloused hand find his palm and squeeze it tightly. It wasn't a gesture of passion. It was a gesture of checking—'are you here? are you alive?'

"I'm here," Dokja whispered.

"Sleep, Kim Dokja. Tomorrow we need to be faster than the wind."

Dokja closed his eyes. He dreamed of the Seoul subway, the noise of the crowd, and the smell of coffee. But in the center of that dream always stood Yoo Joonghyuk in full climbing gear, and in his hands wasn't a cup of coffee, but an ice axe, gleaming in the lamplight.

The Lhotse Wall (6400 – 7100 m)

Climbing the Lhotse Wall is a monotonous, soul-sucking labor. Imagine: before you lies a two-kilometer-high ice mirror, tilted at a 50-degree angle. You don't walk; you scramble, clipping and unclipping your jumar (ascender) every five meters along the fixed rope.

It was here, halfway to Camp 3, that Kim Dokja made a mistake.

His left crampon skidded across "blue ice"—hard as steel. Dokja didn't fall; his self-belay held, but he jerked sharply with all his weight onto his right arm. Something in his shoulder joint cracked, distinctly and dryly. The pain was so sharp his vision momentarily darkened.

"Dokja!" Joonghyuk's voice came down the rope. He always sensed the slightest hesitation. "What's wrong?"

Dokja froze, his forehead pressed against the cold ice. He felt a hot, pulsating fire spreading inside the joint. Every movement of his fingers now sent a jolt to his neck.

"A rock knocked out my foothold!" he shouted back, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "It's fine, I'm secure!"

He lied. And that was the first crack in their "partnership." Dokja bit his lip until it bled, forcing himself to pull up on the injured arm. But that wasn't the only problem. A strange sensation appeared in his chest—as if fine, wet sand had been poured into it. Every breath was accompanied by a barely audible, gurgling wheeze.

Camp 3: 7100 m.
Camp 3 isn't a platform; it's a couple of tents hammered directly into the steep ice slope. Just to go to the toilet, you have to clip into the safety line.

Inside the tent, Kim Dokja sat, fighting the urge to cough. At this altitude, a cough is a death sentence. If Joonghyuk hears the characteristic "wet" sound, he'll turn the expedition around the same second.

Joonghyuk fussed with the stove, his face gray with fatigue, but his eyes remained sharp.

"You're paler than usual," he noted, handing Dokja a mug. "And your arm. You barely used it on the last leg."

"Just froze," Dokja hid his right hand under his armpit, imitating an attempt to warm it. "The wind on the wall was strong, I over-gripped the jumar."

Joonghyuk looked at him for a long time. His intuition screamed danger, but Dokja smiled—that same calm, confident smile he usually used to deceive the whole world.

"Tomorrow we enter the Death Zone," Joonghyuk said. "7500 and above. There won't be time for 'frozen wrists.' If you feel you can't do it—say so now."

"I'll make it, Joonghyuk-ah. We didn't come this far to turn back on the threshold."

Dokja turned away towards the tent wall. In the darkness, he discreetly spat into a tissue a clump of mucus with pink streaks of blood. Mountain sickness was beginning to devour his lungs, and his injured shoulder had gone numb.

The Yellow Band. 7500 m.

The world had narrowed to a tunnel limited by the edges of the oxygen mask. Yoo Joonghyuk heard only his own breathing—heavy, wheezing, as if dry pebbles were rolling inside his lungs. Every step up the "Yellow Band" was a battle with gravity and time. The sedimentary rock under his crampons crumbled with an unpleasant dry crunch, reminding him that this mountain was just a giant pile of stones, not meant for life.

Joonghyuk led the way, breaking the trail. Ten meters of orange dynamic rope snaked across the gray-yellow rocks between him and Dokja.

Suddenly, the radio on his shoulder crackled to life. Through the static and the howling wind came a sound that froze Joonghyuk's blood faster than the sweat on his face.

"Joonghyuk... ah..."

It wasn't a call. It was an exhale, full of such hopelessness and pain that Joonghyuk froze sharply and began to turn. But he wasn't fast enough.

In the same instant, the rope, which had been lying slack on the rocks, suddenly came alive. It whistled deafeningly across the rock and pulled taut with the sound of a guitar string. The impact was colossal. Ten meters of Kim Dokja's free fall transformed into monstrous kinetic energy that yanked Joonghyuk via his harness.

The air was knocked from his lungs instantly. Joonghyuk was thrown face-first into the slope, his chest slamming into a sharp rocky outcrop. If not for the instincts hammered in by years of training, he would have been pulled down after him. But in the split second before his consciousness grasped the disaster, his hands were already acting.

He drove the pick of his ice axe into a narrow crack, simultaneously bracing his crampons against the crumbling limestone.

"Gha-aa!" a rasp tore from his throat as Dokja's full weight finally settled on him.

The rope bit into his thighs, cutting off arteries, dragging him down into the abyss. Joonghyuk felt his shoulder joints groan, threatening to dislocate.

Joonghyuk lay on his stomach, gripping the ice axe with both hands. He couldn't see Dokja—he was hanging beyond a rocky overhang, above a three-kilometer abyss. Only the trembling orange thread connected them.

"Dokja!" Joonghyuk screamed into his mask, and his voice echoed back as pain in his ears. "Kim Dokja! Answer!"

"Cut..." the quiet, broken voice from the radio made Joonghyuk shudder. "Joonghyuk... cut the rope. The anchor... won't hold..."

Joonghyuk looked at his ice axe. Thin, web-like cracks crept from under the pick driven into the ice and rock. The anchor piton hammered a meter above began to slowly, with a millimeter-by-millimeter screech, work its way out of the stone. The rock was too brittle for the weight of two.

"Shut up!" Joonghyuk grabbed the rope, wrapping it around his forearm, feeling the nylon burn even through the thick fabric of his jacket. "I'll pull you up! Do you hear?! Just don't let go!"

Below him, thirty meters down, Kim Dokja hung in the void. His right arm, useless and numb, dangled like a rag. Every breath echoed in his chest with a taste of iron. He saw stone dust falling from above, from the edge of the rock—a sign that Joonghyuk's anchor was failing.

He looked up. There, against the black sky, he saw the silhouette of the man who had been his purpose for the last few years. Joonghyuk trembled with the strain, literally becoming one with the mountain, refusing to admit defeat.

'You were always so stubborn,' Dokja thought. 'But if I don't go, you'll fall with me. And you must live. You promised me that apartment.'

Dokja slowly, fighting his own body's resistance, reached with his good hand towards his belt. His fingers, stiff from cold and hypoxia, found the handle of the strap cutter.

A small knife with a curved blade. One slash—and Joonghyuk would be free. One slash—and the mountain would have its sacrifice.

Joonghyuk, feeling a strange change in the rope's tension, lifted his head and looked down over the edge. His eyes widened. Through the blizzard, he saw Dokja bringing the gleaming blade to the orange nylon.

"NO!" Joonghyuk's scream overpowered even the roar of the wind. "KIM DOKJA, DON'T YOU DARE! DROP THE KNIFE!"

"Sorry..." Dokja whispered into the radio.

"I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU DO THAT!" Joonghyuk went berserk. He let go of the ice axe with one hand and reached down, as if hoping to grab Dokja by the collar across the distance separating them. "DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE ME!"

Dokja swung the knife.

At that moment, the mountain, tired of their struggle, passed its judgment. The anchor piton holding them, with a dry, ringing "zing!" flew out of the rock.

The world under Joonghyuk's feet disappeared. He didn't have time to scream. He saw the knife fall from the stunned Dokja's hand, saw the orange rope tangle uselessly in the air.

They fell. It wasn't a free fall into the abyss—they were thrown down a rocky couloir. Impact against an outcrop. Darkness. Another impact. Joonghyuk felt his body turning into a solid lump of pain, but only one thought hammered in his head: "Where is he? Where is Kim Dokja?"

Their fall was stopped by a deep snowdrift on a narrow rocky ledge hidden in a niche. The impact was so powerful that the snow billowed up in a giant white shroud.

Silence.

Joonghyuk lay face down. His mask was cracked, a sharp piece of plastic had split his eyebrow, and blood flooded his left eye, freezing instantly in the cold. He took a breath—and choked on a cough. Every rib screamed in pain.

He rolled onto his back, staring at the starless, black sky of 7500 meters.

"Dokja..." he rasped. His voice was unrecognizable.

He turned his head. A meter away from him, at the very edge of the precipice, lay Kim Dokja. His body was twisted unnaturally, and from under his helmet, a dark stain slowly spread onto the snow. The rope, still connecting them, was twisted and frayed by the rocks, but it had held. It hadn't let them fly into the abyss.

Joonghyuk crawled towards him. Every centimeter was achieved through "I can't," through the grinding of broken bones. He reached Dokja's hand and squeezed it.

"Live..." Joonghyuk exhaled, pressing his face against his shoulder. "Just don't you dare die now."

They were at an altitude where birds don't fly and people don't live. Without communication, without tools, trapped on a ledge two by two meters. But they were still connected by one thread.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn't remember getting up. His body had become a buzzing machine driven by pure adrenaline and primal terror. He couldn't drag Dokja back up the icy couloir—without ice axes and with a damaged rope, it would be suicide.

The only chance was a snow cave.

He began to dig. First with the remains of the titanium snow shovel attached to his backpack, and when it broke against the rocky base—with his own hands in torn mittens. At 7500 meters, physical labor of this intensity burns the remaining oxygen in the blood within minutes. Joonghyuk wheezed, his lungs burned, and gray spots danced before his eyes, but he kept gnawing at the dense snow layer.

He dug out a niche, widened it, turning the tiny ledge into a semblance of a crypt.

"Help me..." he rasped, grabbing Dokja's limp body under the armpits. "Help me, Kim Dokja, you damn martyr..."

He dragged him inside. Blocked the entrance with snow blocks and backpacks to cut off the roaring wind. It became quiet inside. Frighteningly quiet. The only sound was Dokja's wet, gurgling wheeze.

Joonghyuk held him close, trying to warm him with the remnants of his own heat. At that moment, Dokja, whose body was convulsing in the agony of pulmonary edema, finally sank into the memories he had so carefully hidden.

It was three years ago. Dokja had entered Yoo Joonghyuk's house—a cold, sterile mansion where even the air seemed filtered of emotion. He had brought some training planning documents, but froze in the hallway upon hearing voices from the study.

"...he's spending too much time with that 'partner' of his," Joonghyuk's mother's voice was dry as an autumn leaf. "Yoo Joonghyuk must understand that his only value lies in his exceptionalism. If he doesn't become the first on Everest, if he doesn't confirm our status, all the investment in him will prove worthless."

"He'll do it," his father replied, and there wasn't a drop of parental pride in his voice, only calculation. "He knows the price of failure. He has no right to human weakness. If this Kim Dokja is hindering him—we'll find a way to separate them."

Dokja had shrunk back then, pressing himself against the wall. He wasn't afraid for himself. He was afraid for Joonghyuk, who at that moment was standing on the stairs above and, judging by the dead silence, heard every word.

Later, when they were alone in the gym, Joonghyuk was silent for a long time, just looking at his hands.

"They don't see me, Dokja," he had said then. It was the only time his voice had sounded so broken. "They only see an investment project. If I don't bring them that summit, I simply don't exist for them. I'm an empty spot on their family tree."

It was then that something snapped in Dokja's head. His love, already prone to self-sacrifice, took on a twisted form.

'If you need that summit to "exist" in their eyes—I'll give it to you,' Dokja decided. 'I'll become your invisible stepping stone. I'll be your oxygen, your belay, your lie. I'll endure any pain, just so you never look at your hands again as if they don't belong to you.'

He didn't understand that, in trying to save Joonghyuk from his family, he himself had begun treating Joonghyuk like a "project," ignoring the man who simply wanted to be loved for who he was, not for what he conquered.

The silence in the snow cave was worse than the wind. At some point, the hoarse, gurgling sound of Kim Dokja's breathing stopped. His chest fell still.

Yoo Joonghyuk felt icy terror tighten around his own throat.

"Breathe," he ordered, but Dokja's body didn't respond.

There was no time to think. Joonghyuk tore off his own mask, then roughly pulled the oxygen mask from Dokja's face. His partner's lips were blue, almost black in the cave's twilight, the corners of his mouth smeared with dried blood.

Joonghyuk filled his lungs with the icy, thin air, tilted Dokja's head back, pinched his nose, and pressed his mouth to Dokja's.

This wasn't a kiss. It was an attempt to restart a stalled engine. Joonghyuk exhaled forcefully, pushing air into the other man's lungs, forcing them to expand.

One exhale. Pause. Another.

He could taste Dokja's blood on his tongue. He could feel the cold of his skin. He was giving him everything he had left—his warmth, his oxygen, his life.

The darkness around Kim Dokja suddenly became soft and warm. The cold was gone, the pain in his broken ribs vanished. He wasn't standing on a mountain, but in that very apartment from their conversation. Rain was falling outside the window, but inside it was quiet.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood before him. He wasn't looking with his usual irritation or anger, but with something infinitely deep and sorrowful in his eyes.

"You've been walking so long," this dream-Joonghyuk said softly.

Dokja wanted to answer, to apologize for being late, but Joonghyuk stepped towards him. His hand touched Dokja's cheek—his fingers were hot, alive. Joonghyuk leaned in.

'It can't be,' Dokja thought, freezing. 'I'm just a reader. I'm not the hero of this story.'

But Joonghyuk's lips covered his. It was careful, almost weightless, as if Joonghyuk was afraid Dokja would crumble at the touch. In this kiss was all the unspoken tenderness, all those years of watching each other's backs, all the muted yearning they had hidden behind mountaineering routines.

Dokja closed his eyes, responding. He wanted to stay in this moment forever. To dissolve in this warmth, in this taste, in this feeling of being needed.

But suddenly, the kiss changed. It became hard, demanding, almost aggressive. Air rushed into it not as a gentle stream, but as a hurricane, tearing at his throat. The warmth was replaced by a burning pain.

"Breathe!" Joonghyuk's voice thundered not in his ears, but directly inside his head.

Kim Dokja convulsively sucked in air, and his body arched. His lungs were scorched with fire. He snapped his eyes open, coughing the air back out.

In the dim light of the headlamp, the illusion of the warm apartment crumbled to dust. Hovering directly over him was Yoo Joonghyuk's face—bloodied, covered in frost, with the crazed gaze of a man who had just stared death in the eyes. Joonghyuk was breathing heavily, his lips wet and red—not from a loving kiss, but from the blood he'd wiped from Dokja's face.

"You..." Dokja whispered, trying to reconcile the sweet dream with this icy hell. His voice was barely audible from under the mask Joonghyuk had already pulled back on. "Why... aren't you... at the summit?"

Joonghyuk froze, still hovering over him. His shoulders shook—from the cold, or from rage, or from the fact that Dokja was finally speaking.

"What fucking summit, Dokja?!" he grabbed him by the shoulders, almost shaking him, driving out the remnants of the narcotic sleep. "You almost killed us both! You tried to cut the rope!"

Dokja blinked. Reality was returning in shards. The knife. The rope. The fall.

"You should... be... important..." Dokja coughed, and pink foam bubbled on his lips again. "To them..."

Joonghyuk closed his eyes for a second, pressing his forehead against the cold plastic of Dokja's helmet with a groan of helplessness. He could still feel the phantom sensation of the mouth-to-mouth, but now it felt not like salvation, but like torture.

"Idiot. Do you hear me?" Joonghyuk switched to a whisper that was more terrifying than a scream; it rang with tears he couldn't afford to shed. "I'm already important. Not because I'm standing on a piece of ice. But because you, the most insufferable person in the world, chose me as your partner. I don't need their recognition. I need you to breathe."

He pulled back sharply and took a syringe of dexamethasone from the first aid kit—their last hope to curb the pulmonary edema for at least a couple of hours, enough to start the descent. His movements were sharp, angry, yet careful.

"I'm giving you the medicine now," Joonghyuk said, and his hands, despite the frostbitten, blackened fingertips, were steady. "And we're going down. You will walk, even if I have to tie your legs to mine. We're leaving this cursed mountain."

Dokja looked up at him from below. Through the pain and the fog in his head, through the residual warmth of that hallucinatory kiss, it finally began to dawn on him: the mountain wasn't his enemy. His enemy was his own belief that he didn't deserve to be beside Joonghyuk simply for who he was, without feats, without sacrifices, without the need to die for someone else's glory.

"Joonghyuk-ah..." Dokja weakly touched the sleeve of his jacket, searching for the warmth he had dreamed of. "Sorry."

"You'll apologize in Seoul," Joonghyuk cut him off, driving the needle through the layers of thermal underwear into Dokja's thigh with force. "For now—live. That's an order."

The Descent. 7500 – 6400 m.

The snow cave, which had seemed like salvation, had become a trap. The oxygen inside was burning up, replaced by carbon dioxide and the heavy, wet smell of Dokja's sickness.

"Time," Joonghyuk's voice cracked like a whip.

He pushed the backpacks outside. The wind immediately caught them, trying to carry them into the abyss. Outside was a "whiteout": the sky, the slope, and the abyss had merged into one impenetrable milky veil. Visibility—three meters.

Joonghyuk tethered Dokja to himself with a "short leash." Now they were one creature with two heads and four legs, only two of which worked. Dokja hung on him, his chin knocking against Joonghyuk's shoulder.

"Kim Dokja! Watch my heels. Don't close your eyes. If you close them—I'll throw us both off. Do you understand?!"

"Under...stood..." Dokja rasped, but his consciousness was already beginning to detach from reality.

Suddenly, his world went quiet. The pain in his chest vanished, replaced by a soft warmth. Dokja was standing in the middle of an empty, bright room. It smelled of fresh paint and wood. A huge floor-to-ceiling window overlooked the Hangang River, bathed in sunset light.

"You're late again," a voice came from the kitchen.

Dokja turned. There stood Joonghyuk—without a scar, without a mask, in an ordinary black apron. He was chopping vegetables, and the sound of the knife on the board was so cozy, so real.

"I just... got lost in the light," Dokja replied, feeling an incredible lightness.

"WAKE UP!" The slap across his cheek was so hard his teeth clacked.

Reality returned like an ice-cold shower. Dokja choked on a cough, spitting thick pink mucus onto the snow. They were on a steep section of the "Yellow Band." Joonghyuk was holding him by the collar, his eyes burning with a crazed fire behind his goggles.

"Don't you dare go there!" Joonghyuk roared, overpowering the blizzard. "Look here! Step! Take a step, you bastard!"

Joonghyuk was literally moving Dokja's legs with his own hands, hammering his crampons into the ice. Every meter of descent was torture. Joonghyuk felt his own muscles beginning to tear. His heart hammered in his throat, skipping beats. His oxygen tank was empty; he was breathing the same dead air as Dokja.

They reached the fixed lines on the Lhotse Wall. This was the most dangerous moment. They had to clip their descenders onto the ice-covered rope. Joonghyuk's hands, frostbitten and blackened at the fingertips, barely obeyed.

"Joonghyuk..." Dokja slumped against him, his head dropping weakly onto his partner's chest. "Leave me... I see a light. Down there. Is that... our apartment?"

Joonghyuk looked down. There was no light. Only a roaring white void.

"Yes," Joonghyuk lied, his voice cracking. "Yes, Dokja. It is. But the windows aren't clean yet. You have to go down and clean them. Do you hear me?"

He grabbed Dokja's face, smearing his mask with blood from the wound on his own forehead.

"You promised me a window! You promised me books! If you die now, I'll burn all your damn novels! I'll find them and destroy them!"

This outburst of rage worked. Dokja flinched, his pupils slightly contracting, focusing on Joonghyuk's face.

"My... books... you can't..." he whispered.

"Then move!" Joonghyuk pushed him towards the rope.

They began sliding down the vertical ice. The rope smoked from friction. Joonghyuk worked like a machine: clip in, descend, lock off. Clip in, descend, lock off. He stopped feeling the pain in his knees. He stopped feeling the cold. He had become simply a function for saving Kim Dokja.

It didn't happen instantly. It was like watching a wind-up toy run out of momentum.

At 6700 meters, where the air is thin as tissue paper, Yoo Joonghyuk's knees simply stopped receiving signals from his brain. The muscles, burned out by hypoxia and hours of struggle, had turned to stone.

He took a step—and his leg buckled.

The impact with the slope was brutal. The ice, hard as concrete, met his knees with a sickening crunch. Joonghyuk didn't even have time to brace with his arms. He just pitched forward face-first, his split lips grinding into the hard-packed snow.

A second later, weight crashed down on top of him. Kim Dokja, tethered to him by the short leash, fell after him, pinning Joonghyuk to the ground. They lay in a heap, tangled in straps, carabiners, and limbs, like two drowned men washed ashore.

The wind howled over them, skimming ground blizzard across their motionless bodies. The cold instantly found gaps in their clothing, sinking icy needles into sweaty skin.

Shadows began to thicken around them. Joonghyuk's vision, narrowed to a tunnel, began to play cruel tricks. He thought he saw figures emerging from the blizzard.

There was that same "third man" in the blue down jacket. He stood very close, unmoving in the wind. His face was hidden by the hood, but his posture expressed infinite patience and comfort. He stretched out a hand in a thick mitten, as if inviting: "Come here. It's quiet here. There's no pain. Just lie down."

Joonghyuk felt his eyelids growing heavy. The desire to close his eyes was stronger than hunger, stronger than fear, stronger than love. It was the biological need of a cell to die and stop suffering.

"Joonghyuk-ah..."

Dokja's voice sounded right by his ear. It was wet, gurgling, as if Dokja was speaking from underwater.

Dokja slid off his back and now lay curled up beside him. He pulled off his mask, and Joonghyuk saw pink foam bubbling on his blue lips. The pulmonary edema had entered its terminal stage. Dokja was drowning on dry land.

"Let's..." Dokja whispered, and his eyes, cloudy and unfocused, stared somewhere through the blizzard. "Let's just... sleep. It's so... soft here."

Joonghyuk blinked. The snow did seem soft. It looked like the duvet in their apartment. Why fight? They had done all they could. They had descended almost a kilometer. That was enough.

"Sleep..." Joonghyuk echoed. His tongue could barely move.

Silence began to envelop them. The pain in his torn muscles receded, giving way to blissful numbness. His heart slowed its rhythm. Thump... pause... thump...

And at that moment, on the very brink of oblivion, Joonghyuk felt it.

Warmth. Faint, barely perceptible through his glove, but absolutely real.

Kim Dokja's hand—trembling, weakened—found his palm lying on the snow. Dokja's fingers curled.

It wasn't the convulsive grip of a drowning man pulling his rescuer down. No. Dokja interlaced their fingers. He weakly stroked the back of Joonghyuk's hand with his thumb.

It was a gesture of absolute, heart-wrenching tenderness. The way you hold a loved one's hand before a long parting. The way you say goodbye when you want to say: "Thank you for being with me. I love you."

This gesture shot through Joonghyuk like a defibrillator charge. It burned his nervous system more fiercely than the minus-forty-degree frost.

A picture flashed before Joonghyuk's eyes. Not the mountain. Not the summit.

Seoul. Evening. The shadow of an apartment building's awning. Kim Dokja standing there, shivering in his coat, waiting for him. Dokja, who always thought of himself as just a footnote in the great climber's biography. Dokja, who thought he was merely a tool, a stepping stone, expendable material for Yoo Joonghyuk's ambitions.

The thought struck his brain with a blinding flash:

"No. You're not a tool. You never were."

Joonghyuk's eyes flew open. The icy crust on his lashes cracked.

"You are the only reason I even came home that evening. You are the only reason I exist outside these cursed mountains. If I close my eyes now, I won't be betraying myself. I'll be betraying you."

Rage—hot, animal rage at death, which had dared to touch Dokja—flooded his veins in place of adrenaline.

"AAAH-H-H!"

The scream tore from Yoo Joonghyuk's throat. It wasn't a human cry. It was the roar of a beast backed into a corner, refusing to die.

He surged upward. His body screamed in pain, but he forced it to obey. He grabbed Dokja by the collar, hauling him out of the snowdrift.

"No sleeping!" he roared, shaking him. "Open your eyes, Kim Dokja!"

Joonghyuk ripped off the remaining rope. With trembling, stiff fingers, he began lashing Dokja to his back. He tied knots with his teeth, tightening the straps so hard they cut into flesh.

They were no longer two people. They were one being. A four-armed, two-headed monster that had decided to defy entropy.

"We. Are. Going. Home!" Joonghyuk rasped directly into Dokja's ear, heaving his weight onto his broken shoulders. "And you will wash that damn window! Do you hear me?!"

He took a step. Then another. He wasn't walking with muscles. He was walking on pure hatred for death.

Time ceased to exist. Space shrank to the patch of light from his headlamp at his feet.

Step. Wheeze. Step. Wheeze.

Joonghyuk didn't know how long they walked. An hour? An eternity? He just kept moving his legs, feeling Dokja's warm breath on his neck growing fainter and more ragged.

At some point, the wind died down. The white haze before his eyes trembled and tore apart.

A thin, quivering beam pierced the veil of snow.

Joonghyuk stopped, swaying with exhaustion. He thought it was another hallucination. A star fallen onto the glacier.

But the beam swung. Then another. Yellow, orange, white dots. They danced in the darkness below like fireflies.

"Look..." Joonghyuk nudged Dokja with his shoulder, his voice cracking into a shriek. "Look, you idiot!"

Below, a couple of hundred meters away, stood tents. Camp 2. People with headlamps had come out onto the glacier, combing the darkness with searchlight beams. They were looking for them.

Hope hit his legs harder than fatigue. Joonghyuk took a few more steps, speeding up, almost falling forward.

"Over here!" he wanted to shout, but only a rasp came from his throat.

He didn't make it. Fifty meters from the outermost tents, when he could already see the silhouettes of people running towards them, his body said "enough."

His knees gave way. He collapsed into the snow, but even as he fell, he tried to twist so that Dokja would land on top, so he wouldn't crush him with his own weight.

The impact with the ground was soft. The world around them exploded with voices and light.

He lay on his back, staring at the black sky streaked with the beams of headlamps. Hands grabbed him, someone shouted: "Stretchers! Over here! Oxygen!"

Joonghyuk felt the rope that bound him to Dokja being cut. The moment the tension vanished, panic overwhelmed him. His other half was being torn away from him.

He tried to sit up, but could only jerk his arm. His fingers clawed at the edge of Dokja's down jacket as they were already loading him onto an akja (rescue sled).

"No..." Joonghyuk rasped. A bloody veil clouded his vision. "Don't... take him..."

He tried to hold on. He couldn't let go. If they were separated, Dokja would disappear. He'd dissolve, like that dream.

"It's okay!" someone's voice sounded muffled, as if through layers of cotton. A rescuer's face—bearded, anxious—loomed over him. "We've got them. We've got him. Both of them! Get him on oxygen, now!"

Joonghyuk wasn't listening. He was looking to the side.

There, in the glare of the searchlights, a rescuer placed an oxygen mask over Kim Dokja's face. The regulator hissed, delivering the life-giving gas.

Joonghyuk saw Dokja's chest quiver. And then, for the first time in many hours, it rose high and deep. It was a real breath. A breath of life.

Kim Dokja was breathing.

Seeing that, Yoo Joonghyuk unclenched his fingers. The darkness waiting at the edge of his consciousness washed over him in a soft, warm wave. This time, he allowed himself to fall into it, knowing that when he woke up, he would not be alone.

.

.

.

Epilogue.

A soft spring rain fell outside the window. The hospital room was quiet, broken only by the faint rustle of book pages. Kim Dokja sat in a chair by that very "big window." His face was still pale, and the tips of his fingers bore the dark marks of frostbite—souvenirs the mountain had left him. But he was breathing. On his own. Steadily and deeply. Even if his chest still ached a little when he laughed.

The door opened without a knock. Yoo Joonghyik walked in. He had a slight limp in his left leg—a memento from the fall at 7500 meters. In his hands was a bag of food, and the aroma of spicy chicken instantly overpowered the sterile smell of medicine in the room.

"You're reading in the dark again," Joonghyuk said in an expressionless tone, walking closer and clicking on the lamp. "You'll ruin your eyesight."

Dokja squinted at the sudden light and smiled. That smile of his—slightly guilty and unbearably bright, the one that still made Joonghyuk's heart clench painfully.

"I was just looking at the window, Joonghyuk-ah. It really is very clean. Did you wash it yourself?"

Joonghyuk froze, setting the bag down on the table. He didn't answer. Instead, he walked up behind Dokja and placed his heavy, calloused hands on his shoulders. Dokja didn't flinch. He leaned his head back, pressing the back of his skull against Joonghyuk's stomach, and covered Joonghyuk's hand with his own.

"No more mountains," Joonghyuk said, his voice quiet and strained almost to the point of cracking.

"Agreed," Dokja nodded. "Next time, let's choose something simpler. Like... the sea? It's flat. Nowhere to fall."

Joonghyuk didn't say anything. He slowly leaned down, closing the distance between them until Dokja felt his warm breath on his cheek. In the Death Zone, that breath had been the only thing keeping them in the world of the living. Here, it became a promise.

Joonghyuk buried his nose in Dokja's hair, inhaling his scent—now it was the smell of soap and homey comfort, not ice and fear. His lips touched Dokja's temple, then he slowly turned Dokja's face towards him.

This was nothing like that desperate, life-saving breath in the snow cave. This was a long, lingering touch. Joonghyuk kissed him as if he still couldn't believe Dokja wouldn't crumble in his hands, wouldn't turn into a hallucination. Dokja responded, his fingers clutching tightly at the sleeve of Joonghyuk's jacket, pulling him closer, erasing the last boundaries between them.

This kiss held none of Yoo Joonghyuk's pride or Kim Dokja's self-sacrifice. Only the two of them remained.

"Next time," Joonghyuk whispered directly against Dokja's lips, "we'll choose a sofa. And a book. One for both of us."

Dokja closed his eyes, feeling himself fill with an absolute, almost forgotten sense of peace.

"HEY! DID YOU TWO DECIDE TO SKIP TO THE DRAMATIC FINALE WITHOUT ME?!"

The door swung open from a kick. Han Sooyoung burst into the room like a small tornado. She was in her usual black coat, with a bag of candy and an expression on her face as if she was about to declare war on both of them right then and there.

Joonghyuk instantly pulled away, straightening up and resuming his usual stone-faced composure, though the tips of his ears betrayed him by turning red. Dokja just buried his face in his hands, trying to hide his laughter.

"I knew it!" Sooyoung threw her bag onto the empty hospital bed and put her hands on her hips. "Leave you alone for half an hour, and you two are back to your sloppy mushiness! Kim Dokja, you just started breathing properly again, and you're already climbing all over this gloomy sunfish!"

"Sooyoung-ah, you're just in time," Dokja mumbled, wiping away the tears of laughter. "We were just discussing... window cleanliness."

"Windows?! I can see right through you two, idiots!" She walked to the table and peered unceremoniously into the food bag. "Oh, spicy chicken? I hope you bought enough for three, because I'm about to give you a lecture on why mountain climbers are the worst subspecies of humans, and I'll need the calories."

She pulled out a piece of chicken and stared at them while chewing.

"Well, why did you stop? Continue. Don't mind the brilliant writer documenting this shame for posterity."

Joonghyuk sighed heavily and looked at Dokja. His gaze said: 'See what I have to put up with?'

Dokja winked at him. The mountain was still there, far away, in the Death Zone. But here, amidst Han Sooyoung's yelling, the smell of food, and the spring rain, they were finally home.

"Han Sooyoung," Joonghyuk said calmly, pulling out a chair for her, but never letting go of Dokja's hand. "Sit down and eat quietly."

"In your dreams!" she snorted, but sat down anyway, making herself at home beside them.

Outside the window, it grew dark, and in the reflection of the glass, Dokja saw the three of them. He was no longer a shadow. He was a part of this strange, noisy, and utterly alive story.