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The observation deck was quiet except for the low, constant hum of the station’s life-support systems—a sound so familiar after months aboard that it had long since faded into the texture of silence.
Kim Dokja stood near the wide curved window, arms loosely crossed, and watching his brother with the patient amusement one reserves in the presence of those simultaneously too stubborn and too protective to admit either flaw aloud.
“You’re absolutely sure you’ll be okay?”
For someone whose default expression hovered between aristocratic pride and barely-leashed violence, the question felt almost indecently soft coming from Sun Wukong himself.
Kim Dokja couldn’t help the slow, crooked grin that spread across his face.
“I’ll have some peace and quiet to get all these repairs done at last,” he answered with a deliberately light and teasing voice before reaching out to pat Wukong’s shoulder "Commander Isparang will be here in a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be homeward bound with them once their experiments are done. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
Those intense golden eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. He didn’t shrug the hand away, though the faint twitch of his jaw said he very much wanted to.
“I don’t like the idea of you being here all alone. I’ve worked with Lycaon before—it’s not like him to bungle things up and get his mission delayed like this. You know where all the logs are saved, don’t you? He’ll need them since I won’t be around to brief him on the progress we’ve made. We would’ve had an entire week for this handover if he’d gotten here on schedule last week. Goddamn him.”
Kim Dokja let out a chuckle that echoed against the metal walls. Such a sound felt strangely intimate in the cavernous quiet of the nearly deserted station.
“Look,” he said, gentling his tone without making it obvious, “I might not know anything about the research that goes on at this station, but I know where to tell them to look. Everything will be fine.” He let his hand fall away after giving one last squeeze. “I’ll have everything in tip-top condition for when Commander Isparang’s shuttle docks. And you need to go before your crew mutinies and decides to just toss you into the hold for the return trip.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Wukong huffed in a snooty manner before retrieving his helmet from where it rested on the console ledge, and tucked it under one arm. Afterwards, he ruffled the top of his younger brother’s head with a charming half-smile.
“Anyway. Send us a message once you’ve gotten the communication systems up and running again. It’ll be good to hear from you.”
Kim Dokja inclined his chin and wiggled his fingers in a boyish wave.
Wukong held his gaze for one heartbeat longer, then turned on his heel. Long golden hair spilled and rippled down his broad back like molten sunlight as he strode away, boots ringing softly against the grated deck until the sound was swallowed by the corridor’s insulation.
In the silence that followed, Kim Dokja exhaled through his nose and drifted toward one of the smaller auxiliary viewports along the port side. The station’s rotation had brought the window around to face the slowly receding departure vector. He stopped close—close enough that his breath fogged the cold silica before the environmental recyclers whisked it away—and pressed his forehead to the transparent material.
Through the triple-layered pane, he could see where the New World was suspended against the void, her long white hull gleaming under the hard, unfiltered starlight, a slender ivory needle stitched against infinity.
The main engines ignited.
Twin cones of pale-blue plasma unfurled from the nozzles like enormous lotus blossoms caught in mid-bloom, so bright they stung the eyes even through automatic polarization. The sudden flare painted the inside of the observation deck in shifting cerulean and ghost-white; shadows raced across the walls and danced over his face as he watched the New World blast off into nothingness.
For the first time in his career, Kim Dokja was left utterly alone in space, and on the Sector One space station no less.
The first and most prestigious of all space stations in the early years, Sector One had gradually fallen into obscurity and disrepair as space travel technology expanded in leaps and bounds. Once a bustling research outpost, and then a critical refuelling waypoint for passing shuttles, the only people who used the station these days were small-time scientists working on inconsequential projects.
All Sector One is now is an underutilised, outdated husk with unavoidable system failures every few weeks—system failures that Kim Dokja, as the station’s chief and only mechanic, did his best to prevent where he could and fix where he couldn’t.
Humming absently to himself, he took a long, slow walk back to the maintenance unit, already thinking about all the outstanding tasks that were awaiting him, each one written sequentially in his near-illegible scrawl on the clear board taking up the entirety of one wall.
First and foremost on his agenda was to get communications up and running again.
Admittedly, it was a little dangerous to be stranded alone in the middle of nowhere without any way to send an SOS if he really needed one, but what really concerned Kim Dokja was that it had been more than a week since his last video call with Yoo Joonghyuk.
That was, in his opinion, more than a week too long.
Six months since he’d last seen Yoo Joonghyuk in the flesh.
Six months since he’d last kissed him goodbye.
Three more months until his current stint on Sector One officially comes to an end, but now that Lycaon’s launch date had been unavoidably delayed—and with it his only way home—it’d probably be another half year before his feet touched soil again.
Kim Dokja let out a sigh as he stared at his to-do list, fingers tapping at the handle of his toolbox.
He loves his job, he really does.
He was little more than a simple mechanic, with no head for biological science or piloting or the hundreds of other complicated things the astronauts and researchers did, but here he was on an honest-to-god space station anyway, closer to the stars than almost anyone else on Earth.
He’d always wanted to do that, even as a child.
Make it to space, have wild adventures, meet mysterious aliens.
It was just that he missed his boyfriend terribly, and not having the means to talk to him when they were already millions of kilometres away from each other didn’t help matters.
Instead of grabbing his toolbox and getting back to work, Kim Dokja slumped down in front of the nearest console. He might not be able to make or receive any calls, but at least his saved files were still right where he had left them—all the video messages his friends and family and, of course, Yoo Joonghyuk had left him over the past six months.
There weren’t many of his own.
Kim Dokja preferred to voice or video call when he could, and he wasn’t in the habit of recording those. Meanwhile, Yoo Joongyuk really only sent video messages if he was particularly busy with work and couldn’t match his free hours up with Kim Dokja’s.
The latest video was dated a little less than two months ago, and Yoo Joonghyuk’s handsome frame popped up the moment Kim Dokja clicked on it. His face softened at the sight, the same affection that warmed his chest reflecting in the relaxed corners of his eyes and mouth.
A low towel slung low around Yoo Joonghyuk's hips, droplets still clinging to the dark sweep of his hair and the sharp line of his collarbone. Steam curled lazily from the open bathroom door behind him, carrying the clean, warm scent Kim Dokja could almost imagine—citrus shaving gel and vanilla shampoo.
Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look at the lens right away.
He never did at the start.
Instead, he moved with that economical grace that always made Kim Dokja’s chest ache a little, shoulders rolling as he reached for a plain black shirt, the muscles along his back shifting under damp skin like taut cable under silk.
Only then did he glance over.
The look was brief and entirely casual to any onlooker, but Kim Dokja knew otherwise. He was acutely aware of that slight softening at the outer corners of those dark eyes, the loosening of his perpetually set jaw.
[Morning—or evening, depending on your cycle…]
His voice was low and rough from disuse.
[You’re probably elbow-deep in wiring again. Try not to electrocute yourself.]
A tiny smile ghosted across Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth as he turned away to the stove, flicking on the blue-flame burner and cracking two eggs one-handed into a pan already shimmering with oil.
Kim Dokja leaned his cheek against his fist and watched.
He knew every beat of this video by heart. Had replayed it so many times that the timestamps had worn smooth in his memory.
Yoo Joonghyuk slid a slice of thick bread into the toaster. Pushed chopped green onions into the eggs with the flat of a spatula. Reached for the soy sauce bottle without looking, thumb brushing the label in an absent caress.
[…inspection on the new propulsion rig went longer than expected...]
He continued to recount the events of his work as an operations manager, voice pitched to that particular register he only used with Kim Dokja.
[They keep trying to cut corners on the coolant manifolds. I told them if they want the thing to explode mid-burn, they’re welcome to ignore me. Again.]
There was a soft huff of amusement.
He plated the eggs, dark hair falling forward to shadow his brow as he leaned over the counter to retrieve the toast. The motion pulled the towel he was still wearing just a fraction lower and Kim Dokja’s gaze caught, helplessly, on the sharp cut of hipbone, the faint trail of dark hair disappearing beneath damp cotton.
He knew what came next. He always knew.
Yoo Joonghyuk sat, finally, elbows on the counter.
The man took one bite, chewed slowly, and then looked straight into the lens.
For the first time in the entire twelve-minute long recording, any cold pretense fell away completely.
Yoo Joonghyuk rubbed the back of his neck once, a rare tell of discomfort.
He went on another brief rant, which was as close to endearing as it could get for someone who rarely spoke much in general.
[I wish you were here, so we could eat like this together. You better be taking care of yourself without me having to nag.]
He lifted the plate toward the camera, then set it aside again with a sigh.
It was only after a long pause of deliberation that he licked his lips for courage.
[I miss you. And—And I love you.]
Words that made Kim Dokja’s throat close the same way it had the first time, the tenth time, the hundredth.
Then, because Yoo Joonghyuk is still Yoo Joonghyuk, he glanced at something off-screen and swore softly under his breath.
[Shit. I’m gonna be late. Where are my pants? I’ll—]
He leaned forward abruptly, close enough that the camera could make out all the individual lashes fanning against his cheekbones.
[—call when I can. Stay safe. Don’t do anything stupid.]
[I’ll see you soon.]
The screen froze in a flash of caramel tan, the exact shade of Yoo Joonghyuk’s skin coalesced into a blurry splash of color, and Kim Dokja’s lips tilted just a little as wistfulness clouded his gaze.
The maintenance bay was perfectly silent except for the endless, gentle sigh of the ventilation system and the faint noise of cooling metal somewhere overhead. His reflection stared back at him in the darkened monitor once he mustered the will to turn it off—eyes a little too bright, mouth parted on an exhale he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He reached out, fingertips brushing the cool glass where Yoo Joonghyuk’s face had been previously.
“Miss and love you too,” he whispered to the empty dark.
Thankfully, the moment of sentiment passed quickly, and then he was back on his feet and stretching for his toolbox.
The sooner he was done with his repairs, the sooner he would be able to call his boyfriend again.
However… the silence that permeated the air was particularly strange at the moment.
Even for Kim Dokja, who quite literally knew Sector One inside and out, it was odd being all alone on the station. He didn’t usually see the other residents all that often outside of the cafeteria, but simply the knowledge that they were somewhere onboard, tinkering around in the labs or snoring in their bunks, had always been a constant presence in the back of his mind.
Now, the echo of his boots down the long, blank corridors that he traversed daily seemed louder and hollower than before.
The isolation didn’t really bother Kim Dokja that much, though.
He enjoyed company, but he was also self-sufficient in the manner only an experienced space mechanic could be, who was used to having little in common with anyone else he shared the station with.
At least, it wouldn’t have bothered him if he’d still been able to call Yoo Joonghyuk as often as he used to.
A frustrated sigh huffed out of his nose as he stared at the complicated machinery before his eyes, a single glance already enough to tell him that this wouldn’t be the simple patch job he had been hoping for. In fact, this was the culmination of far too many old patch jobs on a system that should’ve been ripped out and forcibly upgraded a long ass time ago.
To get even a rudimentary form of communications up—no visual, just audio—was going to take him days, if not weeks, and that was on top of making sure nothing else on Sector One decided to fall apart on him as well.
The three days of cold showers everyone had to endure before he’d managed to get the water heater working again still lived fresh in his mind.
-·=»‡«=·-
Rather counterintuitively, Kim Dokja discovered that it was much harder to concentrate when he was completely alone with no distractions in sight.
He took a few too many snack breaks while working, and in the end he didn’t make very much progress on his repairs at all. He pointedly refused to look at his to-do list when he passed it on his way to his room.
There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
There’s still plenty of time to get everything done.
As always, Kim Dokja spent a full five seconds or so looking at the photograph tacked up beside his bunk before turning out the lights that night.
Some part of the image remained imprinted behind his eyes when he closed them—him and Yoo Joonghyuk at the top of the Namsan Tower, a kiss pressed to his forehead and a strong arm wrapped around his waist as he turned towards Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest with a large smile.
They had been dating for over a year by then.
Hah. This is torture.
Even more so, when he woke up the next morning.
It was a bit of a nasty shock for Kim Dokja to step into the empty cafeteria for breakfast, every table wiped clean without a single trace of the research team that had still been in residence only a day prior. He hadn’t forgotten that they’d left, but the stillness around him was disturbing all the same, a truth that was only just settling onto his shoulders.
At least no one would be calling for him to help with their forgotten logins or erroneous data, all of which was almost always down to human error and nothing to do with the system at all.
Also nothing to do with Kim Dokja, considering he was a mechanic and not an IT support staff, but no one else seemed able to grasp that difference.
Anyway.
He very quickly discovered that he didn’t actually like the silence of an empty space station, even if it was for all intents and purposes the very same silence as an occupied space station.
It reminded him of showering alone at home as a teen when his parents and brother were out—that strange nagging feeling that something was in there with him anytime he closed his eyes and raised his face to the spray of the showerhead; that irrational yet unshakable conviction of being watched.
He was always alone when his eyes snapped open, of course, but the feeling usually remained, that faint shivery crackle running down his neck and arms until he emerged from the bathroom fully dressed.
Kim Dokja never got that feeling when his family was home.
Alas, he tried playing some music before diving into his repairs instead, going for tracks with a loud, thumping bass that he could sing along to with enthusiasm. It worked up to the point where the unwelcome, invasive thought that he wouldn’t be able to hear anyone come up from behind occurred to him.
Not that there was even anyone else on the space station to come up behind him, or any reason that should make him nervous, but Kim Dokja turned the music down anyway.
-·=»‡«=·-
There was a bit of an emergency on the fourth day following the New World’s departure.
A mildly concerning choke in the drainage system that set off a series of alarms in Kim Dokja’s earpiece. He groaned in annoyance, but immediately left the mess of the half-dismantled communications system and got to his feet.
The drainage system is linked straight to the jettison mechanism that blasted waste out of the station at regular intervals, and he definitely didn’t want any sort of open link between the interior of Sector One and the open void of space at any time.
Funnily enough, the choke had nothing to do with the bathroom that Kim Dokja regularly used, and he couldn’t help wondering what kind of massive shit some researcher had taken before their departure, to still be stuck in the system days later. Even more inexplicably, the choke appeared to resolve itself even before he reached the right set of pipes, like whatever it was had finally managed to squeeze itself down where it belonged.
At least, Kim Dokja hoped so.
The only other option was that the choke had been coughed back up and was currently swirling around in some abandoned toilet bowl that he had absolutely no intention of hunting down.
That would be Lycaon’s team’s problem, whenever they saw fit to finally arrive.
With a sigh, Kim Dokja turned on his heel and made the long walk back to the communications array, refusing to let the quiet at his back force him into a wild sprint for safety.
By that logic, nowhere on Sector One was safe anyway.
-·=»‡«=·-
That night, the stifling unease of being alone in the dark rose to the forefront of his mind stronger than it had been all week.
Kim Dokja’s room wasn’t large, and there was no earthly way anything could have slipped in without his notice, but he had the strangest feeling that something had anyway.
It wasn’t tucked away in the corner where he could dismiss it as a pile of unwashed clothes, or looming over him in a way he could disprove by simply opening his eyes. No, it felt like it was crouched on the ceiling like some sort of awful, oversized bug, observing him with cool curiosity, just like Sun Wukong and his experiments.
Reaching out, Kim Dokja flicked on the lights, but his room looked just as it always did.
Small, cramped and messy, with absolutely nothing of interest on his bare ceiling. His eyes slid to the photograph on the wall, and he let the sight of Yoo Joonghyuk lull him into sleepy comfort before he plunged the room back into darkness again.
Of course there was nothing there.
Why would there be?
As such, Kim Dokja pulled up another months-old video from his boyfriend the next morning, for no reason other than that he felt like it, and it startled him a little to realize how relieved the sight and sound of another human being left him.
It had only been a couple of days since he’d last seen his brother’s team, but Yoo Joonghyuk’s casual chatter washed over him like a soothing balm, the vague trails of lingering restlessness vanishing beneath the weight of his concentration.
He was lying against the headboard of his bed, sheets pooled around his waist, chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. His hair was mussed as well, much longer than the last recording because this was before he trimmed it.
Yoo Joonghyuk raked a hand through the strands once, rather impatiently, then let his head tip back against the pillow with a quiet exhale in the dark room.
[Today was crap. Training sims ran overtime and the new recruits kept panicking on the zero-g module. I had to drag one of them out by the suit tether like a damn kitten.]
For as upset as he claimed to be, the look in his eyes sure was amused.
[I believe I could outlast every one of ‘em if I tried. Maybe even your golden-boy brother too.]
That particular brand of fondness was the kind of thing Yoo Joonghyuk was prone to only when exhaustion stripped away all his sharp edges.
[It’s too quiet here.]
This time, he rolled onto his side, facing the camera fully.
[Mm.]
His expression took on a more seductive look, to the point that even his voice had dropped an octave.
[But suddenly, I find myself with the thought that you might want something to keep you company. Y’know, since you’re stuck out there playing lone mechanic and I’m here in a big, empty bed.]
He tilted the front camera so that it was a slow and shameless pan downward.
The sheets were barely clinging to his thighs now, with the obvious outline of arousal beneath thin cotton and a free hand resting low on his muscled stomach, fingers splayed, not quite touching, but close enough to make intent crystal clear.
There was a leisure air of confidence before his smirk faltered into something close to sheepish.
[…Don’t look so smug when you watch this, or I’ll kill you.]
It was cute the way Yoo Joonghyuk always tried to hide the way his ears turned a flustered shade of red. He dragged a hand over his face and breathed out.
[Kim Dokja, you fool. I think you’ve ruined me.]
The fool in question let out a snort as he shook his head and stood up.
The second half of that video was saved in his personal tablet for personal viewing only, and he had wiped it from the common servers with extreme prejudice. Most people had the decency not to touch the rest of the crew’s private messages, but there were always the odd accidents here and there, the slip of a finger or simply some unforgivably nosy idiot who felt entitled to everyone’s transmissions.
Kim Dokja didn’t watch the delicious little segment left just for him right then—it’s far too early in the day for that—but he did leave for breakfast whistling cheerily, and even sitting alone in the middle of the empty cafeteria did little to dampen his spirits.
-·=»‡«=·-
By mid-afternoon, the strange being-watched feeling prickling on the back of his neck was back, and even the music pumping from the speakers beside him couldn’t drown it out.
Kim Dokja wasn’t stupid.
He knew that being completely isolated from every last bit of human interaction wasn’t the healthiest situation to be in, but it had hardly been a week.
Surely the psychosis didn’t set in that fast?
“Probably been watching too many horror movies,” he muttered to himself, digging through his toolbox and trying to ignore the wavering shadows that seemed to be congealing into a recognisable shape in the corner of his eye.
It was a pastime of his back on Earth, putting on the latest D-grade horror flick and guessing which piss-poor cliche belonged to which equally as piss-poor decision making protagonist who was surely doomed to die a gruesome death.
Except he hadn’t quite anticipated it backfiring like this…
Gritting his teeth, Kim Dokja refused to look up and around.
There wouldn’t be anything there. There never was.
That night, he dreamed, vague flashes that refused to form in his mind when he finally opened his eyes to his morning alarm, his mouth dry and sticky with sleep. Mostly, he remembered seeing Yoo Joongyuk and the man had been happy in his dream.
That’s all he’s ever wanted.
Kim Dokja grumbled to himself and threw an arm across his face.
He desperately wanted to talk to Yoo Joonghyuk instead of getting to work, but if he didn’t get to work, then he would never be able to talk to Yoo Joonghyuk.
Perhaps, a shitty Catch-22, not that any Catch-22s weren’t shitty.
But he didn’t very well have time to dwell on that now because—
The soft click of his door opening made his blood run cold as ice.
There was a long silence, but not the silence of an empty room with a door that had impossibly opened on its own. It was the same silence that he immediately recognised after days of being clinically observed, and he knew that he should open his eyes.
He knew that he should lift his arm and confront the intruder standing in his doorway, except there couldn’t be an intruder on the station.
Nothing could dock without authorisation from the crew onboard, and that was Kim Dokja himself.
Footsteps now, getting closer, but he was all alone and this couldn’t be happening, and he didn’t want to see whatever had just walked into his room.
His heartbeat refused to cooperate.
It started as a dull thump behind his ribs, but then each beat landed harder, faster, louder in the confined space of his skull until it felt like someone had cracked open his chest and was using his sternum as a drum.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
Was it the sound of his heart or the sound of those steps?
Relentless, obscene in the quiet, drowning out everything that mattered. He could feel the pulse in his throat, in his fingertips, in the soles of his feet.
Every vessel in his body seemed to be shouting the same terrified message.
Run.
Run.
Run.
Run.
Sweat prickled along his hairline, then slid in slow, crawling trails down his temples, tracing the curve of his cheekbones, pooling in the hollows of his collarbones.
It itched and it burned.
But he didn’t dare wipe it away.
Didn’t dare move at all.
And then the whispers began.
They didn’t arrive all at once.
They seeped in like smoke under a door, so faint he could convince himself they were only the hiss of recycled air through the vents, or his own depraved imagination.
But they weren’t.
One voice, then two, then more, overlapping until the sound became a texture rather than individual words. A low murmur that vibrated in his sinuses, in the roots of his teeth. They weren’t speaking Korean, or English, or any language he recognized—just a susurrus of sibilants and breath, rising and falling like wind through dead leaves.
Getting closer.
Getting louder.
He bit down hard on the inside of his lower lip until copper bloomed across his tongue.
He focused on it, on the sting, on the slow well of blood that coated his teeth and trickled warm and thick down the back of his throat. Anything to tether himself. Because if he listened too closely to the whispers, if he tried to parse meaning from the rising tide of them, he was terrified he would understand.
And if he understood… no.
It’s not real.
He repeated the words silently, over and over, in rhythm with the hammering of his heart.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
The whispers swelled until they filled the entire cabin, until the sound seemed to press against the insides of his eyelids, against the fragile skin of his eardrums.
They were right there.
Right here.
Until suddenly, they weren’t.
*
*
*
Total, abrupt silence.
The absence of sound was so violent it felt like a physical blow.
His ears rang with it. The heartbeat in his skull didn’t stop, but now it echoed in a void so complete that every other noise sounded muffled and far away, as though the station itself had stepped back to watch.
Kim Dokja lay there for what felt like hours, minutes, seconds.
Slowly—agonizingly slowly—he lowered the arm that had been shielding his eyes.
The room looked exactly as it always did.
Dim emergency lighting along the baseboards. The small porthole showing nothing but starless black and the faint reflection of his own pale face staring back. The photograph on the wall.
It was empty.
There was no one.
He exhaled through his nose and pushed himself up on trembling elbows. The blanket slid down to his waist with a soft rasp. His skin felt clammy, too tight and he scanned the room again, left to right, forcing his gaze to linger in every corner.
Nothing.
Even the door was closed.
The access panel beside it glowed steady green, locked from the inside.
He could make a break for it.
He could slide off the bunk, cross the three meters to the corridor in six panicked steps, slam the manual override, and run until he reached the central hub.
He could—
“Kim Dokja.”
Deathly cold air whispered over the nape of his neck, right beside his right ear.
Intimate as a lover’s sigh.