Chapter Text
“Ah- you kind of look like a crazy person.”
“Nothing will work, by the way. Just give up, they’re all quacks or fakes.”
“It must be nice to have a comfortable job like this. Back home, you’re either royalty or you’re a servant.”
“Hey, I could touch the keyboard if I tried hard enough. How do you play?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is close to snapping.
Or having a stress-induced aneurysm.
“Leave me alone,” he will say. And Dokja will.
For maybe thirty minutes, maximum. It seems the demon king has no concept of mortal time; when he comes back to Joonghyuk after bothering Han Sooyoung, he might say it had been a while, or that it had only been a couple hours. Sometimes, there will be moments of blessed quiet when the man is back in the demon realm or whatever it is he does when not pestering one of the two of them.
Unfortunately, those times are far and few in between.
“You don’t eat a lot of varied stuff,” Dokja remarks. “Do you get all the nutrients you need with those?”
Joonghyuk grits his teeth. “You can live off them,” he says. Han Sooyoung nags him far too much already about his eating habits, for a second, infinitely more annoying person to join in. And it isn’t like she can say anything about being healthy, either. The occasional fruit smoothie doesn’t make up for multiple all-nighters a week and a constant intake of a frankly dangerous amount of caffeine.
He can cook for himself, and occasionally Yoo Mia, when she comes over to his apartment. He just can’t find a reason to waste time on that when he has piles and piles of letters to respond to, and perfectly fine juice boxes stocked up in his cupboard.
“Is that so. I guess things have changed since the last time I’ve been here,” Dokja hums. “If only I still had a real body. Then I could have tasted them.”
“Too bad,” Joonghyuk says automatically. He’s learned that Dokja’s questions only get more annoying with constant input. He stops in the middle of mixing his fruit and berry bunch flavored mush to scrutinize the demon king, sitting on the counter.
“When was the last time you were on Earth?” he asks.
“Ah, let’s see,” Dokja leans back. “Maybe . . . about eight years in your time? But much longer for me, since the demon realms operate on their own plane of reality. Not since I was a human, anyways.”
“You used to be a human?”
“Well, yes,” Dokja tilts his head. “Don’t I look human? Minus the wings and horns.”
“You do,” Joonghyuk squints, “but how is that even possible?”
“Demon kings aren’t born kings, y’know. Like I said, there’s royalty, and that’s based off strength. You can challenge anyone you want to gain their title, if you win. If there’s no king in a realm or if the present one steps down, a scenario’s automatically started to decide one.”
“Scenario?”
“It’s just a contest,” Dokja waves off his confusion. “If the king’s still alive, you have to steal the crown off his head.”
“It’s that easy?” Joonghyuk tries to imagine it in his head. Honestly, with names like ‘demon realm’ and ‘Demon King of Salvation,’ one might have expected those battles to be a lot more gore-filled.
“No, it really isn’t. The previous king isn’t just going to lie down and let their subordinates take the throne so easily, y’know. It’s basically just the final deciding of who’s strong enough to beat the previous king and everybody else vying for the throne.”
“And you won that battle?”
“Oh, no,” Dokja chuckles. “I used to be human, remember? No way I can compete against other races. I had a different method of gaining this crown.”
“What was it?” Joonghyuk asks, impatient.
“That’s-” Dokja stops. “A story for another time. It involved a lot of scheming, though.”
Joonghyuk groans, pinching his brows. He’s doing that a lot lately, ever since this demon king came into his house and refused to leave him alone.
“You are worse than Han Sooyoung,” he informs Dokja. Honestly, is he doomed to always be the one who hears such cliffhangers from people? First Han Sooyoung, with her infuriatingly written protagonists and abrupt ends of arcs, and now Dokja, cutting off the tale of his own promotion at the part he wanted to know most.
“I’m not so much of a storyteller,” Dokja shrugs, though the glint in his eye tells Joonghyuk that he knows what he’s done.
“What even was your name as a human, then?”
“That’s also a secret,” Dokja says. “It’s not like anything interesting happened in it, either. I was just a regular man, until I died. That’s when everything actually happened.”
“You died?” Joonghyuk finishes stirring his mix.
“Yeah,” Dokja nods. “That’s how most get into the demon realm. Do something really bad, and when you die, you’ll be punished by becoming a servant eternal to the upper class.”
He pauses. “Not really much different from regular life, to be honest. Society’s all the same, huh?”
“I do not want to debate the morality of the state of our society with a demon king,” Joonghyuk sighs. “And what did you do to get sent there? Something horrific?”
“You could say that,” Dokja says. “Murder’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“Then you weren’t a regular man,” Joonghyuk glares. “The qualifications of being an ordinary person also include not killing anybody.”
“Cruel. The circumstances should be understandable, don’t you think?” Dokja pouts. “Although it did all work out in the end. I guess I should thank the higher power for that.”
“I’m assuming that the ‘higher power’ is you,” Joonghyuk informs him, “and I also don’t think you’ll tell me anymore of your past. So please go and harass Han Sooyoung instead.”
“You’re completely right,” Dokja smiles sunnily. “Thank you for the suggestion, but to be honest, I’d rather stay and watch you play games. There’s a reason why people stream games and not writing webnovels, I guess.
“Plus, Han Sooyoung-ssi is struggling a lot more with me watching, for some reason,” he contemplates. “Writers have it a lot tougher than I thought.”
“No, that’s a lie,” Joonghyuk denies. “Most writers, especially Han Sooyoung, like it when one watches them write. It gives them motivation.”
Dokja laughs. “I know you are lying, but I am a little curious as to what she is doing, so I think I will pay her a visit. Thank you for the talk.”
Without any other goodbye, Dokja disappears from his spot on the kitchen counter. No cloud of smoke, no interdimensional portal where he might be escaping.
Joonghyuk inhales his fruit and berry jelly in one breath, swallowing with difficulty.
Han Sooyoung will definitely get back at him for that, but it’s worth it for the couple hours of blessed quiet it will get him. Unlike Dokja, she is not omnipotent and also able to enter his apartment without a key or some lockpicks.
Joonghyuk can deal with Han Sooyoung. It might involve getting some bruises, but he can deal with it.
The problem is with Dokja. Personally, Joonghyuk thinks he’s adjusted to this rather well, when a normal person might have reported such things to the police. So has Han Sooyoung, although she’s been much more vocal about her annoyance in having an audience while she writes.
Perhaps he was too quick with accepting this demon king’s presence in his life.
He doesn’t really think himself the trusting type, but it’s strange. Something about Dokja makes him lower his defenses, despite not doing much besides following him around and hanging around his house occasionally. Which, granted, is also what Han Sooyoung used to do years ago, but it took him months to even admit that she was his friend.
Maybe he can even think, sometimes, that it could be more. When they spar at the gym, when she’s catching her breath, drinking water, and he catches himself staring at the column of her throat as she swallows. Logically, Joonghyuk knows there is some sort of attraction involved. Never too much, never enough for him to want to initiate anything, but it’s there.
Han Sooyoung is very conventionally attractive, and her personality, brash as it is, appeals to his own. Not pretty, but nice to look at, he’d say.
Dokja, on the other hand, is both extremely ordinary, and the strangest thing that has ever happened in his life. The King of a Demon Realm. The man can apparently jump dimensions and physical space, and also isn’t caught up in any major news from the past decade, despite claiming that he’d last been human eight years ago.
Honestly, Joonghyuk would be more skeptical about his claim, if it weren’t so baffling of a lie to tell. Dokja might not even be who he’s claiming to be, but who else could travel from another realm and only be interested in webnovels? If someone were to tell Joonghyuk a couple weeks ago that he’d be visited by a demon king, his thoughts would automatically go to the word apocalypse.
Dokja has done nothing in the four weeks since he’s arrived, besides just living beside Han Sooyoung and Joonghyuk. It’s strange. What his motive in coming here?
Joonghyuk would be willing to bet that coming into the human world would be more of a challenge than Dokja made it out to be; otherwise, wouldn’t there have been a national uproar of otherworldly occurrences? He still remembers how Dokja introduced himself at first; seventy-third demon king. Not a demon king, or the demon king. An assigned number, meaning there are seventy-two more kings before him.
Although the way he said it, you’d think the other kings wouldn’t be human. Joonghyuk can believe it. Humans don’t really have much to offer in the strength department in the way Dokja described it, against other aliens or whatever they are. Maybe that’s why none of them come to this world.
Joonghyuk watches ice fall from his refrigerator into his cup, clinking against the sides.
This is all becoming more complicated than he ever wanted it to be. He’s two years away from being thirty, shouldn’t he be trying to settle down or whatever it is people in their thirties do?
Well, it’s not like he planned for this to happen. Might as well do whatever he can with it, and be thankful he isn’t alone in this plight.
x
“Leave me alone,” Han Sooyoung moans. “Don’t you have a world to manage?”
“I’ve told you this before,” Dokja says. “My management and I have a deal. I maintain the position and challengers, and they do the actual ruling.”
“What a nice deal,” she says deadpan, sprawled out over her desk. “I’m guessing you were the one who came up with that arrangement?”
“No, actually,” he shakes his head. “I was commissioned by Aileen.”
“Forget I asked.”
Han Sooyoung rubs at her temples.
She’s going to kill Yoo Joonghyuk. As soon as she finishes this week’s chapter by the deadline, she’ll march him down to his fucking grave.
If she manages to finish the chapter, that is.
Han Sooyoung is burnt out. She has ideas but they refuse to transfer themselves onto her waiting document, line blinking in an almost offensive way, as if mocking the blank page. She grits her teeth, cracking her knuckles as she ignores Dokja looking around her room.
She doesn’t have writer’s block. She doesn’t. This week’s chapter would have been finished by now, if it weren’t for a certain demon king, barging into her house at all hours and generally being a huge nuisance.
And honestly, it isn’t like she’ll lose all the revenue she’s made off this novel just by taking a week-long break, but that’s not it. Her editor would understand needing a pause, and so would her readers, for the most part. It’s just the principle of it. Han Sooyoung, in her just-over-a-decade long career of publishing webnovels, has never taken an unscheduled break.
She takes pride in her work, and that includes pushing herself to the early hours of dawn to finish revising an entire chapter that she deemed unsatisfactory.
It’s part of the reason why she’s been so successful, although Yoo Joonghyuk keeps insisting that working all-nighters is doing nothing to help her writing quality.
Although the irony in that statement, isn’t lost on her. The amount of times they would stay up through the night together in university are countless.
If Han Sooyoung were any less benevolent, she might have told Yoo Joonghyuk that he was just getting old.
“Hey.”
Dokja’s voice startles her out of her reverie, his face hovering beside hers.
“Don’t surprise me like that,” Han Sooyoung groans. “And stop appearing and disappearing out of my house. What if you catch me taking a shower or something?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” he informs her. “I’m able to sense your general vicinity and movements before I arrive.”
“I’m so glad,” she deadpans. “Now will you leave me alone?”
“I just thought you might be having trouble with your writing,” Dokja smiles innocently, as if he isn’t the cause of said trouble. “Could I offer some suggestions? As an avid reader, of course.”
“Whatever.”
“If you’re having difficulty in furthering the main plot, why don’t you make a filler?” he suggests. “How about the characters going to a beach? Let the main characters have an off day?”
Han Sooyoung pauses.
Author-nim, how about going to a beach this regression turn?
She remembers- remembers something. A comment, from some trashy series on a freewebnovel site.
“A . . . beach episode?” she tilts her head. “But they’re in the middle of an important quest.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dokja says patiently. “There’s lots of reasons why they might need to go to a beach. A special item, or requirement that needs to be fulfilled to progress. Yoo Joonhyun’s party would want a break, right?”
“I guess so,” Han Sooyoung considers. “Wouldn’t the readers complain, though?”
“You probably already know this, but some will be unhappy no matter what, right?” Dokja shrugs. “I bet a ton of them want some reprieve to process the chapters up until now.”
“Hm. You’re right,” she agrees. “I guess that could work.”
Dokja nods along, grinning.
Han Sooyoung returns to her laptop, resuming her writing, but for some reason, it isn’t quite right.
Her fingers twitch on the keyboard.
“Aren’t you going to leave now?”
“What for?” Dokja asks.
“You’ve given me advice, and I know what to write, now. Isn’t that enough?”
“Sure,” Dokja says. “But I still have a couple hours until I need to return to my realm, and Yoo Joonghyuk is probably unavailable, right now. I’ll just watch you write.”
“It’s boring work,” Han Sooyoung says. “I write a lot of drafts before I’m done.”
“That’s alright,” Dokja counters. “I’m very patient.”
Her hand tightens around the pen in her left hand.
There’s no way she’ll get any work done with a specter floating directly behind her, watching her. But at the same time, she also can’t make him leave, since she isn’t able to touch him or do much of anything else besides talking.
Dokja, who gave her the inspiration for her next chapter, is also the reason for her writer’s block.
Han Sooyoung clenches her jaw.
Yoo Joonghyuk is dead.
x
It turns out, he cannot deal with Han Sooyoung.
The woman, he learns, is very determined. Especially with his apartment locks.
It’s only thanks to his fast reflexes that he’s able to shut off his camera as soon as Han Sooyoung kicks his door open while he’s streaming a game, but his mic isn’t so easily shut off-able. The fact that she’s pulling him by the arm away from his desk while yelling at him also isn’t a help.
“You’re the one who sent him to me, weren’t you?” Han Sooyoung accuses. “I fucking knew it. Do you know how long it took to convince him to fuck off and explore the outside? Four hours. Four hours that I could have spent writing the shitty beach episode-”
“I didn’t,” Joonghyuk tries to defend. “Wait, just let me turn off my-”
“I’ll let you play your shitty games,” Han Sooyoung hisses, “when you apologize for making me suffer through that jerk Dokja’s incessant questions right before my deadline.”
“It’s not my game,” he attempts to yank his arm out of her grip, but her hand doesn’t even shift. He suddenly, vividly regrets suggesting bar gymnastics to her, years ago. “It’s my mic.”
“It’s your what?” she glances over. “Don’t try to weasel your way out of this, you-”
“Are you two fighting?”
Just then, the worst person possible arrives, appearing out of nowhere. Joonghyuk is incredibly glad that he at least had the sense to shut off his camera beforehand.
“We are not,” he grits out, but then Han Sooyoung’s hand is colliding with his shoulder, leaving it smarting.
“We are,” she growls. “This is the guy who said it’d be a good idea to bother me, yeah?”
“Yes,” Dokja nods, “but there’s no reason for you two to be fighting. Aren’t you friends?”
“Friends don’t interfere with friends’ deadlines,” Han Sooyoung shakes her head, face turning red from exertion.
“Friends don’t break into friends’ apartments!” Joonghyuk’s voice rises, even though he knows it is a bad idea. The mic is still on, but really. This is ridiculous. All he did was suggest something; Dokja didn’t have to listen.
He whips his head to the demon king in question.
“It is your fault.”
“What?” Dokja’s face twists. “How is it mine? All I did was go where you told me to.”
“You didn’t have to bother her for so long,” Joonghyuk says.
“Wow, that’s low,” Dokja scowls. “I follow your instructions, and I get all the blame pinned on me.”
“You both are in fault,” Han Sooyoung says angrily. “Get out of the room.”
“This is my house,” Joonghyuk snarls. “If it’s anyone who should be getting out, it’s you two. Unless you want to pay rent, let me go.”
“I don’t even have human money-”
"Shut up, both of you!"