Archive of Our Own

1.

In the dream, he’s in the subway.

This is not the first time Dokja has dreamt of the subway, nor will it be the last. Time after time, night after night, he returns here: the subway crammed full of people, the subway empty and devoid of life, the subway with the monster raising a blade over his head. Sometimes it’s in the car; sometimes it’s in the station. But it always stays the same.

In the dream, he’s sitting alone in the subway car. It moves steadily along the tracks, rattling under his feet, arm rails swinging and clacking overhead. The lights are bright. Outside is darkness.

He blinks, and then someone is sitting across from him.

She sharpens into view, little by little: a baseball cap, ankle-length pants, a white coat. But when Dokja tries to look at her face her features go vague, indistinct — though somehow he can tell she’s looking at him, silently, as if listening. It takes him a moment to realize it’s because he’s talking. He can’t understand himself, in the way the words in dreams slide away into foreign tongue once they leave your mouth, but he thinks he might be telling her about a story he read.

The subway trundles on, its rumble a gentle hum in the background. For once he doesn’t mind it so much; for once it doesn’t seem like a nightmare. Dokja talks and talks and talks, and the woman listens.

When the train slows to a stop, the familiar sights of a station blurring behind the windows, Dokja falls quiet, too. He stands up because this is his station, knows that in some inexplicable omniscient way, but when he steps past the sliding doors and turns around, the woman is still seated there, hands folded atop her lap.

Something twists in Dokja’s chest, clenches. It hurts. He doesn’t know why, but it hurts, and the idea of those doors sliding shut, the subway disappearing into the darkness, the woman gone forever —

He takes a step forward, but pauses. This is his stop. He can’t go back. Something tells him it won’t change anything.

So he watches the doors judder for a second as they begin to close, slowly, shutting out the rest of the seats, his view of the woman shrinking into a sliver — and at the last moment he jolts, because the woman opens her mouth to speak, and —

“Dokja-ya!” Uriel cries, her face swimming into focus above him, and the subway blinks out of existence as Dokja bolts awake, Uriel’s hands on his shoulders like she’d been shaking him back and forth. “Really, today of all days, you slept right through — wait, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“What?” Dokja groans, rubbing his eyes to wake himself up, then staring down at his hands when they come away wet. “Oh,” he says, weakly. “It — It was a dream…”

Uriel goes quiet, her panicked expression fading to make room for sadness the depths of which Dokja doesn’t think he can ever fathom, no matter how many times he sees the corners of it, on late nights and early mornings. “Was it a nightmare?” she asks, so softly the other household noises almost drown her out. There’s no pity in her voice, but Dokja squirms all the same at the attention — and anyway, that hadn’t been a nightmare, had it? Only there had been something nightmarish about… about… What had it been about, again? “If you’d like to stay at home…”

Normally Dokja would jump at the chance to skip school and stay here all day — even if that means being dragged to the home gym Lee Hyunsung and Lee Jihye have set up, even if that means Yoo Joonghyuk will try to teach him a new recipe and Dokja will just end up getting flour all over the kitchen — but then he remembers why Uriel had woken him up in such a frenzy in the first place.

“No — it’s fine!” he exclaims, kicking the blankets off and swinging his legs off the bed. Evidently he stands up too soon because his vision swims, and he has to very subtly grab onto the bedside dresser to steady himself so Uriel doesn’t notice and remember to force vitamin B pills on him again. “I can’t skip the class trip again!”

Last year he had been too sickly to go with the rest of his class on the annual field trip, which he’d sulked about for days despite knowing full well he wouldn’t have lasted half an hour on the mountain trail they were supposed to go hiking on. His classmates tried to tell him they were all far too hot and sweaty to enjoy it, so really Dokja hadn’t missed out on anything, but clearly they’d enjoyed it a little when half the class got lost in the forested area and ran around in circles while shouting at each other to return to the path.

So of course he isn’t about to skip this year’s trip, not when his motion sickness is no longer as unbearable as before and he can walk for longer than ten minutes without getting tired. Also, it helps that their destination this year is just a bunch of temples rather than a mountain.

“Dokja-ya, you forgot your extra uniform set,” is the first thing Lee Hyunsung says when Dokja heads down the stairs and arrives at the dining table. To Dokja’s dismay, his backpack looks twice as full as it had last night when he had finished packing. “And a towel! And a hat! And some tissues and hand sanitizer and—”

“Ahjussi…” Dokja sits down by his place at the table, where a plate of breakfast has already been prepared. “I don’t need all of that.”

Lee Hyunsung looks genuinely heartbroken. “But you’re going on a trip—”

“It’s okay! Really! I packed that myself, so don’t worry!”

“Ahh, the kid will be fine,” someone dismisses, to Dokja’s relief. Kim Namwoon takes the stairs two at a time, plopping down on the chair beside Dokja and snatching one of the kimbap from his plate. “You’re bringing our secret weapon, right?” At Dokja’s solemn nod, he cackles and smacks his back with far too much force this early in the morning. “See! He’ll do alright! If anyone tries to get the drop on him, they’ll get a nasty surprise!”

Lee Hyunsung stares at them. “What did you put in that bag?”

Dokja stuffs the last of his breakfast in his mouth and shoots up from his seat. He has no desire for Lee Hyunsung to know Kim Namwoon had convinced Dokja to bring a pocket knife along. “Gotta go! I’ll be late! Where’s Joonghyuk-ahjussi? He is driving, right?” Usually Lee Hyunsung drives the most, because after manually fixing and repairing and modifying the dingy old car they got secondhand so many times he’s started treating the thing like his favorite daughter, but Dokja had specifically requested Yoo Joonghyuk be the one to drive him to school this time. Mostly because he intends to dump everything Lee Hyunsung had stuffed in his bag in the backseat.

Lee Hyunsung is now staring at his backpack with the intensity of a police hound. “Not so fast. Let me double-check to make sure you—”

“Lay off, soldier-ahjussi! You don’t trust me?”

“No.”

Dokja slings his backpack on and almost topples over from the weight. Did Lee Hyunsung cram every single one of his uniform sets in here? Even Yoo Joonghyuk won’t be able to fault him for taking some of these out. It’s just like in video games, when hitting weight limit reduces your stats and prevents auto-regeneration…

He makes it as far as the front door when Uriel, running so fast she practically materializes out of nowhere, nearly smacks into him. “Hold on! You didn’t even brush your hair after waking up!” she cries, brandishing a comb in her hand, the feathers on her wings ruffled in her distress. Against all common sense, Dokja resigns himself to standing still and letting Uriel brush his hair, straighten his tie, and smoothen his collar — and even then, she still looks at him like he could do with some makeup. Then, to his horror, she tears up. “I can’t believe it’s been a year since you cried over not getting to go to that mountain hike…”

Dokja groans. “Noona…”

“Humans — I mean, kids grow up so fast! Sooner or later you’ll get your growth spurt, won’t you? Surely it’s not too late for that?” Uriel suddenly looks thoughtful. “Maybe you need those vitamins again—”

“Noona…”

“Alright, alright!” She pushes down on one more stubborn strand of hair on his head before leaning in and kissing his forehead. Dokja squirms in place and tries not to combust from embarrassment. Everyday he’s grateful Uriel has to get to work early in the morning and never has school-driving duty, because if any of his classmates — or anyone in school, really — saw him getting a kiss from Mommy he might really and seriously die of shame. “Have fun! Stay safe! Call if you need anything! You brought some of those sickness bags just in case, right—”

Dokja waves goodbye and flees out the door before Uriel can say anything worse.

Even just carrying his backpack from the front door to where their car is parked is a test of strength no PE class could replicate. Dokja clambers in the backseat and sets his bag down on the floor with a wheeze. In the passenger seat, Lee Jihye turns around and chokes on a laugh. “Did Hyunsung-ahjussi go too far again? Oh man, he really hasn’t been a student for ages! Who carries that much around on a field trip?”

“Jihye,” Yoo Joonghyuk, from the driver’s seat, says, “you haven’t been a student for ages either.”

“Oh, come on, you know what I mean. And anyway, I’m a student now, aren’t I? A driving student, anyway. Hey, kid, you still breathing?”

Dokja glares sullenly up at Lee Jihye’s grin before he opens his bag and pulls out the three extra uniform sets neatly folded on top of all his other stuff. “Don’t tell Ahjussi, he’ll get sad again. This is for my own good… Seriously, if I brought all of this with me, I wouldn’t even have space for my—” Dokja jolts so hard he bumps his head on the roof of the car. “Wait, my lunch! I almost forgot — let me go grab it real quick—”

“No need,” Yoo Joonghyuk, from the backseat beside Dokja, says. “I have it here.”

“Ah, thanks.” Dokja watches, fascinated, as [999] lifts the lunchbox up and carefully places it in his backpack. Despite how he’s been living, breathing, and doing the chores together with the kkoma Yoo Joonghyuks for almost a year now, he still can’t help but stare a little every time they do something as mundane as use a spatula or water the garden plants or lift up lunchboxes. The urge to cup one in his hands like he would a hamster never completely goes away either. “Um, also, for today, could you…”

[999] looks expectantly up at him.

“…stay at home with Ahjussi and the rest? Don’t follow me. Don’t hide in my bag. Don’t do anything like that.”

[999] stares at the ground as if suffering a personal grievance. “…Very well.”

Lee Jihye bends over laughing so hard, she can’t stop long enough to do her seatbelt. “It’s like telling a dog to stay! What’s next? Shouldn’t you give him a treat for obeying, kid?”

Yoo Joonghyuk sighs and reaches out to yank her seatbelt into its buckle before starting the car. “You took your time, Dokja. If Lee Hyunsung were driving, you would be late and miss the bus.”

Dokja gulps. “Sorry. I…” had a dream… and woke up crying… Yeah, as if he’s saying that. “I slept through the alarm. Slept late, I guess.”

“That’s what you get for being on that damn phone all the time,” Lee Jihye says, deepening her voice in a horrible imitation of Yoo Joonghyuk’s.

“L-Let’s just get going already, please? It won’t happen again!”

But what had the dream been about? Dokja wonders, over and over, on the car ride to school.

They’re supposed to be taking notes on things like architecture, religion, and history, but Dokja mostly uses the notebook he brought to doodle the temples they visit and the landscapes they see on the bus ride. Most likely he and his classmates will just all pitch in together and help each other out ten minutes before they have to submit their essay the next day.

Their last stop is apparently one of the oldest temples in the area, several hours away from Seoul and closed in on all sides by trees, but that’s as far as Dokja listens to their teacher; he along with half his class have already gravitated towards the souvenir booth, where the temple is selling small amulet charms that would fit neatly in a wallet. Dokja scans the blessings written on the pouches: success in business, good fortune, childbirth… Which ones would suit Yoo Joonghyuk and the others back home? Would they even like these kinds of things? Uriel would probably prefer something more Catholic, but then again Dokja’s never seen her actually pray, nor do they have a dedicated altar at home. It’s probably fine.

He’s just finished paying for all six — five for them, and an education one for himself — when something moves in the corner of his eye, and he turns just in time to see a white blur disappear behind some bushes.

Dokja blinks, standing in place and consequently holding up the line for souvenirs, though he hardly even notices the irritated look the student from a different school shoots him as they push past in the line. What had that been? An animal? A bird, maybe? It had moved too quickly for him to see anything other than it being white. Had it been the edge of a shirt?

And why, despite how indistinct that single glance had been, did it seem so familiar?

It doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t even really know what that flash of white had reminded him of, only that it had felt like he’d been on the verge of realizing something — remembering something, for a moment, only for the chance to slip him by. Before he knows it he’s taken a step forward, then another, and then the worn dirt path under his feet has turned into grass.

Dokja gives his surroundings a casual, cursory glance. No one seems to notice him — the teachers are on the other side of the temple, and the other students are either busy with the souvenir shop, taking pictures, or writing down notes. If he just takes a quick look around back, he’ll return here before anyone notices, and certainly before late afternoon finishes transitioning into early evening. He takes a moment to steel himself, then heads into the woods around the temple.

It isn’t as unnerving as he expected. The trees aren’t thick enough to block out the sunlight, so he can see clearly enough, and the constant background noise of leaves rustling and birds singing is almost relaxing. Dokja had gone on a road trip once with Yoo Joonghyuk and the others during summer vacation, but they’d mostly visited tourist attractions and popular restaurants rather than trek through a forest. Which makes sense, actually, because Dokja’s not sure he would have survived a trek through the forest back then, when he would be out of breath just going up two flights of stairs to his classroom in school; now, at least, he can walk at his own pace and admire his surroundings.

There aren’t any white birds, though, or even flying plastic bags. Dokja turns his head around so many times in an attempt to spot whatever that had been earlier that he gets dizzy after a few minutes. In all this green and brown, surely something white would stand out…?

He wanders aimlessly for a while — if there had been a path here once, it’s been long since overgrown by grass and plants, so Dokja picks his way carefully through, trying to move in a straight path so returning to the temple won’t be difficult. Of course that plan falls away fairly quickly when he hears the faint but undeniable sound of a running stream, and curiosity pushes him to follow the noise, weaving through mossy trees and ducking under low-hanging branches until, when he quietly steps out onto a patch of wet leaves, he finds… something.

In the late afternoon glow, the sight is beautiful enough to make him pause entirely. The stream is shallow, closer to a creek, the water running over smooth rocks and reflecting the light; a breeze passes by, rustling the leaves on the trees overhead so the dappled sunshine dances across the grass. Birdsong, high and sweet, drifts through the air like the whole forest is singing.

Crouching on the bank is a girl, short hair framing her face, her hand gently stroking the head of a scraggly black cat. The sunlight casts golden rays on the crown of her head, runs like liquid radiance down her back.

They’ve never met, this Dokja knows for sure. She’s wearing a different uniform, which must mean she’s a student from the other school also here for their class trip, so obviously Dokja would never have seen her before — right? So why is there something so deathly familiar about her, as if this is far from the first time they’re seeing each other, as if he’s seen her somewhere on the tip of his tongue yet deep in the recesses of his memories? They’ve never met, this Dokja knows for sure — so why does his throat feel tight and his eyes go warm? Why does it feel so hard to breathe, all of a sudden, like the next breath he takes may be what forever ruins the sanctity of this scene?

He should say something, he decides. He should step forward, reach out, ask if they’ve ever seen each other before. It might sound like a line — no, it’ll definitely sound like a line — but it’ll be worth it if he gets some answers, some explanation for the painful throb in his chest. Dokja will reach out. Dokja will say something.

Dokja steps on a twig.

The cat is up and running in a flash, disappearing into the undergrowth before the girl has even finished stumbling onto the mass of wet leaves beneath her. “W-Wha?!” she yelps, blinking at where the cat had fled and then up at Dokja, who now feels like the biggest idiot in the world. “Who are — What are you doing here? No, wait, you’re from the other school, aren’t you? Are people looking for me already? Shit!”

Hearing a much younger girl cursing so naturally has Dokja staring at her, at a loss for words. Already the desperate need to reach out to her has faded, but the strange sensation of familiarity — of déjà vu, he realizes now — lingers like a ghost, leaving him unsure of how to act, what to say. In the end, when the girl’s expression goes from surprised to confused to annoyed, all Dokja can manage is, “No, um… No one’s looking for you. I think.”

“You think?” the girl snorts.

“I came out here looking for something else. Not you. Why would people be looking for you anyway?”

The girl colors, and now it’s her turn to look away, though she sneaks unsubtle glances up at Dokja. “Uh, ’cause… ’cause I’m their classmate! Duh!” She stands up, sweeping dirt off her skirt; they’re nearly the same height, to Dokja’s embarrassment. Then she turns in a slow circle around herself and scowls at him once she finishes her turn. “Oh, great. You scared it off!”

“What?”

“The cat! It ran off! Thanks to you stomping all around the place,” the girl seethes. “It took forever for it to stop running away from me and let me pet it. Ugh…” She looks at him for a long while, and for a moment Dokja wonders: Does she feel it too? Is she getting that strange sense of déjà vu, like she’s seen him somewhere before, like she needs to tell him something now, before it’s too late? Maybe they can figure this out together. Maybe there really is something he’s not noticing here, something she could help with —

“Hey,” she says. “Do you know how to get back?”

It only takes about five minutes for Dokja to wonder why he’d ever thought this girl could be some long-lost soulmate of his. Not only is she an expert at getting on other people’s nerves, she also keeps blaming him for not checking where he was going. Which, okay, that’s his fault, but — “In that case, you should have kept an eye on where you were going too,” he coolly, calmly remarks, determined not to sink to this girl’s level and act like a spoiled brat. “Or were you that desperate to run away? Planning to live in these woods forever? Hmm… I can admire your level of stupidity, I guess…”

“S-Stu—!” The girl’s face goes a spectacular shade of red. “Just who do you think you are?! As if you’re that much different from me! Look, I got distracted by the cat, so I’ve got an excuse. What about you, huh? You said you came here looking for something? What was it, a bird? Maybe a dog?”

Dokja clamps down on his tongue before he can say anything stupid. Instead he shakes his head like he doesn’t have the time to entertain small children, never mind that they’re probably not that far apart in age. “Either way, we’re stuck here and it’s getting dark, so stop whining. Aren’t you scared some big bad monster is going to hear you?”

“The fuck? I’m fourteen, not four!”

“What? I don’t think the teachers were lying when they said there’s the occasional wolf here. Also, children shouldn’t curse so much.”

“Who’s the child here?! How old are you, anyway? Twelve?”

Dokja has to briefly close his eyes at the psychological attack. “I’m sixteen, actually. I’m your upperclassman, so you should use polite speech when—”

“Upperclassman. Polite speech! You’re from a different school, weirdo. If I have to speak politely, then so do you!”

“What is your name, then?”

The girl gives him a distrusting look. “Why should I tell you? Weirdo,” she adds, now using the word like punctuation. “It’s Han Sooyoung,” she says anyway without waiting for a reply. “And no way are you sixteen.”

“I just haven’t hit my growth spurt,” Dokja explains. “It’s due to come any day now.”

“Um,” the girl — Han Sooyoung — says, “sure. What’s your name?”

“Kim Dokja.”

“Weird name.”

“Thanks,” Dokja says, dryly. “So, Han Sooyoung-nim, if you would be so kind as to remember where you came from or which direction you took, please show me the way—”

Han Sooyoung shudders. “Okay, enough! Quit talking like that!”

“You told me to—”

“You are so annoying! And I’m telling you, I don’t remember! I just followed the cat, okay? Maybe if you hadn’t shown up when you did—”

“What, would the cat have shown you the way back? How cute. By the way, Han Sooyoung-nim, how many books do you read on a daily basis?”

Dokja is starting to really enjoy how easy it is to make Han Sooyoung look seconds away from spontaneously combusting. “Shut… up,” Han Sooyoung grinds out through gritted teeth. “Okay, fine. Look, let’s just keep walking and shouting our friends’ names. They’ll hear us, right? We’re not that far from the temple. Besides, it’s already this late,” she adds, gesturing to the darkening sky above them, “so they’ve probably done a roll-call to get everyone back in the buses. They’ll notice we’re missing and be on the lookout for us.”

Dokja hums. He had more or less thought the same thing, but Han Sooyoung had sounded pretty reliable when she said it aloud. Maybe she’s not that spoiled a brat? Or maybe she’s used to running away like this? “Sure, sounds good.”

Han Sooyoung stares at him. “What? Aren’t you gonna tell me you think my plan’s stupid?”

“I mean, it’s the only plan we can feasibly have, right?”

“‘Feasibly…?’ What are you, a research paper?”

“That should convince you that I’m really in high school.”

“That doesn’t really…” Han Sooyoung rolls her eyes. “Never mind. Suuure, you’re sixteen, you’re in high school, riiight. You know you’ll be called a creep for hanging out with me then, right?” When Dokja, genuinely puzzled, can only blink down at her, Han Sooyoung snickers and continues: “What kind of high school boy gets himself alone with a beautiful middle school girl like me out in the woods? Your teacher and my teacher are going to put you on classroom cleaning duty for the rest of the year.”

“Ah, I see…” Dokja keeps the politely confused expression on his face, just to annoy Han Sooyoung more. “But, I’m not interested in four-year-olds?”

“…I’m going to kill—”

But Han Sooyoung doesn’t get to finish her death threat, because something rustles — loudly.

She jolts, Dokja startles, and the both of them try scanning their surroundings before they’re cruelly reminded that’s virtually impossible now that it’s completely pitch-black around them. Even when they fumble for their phone flashlights, the forest has gone from the peaceful, friendly woods they had been in the daylight to every dark, mysterious, definitely-haunted horror movie location.

The rustle returns, even louder this time, almost certainly closer to where the two of them are standing stock-still like a pair of horror movie victims.

“What were you saying about wolves, again?” Han Sooyoung squeaks.

When something approaches from the darkness, Han Sooyoung grips Dokja’s arm in a vice, nails digging into his skin, and Dokja grabs her wrist in matching horror. Maybe if he calls Uriel now she can fly from home to here within about three and a half seconds. No, maybe two and a half? Two? How long will it take for a hypothetical wolf to chase them down the forest and gobble them up for dinner? Beside him, Han Sooyoung is shaking like a leaf. Maybe Dokja should have brought [999] along after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone on this trip after all —

“…Meow?”

“Ah,” Han Sooyoung says, in a sigh of relief so heavy she sways on her feet for a moment before steadying herself on Dokja’s arm. Dokja’s arm, which is rapidly starting to sting now that he’s no longer in danger of getting ripped limb from limb and has enough space in his brain to process other feelings, like how much Han Sooyoung’s nails hurt. “It… It’s you! You came back!”

Dokja stares, dumbfounded, as Han Sooyoung crouches down and the black cat from earlier happily nuzzles against her hands. She pets it for a while before looking up at Dokja, a wicked grin on her face. “How’s that for reading too many books, Kim Dokja?”

“…Well, is it going to show us the way back?”

Ridiculously enough, once the cat starts walking, it brings them all the way back to the temple where it then proceeds to curl up by the foot of the souvenir shop — long closed, it seems, though the employee from earlier bends down to pat its head. Han Sooyoung makes to follow the cat, but a swarm of other girls wearing the same uniform she is instantly bear down on her the moment they step out of the forest. “Sooyoung-ah! Where have you been? We’ve been searching all day!” one of them cries.

“That’s right! We totally thought you got kidnapped, like, for real this time!”

“The one time you didn’t bring those bodyguards, too!”

Bodyguards? Dokja wonders, but before Han Sooyoung can say anything to clarify, his own classmates have surrounded him too, smacking his back and clapping his shoulder like they’re checking to see if he’s still human. Not for the first time, Dokja is glad they’re nowhere near as strong as Kim Namwoon or Lee Jihye. “Hey, Dokja-ya! What was that all about? You went all alone out in those woods?”

One of them shudders theatrically. “They’re way creepy! How’d you stand it in there? I’d have run around screaming my head off, man.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know you’re a coward. No, wait, you weren’t alone, were you, Dokja-ssi? Who’s that girl you came out with?”

His friend whistles. “Did you get along ’cause you’re both super short?”

For some reason Dokja feels his face warm, even if he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Height has nothing to do with it! And, uh, she’s… from the other school.” At the looks on his classmates’ faces that clearly read Duh, he tentatively adds, “She was in the woods too. We just bumped into each other. And, uh… got lost… together?”

“That’s so not what happened,” Han Sooyoung mutters, and Dokja turns to see her and her classmates beside them. If he had felt embarrassed, Han Sooyoung looks even worse off, probably because of her friends’ teasing grins. “I would have been fine if you hadn’t scared the cat away! Sheesh!”

“We would both have been fine if you knew how to pay attention to your surroundings. I guess they don’t teach kids that until they’re in high school.”

“You… Youuu…!”

“Oookay, it’s time for Sooyoung-ie to cool off,” one of the girls says, hastily grabbing Han Sooyoung around the shoulders before she can presumably maul Dokja where he stands. Dokja can’t help the grin on his face, nor the weird endearment he can feel at how mad Han Sooyoung looks. Is this what it’s like to own a Chihuahua that clearly hates your guts? “Hey, thanks for bringing her back safe… Oh, you guys are in high school? Then you’re our upperclassmen!”

“Don’t say that! They’re not! And don’t thank him, he didn’t even do anything to help!” Han Sooyoung protests.

They head down the temple path together and all the way to their school buses, parked almost right next to each other — Han Sooyoung’s friends file in first, all of them chattering excitably among one another, but Han Sooyoung herself lingers by the doorway. So does Dokja, though for what reason he can’t imagine why. For a long, awkward moment all they do is stand there by their different buses, ready to go their different ways yet not quite able to take that final step away from each other.

“Well,” Dokja eventually says, because he might as well save Han Sooyoung the humiliation of speaking first, “bye now.”

Han Sooyoung looks up at him, looks away just as quickly. “Sure. Bye.”

“Shame we’ll never see each other again. I had fun bullying you.”

“You fucking—!”

“Potty mouth,” Dokja chides, finally climbing up the steps of the bus. “Take care, Han Sooyoung.” Then he swings himself up and into the bus, the door hissing closed behind him.

He tells himself not to, because it will only hurt more, but he can’t resist throwing one last, desperate glance over his shoulder, through the tinted windows of the bus — because there had been something there, right? He hadn’t completely imagined the sense of familiarity he’d felt upon seeing Han Sooyoung for the first time, and there had to be a reason it felt so easy teasing her and pushing her around when at the start of the year it had taken him forever to even say hello to some of his classmates. There had been something. There might still be something, if he can only figure out what.

But the bus is too high above the ground, and Dokja can only smile wryly at the very top of Han Sooyoung’s head.

Still — could that mean there’s the sliver of a chance they’ll meet again? He’ll take that tiny one percent if he has to, if it’s the only chance he’ll get.

At home, he distributes the amulet souvenirs he’d bought for everyone: traffic safety for Lee Hyunsung (he drives the most, after all), love and marriage for Uriel (good luck, noona! fighting, noona!), health for Lee Jihye (not that she really needs more of it, but it can’t hurt), ward away evil for Kim Namwoon (ward away yourself from yourself… brat, are you telling me to explode?!), and finally happiness for Yoo Joonghyuk. Dokja feels a little silly afterwards for making such a big deal out of some lame souvenirs, but he watches them all dutifully slip these into wallets and pouches and pockets, and later on he sees a small congregation of kkoma Yoo Joonghyuks drawing a schedule for who gets to hold the amulet for the day.

It’s only when he’s lying in bed, exhausted but content, that he realizes: Han Sooyoung’s uniform blazer was dark blue, and the stray cat had black fur. In the end, what was that flash of white that led Dokja into the woods and to Han Sooyoung in the first place…?

2.

Sooyoung is pissed.

This is nothing new, but today she is even more pissed than usual. Her literature teacher didn’t just give her a horrible grade on her short story assignment — the only time she’s ever been given a grade this low on any paper, in any class — but even made her stay after class to talk. “Your writing is quite good for your age, Sooyoung — and I’m sure you hear that all the time,” he had said. “But when it comes to originality… I think you need a little help there. You said you want to be an author when you grow up, didn’t you?”

Sooyoung had been writing that in all their career worksheets and counseling guides for the past several years, but hearing it said aloud was somehow embarrassing, especially since it seemed like the teacher was working his way up to telling her she should give up on it. She ducked her head and muttered affirmation.

“In that case, you must read a lot of books. Now, you know what a cliché is, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you should also know many readers don’t like them because they’re predictable and unoriginal. When you’re reading a book full of clichés, don’t you get the urge to… change it a little bit, make it less boring? Of course, a good writer can write typical clichés and do something interesting with it, but—”

At this point Sooyoung’s short temper had reached its limit. “I’m a good writer.”

The teacher looked taken aback. “I mean… Well, yes, you are. But—”

“I don’t deserve this grade.” She paused, trying to calm her raging thoughts into something more coherent. She didn’t want to be accused of having thrown a tantrum to get her way again, and the one time she had been desperate enough to drop her father’s name to get out of missing an assignment, she’d been so full of guilt and self-loathing and humiliation that she’d never done it again. Sooyoung knows better now: to reason with adults, you have to pretend to be on their level. “If I rewrite my assignment,” she said, slowly, “will you consider giving me a different grade?”

Her teacher pursed his lips, which wasn’t a good sign. “I don’t know… It’d be unfair to the rest of the class.”

“Then give them another chance, too,” Sooyoung reasoned. “If they want to, they can write something new and get a better grade. But if they don’t care, they don’t need to do it. That’s fine, right?” In truth, she knew no one in her class would care; most of them weren’t big on books, preferring movies or TV shows or other sorts of media, and the only things they ever wrote were essays for class.

It took a while, but eventually she’d convinced him to give her another chance. Of course, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t just give her a lower grade for her next submission, but Sooyoung is determined it won’t come to that.

Or… well, that was the plan, anyway.

He’d given her the weekend to work on it, and Sooyoung had been confident she’d be done by Saturday morning. Now it’s Sunday afternoon, Sooyoung can barely keep her eyes open after passing out at 3am last night, she’s run out of sweets and drinks to keep herself going, and her laptop screen is still studiously blank.

“…Ugh…”

It doesn’t help that today is hot and sunny, and Sooyoung makes a face every time sweat makes her wrists stick to her laptop. No matter what, she just can’t get comfortable enough to focus on writing, or even on coming up with an idea to write about in the first place. But if she can’t prove herself… that might just be worse than getting a lower grade.

Maybe she just needs some inspiration. Yeah, Sooyoung’s gotten some of her best ideas when at school or on the subway — or, more recently, on the bus, but that was a one-time thing. She peels herself off her chair, changes out of her pajamas, and heads outside. Obviously she can’t go to school on the weekend, and the bus isn’t an option since she has no idea how the routes for that work… but what if she takes a longer subway ride than normal? If she does something different, wouldn’t she also get a more novel idea that way? It’s as good a plan as Sooyoung is going to have.

Riding on the subway is always a strange experience for Sooyoung, though she can never pinpoint why or how. It had been the first of many things she had to teach herself, because her parents didn’t care enough to bother: at barely five years old she had memorized train routes and timetables like she would the multiplication table, and at seven she had learned how to carry pepper spray around after a bad encounter on the evening train. You’d think she’d hate it, then, listen to other students her age chattering with their friends in small pairs and clusters throughout the subway car, feel more alone than ever sitting or standing silently at the side, always on the fringes of something she so rarely has the nerve to reach out for herself.

But Sooyoung likes the motions, oddly enough. The rumble of the train, the clack of the arm rails, the sway of the car — all of it is always relaxing enough to have her calming down, and today is no exception. On a Sunday, the train isn’t as cramped as usual, and Sooyoung lets the rhythm of its movements guide her thoughts. If I’m having trouble with what clichés to use and how to make them better… I should read some more, right? But there’s nothing new in the library near my place… If only I could go somewhere new…

Unwittingly her mind drifts back to that temple. It had been the perfect place for peace and quiet, a good several hours’ ride away from Seoul and sitting in a beautiful forest… that obviously doesn’t have wolves, Sooyoung thinks, rolling her eyes. What was that boy’s name again? Kim Dokja? Weird name for a weird guy. He seriously thought she’d believe him when he was just trying to scare her? And he’d had the nerve to blame her for not paying attention for where she was going!

…But getting lost with him in that forest, bickering back and forth, feeling that strange sense of familiarity the moment she laid eyes on him… Well, it was new, and interesting, and maybe even something that could belong in a novel. Maybe.

She gets off at a stop she usually only passes by on the way to school, feeling a little lost when she steps out of the station and into unfamiliar surroundings. But she only pauses for a moment before pulling a map open on her phone and heading for the nearest bookshop.

There are a few scattered throughout the streets, and Sooyoung ducks in and out of each one, growing more dissatisfied by the minute. The selections here aren’t any different from the libraries and bookshops near her place, and maybe she should have expected that, but she’d been hoping a different area would have a different set of choices for her, too. Her last stop is a secondhand store for used books — she usually doesn’t check these out, because old books don’t have the same clichés or tropes she finds best in more modern novels, but she figures she may as well make an effort to broaden her horizons, even if she honestly doubts she’ll find anything of worth here either.

It looks like this is a pretty quiet neighborhood, because the past few bookshops she’s stopped by have been mostly empty. This one only has an employee behind the counter and one other boy by the sales display, flicking dispassionately through some tattered copies. Sooyoung steps closer to see what else is on the shelf —

And nearly falls back on her ass. “You!”

The employee shoots her a dirty look, probably because she’d shouted loud enough to scare a flock of birds off a nearby tree. But Sooyoung doesn’t care, not when she’s looking in the face of someone she thought she’d never see again — someone she had just been thinking of a few hours ago, even. The boy — Kim Dokja — startles backward, dropping his book then fumbling to catch it before it hits the ground and somehow hitting his knee against the underside of the display shelf and stumbling back once more from the pain. “Ow, ow—”

Sooyoung snatches the book up before it can fall, raising an eyebrow down at the coffee-stained cover. “What are you doing here?”

“What? What did I do?” Kim Dokja groans, steadying himself on the shelf behind him. “You… You’re that girl. From before.”

“Don’t you dare tell me you forgot my name.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to jog my memory…” He grins when Sooyoung steps forward with intent. “I’m just kidding. Han Sooyoung-nim, right?”

“Drop that stupid -nim already! Did you follow me or something? Did you fall in love with me after our tryst in the forest and stalk me on social media?” Sooyoung shudders. “High school boys are so gross. Don’t come any closer or I’m calling the police.”

Kim Dokja scoffs. “Kids your age shouldn’t be saying words like tryst… and for your information, if anyone is the stalker here, it’s you. I live within walking distance from here. Oh no, I shouldn’t have said that, now the stalker knows where I live…”

“Stop calling me that! And don’t read boring books like these.” Sooyoung sets the offending boring book back on the display, once again ignoring the employee’s glare she can feel burning the back of her head. So you live here? she wants to ask; It’s not that far from my place by subway, but this is the first time I’ve come here. What kind of coincidence is it that we’d meet like this, when I thought we’d never even see each other again? Because she had been disappointed, just a little bit, when Kim Dokja had climbed into that bus and disappeared from sight — in that moment something had clenched in her chest, something had urged her to follow him, something had made her so beyond desperate to make sure they would meet again because she absolutely had to tell him something —

But what? Even after several restless nights of replaying every detail of their encounter Sooyoung couldn’t glean any more from it than she had the first time. And now that she’s looking at him rather than shouting in his face, she can feel a relief settling upon her, relaxing her shoulders, loosening the knot in her chest.

“You don’t live around here, do you?” Kim Dokja is asking, pulling Sooyoung out of her thoughts. He’s already back to browsing the books on display, though he doesn’t look particularly interested. “We would’ve seen each other once, at least. What brought you so far out?”

“Oh…” The extremely mundane topic of conversation almost has Sooyoung floundering for a moment before she remembers what made her come out here in the first place. “I was looking for some new books. I need to prove something to my teacher, but first I need to do some… some… market research.”

Kim Dokja stares at her. “What?”

With such a willing audience, who is Sooyoung to not express her feelings? “That asshole gave me a shitty grade on my short story assignment!” she explodes. Kim Dokja raises an eyebrow but says nothing, just leans back and watches her like this is free entertainment. “He said clichés are boring and predictable, then implied I wasn’t a good enough writer to make them interesting! Can you believe it? First of all, I’m the best writer there is in our school! And second of all, it’s like he’s never picked up a book in his life! Clichés are clichés because they work!”

“I’m confused.”

“I mean, just pick up any book from… Well, maybe not from here,” Sooyoung considers. “This place is a dump. In any normal bookshop, where they actually stock new releases. Any of those books is gonna have a cliché or two in them! And of course, customers just eat that stuff up! That’s how smart authors earn their keep, you know!”

Kim Dokja stares at her again. “So,” he says, at length, “you just want to earn money.”

Sooyoung sniffs primly. “Sure, there’s that. It’s just much easier to get your name out when you use formulas that have been proven to work, see? Switch it up a little, change a few names, and you’re set. As long as you’re still telling a story, isn’t that good enough?” At the look on Kim Dokja’s face, she adds, “It’s all about knowing when to go with the flow and appeal to the masses. If you don’t do that, no one’s going to read your work, so even if it’s got all sorts of subversive themes or whatever, it won’t matter!”

“Seriously…? What kind of writer are you? Don’t you have any pride?”

“Of course, I take pride in my shrewd thinking and calculative mindset.”

“You’re making me nauseous… Do all the kids in your school talk like that? No, you’ve got to be the odd one out, right?” Kim Dokja asks. Before Sooyoung can launch herself at him and claw at his face, he laughs softly under his breath and turns back to the books. “To be honest, I actually prefer webnovels. But Ahjussi told me to stop being on my phone all the time ’cause it’ll ruin my eyesight or something, and then he made me go take a walk so I’m not always sitting down at home…” He sighs, though he doesn’t seem all that annoyed. “On the weekend, too…”

Sooyoung frowns thoughtfully. “Web… novels?”

“…No way.” Kim Dokja stares down at her in disbelief. “You don’t know what they are?”

Since the secondhand shop is obviously a lost cause, they head out and walk down the street while Kim Dokja shows Sooyoung the epic highs and lows of webnovels, which are basically books posted online. “It’s not just ‘books posted online,’” Kim Dokja argues. “Webnovels can be considered a subgenre of literature, you know. Just like how romance books and fantasy books have different clichés, webnovels are different from published novels.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why are you looking at me like that? Maybe it’s better if you see for yourself.” Kim Dokja pulls his phone out, taps on the screen, then shoves it in Sooyoung’s face.

She squints at the website — its name sounds familiar for sure, so maybe she’s heard of it before and just didn’t realize what it was about. It sort of looks like the website she uses to search up books and the reviews people leave on them; the next thing she notices is that Kim Dokja’s username is just ‘Kim Dokja,’ which has her rolling her eyes so hard her head hurts for a second. At the top of the website are numbered lists labeled ‘Trending’ or ‘Hot’ or ‘New,’ which is pretty normal, but the titles of the webnovels in these lists have her raising an eyebrow. “What the hell is this? I Got Reincarnated As the Empress’ Advisor But It Turns Out She’s in Love With Me?”

“Oh, those. I don’t really care for romance webnovels, but that sort of title is pretty common,” Kim Dokja says.

“Pretty common? So this is the stuff you’re into, huh?”

“Don’t put it like that,” Kim Dokja sulks. He scrolls down a bit, then perks back up as he hands his phone to Sooyoung. “Here. Novels like these. I bet you don’t even know what a regressor is, do you? Or what transmigration means? How about what sort of place Murim is? See, webnovels are their own genre. If you really wanna look into how clichés can be done well, you should read a few of these.”

Sooyoung hums, looking down at the list on the screen: Rebirth of the Demonic Swordmaster, Tyrant of the Heavenly Cultivation, Only I Level Up… These don’t look any better than the romance ones, in her opinion, but she’s not cruel enough to say that when it’s obvious how much Kim Dokja loves the stuff. For some incomprehensible reason. “Oh, yeah? Who writes these webnovels anyway?”

“Just… anyone.”

That gets her attention. “Anyone?”

“Anyone with an account. You can even earn money by writing if you’re really good. Readers buy your chapters as they come out, sort of like a subscription.”

“Anyone can post here…?” Sooyoung repeats to herself. An idea is forming at the back of her head, one better and smarter than just writing a new story for her teacher. After all, he’s already set on disproving Sooyoung’s point, but if Sooyoung goes above and beyond that… “Cool, cool, cool,” she mumbles, already forgetting she’s on Kim Dokja’s phone as she scrolls further down the list, absorbing the most popular titles and filing them away to read on her laptop later. “Now this is interesting…”

“Isn’t it?” Kim Dokja asks, sounding delighted; Sooyoung finally remembers to look up at him and is consequently struck dumb by the beam on his face. “People think webnovels are just like blog posts with bad grammar and full of emojis. But — okay, some are sort of like that,” he concedes, rolling his eyes, “but there are more that are better than that. Better than published books, even. You could do a real research study on the rise and spread of webnovels, actually.”

“Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to put some of those titles in the references section?”

Kim Dokja blanches. “Well… Well, even if their titles are usually like that, the content itself still holds… merit! So? What do you think?”

“I’ll have to actually read some of these to find out what I think,” Sooyoung says, and actually means it. As unpromising as some of these titles look, it’ll be interesting to dip her toes in a completely unknown genre and find out how different they are from the ones she’s already familiar with. Also, maybe they’d make good reading material for when she wants a laugh. “You really like these things, huh?” she says, as if observing for the first time. “Do you have a favorite? I’ll read it first.”

“Yeah! It’s called—”

Sooyoung waits, but oddly enough Kim Dokja falls silent, as if he’d somehow forgotten the name of whatever his favorite is. Or, no — the expression on his face is something Sooyoung can’t even guess the meaning of, so deep that whatever is in his mind is beyond Sooyoung’s understanding. Not quite entirely sad, not quite entirely happy, not even something in between: it seems to be everything, all at once, the sum total of all known human emotion on his face and then more, hidden in the slight furrow in his brow, the gentle curve of his smile.

Oh, Sooyoung thinks — he must really love that story.

“Never mind,” Kim Dokja says. He makes an obvious effort to act normal, like Sooyoung hadn’t just seen him make a legitimately indescribable expression, but even his voice sounds a little softer: like how one may talk about a distant lover from the past. “The author took it down halfway through. I’ve got other recommendations, though. For example, The World After the Fall…”

“Well, that’s promising,” Sooyoung says, glad to find some familiar ground. “Seriously, I saw less cringe titles in that secondhand store’s bargain bin. Can’t these webnovel authors do any better?”

“If that’s what you think, you should try reading some of the romance novels first, then. Or the reincarnated-into-a-new-world ones.”

“The — what?”

“They can actually be interesting. I know one that had the protagonist trapped in a time loop…”

Sooyoung’s not sure how long they spend just walking around the city, exchanging favorite and most loathed books, arguing about whether this trope or that cliché could work, taking routes Kim Dokja obviously knows by heart and dropping by the same bookshops Sooyoung had visited earlier that day. Alone they had been boring and filled with the same old selection of bestsellers she’s already familiar with; together with Kim Dokja, though, she gets to see him go from shelf to shelf, peering at the spines of books and carefully slipping them out to read the blurb or flip through the pages. He’ll ask “Couldn’t you use this for your market research?” or say “See, love triangles are just stupid,” and then Sooyoung will have no choice but to grab a copy for herself and see if he’s right.

At the last bookshop they visit, Sooyoung is halfway to the cashier with an armful of books in hand before she pauses and turns around. “You’re not getting anything?” She lifts the topmost book from her stack and waves it at him. “I thought you said this one looked good.”

“Oh, uh.” Kim Dokja scratches the back of his neck, smiling vaguely. “I only brought enough money for three books. And if I buy too much, our bookshelf won’t have enough space for new ones…”

Don’t you have a card? Sooyoung almost asks, biting down on her tongue just in time. “Well… okay,” she mutters.

She waits for Kim Dokja to wander off and look at the other displays before dumping her stack on the cashier, telling the employee to wait for her, and rushing back to the shelves Kim Dokja had lingered by earlier.

It’s dark out by the time they return to the station entrance, where Kim Dokja had kindly walked her to (Sooyoung’s pretty sure he had just gotten caught up in retelling the plot of whatever webnovel he was talking about and hadn’t noticed where they were going). “Oh, you’re leaving already?” he asks, when Sooyoung turns to face him. “Don’t you want to stay for dinner? Ahjussi always cooks up a storm.”

Dinner? We just met?! “No?!” she yelps. “I mean, no, no, I gotta go. If I stay too late, I’ll get home even later.”

“Ah, right.” But Kim Dokja looks a little disappointed anyway. “Come around again sometime when you’re free.”

He’s a lot nicer after spending the whole day talking about books and webnovels, Sooyoung observes. This feels weirdly like the end of a first date, Sooyoung’s subconscious remarks.

“It was fun having someone to bully.”

“…Bastard. I never wanna see your ugly mug again.” At Kim Dokja’s laughter, Sooyoung shakes her head and digs around in the many paper bags carrying her newly-purchased books, then retrieves the ones she’d picked out earlier and shoves them towards Kim Dokja, nearly hitting him in the chest. “And here! Hurry up and take them.”

“Huh?” Kim Dokja has the gall to look genuinely confused. “Aren’t these yours?”

Sooyoung scowls. “Do I look like I would ever read titles like these out of my own free will? If I wanted to waste my time, I’d find a less painful method, like sleeping. Anyway, here.” When Kim Dokja lifts his arms up unbearably slowly, as if any sudden movements may make the books disappear, Sooyoung groans and grabs his arms up to place the books in his grip herself. “There! Sheesh, it’s not such a big deal. But if you want to sing my praises, that’s okay too.”

That draws Kim Dokja back out of his reverie. “No, I don’t think I will.”

“Ungrateful bastard. See if I ever come visit again.” Sooyoung turns on her heel and starts determinedly down the station stairs, trying to ignore the painful little wrench in her chest. For all her bluster, part of her doesn’t really want to leave: part of her wants to take Kim Dokja up on that offer for dinner even if they have just met, wants to stay a little longer and talk about just one more book, one more cliché, one more part of literature she wouldn’t have thought about if not for Kim Dokja’s thoughts on the topic. Part of her wants to stay, just a little longer.

“Han Sooyoung,” Kim Dokja calls.

Sooyoung pauses, turns just enough to see him in the corner of her eye.

He smiles that small, strange smile again, the one that doesn’t quite look happy but seems wholly sincere all the same. “When I finish, I’ll give them back, so you can waste your time too.”

“…Whatever. Idiot.”

As if he can do that, Sooyoung thinks, all the way throughout the subway ride back to her place. It’s not like he knows where she lives, so if she just doesn’t come back here, he’ll have no choice but to keep those stupid books with him. But then again, he might remember where she studies, since they had that simultaneous class trip last time… He might take the train to the neighborhood and poke around there and then Sooyoung really will get to call him a stalker.

It sounds unlikely, but Sooyoung finds herself biting back a dumb smile anyway. If anyone is both dedicated and determined enough to do something like that, it’d be Kim Dokja. She doesn’t really care if she never gets those books back, but if he really cares enough to bring them to her, then that’ll mean they can meet again…

Wait! What is she thinking?! It’s not like she wants to see his ugly face again or anything, damn it! Ugh, how disgustingly cliché is that?!

3.

It’s a testament to how good the books are that Dokja only realizes he has no way of contacting Han Sooyoung and returning the borrowed novels to her two whole weeks later, when he’s finished all of them in record time, even for himself.

He had been called out numerous times: by his teachers for reading during class, by Yoo Joonghyuk for reading at the dinner table, by his own brain for reading while in the car and consequently getting dizzy. But the books are good, fast-paced and compelling and interesting and drawing him into the story in a way the bad webnovels he reads just to have something to read can’t do. Granted, maybe that’s his fault for consistently seeking out garbage and developing some kind of acquired taste for it, but it’s not his fault it’s easy to find so many good stories online without spending a thing. Once he grows up and gets a job, he’ll definitely support his favorite authors, but right now all he can do is leave kind comments on the ones he likes.

(None of them are anything like Ways of Survival — but he’s spent enough time missing it by now.)

After finishing the last book, all Dokja could do for several long minutes was lie in bed, stare up at the ceiling, and silently fight the urge to reread all of them right away. If he did that, he wouldn’t be able to bear parting with them when he had to give them back… Wait. How was he going to give them back?

And so he had arrived at his current predicament. Dokja had considered hanging out by the bookshops just in case Han Sooyoung would visit those again, or even wait for her by the subway station, but it seems unlikely she’d be visiting on a weekday when she probably has better things to do, like attend classes. His second plan is to search her name up in social media, which he does right away, but he’d failed to take into account the hundreds of other Han Sooyoungs on every social media site he tries, which is maybe two. He only really knows how to navigate Textpia and nothing else.

He sets his phone down, disappointed. It’s only been two weeks, but he already misses her, strangely enough. Han Sooyoung isn’t like any of the girls at school — actually, Han Sooyoung isn’t like any of the people at school, period. She’s just that weird. Even without that sense of familiarity that had drawn Dokja to her in the first place, hanging out with her and listening to her jabber on about how much she hates her teachers and how these bestselling books are all second-rate compared to her writing is fun, and when Dokja had finished reading those second-rate books, the first thing he wanted to do was call her up and tell her all about their strengths and weaknesses like they’re doing a book report for school.

Dokja sighs. There’s that ache in his chest again, tight and painful, like missing someone he’d never even known.

But anyway, speaking of Textpia… Dokja closes the social media sites he’d opened and is greeted with the refreshingly familiar interface. Now that he’s finished some actual good books, he has serious doubts anything on here will hit — at least, until his standards go lower and lower and he finally starts eating from the trash again — but he checks the lists anyway, just to see if anything has changed while he had been out reading physical books.

Usually there isn’t much change in ‘Trending’ or ‘Hot,’ but today an unfamiliar title has climbed its way up to second and third place, to Dokja’s surprise — and it’s number one on the ‘New’ list too, which must mean some up-and-coming writer has somehow shot their way up the ranks, breaking past even the more popular novels that have achieved a cult following for how they’ve been ongoing for years.

He frowns. Something — or someone — can’t be that good… can it? To start, this novel has got such a boring title that it wouldn’t even serve as clickbait for bored readers. For it to get so popular in such a short amount of time… Maybe all the attention it’s getting is from bot accounts and the author’s sock puppets.

Still, he doesn’t have anything else to do, and it might be funny to look at the comments and see a bunch of uncreative usernames singing the author’s praises. Dokja reluctantly opens Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint.

…and the way Kim Reader snapped Yoo Regressor out of the Cinema Master’s mind control was so emotionally charged! Not to mention how much information that gave us about both characters! Yoo Regressor’s thoughts about giving up on this life must have really hurt Kim Reader… After how long he read his story, and upon thinking about how he only has the one life… That was definitely the best scene this chapter, Author-nim! You have such a grasp on characterization and depth! Wait, but did the other characters overhear what Kim Reader said?? I’ll read the next chapter now!

Dokja is quite literally shaking as he clicks to the next chapter and the page loads. When was the last time he got hooked onto a webnovel this quickly? A webnovel with such elegant prose, perfect diction, and intricate plot! Moreover, for this to be the author’s debut novel?! A writing prodigy like this only comes around every hundred years, right?! Dokja can’t believe he’s getting to read such a work of art with his own two eyes right now…

The page finishes loading. The next five chapters are all locked behind a payment.

Dokja makes a small, injured noise.

This can’t be happening… No, no, don’t think that way. This isn’t the first time this has happened to him, and he can deal with waiting for a few days for the paid chapters to become free ones. But he isn’t just impatient to find out what happens next, he also desperately wants to show his appreciation for the author through more than just dumb rambling comments, and buying paid chapters is one of the best ways to do so…

Dokja chews on his lower lip, staring at the taunting little Buy button on his screen. Maybe if he begs Yoo Joonghyuk… No, maybe Lee Hyunsung might understand him more… Also, it would be less embarrassing to ask him…

Just as he’s begun drafting a speech in his head to convince Lee Hyunsung to lend him his credit card, a new notification pops up. Dokja’s first thought is that one of the paid chapters has become free and he mashes the refresh button with fanatical force, but unfortunately the chapter remains locked. His next thought is that it’s probably just some daily promo or something, which he usually deletes right away, but right now he’s so desperate that he might just check to see if it promises free coins.

Dokja opens the notification, sees [1 new message from BlackFlameEmperor], and almost drops his phone.

Hello, thank you for your kind words. I’m very happy you like Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint right now. I still have a lot of developments in mind so I hope you enjoy those in the future as well. Your in-depth comments were nice to read, and gave me new ideas for later chapters. What else did you like about the story? :)

The author! They hadn’t just replied to his comment, they had personally messaged him to ask for his thoughts! This time Dokja has to set his phone down on the bed before he actually drops it. He rereads their message, then again, then again for good measure, then hides his face in his pillow. Not only are they eloquent, they’re also so kind…! Their username gives a strange impression, but they’re so polite and formal in speech! They must really value his insights, too, if they messaged him! Well, okay, it’s entirely possible they asked the same question to a bunch of other commenters, and they probably like those who paid for their chapters way more than some freeloader. But… well, Dokja feels special anyway!

Now that he has the chance to really show his appreciation to the author, Dokja can’t get this wrong. He navigates to the notes application of his phone and starts drafting a reply.

About half an hour and dozens of edits later, he ends up having to send his message in three parts because he’d hit the character limit in the first two. Dokja skims through his messages — Author-nim, first of all, thank you so much for reaching out to me… I’m totally blown away by your talent and genius… I’ve never seen a story like this before, one that both upholds and subverts popular tropes… You must have done a lot of research on other similar webnovels of the genre, right? — and feels himself get embarrassed all over again. Is this too weird? The author did ask him for his thoughts, though. This is just like if he left an extra-long comment on the latest chapter.

Dokja waits with bated breath, heart jumping to his throat when he sees the message has been marked read. It’ll take a short while for the author to read all that, and then… How will they reply? He’s getting giddy just thinking about it. Even a simple thank-you and a few hints about what the next chapters will be about is more than enough already. He waits, and waits… and waits…

And waits…

And…

…

…Surely it wouldn’t take this long for the author to finish reading his messages?

Dokja waits a little more, but nothing arrives, and eventually he gives up and closes his phone, the excitement in his chest now like humiliation in his gut. What had he been thinking, sending such a long message like that?! He’d definitely been too much, right? He must have scared them away, and he can’t blame them, because he’d probably be freaked out by getting an essay in his messages. But he’d really poured his heart out in that message… and he meant every word… and he definitely didn’t mean to be weird…

This sucks. Dokja rolls around in bed and kicks the blankets until he tires himself out.

He mostly forgets about it when he remembers he has homework due tomorrow, and by the time he finishes the problem sets it’s dinnertime, and tonight is his turn to help wash the dishes together with the kkomas on cleaning duty. It’s only when Dokja climbs into bed that night and checks his phone that he’s brutally reminded of his message — still bereft of a reply, despite how long he stares at the read receipt and wills for the typing icon to pop up. The one time he worked up the courage to speak directly to the author of a great webnovel, and he’s left hanging like this… Truly, communication is an impossible wall to overcome…

How is he going to sleep like this now? Dokja navigates back to the website’s main interface and opens the first webnovel he sees, already knowing it’s not going to be anywhere near as good as Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint.

Dokja knows reading for hours in the dark is the entire reason he’s always waking up tired and groggy the next morning and why his eyesight is going to be shot to all hell in the future (the latter in Kim Namwoon’s words), but he can’t resist doing it anyway. At least tonight he has an actual reason to read bad webnovels for over an hour — to soothe the sting of a broken heart — and, after reading the third iteration of a demonic swordmaster’s reincarnation, he’s just about to drift off at last.

His eyes have already closed when his phone buzzes in his hand, and Dokja’s eyes promptly fly open. Unfortunately, when he opens the notification, it’s not exactly what he had been hoping for.

KIM DOKJA URE SOOOO EMBARRASSING IS THIS A LOVE CONFESSION OR SMTH??? WTF IS “IVE NEVER FELT LOVE LIKE THIS BEFORE” & “I THINK THIS MIGHT BE IT FOR ME”????? DO U HAVE A CRUSH ON ME BE HONEST

The amount of question marks and the sudden dip in grammar takes him so off-guard for a moment that Dokja can only think, How do they know my real name?! before remembering his username. Then his brain catches up to his eyes and he sits up on his elbows to type rapidly.

No!!! Author-nim, I’m so sorry my messages came off weird!! I was just expressing my love for your story, and I had a lot to say because I wanted to tackle everything you’ve published so far! I should have phrased my messages in a different way to avoid misunderstandings. I’m very sorry again…

He makes to close his phone and scream in his pillow until he either passes out or needs to drink water, whichever comes first, but the reply comes quicker than expected — much quicker than before, at any rate.

omfg

its me. its han sooyoung. are you fucking stupid

Dokja reads the message. Then he rereads their message, then again, then again for good measure.

Oh. That explains the cringe username

ASSHOLE?

Careful, I can report your account for offensive speech

Of course it was Han Sooyoung all along. Dokja can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips — somehow he’s not even that surprised to find out the real person behind ‘BlackFlameEmperor,’ as if a part of him had expected their paths to cross again through coincidence. And to think he’d gone back to Textpia because he couldn’t find Han Sooyoung on any social media sites, only to find her like this…

as if. you love my writing too much to do that. you luuuurv it soooo much anyone with a working brain would think u were confessing ur undying love to them in those messages. do u talk to all ur fave authors that way??? arent u embarrassed?!?!

…Somehow, her horrible typing style is extremely reminiscent of how she talks in-person. Dokja starts typing up a reply before Han Sooyoung can send a follow-up insult.

Still, he’s genuinely impressed with Han Sooyoung’s skill. He thought she’d just been exaggerating being a great writer, but she’s easily on-par with some of the best webnovels Dokja’s read over the past year. Granted, that may not be much when considering the sorts of works he’s comparing hers to, but he can’t believe work like this was written by a 14-year-old. Maybe she takes special classes or something? Surely even natural talent needs to be honed in some way? But if she’s self-taught, that’s even more impressive.

i know im awesome. u can keep telling me that though :)

Haven’t I sung your praises enough already? Your readers would be horrified to know who’s behind the username. Actually, since it sounds exactly like something a 14-year-old would come up with, maybe they already do…

keep this up and ill report YOU for offensive speech.

Han Sooyoung is as fast a texter as she is a talker, chatting about whatever comes to mind, sometimes about her novel and sometimes about random things at school, like her friends dragging her to a test of courage at night or that one mathematics exam her entire class helped each other cheat on. In turn, Dokja tells her about the books he finished reading, about how the protagonists in some of them were relatable (but not as much as Kim Reader) and the stories could have used some work here and there because the themes fell pretty flat (unlike Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, obviously), and the romance subplots felt so contrived (unlike the relationship between Kim Reader and Yoo Regressor and by the way, Dokja’s very much looking forward to meeting Yoo Regressor’s dead wife, she’s still alive in this regression, right?).

sure but if u want a romance between her and regressor its not happening. its not in line with the themes.

No, I totally understand… He has to yearn for a woman who’s simultaneously part of his present yet left behind in the past…

Still, can’t we get an extra story on how the two of them were like when they had a child? It’d be a total cash grab, don’t you think???

:) ill consider it if you beg some more and kiss my feet

I am not doing that

I can return the books I borrowed to you though. Want to meet?

i told u to keep them? do u just want to see me again so u can steal my phone and read the paid chapters from there??

Yeah :)

u suck

i want parfaits

OK, I know a good café in the neighborhood. Will you be free after classes? 4-year-olds don’t have after-school club activities yet, right?

Sorry *14-year-olds

THAT WAS DEFINITELY ON PURPOSE U R NOT SLICK!!!

It’s past two in the morning when Han Sooyoung finally stops replying — without so much as a ‘goodnight,’ so she must have dropped off to sleep with her phone in hand — and Dokja plugs his own phone in to charge for the night. He’s going to wake up even groggier and more tired than usual the next morning, he knows.

This feels weirdly like they’ve just scheduled another date, his subconscious remarks.

4.

Sooyoung will be the first to admit that, when she had snuck out of the house this morning, she may not have entirely thought this through.

This must be the third time she’s hunkered down, sandwiched between two trash bins at the back of a convenience store, and prayed the security guards pass this area by already. Why is this suddenly way harder than the last time she had to avoid them for the day? Sure, that was years ago and she had ended up nearly getting carted across the country because she had hidden in the back of a delivery truck, but — anyway, the point is that it doesn’t look like she can avoid them for long, to her frustration. If only she could get to a huge shopping complex and blend in with the crowds of people, or hop on a subway and change trains a dozen times to throw them off…

No… maybe it’d be easier if she could ask for help? If someone could just distract them for long enough to let her get away… Sooyoung pulls her phone out of her pocket. It’s her backup phone, because if she brought her usual one out with her they’d be able to track her location and this would all be over in five minutes flat. However, the contacts list on this one is painfully small, since she gets lazy to constantly add and change new people and their numbers on a phone she rarely uses…

Footsteps, loud and getting louder. Sooyoung startles, her shoulder hitting the trash bin beside her and sending it toppling on its side with a loud crash, and by then Sooyoung has jumped to her feet and is sprinting down the road, jabbing the first number she sees on her screen. Anyone, anyone will do!

Whoever it is picks up on the second ring. “Han Sooyoung?” Kim Dokja yawns. “What’s—”

“Help me! Right now!”

“What the? What’s going—”

“Just get over here, ASAP! It’s an emergency!” Then Sooyoung thinks twice and realizes they’ve never actually gone to each other’s houses before; they’ve mostly met up in places like restaurants and cafés and — of course! “That big bookshop that’s like, five floors tall,” she says, a bit quieter so the security guard chasing her from behind won’t overhear. They might still be able to trace her tracks by taking the subway and splitting up, but hopefully she’ll lose them for good once she has Kim Dokja to help. “Let’s meet there, okay? Act natural! I’ll be there in ten, twenty minutes!”

She’d been expecting Kim Dokja to question her sanity, but she isn’t expecting him to sound terrified. “W-Wait. I can’t — I’ll take half an hour at least if I run, Hyunsung-ahjussi took the car—”

“What? You don’t need a car, it’s only two subway stops from your neighborhood! Now hurry or I’m dead!” And she hangs up before Kim Dokja can say anything else.

It takes Sooyoung much longer than twenty minutes to lose the guard chasing her, take the route to the station, backtrack again when she notices someone following her, then finally launch herself down the station stairs and into the train as soon as she’s free. At the last second she notices a pair of guards storming down the station, but by then the train doors have already closed, so Sooyoung can only pray they predict she’s taking a longer route rather than one just a few minutes away.

She catches her breath while riding the train; when they reach her stop, she stumbles out and into one of the station restrooms to change out of her hoodie and jeans and into, well, a different hoodie and jeans. The guards will probably still recognize her from a distance, but by then she’ll hopefully be running away. Sooyoung makes sure the coast is clear before hurrying out of the restroom and up the stairs.

Kim Dokja is waiting by the bookshop’s front doors, though he’s clearly doing a horrible job at acting natural by how he looks like a nervous wreck. He’s so focused on scanning the streets that he startles badly when Sooyoung comes up from behind and taps him on the shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hey!” Kim Dokja yelps, his voice a pitch higher than usual. Sooyoung snickers at the surprise on his face first before instantly feeling guilty when she sees the rest of his expression, much of which is overwhelming concern. “Han Sooyoung! What’s the emergency? Why’d you ask me to come out all of a sudden? Are you in trouble? You’re not going to prison, are you? No, wait, you’re not being chased by a serial killer, are you?”

“What? No? What the hell made you think that?”

Kim Dokja stares at her. “Um, the way you called me while you sounded like you were running for your life? Did you consider that part?”

Okay, maybe Sooyoung owes him a bit of an explanation. But just as she opens her mouth to do exactly that, she spots a suspicious silhouette coming up from over the road and grits her teeth instead. “I’ll explain later,” she says, tugging on Kim Dokja’s wrist. “Right now, we gotta run!”

“What? Where?”

“Hell if I know! Come on!”

It becomes immediately apparent neither of them have any idea where they’re going. They’d only gone to the bookshop once when Sooyoung saw a post about its grand opening online a few weeks ago, and they haven’t had the free time to come back since, so Sooyoung mostly just drags Kim Dokja down every side-street she sees until they’re both hunched over and panting in a dark, sketchy alleyway several minutes later. “You know,” Kim Dokja says, after he catches his breath, “I’m pretty sure we just circled back where we started.”

“Shut up,” Sooyoung wheezes.

“Seriously, who are we running away from? And are you sure they’re not serial killers?”

Sooyoung scans the storefront she can see from the narrow view the alleyway gives her, then perks up. “There! That looks like a big grocery! Okay, come on, let’s just hide out there until they give up and search somewhere else. And stop asking questions, it’s complicated.”

“You want me to stop asking questions about this?”

Seeing as Kim Dokja refuses to be calmed down, Sooyoung takes his wrist again and pulls him over to the grocery store across the street (though, of course, not before checking both sides for cars and security guards alike). “Just follow my lead. And don’t forget to act natural!”

They’re lucky it’s a Saturday morning — there are plenty of shoppers getting their groceries in before lunch, and it’s a big enough place to lay low in for a little while. Sooyoung brings Kim Dokja over to the sweets and snacks aisle before deciding they’ll be safe for now. Judging by the amount of tiny screaming children in this part, the security guards will think twice before checking here anyway. “So, it’s not a serial killer,” she says, which has at least three of the tiny screaming children pausing in the middle of their screaming to stare wide-eyed up at her.

Kim Dokja says, “Why don’t we have this conversation somewhere else.”

So they move one aisle over, with cereal boxes and milk cartons for company. “It’s simple,” Sooyoung says, solemnly. “I did something bad and now the guards are coming to get me.”

“That’s… simple? Really. Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. It wasn’t anything bad-bad, like prison-bad, but just kinda not good,” Sooyoung explains. The uncomprehending look on Kim Dokja’s face must just be proof lesser beings can’t understand her divine intelligence. “And I need your help running away from them.”

Kim Dokja seems to consider this, then asks, “How exactly am I supposed to help you?”

“Um, distract them while I run away? Pose as a passerby and say I went the opposite direction? Throw yourself in front of me to sacrifice yourself and buy me time?”

“So I’m your meat shield.”

“Well, that one is just a last resort.”

Kim Dokja sighs. “This is still suspicious. Did you get on someone’s bad side on Textpia? I know there have been some people on there who border on… Anyway,” he says, a little brighter, “as long as you mean it. At least it really isn’t a serial killer. Or presidential bodyguards chasing you down because you stole something from the government office.” When Sooyoung just stares at him, Kim Dokja adds, “You… didn’t, did you?”

“No, I was just trying to understand how your brain came up with that. You ever think you read too many of those shitty webnovels?”

Kim Dokja casts his gaze around them, then heads further down the aisle and gets an empty, abandoned grocery cart by the side. “Since we’re here, we might as well try to blend in, then. Um…” He stares at the shelves, then gets a cereal box and drops it in the cart. “Do people usually get one or two cereal boxes?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on how many people are eating cereal? You never been grocery shopping or what?”

“We don’t eat cereal. Joonghyuk-ahjussi thinks they’re unhealthy and cooks all our meals.”

That must be his personal chef, Sooyoung surmises. Kim Dokja hadn’t struck her as someone well-off enough to afford one, especially after he’d only brought so much money that one time they went bookshop-hopping, but maybe he’s got hidden depths or something. In that case, maybe it’d be fine to tell him the complete reason Sooyoung is being chased around…? No, better safe than sorry. She’ll hold out on that for now.

She grabs the cereal box and slots it back on its shelf, replacing it with three more boxes of a different brand. “These taste better.”

“Wait, are we actually buying these? Put those back! I didn’t bring that much money!”

“No, of course not, but they’ll be handy later on.”

They go from aisle to aisle, filling the grocery cart with so many things that Sooyoung’s pretty sure not even her cash on hand could cover it all. “We’ll just put it all back later if we’re safe,” she says, at Kim Dokja’s raised eyebrows. Returning everything to their respective aisles sounds like a real pain, but it sure as hell beats being caught by the guards, so Sooyoung will take it even if she can only reach the second-highest shelf on her tiptoes.

At least half an hour goes by of just grabbing random groceries before Sooyoung’s sixth sense tingles. “Shh! They’re close by!”

“I wasn’t saying anything,” Kim Dokja says.

“Shhh.” Sooyoung peers out from the corner. Her suspicions are proven correct: several aisles down are a pair of black-clad security guards stalking down in Sooyoung’s direction and thoroughly creeping out the other shoppers around them. She ducks back in before they notice her, but the movement may have caught their eye anyway, and Sooyoung can already tell they’re coming closer. “Okay, we gotta run,” she tells Kim Dokja, who watches her with a mix of amusement and exasperation. “But don’t leave the cart. Push it with you, okay?”

“Why on Earth would I do that?”

“Just listen to me. I’ve done this before.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Sooyoung ignores him and heads down the other end of the aisle. They could go all the way to the back, where the meat and fresh produce are, or take the hall in the middle instead… No, it’s a straighter shot to the entrance if they go with the latter. “Alright, run!”

To his credit, Kim Dokja keeps up admirably well, even though he’s pushing a cart that’s probably twice his weight. They make it almost all the way down the narrow hall, dodging and weaving around shouting grocery shoppers and nearly crashing into at least three display stalls, before Sooyoung finally spots the security guards pushing past other people and shouting into their intercoms. One of them is fast enough to make a grab for Sooyoung, but with perfect timing she reaches in the cart, grabs one of the cereal boxes, and throws it in his face.

There is a collective gasp from the grocery shoppers. The man staggers backwards like he’d been dealt a critical blow. Sooyoung can hear Kim Dokja gasping and panting for his life behind her.

Thankfully that’s the only cereal box that needs sacrificing, because it’s just another few seconds of running before they emerge out of the grocery. Kim Dokja releases the cart into the wild as Sooyoung swerves into the nearest alleyway before the guards can come out and see where they’re going. “Wait,” Kim Dokja wheezes, “did that — does that count as stealing? It doesn’t, right?”

“If it does, I’ll pay for it! Keep running!”

Sooyoung is getting a genuinely good idea of the streets in this part of the city. Within another few minutes of running they’ve lost the guards, at least for now, and Kim Dokja also looks like he’s on his last legs. “I… don’t see… why I have… to be here,” he manages, in between gulps of air as he leans on the brick wall, uncaring about all the grime and dirt that will almost certainly get on the back of his shirt. “And also… can’t we… just stay still… and hide somewhere?”

“Yeah, that’s what I used to do,” Sooyoung says. “But it’s just not possible. They always find me, so I gotta keep moving, you know?”

“Okay, then… answer… my first question…”

“Well, I guess you deserve a break for being such a good… grocery-cart-pusher,” Sooyoung graciously allows. Kim Dokja gives her a look that she can’t help but bark out a laugh at. “Come on! If you’re this tired from a bit of running, then consider this your exercise! Okay, let’s go, lunch is on me.”

“Lunch?”

“It’s around lunchtime, right? We looked at so much food in the grocery that I got hungry. They’ve gotta have some good restaurants here.”

“Speaking of the grocery, seriously, that cart might have rolled into traffic by now…”

“And? It’s a cart, not a baby stroller. Let’s go look for somewhere to eat.”

They find a restaurant not too far from where they are, and Sooyoung is thrilled to see it looks exactly like the sort of place she would never eat in under normal circumstances: cheap decorations, cheap furnishings, cheap menu. Those guards will just pass this place right by. “Get whatever you want,” she says, when she and Kim Dokja sit down at a table near the very back. Of course, just in case the guards do take a look around in here, she’s already mapped out an escape route.

Kim Dokja takes one look at the menu and immediately says, “They charge for the water?”

…Hmm. If he’s that surprised, maybe Sooyoung didn’t choose the best restaurant for camouflage after all. “Well, whatever,” she says. “Get ten glasses of water if you want.”

“No, I don’t want… Anyway, why are you being so generous? Have you finally turned over a new leaf or something?”

“Haaah?! I don’t have any leaves to turn, asshole! I’m perfect as is!”

Kim Dokja stares at her like he’s never heard anything more stupid in his life. Sooyoung sighs and grudgingly amends, “Hey, is it such a bad thing to offer you compensation for your help? You did push a grocery cart around and all! I might as well make it worth your while!”

“That so… Then is there an option for monetary compensation instead?”

“Sit down and eat your food, Kim Dokja.”

He laughs, which is annoying and embarrassing enough on its own, but then he has the guts to add, “To think Sooyoung-ie could be this kind and considerate to her meat shields…” and subsequently has to duck when Sooyoung jumps out of her seat to swing her fists. “Okay, okay! Let me see. Wait a minute, why is half the menu in English…? Surely this isn’t necessary?”

“Tch. Give me that. I already know my English is way better.” Sooyoung snatches the menu out of his hands, ignoring Kim Dokja pointing out there is a perfectly good copy of the menu sitting on the table because she’d ignored the waiter handing it to her earlier. She flips through the pages then asks, “Want a chicken bucket for ten?”

“No?”

“Let’s get it. I’m hungry.”

“There’s no way we can finish—”

“I’m paying, so your only job is to eat!”

In the end, they barely even get to touch their chicken before they have to get it for takeout and escape through the back door, because a pair of security guards walk in to order lunch for themselves, too. Kim Dokja, of course, gets chicken-carrying duty. They spend half a frantic hour searching for places where they can eat their chicken in peace, but after hiding behind some trees in the park (they get found in under five minutes), crouching down in the alleyways (stray cats try to steal their food), and sneaking into the same public restroom stall (Kim Dokja gets kicked out by security), they determine there’s just no other choice but to eat on the go. Which is harder than it seems when they have to keep running away every few minutes from a security guard chasing them down.

“This won’t do,” Sooyoung decides, through a mouthful of chicken. “Did you hear what those guys said? ‘Look for the boy in the blue sweater and pants!’ Don’t you know even the first thing about going undercover? Bring a change of clothes!”

“This chicken is really good,” Kim Dokja comments.

“That’s it. I know just the thing.” Sooyoung scans the street, perking up when her eyes land on a nearby bus stop, and the bus slowing down as it approaches. “Perfect! Hurry up, we have to get out of this area anyway. Place is crawling with the guards.”

They finish off the last of their chicken in the bus before getting off once Sooyoung starts recognizing their surroundings outside. “Here!” she declares, after a few more minutes of walking — Kim Dokja stares up at their destination, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What’s with that look? Haven’t you ever seen a mall before?”

“I, uh… Of course I have, but… This must be the sort of place where everything costs millions, right…?”

“What are you talking about? Let’s just go in. And hope those guys haven’t caught up with us already…”

Kim Dokja gawks at everything in the mall, which just further proves this guy has never been outside in his life; Sooyoung refuses to consider the other alternative, that being he’s just never been to this kind of place in his life. Though the restaurants and snack bars are extremely tempting, Sooyoung prioritizes what they came here for in the first place and makes for the third floor right away. “Okay… I don’t know what would look good on you,” she says, as they ride the escalator up. “What do you usually wear?”

“Uh… shirts… and… pants?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Just, anything, really,” Kim Dokja squeaks. He still looks out of his element here, especially when they get off the escalator and he realizes where Sooyoung is leading him. “Wait, hold on. I’m not much for — I really don’t like — You’re not going to be like Uriel-noona, are you?”

“Ur-what?” What the hell kind of name is that? A codename? A stage name? “Whatever, quit stalling,” Sooyoung says, deciding she doesn’t care enough to ask. “It’s no big deal. Let’s just get you some boring clothes that’ll help you blend in for today.”

“Ahh, that works. Whew…” Kim Dokja lets out a relieved sigh. “I was worried I’d have to start running from you and those guards.”

…What kind of shopping trips has this guy been on?!

Inside the clothing store, Sooyoung gives the new arrivals a cursory glance before, not for the first time, ignoring them in favor of plopping down on one of the plush seats and letting the saleslady fawn over her. “Hold on, I’m not buying for myself this time,” she interrupts, before she can start throwing clothes at her, and points at Kim Dokja standing awkwardly near the entrance, as if wondering which clothes here are the ‘boring’ ones. “Can you find some stuff that will look good on that guy?”

“Aha!” The saleslady claps in delight. “You’ve brought a friend, young miss! Possibly a boyfriend?”

“…Ew. No way.”

“There’s no need to look so disgusted,” Kim Dokja tells her.

The saleslady is on him in an instant, holding up clothes against him, either nodding or shaking her head to herself, asking rapid-fire questions Kim Dokja only replies to with “uh” or “um” or “uhhh.” It must be nearly a full hour later when the saleslady presents several sets of clothes that she’s verified look good on Kim Dokja, who stands behind her frantically shaking his head. “T-This is too much, isn’t it? Hey, Han Sooyoung, you promised you’d get boring clothes, so why did we go into this store?!”

“Shut it.” Sooyoung squints down at the clothes. She can’t make heads nor tails of them, but she may as well take the saleslady at face value; the woman’s never failed when it comes to picking Sooyoung’s clothes out. “Okay, I’ll take them all.”

“What!” Kim Dokja shrieks.

“And I’ll take these too.” Sooyoung hands over a white windbreaker and a cap. She’s already changed clothes twice, but an extra layer of disguise never hurts.

“Hey. Wait. What do you mean, you’ll take them all?” Kim Dokja demands, stomping up to Sooyoung and poking her forehead. “What am I going to do with clothes that expensive? With so many clothes that expensive?!”

“Wear them?” Sooyoung suggests.

“That’s not what I — wait!” he cries, when the saleslady scoops all the clothes up and marches towards the register. “Wait, she’s just kidding, she doesn’t mean it, don’t get them all — wait, please!”

Of course, they get them all. Kim Dokja throws up a huge fuss about it for several more minutes before Sooyoung shuts him up by making him carry the shopping bags. He’s already changed into a completely new set of clothes, and Sooyoung has shrugged the windbreaker on, so they should be safe for the time being. “See? If we get spotted again, you can just change into another set,” she says, rather proud of herself for solving such an easy yet annoying problem. Kim Dokja just looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. “And obviously you can keep them after today. Use them as pajamas or whatever.”

“Pajamas?”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal,” Han Sooyoung scoffs, reaching into one of the shopping bags to wear her cap. Sure, they’re under a roof, but she’d liked how it looked on her reflection. “Hmph, shouldn’t you be thanking me for my generosity right now? Next time, see how you like it if I force you to do unpaid labor… and… W-What?” she stammers, when she realizes Kim Dokja is giving her an intense look. “Do… Do I look weird?”

Kim Dokja is quiet for a few more seconds. Just as Sooyoung is about to rip the cap off and throw it in the nearest trash bin, he turns away and says, almost too casually to be believable, “No, you’re fine. You just looked like someone else I knew for a second.”

“W-What’s with that… uh… Uh, look!” Sooyoung exclaims, pointing at the snack bar just up ahead. “Bungeoppang! You want one? I want one! Let’s go get some!”

“Wait, didn’t you just eat half a bucket of chicken? Are you seriously still hungry?”

“Shut up and let’s eat! You want red bean or chocolate?”

Sooyoung gets red bean and Kim Dokja gets chocolate. To her horror Kim Dokja doesn’t eat it right away, saying something about how he ‘prefers them cold,’ at which point Sooyoung tunes him out to avoid hearing anything worse come out of his mouth.

Left with nothing to do and a whole mall to explore, they go from store to store whenever something catches their attention: looking at the cats and dogs in the pet shop, flipping through bad YA books in the bookshop, staring in confusion at the video games on display while Kim Dokja browses idly through the selection in the appliance store. It’s probably the one place in the mall Kim Dokja feels more relaxed in than Sooyoung, considering how he goes on to point out a few video games ‘Namwoon-hyung’ and ‘Jihye-noona’ have been looking forward to the release of.

Sooyoung has no idea who those are, but she can only assume they’re upperclassmen he’s friends with. Kim Dokja himself had said he was an only child, so why does it feel like Sooyoung can never keep track of how many names he casually drops…?

In the end Sooyoung buys the games, ignoring Kim Dokja when he asks if she even has the console for them — it’s not like she’s going to play the things, after all. When he ducks into the restroom a few minutes later, she slips the game boxes into one of the shopping bags with all his new clothes, making sure to completely bury them under the sweater. He can have fun playing this with his other friends, Sooyoung thinks. He can wear these new clothes when he goes out with them, too…

Her throat feels thick, her chest tight. They’re already friends, aren’t they? So why does she still want more? Why does she still want to share more of their lives together, as if making up for lost time?

Her thoughts are rudely interrupted when Kim Dokja launches himself out of the restroom. “Han Sooyoung! They’re there! They’re in there! We have to run, I think they saw—”

A guard slides out from behind. “There they are!”

“Damn it, I wanted ice cream,” Sooyoung grouses as they take off running once more.

This time is significantly more difficult, because the longer they run around the mall in circles, the more guards start pouring in from the entrance. They race up and down escalators, slip into closing elevators at the last second, hide in the clothes racks of fashion stores, and finally hold bated breaths as they crouch behind cars in the dark, dank parking lot until the threatening footsteps finally fade away. Then they have to walk all the way up the curving ramps to avoid returning to the guard-infested mall, so by the time they emerge into the late afternoon sunlight Kim Dokja is gasping for air like he’s just ran a marathon, done ten consecutive laps in an Olympic-sized pool, and finally weightlifted.

“Remind me,” he pants, “never to answer your calls again.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got, like, twenty new shirts, what’s the problem?”

The sky is turning shades of pink and gold already; Sooyoung hadn’t realized how late it had gotten while they’d fooled around in the mall and spent more than Sooyoung’s credit card is used to on most days. At such an awkward time of day there aren’t many people around outside, turning the streets unusually quiet, and Sooyoung takes a moment to just breathe, without the pressure of eyes on her back. “I’m tired,” she declares. “Let’s go sit down somewhere. I think there’s a park around here.”

The park isn’t far, though it certainly feels that way when their legs are aching and they (well, mostly Kim Dokja) are laden down with shopping bags. When they arrive it’s relatively empty as well, and Sooyoung collapses on a bench in relief, resting the back of her head on the backrest to stare up at the sunset sky. Or, no, not sunset… The golden hour, she thinks. The same time they had first met each other, back in those woods around the temple.

Kim Dokja sets the shopping bags down on the bench with a groan. “What do you want?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a vending machine there. I’ll get us something.”

“No, I don’t want…”

“Come on,” Kim Dokja insists, already taking out his wallet. He actually looks kind of excited, though for what reason Sooyoung can’t tell. “Fine, I’ll just get you whatever then. Don’t complain if you don’t like the flavor.”

Sooyoung watches, silent, as Kim Dokja heads over to the vending machine beside the bench and slots in a few coins. The drinks clatter down a few seconds later, and he returns with a proud smile on his face as he hands her a can of… lemon juice. For a moment Sooyoung can only stare down at it, uncomprehending, before taking it in her hands; she doesn’t recognize the brand, and in fact she rarely even gets drinks or food or anything from vending machines when she can just get them from their actual stores, but Kim Dokja just looks so… happy.

Is it because this is the first thing he’s bought for her today, as compared to how she’s waved her card around for him all day? She cracks the can open, takes a sip. “Huh. Not bad, I guess.”

“Oh, what?” Now Kim Dokja almost looks disappointed. “I was hoping you’d spit it out.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you? You trying to poison me?!”

“Well, at least you like it.” Kim Dokja opens his own can of iced chocolate. Sooyoung hadn’t even been aware they sell those — and also, he must really like chocolate, huh. Or maybe it’s the only flavor he knows and thus goes for it whenever he’s presented with more than one choice. “We’re pretty out in the open here, aren’t we,” he remarks, staring out at the park. It’s as empty of décor as it is of people, with just a few benches arranged around a lonely stone fountain in the middle. “Won’t we get spotted right away? We didn’t even have time to change clothes halfway through.”

“Mm.”

“…What’s wrong?” Kim Dokja asks, slowly. “You’ve been talking nonstop all day, so why slow down now?”

Sooyoung worries on her lower lip, realizes she’s doing that, stops, and takes a sip of her drink instead. She hadn’t been lying about it being not bad — in fact, it’s actually pretty good, though she never thought she’d like lemon flavor much. “It’s fine,” she says, at last. “We’ve lasted pretty long, so even if they find me now, it doesn’t matter.”

“Uh… what..?”

“Oh, right. I didn’t tell you everything.” Sooyoung keeps her voice casual, like this really is just a detail she forgot to mention and not something she’s been deliberately holding back all day. “My parents came to visit today. But I didn’t want to see them. So I ran away from the house.”

Kim Dokja says nothing. Sooyoung keeps her gaze fixed on the grass under her feet as she speaks, because she doesn’t want to see whatever he must look like right now. “They thought I got kidnapped for ransom or something, and sent out a bunch of their personal bodyguards and security to hunt me down. Funny, right?” She forces a sardonic laugh. “Kidnapping, really? Who cares? They only visit once in a blue moon, and it’s only ever when they need to tell me to shut up and quiet down so I don’t reveal their affair to the whole wide world — like, who fucking cares about them. Who cares that they cheated and ended up with some kid they don’t want. It’s all so—” Her voice finally chooses to crack here, and Sooyoung has to close her eyes when she spits the last word out — “stupid.”

It’s quiet for the longest time. A breeze passes by, rustling the leaves on the trees, the sunlight shifting and dancing and Sooyoung wishes she were back in those woods, petting a cat, feeling like she could stay in that forest forever and never be found, never have to return to that house, too big to hear yourself in and too empty to ever completely fill up. She wishes she’d never said anything. She wishes she could say more. She wishes and wishes and stares at the grass until her eyes burn with unshed tears.

Kim Dokja says, very softly, “If you want… For today, you could…”

Tires screech against the asphalt. He freezes, tensing up like he’s already developed the instinct to run just from today alone, but Sooyoung stays still, even when she hears a car door opening and slamming shut, even when she hears booted footsteps heading their way. “Wait — wait,” Kim Dokja’s saying, desperation creeping into his voice, “hold on, just a minute — Han Sooyoung, hey. I — I get it, okay? I get wanting to get away from the house for a bit, and — and the people in it, so if you want — you could… you could come and…”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Sooyoung says, when he trails off and stares up at something behind her. “It’s late. I should get going.”

“Han Sooyoung.” Kim Dokja stands when she does, takes a step forward when she does. “You don’t have to go,” he’s saying, almost pleading, and Sooyoung almost crushes the can of juice in her grip. “We can keep running. We can just — We’ll take the subway and—”

“Kim Dokja,” Sooyoung says, slowly, so her voice doesn’t crack again. “I had fun today. Okay?”

She turns around and follows the security guards waiting behind the bench.

The car is black and sleek and significantly prison-like. One of the guards opens the door for her, and as Sooyoung climbs in she sees Kim Dokja from the rearview mirror, stumbling out from the park and heading down the street as if meaning to follow them. Idiot, she thinks; “Idiot,” she says aloud, the slam of the car door drowning out her voice. As if he thinks they’ve been doing so well avoiding the guards all day. As if he thinks they’re seriously that bad at their job, that they’d be outpaced by a pair of dumb teenagers and defeated by some cereal boxes. As if they could keep doing this, forever, never running out of places to escape to together.

The car starts up and moves down the road. Sooyoung tries to look away from the rearview mirror but fails, and she can only watch his silhouette disappear into the distance, slowly then all at once. When he’s gone she stares down at her lap and tries not to think about why even this seems familiar: as if she’s seen him leave before, too, his back eternally out of reach.

5.

“You know, for someone who said she didn’t want to come,” Dokja comments, “you sure look like you’re having fun.”

“Oh, shut up,” Han Sooyoung snaps, readying her toy gun again. She takes careful, precise aim at the plushie on the top shelf, then shoots. Her bullet careens off-course and smacks into the wall. “For fuck’s sake! What’s wrong with this thing? It’s totally sabotaged, isn’t it?!”

“Don’t say that, you’ll hurt the owner’s feelings. Sorry about her,” Dokja adds, to the aforementioned booth owner, one of the students in a different class. “She’s a sore loser.”

“I said shut up, you’re ruining my concentration here!”

At first Dokja had only invited Han Sooyoung to his school’s cultural festival to get more customers for his class’ booth — a café that honestly sucks at being a café, only salvageable because the baked goods aren’t so bad — but she stuck around and hogged one of the five-person tables doing nothing but eating cookies and cupcakes until Dokja finally got off his shift. Then she insisted he give her a tour around campus, and Dokja did his best to pretend like she was being a total pain when in truth he was relieved she’d brought the subject up first; he’d been thinking of a way to casually offer they go around the festival together the whole time he was serving other customers drinks and snacks.

That was around lunchtime. They spent the rest of the day messing around and wasting time, trying the upperclassmen’s haunted house (Han Sooyoung shrieked and clung to him like a monkey wrapping its limbs around a tree the entire time), watching the elementary schoolers’ musical performances (Dokja will admit he fell asleep), and finally trying out every single game booth set up by the other classes, of which there are a ton. So far they haven’t won anything, though, because their combined skill at aiming, throwing, and shooting is still zero.

“Let me try,” Dokja says, taking the toy gun away before Han Sooyoung can go truly ballistic and hit the quavering student over the head with it.

Han Sooyoung scoffs. “Like you’ll hit anything! You’re even worse at this than I am!”

She’s right, but she doesn’t have to say it. Dokja takes aim and shoots, but his hand falters at the last second and his bullet goes astray as well, landing dangerously close to the student’s head. This must be the last straw for them, because they grab one of the consolation prizes from the bin and shove it in Dokja’s hands. “Here! Here, just take it!” they wail, leaving Dokja no room to refuse.

“What? Lame!” Han Sooyoung says, digging her wallet out. “Let me play one more—”

“No, no more chances left for today! P-Please try your luck somewhere else! I’m begging you!”

“Psh, coward. You’re just scared we’ll win top prize.” Han Sooyoung dutifully returns her wallet, though, and raises an eyebrow down at the limp plushie in Dokja’s hands. “What the hell is that?”

“I think it’s supposed to be a cat.”

“Huh? You think I’m stupid or something? This is obviously a rat.”

“Whatever it is, take it.” Dokja returns the toy gun to the student and dumps the cat/rat/monster plushie in Han Sooyoung’s hands instead. It’s surprisingly big for a consolation prize, almost the size of their heads, and Han Sooyoung has to wrap her arms around it to keep it from falling. “Now you finally have a souvenir to bring home with you. Only after around six hours of losing, anyway.”

Han Sooyoung flushes bright red. “I-I-I don’t want your stupid souvenir!”

“Why not? Isn’t it cute?”

“It’s so fucking ugly! No wonder that guy decided to give it to you!”

“Hey, don’t bring me into this,” the student protests.

Han Sooyoung goes on describing how ugly and dumb and stupid the plushie is, though she makes no move to return it to the booth owner. Dokja tunes her out around five words in, moreso when he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket… for the third time in the past few minutes, he realizes with a wince. When he finally picks up, he greets Lee Hyunsung with “Sorry” instead of “Hello.”

“It’s fine,” Lee Hyunsung sighs. “You’re having fun. But it really is getting late, and you know how bad the late-night traffic can get.”

“Okay, okay, I… Just give me five more minutes. I’ll be at the gate in five minutes, I swear.”

When he hangs up, Han Sooyoung is looking at him with a mix of curiosity and disappointment. “That your parents?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dokja says, because it’s always easier to let others assume what Yoo Joonghyuk and the others are. “I really have to go now, they’re waiting by the gate.”

“Okay. I’ll come with you,” Han Sooyoung says, as easy as if she doesn’t mind him leaving already, not at all, they must be sick of each other after spending all day together anyway. That’s what Dokja tells himself, at least, because if he doesn’t he may never stop thinking about how unfair it is that he has to go home early when all his classmates are still here.

Lee Hyunsung really is waiting by the entrance gates to the school, leaning against the side of the car; Dokja can spot Kim Namwoon waiting in the passenger’s seat, bobbing his head along to whatever heavy metal track he’s put on the radio. “Dokja-ya, there you are,” Lee Hyunsung greets, expression going from relieved to confused when his gaze slides to the side. “Ah, and this is… a friend?”

Dokja is glad it’s evening right now and the red on his cheeks is (hopefully) unnoticeable. He doesn’t even know why he’s embarrassed. Friends are normal. Friends are good. “Yeah. Han Sooyoung.” He turns to her at this, takes in the way she’s avoiding his gaze and shifting her weight back and forth, clearly awkward. “Um… Well… I have to go.”

“Sure, okay,” Han Sooyoung mumbles. “Thanks for today. I guess.” She’s clutching the plushie to her chest like it’s a beloved doll instead of a ratty old consolation prize.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Yeah.”

The silence feels heavy enough to touch. Dokja wants to bury his face in his hands and scream. Of course Han Sooyoung isn’t leaving just yet; of course Han Sooyoung’s parents aren’t here to pick her up and drive her home.

Ever since that day they spent running around Seoul and escaping security guards Dokja was half-convinced were out for blood, things have been… well, they’ve made an effort to keep them the same as if nothing had changed, but there’s a distance between them that Dokja doesn’t know how to close, and he’s fairly sure Han Sooyoung doesn’t either. After all, how do you just talk about someone’s family life (or lack thereof) after you watched her get taken away by bodyguards, looking the whole time like she’d rather be anywhere but there? How do you just say, hey, I understand, my dad used to smash alcohol bottles and put out cigarette burns on my mother and I, so I totally get it? Wouldn’t that freak her out instead?

So they’ve kept quiet, and they haven’t talked about it, and Dokja is starting to think they never will, for both their sakes.

“Isn’t it getting late?” Lee Hyunsung remarks, and Dokja jolts because he’d well and truly forgotten he was even there. He’s looking at Han Sooyoung with something like contemplation in his expression. “If you’re Dokja’s friend, why don’t you just come sleep over?”

Dokja blinks. Sooyoung stares. “…Eh?”

“Hey, shrimp — whoa! Who’s this?” Kim Namwoon exclaims, when Dokja and Han Sooyoung climb into the car and sit stiffly in the back. It looks like they entered just as the heavy metal song ends and an anime opening theme song begins. “A friend? A girl friend?”

“Hyung, shut up.”

“Wow! I know you’ve got friends, but this is the first girl you’ve ever brought home! Wait, she’s coming home? For dinner? No, to sleep over?! You’ve got some nerve, brat! Captain is gonna get blown away by this! And so will that archangel-noona, actually. Though in, like, a completely different way.”

“Hyung, please shut up.”

“Aww, the little baby getting embarrassed? Eh? Well, in my opinion, took you long enough. At your age, kids should be bringing home other kids every other day, but you sure took your time, huh? Waited for the right girl?”

“Hyung, I don’t want to hear this from you when you’ve been trying to pick up the same girl for 40 thousand years.”

Kim Namwoon finally descends into a sulky silence.

Dokja is seriously beginning to wonder if this was a good idea, considering how hot his face feels, but Kim Namwoon’s stupidity must have helped Han Sooyoung relax because she’s doing a really bad job at stifling her laughter. “P-Picking up… Bringing me home… Wait, this means you’ve never had a girlfriend? Kim Dokja, seriously? You’re so lame, I almost feel sorry for you.”

“Why would I have a girlfriend? Can’t I focus on studies first?”

“That’s what all the guys who can’t get girls say.”

“And what about you?”

“Well,” Han Sooyoung primly says, “according to you, I’m four years old, and what’s a four-year-old doing with a boyfriend?”

The traffic isn’t horrendous, to Dokja’s relief, but Han Sooyoung stares out the windows like she’s never been in a car before. (Which is plainly untrue — but Dokja tries not to think about that.) “Do you always use a car to get to school?” she eventually asks, sounding genuinely curious. Dokja can’t blame her.

“Yeah.”

“Huh… Why not just use the subway? Is the station too far from your place or something?”

Dokja’s first thought is to lie, like he always does, whenever others at school ask how come his ‘parents’ or ‘older siblings’ pick him up from school everyday. Are you part of a chaebol or something? they’ll tease. And always Dokja says, My family’s a bit protective… Hyunsung-ahjussi likes using the car… Jihye-noona wants to practice her driving. The excuses change, and though they’re never entirely false, he knows they’re all lies.

But he thinks about Han Sooyoung on that park bench, bathed in the golden sunlight, tears shining in the corners of her eyes, and before he knows it he’s saying, “I don’t like the subway.”

Han Sooyoung blinks. “Oh… huh?” she says; then, to Dokja’s horror, she adds, “But didn’t you take it that time to…”

And then she trails off in obvious embarrassment at the realization: that when she’d called Dokja up about her supposed emergency and provided zero other details, he had been terrified and desperate enough to take the subway and search for her, even when he’d clenched his fists so hard he left cuts on his palms, even when the sway of the train and the flicker of the lights threatened to push him somewhere else, in a different time and space, somewhere he couldn’t entirely recognize but somewhere he was sure he had been, before, and had no intention of returning to.

“Almost home,” Lee Hyunsung says, mildly, turning down the intersection.

Lee Jihye greets them at the door by flinging it wide open, like she does every time she answers the door. “Hey, finally! It’s so late, the food’s gonna get cold — whoa! Who’s this?” she exclaims, the exact same way Kim Namwoon did. “A friend? A girl friend?”

“Noona…”

“Wow! I know you’ve got friends, but this is the first girl you’ve ever brought home!” Lee Jihye says. Dokja wonders if they rehearsed this somehow. “Well, hurry up and get in, Captain’s tired of waiting!”

She ducks inside the house, followed by Lee Hyunsung and Kim Namwoon, while Dokja drags his feet in and tries not to melt into a puddle of embarrassment. When he musters the courage to turn around and look at Han Sooyoung, though, she looks more bewildered than anything. “Hold on,” she says. “I thought you said you were an only child. But this is, like, three older siblings already? Or is the ahjussi who drove us here your personal chauffeur?”

Dokja stares at her. “I do not have a—”

“Dokja-ya!” Uriel’s familiar voice cries. Han Sooyoung pulls the front door shut behind her just as Uriel pokes out from the kitchen doorway, flour on her cheek and her hair pulled back in a thick braid rapidly coming undone. “Welcome home! You’re just in time for—” Then she spots Han Sooyoung and goes silent.

Han Sooyoung stares back. Uriel pulls up a grin and begins to very unsubtly edge back into the kitchen, so the doorframe covers her wings.

“Wait,” Han Sooyoung says. “Is that your mom? Is she a foreigner?” She turns to Dokja. “Are you a foreigner?”

“You know what,” Dokja says, “let’s just go with that. Help me set the table.”

Even for Yoo Joonghyuk, this is more food than usual, so much so that Dokja wonders if he’d known about this somehow and planned ahead to cook for more than their usual six. Han Sooyoung squeezes in between Dokja and Uriel around the dining table, looking a mix of awed and awkward at so many new people crowding in around her. “This is the first time our Dokja’s brought a friend home for a sleepover,” Uriel chirps, as if Dokja and Han Sooyoung and the rest of the world needed a third reminder. At least she says friend. “Captain made this so Dokja could eat up after spending all day at the festival, but it’s a good thing we’ve got more than usual!”

“Uh… yeah,” Han Sooyoung says, as Uriel spoons unholy amounts of rice into her bowl. “Um, thank you.”

Dokja elbows her. “Don’t be awkward.”

“I-I’m not awkward! Who’s awkward?!”

“You’re not in the same school, are you?” Lee Hyunsung asks, before Han Sooyoung can start pummeling Dokja’s shoulder. “How did you two become friends?”

Han Sooyoung clams up again, going back to looking awkward. Seeing her like this is so weirdly endearing that Dokja can’t help but grin as he answers. “It was back during the class trip, actually. There was another school that went to the same temple, and you’ll never believe how stupid she was…”

“Hey! E-Enough, let me tell my side of the story!”

Her awkwardness fades as dinner goes on, but Han Sooyoung doesn’t seem to lose the look of perpetual surprise on her face, moreso when Yoo Joonghyuk silently serves more food onto her plate once she finishes eating. “There’s still some left,” he says, at her questioning look. “And there’ll be some leftover. You can take it home. You like the chicken?”

“I-I…”

“I’ll save some for breakfast tomorrow,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, mostly to himself.

After dinner Lee Hyunsung helps put an extra mattress in Dokja’s bedroom, but just as Dokja and Han Sooyoung enter, Yoo Joonghyuk stands menacingly by the door with his arms folded over his chest. “Remember,” he says, sternly, “no funny business. I will check every hour to make sure—”

“Oh, stop!” Uriel says, her laugh completely at odds with how she grips Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulders with monstrous force and turns him away from them. Han Sooyoung looks unnerved, though whether by Yoo Joonghyuk’s warning or Uriel’s strength, Dokja can’t tell. “Just go have fun, kids. Don’t worry about stupid old men. Really, Captain…” And then she steers him down the hall towards their own room, hissing admonishments under her breath the whole while.

For a moment Dokja and Han Sooyoung just stand there, both of them clearly unsure where to go from here. Then Dokja steps forward and opens the door. “You must think you were real subtle, slipping those video games in my clothes.”

Han Sooyoung harrumphs, and just like that any remaining awkwardness is gone. “Well, wasn’t I? Have you been playing? If I find out you wasted my money—”

“Get in, I’ll teach you how to play.”

It’s a multiplayer game, so Dokja gets to laugh until his sides hurt at Han Sooyoung failing miserably at some of the most basic controls and the easiest quests in the game. They sit together on Dokja’s bed first, entirely because it’s easier to see the TV screen from there, until Han Sooyoung gets comfortable enough to lie down or kick her feet up on Dokja’s lap or rest her head on his shoulder while throwing a tantrum about how this game sucks and she has no idea what he likes so much about it.

“You’re right, it’s boring when you play it on your own,” Dokja says. “Which is why I always play with Namwoon-hyung and Jihye-noona. They’re almost as bad as you are.”

Han Sooyoung snarls and mashes the controller buttons with unnecessary vehemence. “I bet reading my webnovel is way better than this.”

“That’s right, have you been writing lately? You said you write everyday, but you must not have had time today…?”

“Hmph. A beautiful genius girl writer knows when she deserves her days off,” Han Sooyoung says, which obviously means she chose the cultural festival today over her actual job. “Anyway, I’ve got the next chapter all planned out, so I’m not in a hurry.”

Dokja sits up. “The next chapter, huh?”

“Oh, that’s right. You wanna see what happens next? I left it at a total cliffhanger, didn’t I?”

“You always leave things at cliffhangers. Hey, let me see it. Maybe I’ll catch a grammar mistake like last time.”

“That was just a typo! And no, you can’t read it ahead of schedule!”

“Let me read. In return for dinner tonight.”

“I said hell no!”

Dokja makes a dive for her phone. Han Sooyoung screams and kicks him in the face. They end up in a wrestling match on the bed, rolling back and forth on the sheets and struggling for possession of the phone, before they give up and lie together in matching unathletic exhaustion. “Do you… really… want spoilers?” Han Sooyoung pants. “I’ll spoil the entire end of the story… Don’t try me, damn it…”

Dokja covers his ears. “I apologize. Please forgive me.”

“Bastard, now you see the weight of your crimes…”

It’s beyond late and they’re both tired from having been at the festival all day, so Dokja reluctantly gets up from bed to turn the gaming console off and then to kill the lights, leaving only his desk lamp glowing faintly on the bedside dresser. To absolutely no surprise, Han Sooyoung doesn’t move from where she’s lying on his bed, grinning up at him as she pulls a blanket over herself. “Hehe. I’m stealing your bed, Kim Dokja.”

Dokja steps over and wordlessly tries to push her off.

“Agh! Ack! Quit it! You’re gonna turn me into a burrito!”

He gets as far as pushing Han Sooyoung halfway across the bed before deciding he’s too tired for this, and also he’s satisfied with how stupid she looks half-rolled up in his blanket. “Don’t hog that,” Dokja says, climbing into bed beside her and ignoring her look of horror. “What? Oh, right, you’ve never brought a boy home before either.”

“S… Shut up! And ew, get off!”

“This is my bed?!”

They push and shove some more, but they’re both so tired that Dokja can’t even be bothered to remove Han Sooyoung’s arm from his face when they both fall still, just closes his eyes and relaxes in the warmth and comfort of his bed — and the presence beside him, too. It’s strange and unfamiliar but at the same time — nice, too, especially when he realizes Han Sooyoung’s still got the cat plushie from the festival, hugging it to her chest, and she really does like it, huh.

“’Night,” Dokja mumbles, feeling more content in this warmth than he has in ages.

It must be several minutes later, just as Dokja is drifting fully into sleep, that a soft voice stirs his consciousness. “Hey. Are you awake?”

Dokja says nothing, mostly because his brain struggles to process the voice and the words and his answer. But he doesn’t get to speak or even open his eyes when Sooyoung continues, lowly: “Well… um… thank you for today. Or whatever. It… It was fun. I had fun. I guess…” A long pause, then an embarrassed huff. Dokja doesn’t even need to look at her to know she’s scowling right now, a flush high on her cheeks. “Damn it, never mind. This is stupid. Good… Goodnight.”

He waits for her breathing to deepen and even out before murmuring, “You know you’re always welcome, Sooyoung-ah.”

Just as how they had taken him with them, all that time ago, and he thought: this is what having a family feels like.

In the dream, he’s in the subway.

The woman is there again, sitting across from him, white coat and black hair and indistinct features. The difference this time is that the train isn’t moving; there are people coming and going, entering and leaving, always in motion, always in transit. Dokja has to move, to get up and leave, because this is his stop and Yoo Joonghyuk will worry if he’s late coming home —

But he doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to leave this woman behind again, after all the time they spent apart from each other, when all the words they couldn’t say stretch out before them like train tracks disappearing down a tunnel.

She doesn’t move, just sits and sits. And so does Dokja. Overhead, the faint announcement of the doors closing sounds.

Maybe it’s fine if he comes home a little late tonight, he thinks. Yoo Joonghyuk will understand, as long as he explains he didn’t want to leave her behind. Dokja will wait as long as she needs. They’ve both waited long enough; he can keep waiting a little longer. Maybe that’s why he’s back here, in this dream, in this subway, as if the first dream had never happened and he had never gotten up and left her behind in here — as if this is the universe giving them a second chance at things. So rarely does Dokja even get first chances; he has no intention of wasting a second.

The lights flicker. This time he stays.

Then the woman stands, beckons to him — Dokja stands up, too, and takes her hand as they walk out the train together, the doors sliding closed behind them. Under the station lights, her face comes into detail, little by little.