It's fascinating to follow Kim Dokja through the novel. There are many things that leave me chasing trails of crumbs. I'm always about to connect some trails and garner a better understanding of him just to discover something new.
Here are two things I discovered:
At the beginning of the novel, Kim Dokja is scarily cool-headed and pragmatic. And while we can attribute this to the fourth wall, I believe that there is also Kim Dokja's inherent need to distance himself from his own reality to blame.
Throughout the novel we find out that Kim Dokja fought his way through life by distancing himself from the reality he lived in, going as far as telling himself "I'm Yoo Jonghyuk," just to get through the day. He's originally someone who distances himself from trauma and in this instance, he suddenly finds himself in need of doing the same to the novel which suddenly became his reality.
So, while the fourth wall certainly helped him keep his cool, this was something he was likely to do from the beginning.
I think the most damning evidence to this is that at one point in the earlier parts of the novel, when he was supposed to introduce himself, he imagined how cool it would have been, if he could introduce himself as Yoo Jonghyuk but he didn't.
Why? Because Yoo Jonghyuk had become part of the reality he is actively distancing himself from. As the novel progresses, Kim Dokja stops running from his own reality and I like to think the fact that he can claim "I'm Yoo Jonghyuk" again, is part of the progress he has made in overcoming his trauma response.
Kim Dokja, much like Yoo Jonghyuk in the original WOS, is running into his death. Possibly this is something Yoo Jonghyuk developed in his later regressions so it's something Kim Dokja remembers more vividly than the Yoo Jonghyuk from the first few refressions, who still had the power to fight till the end without taking regression as an out.
That death seems like an afterthought to Kim Dokja is definitely something we can attribute to him living in the only way he knows how to; by following Yoo Jonghyuk's example.
I think what supports this theory more than anything is that Kim Dokja only starts to understand that his death is not the solution to resolve every situation, and that he needs to fight to live and use other solutions, only after Yoo Jonghyuk fights the pull of regression and his constellation's stigma to see the end of this world right here.
I'm sure as more time passes, I'll make more small discoveries. The source material has so much to give.
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