Hi! If you're not taking reqs then feel free to ignore this but could you write Kim dokja angst? Maybe we're switching the roles and the reader is dying instead of dokja for once lmao
HOUSE OF CARDS ゜・KIM DOKJA
"A house made of cards, like the fools we are."
In which a gambler finally pays the price for his bet.
never actually written angst so I hope this is good enough anon
art creds to kim28_dokja on twt!
pairings: kim dokja + gn reader
warnings: blood, injury, death, references to child abuse/dokja's past
wc: 2.4k
ORV MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
Dokja is shit at games.
It’s clear to the dealer. Even on the best day, those omnipotent palms that allocate fate will grow clammy (which they never do) and that ever-present smile slowly turns into a profound grimace. They know. They feel it instinctually, on a cellular level: that hand was terrible.
It’s clear to the people around him. The salaryman stumbles into the building as though he’s just learned to walk: in never-polished shoes, slacks that perpetually crease further with each nervous wipe of his hands, and the clinging scent of smoke that preludes his entrance. He’s not got his life together, they observe, behind stony poker faces he can never quite master. That’s why he’s here.
Most of all, it’s clear to Kim Dokja himself. Every irregular heartbeat pulses in his throat as he gazes at his cards—two seven offsuit. In his sweat-streaked fingers is the short straw urging him to enlist. On the table before him are all his chess pieces, lined up neatly: spectators to the constant check, his inevitable downfall.
Despite his atrocious luck, the thin red string binding him to this world never quite severs. A fire befalls the casino. A bullet embeds itself in the shell of his helmet and not a hair further. The chess game is postponed by a phone call and the poignant sound of shattering glass—and Dokja is left to shoulder the limbo of an unfinished game.
He’s shit at games, but never truly loses.
Is it simply up to chance? A coin is tossed into the air: another foolish plan devised, another chip placed that equates to one of his lives. Crisis after crisis—Dokja, that harbinger of misfortune—yet each time, he resurrects. He bets on it, in fact: quite literally gambling away everything.
It is just how things are. He cuts corners. He smooth-talks the fates into letting his transgressions slide just a little longer. For once, he’s winning, and the grand prize is something beyond his wildest dreams—an ending, to mark the indefinite uncertainty of chapters that seem to grow like nebulae.
“Dokja.” It’s a sigh each time when he defies the end. Anyone else would interpret it as exasperation, but he likes to think he knows you better than that; it’s relief you greet him with, no matter how many times he sacrifices himself. “You idiot.”
It’s nice to know his long-time friend cares about him.
No matter how many times he places his bets, the value of his life never seems to deprecate for you. Sacrifice is something you’d rather avoid (so does he, but it cannot always be helped, right?). If Dokja’s life can be used to save more of the people he cares about, all the better.
In fact, he’d rather keep you away from any front line.
There’s a story of its own between the two of you: years of scraped knees and violence, of gazing up at your shoulders while you bruise your knuckles with whoever bruised his eye, of friendship pacts forged with spat-on palms and corded bracelets.
Your very soul is entwined with his scrawny one from years past, and it’s always been the case that yours has fought the battles in his stead. ‘Why?’ he’d once asked, and he still vividly remembers the cool response you attempted to give, only to end up fumbling the words.
Because I can. Because I want to. Because you deserve it.
It’s his turn to repay his debts. These fights are no longer about a bloodied mouth and spitting red onto the asphalt. They don’t end with bruised ribs and broken noses.
You sit out. This one, he thinks grimly, is his fight—one that will guarantee both you and him turning the page on ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼. Every factor has been considered. Each risk is carefully mitigated at the expense of himself. None of the contingencies fail to prioritise his oldest friend.
These are chips he cannot afford to bet on.
Naturally, he keeps them close to his chest.
゜゜・
Dokja is shit at games.
His friends know it all too well. Those disbelieving laughs they let out, their fists clenching and unclenching as they debate whether to hit him across the head—Dokja, the herald of despair, he is—and finally the rush of words leaving their mouths like air deflating from a balloon: “Never do that again.”
All in, his chips go—each and every time. There is no other way about it: not unless you shackled Dokja to you in vain to make him listen—to stop the endless deaths he goes through. Over and over, until you feel his mind wear into recklessness, until you see the emptiness that taints his eyes as he slips into quiet contemplation.
How will Dokja die this time?
You’d rather erode into nothingness than clip his wings, though. That book he gushed about to you (syllables rushing over themselves in his excitement each update) gave him back his life—if you ruin his painstaking ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼, you don’t think you could forgive yourself.
Even if he’s ratcheting to Icarian heights. Those feathers of his are beginning to streak wax-hot down man-made frames, made of pages upon pages of a book obsolete to all but one dedicated reader.
You think he can see the pain in your eyes, before he turns away with lips pressed together tightly. You’ll be safe, he reassured you. You’ve got me. I’ll create an epilogue for you to witness.
Dokja’s changed.
Those scrawny shoulders have become something that the very sky settles on: ones that no longer shake behind your own arms. The world has bruised you, and Dokja shall bruise it back. Every favour, repaid tenfold.
Dokja’s changed.
He’s still got the same facade of the boy you’ve called your oldest friend. If it weren’t for that, you’d think the man who coldly settles his death were a stranger. Someone you never shook hands with, childishly grimacing at the remains of a spat-upon pact rubbing into small palms.
Dokja’s changed.
He thinks he no longer causes misfortune with each risk he takes—as if his life were a mere trifle, as if each shred of news about him doesn’t shatter your heart over and over.
When will it end?
You haven’t seen him for months.
Is it finally time to grieve?
゜゜・
Dokja is shit at games.
It seems you are too. He turns the page of his book, and beside him the house of cards is carefully stacked on the glass table. It’s a precarious matter: high stakes against yourself, an unsafe tightrope that threatens to give way any moment now.
Your eyes meet his.
Like magic, the house collapses.
゜゜・
You are shit at games.
You take a deep breath, and begin organising what could be the final legacy of Dokja. It’s something he treasured even over his life, evidently: the ending, which you allow into your soul in the Kim Dokja-shaped hole left behind.
It’s the first time you take a gamble: carefully picking up the shards of his ideas while rivulets of blood run down your fingers. It’s your turn.
The battlefield in the scenarios is a sanctuary: white noise washing out Dokja’s ever-persistent voice in your head. There’s a perpetual, acrid smell of ash and smoke—a reek that is far better than the dust of buildings Dokja leaves you behind in.
It’s hard.
Gambling is not for you; in the sense that it sickens you, rather than just invoking disaster like it does for Dokja. The only good thing about it is that Dokja’s dream is finally being realised—a tribute to your oldest, dearest friend. Like funerary wine, metallic iron fills your mouth (a once-familiar taste) with each battle, every step closer to the story Dokja wove for you. A fabric so salient you couldn’t help but be entangled in it.
I can do it. That is your gamble.
You do it.
You cut down monsters the size of buildings. You cling to life with bleeding fingernails, scraped raw with tenacity. Tentatively, you begin fleshing in the husk of yourself: talking with the friends you made in the apocalypse once more.
And like Dokja, you begin defying death.
It starts off small—an arrow that you saw coming but didn’t feel like dodging. Jung Heewon almost blew a gasket when she took a glimpse, but then her eyes met yours—filled with the same distance that Dokja’s were, as though you too were peering through an impersonal screen—and she looked away for a brief moment.
“Idiot,” she whispers. “Don’t treat yourself like Dokja.”
Your chips pile up.
Except, you don’t quite have the same privilege that your dearest friend has.
You will incur the cost, rather than somebody else. There is a reason Dokja is called a harbinger of ill fortune to others, and you are not. In the end, your downfall will be at your own hand.
“Fool,” Yoo Joonghyuk grimaces as he cuts down a wolf you let claw your arm. The coppery stench is thick in the air, but there seems to be a manic grin on your face as you slice and chop and stab: a madness that slowly spreads like illness through your body. “There is nothing more worthless than sacrifice without cause.”
The debt accrues.
Kim Dokja dreams of your knuckles, bloodied once more as you stand to face the world. But, it’s just a dream.
He bets on it.
゜゜・
You are shit at games.
Bitter, arterial blood congeals on your hands as you try in vain to staunch the flow. There is nothing quite as caustic as the realisation that you fucked up, because now all the signs of your hamartia are clear.
The house has long collapsed—it’s that final card that still hasn’t hit that glass table yet.
Is this what Dokja feels? The thought runs wonderingly through your sluggish mind. Is it what he felt, you mean to say, but your throat grows thick whenever you speak about him in the past tense. You can’t quite accept the reality that he’s gone. The shock anaesthetises your mind: cradling your neurons with such gentleness that it’s hard to conceptualise you’re about to follow him to wherever he’s gone.
Will I see him again?
Everything reeks of iron: from the massive corpse on the ground, to the claw impaled through your abdomen. It was inevitable. You’ve grown tired of the endless fight, and it’s cost you dearly.
Your chest heaves desperately.
Dokja.
“Dokja,” you croak, collapsing onto the rubble freshly decimated. Despite the rough surface, your blood-slicked hands scrabble for purchase on the concrete—something that doesn’t quite feel like you’re the one puppeteering your strings.
Deliriously, you watch as the same hand urgently attempts to apply pressure to your wound; it goes against rationality, but then again you’re not really yourself anymore.
“Dokja?” you try again. Perhaps if you speak loudly enough—syllables soaked with sanguine that dribbles from your lips—you’ll be able to reach your dead best friend.
There is a pressure behind your eyes.
It may be tears; it may be an unwelcome guest in your head.
It’s too late, you think. He’s dead, and soon I will be too.
“Dokja,” you whisper, and there is salt on your tongue as you feel your limbs grow colder. Everything hurts—your pounding head, the thrum of your pulse as you marr the asphalt with crimson, and finally that stupid bleeding heart of yours that swears you can hear the spirit of your oldest friend.
You can’t die, you think he says—a quiet scream drowned out by the static of your mind.
“I’ll see you soon, though,” you slur, and the weight in your mind lifts—blurring and coalescing into a mirage you could recognise blind.
Frigid fingers pass through the hologram, and you smile, bittersweet.
“Dokja,” you breathe. “It’s been almost a year since I last saw you.”
His hands grasp your shoulders desperately, though his frantic mouth goes unheard upon your ears. You… can’t… die, his lips read—but that’s silly, you think. Doesn’t he want you to meet him again?
Horns curve out of his head, while his wings fluff out—shoulders shaking, with an expression you’ve only seen once on his face before. Utmost grief, when he came soaked in congealed blood and a haunted look in his eyes: murmuring she killed him, over and over.
He’s your best friend. He was your best friend.
Kim Dokja has lost his final gamble, and the bullet in the chamber has finally been spun into place for you too.
“I can see you soon, right?” you murmur—there are cold fingers brushing against your forehead, and you think death is unexpectedly gentle.
His lips wobble.
Incorporeal fingers trace the tear tracks on your face—ones that mirror the slow stream of salt from his own eyes. You didn’t even notice—too caught up in the gradual greyness that spreads through each vessel, weaving through sinew and bone and brain.
“I did a good job, right?” Your sword rests across the ground, heavy after almost a year of fighting. “Maybe it’ll help with the ending that you wanted.”
Dokja’s face crumples, and you can feel your own throat growing thick. Dokja, I’m scared, you want to admit. For the first time in your life, there’s a choking fear that grips you as the red surrounding you blooms into a field.
Your own wings are rapidly coming apart.
“Dokja, I don’t want to die,” you mumble. Struggling, you curl and uncurl your hands into fists, but you can no longer feel them.
“Dokja,” you try again. You can no longer see him, but whether it’s from the salt clouding your vision, or the haze of limbo, you cannot tell.
There is a phantom pressure that lingers on your face.
“Dokja,” you gurgle, mouth iron-hot with arterial blood. “Don’t leave me alone—please.”
No response is given, but that sepulchral presence seems to remain—this time, those hands brush and cradle your face.
You cannot tell if it’s him or death itself, but you don’t think death would kiss you like that.
As if he could possibly breathe life back into you, his ghostly lips move against yours. Desperately, so urgently you half-wonder at his panic.
Dokja, you want to ask. You’re already dead, right?
Right?
With the final scraps of your vision, you watch as he pulls back—his tears pattering across your face—watch as his mouth moves for a final time.
I can’t live without you.
But by then, it is too late.
The words go unheard, and Dokja is alone once again.
Hi could you write a (platonic) Yoo Joonghyuk x Constellation M!Reader
Reader is Secretive Plotter's husband and he helps KimCom for a scenario, I hope I don't ask you too much, I wish you a good day/night 🌸
LORD OF THE MYSTERIES * ★ ₊ ⋆ SECRETIVE PLOTTER
The foreign stars that cluster the night sky like vultures preying on the demise of humans are hard to equate to the protostar that had been born in this particular round.
* ★ ₊ ⋆
HELLO ANONN!!! listen I was going to do the requests sooner but I was swamped with a work and a larger project, so I'm apologising preemptively to the requests still in my inbox and post-emptively to the ones that have waited for TIME
without further ado, I shall be working on completing the other requests (and yes the name of the constellation was intentional, no I have not read the lotm novel fully though I have tried)
art credits: hellmirrart on X
pairing: secretive plotter x male constellation reader, '3rd round' yoo joonghyuk x reader (platonic)
warnings: none, except spoilers for orv
wc: 1.8k
ORV MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
There are many tales that make up a person.
First, there are the superficial adjectives lingering just outside the dermis: little epithets mentioned in passing. Stoic. Quiet. Stone-faced. These words are shared between humans: surface-level stories that allow one to select a person in a line, yet ultimately fail when confronted with the amorphous, exponentially-growing mass that is humanity.
Next are the anecdotes: the involvement of various characters, that can’t exactly be surmised just by looking at them. He swung a sword at me. He glared at me. He was rude to me. These lurk below the skin, forming an impression, yet not a complete picture: as a few congruent curves are to a fingerprint, as a shadow is to the object.
Finally, deep under sinew and flesh, located in the very marrow of the matter are true stories. These encompass many things. The particularities of somebody’s disgusted expression. The precise gestures of their hands when they are nervous. The order of emotions one displays on their face as they receive good news. Stories—each microscopic detail is a tale that forms the very structure of a person, which can never truly be replicated.
Except, of course, when it can.
“Look, he’s just like you.” These syllables are murmured into your palm: a sentence he should feel insulted by, yet he’s more preoccupied with how you’re lying on the bed—leaning on your elbow with a smug number 41 on your right side, and a more reticent 999 curled up on your left. It becomes disproportionately difficult to comprehend whatever’s going on when the man in the doorway is greeted with such a rarely peaceful, picturesque scene in front of him: so utterly removed from the mess that is indubitably occurring in each wing of the house. It’s… domestic, really, in a way he doesn’t quite feel he deserves.
“Of course he’s like me,” he finally retorts. “Why would he not be?”
He rarely feels childish—or at least, he should rarely feel childish. He’s lived through hundreds of millenia, seen the falls of countless constellations, died thousands of times, yet still, his steps petulantly take him to your side to see just exactly what you’re finding so fascinating.
Predictably, Yoo Joonghyuk is on the screen that 41 is propping up for your leisure. As if winning over the squabbling, stubborn kkomas that roam this place wasn’t enough, you’re now observing yet another variant. A face identical to the one on your phone scoffs.
[Secretive Plotter is becoming increasingly irate.]
[Secretive Plotter donates 1,000 coins.]
These contradictory ‘tales’ are, naturally, owed to the man behind you beginning to seethe, while number 41 paws at the screen whimsically to adjust it to your sight better. A few stray donations here and there when the not-so-dexterous kkoma hand slips, and thus the contradiction forms.
It does not help the simmering annoyance he feels when you’re so busy, as you had put it earlier.
[Lord of the Mysteries donates 3,000 coins.]
[Lord of the Mysteries waves his hands towards the portrait, motioning with growing frustration.]
The man behind you wouldn’t have been so generous to give any hints in this fiendishly difficult escape room, but you always did have a soft spot when it came to the hims of this world and all his companions.
[Lord of the Mysteries donates another 4,000 coins, telling the Incarnations to turn the frame rather than gawk at the paint strokes.]
But this. This is too far: ignoring his rhetorical, sarcastic comment while you continue to spoil the Kim Dokja Company rotten in this sub scenario. Outer gods forbid you save your tendencies for main scenarios.
There isn’t even a time limit for this room!
The bed dips under the weight of another constellation as he joins you, and to his strange, vindictive satisfaction, the wayward kkomas scatter; in their stead, three eyes glare at him (though, it’s difficult to take palm-sized beings seriously, as a rule of thumb).
“Scram,” he utters triumphantly (though, it’s equally as difficult to take him seriously—a constellation who has gone through hundreds of millenia, who looks like he’s melting in your presence). It is quite obvious that they don’t listen to him—999 is helped over your body to your right side by the traitorous 41, and you let them, much like you let him sink into your left side, breathing in the scent that carries tales of both your life and his.
The ink you write with. The food that he cooks for you, and only you. The faint traces of books, mingling with the vestiges of clean soap.
A heavy arm wraps around your waist, while an impatient face buries itself into your neck. Yet, despite his obvious preoccupation, he still makes the time to shoot the kkomas a look that they have unfortunately become quite familiar with when it comes to you and your time. They cannot do the same things he does: namely, hold you like this.
I win.
It is as he has said. Seldom does he act childishly, but he can’t refrain from having capricious whims when he is faced with your presence.
Pay attention to me, my love. This is the look the kkomas now read on their Plotter’s face—no, not merely his face, his body. It’s pathetically pathetic, yet they can’t help but understand.
“See there,” you comment laconically, and despite his growing aversion to the distraction in your hands, he is compelled to observe, just like you have asked him to do. “He is far more cautious than the third. Without knowing it, he is a shadow away from you.”
He is faced with a mirror of himself, glaring up at wherever the omnipresent cameras are—though he merely looks perplexed when he is faced with the screen displaying your name.
It makes sense.
You are a perplexing entity, and one that this particular Yoo Joonghyuk would not have encountered before.
He sheaths his sword, and just like that, the Plotter who breathes you in recognises the telltale glimmer of trust in his eyes that the Yoo Joonghyuks of the worlds have towards your existence.
He’s not for you, he chastises silently, though the him in the screen will never hear him.
The Plotter presses a chaste kiss to your shoulder, and finally, finally, you turn your gaze to meet his own, fervent one.
“Where is the time you’ve reserved for me?” He knows he’s being far too jealous. He can hear it in the sluggish pulse that only ever seems to quicken whenever you’re around—he can feel it in the heavy tension in his sternum.
I win.
He’s taken the victory once again when he feels you shift to switch the offending device off; a rare smile paints his face, just as a frown breaks out on the face of the Yoo Joonghyuk still within the scenario.
[Lord of the Mysteries has temporarily disconnected from the channel.]
* ★ ₊ ⋆
“For a Lord of the Mysteries, he sure doesn’t act like he likes them.”
Jihye’s confused voice is the first to reach his ears as his sword slices through the particular barrel the constellation warned them about mere moments ago. Before he left, that is.
The man known as Yoo Joonghyuk, going strong in his third round, is perhaps even more confused than his disciple—and that never happens. Never. He could blame it on the walking bucket of bad luck that is Kim Dokja, but this is still too unusual to pin it solely on that man.
In purely pragmatic terms, it could be said that Yoo Joonghyuk’s memory is impeccable. It has to be, if he ever had hope of escaping the cursed cycle he has been trapped in.
When event after event that he knows from two previous rounds go awry, it is uncannily easily to point Dokja as the culprit—yet, these familiar eyes that watch him were present from the very moment he awoke in that compartment on the train, eyes that were strangely empathetic for a constellation.
It is easy to feel pity for lesser beings: a cloying, disturbing emotion to witness when lives are purchased with arbitrary coins.
It is not easy for a constellation to seem so human.
Amongst the entities that crowd the channels of the third round, he recognises many names. All were ones he had witnessed in the past two rounds—bickering amongst themselves like he had predicted, bidding on the struggles and turmoils of humans with an apathy akin to monsters.
All… but one.
The foreign stars that cluster the night sky like vultures preying on the demise of humans are hard to equate to the protostar that had been born in this particular round.
[The Lord of the Mysteries hints at the Incarnations that they have already passed the right path.]
[The Lord of the Mysteries agrees to the bet proposed by the Incarnations.]
[The Lord of the Mysteries votes in favour of the formation of the Kim Dokja Company.]
Favour doesn’t seem to be currency when it comes to this particular star; rather, favour is endowed freely amongst those he likes, without asking for anything in return. It’s disturbing: complex in a way he doesn’t quite know how to deal with, much like he doesn’t quite know how to deal with Kim Dokja, and all the anomalies that seemed incessantly tied to that man.
[The Lord of the Mysteries assumes what appears to be the night watch.]
It’s bizarre. He can’t quite trust the constellation. He can’t even begin to comprehend what goes on inside his head. Though, what’s perhaps the most perplexing of all was the fact that he can’t sense any trace of malevolence in the constellation’s actions.
He’s shady, his intuition screams at him. He makes no sense, his Sage’s eye confirms. He’s fattening us up for the final slaughter, his gut proclaims.
Yet, unfathomably, both eyes flutter shut. It wouldn’t hurt, his heart murmurs against the turmoil.
The sword slips from his tight grasp and clatters against the floor, but the man doesn’t stir from his upright slumber against the wall. A lone draught carries its songs through the abandoned building, but his breathing remains calm and undisturbed.
For once, the tempestuous landscape of his mind has stilled: nightmares grinding to a gradual halt, clammy skin drying in the gentle evening breeze. For once, the stories that make up his dreams are doused in balmy tranquility: the smell of sunlight in a field, the warmth of a song playing in the distance, the taste of literature while turning a page.
Under the watchful eyes of a singularity in the heavens, the 1864th Yoo Joonghyuk sleeps peacefully for a night.
Kim Dokja with a Sung Jinwoo!Reader and their supporting constellation is Six-Eared Macaque
BAKHT ⁺ ✦ KIM DOKJA
"An existence as lonely as yours... chance has not been kind to you, it seems."
It was neither choice nor good fortune that flung you into the rift that divided worlds: suspended in a limbo not of your own making, in a world with no dungeons like yours but 'scenarios' instead. Only the Story reaching its [◼◼◼] and you protecting the protagonist would guarantee your return, but how were you supposed to do that when the 'protagonist' you were meant to protect kept dying?
honestly it's been a while since I read both solo levelling and orv so the plot is a bit hazy. I told myself to focus more on the actual interaction so it wouldn't snowball into storybuilding like the rest of my works... but alas... honestly this ask was extremely interesting like I've never read journey to the west but a sung jinwoo/six eared macaque collab??? damn
me when I focus on tense first encounters rather than the lovey dovey aspect of relationships.. jokes aside it does get somewhat soft at the very end
fun fact bakht refers to fortune in arabic, or rather finding luck in 'chance'; which unfortunately our reader doesn't seem to have a lot of...
art by @ 1L9l2Aa8UCL0IGJ (blackbox) on x!
pairing: kim dokja + sung jinwoo gn reader
warnings: canon typical danger, mentions of death, also they're not really on the best of terms initially?? quite graphic depictions of blood
wc: 2.7k
ORV MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
Tonight, the wind carried only premonition in its whispers. It started like all the stories did—the ones that reached your ears, at least. Beginning as a gentle breeze, the songs twining past and future turned coarse as a gale once they encountered the pixelated appendages that seemed to have a life of their own: six downy auricles that were unable to decide whether to stay in the virtual realm or materialise themselves.
Most of the time, they hid in the umbrous kingdom—much like the rest of your shadows. When you donned the façade of the humans from Planetary System 8612, the tales you could eavesdrop on were mere gossip slinking in from the future and the bygone past—tidbits of paltry information that were perhaps divine retribution for not proudly donning the Six-Eared Macaque’s ‘crown’, as he seemed to put it.
But tonight was different. Tonight, the mellifluous litany of your flute was sharper than usual as you idled the time away. Tonight, with only the vast night shielding you and the countless shadows skulking on the rooftop, their dance appeared wilder. There was frenzy in the air, and prophecy tainting the cold, canorous wind.
It tasted acerbic.
‘Danger… horizon…. Dokja….’
The frequency soured the melody that brushed past the fur of your six-ears, and they flicked, irritably.
[The Fake Monkey King warns of something afoot.]
“I know,” you bitterly commented. Something was always afoot when it came to this world in which you did not belong. Falling past the veil separating a dungeon from nothingness wasn’t meant to happen. Your system subsequently trapping you in this limbo until you reached [◼◼◼◼◼], too, wasn’t meant to happen either. Let the Story run its course and protect its ‘protagonist’, and this dimension will naturally collapse just enough that you’ll fall through back into yours.
Kim Dokja, you’d repeated like a mantra while you lost your mind—over and over while your system glitched and protested in this limbo. Over and over, while he died and died and died some more. You’d bought and earned and fought for various potions, weapons and clothes to help him with his scenarios—leaving them in his vicinity where you knew he’d stumble across them—but it was all so fucking futile.
Each time, he returned past the veil; each time, you sank into a deeper mire of restriction. You hadn’t spoken to another soul in months: imprisoned in the very shadows you controlled. It wasn’t as bad, initially: you could still talk to people uninvolved in the ‘Story’, the poor souls dubbed as extras—so long as you didn’t cause any ripples with your actions. If Dokja was accounted for through both the soldiers in his shadow, and the whispers that reached the six ears that fanned out behind your head, it would be fine.
‘Hazard… kilometre north of Dokja’s camp….’
A kilometre. You’d be quiet. You always were.
Dokja. Dokja. Dokja. Your face soured as you exchanged places with Beru: ready to silently act as his guardian shadow, though if he was determined to sacrifice himself… Both of you would pay a price.
The silence in the city was razor-sharp and just as deadly, to the point you could hear the ionic buzz of your summoned demonic knives. Their ozonic scent bitterly filled your mouth, which only amplified the acerbic profanities mingling on your tongue as you glanced around for the danger. What danger? You’d be damned before you were sent back to that empty desert to reflect your wrongdoings. There was no chance to gain anything there—just endless time, chipping your sanity away and stirring up derision for the one who couldn’t solve anything without dying.
Because in the end, both of you would pay the price, and he didn’t even know it. He became a constellation, while you were shackled to a prison that was never of your own making.
Examining the wreck of this urban landscape that felt too much like the Seoul you knew, you came to the abrupt conclusion that there was nothing. Even when your six-ears flicked this way and that, it was too silent. Not a whisper, nor any trace of danger lingered in this space; such an occurrence was nigh-impossible in the scenario-laden dome of this city.
[The Prisoner of the G◼◼◼en Headband expres◼◼◼◼ his mistrust.]
Sun Wukong. A flash of hatred that was not your own wracked your body, complete with a burning envy and something far more insidious than anything you’d ever experienced,
Crackling messages began interfering with your system screen. You’d only seen this once—when you accidentally intruded on the fringes of the ‘Star Stream’ as an ‘unauthorised one’. An anomaly if you ever saw one.
“There’s nothing,” you muttered callously, scraping the tip of your blade against concrete ruins. If it had been a false alarm, then it was time to leave before you risked paying the penalty. Your job was simple—keep watch of the ‘protagonist’ from the shadows, and make his life somewhat easier.
[A nameless constellation argues that advertisements are simply a part of life, and that it’s not a big deal to build suspense.]
That’s weird. The messages were getting clearer, but the warning signs that typically appeared in the system windows weren’t there.
Your own supporting constellation was far too quiet as you sheathed your knife in the shadow dimension—the darkness cradled the weapon softly before it vanished, though the familiar whish could not soothe the unease that distorted your mind. Never had the six-ears failed to pinpoint hazards, as close to omniscient that they were.
“Got you,” something—someone—whispered from afar, the moment you stepped on the next broken slab of pavement and triggered a tripwire. A paltry toy, golden string that was incandescent in this darkened city, wrapped tightly around your body; right before you were shoved against a concrete wall. “You’re not the only one to see the ‘outcome’.”
Stand down, Igris, you commanded as the stranger continued to press into you; you could sense the turbulent shadows growing even more agitated at your position, though all of them could feel the ease with which you could’ve snapped out of the rope that was no more than a thread. The stream was eerily silent, while the glassy window only you could see kept its cold azure colour—nothing like the glaring scarlet that informed you of your penalty.
Who is this?
In the darkness, you made out the shape of a mouth pressed into a thin line. Dark hair partially swept over the stranger’s eyes, while a long white coat draped itself over his shoulders. But it wasn’t the garb, nor was it the features that alerted you of just who this was.
It was the umbrous cloud of his soul, the very one you’d been tracking all these weeks.
“Kim Dokja,” you greeted, half-placidly, half in intrigue. If he could bend the rules of life and death to suit him, you supposed that bending some more rules wouldn’t hurt. The interest was quickly replaced by irritation—for this was the very charge that had continuously shackled you to the in-betweens of the Seoul dome. Not quite a human from this planet, nor a monster—just an abominable anomaly that didn’t belong in this ‘Story’ at all. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
There was a polite smile on your face, but he only scoffed in disbelief. “What the hell are you playing at? Who are you? You think leaving all those materials for me to find will somehow increase your chances to survive? Why are you doing this?”
Incredulity laced each syllable. The Ugliest King stared hard at the face of the Shadow Monarch, though he didn’t know it.
You sympathised, you really did. Having someone trail after you (though he hadn’t mentioned your shadows—did he even notice them?) and leave you useful items might have been convenient to some, but chronic overthinkers (as Beru had reported to you from his shade) wouldn’t see it as such.
But it wasn’t like you had a choice not to, either.
“I just want to get back home.” For the first time, there was a hint of the welling annoyance that seeped through the cracks in your courteous expression: in your grinding molars, in the slight squint of your eyes. Babysitting this guy should have never been part of your job.
Don’t affect the story.
You pressed your lips together to avoid the tide of complaints that swept in. Why do you keep dying? Do you know how much it sucks whenever you do? Why the fuck was I put on babysitting duty?
“Just take the things,” you gritted out instead; to which a sharp blade stung the side of your neck. Quick, but not quick enough to pose a true threat to you. “They were annoying to farm, you know that?”
“I never asked for them, nor do I need them to reach where I want to be. You were never in the original— I can’t exactly trust you now, can I?” he scowled—more ill-tempered than Beru had included in his periodic reports. In a mere second, you surged: as fluid and fast as quicksilver, slamming the guy you’d grown to abhor into the cold, harsh asphalt. There was no apology dripping from your lips this time, only a snarling, bloodied grit of teeth when the penalty began etching into your skin as a direct consequence of laying hands on the ‘untouchable’ protagonist.
Sensing your distress, the six-ears materialised around your face—like they were countering the drip-drip of sanguine that slinked from your nose and onto the shirt of the man beneath you. You watched as you sullied the protagonist you were forced to stay away from—tainted in a way that was sure to finally end you. His dark eyes, too, traced the motion of each crimson rivulet: chest rising and falling desperately as he felt the very real, razor-sharp edge of his own knife lightly against his jugular.
“Listen, I never asked for this either,” you hissed. “Believe it or not, I too want you to reach the conclusion of this shitshow so I can get back home. You need to stay alive for that. I’ll wait.”
The pressure in your head intensified.
“I don’t know how you got past the restrictions on me—” Your grip on his shirt loosened as carmine began seeping into the system window. “—but I can’t stay here any longer without repercussions. Neither can I interfere with the story nor escape this hell—” Dark spots began floating in your vision, and the blade sliced into the concrete a hair's breadth away from his neck with a low-resonating chime. Maybe this was your only chance to make your job easier, without the loss of sanity that came with rule-breaking. “—but if you can’t trust me, trust that your accomplishment of your goal will allow me to get back to my own world as a result.”
“Wait–” Your body swayed as you stood, feeling the familiar frequency of the Stream boot up against the fine down of the six-ears. I don’t have time, you wanted to say, but iron was beginning to leave your lips too.
[The Prisoner of the Golden Headband complains loudly that fraternising with the enemy is a horribly stupid move, pulling out his hair.]
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire is unsure of this development, and would like to be filled in on this stranger’s connection with the Prisoner of the Golden Headband..]
The Star Stream was… clear. Not filled with static like it had been before, but cogent enough that you could observe each message coherently.
[The Star Stream has its eyes on you.]
A terrible foreboding surfaced, while your chest constricted with the sudden onslaught of red that assaulted your eyes—a cacophony of warning signs, all targeted at you.
“What is that?” A hand that wasn’t yours reached for the crimson glow, and you jolted as the cerise shattered: reverting back to the familiar blue interface. The ache in your head, too, vanished—yet the buildup of fatigue was still present in your hazy mind. Though, the only thing you could register was the change in his voice as he observed the screen, an inkling of understanding as he watched the characters fade from existence:
Protect the ‘protagonist’ Kim Dokja. Let the Story run its course, and you will be able to return to your home world.
{The Fourth Wall quietly observes the remnants of its meal.}
Gone, in a wave of his hand. That same hand, now held out to you as if it hadn’t just erased weeks’ worth of strain from your body: long, deft fingers reaching out to you. You could only stare as the world grew dim around you, as a faint voice brushed past the soft fur of your six-ears.
‘Error… error… due to unprecedented actions ◼◼◼◼ taken by the protagonist, the system has now… updated to provide for a deuteragonist model… consi◼◼der standby… updating… updating… ◼◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼ objective updated… reach the [◼◼◼◼] alongside deuteragonist Kim Dokja to catalyse homecoming.’
“What the hell… did you do?” you slurred. The misguided loathing towards him had dissipated into a tumultuous state of frenzy; you could feel the shadows within stir with the agitation of your mind, though you fought to keep your cards at bay. Rather than the hilt of your familiar sword, you thumbed the worn edge of your flute in a last bid to stay calm.
“‘Reach the [◼◼◼◼] alongside deuteragonist Kim Dokja to catalyse homecoming’, huh?” The incredulity you felt at him repeating the words that only you ever heard was overshadowed by the bone-deep exhaustion you felt.
“Was… being honest,” you mumbled for the last time, fully expecting to feel the frigid asphalt as you collapsed and your eyes came to a close. The lingering penalties had finally taken effect, yet you didn’t quite hit the hard concrete like you anticipated. Rather, you collided against a wiry frame that, despite its initial gauntness, was far warmer than anything you’d felt in these apocalyptic weeks. “I might’ve died if I continued interfering.”
“You won’t die.” The words ghosted over your ear as he stared down at the person in his arms who’d been tracking him for weeks. They’d been a constant pain and irritated him to no end, especially with all the gifts he received that he’d never read about in TWSA; and there was nothing he hadn’t read about in TWSA save for the epilogue. “I won’t let you.”
His very headache was now slumbering in his arms, with only the ambition of going home on their mind.
What a lonely existence.
Maybe you heard him. Maybe you didn’t. All he knew was that he was crafting an epilogue that would shake this very world to its roots, and perhaps there was a small, you-sized shape cut out just for the person snoozing their little heart out. He had a feeling he had only breached the outermost layer of you; peeling back only the very dermis to reveal someone far too overpowered to compete with most of the dome.
Dokja’s thumb traced the bloody lines staining your face. You could faintly feel them; then, abruptly, the citrus smell that lingered on him grew sharper. Closer. A soft pressure applied itself to the crown of your head: fleeting, silvery. What was that?
It was everything that had been forcibly taken from you after you were brought past the void.
With something that was suspiciously close to a smile, your mind drifted away in the arms of someone who both damned you and saved you.
⁺ ✦
“If Igris and Yoo Joonghyuk fought, who would win?”
“Igris,” you answered without missing a beat. There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in your face as you opened your mouth, and it was so strong that he almost believed that your Commander could beat the true ‘protagonist’ of this world. “And if he lost, I’d win for him.”
This! This was his chance to get back at that squid bastard!
Hiiiii can u write Kim Dokja x Goth!Male!reader this sponsor constellation is Apollo and The reader is a simp for Dokja ( I love this man )
LOVE LIKE BLOOD ・゜゜KIM DOKJA
“The life is short, and I’m running faster all the time,
Strength and beauty destined to decay,
So cut the rose in full bloom.”
By chance you meet him, by chance you become his friend, by chance you stay by his side; until it cannot be called fickle, capricious chance any longer, but an example of the inevitable law of universal attraction between two starving masses.
art by @ 1L9l2Aa8UCL0IGJ (blackbox) on x! also thank you anon this ask was so big brained I yapped on for like 5k words (very sorry if you wanted headcanon/drabble form I got the most profound inspiration for this at like 3am :3) also damn you have no idea how many song titles I was perusing trying to find a suitable one for this...
pairing: kim dokja + male goth reader
warnings: pretty graphic metaphors, child abandonment/implied parental death, child neglect + abuse, alcohol, smoking, depression + bullying, hurt/comfort, injury, violence (as it's orv), does 10+ year long pining and oddly tense homoeroticism need a warning, anon I hope you ENJOY reading because I enjoyed writing
wc: 5.6k (YAP because i love this silly man, I've never written so much for a request before lmao)
ORV MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
Fundamentally, you and him are the same.
There’s a sense of loss that’s too heavy for either of your bodies to comprehend. Rather than a heart, there’s a black hole right where the organ lies; so greedy, so hungry for acknowledgement. Born blue into this world—deprived of oxygen yet wailing, screaming for your voice to be heard—it’s little wonder you’ve always been avaricious for the love your parents could never give. The hands cradling the babe were never loving; they were clinical, they were covered in sterile blue gloves and they smelled only of caustic antiseptic. There was no kiss on your slimy, puckered forehead. There was only the sting of alcoholic sanitiser.
Kim Dokja is similar, yet his parents wouldn’t (rather than couldn’t, for in your embittered mind the two concepts were so different as to be alien) spare him scraps of care. Rather than press a kiss to their son’s awaiting cheek, only bruises blossomed where the love should’ve been. No flowers were given for Children’s Day—only oily blood spilling and macerating against his chubby hands as a last, vibrant gift for their son.
These two black holes sputtered on their axes while they spun round each other: gluttonous, esurient for care that didn’t come with bruises and wailing grief.
Seoul had been unusually cold; blue afternoons spanned across the school rooftops. They were frigid and foggy—perfect for avoiding detection. Thus, the boy without kisses (only contused skin) encountered another like him on the rooftop that day. Against the haze, your own cigarette smoke had dulled the edges of what he saw—a boy canted against the railing with rippling earphones and a head tilted so far back he could taste the polluted mist.
A merger had occurred.
And though neither of you said it, there was an unspoken recognition of each other’s greed in that moment. Your eyes, ghosting over his injuries while the heavy bass played and the prussic wisps trailed around him: deep reverberations sounding a bit too like his careening heartbeat—as he made sure no one had followed him up here, that he was safe. And his umbrous eyes—honed in on the cigarette wedged between your lips, now stained black from the gloss decorating your humourless smile.
Maybe it was just that inherent feeling of kinship that came with avariciousness: a snarling sort of camaraderie that snagged at your skin with its claws. The wounds left behind were tender, but tender was precisely the adjective you were looking for—as was he.
And so, Kim Dokja found himself coming to this particular rooftop the next day. When his breathing came ragged and his vision began to swim, he instinctively sought the numbness the frigid azurine firmament would bring. Like a wounded animal, he sought safety. Flight over fight—a lesson he’d learnt too late. Bruised fists would never save him.
There you sat—eyes closed and lips still glossed in modest black. There were silver rings on your hands; rings he’d seen flashing before his eyes before he was hit, that those people no longer sported. Quietly, he matched up the scrapes on your own knuckles to the ones decorating their faces: to their unusual sullenness today. They’d furtively sequestered themselves in a club room all break, touching their swollen lips and eyes with bruised fists. Bruised fists. Like trophies, the achromatic metal glinted against the cobalt haze, and for once, his heart didn’t skip any beats at the sight of the gleaming metal. Neither did you acknowledge his presence nor their sins, but still, he sat on the same bench you were sprawled upon: hugging his bag to his chest while he scrolled the hallowed pixels of Ways of Survival.
There was no grand exchange of words, no heartfelt conversations between Kim Dokja and the boy with a messed-up uniform.
This was how tentative company was kept for a fragile week.
Tuesday was the day that fragility finally shattered. He still remembers every detail about it—down to the particular cigarette brand you’d purchased that morning, down to the chips in your dark nail polish, down to just how many rings you’d worn on your left hand (three—it was three rings). Tears had spilled down his cheeks that afternoon; they warped and distorted the words that had saved him thus far, evoked from the pain in his purple ribs and his empty stomach. Somehow, the salt he’d kept tightly bound had been coaxed by your cold presence—perhaps, knowing your indifference made it easier to cry pathetically in front of you.
You still didn’t speak, but you did hand him a tissue. You still didn’t speak, but you did press your shoulder to his own trembling one: smelling of caustic smoke, and something rich and sweet lingering beneath the plumes. You still didn’t speak, but your rings clinked on your left hand as you unhooked the earbud in your pierced ear and offered it to him: fingers brushed against his palm as he was forcibly shocked out of crying any further, like a blubbering child faced with such a conundrum that their little brains focused entirely on that rather than the reason for their tears.
Melancholy had streamed out of the device. Doleful chords twined against threnetic voices—which he could not translate nor understand but could feel in pulsing waves.
In that short whorl in the great machine of time, in the chill of the blue hour, he could not help but feel warm.
And thus, that Tuesday changed the trajectory of this merger somewhat. A deafening hum had finally blossomed from the gargantuan event; your presence could no longer be described as distant.
When he went to class the next day, you were in the seat next to him: a mirage brought on by his lack of food, no doubt. He limped to his desk, but there your corporeal form remained: this time with silver chains lining the base of your throat and a dry, sharp grin decorating your face. Sure, he knew there was a student that never showed up in his class, but he wasn’t expecting it to be you: your name now a permanent fixture in his mind.
There was a new name for this phenomenon: friendship.
The boy, with the pensive music and trophies stolen from Dokja’s tormentors, smiled up at the reader staring at him. It was an inviting gesture: the proverbial hand reaching out, the hand which he took.
You weren’t a particularly talkative friend at first: preferring to simply share your music rather than speak much. That was fine with him—it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to reading alone. Then, you started bringing boxes of food alongside your cigarettes: containers that lacked the refinement of store bought meals. One for you, and one sheepishly thrust out to him with a smile bright as burst yolk and as messy as it too. Consequently, he returned a wobbly, unsure smile back at you—not mentioning that the vegetables were slightly burnt, slightly too salty. But that was fine. The more lunches you brought, the more skilled your hands became—until he never felt truly full unless he was eating what you gave him.
In return, he cracked open his soul: pried its rusted walls with bleeding fingernails in a gesture never before seen, not since his childhood when he still knew what hope meant. Dokja for once didn’t blubber apologies and pleas for mercy—but became a teenager rather than a groveller. He complained about teachers, he discussed Ways of Survival at length (noting how you listened even when you showed no particular interest in reading it), he finally developed his own, modest aspirations for his own life. Lying in his bed in his lonely apartament, it suddenly didn’t feel so claustrophobic (yet somehow far too big for one) when you were there with your shoulder just brushing his own.
You were not as cold as you seemed: though this was always obvious from that fateful Tuesday. You made fun of and empathised with the eternal regressor; you diligently stood at his half-broken stove frying meat and vegetables; and you talked at length about whatever band you were currently into—“I’ll take you to one of their concerts when we’re older,” leaving your lips, for your dense black-hole hearts did not conceptualise a future where the other was not present. He saw your loneliness—heard the rumours of you bouncing around from orphanage to orphanage, roaming the streets and working nights rather than return to that boreal home.
So, more nights than not, he woke up from his nightmares to see you sleeping on the small couch in his home—legs just about peeking over the armrest, for your avarice didn’t only cover the abstract but the heaps of food you swiped from the canteen (and over the past two years he’d known you, you got your growth spurt far more obviously than he had). It partly contributed to almost skittish aversion his tormentors had of him—one you never did acknowledge, and so he learnt quickly to not mention it either. In this way, he too never mentioned why he invited you to sleep over more nights than not. And so, neither of your selfish hearts ever spoke a word of pity, but rather conveyed an unspoken understanding that bound the two of you in this merger.
This routine continued.
He enlisted after graduating from the local university, and so did you—suffering the eighteen months of hazing with the smoke lingering on your skin and that same, humourless smile he first saw on your face. Frigid mornings turned his own lips as blue as the sky, yet he found it was harder to feel the chill when he saw you. Just like back then, you wore the same smile that brimmed with such colour it was practically incandescent with its heat.
Two outcasts. It was hilariously terrible. Two outcasts, still sharing a pair of earbuds that had seen better days—blaring out the dolorous music that had grown on him, that described this situation perfectly. Stars were strewn in the fabric enveloped around you: memories that would continue to shine even after the world slowly marched towards its apocalypse.
In that cramped bunkroom, it had been just like school—blue nights with the moon just barely peeking through the window, with your leg still hanging off the side of the bunk and within his field of vision. And he still found the steady rise and fall of your breathing far more comforting than any white noise: like a guard dog, almost, you still shielded him by his proximity to you throughout the brutal eighteen months of mandated service.
Adulthood had crept up unbidden. In his single-room apartment, he sat on his couch with your legs sprawled just as lazy as they had been eight years prior. Though, your appearance certainly had changed—beneath the loose material of your tank top, he could see the ink seeping and decorating your skin. He’d gone with you to the underground artists right after the discharge: worriedly biting his lip while you simply grinned at him as if there wasn’t a needle pressing into you. And despite his initial concern, he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away—sneaking glances even as he browsed through job sites since the winding patterns under the fabric and silver jewellery was oddly entrancing to the eye.
In the end, he applied to the same company you had done on a whim: Minosoft, where you carefully wiped off the black residue on your lips and the smudged pencil round your eyes. You still shared your earbud with him on the subway (though you’d sent him your playlist aeons ago), you still smoked the same brand you did eight years ago, you still occasionally put on those rings you’d kept as prized trophies, you still made two sets of lunches for work. You still listened over drinks while hammered Dokja updated you on the latest update of Ways of Survival. You still angled your body just so, so that you would bear the brunt of Han Myungoh’s scolding rather than him.
You hadn’t changed.
But in some ways, he could no longer see the same boyish guy who’d awkwardly offered him his earbuds nine years ago. The look in your eyes was far more intense, the messy smiles splitting your cheeks were sharper, more overwhelming, and there was no longer any clumsiness in your movements from your sudden growth spurt from years prior. Even the very hand that occasionally clasped his shoulder, even the legs that you still casually flung over his on his beaten old couch, were far more scorching than he remembered.
You had changed.
And in the end, it was him who was left behind.
Eternal loser, Kim Dokja.
Though, he could never find fault with you for that. Not when you leaned over the tangle of limbs on his couch, not when he caught the thread of oud lingering beneath the smoke on your throat, and not when you thrust your phone screen at his face with that stupidly boyish grin that only peeked out when you brimmed with excitement—with a “look, I finally got us tickets for this festival!”. And he knew at that moment that you weren’t leaving him behind: stretching out your rough palm just like you had more than a decade ago.
He let you tousle his hair to give it more spikes. He let you dress him up in your clothes—they sat too large on his frame, but he found himself unconsciously burying his body in the fabric that smelled like your laundry. He let you slip your rings onto his fingers: slender digits jolting at the sensation of the cool metal and the action itself.
Finally, he let you rub your dark pencil on his lashline—lids fluttering up at yours while he did his best to not avert his stare. His gaze traced the bold lines of your brows and eyes, and finally onto the dark stain on your lips as you bit them in concentration. “There,” you’d murmured, gently grasping his chin. “That looks pretty.”
And just like the loser he was, he felt his chest tighten at the casual compliment, for seemingly no reason.
Over the din of the hall, he could barely hear the ebb and flow of music. Goth chords jostled him, weaving past the throes of post-punk and metal as band after band took the stage. In this crush of people, he was more focused on how your index finger threaded through his left-most belt loop; linking the two of you just enough that he wouldn’t get thrown into the mosh pit. No doubt the buzz of cheap liquor contributed to his distracted train of thoughts—he never was the best at handling alcohol. His hazy gaze distorted his view of your side profile; in the dim lights, obviously the wide smile (yolk-like, as was your grin years back) couldn’t possibly be that bright.
It was at this moment that sentimentality got to him. He was thankful that his friend had stuck by his side for so long: gazing so softly at your happy expression he was unaware of his look himself.
This was the night before the apocalypse began.
When the crowds trickled out, when the reverb of bass still played through the club, you hugged him tight for coming with you. Outcast with the outcast, you’d thought introspectively. There were cheap spirits clouding your mind that night—a hangover would surely strike you come morning—which was why you weren’t as reserved as you usually were. As you leaned down to press the man into your arms, your lips had brushed past his cheek accidentally, and you could feel the black hole in the centre of your chest constrict.
Profanities had whirled through your mind when the dark smudge remained on his cheek, and especially so as he made no move to wipe the umbrous gloss off on the subway back. Or maybe he just hadn’t noticed—not with the flush on his cheeks from the alcohol in his system. There was a terrible, discordant crescendo to your pulse as you gazed at him. The gloss, from where it smeared slightly past the boundaries of your lips, burned your skin. But you made no moves to wipe the corners either—for this night only, there was something linking Kim Dokja to you.
Thus, for the first time since he was a mere babe cradled in his mother’s arms, there was a kiss planted on his cheek that wasn’t from a fist. An accidental one, but one that could not be considered devoid of affection. And though neither of you remembered it after the hazy stupor faded, it did not change the fact that it happened nonetheless.
A small snippet of joy in the bleak landscape. A caesura found within the long, winding elegy of this world. A reprieve before tragedy.
It was a fitting conclusion for the night before the end.
✦ . ⁺
[The free service has now been terminated.]
Back in the carriage, wedged between Yoo Sangah and Kim Dokja, the two of you had shared a glance confirming the unspoken truth. Minds intrinsically linked together—he did not need to speak for you to understand his thoughts immediately. And Yoo Sangah had recognised this—as did she remember the devoted gleam in your eyes whenever you spoke to or of the man seated adjacent to you. Yet ultimately, her lips would remain closed.
When the scenarios began, it was Kim Dokja’s turn to repay you. He would be your shield moving forward—protecting your messy smile even as the world burned away. He vowed this to himself, and though the promise was heard only by him, it did not change the fact that the constellations watching him and his companions could see the oath brimming from him as he put you first.
[Almighty Sun has sponsored you.]
Even when Apollo chose you as his incarnation, even when you were just as capable as you had been before the cataclysm occurred—he could not help but feel his fists clench as you put yourself in danger.
“Hold on,” you’d murmured, rings flashing as you’d caught his wrist in your firm grasp. Even with his coins improving his stats, he still felt so much weaker than you—still the boy who ran to the rooftops while your fists bruised against the faces of those who tormented him.
Had your touch always been so scalding?
Privately, he thought Apollo had chosen the right person—smile bright as the sun, skilled fingers deft enough to play the electric guitar you’d bought on a whim, presence practically a healing balm for his soul.
“You’re injured, Dokja-ya.” And the words had made him shiver as the syllables ghosted over his flesh—your face was too close to his chest where he’d been slashed by a monster, while the affectionate tone added to his name made this situation far worse than it was. Secluded like this, in an abandoned corner of the station, it was easy to misread the situation; this was the only reason his face flushed red. His friend was far too close. When those aforementioned fingertips brushed over the wound—just grazing the wounded flesh—he jolted. From the pain, of course.
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire has sponsored 200 coins.]
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire would like to see more action.]
“Steady.” You eased him against a pillar while ignoring the message—ignoring how your pulse was now leaden in your mouth, how the golden gleam stitching flesh back together seemed far more shaky than usual. Though, you couldn’t ignore the pain you felt as you saw the rise and fall of his torso grow shallow; you were useless when it counted—arrows meeting their target far too late.
“Dokja-ya,” you breathed, sweeping the hair that plastered to his clammy forehead. He didn’t meet your eyes, and the heavy feeling in your chest grew more burdensome. He was supposed to tell you what was wrong; as his best friend, you duly heard his complaints and dealt with them where you could. More often than not, you could intuitively tell what bothered him; much like you had from the very first day you saw him all those years ago. And as time passed, the object of your adoration only grew easier to read.
But he was never avoidant like this.
What happened? As you watched him leave with heavy steps and not a glance spared back, you could feel the crushing weight of the sky drop back down on your shoulders. Fuck. Burying your face in your hands, you barely registered the message that popped up.
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire expresses her sympathy.]
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire says she knows how the two of you can make up.]
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire sponsors 69 coins.]
[The Almighty Sun tells the Demon-like Judge of Fire to not be stingy.]
[The Almighty Sun sponsors 6969 coins.]
[The Almighty Sun empathises with a lover’s quarrel.]
“Shut up,” you seethed, and the bad mood carried on late into the night. It was obvious to anyone with eyes; the conjured lamps lining the perimeter of camp had seethed with you. Gold had been interspersed with bleeding red—crackling like true fire, though it was anything but. Even the tattoos that lined your skin had begun eroding into ember-like patterns, as though lava was breaking through the dermis of your skin.
Unsurprisingly, it was Yoo Sangah that had approached first: past the harsh glow of your lamps, gracefully weaving through the brightness with the light steps that belied her nebula. She’d taken a glance at the incandescent splintering of your body, your hands furiously working away at the guitar plugged into your practically-bulletproof earphones, and finally the imposing frame of Yoo Joonghyuk only a few metres away as he stood guard tonight.
But when you paused, when you hastily yanked the buds from your ears, she could also see the wobble in your lip. The furrow in your brows wasn’t angry, it was anguished, while the fearsome glare in your eyes contained only pain. If she was being honest, it was hard to approach you at work and even nowadays—with ease, you picked off enemies from a distance and your longbow conveniently morphed into two curved daggers when it came down to it. You were a maelstrom with the capacity to take lives—stained with blood as you bared your proverbial teeth at any threats to Dokja. But it was precisely that that allowed her to see your stupidly blind adoration of this man.
(“Your devotion will only hurt you,” she says, as if that will dissuade you. You’ll take whatever feeling he gives you: greedily swallowing each and every morsel of emotion. Tender is your heart, but tender is good. It means you aren’t going mad over the situation you’re in.
“Yoo Sangah, I appreciate the advice,” you reply politely—you do respect her, after all. “But I do not mind that.”)
Yoo Joonghyuk had bemusedly watched as she left: staring the the dim red tattoos strewn across your body as if they could possibly help him decipher the fool in front of him. His Sage’s Eye flashed as golden as your lamps for a brief moment—detecting that your statement had, in fact, been true.
Fool, he’d said as your hands flew over the fretboard once more. Fool, as you disappeared up the stairs to the rooftop. Fool, when your lips had pressed together tightly against one another.
You did mind, even when you thought it was the unequivocal truth that you didn’t.
Maybe it was futile to even think it, but he thought that idiot didn’t deserve the long-standing care in your hands, and the veneration in the timbres of your voice. It was pointless to get attached to someone like that—especially when the end of the world was upon you.
But you wouldn’t know that, since you could not read his mind. But you wouldn’t know that, since he would never explicitly say it. But you wouldn’t know that, since you’d long-since accepted your self-torture as perfectly and utterly a part of what came with knowing Kim Dokja for as long as you did.
The rooftop was like all other rooftops. Similar. The same. Azurine fog was at your fingertips: just like that day all those years ago. Except this time, Kim Dokja was not in your sights, and you were left alone with wisps of smoke trailing from your lips and no other company save the glowing stick in your fingers. Just like it had been; before you met the boy with a heart as greedy and all-consuming as yours. Before the merger between two black holes occurred. Before he ran up to the rooftops with bruises on his face and placed new stars in the endless vacuum of your universe.
There was no charge in your phone, but the song that played that day still rested heavy in your neurons as you sprawled out on the bench. Mindlessly, you summoned the lyre-turned-guitar: doleful chords germinated, flourished and withered away once more under distressed fingertips. It was a night between scenarios; another caesura in this ceaseless tragedy. Though those days were filled with an empty stomach and an endless struggle, they were your halcyon days.
Just like that time almost twelve years back, it was a blue Monday once more.
Just like that time almost twelve years back, you didn’t hear the heavy run of footsteps through the heavy burr of music.
Just like that time almost twelve years back, Kim Dokja’s black hole heart pulsed with each discordant twang of chords—though this time the link was acutely clear to him.
The boy who once tasted the mist and tilted his body into oblivion was no longer there: replaced by a man who’d faithfully stayed by him for more than a decade. Though you hadn’t changed, not at all; not when he could still see the rings you took off his bullies, gracing your fingers just as they had back then. A trophy, dedicated to his protection. When his plans involved his sacrifice, you were the first to reach him. Your face was the first he saw, tears brimming from your lash line. For despite how you’d grown into your looks, you wore your emotions clear on your face. Your heart had been taken from the cavity in your chest and replaced with a dense core that greedily always wanted; yet it had been sewn messily onto your sleeve rather than discarded.
Kim Dokja suddenly remembered another interlude. A club, where the amorphous ebb and flow of bodies could not sweep him away from your side—since you kept him there, treasured his presence enough that you hooked your finger firmly into his belt loop and rooted him there. An anchor: you’ve always been the rock beneath his shaky feet, after all. He remembered that, and not the endless churn of music that made your face glow with happiness.
(A black smear of gloss left on his cheek. His hands, carefully wiping eye pencil away yet not touching the remnants of your lips—not until it smudged away on its own, forgotten for all of time but this day.)
A sun of his own. The reader trod his slow orbit around you long before he could conceptualise the gravity that drew two masses towards each other. Newton’s theory of universal gravitation be damned; you were the only centre of the universe, the only body that ever existed to draw others towards your brilliant light.
His eyes flickered over the smoke in your lips: the dim embers of a glow from the lines in your skin made it seem as though you were alight yourself. Instinctively, physically, he was compelled towards the patterns just like he had been all those years ago: your music, your stupid piercings and your stupid discussions about bands and the stupid way you listened attentively to his yapping about Ways of Survival. Stupid, because why did you do that? Why did you convince him to make a shrine for you in his heart? Stupid, because why is it only now that he can see what exactly lays atop the stone altar?
“Kim Dokja,” you spoke through your plumes, formal in the way he knew you spoke when you were upset and trying to keep it together. He swallowed, and he could feel the same pitter-patter of his pulse as he did all those years ago—heartbeat colliding loudly in his ear drums while he steps towards you, unsure. You didn’t let up with the strum of strings: electric in the drizzle of rain and wind and cold Seoul air.
For once, he was the one looking down at your impassive face. He was the one brushing his fingers through your hair, he was the one whose hands made themselves comfortable on shoulders—for it’s always been you wrapped around him, you whose legs wedge on top of his domestically on his shitty couch in his shitty studio flat.
“It’s Dokja-ya,” he corrected: tongue thick and leaden. It constricted his larynx and made his cadence oh so small at this moment. Tentative. Because he was your close friend and you his. He was the one who knows all your expressions—even the ones you deliberately tried to hide from everyone. He was the one who’s been with you the longest: always staring up at the muscle of your back while you act as his shield. He was the one who’s been blind.
Your fingers halted against the strings and the instrument dissolved into the wind; the concert for two had reached its conclusion, just like it had all those months ago. For despite being packed full of people, the club only ever had two people in it for him.
Lazily, those same hands that have bruised for him—but somehow had a touch that was far more painful than any torment that was physically inflicted on him—wrapped round his own that rested neatly on your shoulders.
“Dokja-ya,” you answered, and the axis the world tilted on is finally righted. This man, Dokja thought—and his umbrous eyes traced down the warm lines of your face, stopping on your lips. Bittersweet.
“Don’t leave me,” he all but begged—voice only a whisper. Don’t die on me, the black hole wanted to say instead; selfishly wishing for you to always be by his side so he doesn’t see you depart this world first. That would end him more than anything else.
“I can’t leave you,” you murmured, and oh, the hand brushing his tear-stained cheek suddenly made more sense. “Dokja-ya, I should be telling you that.”
He pressed his face into your warm palm—scorching even with the boreal damp settling over his skin. There was something twisted within him that revels in your admission: that you, too, feared him abandoning you just as he feared you leaving him behind.
“Idiot.” And he twined his fingers in yours, seeing the surprise on your face bloom—for he’s already established that you’re ever so easy to read. Idiot, because it’s ludicrous to even think that he’d ever willingly walk away from you like that.
“You’re the idiot,” you whispered as your phantasmal hand ghosted from his cheek to his collar, yanking him so he fell onto the firm sprawl of your legs—in a way he’s never felt. So warm, he thought through the haze as he straddled your languid body—fit so right against you that there was none of the tension nor the anticipation that he might’ve felt. His hands splayed out onto your chest, feeling the steady beat of your heart, tracing the glowing lines he adored on your body.
So warm, he thought as your hands gently cupped his face—for you’ve never been anything but soft with this stupid man perched on your lap.
So warm, as your lips met his and he melted into your body. He could taste the acrid smoke on your tongue, but he could also taste the food you’d prepared earlier for him, and the traces of whiskey you’d scavenged. All traces of you; his insatiable heart could not help but want to merge into you.
So warm, as your tongue melded against his and he could feel the seam of his mouth against yours grow ever more ragged and messy. His hands desperately curled into your shirt, and he could feel your palms pressing harshly against his waist and canting his torso into yours more—something which his avaricious heart eagerly swallowed.
On a blue Monday just like this one, two boys met for the first time once more on a rooftop just like this one.
Again. Like and like created a merger for the second time, or perhaps it was already the third. Or fourth. Or the thousand-eight-hundred-and-sixty-third time this has happened—over and over and over and over.
Fate has a funny way of bringing people together, or maybe it’s just the intrinsic law of gravitation that binds two black holes in a binary system.
Blue Monday. What a silly notion, when the man beneath Kim Dokja is as warm as the brilliant sun.
✦ . ⁺
Fellas is it gay to pine after your best friend for over ten years and have oddly homoerotic moments with them
✦ . ⁺
EXTRAS
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire returns from her work and asks what she missed.]
[The Almighty Sun keeps his lips shut.]
[The Abyssal Flame Black Dragon stays silent.]
[The Prisoner of the Golden Headband, perhaps not fearing his imminent hair loss, opens his mouth.]
[The Demon-like Judge of Fire promptly goes catatonic and explodes.]
Hello can u write a Dokja x Medusa!male!reader please
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR GORGON ゜゜・KIM DOKJA
'You listening, Dokja? Maybe if you followed the guides for dealing with intelligent species like this one, you wouldn't be in such a stupid mess.'
yall think aegis can be used as a different sort of barrier?!?! sorry anon this is less mythology centric than i planned icl
art by @ 1L9l2Aa8UCL0IGJ (blackbox) on x!
pairing: kim dokja + male reader
warnings: canon typical danger, mentions of self-sacrifice
wc: 2.9k
ORV MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
There exist several unspoken rules when interacting with the particularly volatile species integrated onto Planetary System 8612. Most ‘monsters’ are unable to effectively communicate with the main intelligent species in the domes, thus are doomed for imminent slaughter. However, exceptions like the catalyst behind these reports must be treated with particular regard.
Guidelines will serve you well in the coming days, reader. If you’ve accessed these reports, it probably means the days are bleak and you’ve encountered one of these species. One thing is for certain; if you are reading this, you will survive your encounter with a gorgon.
< Observation log, section 1 > (Relative Earth time 21/◼◼/20◼◼)TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDING
‘Rule number one: if possible, do not engage with a gorgon. Though, considering your perusal of these records, it seems this was not successful on your end. Better luck next time!’
‘Sooyoung-ah, don’t be ru—’
Avoidance was always a good policy when it came to the apocalypse. It saved time, toil, and lives—much like a vaccine helped one bypass a virus. But one couldn’t rely on it entirely; neither vaccine nor evasion was infallible after all.
‘If they were, these records would not need to exist.’
And for humans, their biggest hamartia was their ignorance. Nerve cells could only do so much to detect dangerous stimuli and trigger a reflex for flight. If the hazard was less obvious, much more innocuous, then the poor human would only be wading into quicksand if they weren’t smart enough. Right before getting devoured.
‘Of course that squid was the blind one who got us into this mess.’
Just like these unspoken rules, it was de facto that Kim Dokja was unlucky. Unfortunate. Ill-destined. However you chose to put it, the man was born under a cursed star, which meant that the stranger sitting across from him in the park was naturally part of his jinx as well.
“What are you staring at?” Unlike the squid wearing his stupidly pristine coat, the man sitting on the bench facing him appeared to be a student: civilian wear and a lanyard still around your neck, like you’d frozen in time these past few months. Glasses rested on your nose, which you pushed up each time they slipped—even if they moved only minutely.
Perhaps you were nervous, but the caustic indifference in your tone suggested it was an unlikely possibility.
“Ah, sorry. I have a habit of looking at interesting people,” he laughed your question off, but the lack of information on you, coupled with the fact he didn’t recognise who you were, gave him the answer he needed. You weren’t a part of the original novel. “Uh, it’s a nice park, isn’t it? Lovely statues.”
You glanced at the reader, unimpressed. Just like that handsome bastard, there was that same impassive scowl plastered on your face. But as soon as he’d mentioned the sculptures scattered around this surprisingly lush pocket of Seoul, your face had softened somewhat.
“Art major?” he probed, for there was something about your gaze that drew words from his mouth. Or perhaps it was just how surreal this scene was: someone enjoying the park like anyone before the paid service began, just some guy taking a breather from classes with a thick, bound book beside him.
A ballpoint pen, rather than a sword or any other weapon. Blue ink, instead of bloody atrament.
You were a part of this world, yet detached from it all.
“No, chemistry,” you said. Deadpan, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m specialising in geochemistry. Rocks, soil, minerals. Humans do so underappreciate what goes on beneath their feet.”
Specialising. Present tense. Not specialised.
Humans: like you were utterly detached from anyone and everyone.
His breath caught in his throat.
The urging of constellations reminded him of just the situation he was in—about to run out of time in this sub-scenario, where hordes of monsters would soon swarm. Right in this very park.
“Listen, you’ll need to get out of here soon—there’s going to be swarms of insect-like creatures here in, uh, five minutes give or take. You’ll be in danger if you can’t fight,” he swallowed. A look of disdain flickered in your eyes, and his head throbbed with how much your expressions resembled that sunfish bastard’s. You’re the idiot, your brows indicated, while the set of your mouth held only one question: who said I couldn’t fight? In the same strand of thinking, the sudden curdle of your shoulders—hunched, guarded—seemed to gesture and who are you to tell me that?
‘If only you knew back then.’
In short, you could fight. You could fight, and you were absolutely terrifying to watch.
“Aegis,” you whispered, and the statues seemed to continue in susurration with you as the air warped in on itself. Dokja was thrown back by the shockwave as the space rippled—all in time for the main guests of the sub-scenario to arrive.
Insect mutations.
They crashed right into the distortions. A barrier. You’d set up an impenetrable defence in less time it took for him to draw breath, only for him to keel over behind you instead. Wow. Okay. He could still work with that.
“What are you—”
“Silence.” It would’ve stung less if you just told him to shut up instead, but from the very get-go you were never particularly nice. Kind? Somewhat, in the sense you’d viewed him as some useless, bumbling fool that would be better off behind the translucent shield you’d conjured. But nice? No, from the very beginning, you were never nice.
‘Deserved.’
That was fine. Bearable. Still in the realms of believability.
For Kim Dokja, the shock came after watching your hand raise to your face to slip your glasses off. From the back, he could no longer see the stern expression you no doubt wore. But he wasn’t focused on your face, but rather the warmth of the day instantly seeping from the molecules.
Time itself froze, and the insects did too.
No one breathed, and not a singular sound rang out—save something hissing. A tire, perhaps, but nobody was fool enough to simply drive cars during the apocalypse.
Then came the stirring of your clothes. It was a breeze only you felt, rippling and undulating until your hair moved too. Except it wasn’t the wind that hissed, nor was it the wind that wafted the coils. No, they twisted into thicker, scaly locks—snake-like, except these were snakes suddenly attached to your head. It was no longer a simile, nor was it a metaphor.
You had fucking snakes in your hair.
His breathing was shallow; in the sudden frigid climate, those puffs crystallised and condensed in small white clouds.
And what of those insects?
His eyes flicked back to the ground shakily, to where the arthropods lay crumbling. Statues, like the ones he’d complimented brief minutes ago. Pearlescent marble—no, stone. Your glasses were still grasped tight in your hand, and he knew if you turned to meet his wide-eyed stare he’d be next. But, alas—
“Who… are you?”
‘And this is how Kim Dokja put his foot in his mouth and demonstrated his exceptionally poor luck.’
< Observation log, section 2 > (Relative Earth time 24/◼◼/20◼◼)TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDING
‘Rule number two: do not stare into the eyes of a gorgon. Don’t even look, except for when there are protective measures in place. Case one: a blindfold. Case two: glasses, which he literally wears every minute of the day save for when he’s sleeping. Dokja, do not sneak up on the man when he’s sleeping.’
‘Dokja, you suck.’
It wasn’t often you let down your guard, with writhing, clawing humans nonetheless. Pointing fingers to find the monsters under their beds and threatening their cities—when in fact it was their bellicose faults that doomed them. A self-made end, a fitting conclusion for the snake that bites its own tail. If you had ever been human once, these people shared more blood with the beasts than they thought.
Point was: you didn’t particularly care for those who appeared to be like you. Bodies, soft and squishy from a life coddled in cities; smiles duplicitous and more monstrous than any snarl; and their thoughts, often more heinous than any demon. And despite their sins, they’d meander in life wrapped in the bliss of self-ignorance. Dead in their varying morals like shrouds of far-too different cloths.
In this, no human was the same. This was the philosophy that alienated yourself from your sisters.
This was also the philosophy that landed you in a warm, damp place—completely dark with something poking at your cheeks. Correction—even through the thin membrane and slightly thicker skin that covered your eyes, there appeared to be a dim redness seeping into the edges of blackness. It seemed your blood vessels were alit by some foolish beastling. Almost like the golden chariot was prancing afore your eyes, except only Aeos of the Dawn was trotting along your lash line with a proud toss of his shrunken head.
Your fingers twitched inside your sleeping bag, but you forced a deep breath in before you could hear any hissing.
Actually, you knew exactly who was prodding at your cheek with a frigid index finger; the faint brush of his scent gave him away almost instantaneously.
“Kim Dokja. Are you an idiot?” you ground out, eyes still tightly shut to avoid turning this fool to stone. “I’ve already agreed to travelling with your circus, so I’d prefer you refrain from getting petrified.”
“You really do sound like him when you’re irritated,” he let out with a suppressed snort.
“Aegis,” you whispered, and the impertinent hand ceased its movements.
The barrier was not, in fact, activated.
“Gave me a bit of a fright there,” he swallowed. “I just wanted to say, it’s fine if you open your eyes.”
“No,” you deadpanned. Though you couldn’t see the expression, you could feel your facial muscles twitch into an impassive wall. “Don’t involve me with your stupid plans to kill yourself off.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he corrected himself. Were all humans like this when you lived as one? “It just won’t work on me. Me alone, which is why I locked the door so no one could come in.”
“Why?” He was a fool like the rest of them—risking peril for a glimpse of cursed eyes. Like all of man, his hubris rested heavy on his shoulders.
“I just want to see your smug face without any glasses.”
“You’re looking at it presently,” you argued. Though your ire was evident with your furrowed brows, he didn’t relent. Where was that puny man who’d trembled behind you at the sight of insects? More importantly, how had he changed so quickly?
“With your eyes open,” he clarified. He was more insane than anyone you’d ever met.
“Does it really make a difference?” you stalled. “How can you be sure you won’t suffer the effects as every other human and beast does?”
“You care about me that much?”
It was a quiet question. A tentative venture into teasing, yet strangely vulnerable.
“You worried?” he echoed. It was a weak aegis of his own, already prepared to accept your scoff and firm no.
“Fool.” Both the skin eyelids and the thin membrane unsheathed haunting irises. You already knew what you’d see in them—a milky sort of quality to their natural colouring, even without the extra membrane. Slit pupils dilated minutely at the sight of him, and his breath caught in his throat as you gazed upwards, unblinking.
Fool. The word echoed in his mind, an answer to his question but not at the same time.
I’m not worried.
Peering, your claws gently grazed his face: almost a kiss, if a kiss left a slight sting behind.
“I’m always worried about you, Kim Dokja,” you murmured, and it was perhaps then that his heartbeat grew erratic. Staring into those pretty eyes of yours with your thumb tenderly swiping across his flushed cheekbones, it was no wonder he could taste his very pulse. “Remember our first meeting?”
“How could I forget?”
A back facing his hunched form, more dependable than the shield spreading and curling beneath your mighty palms. Snakes coiling down your back, but there was nothing scary about how they swayed like ribbons in the sunset. And finally those eyes, directly protecting him from the swarms of insects.
No, perhaps it was then when the thrum of the organ grew somewhat more rapid.
‘Glad you realised.’
< Observation log, section 3 > (Relative Earth time 03/◼◼/20◼◼)TRANSCRIPTION OF RECORDING
‘Rule number three: do not feed the snakes. Do not feed the snakes, Dokja. DO NOT FEED THE GODDAMN SNAKES.’
“Is Kim Dokja a masochist?”
The question, like most questions, came out of the blue. Such an innocuous, casual tone veiled your usual clipped syllables that Han Sooyoung found herself seriously internalising your words, before—
“What— koff— huh?” she spluttered against the sudden taste of her lemon candy, expression turning troubled, then incredulous.
“Does he take pleasure in torturing himself?” you clarified, as though it were a matter of comprehension rather than tact.
‘I knew what a masochist was! Why would he ask that?’
“If it’s Dokja, probably,” she coughed finally. Honestly, she’d pondered this very question herself—staring deadpan at the numerous deaths he’d experienced by his own plans. “Uh, just so we’re clear, why do you ask?”
“Is it normal to try to feed my snakes?” Definitely not.
“That… idiot did what?” she stared at the resident gorgon with quite the perplexed expression, but soon regained her composure. “No, not particularly. Are they… venomous?”
“Yes. Very much so. Please tell him to quit.”
Yet, despite all the half-hearted chidings of you and Sooyoung alike, your little snakes were beginning to grow fat and affectionate towards the man. You could feel something fundamental begin to shift, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling.
< Observation log, section 4 > (Relative Earth time 14/◼◼/20◼◼)TRANSCRIPTION OF RECORDING
‘Rule number four: gorgon venom should not be ingested. If you are Kim Dokja, this applies perhaps most poignantly to you. You may be immune to its effects for whatever reason, but the venom is a nightmare to get out of clothing. Thanks.’
“An experiment?”
Kim Dokja’s face didn’t change from his usual, vaguely blurred visage; but it wasn’t like snakes had particularly good eyesight regardless. “Yes. Would you be up for it?”
You’d agreed on a whim. Why the experiment was to take place in a closed room, you didn’t particularly know. Maybe humans encountering an apocalypse had special customs to adhere to. “I am familiar with experimental protocol in laboratories and practicals.”
“Would you like to help me upgrade my poison-immunity skill?”
You’d initially refused outright—struck dumb at how recklessly he treated his life. Every time you thought he was a fool, he proved himself even more foolish—a crazed endeavour if you ever saw it.
Gorgon poison. Released in more diluted doses from the snakes on you, concentrated particularly in the bone-white fangs in your mouth. Like a vampire, Yoo Sangah had excitedly noted: much too excitedly for your liking.
Bite me, he asked you.
A pale wrist was held out cautiously in front of him. The air was no longer mere air, but an ancient altar dedicated to this sacrifice. Thus, you were the priest for this rite once more, but this time the ram carried the bronze knife itself.
He’s an idiot, you seethed, yet you were too.
For you suggested a less painful way of transferring venom, but he agreed. For you gently clasped his chin with razor sharp talons skimming the dermis of his throat, but he melted pliantly in your hands. For you leaned in with softened eyes, but his own simply fluttered shut in anticipation.
You surged, pressing him against the cold cement of the wall. Air was robbed from his lungs as he gasped, but rather than pulling back his warm, human hands merely wrapped around your nape to meld your body against his.
Why did his hands shake so? Was this not just an experimental procedure dedicated to strengthening a human?
Despite your analytical mind, your eyes closed too—both membrane and skin—and you savoured the lingering taste of the meaty dinner he’d eaten, and the underlying flavour of him. Hot blood pumped beneath his fragile oral mucosa; your greedy, long tongue prodded his own to find just where his pulse thrummed the strongest.
Ah, fuck, he thought dumbly; sloppily making out with you in a forgotten room was not how he’d envisioned this night, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
Even as he winced with sharp pain when your fangs cut his lips, he couldn’t pull back—objective achieved but long forgotten. Those pesky, wandering hands of his clung onto your body when his head canted: deepening the kiss rather than wrapping up his poison exposure.
Iron tainted his mouth. Dripping past the seams of desperate lips was the crimson mixture of blood and venom, dripping onto his sweater and corroding the very threads—yet Kim Dokja both did not notice and did not particularly care.
But all good things came to an end. The two of you were met with an extremely exasperated Han Sooyoung at the door as she gave you a look, one that implied I expected better from you. For Dokja, the reserved expression was I expected this, to be honest.
‘PDA is not appreciated during the apocalypse. Take that shit elsewhere.’
‘Thus, these reports can be summarily concluded in two points of advice:
1. Unless you are Kim Dokja, do not attempt any of these activities with a gorgon.
also, have another brainrot idea that's been running around my brain: in his abundant free time, i like to imagine reader just fucks around doing whatever, from infiltrating the kitchen and hanging around with the staff and chefs to actually sparring with the temple knights and guards and advising them on how to improve. maybe even the og heroine and other male leads, all while sunday likes to show up and drag him to do even more menial tasks that only serves him get more annoyed at sunday while our dear stupid pope is angry at both himself for acting weirdly and at the people reader talks to for reasons he isn't quite sure of yet tbh but he still doesn't like how people seem to really like the hero,,, a lot.
ESPECIALLY the other male leads,,, im not quite sure how powerful they are in terms of physical and political power but i feel sunday would be most angered by them LMFAOOO like bro chill,,, reader is NOT yours 💔💔💔 genuinely embarrassing behavior my guy please get a grip,,,,,
🐈⬛ anon
oh I like where this is going...
Salaryman reader comes from a very average background in both lives and forms bonds with the characters who aren't even mentioned in the original novel, not only because he can relate, but because they're far less predictable than the main cast.
"The stew tastes different."
Sunday notices the subtle shifts in the food brought to him each day in his room and office, as well as the wildly experimental dishes made out of conventional ingredients prepared unconventionally - something he makes a passing comment about to the staff who take his meals to him, but something about their nervous gaze sets his suspicions ablaze. "Who prepared this?"
His thoughts turn to an assassination attempt.
The chef, they lie. They don't want to get you in trouble, after all.
He's shrouded in the best disguise - one that robs him of any distinctive features and allows him to blend in with the other staff who manage the pantry, sneaking into the kitchen like he used to with Robin. I raise you this - him watching you in an environment where you're laughing as you chop onions alongside the chefs, sporting their aprons and their hats while you natter on about the most useless of things. You're trying to kill him now???
Unfiltered, abrasive - so unlike the more subdued version of yourself that his breath cannot help but catch in his throat and his mind goes momentarily blank, before he slinks away, stewing in irritation at the fact that you're acting so indecent (swearing, dusting those carefully-ironed clothes of yours with flour as you knead various baked goods, and worst of all, abandoning your duties of translation) with his staff. You're a buffoon, far too foolish to be an assassin.
He keeps this up for a week, but you're everywhere. The knights templar have begun showing unusual footwork in their precise sequence of steps that they train in as part of the Order - and by Ena does it take him longer to realise, but once he does, he's back in his disguise once more and watching as you demonstrate what you use in the battlefield. Not the ceremonial, self-sacrificing movements of the Temple, but the quick movements that ensure survival. He grinds his teeth as he watches you ruffle the hair of a squire, clapping the shoulder of a Knight Commander, and pulling another knight in with some stupidly informal handshake - you're so improper, and he's stewing in anger over it.
These discrepancies come with those other idiots that flit about [redacted] - since when does Gepard Landau have a spine? It's the first time he's seen you fight, not as a participant, but as a spectator watching you take an opponent seriously for the first time - a spar that he never invited the Southern Duke's heir for, but he's come at your behest instead, something which strikes Sunday as absolutely insolent.
You come away with a wild grin on your face - and Landau's face mirrors yours. You're shaking hands, bones bruised and macerated - Landau's own ribs creaking in dislocation - and Sunday freezes in shock as he sees the muscular giant punch your arm playfully over a joke you made. One that he cannot hear, try as he might - but that social amiability seeps into the meetings where the two are present and for once he's not just quietly confident, he's bolder and far more capable than he was before.
Sunday's fists creak as he clenches them.
Since when does the Northern Duke wear anything but a scowl on his face? Since apparently the two of you almost killed each other in a forest several miles off the Temple's radar (and by Ena did he have to search to find a vantage point for it), and now, the man thought to be a demon frequents the Temple far more often than he did perfunctorily (which was like, once annually), lurking with a pensive expression!
And Sir Argenti... Ena knows the extent of his obsession when it comes to things beautiful - but engaging in literature discussions with you, hanging onto your words, meeting you far too coincidentally- Sunday splutters in outrage. You?? No, not just outrage - incredulity -
Even [redacted]?? She looks relieved whenever you rid her of the pests flying around her - lingering in the non-prayer sections of the Temple as she chats to you about politics, romance novels???, and the newest symphonies playing in the halls. How would you even know???
What in the everloving grace of Ena do they see in you?
I raise you this - not only does he not like that they seem to all like you (even ROBIN has fallen under this curse), but he is convinced of the sheer absurdity of their feelings. This stupidly annoying, callous, puffed-up commoner-turned-viscount who is getting under his skin by getting friendly with both his staff and rivals, and even the person he admires in this cursed world.
Can't they see how utterly untrustworthy and shady you are?
He's not dragging you away out of jealousy, of course he isn't!!! He's eliminating any threats to his position, while simultaneously getting back the guard-turned-aide who was supposed to assist him in administration, but is now preoccupied with giving... love advice?.. to a stableboy. What the hell would you know, anyway?
God forbid you ever leave the temple for a prolonged period of time (i.e. more than 12 hours) and he can't find where you've went
anyway yeah I got a little too carried away again whoops
hello!! Your fic is so cool and if your request is open, can I request DG x male reader when DG still in his James lee era while reader is the King of Busan
XENIA ゜゜・DG
Xenia, noun: the classical concept of hospitality to strangers. This, unfortunately, includes a wandering dog and his conniving owner—a most irritating, tooth-grinding conundrum the King of Busan has with Charles Choi and his boy-genius.
sorry for the wait anon I was away from my laptop for the past week or so! and I couldn't write :'( first meetings and onwards for this particular work
haha chicken and egg problem.. haha introspection on business and corruption... haha capitalism
pairing: dg (james lee) + male reader
warnings: male reader, canon typical violence, arguing (bickering)
wc: 3.3k
LOOKISM MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
In the lengthy chronicles of Charles Choi’s grand plan—to mould the precarious South Korean underground into something far more profitable—James Lee finally came across his very own cause-and-effect conundrum.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Plutarch initially posed this question in The Symposiacs: a symbolic tug of war between creator and creation. James supposed, in his bored sort of way, that this question described the relationship between cities and Kings as well. Chronically, objectively, the cities existed first—tall structures and unique ecosystems that forged shadowy figureheads to rule the violent underbelly. But poetically, it was rather hard to ignore the hands etching—pummeling—a pathway for the power to flourish. Without those in charge, what were the cities? And without the cities, who were the people in charge?
Parsing the matter, it distilled into who influenced whom.
Of course, the dazzling sprawl of Busan refracting from the glass under his feet was no exception. Even he, who satiated his youthful wanderlust with blood on his fists, couldn’t deny his reluctance to sully this city more. But, what did it matter? The second most important city in South Korea (some would froth at the mouth and argue it was the first for its gateway to Eurasian trade, or at least for its world-class ports) was built from perfectly respectable trade; but alack! it was also protected by its snarling underworld. It had already been befouled: polluted by fists no better than his, trodden by legs more filthy than his own. Blood and toil smeared its golden sand, and its money was just as dirty.
Sure, the city was propped up by honourable (hah) commercial deals, but it was shielded by the illicit ones.
A defiled aegis, if you would.
It was clear the current glitzy glamour of Busan night-life was carefully orchestrated by someone: from the specific mouthfeel the night air had, to the businesses that ran late into the witching hours. Those mythical beings and chaebols who fed and extracted money from this place, in endless loops, were culpable for these towering skyscrapers and glittering lights.
Creators.
In turn, the city cradled your grimy little body—chubby hands wrapping around index fingers of the metaphorical hounds—and made you.
Did this metropolis represent you, or did you represent the metropolis?
It was not in a polite setting that James Lee scouted the venerable King of Busan: arguably the second most esteemed figurehead for the Kings of South Korea. In theory. In theory, since Busan’s reputation as a hub for trade and exalted trade (rather than the mere cold, hard cash ill-reputed other cities offered Choi) entwined with your own. Except, in practice, you were a far more reticent King than anyone could imagine. A shadow to fade into obliquity more than any other shadow.
Underbelly, yes. This was the turf you were most at home in; he could forget all about the glamorous, illegal casinos in basements, he could forget about eavesdropping on business moguls and their lackeys, he could forget about waiting in the entertainment districts for the proverbial snake to finally rear his head.
You were the fucking microcosm of this city: draped with expensive fabric and chainmailed with gold, but the blood on your knuckles stank of impurity. In a parking lot nestled on the outskirts of Busan, he witnessed the King in his court: complete with the luxury, the opulence, and the hamartia of brutality that came with capitalism. Yes, Busan had minted you as a shadowy side to a glitzy coin—as your eyes snapped to where he lounged against concrete, he couldn’t help but observe how your imaginary hackles raised.
Thwomp. Casually, you tossed the grunt beaten black-and-blue to the frigid asphalt, with the magnanimity of tossing breadcrumbs to ducks in a pond. Like the lackey was the bread and James fucking Lee himself was the duck. A bloodied cheek squished into his sneaker, but you merely stared at him owl-like. No, cat-like, because it seemed to be the same nonplussed stare a cat would give someone after bringing them a dead rat.
“Nice city.” Since you clearly had no intention of speaking first. Deftly, his fingers unravelled the mystic plastic of a lollipop: popping the cherry-flavoured candy into his mouth to soothe the acerbic irritation he tasted. “You treat all your guests like this, or do kings not follow xenia anymore?”
It was a rather futile attempt to lighten the mood. After all, if he could help it, he’d rather negotiate to pave the way for the second generation before resorting to throwing his fist. No, that was a lie. His flexing fingers wanted nothing more than to curl into a fist to let off some of the steam he’d garnered from searching for you in this uselessly big city, but fate had him making stupid jokes based on The Odyssey he’d read just last week for his Classics competition. If he rummaged in his pocket, he could probably find the gold medal clanking against hard sweets.
Your expression changed minutely—a slight disturbance in your brows. They furrowed, and for a brief moment James Lee thought his joke fell flat. With all the blood soaked into your expensive garb, maybe you just valued fists over Homeric hexameter. Violence over prose. Brawns over brains. You slinked like shadows. Crude. Ominous. He could barely see your face even with the city lights flashing neon in the backdrop, but when your loping gait came to a halt, there was an exasperation that afforded more subtle nuance to your character. A bitterness to tinge what he thought was mindlessness.
“Mr. Lee.” Your voice curled low in your throat, as quick and elusive as mercury, and perhaps just as poisonous. Shadow King of Busan, the man who never introduced himself to you noticed. Silence was golden, and he suddenly understood why Charles Choi so badly wanted sway over the young King in charge of this port city. “I hope you’re aware that beating my subordinates would invalidate any sort of hospitality between us. You’re no god amongst men either, so ritualistic hospitality is a very weak premise to coerce my amiability with. Try again.”
Deity in the flesh. Perhaps James Lee was the closest thing to breaking the limits of humanity, but all men were fallible. That wasn’t what caused his brow to rise though; going in blind may have been risky, but it was worth it to find someone with a silver tongue like this.
You looked about his age—treading on the precarious cusp between First and Second Generation, fists stained as red as his hair—but you spoke as if you were triple your years.
“You wanna transfer to my school? It’d be fun to have you in the Debate Club,” he said on a whim, but it wasn’t really a whim either. His instructions were expressly to negotiate with Busan—the city was far too volatile to create a power vacuum in. For cities like Ansan, struggle was welcomed; but Charles Choi had too little of everything to contend with Busan, of all places. Just like in Seoul, the situation would resolve itself, and it was far too soon for the HNH Group to meddle in a place like this. “You talk like a teacher.”
His tone was as syrupy as his candy, but there was half-provocation, half-probing-curiosity entrenched in his cadence. Go on, it coaxed, throw a punch. Argue back. Unorthodox was his means of securing cooperation, but he’d have to be a little unorthodox to secure the deal old man Choi had painstakingly written out. A contract between Elite and the capricious man before him, between HNH Group and the microcosm of Busan himself; it sounded like every capitalist’s wet dream.
“Good question, kid,” you smiled, but it was less of a smile and more of a sneer as you ghosted closer to him. Kid, like you weren’t one yourself.
Crack. You stepped, heavy, on the hand of the man you’d pummelled—only his unconscious groan of pain re-alerted James to his existence. “The term isn’t over. You should still be in school. Playing around like this makes me far less likely to listen to whatever you’ve followed me for. Try again.”
The thick scent of metal invaded his personal space as you peeled your black gloves off; the rings beneath them were tinted with the blood that had seeped through the material. Just like that, you callously tossed the garment onto the slumbering man under your feet—though he truly wasn’t sure whether it was a final affront to a beaten man or throwing down the gauntlet towards James Lee himself.
It was a reminder, once again, to not be hasty. There was the real possibility of fucking Charles Choi several times over if he didn’t get this right, but the thought of his imminent doom didn’t seem all too unappealing. On the contrary, he found his heart beating faster—pulse hot on his tongue as an intriguing challenge presented itself before him.
“I’m sure your informants have relayed more intel than just my name,” he mirrored the jagged stretch of your lips. The Legend of the First Generation. The Genius. The original, associated with the base moniker of the Ten Geniuses to show just how unparalleled James fucking Lee was. “Take a guess as to how my scholastic life is going, then consider the opportunity that I’m bringing you.”
Ambiguous. His words were dusted with just enough information to seem straight to the point, but vague enough that it was tantalising. A hook to ensnare the snake of Busan himself. And rather than sating the itch in his fists, he found himself looking forward to a parley instead.
You studied him, appearing to consider his words seriously. Syllables phrased like he was the one with the upper hand, when in fact the HNH group was still tentatively unfurling and in the process of negotiations with both yakuza and Triad alike. He awaited your favourable response, hearing the stats roll into your mind as you calculated the preliminary gains and losses to joining hands with Charles Choi.
Bloodied fingers tapped a rhythm into your jacket absentmindedly. He watched, anticipating your invitation.
“Fuck off.”
“Huh?” he spluttered. Maybe he misheard you. Maybe he finally choked on his candy and induced a coma in which he was now dreaming of your response.
“Your boss sent a high-schooler to broker a deal with Busan.” Your fingers now drummed in irritation against your forearm, but he was just as irritated. He took care of every other prefecture and province, only to have this guy who was his age, nonetheless, tell him his presence wasn’t good enough. Like, what? “Tell old Choi to come himself to negotiate if he wants any sort of foothold in my city. If he truly wanted a respectable contract, why would he send you as a messenger?”
“Excuse me?” If he wasn’t restricted from fighting you—the only exception was valid self-defence—he would’ve made the asshole in front of him eat shit. Alas, Choi wasn’t that generous or lenient. “He sent one of the Ten Geniuses, the primero, for this. I’m one of his greatest assets.”
“Are you a damn car or a person?” you snapped, and it suddenly felt as though he was looking upon an ancient wizard as he lectured a troublemaker outside his tower. His eyelid twitched, and he was finding it quite hard to keep a cool head. “Talking about assets… can’t believe Choi’s sent the guy who’s fucked up all the smaller provinces to deal with us.”
The latter sentence was more grumbled to yourself; it appeared he annoyed you just as much as you annoyed him, which he found a delighted satisfaction in.
“Tell Elite to come himself,” you uttered finally, not even letting him get in a word edgeways as you ambled back into the shadows—not even sparing a glance for the pile of bodies left in your wake.
And despite his objective, despite the imminent yelling he’d no doubt face, he couldn’t help but stare at your blood-soaked coat fluttering in the frigid coastal wind.
Out of hatred, obviously.
・゜゜・
Charles Choi was a conniving bastard. You already knew it, but seeing him in the reception hall really drove the image home. He was polite, a little too polite; yet as soon as you slid that manila folder across the mahogany table, his demeanour prickled into something knife-like.
Snake of Busan, you were nicknamed, but this guy was something else entirely. Once he sank his teeth into your determination to keep Busan flourishing, you could practically see his pupils contract into thin slits. Of course you’d dealt with tricky deals. Weaving through negotiation as though it were a riptide was how you clawed your way to the very depth of Busan’s underworld—navigating until you finally found that crown mired in cess.
Or, more accurately, it was Miss Crystal Choi who’d pierced her venom right where it hurt. A Genius of Business, her father had called her—and boy, did it take all your wit to match her expertise in trade.
But did he really have to bring that guy along?
The scion of the Geniuses was also in your office, leaning against the wall far behind Elite and his daughter. And though nobody asked for his input—not even old Choi spared his prodigy a glance—it still irritated you to no end that he’d tagged along. A bright, cheerful grin cast the sun against the city nightlife on the top floor of your building—one directed right at you, considering the only other two people he knew had their backs facing him. Quite the foolish move, but you weren’t one to concern yourself with people who were basically daylight robbing you. If the dog they’d raised bit them, all the better.
Or maybe he was beaming right at your bodyguard-turned-assistant, who stood discreetly in the shadows of the blinds: slatted light gently cresting over his tall build. Well. It certainly was one of the less strange things Mr Lee had done.
Still, for someone who’d been glaring at you just a week ago, the change felt far too eerie to ignore.
“—and onto the temporary personnel exchange section—” A feeble attempt to pry open the walnut that Busan was, which would only end with the unfortunate bastard failing. You’d choose a loyal subordinate, they’d select someone who was doomed to only grunt work—far from the impenetrable fortress of this building. Boredly, you tapped the pen on the contract, before freezing up at Miss Choi’s next words. “—we’d like to recommend James Lee to transfer to this office.”
A pen snapped, and ink spilled onto the page. Dumbfounded, you barely registered her sliding over a fresh sheet, as though she knew full well this would happen.
No, it was no recommendation. Her very mention of his name was a forceful shove of him into your office. No wonder he was grinning like the devil. No wonder he was here in the first place. At that moment, you wanted nothing more than to leave Busan behind.
Your eye twitched.
He kept smiling—an ominous prelude to the brimstone and fire you were sure to experience promptly.
・゜゜・
“Aren’t I a better bodyguard than that useless one you keep around?”
James Lee had been a bit too quiet these past few days; duly loping around behind the lower-ranked subordinates as they made their rounds, never crossing the proverbial line when you’d handed him his duties as interim grunt. Though, whenever you passed him, his eyes followed the shadows of your fluttering hem—two pinpricks of an arid glare sweeping on your back.
But James Lee was a dog, and whatever command Elite gave him, he’d obey. Heel. Roll over. Serve under the King of Busan for a month. A jester, if you would, with a leash around his neck that kept drawing more and more blood from him. What were the limits? Just how far would he go for the man with a crimson shadow?
“No,” you said. He stood, far too proud, on a summit of lackeys that had been sent your way by one of the companies who’d attempted to cheat their way to getting a more favourable deal. It would’ve been a simple ambush—one doomed to fail—fated to end with you tossing blood-soaked gloves right on them before you postponed the meeting you were on your way to.
But not today. It appeared the limit of the dog of Elite was passing up petty competition with the man two paces behind you.
“Unlike you, Song’s actually pleasant to listen to.” Yes, Song wasn’t the most useful of bodyguards point-blank, but it wasn’t like you particularly needed someone to take care of protecting you. He made people lower their guards. And he made a mean cup of tea. “I don’t have any use for you, so you’re still worse.”
“Semantics,” he shrugged. “I made your life much easier, did I not?”
He was smart. Too smart, but you already knew that from the intel that had not yet been erased. Hushed up, because of course Elite would painstakingly conceal his cards.
And unfortunately, you were always drawn to a risky hand. A pleasure far removed from the mundane violence of your everyday life—a heart-pounding thrill of betting all your chips in a hazardous (though not desperate) gamble.
“Maybe.” For it was one day removed from the multitudes of late meetings and burdensome glove changes. Your hands weren’t seeped in oily red, sliding and dripping onto your expensive clothes that were tailored—though still felt so fucking ill-fitting that it made you sick—right to your body.
You considered the man toeing carefully past the dogpile located against a cargo container: donning what could’ve been your life. A beige school uniform, pinkie slightly indented from books and study, pen marks still dotting his fingers. Closer. He ambled lazily to your direction, and as he approached with the dying sun behind him, you could see his smile. Just as languid as the day you first met him, and just as irritating.
Closer. Strawberry candy laced the iron odour, though you could faintly taste lemon in the profile too—testament to the yellow wrapper stuck crudely on one of the men. Closer—he was far too close now, standing chest to chest while he stared directly at you.
If there was one thing that came from this ill-fated encounter, it was probably the permanent furrowed brows that decorated your perplexed face—the bloodhound had been reduced to this fluffy thing demanding your attention.
And it was just as unfortunate that your impression had been chipped away for him too—a King whose expressions were utterly delightful to witness. A straight mouth, grinning ever-so-slightly when a deal went your way. A routine rhythm to your biro tapping your notepad. Eyes that shone with practical constellations as you breathed the briny air of the port in.
A particularity to the way you treated others, steely to the strong, awkward with the weak. So utterly flustered, when it came to tiny kids tugging on your long coat, or the grandmas you lent your arm to on the streets. If he had to compare it, he’d attribute your personality as a non-Newtonian fluid: your very own mix of cornstarch and water. Tough with pressure, all soft without.
Like now.
“Come on,” he whined. Psychologically, he was doing a damn good impression of pitifulness—even if you’d just witnessed him commit a beatdown so one-sided that you could feel the second-hand pain. And little by little, he was watching you falter: breath caught in his throat as he watched your brows default to their furrow once more. “I saved you a good few minutes, didn’t I? Don’t tell me Busan can’t even acknowledge hard work and effort.”
“Fine, whatever,” you crumbled just like that, under the heavy weight of his triumphant eyes. “Good job.”
So cute, he thought, then froze almost immediately the moment the words came to mind.
Hey I could request for a Daniel Park who has a crush on Male! Reader ( fluff please )
27,000 WON ゜・DANIEL PARK
Armed with nothing but a headache and the fit of a wayward uncle, it's perhaps not your proudest moment. But it's a moment nonetheless: one the cashier in this stupid convenience store locks away in his pounding heart.
aka first meetings with this guy /// anon this is more crack than fluff I'm sorry ..my idea of fluff is getting a free umbrella from a fumbling cashier because it's raining, I swear it sounded better and fluffier planned
pairing: daniel park + male student reader
warnings: mentions of alcohol, convenience store weirdo #1 + #2, tiny bit of violence, not a warning but shy daniel (in both bodies), more reader-centric than anything, pre training arc
wc: 2.2k
LOOKISM MASTERLIST
MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION
Without an umbrella, Seoul was a miserable place tonight. Anyone else might’ve appreciated the dense shimmer of rain streaked neon with this fluorescent city, but your head throbbed miserably with the urban cacophony. Fuck. It was pointless stumbling out onto the grey asphalt when you were in such a shit mood. People swarmed and jostled, and you might’ve stepped on a foot or two as you leaned against the rough, corrugated shutters of a closed shop: barely holding on to both your sanity and your consciousness.
Ironically, it was the detestable luminescent rods that saved you, beckoning your damp body towards a 24-hour convenience store. Warily, you peered at the cold lights—and they winked back. Winked, for their clinical flickering suggested sentience, or at least, some sort of quest window that was your beacon for safety from the downpour.
Located on the very corner overlooking an alleyway, it really wasn’t very surprising that it was a magnet for trouble too—if you objectively looked back on the situation. Dark, dingy, smelly—all were generous, polite adjectives you’d use to describe the surroundings.
You dodged the businessman puking up his guts on the off-white wall with a strained smile and a pained twitch in your eye. An abandoned soju bottle sloshed onto your shoes from his wobbling, and your day (night) became worse. Immediately. Biblically, your irritation surged to such unprecedented levels that he might’ve turned into a pillar of salt had you even an ounce of psychic talent.
Still, you stepped across the threshold smelling faintly of pollution and alcohol, but you were finally in one of Korea’s sanctuaries. Albeit soaked, shivering, and possibly seething with annoyance. The triple S threat of all bad days.
“Shit,” you cursed as your phone rang in your pocket. Desperately juggling the two bottles of barley tea and a lychee ice cream onto the top of a freshly polished shelf, you scrambled for the device and swiped it multiple times with wet fingers. Stupid, stupid phone, you thought as it creaked in your incensed grasp. Answer the fucking call, damn it.
The caller ID was as followed: stupid sod. The person on the other end? Well.
“Where’d you go? The weather was supposed to be rainy all through the night, and you really went for a walk?” The voice on the other end of the line was just as irritating as ever. Nasally, too, like if a short dog suddenly started barking with a French accent. Your head throbbed just trying to imagine it, but you did suppose your younger sister was a migraine and a half.
“Hungry,” you muttered. The brick-red plastic basket at the entrance clattered against the linoleum floor as you pulled it out single-handedly, but still you tried to keep your voice down during these witching hours. Those two barley teas bounced against crimson when you swiped the goods into your mode of carrying, and you thoughtfully threw two blue, cardboard packets of paracetamol into there too. Now, you were just missing some yellow to complete the haphazard primary colour wheel you cradled.
“What? Can’t hear you.” Your eye twitched at her admission, and you just knew she was squinting at her phone with an open mouth as if she could simply inhale the frequencies instead.
“—yeah I don’t have my ID, but you could let it slide, right?”
“Hungry,” you enunciated, clearly, for the dear sister struggling to hear a single word. “You happy? I’ll be back in twenty so just don’t burn the house down. And clean out your ears—I don’t want to give the poor guy working the graveyard shift a headache by talking loudly, especially since you’re a banshee on speaker.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she dismissed. “Get me those chips—those ketchup ones—and those peach candies. The knockoff ones, you know which ones.”
“With whose money? Get them yourself, you lazy bum,” you sighed exasperatedly. You were on, what, your last twenty thousand won? In this economy, too.
“—what do you mean you can’t just let it slide? Hey! I look over 21, don’t I? C’mon man, don’t make this difficult.” There were snippets of conversation threading along into the spool of your own, and your eyes flicked upwards. One poor cashier in his green vest, hands clasped like God would possibly rescue him from this situation if he was pious enough. The other had an obnoxiously fake leather jacket draped over him—a wannabe thug if you ever saw one.
“I sent you some, you broke shit. Like, you literally have a job, so there’s no need to be so stingy. Get me some lemon tea too,” she groaned. Her syllables dragged out abrasively, but you were more focused on the conversation unfolding in reality rather than how much you hated her voice.
“I’m sorry, I really—I legally can’t sell you these products if you don’t produce a valid ID.” The clerk had guts, you had to admit. His voice cracked just twice in his answer, and though he was about half the size of the guy blocking the lottery ticket view, his shaking fists clenched and unclenched. You liked the look in his eyes: determined to stand on principle, even if it was just to some guy high off a power trip.
“Okay, sure. Uhh, I might be back in forty. I just need to do something.” Words, as fickle as they were, drifted into nothingness while your eyes communicated your intentions. It was a pity you didn’t want to see her irritating face—you would’ve pressed the video call on Kakaotalk just so she could get front row seats to a beatdown. To be clear, the harrasser’s beatdown, not the harrassee’s.
“Hey. What’s that supposed to mean? Hyung? Fuck, not this— don’t you dare hang up, we’ve literally got our first day tom—”
“Gross.” You made a face as you finally pressed the red button; she should’ve known you’d simply leave the call sooner if she used that term. Cooties. Idiot cooties. Dropping the phone into your pocket and her cavity-inducing requests (plus some cup noodles for your grumbling stomach), you set the basket a safe distance away before eyeing the cashier.
You were quite the expert in miming and clownish arts, if you said so yourself. His face turned everything from unsettled to confused to hesitant in the span of two and a half seconds: pointing first at yourself emphatically; then to the man’s back as he stood waving his arms about; and finally making a fist and clenching it, all to really emphasise your point. Me. Him. I punch.
You don’t know if he took it as a joke. You hoped he didn’t, but his eyebrows crinkled and uncrinkled like he was trying to figure you out.
However, he didn’t exactly have the luxury of piecing together the implications. Not when the man became dangerously more incensed as he was asked to leave, and certainly not when he was about to grab the poor employee’s vest with those nasty hands of his.
Gross.
There was no time to hesitate and plead the heavens for forgiveness.
“Hey man, there’s no need to be a dick to workers,” you gritted out, gripping both his arms in an ironclad grip that miraculously relieved some of your tension headache. Like some damn stress ball, except this was not satisfying at all as you felt the hair on his forearms shift together. Ew. Ewww.
“Who the fuck are you?” His words sounded garbled, temples throbbing while you glared down at him. Get out. It was enough of a pain to move fast, let alone come up with an answer that didn’t sound corny. In a soaked hoodie, slippers and tracksuit bottoms, there was little you could say that wouldn’t make you stay up at night in embarrassment later on.
“Shut up,” you instead bade, since you looked like an uncle in this particular outfit. Might as well give out life advice. “Don’t give yourself liver and lung problems, kid.”
The cashier’s lips might’ve twitched in that moment, and your own suppressed the agonising grimace that convulsed through your face. Fuck. Why was a high school student giving life advice to this dropout?
“Who the fuck do you think you are, huh?” He began rocking his body to build momentum and twist free—and twist he did. Through the air and right into shiny, slippery linoleum after he canted his hips sideways for a weak punch. And you threw him, plain and simple: collar grasped tight in your aching fists.
Success. You did not hit anyone! And neither did you accidentally wreck any of these painstaking displays! You would not get chewed out with a slipper curve-balling straight at your head tomorrow!
“Are you—” the cashier began, but you gestured ‘wait’ with a splayed hand as you stared down at the half-conscious man at your feet sheepishly. Was he… alright? Any more of a brain shake and he could end up more stupid than he was five minutes ago, because how the hell would some random shopkeeper join the National Assembly and change the law? Just so this buffoon could buy drinks without an ID.
“Hold on,” you muttered with a dented pride and some shame. “Let me just—”
You hoisted the guy’s cheap leather-jacketed arm around your shoulder and dragged his wobbling body out, too repulsed by the stench emanating from him to pay heed to his nonsensical babble. There. Now the businessman holed up outside by the bin would have a buddy for company. For good measure, you tossed a powerful mango body spray into the red basket to douse yourself with promptly.
Awkwardly, you placed the miscellany onto the little table the thug had bracketed off—only this time the cashier’s opponent was some guy trying desperately to not wilt away on his feet.
“Um. Sorry about that—” The apology was muffled through your hand dragging across your face—peeking through your middle and index finger at the guy in front of you. Pinned to his vest was a nametag you hadn’t spotted earlier: Daniel Park, noted in size 15 Latin characters and rounded hangul alike. “—Daniel Park.”
Gosh, you even bowed. “Please forget what I said to that guy, for my dignity.”
“Sure.” Once his voice had stopped shaking, it really was quite pleasant to the ears—though it currently shook with barely suppressed laughter. He scanned your items with a tiny, tiny smile. “Thanks for that. I might’ve gotten punched if you hadn’t been there.”
“Real pricks out here,” you grumbled. “No sense of shame or anything.”
“Ah,” he quivered for a brief moment, and you felt your ears heat with just how much you sounded like an ahjussi.
“Forget I said that too,” you muttered mournfully: five stages of grief beginning and ending within you. “I promise I’m not that old.”
Plastic rustled as he pushed the bag towards you: “Twenty-seven thousand won.” And with it, a cheap polka-dot folding umbrella was also pushed your way with a self-conscious smile. You froze, and he floundered.
“As a thank—as a thank you,” he waved, panicked.
“Well, thanks.” You honestly were a little dumbfounded at this sudden good fortune. Maybe you’d get struck by lightning on the way home—you were tall enough that it could probably serve as a conducting rod if you tried hard enough. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”
Just like that you were gone. Back into the neon rain of Seoul you walked, though this time it wasn’t as bad with a pattern over your head and acerbic ice wedged between a sheepish pout.
・゜・
With a barely suppressed yawn, you stood loudly and proudly (silently and exhaustedly) before your new class. They looked like any other crowd of teenagers: gum surreptitiously being chewed, sneakers squeaking right against vinyl flooring, and a barrage of interesting fashion choices as befitted this department. Back to your own name, you introduced yourself while thinking of about a million other things you could’ve been doing.
Speaking of your new classmates, they may have been looking at you with curiosity, but there was one particular guy who looked like he’d seen a ghost. Another pretty-boy you’d never done business with, but somehow—for some damn reason—he was staring like you’d shot a horse in front of him. Staring like he was the shot horse. Seriously. Paracetamol was limited in how far it could cure a headache.
Your gaze met his, and he flinched. Who’s this guy?
Fuck.
Daniel Park was done for. As you looked at him, he could feel his heart threaten to explode and spatter this whole classroom with veins and sanguine matter. Still wearing that same hoodie, still grinning lazily, and still sporting that confident expression like you could handle anything. His pen creaked in his tight grasp.
By all heavens, this man was flushed red as soon as your unimpressed gaze met his—pink and suppressing the urge to hide his steaming face in his hands.
Shit, shit, shit.
・゜・
“Daniel, why the hell is your face so red?”
‘Are you sick?’
“He’s basically the healthiest out of all of us. Can’t be illness.”
