Archive of Our Own

“Tell me about that story again, please?”

The child’s expectant voice is as crystalline as the chime of a bell. He cannot make out the expression on the child’s face behind the blur, but he can imagine the stars shining in large, innocent eyes as they say those words. 

“We just finished it again a few days ago, ■■■. Have you not gotten tired of it?”

That question prompts an offended gasp from the child. The witness feels an understanding smile emerging on his lips despite knowing nothing of the pair in front of him. 

“Never!” his chest warms inexplicably at the retort, “Ahjussi, you really don’t understand. That story is—”

—the story I love the most in the world. 

“Even better than ■■■■■■■■?”

“...Well, no, not really? But that story is the only thing you are good at telling anyways,” the cheekiness is strangely foreign in that familiar voice, “So, please? I really wanna hear it again.”

The adult responds with a sigh, but he acquiesces and sits down by the small bed. The sound of pages carefully turned warms his heart, and he somehow senses that the petite figure on the bed shares the sentiment. He cannot help but grow more curious than he is allowed to when the silence returns. The kid then speaks up, 

“Can we start at ■■■■ this time? And skip straight to ■■■?”

“We can, but is there a reason why?”

A chill suddenly runs down the witness’ spine. His stomach churns in nauseousness. His feet lose their balance as if the world starts to spin—

The child met his gaze with a delighted beam. 

It’s a hallucination, he reasons to himself. This isn’t the first time his eyes deceive him into seeing things that don’t exist. It’s a hallucination. It’s a hallucination. It’s a…

“It was the time that ■ got ■■ and our ■■—”

The voices slowly slur into an indistinct mess. 

He cannot keep himself focused. He cannot breathe. 

“...You really like him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!” the gleam in the child’s eyes is seared deeply into his mind. Innocent. Expectant. Fond.  

“After all, ■■■…”

Kim Dokja knows he is on the subway. He knows that nothing has changed. What he has dreamt of is but another distant worldline. This is another nightmare that he will wake up from soon. He has—

[ The exclusive skill, The Fourth Wall, is forcibly disabled. ]

“...Mn? I’m pretty sure it worked. Hyung, are you really still dreaming?”

If he doesn’t open his eyes, it will go away. It has always worked.

Something is waving in front of his face—a small hand, most likely. Dokja shrinks further into himself. 

“Eh? U–uhm...” the youthful voice from his dream grows closer. Don’t come here. Stay away.  

“Don’t cry, hyung,” for god’s sake, he’s not crying, so why isn’t the thing backing off yet, “Everything is fine. You’re okay. We—I’m not here to hurt you!”

Warmth touches his cheek—Kim Dokja violently flinches from the sudden contact that feels too real on his skin. He slaps it away, feeling something burns at the pit of his stomach that dangerously resembles the rage and fear he hasn’t felt in forever. His eyes fly wide open to glare at the dreaded presence staring back at him. Almost instinctively, he activates his Demon King transformation and seethes through his teeth, hoping to appear intimidating enough to scare the thing off as he did on their unpleasant first meeting. 

Dokja pointedly ignores how fascination quickly replaces the wounded look in the innocent dark orbs.

“Why?” he growls, feeling his heart drumming in his chest so rapidly it hurts, “Why the fuck are you here?”

The Oldest Dream, no, former Oldest Dream blinks. A sigh of relief almost escapes him when the boy takes a tentative step backward, but quickly sublimes into a sharp shard of ice piercing his throat at the timid smile gracing the child’s lips. 

“Demon King of Salvation,” his modifier rolls off the kid’s tongue with sickening awe. His starry eyes shine with incomprehensible interest, “Ahjussi was right. You are beautiful.”

“What do you think about ■■■■, ahjussi?”

The man places a cup of warm milk in front of the boy and looks at him, contemplating. 

“I’m not the one to judge his choice,” he starts, slowly, “But if you insist, I would say that he made a foolish decision.”

Small fingers carefully brush against the fine print on the makeshift book cover as if it is something precious to be cherished. 

“I think I’ve seen that kind of ■ before.”

“Have you?”

“The first time was from long ago,” the child shifts his gaze towards the window. He reminiscences about the knife, the bottle of alcohol, the body, the police, the woman, and the book. His guardian doesn’t interrupt, but he places an awkward hand on the boy’s head. 

“And, later, from you, ahjussi.”

“You must be mistaken. ■■■ took a lot away from my ■, but our ■ are not the same.”

“They are, though? Kinda? You both end up becoming some outer existence that ■■■. And you ■■■ into ■■, too.”

The gaze that meets the child accompanies a complicated frown, eliciting a youthful burst of giggles. The older male shakes his head exasperatedly before he pulls a chair and sits down next to his company. 

“I think you might need a reminder that the former applies to you too.”

It takes him a while, but Kim Dokja reluctantly comes to terms with the fact that they are anything but on the same wavelength. He pretends not to hear the peculiar praise as he stares the Oldest Dream down. The boy appears nothing like the one Dokja had seen through the mirror or behind the protective barrier that day—smelling of pancakes and warm milk, body free of band-aids and bruises, eyes as clear as marbles under starlight, gleaming healthiness with just the right amount of fat rather than just skin and bones, standing straight with more confidence than Kim Dokja thinks he has ever garnered in twenty-eight years of his life. 

“Hyung, please,” the Oldest Dream’s gaze meets his, timid and full of childish determination, “I just want to talk.” 

The placating tone reminds Dokja of Shin Yoosung’s voice when she speaks to a wary stray. Black feathers on his back burst into nothingness, dropping the powerless god back to his seat. How the child immediately brightens up resembles the look on Lee Gilyoung’s face whenever Dokja praises him for a job well done.

The existence before him is undeniably Kim Dokja, but it is also everything that he is not. He turns his head away and closes his eyes. It doesn’t seem like he can chase the kid out anytime soon, might as well keep him entertained until, hopefully, one of his guardians soon notices his disappearance and picks him up.  

“How did you get here, anyway?”

The weight on his shoulders lightens for some reason when he feels the cushion shift under him. The Oldest Dream has taken a seat next to him, keeping a respectful distance between them. He doesn’t need to look to know a pleased little smile has appeared on the other’s face.  

“Someone brought me here.”

“Kim Namwoon,” Dokja makes a guess before he can help it, “Or maybe Uriel. What did you even tell her?”

He gets a quiet giggle instead of a proper response. Not that it matters. 

“Namwoon-hyung isn’t a bad person.” 

“...” 

“I asked him to take me to the arcade one day.”

The Demon King doesn’t stop the child from scooting closer to him. 

“He agreed right away without realizing it was a… hm, what day was it again? Ah, a Wednesday! He was teaching me how to play the, well, the driving game when Jihye-noona came in and caught us. She said something about, uhm, telling ahjussi, but Namwoon-hyung and I convinced her…”

The boy isn’t a good storyteller by any means. He stumbles over his words, misses details here and there that he remembers and adds in later on, completely blowing the sequence of events up, even sometimes saying things that make no sense. The story itself is mundane at best, not at all helped by the childlike point of view and the silly wording. Dokja can very much see Han Sooyoung arching her brows, offended, were he to present this hot mess to her—

Despite it all, he…

“And then?”

The clumsily put-together tales are sweet with something he had never tasted when he looked like the boy sitting by his side. What reaches out to take his hand is small and unimaginably warm. 

“Poor little thing. You must have been so lonely.”

The angel whispers as she gently combs through the child’s hair. He hums in contentment, relaxing into the comforting gestures, looking every bit like a cat sunbathing on a lovely spring day. 

“It’s okay, Uriel-noona,” his eyes follow a chick hopping on the window sill, “I was kinda asleep and dreaming anyway, so it didn’t really matter. Maybe the dream was what kept me from feeling lonely? I think so?” 

A kkoma-sized creature puts down the phone it was fixated on and gives the youth a look. The boy pokes its cheek and grins when it rudely swats his finger away. 

“Ahjussi told me he created you guys to preserve his memories, but I think he would have actually felt so lonely if it weren’t for all of you.”

The man standing at the corner of the room furrows his brows at the remark. He picks up another kkoma and stares at it judgmentally for a good minute,

“Don’t speak nonsense, Kim Dokja.”

Every story eventually comes to an end, even if only temporarily. The few silent minutes following the glorious victory of [41] in a ridiculous debate with Namwoon regarding whether pineapple goes on pizza aren’t suffocating, but they are uncomfortable enough to feel as if they have been stretched into hours. 

“Hyung,” doe eyes peer up at him after a while, “How are you feeling?” 

The reply reflexively comes out, “I’m fine.”

The Oldest Dream cocks his head curiously but doesn’t say anything further, instead turning around to look outside the subway window. Kim Dokja needn’t follow the child’s line of sight to know what he is looking at—not when he still finds himself staring in the exact direction every once in a while, even after growing accustomed to the fact that greeting him would be nothing but foreign astronomical objects.

“Your companions and family are somewhere over there.”

It bugs him a bit that the kid can point that out with ease. Then again, perhaps it would be stranger if the former God of the universe were to be clueless about the worldlines he intently watched over. 

“Do you know how long have you been out here, hyung?”

It was… twenty-one thousand the last time he checked with The Fourth Wall. He isn’t sure how much time has passed since then and if he wants to know. Something tells him that the child can give him the answer, so he stays silent.

The Oldest Dream doesn’t mind Dokja’s lack of reply. He never does. 

“Do you wanna know how they’re doing?”

They will be fine, of course. Forty-nine percent of himself stays behind—not much, but, hopefully, enough to fulfill his promises to them. A part of him will be the first one to read Han Sooyoung’s new novel, take the kids to PC Bang and eat pizza by the river, congratulate Li Jihye on her graduation, go biking with Yoo Sangah, give Lee Hyunsung advice, try Jung Heewon’s drinks and Yoo Joonghyuk’s cooking… 

And it is his job to keep the universe going so each of those little things can come true. 

“Hyung.” 

The pause sends a chill down his spine. The child's eyes are still fixed on the nothingness far, far away behind the glass window. 

“Do you think they’ve realized?”

“We cannot do that.”

“Ahjussi…”

“No. Absolutely not. That is simply absurd, Kim Dokja.”

The Oldest Dream is now looking at him sorrowfully. 

“The two percent gap makes a lot of differences, hyung,” he speaks slowly, as if explaining to a child. 

“He eats what we would never eat and does things we would never do.”

A child’s soft hands grab his own tightly. Pull back, Kim Dokja’s brain helpfully screams at him. He doesn’t. He cannot. 

“He doesn’t remember the story that saved us, hyung. He has no clue of the story we love the most.” 

He can see the child closing in on him behind his blurry vision. The Oldest Dream’s expression seems to soften. Lips pepper along Dokja’s cheek, kissing his silent tears away. 

“Is that truly you ?” 

All the boy does is reiterate everything he already knows. Every word, however, brutally nails into his heart. 

“The others…they know you better than you think. I bet they’ve already noticed, yet they’re perfectly fine and happy. Hyung, do you think—-”

Kim Dokja bites his lips and lowers his gaze, yet refuses to back down at the older male’s stern glare. 

“I already told you,” Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, shaking his head, “It was his choice. I shall not interfere with what he has chosen.” 

“You don’t have to do anything else!” the child points out, “I’ll be doing all the work, I promise! I just—”

“Kim Dokja.”

“What do you know?”

Small arms embrace him, warm enough to protect him from the cold of carriage 3706, the subway, and the vast universe. Kim Dokja buries his face into the thin shoulder despite his flickering judgment. He cannot recall exactly the last time he drowned in someone else’s body heat. 

“Hyung,” the whisper to his ears is sweeter than chocolate, “I’m the one who understands you the best in the world.” 

As much as Dokja wants to refute the claim, he knows too well that the Oldest Dream’s words aren’t simply empty, false egotism. This is the only being that shares fifteen years of his life with him, the only one who can comprehend his tragedies to their very core. Even when their courses have diverged to the point that the existence holding him becomes more alien than anything Kim Dokja has encountered, it doesn’t erase the fact that he was once him. 

“You don’t have to be here all alone.”

The child gently rubs small circles on his back. 

“I can share your burden. I can help you,” the former God promises, “You don’t have to shoulder the weight of worldlines by yourself, hyung. I’m here for you.” 

“He’s basically me, but also all that I’ve wanted to be,” Kim Dokja mutters under his breath as he bows his head pitifully. 

“Ahjussi, I thought you would understand.”

“I don’t want to see you lonely anymore.”

“I’m happy now, but what about him?”

“Hyung, you have done well.” 

A kiss on his forehead prompts Dokja’s eyes to flutter close.

“Please rest. Ahjussi and I will take care of you.”

“More than just wishing for a fulfilling ending…” 

“A new worldline has started.”

The Oldest Dream quietly nods at his words. Secretive Plotter looks down at the young man soundly sleeping in his arms, smaller and lighter than he can recall. Nostalgia surges through him like a wave of acid—so excruciatingly hot it burns. The only thing keeping him from tightening his hold is the irrational fear of breaking the fragile being into pieces if he dares to apply even the slightest of additional strength. 

“They are coming for him in the very end.” 

“How much longer do you think he'll have to wait until they reach here?" A valid question, in all honestly, considering the differences in how quickly time flows, "They could have done so sooner.” 

“Kim Dokja.” 

“They cannot write the ending that he truly needs, ahjussi,” the boy purses his lips solemnly, tugging on the Plotter’s coat, “Let’s leave now. Before he wakes up.” 

The subway doors shut behind the leaving silhouettes as a familiar blue holographic screen dims away into nothingness:

[ Your ■■ is ‘Happily Ever After’. ]