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Dokja feels tired.
The nurses haven’t come yet and the window is still wide open, letting in the damp and heavy summer air. The sun set just a few minutes ago and Dokja can’t help but stare outside.
Hours ago, his aunt came by. She barely stayed, just the time to look at him with a strange expression, and tell him that she would come back in two weeks to sign the release documents. Then she’d take him home.
She didn’t ask any questions.
She didn’t ask if the rumor that Dokja heard outside of his room was true.
She didn’t ask anything, she didn’t even put her bag off her shoulder.
Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Wait for two weeks, sure. The necessary time to heal his dislocated shoulder, and his other wounds too. Somehow.
Dokja would never have guessed that two floors weren’t enough.
“Hey Dokja.”
The nurse is not the same one as this afternoon. She is, at least, the third one he has seen since waking up, and she seems to be the youngest. The one this morning was older and much less cordial: she asked questions so bluntly that Dokja simply stared at her silently while she was preparing his medication.
“How’s the pain?”
He’s tired. He lies.
“It’s okay.”
She stares at him for a second and then comes close to his perf. He doesn’t really look at her, at what she does. When she closes the window, his heart still hurts.
“Oh, while I’m at it, I don’t know if anyone told you but your stuff is in the closet.”
She walks to some shelves behind a sliding door, and opens it slowly.
“My stuff?”
“The clothes that you were wearing. Well, what they didn’t cut at least. And your bag too. And…”
She smiles and puts his phone out of a plastic bag.
He straightens up slowly.
“I can try to find you a lost and found charger, if you want? People forget them all the time in the waiting room.”
He nods and she comes closer to put his phone on the bed before exiting the room. She takes less than ten minutes to come back with the loot.
“See? They had a dozen at least.”
She takes the time to plug it in before returning his phone, and Dokja thinks that this is the first nice person he has seen since waking up. It’s quite disturbing, just how much this awareness makes him feel bad.
He still says:
“Thank you. It’s… really nice of you.”
“It’s nothing. I bet time must be long here. Your family couldn't give you the TV subscription.”
He looks at the black screen on the wall. “Couldn’t” may not be the term, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Right, I have other patients. Everything's fine?”
He nods.
“Good night, then.”
In the first hour, Dokja doesn’t do much. He tries to read a little but his head hurts and with the medication, he struggles to concentrate. She surely didn’t believe him when he said the pain was okay, because it quickly disappeared and he feels better.
Good enough, at least, to read a whole article about how many drugs to take to make it dangerous. And another about how high it takes to break your neck. He reads it for about 30 minutes, bookmarks it, and moves on.
It’s by wanting to watch a simple video before finally trying to sleep that he comes across a stream. It’s a game he doesn’t know much about because Dokja has never really been a fan of video games. In itself, the stream has nothing special and for now it’s a cinematic so the player doesn’t even speak.
He’s about to quit when he notices the view counter.
1-
I’m the only one.
He doesn’t know why it makes him feel something. He never watches streams, much less gaming streamers, yet Dokja feels unable to leave. It’s not even pity that keeps him here: he stares at his screen without moving until finally the player starts talking.
“They really did a good job on the atmosphere. The music of the last few scenes was really…”
His voice drops suddenly. Dokja has three thoughts:
It’s a boy.
He doesn’t seem much older than me.
His voice is nice.
He gulps.
“I… have a viewer?”
The boy almost sounds embarrassed. There is no face, but the character suddenly goes in circles. Dokja hesitates for a moment before tapping slowly with his valid hand:
Hey .
“Do you like the game?”
I don’t play a lot. I don’t know this one.
“It’s pretty good, for now. I haven’t made much progress yet. I can tell you the beginning, if you want?"
Dokja raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t know why he suddenly wants to cry. He doesn’t do it and says:
Yeah. Thanks.
The boy tells him the scenario from the beginning, for about ten minutes while continuing the level. Dokja focuses on his voice and on the clicks of the remote controller.
When, after several hours, the boy completes one more main quest, he says:
“I’m gonna stop here, it’s 2AM already and I have class tomorrow.”
Oh, okay.
Thank you for tonight. It was cool.
“I plan to continue. If you’re interested. Thank you for watching.”
He lets a few seconds pass before finally ending the stream. Kim Dokja stays still, facing the page of his channel for a moment before pressing subscribe.
He is the first.
SupremeKing (Dokja can’t help but think that this pseudonym is ridiculous) is streaming every day, from 10PM to 2AM. He plays, almost without stopping, and finishes the games one after the other. Dokja connects every day on his phone, without really knowing why: he stares at the screen for hours after the last nurse came, and one day one of them asked him what he was looking at to smile like that.
He was watching an unknown guy irritate himself very clearly with one of the few levels he couldn’t get through in minutes without effort: that’s what made him smile. Dokja didn’t say anything. In truth, he still doesn’t respond much to the nurses, even if the nicest one tries every time to get him out of his silence.
For Dokja, it’s a rather strange feeling. Connecting, seeing that SupremeKing is streaming, feeling better almost instantly. He never plays games where the script is not the most important thing, and Dokja appreciates it. It’s almost like watching movies, but with a few comments here and there of an unknown yet not very talkative guy who seems to know a lot about games.
During Dokja’s two weeks in the hospital, his daily life is the same. He waits all day for the evening to come while looking outside, mostly refusing the extra painkillers that the nurses and doctors are willing to give him, alternating between painful naps and awakening full of memories. Sometimes, someone comes to force him to make movements. Make him get up to go around the corridor and come back, and Dokja does not resist.
Healing or not, he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he gets out. He hasn’t chosen yet.
Try again. Or not.
For now, the few conversations he has with SupremeKing seem enough for him to look forward to the evening. From time to time, other viewers come and the view count goes up a bit, from 1 to 10 and then down to 7. Most nights, there is only Dokja.
“I would have thought you’d get tired faster than that.”
You make it sound like I’m forcing myself.
“I’ve been doing this for weeks, and frankly, it was just so I could watch my favorite parts again when I was done. I never thought anyone would really like it. Plus, you said you didn’t like video games.”
I said I didn’t know about it. Not that I didn’t like it.
I like it when you play.
“Hm. Well, I’m going to finish up anyway. I—”
Child screams. Dokja, lying in his uncomfortable bed and almost wrapped in the hospital’s thin sheet, frowns.
“Shit, I’m ending this here. See you tomorrow.”
The stream ends abruptly.
In the dark, his phone now turned off and put on the nightstand next to the bed, Dokja stares at the darkness in silence. Tomorrow he’s going home to his aunt and uncle. And he doesn’t know what to feel.
Yet, only one thing tells him that he will not immediately go to the nearest roof on his way out the next day.
He said “see you tomorrow”.
It doesn’t change anything.
Kim Dokja leaves the hospital the next morning. His aunt is waiting for him in the lobby; it’s crazy how she looks like his mother. Shorter hair and a much more severe face, but they have the same eyes and the same noses. She waits for Dokja to arrive, pushed by a nurse, on a wheelchair.
That’s protocol, apparently. He can walk, even with a knee support that keeps his leg in place, but he shouldn’t fall in the hospital and break something else on the way out.
In the car, she says nothing. Neither does he.
Kim Dokja has nothing to say to them now. At first, he would have given anything for a few words, for anyone telling him something reassuring, or for anyone telling him that yes, it was his fault. He was right for this. But he got nothing.
Silences, small portions of food left in the fridge for him, no looks, nothing.
Now he expects nothing more than what he had, and fortunately because the days after, nothing changes. His uncle doesn’t talk to him, his cousins avoid him, nobody knocks on his door.
There’s only one thing that changes.
“It’s disappointing. The scenario started well but what is that? The plot twist, we saw it coming from miles. I thought they were trying to trap us.”
I’m betting on a second plot twist in no time.
“Do you think so? I’m not sure. I think you expect too much.”
And I think you judge too quickly.
Look at that.
Aha.
“Shit.”
Sometimes, Dokja hears smiles in the voice of SupremeKing. He has never shown his face, but his voice says a lot about his expressions: some days he is in a good mood and Dokja can hear it, and other days he must have had a bad day because he speaks even less. He never resents Dokja when he comments that he just wants to watch him play, that he doesn’t want to talk. And Dokja always understands when SupremeKing says at the beginning of his stream that he will just keep going on with their current game, in silence.
But lately, Dokja is clearly not the only one following his streams. Last time, there were almost a thousand viewers: yes, it was a pretty popular game from what he had seen, but still.
He is no longer the only one, yet the SupremeKing always talks to him precisely. People in the comments even sometimes think they know each other IRL.
During the day at school, the others keep their distances. At first, Dokja thought they were just waiting for him to remove his bandages, for his shoulder and leg injuries to disappear. But even after every trace of evidence of his failed act vanished, no one dares to approach him.
Nobody wants to harass him anymore, scared he would break like glass again.
In the beginning, it was his intention. Actually breaking this time. Try again. When he went back to his aunt and uncle, he thought, if SupremeKing stops, then I can do it. If he stops, I’ll do it again .
But SupremeKing is there, every night, every day. And Kim Dokja, even when passing in front of the building every day, doesn’t go up.
The parlor is cold.
On the other side of the glass, his mother watches him as if she’s trying to read something inside him. She succeeds, apparently, because suddenly her expression changes.
She doesn’t tell him anything.
So for lack of a better word, Dokja speaks.
“I discovered someone. On the Internet. I—”
"A friend?"
“Something like that. He makes videos. It… helps me.”
She doesn’t know about the roof, the hospital, or even her own sister who barely cares about her nephew.
“Right now he’s on a game called…”
He tells her. And even if deep down he feels guilty and angry, Dokja thinks that for now, there is nothing else he would like to tell her.
“Do you mind staying a little longer tonight? I’d like to put away all the new games we got so we don’t have to do it in the morning and you can come later?”
Dokja straightens up in the aisle. He just spent at least two hours sorting everything alphabetically, the kids who come here at night having disturbed everything in less than two days.
In front of him, the owner of the game store raises an eyebrow.
“I…”
A few months earlier, just after turning sixteen, Kim Dokja finally managed to emancipate himself. His aunt signed all the papers and even took him to court. She managed to prove that all the money from her sister’s book, which belonged to Dokja, had been used for his benefit. He didn’t have much left, but he at least managed to find a small job in a gaming store that actually paid properly.
The judge listened to them, and approved the emancipation. Since then, Dokja has had no news of his family, and he doesn’t know what to think about it.
“I’m sorry, I have something to do tonight.”
“You?”
His boss is a really nice guy. He saw a sad, lost kid and offered him a job. Later, he even gave him tips for a cheap apartment and seeing that Dokja knew a lot about computers, offered him to fix some for money. Now, every other day when he doesn’t need him in the store, he lets him do his things in the back room by repairing the PCs of customers who know the place or have heard about it. All this is done in cash, but it suits him very well.
“Have you made friends?”
He seems genuinely surprised, and before a happy expression appears on his face, Dokja corrects him:
“In fact, it's a stream day. You know, Sup…”
“Ah,” he laughs suddenly, “yes it is. Sorry, how could I forget. It’s Thursday.”
Nowadays SupremeKing is only streaming four days a week. Dokja is looking forward to it, but he’s not really the only one anymore. Now, SupremeKing is one of the most popular streamers on the platform, and Dokja even heard a few customers talk about him last time.
In fact, his popularity exploded at the beginning of the year, a few months earlier. If he started to become popular last year, it was nothing compared to the noise he made when he revealed his face.
He didn’t say anything. One day, Dokja just logged in, as usual, to face the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Dark hair, a little wavy, black eyes, thick eyebrows, perfect skin: in one week the number of subscribers doubled. They talked about him on Twitter, on Instagram. The comment space was filled with strangers and now when Dokja says he’s watching SupremeKing’s streams, people respond with an amused smile. “Ah, yes, I see the appeal”.
It almost makes him angry, that he’s reduced to a beautiful face. As if someone could not watch his videos for other reasons (his voice, the fact that he passes any level with disconcerting ease, his analysis, that he never speaks for nothing).
“Don’t worry, we’ll put this away tomorrow.”
He smiles, and Dokja nods. In the evening, alone at home in front of his computer screen, SupremeKing announces that he wants to finish the game so maybe he will finish a little later. And Dokja is glad he didn’t miss it.
In college, Dokja manages to get hired at MinoSoft.
Nothing crazy, in fact he’s almost the assistant of an assistant, between cleaning help, courier, coffees and preparation of meeting rooms, still far from his goal at the pole of creation of video games. But he gets paid, and he can see the company from the inside (in addition to being able to walk in the different poles during his breaks).
Between work and classes, he struggles to find time and he’s sometimes forced to listen to the streams with a headphone, his phone in his pocket, just to listen to SupremeKing comments on the scenario.
One day, while he prepares a dozen coffee in the break room for all the guys of the marketing team, Yoo Sangah arrives behind him.
“Here, I’ll help you.”
“No, I…”
She’s beautiful, and it’s intimidating. Yoo Sangah always tries to talk to him, from time to time: she got a permanent contract not long ago and didn’t start treating him like a nobody. She smiles at him, asks him how his weekend went, and doesn’t laugh at him for loving only books and video games.
And most of all, when everyone asks him things like “bring us half the store downstairs”, well, she’s willing to help him, even if it’s not her job. They’re only two years apart, yet she always looks so mature.
“You know,” she said, pressing the button on the second coffee machine in the room, “I think we’re really going to keep going with the influencers idea”.
Last time, she confided in him by telling him that she never dared to propose her ideas for fear of being rejected. Dokja had encouraged her, uncertain about saying the right things (she always helped him, and he wanted to reassure her a little).
“I suggested it to them at the last meeting, and the chief seemed to like it. The other companies that tried it made it work.”
He smiles gently. Seeing her relieved pleases him.
“Are you thinking of anyone specific?”
“I had a few names, but I’m not really into video game influencers. I don’t know… trends.”
Dokja hesitates for a moment.
“I…”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps I have a name for you.”
The last coffee is almost ready.
“SupremeKing. If it’s for a game test, I think he would agree. He likes to...criticize.”
“Oh, okay. I’m going to suggest it to them. And I will say it’s your idea, I think—”
“No,” he says, shaking his head a little. “Don’t say it’s from me. I mean, if it goes wrong, obviously don’t take the blame, but... no need to say my name.”
She raises an eyebrow, then slowly nods.
“...okay. If that’s what you want.”
A few minutes later, they take a tray full of coffee and leave the room.
One day, there’s a little girl lost outside his house.
She cries, silently, right next to the bench where he sometimes sits. For a second, Kim Dokja thinks to himself that he should just walk away: he is tired, he spent the night repairing a computer and the day before, SupremeKing announced on Twitter that he could not stream for two days.
So he takes two steps. Then stops.
“Why are you crying?” he finally asks, in front of the little girl.
She has light hair, obviously not quite Korean, and her eyes light up when she looks up at him.
Dokja looks at her, hands in his pockets.
“I…”
She swallows and tries to stop the trembling of her lips.
"I think I got lost.”
Dokja sighs. He feels the imminent stop by the nearest police station.
“You lost your parents?”
She shakes her head.
“I had to go somewhere. I know the way, but I made a detour. My fri...someone I know lives here. I thought he’d be here and we could go back together, but…”
“But he’s not here, so you’re lost.”
He understands. This little girl is alone, eyes full of tears, and he sits next to her with a sigh. At best, this will still get him into trouble.
“I can take you if you want.”
“Really?”
“Do you remember the name of the neighborhood?”
She gives it to him, and he nods. It’s not that far away.
“We were supposed to meet at the playground.”
“I see. Come on.”
He gets up, and she does the same. He winces.
“You know, you shouldn’t be so quick to accept. I could be...someone dangerous.”
“Is that the case?”
He’s frowning. This little girl is rather strange.
“No, but…”
“Good,” she says, “because I learned how to defend myself. I know how to do it.”
Her gaze descends, to a point at the top of Dokja’s pants, and he understands. He doesn’t know who taught her, but he almost wants to take another step to the side, just to get away a little.
“Good. If you ever feel unsafe, don’t hesitate. It’s better to… don’t take any risks.”
The walk isn’t that long: they cross a few streets, one more neighborhood, and when they finally reach the playground surrounded by buildings, Kim Dokja notices almost immediately the little girl with black hair waiting with a bored look.
When she sees them, she frowns.
“Shin Yoosung,” she says as she comes closer.
She takes the hand of her friend and pulls her in her direction. Kim Dokja knows this expression: she is so suspicious of him that she seems ready to start screaming in the second.
“Okay, well…”
“Thank you," says Shin Yoosung.
She smiles softly, and Kim Dokja nods in return.
“No worries.”
She seems to want to say something else, but her friend is still pulling her. Kim Dokja is already moving away.
His apartment is pretty crappy.
It seemed like the best place in the world, a few years ago. It offered him freedom, tranquility, relief. But now all he sees is mold, poor insulation, frequent power cuts. He can hear the rodents in the walls, and the neighbor who’s always violent with his wife and their barely ten years old son.
It drives him crazy.
Tonight, what almost makes him crumble is a new power outage: this one lasted for hours, while he was at work. All the food in his fridge can be thrown away. He clearly does not have the money to do monthly errands again.
He cries a little. He drinks a lot of water. And he goes to bed on an empty stomach.
Next door, he hears the neighbor screaming: it makes him shiver. Of fear, perhaps. It plunges him into memories he doesn’t want to have, and sometimes when he hears that Dokja turns once again into a kid, and he doesn’t feel like he can move on.
Somehow, he will always be the one who stood on the edge of the roof. The one who jumped. It’s there, so close. And he can’t be someone else.
That night, in his bed, he is relieved to see on Twitter that SupremeKing is streaming.
“Oh,” he smiles softly as he sees Dokja’s username appear. “Hello.”
There are thousands and thousands of viewers. But Dokja has a pseudoof a different color, and SupremeKing always spots it.
Dokja is sniffing.
Hey .
“You didn’t miss much. It was just the prologue, and it was a scene where the main character, the girl, was running through the forest. She was older and…”
His voice, much deeper than the first time Dokja discovered him, gently tells him what he missed. Sounds interesting, but tonight he’s barely looking at the screen. He sees that new people are wondering, wondering why the SupremeKing is talking to Dokja so much, ignoring others.
It is comforting.
And as usual, after barely an hour, Dokja doesn’t think about anything but the game he’s watching.
Dokja comes home late every night for a few days.
At work, he was led to believe that if he worked well in the department where he is, he could simply be transferred to video game development once he graduated. Currently he works there at least three full days a week, in addition to his classes and evenings where he goes back to continue what he did not have time to finish.
He sees the end coming, and the last thing he has to finish is the complete video game they had to make in groups for their diplome: the designs are done, all that remains is the code. And that’s his job.
When he comes home, it’s late. He only thinks about one thing: swallowing his dinner as fast as possible and going to bed. Dokja crosses the river, goes up the street, gets ready to turn towards his building.
On the bench, not so far from the entrance, the neighbor’s son sits and sniffs out. Dokja’s heart tightens. This time, the kid has no injuries on his face or any visible marks. He just cries, in semi-silence.
“Gilyoung?”
The boy raises his head in a startle. It feels like his gaze softens when he spots Dokja.
“Oh,” he whispers.
Dokja sits by his side, suddenly extremely tired. Slowly, he takes out the cake he had taken for after dinner and hands it to him. Lee Gilyoung stares at his hand and nods to thank him. After a bite, he stops crying.
“Your father?”
“No. Not this time. My parents are going to get divorced.”
Dokja freezes.
Something in his stomach turns.
“You…”
“My mother is in the hospital tonight. She told my father that she wanted to leave him this afternoon, and he got angry. I think this time she’s really going to do it. We’re going to move, she told me she found a job.”
“Gilyoung, I…”
He looks disturbed. Both sad and relieved, and especially angry. Dokja clenches his fist.
“Are you alone tonight?”
“My friend’s brother is coming to pick me up. I will sleep at their house for a few days.”
“Oh. Good. I—”
His voice dies in his throat.
A few meters away from them, arriving from the end of the street, a man approaches. Next to him, the little girl who had been waiting for the one whom Dokja had accompanied last time stares at him with frowned eyebrows. She pulls the sleeve of the one who looks like her like two drops of water, and whispers something to him.
The eyes of the SupremeKing are on him, and Dokja has the impression that his body is freezing. It’s strange, like a short circuit that goes up from the bottom of his back to his heart, which is shaking in terror.
Because that’s not supposed to happen. That’s impossible.
It’s worse than a collision, it’s almost a crash.
“That’s him,” says Gilyoung, without noticing that Dokja is frozen in place, heart in pieces.
The SupremeKing is only a few meters away now. And it’s like an electroshock when Dokja notices his dubious, almost suspicious expression: he looks at Dokja as one looks at an old man waiting at the exit of the schools.
He swallows, gets up.
“I’m going home,” he says with a small voice, and this time the boy turns to him.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Dokja doesn’t know if he answers. The only thing he knows is that he has to turn around.
He has to go home.
And he has to start believing that SupremeKing exists, in a way, only for himself. Only to allow him to keep getting up every morning, going home every night, and trying to survive in a world where almost nothing holds him back, day after day.
But while leaving the next morning, almost late for work, Dokja is forced to face reality. Because the SupremeKing is right outside his door.
Or more precisely, the SupremeKing is coming out of the neighbor’s house, stuff under his arm and a raised eyebrow. His eyes cross Dokja’s. For a second, Dokja hesitates to jump over the second-floor barrier to try to escape and not have to exchange a single word with him, but he knows it will probably break his ankle.
“Kim Dokja?”
His voice.
A chill rises up along his spine, and for a second Dokja feels the characteristic tingling that announces the tears. He blinks and takes a deep breath.
“I…”
“For yesterday, I’m sorry. Gilyoung told us that you helped him several times, but as Mia told me she also saw you with …”
Kim Dokja swallows.
“You’re letting him stay, from what I heard. That’s good. He’s a...nice boy.”
He watches him so carefully that Dokja wants to look away. He wants to open his door and lock himself inside so he can never get out again.
His look makes him feel like a teenager again, sad and absolutely alone. Although the only thing that has changed since then is that he is clearly not a teenager anymore.
“Mia likes him.”
“Your little sister?”
He agrees.
“She was also worried about him. Eun Jung is a nice woman, but she…”
“...thought she couldn’t do it alone. I know. We’ve already talked about this.”
Very often, even. Each time, Dokja could not prevent the pinching of his heart by hearing her. He has already heard this speech, in a way.
“Take care of him. I’ll go now.”
The SupremeKing is still watching him, from his feet to his head, so much that Dokja’s legs start shaking. He has the time to take three steps, barely. He doesn’t get past him.
“Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“What?”
“My name. Gilyoung told me he didn’t say my name, and I didn’t introduce myself.”
“Oh.”
Yoo Joonghyuk. That’s almost a protagonist’s name. Without the screen bias, he’s almost even more beautiful.
“Nice to meet you. I’m going to go to work now. I have—”
“Gilyoung likes you. He says you’ve been very helpful. Shin Yoosung has been talking about you too lately. Do you want to eat dinner with us?”
Dokja freezes. His eyebrows raise slowly, because suddenly he doesn’t understand. It’s almost a joke. He asks:
“Is that a joke?”
“Why?”
“We don’t know each other.”
Yoo Joonghyuk shrugs.
“I know how to cook. I do it well.”
“… Okay?”
“And Lee Gilyoung needs stability.”
“I…”
"And, sorry to say this, but your cheeks are hollow and I can see your collarbones.”
Kim Dokja blushes furiously. He clenches his jaw, but Yoo Joonghyuk adds:
"I just want to thank you.”
It doesn’t seem to be everything, but it’s the only thing he says. And finally, almost too tired to think of another excuse to refuse, Kim Dokja hears himself saying:
“Okay.”
The kids talk a lot, and loudly. It’s probably normal, but Dokja is not used to it. Only child, often alone: he hasn’t eaten with someone in a long time.
That’s probably why the questions take him by surprise.
“Do you live alone?”
“I…”
“Where do you work?”
“I’m…”
“Do you like ice cream?”
“Why are you asking him that?”
“Why not?”
“You have to ask him important things.”
“Like what?”
“Do you like insects?”
“Guys,” sighs Mia. “Be quiet.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s little sister has been eating in silence since the beginning. From time to time she glances at Dokja, but most of the time she just fills the plate of her two friends, caring for them to eat well.
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t say anything either. He seems almost amused by Dokja’s panicked look at the curious kids.
Suddenly, Mia says:
“Do you like video games?”
Yoo Joonghyuk glances at his sister. Dokja raises his eyebrows, and swallows slowly.
“I… actually work at Minosoft. And I’m… studying video game design. So yeah, I like video games.”
It surprises everyone. The children seem impressed, Mia has a strange expression, and Yoo Joonghyuk stares into his eyes.
“Oh yeah?”
Dokja shrugs.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Why sorry?” asks Gilyoung.
Mia has a rictus.
“He knows my brother. Isn’t that right? You follow his streams, I’m sure of it.”
It’s unreal. This whole situation is unreal. And Dokja can’t help but blush.
“I do. Sorry. Maybe I should have said it before.”
Shin Yoosung is getting a little closer, curious.
“Have you known him for long?”
Dokja lifts his head, avoids glances. He lies:
“Not that much. I… discovered him recently. They talk about him sometimes. At work.”
“Whaou.”
Gilyoung and Yoosung turn to Yoo Joonghyuk who retreats slightly.
“He’s more popular than I thought.”
“Yep. Clearly.”
“Idiots. Of course my brother is popular, what did you think?”
Dokja smiles slightly. The voices fill the room, the children move, laugh. After a while, Yoo Joonghyuk almost growls:
“Finish your plates. There’s dessert left.”
When Dokja goes home, a few hours later, he goes to bed. And he sleeps for hours.
He’s been at his school for hours the last few weeks.
There are good computers, empty and available rooms, and teachers present if questions need to be asked. So Dokja spends his days and evenings there, until the old man who does the cleaning finally enters the room where he is and tells him to go home.
His oral exam is tomorrow. Early afternoon.
The game is done. His graphic designer, also a student, had finished his part months ago: Dokja had all the cards to assemble the game and code what was needed, and he spent whole nights there. Finally, Yoo Joonghyuk played it and, with his usual honesty, told him it was good. He didn’t say it was perfect, because it’s not, but he said it was good. Dokja sent it to his jury the very next day, his hands wet and his heart beating. Now all that remains is the presentation.
By the time he finishes the last slide of his PowerPoint, with a polite thank you for your attention, his phone starts vibrating.
Curry tonight. Okay?
Dokja feels his lips shaking.
Some days he still struggles to understand. Overnight, he found himself going several times a week to a nice neighborhood, a nice apartment, surrounded by noisy and adorable children, eating food worthy of a restaurant. He’s not useful, he’s just invited, and he comes. He eats, he smiles a bit. They watch TV together. Then, when it’s time for Yoo Joonghyuk to go streaming and for the children to go to bed, he goes home.
It’s been going on for weeks, and Dokja’s still terrified it’s gonna end overnight. He didn’t say anything about the streams, he didn’t fix the “I discovered him not long ago” of the first night. He wants to tell himself that if one day Yoo Joonghyuk realizes that he’s not worth it, then he will at least have that. He’ll still have the streams, like before.
That’s fine with me. can I bring some ice cream for later?
It’s strange that suddenly the screen of his phone is no longer the only thing that makes him want to continue living.
Strange, and really nice.
On the night of his results, they throw him a party.
Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung decorated the living room (and Mia, even if she refuses to admit it for some reason) and Dokja is happy to see them. Recently, Shin Yoosung comes in the afternoon to play with her friends but she also has a family, and her mother wants her to eat with them (which Dokja understands, but he had forgotten). Gilyoung’s mother got out of the hospital, she got a job and they moved (not too far, but he’s living with her again now).
Lately, Dokja just eats with Mia and Joonghyuk. It’s quieter, but still as nice. They watch TV, or they listen to podcasts.
“Dokja?”
“Mmh?”
Distractedly, Dokja helps to bring the dishes to the table. Tonight, for his results (awarded with honors!) they are all there.
“Why weren’t your parents there? Mia told me that you went and got your diploma all by yourself.”
Shin Yoosung looks sad. And Dokja’s discreet smile fades a bit. For a second, he thinks about lying to her.
Behind him, he hears Yoo Joonghyuk saying:
“Don’t ask about things like that.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No,” says Dokja, “that’s okay.”
He winces.
“In fact, I don’t get along very well with my mom’s family. And she’s gone. And my dad’s not around either... So, you see, not a lot of people to invite.”
He puts himself at his height, and caresses her hair. Shin Yoosung stares at him with tight lips.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, and she finally smiles softly.
The food is delicious, of course. When they finish, when the children watch an animated film on the sofa and Dokja helps to do the dishes in the kitchen, he feels Yoo Joonghyuk watching him.
The atmosphere is strange. Dokja drank some champagne. He feels good: he has never been so relaxed.
Maybe that’s why he says after a while:
“Actually, I lied. My father’s dead. My mother killed him, and she’s in prison. I lied, but I thought that it was too much for a child like her. She didn’t need to hear that.”
Yoo Joonghyuk pinches his lips. This is not really the reaction that Dokja expected, so he blows:
“Did you know?”
“I read about it. I just wanted to find you on the networks, and instead I came across an article.”
“Oh.”
There’s a lump in his throat. It hurts. Dokja asks:
“When was that?”
“After… the first time we met.”
His chest tightens. Suddenly, it seems more logical. No one would invite a stranger into his home for no reason.
“I see.”
“Sorry I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s okay. It’s better that way, actually. If I had known you knew… maybe I wouldn’t have come back.”
Dokja wipes a plate and places it on the side.
“I was alone for a long time. It was… it was hard, I think. But you invited me. And, surely, you all are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
That’s the truth. He means it, but he never said it. And then the words come out of his mouth and he can’t stop them.
As Yoo Joonghyuk answers nothing, Dokja raises his head and turns slightly towards him.
He’s not expecting a kiss.
Suddenly, Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips are on his and Dokja freezes. He opens his eyes, his head goes silent, and his heart stops.
It’s warm, soft, there’s a hand in his hair.
It lasts a few seconds. Then he retreats.
Yoo Joonghyuk observes his expression, then says, a little worried:
“I thought you knew. Sorry, I didn’t ask.”
Dokja looks at him. What he sees is this boy who started streaming when he was in the hospital. It’s the one that made him want to go home, rather than go on a roof. It’s the one that got him into high school and then college. It’s the one who’s been here almost every night for...years.
Dokja looks at him.
And suddenly, something breaks.
And Dokja cries.
“What, Dokja– Hey, I won’t do it again, okay? We can keep being — hey, you can come whenever you want, okay? Dokja…”
The rest is blurred, because he has never cried like that. His body is loose, he hears voices. Arms hold him, the children ask what happened. Yoo Joonghyuk says he doesn’t know.
And then, it stops.
He wakes up in a bedroom.
It’s probably the middle of the night, because the curtains are not closed and he sees the light of the lamp outside. There is no one, only him. His eyes hurt and his throat hurts too. He touches it distractingly, and notices that he no longer has his sweater and is simply wearing his t-shirt.
He stays still for a moment.
What have I done?
He remembers the tears at first. But the rest is blurry.
Dokja raises the blanket, ignores Yoo Joonghyuk's scent around him, and gets up. He goes towards the door.
The hallway is quiet. He walks to the kitchen, opens a closet, takes out a glass, serves himself a drink.
He remains motionless, water at the edge of his lips, for a few moments.
“Kim Dokja?”
He doesn’t even jump when he hears Joonghyuk’s voice. He’s there, in the doorway.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Sorry about that.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrows are furrowed, and he observes him as if Dokja’s going to collapse again any second. He says:
“I’m better now. Really.”
“Mmh.”
Yoo Joonghyuk approaches, and suddenly Dokja remembers the kiss.
“The children were worried,” Yoo Joonghyuk says.
“Sorry.”
“And so was I.”
Dokja tightens his lips.
"I’m sorry," he repeats.
“There’s no reason to be sorry. But… what caused it? The subject of our discussion, or…”
Your rotten family or the fact that I kissed you.
Dokja thinks about it. He thinks yes, I cracked . It was bound to happen one day, surely.
He hesitates. But he feels too tired to lie. To pretend, again.
“My father was violent, and my mother let him do it for a long time. Then one day he really tried to kill us, and he died.”
Yoo Joonghyuk tightens his lips. He keeps a reasonable distance, and Dokja sees on his face that he understands that it’s now.
This is now. It’s where Dokja unpacks everything.
“My aunt took me in. She and her family pretended I wasn’t there. I ate alone, I lived alone. School was hell. And one day, my mother published a book, about how, exactly, she killed my father.”
He hates that part. Because something inside him is always screaming.
“There were the reporters, and the others at school, and...and at one point it was too much. So I jumped.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. He says:
“What?”
“I went to the roof of a building, on my way home from school, and I jumped. But I just ended up at the hospital. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to wait until I got out, and get really high this time. To be sure.”
It’s too much, apparently. These are things that need to be said to a psy, Dokja knows it. It’s not a story that you tell in the middle of the night to the only friend you have, who apparently loves you as much as you love him.
But he started, and he can’t stop.
“But one day I came across a stream. A guy was playing a game. I wasn’t even interested in video games, but I stayed anyway. I watched the video until the end. And all the others after that. And now I—”
His lips are shaking.
“And now I’m still here. And you’re kissing me. So, yeah, I think I’m kinda freaking out. But things are okay now. Better. I mean, I guess.”
He raises his head, uncertain. Because if Yoo Joonghyuk flees now, then he doesn’t know. It’s unfair, to put that on his plate, as if Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t already have enough.
It’s rotten. It’s heavy.
Yoo Joonghyuk raises his arm, touches his shoulder, slides his fingers along his skin and crosses their hands.
“I… don’t know what to say to that. I’ve never been very good with words.”
“I know. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”
Yoo Joonghyuk agrees. There is something in his expression, which gives Dokja the impression that he is relieved.
So, after finally drinking the glass of water he came for, he asks:
“Can you play in the living room? On the TV? That way I can sit next to you, and I can watch.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him. Then his shoulders drop, in a deep sigh. His lips tremble.
“Yes,” he replies, “let’s do that.”