Chapter Text
Stabbed through the gut was Yoo Joonghyuk’s least favorite way to die.
Aside from being excruciating, it was tedious. Dying took so much longer when the injury skirted any vitals. There was a hole in Yoo Joonghyuk’s middle big enough to blow smoke through, but he knew with grimness born of experience that he still had whole minutes before the hypovolemic shock would set in. Just long enough to let him watch the world burn.
Below him, Seoul had fallen under a red haze: storm clouds that had been accumulating in a hurricane-sized vortex above the city epicenter since the start of the scenario were lit up now like holiday lights, liquid coals in the sky glowing with intermingled gold and crimson, reflected from the lake of fire swallowing up the ground below. The cliff where Yoo Joonghyuk knelt, dying, was far away and above, but it had a great vantage point. He could see it all, even hear it. The city was a crackling furnace blasting his lungs with heat and smoke even from here.
Yoo Joonghyk failed to be impressed. As far as apocalypses went, hellscapes were a dime a dozen.
His memories were a repertory of vistas just like this; he’d seen the world blaze in fire, drown in floods, fall into earthquake-torn fissures large enough to swallow entire city boroughs. On certain occasions he’d been witness to the sky itself coming down, watched an army of heaven’s angels plummeting from the firmament with prismatic contrails drawn like rainbows in their wakes.
He wouldn’t have minded seeing something new for once.
“So here’s where you were hiding.” The voice came from behind Yoo Joonghyuk, followed by the crunch of boots on gravel.
In an instant, the air around Yoo Joonghyuk was thronging with the chimes of indirect notifications, dozens of constellations returning their eyes to him. The fickle bastards had already looked away, bored of watching him slowly bleeding out. Like always, Yoo Joonghyuk’s skin crawled under the feeling of being so heavily observed; he would have vastly preferred being left to die alone and in peace. At least he didn’t have to see the notification windows popping up in accompaniment–he kept them minimized as a default. He had long ago lost any interest in whatever those vultures had to say to him.
The man who walked into Yoo Joonghyuk’s line of sight walked straight out of a dust-covered memory: average height and build, nondescript features, wearing a white trench coat over a black collared dress shirt and pants. Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands spasmed with an instinct that rose out of him like a leviathan from unknown depths, wanting to reach out and wring that slender neck as if they’d done so a hundred times before. Then he winced, fresh agony rolling through him–he’d forgotten his hands were pressed against his stomach, the only thing keeping his lacerated guts from spilling out onto his knees.
Yoo Joonhyuk coughed, then indelicately spit a gob of something that felt thicker than blood to the ground at his side. “Too late,” he said, irritated, to the thing wearing Kim Dokja’s body. Whatever constellation this was playing dress up, Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t going to humor their bullshit. And he didn’t have to. The heavy blood loss was finally taking its toll. The pain was numbing out, turning to white noise. His limbs were made of lead, incapable of moving even one more inch. Exhaustion sat in every wrinkle and pore of his skin. At best, he had a minute or so left on the clock.
Whoever it was playing at Kim Dokja hummed, a thoughtful sound, hands tucked away in the pockets of the trench coat as they crouched down directly in front of Yoo Joonghyuk, bringing them to eye level.
“Too late?” they echoed, and even the voice was a good replica, tone mild but painted with a gentle hint of mockery. “Is there such a thing for a man with infinite time?”
“Not in this life,” Yoo Joonghyuk growled, welcoming the tunneling darkness around the edges of his vision. He wanted whatever the fuck this was over with. Dying was useful at least for ending annoying conversations.
The fake Kim Dokja clucked their tongue, a soft tsking that gently chided like a teacher scolding a student for answering wrongly in class. “About that life, Yoo Joonghyuk,” they said. The eyes on Yoo Joonhyuk’s were velvet pools of lightless vantablack, deep wells for sinking into, a promise of a night with dreamless sleep, of respite. “There’s one you still owe me. Did you think I forgot?”
Had Kim Dokja’s eyes ever been that color? Yoo Joonghyuk strained his overburdened memories without success: it was too long ago, he was too tired. In spite of himself, even the hint of a promise of rest was a temptation his body strained towards without his permission, the permeating exhaustion of hundreds of turns, hundreds of lives, hundreds of deaths overwhelming any rational thought. His head was sinking lower, chin dropping to his chest. He wanted to answer, tell the imposter to shut the hell up. His mouth couldn’t work anymore.
The imposter that wore Kim Dokja like a puppet reached towards Yoo Joonghyuk, fingertips barely grazing his cheek, flaking away dried blood. Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t flinch; he couldn’t even feel it. Sparks of plausibility sprang up under the touch: the sensation normally stung like a hundred pricking needles, like swarming bees, but everything had become by then very dull and very distant.
Get your lying hands off me, Yoo Joonghyuk thought with lackluster heat; the sound of it barely registered inside his own head.
“Let’s try something different, Joonghyuk-ah.” The imposter sounded fond now, grossly over-familiar. “Don’t you have any new stories you’d like to tell me?”
Fuck that, thought Yoo Joonghyuk.
With the familiar stranger’s fingers on his bloodied skin, Yoo Joonghyuk finally died, much to his great relief.