Chapter Text

“White Rose Flower Symbolism?”

"..."

“The meaning of a Dried White Rose is…”

"..."

"..."

"..."

“Better Death than Loss of Virtue.”

"Ahjussi!"

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but smile as Shin Yoosung abandoned her luggage on the doorstep in favor of running up to embrace him.

Back when he first met her, Shin Yoosung and the other kids had been so little that they could only reach to hug at his legs. 

Now, though, unlike Gilyoung and Mia, Yoosung had actually grown to be just an inch or so taller than Kim Dokja himself.

Still, Shin Yoosung was Shin Yoosung. At that time he remembered the young girl had the habit of smushing her face into the leg she hugged as if trying to hide there. Nowadays, she still leaned down to smush at least one cheek on his shoulder while they hugged.

Kim Dokja swallowed down the dry tang that had begun tightening his throat, patting Shin Yoosung on the back a few times.

"Yoosung, it's good to see you again," he said, a little annoyed with the way his voice felt strained over the syllables of his words. "Eh, it seems like you got a bit of a tan this time, hm?"

They had stopped really hugging, but Shin Yoosung kept her head on his shoulder, pouting up at him instead of responding to his observation.

"Ahjussi I heard you got sick…" the girl looked up at him with big eyes, her voice sounding a little tearful.

“Ah…” Kim Dokja made himself calm at such an expression. “Well, yes a little bit, but it’s really nothing to be too concerned about…”

“He’s lying.” Kim Dokja grinned and bore it as Yoo Mia cut in with some sharp words. “He was throwing up blood all day yesterday.”

“Ahjussi!” Shin Yoosung’s eyes seemed to dry up, her tone shifting accusatory as she straightened out and took up a scolding posture… where exactly had she picked that up? “Should you be lying down? Why aren’t you in the hospital?!”

Kim Dokja swallowed. He didn’t feel able to answer these questions, so he just moved to pick up Shin Yoosung’s bag for her.

This motion earned him a squirt of water in his face. 

The one who shot him, Yoo Mia, moved to pick up the bag instead.

“He has a surgery scheduled for tomorrow.” She told Shin Yoosung. 

The girl hadn’t been blessed with her brother’s height in her adulthood, she was about as broad as him, lifting Yoosung’s heavy bags over her shoulders with ease. Eating well to grow big and strong in this case was primarily accurate on the latter count…

“For now, I’m watching him.” Yoo Mia’s words were obviously directed towards Yoosung, but her eyes narrowed towards Kim Dokja as if they were a warning for him.

“Ah, Mia, you’re so reliable these days…” Shin Yoosung put her hand to her chest as though she was really taking Yoo Mia’s words to heart.

“Tch.” Gilyoung, who had been lurking on the staircase as if waiting for Shin Yoosung to notice him, suddenly made a dismissive sound. “That’s not true at all. Hyung was trying to do chores all day yesterday and Mia didn’t lend a hand even once.”

Kim Dokja, for his part, was only half paying attention to this exchange, mind wandering to whether or not he could make a quick trip to the bathroom…

It seemed to be his chance when the kids went up the stairs bickering between themselves, but then two more people seemed to file in.

“... and then he just completely yartzes all over my shoes.” Han Sooyoung’s annoying speech broke through Kim Dokja’s thoughts as she kicked the door open wider, her arms occupied holding another bag. “I swear I didn’t know before then! You got the order of operations wrong Sangah.”

“If you say so Sooyoung-ssi…” Yoo Sangah followed behind Han Sooyoung, holding with each of her hands bags that were larger than the one Han Sooyoung was holding with both her arms. “But, ah, what about the… Oh Dokja-ssi!” 

Yoo Sangah also appeared to have tanned a bit on her trip – and, was it just his eyes or, was the red hue in her hair a bit more prominent than before? 

Yoo Sangah, for her part, had seemed to have noticed something about Kim Dokja as well. 

“Oh my… was it raining earlier today?” She asked him with a polite smile that only someone who knew Yoo Sangah could tell was rather impish.

Kim Dokja blinked at the odd comment, before realizing she must be referring to the ballistic impact he had suffered from Yoo Mia’s water pistol.

Seeing his chance, Kim Dokja lifted the collar of his black button up, as if wiping the water off his face, and discretely covering his mouth while something long and dry fell from it into the spot where his shirt hung over the belt it was tucked into.

“Ah, sorry,” Kim Dokja took a second to lick the metallic tang off his teeth before opening his mouth to smile. “The kids are taking my bed rest orders a bit too seriously… Mia’s been squirting a little water gun at me whenever I ‘step out of line.’”

He had kind of been expecting Yoo Sangah to be able to laugh over the kids’ antics with him, but her eyes narrowed in concern rather than amusement.

“Dokja-ssi’s voice sounds so strained… should you be up and about?” She asked him.

“Yeah, you sound like shit.” Han Sooyoung told him indelicately, squinting at him as if he were suspicious.

“I’m fine–” Oh, no, they did not like that, um, uh, “Well, you know, not fine , but I’m actually doing a lot better than I was yesterday.” Kim Dokja had to adjust what he was saying mid-sentence, but felt it was going pretty smoothly. “I was coughing up petals every few minutes all day – that’s probably why my throat still hurts, though I’m doing well enough now I don’t even have to carry a sick bag with me…”

“Ah, well, if you’re throwing up less flowers that’s a good thing?” Yoo Sangah’s tone wavered up as if she was guessing when it came to his condition, “Maybe you got them all out…”

Kim Dokja wanted to say yes, but Han Sooyoung snorted before he could.

“No way, that’s not how Hanahaki works.” She tattled on him. “I mean, I’d definitely write a character thinking his illness got better only for it to come back even worse later on. It’s more dramatic if the reader gets a glimpse of what hope looks like, only for it to be taken completely away at the last moment.”

At these words, all three of them standing there in the entry way seemed to feel some unease; some for different reasons than others.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kim Dokja was the first to dismiss Han Sooyoung’s grim words, as he had the most reason to disbelieve them, “Not every story is the kind of grimdark trauma literature you like to write.”

“Maybe not,” Han Sooyoung replied, still eyeing him suspiciously, “but every story you like to read is.”

Kim Dokja scoffed a little. He made a move to take one of Yoo Sangah’s bags, whose grip on them had dropped slightly to rest on the ground, thinking they must be heavy, but Yoo Sangah picked them up herself and stepped back a bit.

Han Sooyoung, on the other hand, shoved the bag she was holding back into Yoo Sangah’s arms just to get her hand free to come hit him on the shoulder.

“No!” She chastised him in the tone one might use for a dog who was trying to eat an onion.

“Dokja-ssi, I appreciate it, but I can carry a few bags…” Yoo Sangah, who was now holding a third bag with her forearms while the other two hung from her elbows, spoke in a voice a bit harsher than her words implied.

Han Sooyoung’s blow had unsettled something in Kim Dokja’s chest, so he had to fight for breath before beginning to plead, “Sangah-ssi, your room is on the third floor, couldn’t I just-”

“Not necessary, not necessary.” Yoo Sangah began walking toward the staircase with her bags. “I need to freshen up after the flight,” she claimed, as if Yoo Sangah didn’t somehow always embody the description of someone with a refreshing appearance, “I’ll come down to the living room in a bit to catch up.”

She gave a look to Han Sooyoung that made Kim Dokja think she chose the living room because of the number of comfortable sitting arrangements there, and her words meant something like ‘Make that idiot sit down.’

For a few reasons, Yoo Sangah leaving so abruptly left Kim Dokja feeling rather disappointed. Firstly, he had been hoping that maybe she might be able to see his side of things in all this, or that maybe she hadn’t been paying too much attention to the group chat where his embarrassing medical “needs” were apparently being discussed… But he had also wanted to go up and see if she reacted at all to how clean her room was… Of course, he hadn’t managed to do it by himself, but they probably could have talked about the kids and how responsible Gilyoung was with the chores – and maybe Yoo Sangah in return might even have some stories to give him about Shin Yoosung during their trip…

Something lurched in his chest again.

Ah… On second thought, maybe having that kind of conversation wouldn’t have turned out well.

The hard thing about this was that, of course, Kim Dokja was holding back on telling Lee Seolhwa about the advancement of the disease to not get in the way of the Company dinner that was happening tonight… but because of that, Kim Dokja himself probably wasn’t going to be able to enjoy all the company members being in one place as much as he usually would… Though, he had probably already accepted that was going to be the case back when he found out Spaghetti was the main course for tonight, haha…

Unbeknownst to Kim Dokja, while thinking these thoughts, he had been watching Yoo Sangah go up the stairs with some weird expressions.

Han Sooyoung, instead of helping carry bags up the stairs, had been watching Kim Dokja watch Yoo Sangah.

“... So?” she asked as soon as the woman carrying all her own bags up the stairs was out of sight. “Is it her?”

Kim Dokja had only been reminded that Han Sooyoung was standing next to him by her speaking.

“What?” he asked, blinking at her.

Han Sooyoung’s face contorted.

“I’m asking you if our very own queen of congeniality is your crush, dumbass.”

At that, Kim Dokja’s face twisted as well.

Him… Yoo Sangah?

“No.” He uttered his truthful reaction to the notion.

“Why not?” Han Sooyoung sounded frustrated. “I mean, even if you really don’t think you have romantic feelings for anyone–”

“I don’t.” Kim Dokja confirmed, bouncing the concept of ‘romantic love’ against his feelings towards Yoo Sangah in his head and finding that they repelled one another like the wrong ends of a pair of magnets.

“-- Even if that’s the case,” Han Sooyoung went on, “does that really matter?”

She started making her way toward the living room.

“... What do you mean?” Kim Dokja reluctantly followed her, trying to figure out what she was on about.

“The nature of your uh… ‘condition’ isn’t whatever you think or want it to be, right?” She said, grabbing the white board that had been pushed up against the wall and yanking it toward her favorite spot on the couch. “It’s based on what you unconsciously think is true .”

“Uh, I guess.” With Han Sooyoung so lost in thought, Kim Dokja managed to help her push the board over without her noticing.

She started wiping the list of flower names she had given up on identifying yesterday off of the board.

“But you’re a nerd, so all the stuff you think of as ‘true’ and making perfect sense are just based off of unrealistic storytelling tropes you grew up with…”

Oh, she was drawing a plot diagram now.

Kim Dokja spitefully considered standing… but actually he was kind of tired. He plopped down on the couch while Han Sooyoung continued to talk at him.

“If you think about the typical love story of a male action novel protagonist, it’s usually a side plot that only really exists to make a protag seem cool,” she spoke dismissively of the concept, despite being the one who had put to keyboard Yoo Joonghyuk’s tragic back and forth with Lee Seolhwa in the original Ways of Survival … “especially in the genre of modern fantasy or apocalypse novels, where the idea is that our protag might be unsuited to the real world, but the fantastical or apocalyptic reality just so happens to be set up so that all the things he’s good at that are useless in the real world are the things you need to be good at to succeed or survive… It’s a power fantasy for real life lamos.”

“Aren’t you the one who wrote the damn story?” Kim Dokja was getting offended, thinking about Yoo Joonghyuk of the 0th turn’s struggling pro-gaming career and the way Ways of Survival turned it into his legendary ‘Ruler of Amusement’ attribute later on…

“It’s not my fault your initial character arc was generic and predictable!” What the- Oh, she means Kim Dokja, she’s talking about Kim Dokja’s story. “Blame yourself! Or, I guess the damn genre.”

“Here, look.” Han Sooyoung wrote at the starting point of her plot diagram FL is out of ML’s league , “It’s pretty typical for the female love interest to be treated as sort of a marker of the male lead's development."

Further along the diagram, she wrote Apocalypse/whatever makes Lame ML Cool . Then, with a grimace, FL falls for new Cool MC to show he is Cool now .

"Uh, sure." Kim Dokja supposed he could think of a good chunk of stories that had the sort of progression Han Sooyoung described. Though, he definitely didn’t think Kim Dokja’s story had that sort of progression.

“In your story, uh, in like the first chapter, I think?” Chapter 1? ML sees popular girl from work and says they’re from ‘different worlds’ she wrote under the plot point she had put at the beginning of the diagram as she spoke, comparing the plot of Omniscient Reader to the one she had described before.

“Okay, stop right there.” When Kim Dokja finally realized what this hack plagiarist was getting at, he gathered the strength to get up and grab the white board eraser, mortified by what had turned out to be a shipping diagram and wanting to erase the evidence. "I don't have any romantic feelings towards-"

"No no no! Listen!" Han Sooyoung shoved Kim Dokja's eraser holding hand away from the board and angled her body to protect her diagram. Usually this wouldn't have been very effective, as Kim Dokja's superior stature would allow him to easily reach past her (despite her vigorous attack method of playing "keep away"), but unfortunately, he was at a disadvantage due to his condition, and it actually took him a second to balance himself after Han Sooyoung had hit his arm away, leaving him open to a verbal attack by his assailant.

"What I'm telling you is that it doesn't matter how you feel !" She sneered at him, gesturing toward her cruel and unjust diagram. "Can't you admit that this makes sense? If we make genre assumptions about your story, Yoo Sangah is the one who best fits the role of Female Lead!"

"What, just because I met her first???" It wasn't as if Kim Dokja didn't grasp the process of Han Sooyoung's logic, he just had to find fault with it. "Well there's plenty of tropes that go against that - for instance, in a love triangle, doesn't the love interest who was friends with the main character first always lose?"

“Don’t say that.” Han Sooyoung scrunched her nose. “If we’re talking about the odd end of a love triangle then I would be shoehorned into it! I'm the only other woman you know. Well, besides Jung Heewon, but her and Lee Hyunsung are pretty solid "beta couple" material…”

Han Sooyoung trailed off as if lost in thought, but Kim Dokja didn’t care what she was going to say next. He already had enough objections with the bullshit she had already spewed, but had needed a moment to swallow everything in his throat.

“If anyone’s shoe-horning, then it’s you!” Kim Dokja’s discontent with her entire premise crept past the rasp in his voice. “Yoo Sangah doesn’t fit the status of token Female Love Interest at all – don’t you remember all the character development she had? Her struggle with the nature of a role in the story that was inherently passive and complementary to others? Her reclamation of who she was in the world before the story, someone who tried to save Kim Dokja with her very own hands, grabbing him out of the timeline? And you even wrote that whole section together of how she didn’t even have an unfavorable impression of Kim Dokja at the start, she wasn’t the popular pretty girl on the pedestal that the kind of narrative would expect her to be, she was just another person who felt lost in the modern world and she saw herself in Kim Dokja who –”  

“How can you remember all that and not remember how to talk in first person like normal people do.” Han Sooyoung interrupted him, leaving Kim Dokja choking back some frustration. In his silence, Han Sooyoung had time to look back at the white board, contemplating her diagram. “... You know, if you were a female lead, then the obvious Male Love Interest would actually be Yoo Joonghyuk.”

Kim Dokja wanted to spit blood, but he remembered himself in time and swallowed it instead.

“He has all the hallmarks.” Han Sooyoung held up a finger as if counting out these so-called characteristics.” Hates you for no fucking reason.” The second finger. “You think he's hot so you help him anyway.” Third, “Unlock tragic backstory.” Fourth, “Once you're useful he decides he likes you.” The fingers that had been counting spread apart into jazz hands. “Romance.”

Kim Dokja couldn't speak, so he tried to give Han Sooyoung a stare that implied his lack of response was the ultimate expression of his disdain.

“…”  

Han Sooyoung just turned around and kept talking, erasing her old notes around the plot diagram and making new ones featuring Yoo Joonghyuk.

Kim Dokja thought that maybe if he just gave up and stopped participating in this conversation, then Han Sooyoung would eventually wear herself out.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Han Sooyoung seemed to have entered her “Professor’s Lecture” mode, and continued to speak for well over an hour. In the meantime, the kids came down and sat at the couches nearby, texting each other like they were in a class they didn’t particularly care about.

Mia was sitting on the couch perpendicular to the white board and where Kim Dokja sat leaning back on the armrest, her legs spread out over both the cushions on that particular couch. She didn’t seem particularly concerned with what Kim Dokja was up to now that he was sitting down, but she was still facing him and had her water pistol with her. Shin Yoosung sat on the same couch as her, on top of the other arm rest that formed a 90 degree angle with the armrest Kim Dokja had to prop himself up on to sit normally. 

Gilyoung, on the other hand, sat in the spot next to Kim Dokja on the same couch as him, glancing up concernedly to him from time to time.

Kim Dokja didn’t want to worry him, so he avoided making contact and smiling at him. For some reason, everyone at the company always freaked out even more when he smiled at them.

He did, however, glance over his shoulder occasionally. One time, he saw that Shin Yoosung had texted Gilyoung, and when Gilyoung opened it there was a strange image of some people he didn’t know with Shin Yoosung’s hand writing on top of it.

‘Dokhyuk?’ What was Dokhyuk… were these people Yoosung’s friends?

Kim Dokja wondered about this silently instead of listening to Han Sooyoung. Eventually, Yoo Sangah came down as she mentioned she would, and his thoughts changed course slightly.

Her hair was wet and she was wearing one of the house’s fuzzy white shower robes, so her need to ‘freshen up’ must’ve included bathing a bit – presumably in hot water, as Kim Dokja recognized the extracting skin mask she had on her face from their most recent spa trip together.

He wanted to ask about it… actually he wanted to talk with all these people about so many different things.

The pain in his chest he suppressed… continuously clamping down on the cough that won’t go away… Wasn’t the point of it that he got to spend time with them? That he didn’t ruin this moment with all of them back together.

Silenced by his decision, Kim Dokja didn’t have any control or say in the conversation at all. Yoo Sangah seemed content to treat Han Sooyoung’s ramblings as a seminar on romance writing just as the kids were, but, unlike them, she was a particularly attentive student, raising her hand to ask questions and redirecting the train of Han Sooyoung’s thought several times until Kim Dokja honestly had no idea what they were talking about, anymore.

It was… getting hard to focus on… anything, actually…

Was there a point to all this? Maybe if he just left silently and called Lee Seolhwa it wouldn’t make much of a difference…

“*Snrk!*” 

“Ha!”

Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung both let out abrupt laughs at the same time. When Kim Dokja looked over Gilyoung’s shoulder again, he saw a message Yoo Mia had apparently sent.

… The image was once more completely undecipherable to him, but it was nice to see the kids laughing… Especially Gilyoung, who had been carving worry lines into his young face over Kim Dokja’s state the past day or so…

…

Maybe he did matter, here. He did make a little difference, to these kids, at least. Seeing him here gave them some comfort, didn’t it?

… So there was no way he could leave.

So what if he wasn't able to catch up with the company members the way he had wanted to? It should be enough for him to get to see them all having fun like this, even if it was at his own expense…

… It was… hard to focus on any joy from that, though… Not just because he was wary of approaching all strong emotions in his current state, but also because…

He was getting really… tired. Yeah, he felt pretty exhausted. Sitting here and trying not to move in any way that would cause pain to bloom out in his chest actually took a lot of energy…

At some point, Kim Dokja’s awareness started to slip away from the present and the people in front of him… in this state, could he even get up to call Lee Seolhwa if he tried?

Considering the options left available to him, Kim Dokja started thinking again about the question he was supposed to be asking himself to try and kill the damn flowers in his lungs.

What… what was love? To him?

The word was attached to a few foundational memories. Lee Seolhwa and Yoo Joonghyuk’s life in the 0th and 2nd scenarios… his mom and dad kissing once when he was in elementary school… his mom holding the knife and the foolish, desperate hope that things might end up alright because she loved him…

Hey… why are these memories so shitty? Kim Dokja wanted to lodge a complaint with his subconscious.

Gah. Okay. This was one of the things he had talked about a lot in therapy. He was processing it completely normally and healthily. There shouldn’t actually be any reason to think that his mom didn’t love him, because of that. She thought of it as doing it for him, but even thought to Kim Dokja it was… well, it was still a mother’s love, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t blame everything on her… the situation she was in… well, it was a good thing that she was in a better place now… that Ex-Wanderer’s Cruise Ship Retreat she was missing out on this company dinner to attend.

The selfish voice of a little boy griped that if his mommy really loved him she would cancel all her plans to come hang out with her grandkids who missed her while he was sick, but Kim Dokja just told it to pipe down.

Okay, okay, so, he, uh… he knew that his mom probably loved him. Which was probably the same way that he loved the kids, right? Or at least kind of similar-ish… But he only thought about his mom because he was trying to think of examples of romantic love, and she was probably the first married person he ever met. Yeah, that was definitely the train of thought, there.

… But there was definitely no one Kim Dokja loved enough to stand being treated the way his mother was treated by… Whatever strong emotion she had felt towards that man at the start, Kim Dokja didn’t think he was born with the capability of having it… Even when Yoo Joonghyuk fought him in the past, he always got him back twice as hard… so it was hard to make comparisons….

“-jussi. Wake up, Ahjussi.” Kim Dokja only realized he had closed his eyes when a gentle hand tapped on his shoulder, and light flooded into his eyes as he opened them to see Shin Yoosung gazing down at him, looking a little worried. Despite this, she gave him a gentle smile that reminded him of Yoo Sangah’s. “Mia’s Oppa says dinner is ready.”

Without thinking about it, Kim Dokja opened his mouth to smile back.

This, as it turned out, was a very big mistake.

At the change of pressure parting his lips created, his chest began rapidly convulsing and-

“*HACK KLLK HACK*”

An entire bouquet of the dry white roses that had been scratching at his throat all day suddenly burst forth, nearly unhinging his jaw with their urgency to emerge.

…

As Kim Dokja watched the bouquet fall out of his mouth and onto the floor, petals dripping from his lips… he heard someone scream.

It was all a little foggy… after that…

… The one who screamed… it was probably Shin Yoosung, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t tell if they took an ambulance or someone’s car to the hospital… he was lying down and there were too many people crowding around him to see.

“-s he responsive?”

“Dokja-ssi… Dokja-ssi!”

Oh… had Kim Dokja closed his eyes again?

He tried to look for who had called him, but- Shit, wow, it was bright. They… were at the hospital?

Glancing around from his perspective lying down on a gurney, Kim Dokja saw six people. Lee Seolhwa on his right writing something down on a clipboard. Beside her, Yoo Sangah… who was probably the one that called him just now? But when he met her eyes her expression seemed to get worse, and she turned to say something to Lee Seolhwa.

Closer to his bedside, he saw Shin Yoosung. She was biting her lip with worry, wringing her hands like she wasn’t sure what to do with them, if she could reach out and hold him or not… Gilyoung on the other hand was clenching the side of the gurney tightly between his fists.

A sudden shadow came over Kim Dokja’s vision. Han Sooyoung leaned over him, looking directly into his eyes.

“Hey asshole.” Her words were aggressive, the kind she often used in her arguments or friendly ribbing, but the voice she used to say them was somehow tighter than usual. “This is the suitably climactic moment for your fucking deathbed confession, idiot. Last chance to not become an emotionless husk for the rest of your life.”

Next to Han Sooyoung was Yoo Joonghyuk. He didn’t say anything, just staring down at him with his deep, dark eyes.

Kim Dokja used to think the depths of you Joonghyuk’s gaze were unfathomable. Now, however, he thought that he could read something there. 

Frustration. 

Anger. 

… Helplessness and concern. 

Worry, even.

Yeah, it was… it was obvious all these people loved him, wasn’t it? They were the people Kim Dokja knew best in all the world and… and because of that, he found himself upset to see them at his bedside.

So I ruined the dinner, after all…

What had it all been for, then? Kim Dokja felt the feeling of failure wash over him.

Because the thing was that… Kim Dokja knew that the company members loved him. He knew  it. They didn’t need to tell him for him to know it. Their love for him was completely obvious in their concern for him, the pains they had gone through to adjust to and care for him the past few days, the lengths they had gone to to try and solve his problems for him…

But what did Kim Dokja ever do to deserve that love? What did he ever do for them, in return? To show that he loved them just as much?

He supposed that he did the chores around the house, but there was no loss in that considering he was the one home all the time and consistently unemployed with only one hobby to his name. He felt that it was more of an act of ill will for him not to do those things than a show of love to do them…

The company dinner, though. The dinner… it was supposed to get on smoothly. Kim Dokja wasn’t supposed to ruin it. He wasn’t supposed to make them worry, tonight when they were supposed to just have this one nice thing for all of them… even if he had choke back bloody flowers, even if he had to pretend not to feel any pain, even if he had to eat tomatoes.

… That powerful feeling he had then, the determination driving him on throughout the whole of his illness, wasn't that his love for them?

…

Oh.

…

Okay. Wait a second.

…

That's so fucking stupid . Kim Dokja realized, as he remembered what he had been thinking about the day the Hanahaki had started.

Because the feeling Kim Dokja had felt just then… it was the feeling of sacrificing something.

At the supermarket, it had been accepting that he'd eat a tomato based dish for the sake of spending time with the company members.

Now, it was what had kept him from getting medical care in fear of ruining the very company dinner he had been looking forward to then.

That feeling which was sacrificing something of his for someone else…

To Kim Dokja, that feeling was what love was, too.

That’s so fucked up.  

The reason behind Kim Dokja’s mystery illness was becoming clearer to him.

This sucks.

He had always been someone who expressed love this way, hadn’t he? Shown it through his actions – no, through his hurt. The cost of loving was the only evidence of it.

And what was the one action central to the heart of a Hanahaki plot?

The verbal love confession.

Just. Saying “I love you,” instead of suffering in silence.

Oh fuck me. Kim Dokja hated this. Oldest Dream powers, I am a 40 year old man. Are you telling me we gave ourselves fucking Flowers. In. Our. Lungs. Because I felt like I didn't tell my family I love them enough?

Of course there was no answer, except for the fact that this explanation of events seemed to make some kind of twisted, perfect sense to him once summarized clearly by his turbulent mind.

That said, the realization was only something that came about inside Kim Dokja's mind. Back in reality, he was still lying on a gurney, about to be wheeled into the emergency surgery room.

Lee Seolhwa was saying something urgently overhead, everyone else looking towards her, still wearing a mixture of expressions on their faces.

“You all… I…” Gah. Speaking really hurt Kim Dokja’s throat. His words felt so thick on his tongue, and raspy once they passed through his lips.

… Were they hard to say because he was in pain, or because they were words that were hard to say? 

Whatever the mixture of causation was, Kim Dokja’s lungs felt tight as everyone turned to look at him.

This was his last chance.

“I… really wanted to eat dinner with you all tonight.” He admitted in the loudest tone he could muster, barely above a whisper. “Because… because it was a family dinner. You all… you’re my family, and I love you, and I wanted to eat dinner with you tonight.”

Kim Dokja paused for a moment, a twinge of pain in his chest.

“But… but I… I can’t eat the spaghetti you made.” He blurted out too Yoo Joonghyuk. “It has too many tomatoes in it… and I don’t like those so…”

Kim Dokja felt like he was choking… something warm was sliding down his cheek.

“Hyung, it’s alright, don’t strain yourself,” Lee Gilyoung sounded near tears at Kim Dokja’s emotional confession, “That sooty ba- I mean, Yoo Joonghyuk had me get you a can of Alfredo when I went to the store the other day.”

Kim Dokja squinted. ‘Al-fray-doh?’ Alfredo… Oh, that had been on the shopping list, but Kim Dokja didn’t know what it was.

“It’s a cream based sauce for italian noodles.” Yoo Joonghyuk cut in as if reading Kim Dokja’s mind, his arms crossed over his chest and clenched into fists. “There’s a bowl waiting for you at home.”

“Oh.” At Yoo Joonghyuk’s words, Kim Dokja felt something… lighten. In his chest. 

… 

“Okay.”

And rather than being appreciated for what he could do for others, what he could give up for them… those words made him realize that… 

Kim Dokja was loved, just for being who he was.