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Han Sooyoung sends him off on his final pilgrimage with nothing but a USB stick, a slap across the back of his head, and three words of encouragement: “Don’t die, idiot.”
“I won’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, grimacing.
“Fucker. Just because you say you won’t doesn’t mean I’ll believe you. You know, when I was writing Ways of Survival when we went back, I seriously considered changing your personality to be less arrogant. But Kim Dokja likes your shitty attitude, so I couldn’t… What a freak,” Han Sooyoung mutters, not quite under her breath. Then she sobers, her snarl softening into a frown. “You could really die out there, you know.”
“Yes. I won’t.”
“Traversing through worldlines won’t be easy. It might actually be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do. There’s no regress button you can press for this, especially now that you’re not even my creation anymore. Unruly character of mine.”
“Shut up, Han Sooyoung,” he sighs, turning her back to her and taking a step up the ramp of the ark. “If you don’t have anything useful to say, I will leave.”
“Fucking fine. Leave then,” Han Sooyoung shouts as Yoo Joonghyuk boards onto the ship, her voice growing muffled as he puts on the space helmet over his head, a bubble blocking out the sounds of crass but well-intentioned nagging. “You better send updates!”
And how in the world am I supposed to do that, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, but raises a hand anyway in a goodbye as he slams the door to the ark shut.
The principle of the thing is straightforward: Kim Dokja’s soul has been scattered across the universe, reincarnated into different bodies, different faces, different lives. If the biography of his life is then distributed throughout the worldlines, the fragments of the Oldest Dream can become readers not of Three Ways to Survive a Ruined World, but to Kim Dokja’s life itself. The dreamers can bear witness to a new story, the one where Kim Dokja fights through the trials and tribulations of the apocalypse with his companions.
Kim Dokja’s memories too have been scattered across the unknowable expanse of spacetime. Han Sooyoung isn’t sure about just how many fragments there are out there, and the number of shattered pieces of Kim Dokja’s consciousness could be well within hundreds, if not thousands. Just bring the big important ones back along the way when you’re spreading the novel, she had said. If you can find them. I don’t know what form they will take, or if they’ll even be gatherable. But we need to try if it's possible.
Han Sooyoung, for all of her writing genius and impossible will, has always had a propensity to wing things, in stark contrast to both Kim Dokja and his own meticulous and neurotic planning. Unfortunately, there’s simply no rule book here. No prophetic novel to tell him how to spread the gospel of an out-of-reach and disintegrated god, or how to pick up his pieces.
Yoo Joonghyuk enters the coordinates of the worldline that they theorized is the best chance of finding Kim Dokja’s reincarnations. A liminal place existing on the fringe of the universe. The ark rumbles and lifts off with startling speed, and Yoo Joonghyuk swallows as much doubt as he could muster as he looks skyward and beyond.
-
Floating aimlessly in space, Yoo Joonghyuk has nothing to do but to read the story that Han Sooyoung has written for Kim Dokja. So they do what they always did best. They swap roles, wearing each other’s identities like a second skin. Yoo Joonghyuk becomes Kim Dokja’s reader, just as he was his for those thirteen years.
It’s a strange form of love, even for them. Yoo Joonghyuk knows that Kim Dokja in his former life had worn his name like a protective shell, covering up his softness. But he took that even into this world, spreading Yoo Joonghyuk’s name evangelically, performing acts in his name. And Yoo Joonghyuk did that in turn. Their cities were named after each other.
Life and death companions… what of them now, both hovering in a slim space of nonexistence? Kim Dokja, scattered across the universe as only a concept, and himself, a protagonist outside the bounds of the story he was written for.
Still, this final pilgrimmage is a suicide mission. Both Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk know this. He thinks about the dogged determination that Han Sooyoung had hardcoded into his DNA as he wields his sword and swings at the eldritch, amorphous shapes of the Outer Gods, and wonders why she couldn’t have rewritten Ways of Survival to be a little less unforgiving. She would probably say that it’s unfaithful to the truth, Yoo Joonghyuk decides begrudgingly, nonetheless bitter as the hounds of the Outer Gods tear and gnaw at the stories he’s accumulated across almost two thousand lives, the armor of his tales breaking apart into something brittle and useless. It doesn’t even hurt as the words unravel and flake away. This is how he dies. It’s fitting. Karmic almost, being consumed by the ghosts of the countless pasts he’s thrown away.
Then, a flash of white, quickly consumed by the flapping of a black cloak of void; with it, the Outer Gods glitch and recede.
“The third turn,” Secretive Plotter murmurs. “How pitiful. I should not even be helping you.”
“You’re me,” Yoo Joonghyuk hisses, clutching his arm after clutching the leaf of an errant page and pasting it back over a wound. “After one-thousand eight-hundred sixty-three turns, don’t you want to see this final end?”
The Outer God says nothing in return. It’s like looking at a mirror, cracked and distorted. Yoo Joonghyuk is looking at himself and a stranger all at once. Of course he’s resentful.
“You were never going to die here,” Secretive Plotter says, smiling ruefully. “There is no death for a regressor.”
“I’m not a regressor anymore.”
“Indeed, you are outside the story,” he agrees. “But do you really think you can escape the fate placed upon us by the Oldest Dream?”
As if on cue, the Outer Gods that attacked him begin slowly leaking out of Secretive Plotter’s cloak, oozing out and reaching for Yoo Joonghyuk in cacophony. They lap at his legs, hungry.
“The Oldest Dream is that fool Kim Dokja,” he says, ignoring the screams of the creatures at his feet. “I want to reach his end. I have something to ask him.”
“Curious that you are so different in this worldline having met him. You have lost countless companions but you still chase after him, the one who only exists in your third turn. Have you wondered why that is?”
It’s a rhetorical question. He is the Secretive Plotter and the Secretive Plotter is him and they both know what he has that the Secretive Plotter does not. Yoo Joonghyuk clenches his jaw and dares not to answer.
Secretive Plotter’s face — his face — twists in something between pity and disgust before he flicks his hand in dismissal, the Outer Gods flickering away once more. “Go.”
Stumbling back, Yoo Joonghyuk almost asks why, but it’s pointless. He knows why, even as Secretive Plotter’s face steels to reign in a sour rage and even as Yoo Joonghyuk tastes the envy that his other self fails to hide. He wonders if Secretive Plotter even knows what their ◼️◼️ is after all this time. He wonders if he too thinks it’s ‘salvation’, or ‘devotion’, or maybe all the adjectives and concepts crumble away to reveal something much simpler and that maybe it really is just ‘Kim Dokja’ at the end after all.
-
Yoo Joonghyuk awakes with a startle, his stories nursed back to health and then some. The addition of the Nameless Ones’ stories feel foreign yet familiar; they are, after all, the tales of the lives that he has lived and have yet to live.
Biyoo’s presence is a surprise, though not an unwelcome one. She repairs the ark by giving him a brand new one. It’s the real thing, not the human-made replica that Anna Croft assembled. Even as she prepares the ship, she points out what Han Sooyoung left unsaid: “The odds of success are not very good, you know.”
“I know.”
“Yes, of course you do. You were always realistic. But you had to try.”
Yoo Joonghyuk hears the echoes of the 41st Shin Yoosung who knows him so painfully. “Yes.”
“And to gather his mementos along the way… you all really are crazy, thinking up such impossible plans as these.”
“We wouldn’t have made it this far if we weren’t crazy,” Yoo Joonghyuk mutters, strapping himself back into the seat of the ark. Between Kim Dokja’s martyrdom, Han Sooyoung’s ferocity, and his own stubbornness, he isn’t quite sure who is the most insane. At some point, they must have broken all known bounds of madness.
“At least you all are crazy with each other,” Biyoo sighs. “And for each other, too. Do you know what these memories will look like?”
Yoo Joonghyuk grimaces wordlessly. Grunting, Biyoo digs into her pocket and pulls out a feather.
He jolts in immediate recognition. Black and glossy, it looks exactly like the feathers of Kim Dokja’s raven-like wings of his demon form. “You—!”
“I found this when traveling within the space-time continuum of the Dark Stratum. That place was horrible, but when I saw Ahjussi’s feather floating around, I couldn’t help but grab it for myself,” Biyoo says, something deeply sad underneath her fond smile. “Do you think this could be one of the scattered memories?”
Breathless, Yoo Joonghyuk reaches out and grabs it from Biyoo’s outstretched palm. Even if it isn’t one of the memories he’s looking for, the feather is still a reminder of the person Kim Dokja was. Who he is. His hand trembles and the feather quivers along with him, fragile.
He stares at it, desperation clawing at him. For a moment, nothing. And then suddenly—
"…We don't have to hold another funeral, right?"
It was then that I knew that Yoo Joonghyuk, protagonist of this world, had truly become my unshakeable companion, and that I was his. It was unbelievable that something like this could happen to someone like me. I was just a pathetic almost-orphan living an ordinary life, living vicariously through the feats of the brave hero standing in front of me. He held me by the neck, just like when we first met in the second scenario. At first, I really thought he was just going to get rid of me and be done with it. After all, how could someone like him partner with someone like me? He was my idol, after all. His grip around my throat… well, it was like a comforting sense of deja vu. Only this time, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t have that hatred behind his eyes. It’s…
… something like care.
I couldn’t believe this. Yoo Joonghyuk, caring about me? I would’ve never thought that this would happen, even in my wildest dreams.
He doesn’t even know how hard he’s shaking until Biyoo clasps a hand over his, staring up at him with panicked eyes. “Captain?”
“That idiot,” Yoo Joonghyuk curses shakily. “That fucking idiot.”
He tears his hand away from Biyoo’s and places the feather gingerly into the pocket of his coat, letting out the deep breath he was holding through his teeth.
“Captain.”
“Biyoo,” he replies after a moment, still buzzing with the aftershocks of Kim Dokja’s flashback. Yoo Joonghyuk can still feel his awe. His adoration. His self-hatred. It makes him want to vomit. “Let’s go.”
“So that really was—”
“Please.”
“Okay,” she sighs. Yoo Joonghyuk can’t even look at her. “Okay.”
-
Lee Hakhyun has a copy of Underground Killer.
As Biyoo fiddles with the Cloud System and forcibly syncs up Kim Dokja’s story to Lee Hakhyun’s subconscious mind, Yoo Joonghyuk stalks over to the novel author’s desk and flips Underground Killer over to the summary on the back cover.
“A stunning crime-fiction debut about a mother who murders her husband for her son and her gruesome experience with domestic abuse, the prison system, and a torn apart family that despite all of its hardships, is protected in blood!”
Fiction, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, frowning. It must be this world’s version of Lee Sookyung’s story, fraudulently morphed. He picks up the book firmly by its spine, and as he reaches to tuck it inside his coat, he’s once again whirled away by memories that don’t belong to him.
My relationship with my mother, for a long time, was propped up only by Yoo Joonghyuk and Ways of Survival. I had nothing else to talk about other than this novel and its protagonist, and she had nothing to say to me back. Still, her presence and strength in this world meant that she at least listened when I babbled on and on about whatever Yoo Joonghyuk did in that week’s chapter. I suppose that was a comfort.
She never said anything about how she felt about having met him in the flesh. Her knowledge of Yoo Joonghyuk was translated through my thoughts and feelings about Ways of Survival; it was diluted and biased, peppered with my commentary about tls123’s writing. But I am my mother’s son, and I know she feels angry. Angry that Yoo Joonghyuk was the one there for me when I grew up. Yoo Joonghyuk was there when I graduated. When I started my first job. When I moved into my own house. Angry that he took the role of my protector when she couldn’t.
She put herself in the position to fulfill that prophecy of my greatest love killing me. Of course, the fate wasn’t met, and the one to well and truly kill me that time was Yoo Joonghyuk.
It always was him, wasn’t it? Even before all of this madness. Mother, after going through this apocalypse with you, I know you a little better now. That’s why I’ll have to ask you to forgive me. It will always be him.
“It’s done,” Biyoo says with a huff. “Now, as Han Sooyoung updates the story, it’ll automatically be uploaded into this guy’s subconscious, and he can do the work of publishing and serializing it…” She trails off. “Captain?”
Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea to collect these memories, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks. Lord, it aches, seeing Kim Dokja’s feelings like this. Neither of them were ever good at expressing their emotions, but they were always there, and they didn’t have to say it. Now here is Kim Dokja’s heart, stripped naked into something painfully and wondrously tender. What is he supposed to do with this? Where does he put it? How many times does he have to go through this before he can get Kim Dokja back? When can he shake him by the shoulders and ask why couldn’t you have just stayed, if you really had this much fucking love for me?
“Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk,” Biyoo says softly, slowly, as if not to disturb. “Ahjussi was really your one and only companion, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t know,” Yoo Joonghyuk exhales, “how much there was.”
-
It’s futile, because he knows the answer already. Kim Dokja left because he had so much love that he left his own happiness behind to fulfill his role as the Oldest Dream. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t want to ask him that.
Instead, he wants to ask: this life that you’ve chosen for me, where I’ve reached the end. What do I do with this freedom? What is the life that you’ve dreamed for me? Where do you fall in it?
He finds the next memento buried to the hilt in the void of the Stratum, almost completely lost in its darkness. Wrapping his hand around the handle, he pulls out the sword from the curling shadows and looks upon the mended crack along its blade.
Yoo Joonghyuk knows this sword, of course. Kim Dokja never used another.
“Ahjussi really loved this stupid Unbroken Faith,” Biyoo says, exasperated. “Even though it was a star relic, there were plenty of opportunities to get better swords as the scenarios went on.”
“I cannot explain the rationale of that sentimental fool,” Yoo Joonghyuk grumbles, the metal shine of the sword reflecting his own appearance back at him. In the mirror of the blade, he looks tired. There are gray hairs around his temples, new signs of time.
Just like the other memories, the sword speaks.
This world was really amazing, wasn’t it? I lived in this world in my dreams for thirteen years. It followed me throughout my life. And now I get to live in it for real, wielding a sword and fighting monsters. Obviously it hasn’t all been good, and I even died a couple times… but in this world, I am strong. I have friends. Even the people who were in my previous life are closer to me now. I can protect what’s precious to me.
To protect this world… to fight back to back with Yoo Joonghyuk. A bit of pain and death will never take that happiness away.
“This one doesn’t seem so bad,” Biyoo says, curious. “You don’t look as rattled, captain.”
“Everything that guy does rattles me.”
She laughs, stark and bright. “I suppose. What did you see?”
Yoo Joonghyuk, along with the others, have always thought that someone like Kim Dokja is a self-sacrificing idiot who never thought of his own happiness. And when he split himself into avatars and became the Oldest Dream, that hypothesis only strengthened further. But now…
“He said he was happy,” Yoo Joonghyuk says slowly.
“The scenarios…”
He shook his head at Biyoo’s unfinished thoughts. “The scenarios created the circumstance for us to all have met. That’s what made him happy. Even if it meant his death.”
The weight of the revelation is unbearably heavy, the silence that falls suffocatingly thick. Then, Biyoo sniffles.
“Damn you, Ahjussi,” she mumbles. “Just come back already.”
Unbroken Faith feels cold in his hand. Yoo Joonghyuk can do nothing but heave a sigh in agreement.
-
The pocketwatch comes flying at him through the window at breakneck speed as the spacetime around the ark warps and compresses, funneling their bodies through an impossibly long tunnel and barreling them straight back towards the center world. Yoo Joonghyuk only barely manages to catch the timepiece in the air before being sucked into the dizzying pressure of the Stratum.
“A memento? Now? Here?” Biyoo shrieks, her smaller form undoubtedly the greater victim to the void’s sudden vacuum.
Yoo Joonghyuk braces himself on a ledge, gritting his teeth as the cosmic winds around them batter him with unbearable force. But he clutches the pocketwatch all the same even as the two of them shoot straight for a disastrous crash-landing into their home worldline.
This thing was a gift. He knows exactly what it means. It was Kim Dokja’s reminder to him that time moves forward despite countless regressions, and that each second of life is precious. Yoo Joonghyuk had given it back to him in a fit of anger at his hypocrisy — after all, how can someone who continuously chooses death preach of life’s gifts? But later, he wished he kept it. How incredible is it that it would come back to him like this as Kim Dokja’s final memento, a hello and a goodbye all at once.
Yoo Joonghyuk squeezes his eyes shut as the gravity snatches the ark down further and further, and tries his best to hold himself steady.
Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t a sentimental person. I wanted to give this to him anyway. Maybe that’s selfish of me. But when he carried this around in his pocket, I wanted him to feel this weight and think of me. Because I didn’t exist in other regressions… maybe it could convince him to live.
I don’t want to live in a world where Yoo Joonghyuk feels like he needs to regress. I don’t want him to think he can ever give up. The only reason why I didn’t give up was because I had him. A reminder of tenacity, living in the pages of Ways of Survival. Was it selfish that I wanted to be that for him?
This gift cost me a fortune, Joonghyuk-ah… I hope you appreciate it. But even if you don’t, it’s okay. It just matters that I was able to give it to you to tell you my feelings, even if you can’t hear them.
Joonghyuk-ah.
I love you because I exist. I exist because I love you. When I was fifteen I found you standing proud and unmovable in the words of an unknown novel and in you I found my reason for living. When I was sitting alone at school, I loved you. When I couldn’t sleep, I loved you. When I was riding the subway, I loved you. I saw you in all those pages. I took your strength and I made it mine. I love you because you exist. I exist because you exist. There is no me without you.
Am I selfish for hoping for a world where there is no you without me?
Yoo Joonghyuk hears the crash before he feels it: a thundering sonic boom of this ship punching through the sea. Even as the seawater threatens to drown out his lungs and his body sinks deeper and deeper into the ocean, he doesn’t let go of the pocketwatch.
-
The mementos that he collected are Kim Dokja’s remaining 1%. It’s only fitting that the most important memories are the ones that are left hidden until the very end. Away from this hospital room, the Star Stream stitches itself back together, and Yoo Joonghyuk feels again that suffocating pressure of probability around them all; the inevitable consequence of a god’s pieces flitting back into one whole. Kim Dokja’s fables wrap around him like a veil, his body shrouded in white.
Yoo Joonghyuk curses this fool once more as he clutches Kim Dokja’s unconscious hand. “You don’t need to hope for such a world, Kim Dokja,” he mutters softly, the sound low so the others won’t hear. “You are already in it. I exist because you love me. I love you so now you can exist.”
A moment passes. His confession hangs in the air, bare and unheard. And then—
“Joonghyuk-ah. I was wrong. You actually are really sentimental, aren’t you?”
Kim Dokja opens his eyes and laughs.