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He doesn't blame the kids, how could he? He knows what it's like to be young and wonder about love, and even in the apocalypse, kids can be curious and prying about the nebulous aspects of adulthood. Rather, he feels honored that they trust in him enough to ask.
"Hyung, how does it feel to be in love?"
It should be an easy answer, flowery with just enough sentimentality for it to feel sweetly cloying, something that will have Jihye or Sooyoung screaming about goosebumps. But the question stops him dead and the words that usually come so easily through the slip of his silver tongue falters.
Gilyoung, too young to have to live through this breaking world, looks up at him. His eyes are open and waiting, not an ounce of expectation or denigration, but Dokja still feels like he's been peeled apart by that searching curiosity and blanket trust he's never felt he deserved.
"Hmm," Dokja starts, before the silence can descend further down their group. "It's hard to describe, Gilyoungie."
"What a cop out answer," Jihye teases. "Listen, listen brat, your hyung is old as hell and terrible with women so let me tell you about love."
She throws her arm around his neck and drags him into a soft chokehold. Gilyoung, with an exasperated acceptance, allows this to happen and goes limp for Jihye to hold his body weight up.
"Love," she starts dramatically. "Is like a summer day. The weather is perfect to do whatever you want and the hours are longer so you can keep doing the things you want until you're sick and tired of it."
She releases Gilyoung to level a finger in front of his face.
"But it can also be too hot to do anything. You might have the option to go outside but you're risking sunburn and exhaustion! So you have to learn fast that sometimes you can't do the things you want otherwise you get hurt. Does that make sense?"
"Oh," Dokja says, a surprised look on his face. "That was surprisingly sweet, Jihye-ya."
"Aw, ahjussi, you're making me blush."
Gilyoung's little face is a grimace of confusion and everyone can tell that the metaphor and comparisons are going over his head a little. Dokja gently extracts Gilyoung from Jihye's hold so he can think about what she said more comfortably and offers his hand to hold. Gilyoung does so automatically as he visibly racks his brain to understand.
"So, being in love feels good and bad?" Gilyoung reasons.
"It can," Dokja explains calmly. "I think what Jihye meant was that being in love can feel one way or the other but you have to know yourself and what you're comfortable with so you don't get hurt."
Gilyoung is silent and Yoosung, on Dokja's other side, peers at him curiously.
"Why do you want to know about that anyway?" she asks. "Did you fall in love with a bug or something?"
"No!" Gilyoung defends, all brash youth and embarrassment. "I was just curious after hyung told us that story last night and wanted to know more because I didn't really get it."
"Oh? My ears are burning," Sooyoung cuts in, turning around so she's walking backwards. "What story was this? A personal one? Dokja's first love?"
This gets the attention of everyone in the group and Dokja wants to disappear into the void the minute every eye is on him. Joonghyuk's face does a quick twist and grimace and Dokja can't help but remember what Joonghyuk has said to him the night before. He puts it out of his head before he can start flailing and though he knows more than one person in this group has lie detection, it's hard to stop the automatic denial.
"No," he replies, rolling his eyes. "I've never been in love."
He wishes it were true but it isn't so he just takes the heckling, ribbing and shocked exclamations with good humor. It was easier to pretend that there was no history than explain the truth. Kim Dokja, after all, was still in recovery.
It was your standard high school love story; he was sixteen in a grey sea, friendless and alone, and she came in like a beacon of light and gave his world color again. She was soft and sweet, patient and kinder than anyone had ever been to him, so it was laughably easy to fall in love. He gave her his first hug, his first trembling hand hold, his first too wet kiss, his first time and didn't laugh when he cried the entire way through, overwhelmed and terrified and uncomfortable.
She was 22, six years older, six years wiser, six years more experienced and in a position of undeniable authority as his teacher's aide. Someone, in those six years between them, should have told her not to hurt children. But she did, and he fell in love and she took that as permission to keep hurting him.
Dokja never felt targeted or manipulated, he never felt like a victim despite what several people in group would tell him years later. How could he - when for the first time in his young life, he had the undivided attention from someone who didn't beat or hit him? How could he, when as long as she wasn't touching him, all he could feel for her was love?
"K-ssi," the leader of the anonymous support group he attended before the end of the world, had cut in gently when he told this story. "She sexually abused you, it's okay to call her your rapist."
"I know, I know," Dokja gasped out, feeling the comforting touch of someone else in the group against his shoulder. "It's harder to call her that, I loved her. I really loved her."
"I get it," Y-ssi says, the bruises on her right eye on the cusp of healing, her hand small but strong in his. "I loved mine too. Sometimes, I still think I do. Saying what he did to me was rape feels like a betrayal, like this is my mistake to bear but I can't keep covering for him at the expense of my heart. It's okay K-ssi, it's okay. We can take our time with this."
Dokja would never know these people outside of group, never know their real names, their favorite colors and foods, what their hobbies or interests were, but they were his closest companions for a very long time. For the rest of the session, Y-ssi let him rest his head against her shoulder and he didn't let go of her hand, even when it became too painful and tight as she talked about her ex-husband.
They were all together on the slow crawl of recovery and for Dokja, whose first love was the kindest, he had a long way to go.
---
For all that his first love was kind to him (be it a real love she felt for him or pity for the boy no one could ever want), she set him up on a dangerous path. She left, just as abrupt as she came, with the excuse that the school year was through and it was time for her to start seeing people her own age. And Dokja, who finally had a taste of real intimacy, felt the departure like an open wound.
She molded him into her perfect little partner and without her, Dokja felt like he had no reason to go on anymore. He haunted his life for weeks, on the verge of another mistake, when he found his ahjussi.
Ahjussi could be kind, would often spoil Dokja with pocket money and candy and a terse affection like a distant uncle you'd see once a year during the holidays. He found Dokja alone and sad with a hole in his heart and decided to make a home there and reform him into someone ahjussi could love. For a while, he was a breath of fresh air and gave Dokja a reason to live again.
'Be a good boy and you'll make ahjussi happy' became his mantra and he let himself be twisted and turned into a facsimile of himself until nothing his first love created was left. Dokja was thankful, Dokja was grateful and his ahjussi allowed him to pay his thanks in ways that hurt his body and his soul.
It was a paltry price to pay to be loved.
He thought his first love took all his firsts but his ahjussi found more and more to take until Dokja had nothing left to give and nothing left to amuse his ahjussi with. Dokja cried, begged, clinging tight to the man's leg as he tried to leave the hotel room with a swift goodbye and a last handful of bills.
'Love me,' he pleaded. 'Love me, love me, love me, love me, please, please, love me.'
'Oh Dokja,' his ahjussi sighed like he was a misbehaving pet. 'You're all used up, there's nothing left to love.'
"I love you," Y-ssi insisted when he told this story to the group weeks after talking about his first love. "We all love you. K-ssi, your worth is more than that man could ever conceive."
"We love you," their leader affirmed, tears in their eyes as they reached across the circle to hold his hand. "We love you without wanting anything, just like you love us the same way."
And it was easy to say, hard to believe - harder back then, thrice broken by love he thought he could keep, all before he was 18. His mother's story loomed like a curse over everything he did, his first love whispered false hopes but his ahjussi taught him the truth.
Dokja fell into bed with whoever wanted it. He slept with men and women who sought him for his disconcertingly small stature and when he finally grew, he learned to identify interest and lust with a single glance and took there too. It wasn't until he worked his way through the beds of his platoon during his military service that he realized something was wrong.
Sejong, a repeat visitor to his bunk, asked why his eyes were always closed when they fucked. He asked him if Dokja was actually enjoying himself because he never made a sound or asked Sejong for anything. Dokja didn't have an answer and Sejong stopped coming to visit him.
The question stayed with him until his service was over and throughout college, the words echoing and bouncing in his skull as he sucked someone off in an alley or fucked another faceless person, silent and churning nausea in his stomach. Louder whenever he cried in the shower, vomiting white and bile, sticking his fingers inside of himself to clean out the come and regret. Unbearable, when he lay sleepless and alone, too tired from work, school and life to find another bed to warm.
Several websites called it an addiction; he didn't know how to feel about it. When he thought of a sex addict, he thought of someone depraved who hurt people and used sex as a weapon. He thought of someone who was selfish and took their pleasure at the expense of their partners. They weren't victims, they created them.
'Sex as self injury' didn't feel real. It felt like an excuse.
He wasn't hurting himself, no, Dokja had stopped that long ago when he realized his scars could be off putting to his bed partners. He stopped pinching, pulling his hair out and picking at his nails, anything that disrupted the natural flow of his looks was halted. He couldn't afford to lose the people he managed to manipulate into loving him for the night.
But what else could you call a compulsion that begged him to go out every night and throw himself at anyone who would have him? What else could explain why he needed arms around him, tight enough to leave bruises and blood, proof that someone loved him for the night? What else could you call the stupid, dangerous things he did and places he went to, all to escape his loneliness for a few hours?
'Seek professional help', 'find healthy coping methods', 'talk to someone you trust'. None of this was possible for Dokja who was born unlovable, born to be alone, always on the outside. He, instead, sought absolution in fevered probing eyes, thick hands around his neck, teeth in his chest and pain that lingered for days.
And for a time, it worked.
They said the third time's a charm but for Dokja, it was a nightmare. He fell in love.
---
Dokja let himself fall in love again despite knowing who he was and all he was good for; in the end, he knew who was really at fault. But the euphoria of having someone, not just at intervals, but all the time, every day and every night, swept him up.
His boyfriend was perfect; a gentleman who, despite looking rough and tumble, courted him for months and slowly broke down his walls with a smile and a comforting hand. He would pick Dokja up from work, would carry his bag whenever they'd walk to class together and make dinner with an expert hand and pack a lunch for him every day. His boyfriend would let him ramble about what he was reading that week and complain about his coworkers with an amused fondness. He even introduced him to his older sister who fawned over Dokja like he was one of her own. He fucked Dokja like he was precious and perfect, like he was something worth cherishing instead of just using and throwing away.
His boyfriend was jealous, covetous, accusing and mistrusting but he had every right to be. He knew about Dokja's past, even let Dokja whisper and cry about his addiction, so he had to make sure Dokja wasn't cheating on him every day.
Of course, Dokja had to keep his GPS tracking on at all times, what if he went back to his usual spots and fell back into his old pattern? Of course, Dokja had to check in and call twice an hour to make sure he wasn't out fucking someone else. Of course, Dokja wasn't allowed to have friends, what if he started seducing them like he did with everyone he made eye contact with? Of course, every penny Dokja made had to go back to him, he couldn't be trusted with something that important. Of course, his boyfriend dictated what he wore from head to toe, Dokja would just dress like the depraved slut he was if he didn't. Of course, of course, of course.
His boyfriend was so kind and forgiving and open minded for taking in someone as used up and hollow as Dokja. He even took the time to make Dokja tight again, no doubt he'd been loose after years of taking it from every single person he could. It didn't matter if Dokja thought going in dry was painful, it was the least he could do to make up for how much of a whore he was before they met.
Dokja was in love with the perfect man, everyone said it, he had to be grateful or he'd lose the only good thing left in his life. It didn't matter if his boyfriend didn't love him back, he stayed and tolerated Dokja and that was enough. He only slept with women if he wasn't sleeping with Dokja and that was already more than anyone could ask for.
So it didn't make sense why his boyfriend's older sister took him out to lunch one day and told him to leave. She was smiling, hands trembling as she passed him her phone and her wallet and took his, and she laughed even when Dokja said nothing.
'Dokja,' she said, voice soft and strained but looking delighted. 'I'm so sorry, God, I'm so fucking sorry. I wish I saw this earlier and prevented your suffering. Take this and go, please save yourself. '
'My brother is a monster,' she whispered, trailing across the bruises on his face, neck, wrists and everything else covered by clothes and denial. 'You're a good person, Dokja, you don't deserve this. Please, for my sake, please leave him. I'll take care of the rest.'
And Dokja, who had been trying to save himself the heartbreak by putting up walls and justifying every horrific thing his boyfriend had said and done to him and his body for years, reached out, squeezed his only friend's hands, smiled and said goodbye.
He escaped that life with his ID, his college diploma, a new phone, almost three million won tucked into the pocket of the wallet, and the clothes on his back. He traveled across the country to busy Seoul, a population 9 million strong, stayed in youth hostels and worked odd jobs to support himself. He had a shitty apartment, a temporary job lined up at Mino Soft, a weekly meeting with a domestic violence survivors support group, a phone number he would contact once a month to check in and a web novel spanning thousands of chapters and millions of words.
He can't justify spending money on regularly scheduled therapy or medication but the doctor the group sees once a month is more than enough to start him on a path of recovery. He's surrounded by strangers who don't know his name, face, history or body.
He was happy.
---
Dokja can't afford another mistake, not when he's still in recovery from a sex addiction formed from childhood sexual abuse and a trauma from years of violence at the hands of someone he loved. Not when he doesn't have the support and unconditional love from his group who were probably dead, strewn across the city from scenarios. Not when he looks at Joonghyuk and has to use the fourth wall to make sure he doesn't flinch at everything he does.
Their first meeting should have said it all and it's only a miracle that Joonghyuk's hand around his neck didn't trigger something. Worse, Dokja trusts him now; trusts not to hurt him in that way, that the only reason Joonghyuk will ever put hands on him would be to protect him or help him. Joonghyuk, broken and beaten down just like Dokja, was easy to love. It was terrifying.
Dokja and Gilyoung trail behind the pack, still hand and hand.
"Hyung? Did I make you sad?" Gilyoung asks, mournful and guilty.
"Of course not," Dokja says and he means it. "I was just thinking about the past."
"Oh."
Gilyoung looks like he wants to ask a question.
"Go ahead," Dokja prompts. "Don't hold back now, Gilyoungie."
"Was, was the story actually about you? About the fish who fell in love with the star?"
Dokja can only sigh because Gilyoung was too perceptive at his age. He told a story the night before about a fish who peeked their head through the barrier of water and upon seeing the night sky for the first time, fell in love with a distant star.
The fish would constantly push itself into the air, braving fishermen and creatures, just to see the star. Eventually, it beached itself on a rocky shoreline to die under its comforting light, alone and so desperately in love with something that didn't even know it was alive. However, before its last breath, a bird picked it up and placed it back into the water and asked it to live. The bird confessed that it loved the fish and mourned because like the fish and star, the bird and the fish could never be. The fish, knowing it was loved, returned to the sea and healed. The next time it pushed his head out of the water, it spent its time speaking with the bird instead and learning that love was not impossible.
When Dokja wrote this story as a sad child, he ended it with the fish dying, unloved and reaching for a cold, distant figure. But seeing the tears in Gilyoung and Yoosung's eyes, he couldn't help but add a happier epilogue. He couldn't protect them from much, but Dokja could protect their little hearts.
"Yes," he whispers, like sharing a secret. "I'm happy now though, because I have you and Yoosung and the rest of our group."
Gilyoung makes a face when Dokja mentions Yoosung and he ruffles Gilyoung's hair with a laugh.
"Then are you in love too? Like the fish?" Gilyoung asks, innocent, grinning under the push of Dokja's hand.
Dokja pictures Joonghyuk, patient and never pushing, silent but present, confessing and not expecting. The man in question, turns around to look for the two of them when he couldn't count their heads in line with the rest of the group. Joonghyuk just stands and waits, arms loose and relaxed by his sides as he waits for Dokja and Gilyoung to catch up, watching over them just in case.
"No," he finally replies, taking Gilyoung's hand back into his. "Not yet, but maybe."
"Okay! As long as it's not that bastard, you deserve way better."
Dokja laughs and laughs until tears come out of his eyes.