Chapter Text
“It’s okay…”
A soft voice echoed in the darkness.
“My dear, sweet boy… My precious Dokja…”
There was a distinct helplessness that Kim Dokja recognized, the voice nearly shaking with every word spoken.
Metal scraped dully against wood.
「The sound much different from a cheap kitchen knife clattering on the floor.」
“Don’t cry, Mama’s here…shh shh…hush now…”
Kim Dokja couldn’t remember clearly — too much had happened since ‘that time’.
Had his eyes been wet with tears? Had he made a sound after it happened?
He couldn’t quite recall…
All he knew was that he hadn’t shed a single tear in all of the days that had followed.
“Mama will take care of it.”
「 “Dokja.” 」
Indescribable pain seared his shoulder blades, unlike anything he had ever felt before. When his collar bone had been fractured that one time — or even when his hip had hit the corner for the coffee table that other time — or even all of those other times that left marks on his pale skin, making them all the more obvious — all of the pain he felt back then was nothing compared to what he experienced now.
If he had ever felt it before, it felt like removing a limb…
“Mama will fix it.”
「 “From now on, I will read all of this again. “」
Two voices overlapping, yet the tone was the same — carrying the same amount of strength as a paper tiger with the conviction of intention ringing through.
And, even though he was still trapped in the darkness, Kim Dokja remembered the flash of his mother’s smile when she said —
「”You have to remember well. Understood?” 」
— overlapping with —
“Mama will make everything better.”
Then, excruciating pain tore through him, continuing on in an endless torture.
Until unconsciousness finally swallowed him whole.
Kim Dokja opened his eyes. He didn’t recognize the stone ceiling above him. Pain radiated throughout his body, seeping deep into his bones, and it made him feel nauseous and cold.
He didn’t understand how he had gotten here.
The last thing he remembered was the feeling of wind whipping past his cheek, the sensation of free falling, his limbs rag-dolling as he had finally decided that he had had enough —
Yet here he was — lying in familiar agony on an unfamiliar, freezing stone floor, unable to turn his head. There was an old copper taste coating his dry mouth and his lip throbbed with a pulsing pain. The last time he had felt this beaten up was when his father had been alive.
The shick of metal sliding against stone echoed in the desolate space.
Clinking metal chain links rattled from his right.
He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, as if it would block out the rest of the world — as if it would transport him someplace else — but like the many times he tried before, nothing ever happened like he hoped it would.
Kim Dokja tried to take a fortifying breath, pushing past the ache of bruised and fractured ribs, before gritting his teeth and rolling to a sitting position.
He quickly grasped the situation when he saw the windowless walls and a single barred door leading into what was clearly a prison. The stones themselves seem to give off a dim luminescence so that it wasn’t completely dark. A metal tray with what looked like old bread and gruel was on the floor in front of the door slot. With the increasing realization that he was most definitely in a jail cell, he was starting to get more anxious and wary about the sound of chains he had heard when he first awoke.
Naively, he hoped it was just a rat scurrying past empty shackles. But of course he was never that lucky.
When he mustered up enough courage to finally look, the sight made him forget about his own physical aches and confusion.
Because there was a boy chained to the wall.
He looked to be about the same age as Kim Dokja, fifteen or sixteen years old at least.
His wrists were rubbed raw, his shoulders sagging under his hanging weight.
〔In his youth, he had only known hardship and strife.〕
Kim Dokja couldn’t clearly see the boy’s face since it was turned down and hidden by the curtain of greasy dark hair.
〔The savior who had only known darkness.〕
And yet, unfamiliar instincts were pushing him to get closer, to see clearer the state of the boy that had bruises and wounds littering his malnourished chest and arms.
〔Until he was able to see the light.〕
Kim Dokja had never been in such a situation before. He was having a difficult time thinking past the shock, feeling momentarily paralyzed by the fact that he didn’t know what to do.
Even more jarring were the strange words that were flowing through his mind like a narration, each syllable ringing with a sense of recognition .
He was so sure that he knew those words, had remembered reading it somewhere, perhaps from a story —
「No. It couldn’t be… could it?」
Was this… like those isekai tropes?
— a theme that had been getting more and more popular in the novels he read.
Except, instead of being greeted by ‘Truck-kun’, or dying from being overworked to death, Kim Dokja had taken it into his own hands and…
…
Did it mean that he was now a transmigrator ?
Or maybe he had been reborn in another world?
But, even thinking that, the theory still didn’t seem to quite… fit...
Shouldn’t this new world leave him feeling a sense of… strangeness?
— Like having a sense of knowing that he didn’t really belong.
Yet, it actually felt like this world was the world he was originally from, and the world of his other life was the lie.
《Like there was something very important that he was forgetting.》
Before he could spiral further, some instinct buried deep within him seemed to take control of his limbs, and he acted before he could fully process what he was doing.
Like a marionette being manipulated to move, he found himself in front of the chained boy, the tray of food dragged within easy reach.
It was not that Kim Dokja felt he no longer had control of his body. It felt more like ingrained muscle memory — even though a part of him rationally feared approaching a possibly dangerous and unknown stranger, there was also a gut feeling that this is something he should be doing.
《That it was something he had done before.》
Strangely, after realizing this, his chaotic thoughts began to calm.
Acceptance of his current situation was much more preferable to panic.
In this way, he had always survived.
Kim Dokja studied the boy, able to see the smears of dirt — or was it blood? — he couldn’t tell in the dim lighting of the cell. Greasy, matted hair covered most of his features, yet Kim Dokja could still tell that the boy was malnourished. His cheeks were sunken, skin pulled taut over a sharp jawline, with lips that were cracked and bleeding.
It was a really pitiful sight.
「It reminded him of what his mother sometimes looked like after weathering through the worst of his father’s tantrums.」
Kim Dokja tore off a piece of the stale bread and soaked it in the gruel before lifting the boy’s head and bringing the food to the boy’s mouth.
At first, the boy didn’t respond. His eyes remained closed and his face barely even twitched. But as Kim Dokja slowly pried the boy’s lips open with the softened bread, he visibly tensed and, with an almost feral reaction, teeth snapped down on Kim Dokja’s fingers.
However, what Kim Dokja found even stranger was that it was something that he seemed to have expected — like he had already known it was going to happen.
Belatedly, he noticed the striation of criss-crossing teeth marks along the sides of his fingers, some of them scarred and some just starting to heal.
Still, he soundlessly bore the brunt of each bite.
Perhaps this boy had been here longer than him, knew more things than him.
With feigned apathy towards the pain, Kim Dokja pulled his fingers from the boy’s mouth, leaving the bread behind.
It seemed that it took a moment for the boy to finally come to his senses, a wild light sparking in his golden eyes.
Kim Dokja found he was drawn to the unique glimmer — a recognition that sprouted from the deepest, darkest reaches of his core — and it both scared and excited him in equal measure.
But the reality of their situation did not allow him to explore the unfamiliar emotions.
Kim Dokja had always been a survivor.
He would not waste this second chance at life.
Even if he knew he didn’t deserve it.
Unsurprisingly, Kim Dokja didn’t dwell too long on how he ended up in his current circumstances, nor did it take him long to accept the conclusion that he had fallen prey to the isekai-transmigration novel trope that had been increasing in popularity in the novels in his original world.
His original world had already been inundated with fantastical things — it was a common occurrence for people to awaken into espers and guides with superhuman abilities. The variety of powers that manifested were as infinite as the number of stars in the sky, the life spans of these ‘awakened’ beings stretching to an indeterminate amount of time.
Kim Dokja was no stranger to using his imagination, sometimes believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast — when he could scrounge up enough to eat breakfast, that was.
He had been an avid reader for the past fifteen years of his life. Every moment that he wasn’t subject to the neglect from his relatives or the hounding paparazzi or the ridicule of his schoolmates, he was devouring all of the web novels, books, and manhwa he could get his hands on — always an effective escape from the dark reality of his life.
Getting lost in the words, his imagination weaving tapestries within the blank spaces — it was the only place he could be free.
Until, one day, he had decided to take his freedom into his own hands.
But it seemed that a story had saved him once again.
In the wake of his conviction to leave his original world, he apparently stumbled into a new one.
It just so happened that his new life had started as a prisoner.
Other than the trays of food that were pushed through a slot in the prison door, Kim Dokja didn’t really have any sense of time.
He had tried talking to the boy, asking him his name to start with, but the boy never answered. He only stared at Kim Dokja with an aura of hostile arrogance that sent an eerie chill down Kim Dokja’s spine.
Still. The silence was something Kim Dokja was used to and he was not keen to keep knocking on the ‘wall’ that stood between them.
But then.
As time passed quietly, the words that had scrolled through his thoughts when he first woke up in this place returned in bits and pieces.
Even though Kim Dokja didn’t know the origin of these words — and wasn’t completely convinced that he could blindly trust the narration — he surmised that, not only was he a victim of the transmigration-trope, but, it was possible that he was also under the influence of the infinite-flow-System-trope.
So, with the first few sentences, he more or less recognized the exact novel that he had been thrown into.
〘Season of Light and Darkness: The Chronicles of the Supreme King.〙
And, oh wasn’t it just his luck, that the boy prisoner that he had been nursing was the protagonist of the story.
〔Yoo Joonghyuk.〕
The story line followed the typical narrative of a boy that was born in the slums of an empire. He lived a hard life — sold as a slave when he was a child, enduring years of abuse and imprisonment, until, one night, he miraculously escaped.
It was at this point that the protagonist obtained his halo, both literally and figuratively.
After Yoo Joonghyuk made his escape, he ran into a squad of the Empire’s Holy Knights fighting a party of demonic beasts. Yoo Joonghyuk had gotten caught up in the fight and it was soon discovered that he carried the essence of a divine nephilim bloodline.
Unfortunately, in the midst of the scuffle, Yoo Joonghyuk’s weapon breaks and the monster nearly claws his eye out. Even though he eventually heals from the wound, he is constantly reminded of it. Because of the demonic venom trapped in the scar tissue it was never able to heal properly, forever causing throbbing pain whenever he encountered anything of demonic origin.
Regardless, the Holy Knights take Yoo Joonghyuk with them, and with his skill and wit and strength, he quickly bulldozes through the ranks, shooting up to the highest position that the Empire could offer him.
The title of the Duke of the North.
However, the title was a double-edged sword.
The northern dukedom was a nearly barren, frozen stretch of territory that was meant to guard the rest of the empire from the lands inhabited by the demonic and their beasts.
Kim Dokja could remember the protagonist going through many trials. And, as a reader, he had always praised the author for all of the bloody fight scenes and character development plot points. He had felt a little iffy about how the romance was somehow shoe-horned into the plotline — introducing the Holy Saintess, Lee Seolhwa, who specialized in the nature of poisons, as a means to help relieve the protagonist of his pain.
And, of course, like in most novels with themes of demonic and angelic origins, there was a prophecy involved that spoke of the empire falling to the Apocalypse Dragon, Armageddon, that was said to awaken from where it had slumbered for centuries in the northern wastelands beyond the demonic territories.
Still, it had been a long time since Kim Dokja had abandoned the story.
The author had unexpectedly announced a hiatus during the story’s conclusion arc — which just so happened to be in the middle of the battle between Yoo Joonghyuk and Armageddon.
So it was really unfortunate that Kim Dokja was now dropped into a story with an ambiguous ending.
But.
He wouldn’t have picked up an unfinished story if it weren’t for the small detail that his own name had been used as one of the extras.
It had been during a time where his mother was standing trial for the murder of his father — a time before his mother had published that book, publicizing their tragedy, and pushing Kim Dokja to stand in the limelight alone. A time before reporters and interviewers had hounded his doorstep — before the name ‘Kim Dokja’ had been well-known.
He had just been morbidly curious, doing an online search of his name, and finding it had been used in message boards for a particular novel — using the exact hanja and everything.
It made him want to read the story — to explore another possibility.
〈To live the life of a different version of himself, even if it was only words on a page.〉
However he hadn’t ever thought he would be dropped into that specific novel, into the exact character with the same name — a character who had only shown up in the later portions of the overall plot as a filler trash-villain who wished to see Yoo Joonghyuk fail in his trials. Of course, this was all before the prophecy was ever revealed, and the villain ‘Kim Dokja’ had eventually ended up dying by the protagonist’s sword.
Kim Dokja had to avoid this death flag at all costs.
The fact that he was following the typical narrative of an isekai’d person was not lost on him — the realization leaving the bitter taste of cliche plot points on his tongue.
Still, he had to try.
However, he was starting his new life with an information deficit, so the first few months living as ‘Kim Dokja’ was a struggle.
To be fair, the mysterious narration that kept popping up in random moments fed him sentences from the original work text.
But, Kim Dokja soon came to understand that an author is limited by the words written, and can only explain the settings — everything else was up to the interpretation of the reader.
For example, from what he knew, he was another captured slave of unknown origins, and it was pure coincidence that he was thrown into the same cell as the protagonist.
And yet, recently, the trash narrator kept flashing the same sentences in his head over and over and over again.
〔In his youth, he had only known hardship and strife.〕
〔Until he escaped his prison cell and started his journey to freedom.〕
Now, Kim Dokja wasn’t stupid. He was an expert at reading between the lines. He generally understood that the main plot point was to help the protagonist escape from the slavers, sending the protagonist off at the start of his journey to becoming the strongest man in the world.
How Kim Dokja accomplished this, he had no idea.
The narrator didn’t provide any details of the character’s background or clues as to how or when he was supposed to help the protagonist escape.
— Because why would the author spend time on a throwaway character who was only going to later return as a filler-trash villain?
And so.
Kim Dokja knew he had to improvise.
Kim Dokja tracked the days by how many meals appeared at their door.
If he calculated correctly, then a few months had passed since his transmigration.
Yoo Joonghyuk had proved to be the typical wary yet stoic protagonist archetype, saying absolutely nothing whenever Kim Dokja asked him questions, and only accepting the minimum help from the only other person occupying his cell.
Kim Dokja didn’t take it personally, thinking that maybe it was because of his character setting.
Still, it didn’t stop Kim Dokja from trying, if only to keep himself from being driven insane from the repetitive narration constantly circling his brain.
Because Yoo Joonghyuk was the only other person he could talk to.
In the earlier days, he had pounded on the cell door at all hours for a few days.
The result was that they had no longer gotten meals for a few days after.
The prison guard, if there were any, didn’t speak, didn’t show their faces, didn’t check to see if their captives were even alive. Kim Dokja was reminded of their presence only when they took the empty food trays or provided new ones.
The entire modus operandi was so bizarre that it had Kim Dokja questioning whether he had already gone mad.
And, whenever Kim Dokja would question the narrator, he would simply get the same lines of text, as if the progress of the story depended on Yoo Joonghyuk moving on to the next plot point.
Kim Dokja sighed, absently picking at the loose thread of his shirt.
So many days had passed with the same thing happening.
He didn’t know what to do.
「...was this what it felt like when the author experienced ‘writer’s block’?」
But then.
It seemed that today would be different.
An explosion rocked the walls of their prison cell.
Shattered stone and debris scattered everywhere.
Kim Dokja choked on the dust and smoke that spread throughout their cell.
And yet.
Even though his vision was blurred and he coughed so hard that it felt as if he might chuck up a lung, his mind remained sharp.
When the dust began to settle, muted light shone through a hole in the wall. Kim Dokja cautiously made his way toward it, carefully moving so that he didn’t trip over the loose rubble spread out around him.
He became even more guarded when the ringing in his ears quietened enough for him to make out the panicked shouts coming from beyond the wall.
When he finally reached the opening, he was able to make out the view of the night sky, a bright white moon hanging high. It looked as if the prison cells were somewhat below street level. Kim Dokja could make out the orange glow of scattered fires, the general chaos of people running between buildings of what looked like a small town. Raucous laughter with pained screams accompanied the clash of steel echoing off the walls.
“Ack!”
The stone beneath Kim Dokja’s hand gave way and he tumbled back down the pile of debris he had been standing on. He hissed in pain when he earned himself a bruised tailbone and cut palms in his flurry.
He gave himself a moment to recover, to think through the next steps.
— Tried to not be too perturbed about this completely deus-ex-machina event that was most definitely meant to move the plot along.
Minutes passed by. It was enough for Kim Dokja to deduce that the destruction of the prison wasn’t high on the slavers’ priorities at the moment.
「This is good.」
He could finally escape.
His heart started pounding.
In his excitement, he turned quickly—
Only to find that the blast had taken out more of the prison cell than he had originally thought.
The damage extended into the adjacent wall where Yoo Joonghyuk had been hanging from.
The good news was that it had destroyed Yoo Joonghyuk’s chains.
The bad news was that the protagonist was now sprawled out on the floor, unconscious.
Kim Dojka stumbled his way over, worried that Yoo Joonghyuk may have suffered a head injury, either from the debris or from dropping too quickly when his restraints were released. Who knows how weakened Yoo Joonghyuk was from malnutrition and inactivity.
Kim Dokja grunted as he tried to lift Yoo Joonghyuk, turning him over and moving him into the moonlight. After studying his face and gingerly prodding his scalp, Kim Dokja sighed quietly in relief. It didn’t seem that he was severely hurt.
Kim Dokja on the other hand…
He hadn’t been careful enough. He had exacerbated the cuts on his palms, opening up the wounds and smearing streaks of blood wherever he had touched.
He tsked at his own negligence, using a relatively clean spot of his shirt to wipe off the traces he had left on Yoo Joonghyuk’s temple.
Then he stopped.
For a long time, Kim Dokja stared at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face.
「...」
His gaze drifted to the opening in the wall.
A question drifted up from the darker depths of his thoughts.
「Was it really his responsibility to move the plot along?」
The protagonist was currently unconscious, and he hadn’t been the only one who had been weakened after months of imprisonment.
Kim Dokja was also frail. Look how exhausting it was for him just to move Yoo Joonghyuk a few feet. And, for the sake of progressing the story, he would now have to carry the protagonist for who knows how long until…
「Until when exactly?」
To be completely honest…
Kim Dokja didn’t really have to do anything.
He could leave, get on with this new life.
If the story was meant to continue, then it was not beyond the realm of possibility that there would be another plot device, like say divine intervention or something, that would bring the protagonist to the next scenario.
But.
If he were wrong…
If this was more than just a story…
Kim Dokja looked back down, his eyes tracing the face he had not seen clearly before.
The softness of youth had been chiseled away by starvation. Yet, Kim Dokja could still see traces of a structure that must have been carved out by some artist who knew what they were doing. His lips, though cracked and bleeding, were shaped precisely, his nose slightly crooked— probably from being broken once or twice before.
As a protagonist, it was a given that he would be handsome, Kim Dokja thought.
Yet, no matter how real Kim Dokja made him out to be —
Wasn’t Yoo Joonghyuk just a character in a story?
And, logically speaking, even if this really wasn’t a story, then what did it matter if he just…left Yoo Joonghyuk here…?
〔In his youth, he had only known hardship and strife.〕
Kim Dokja had been the same.
〔Until he escaped his prison cell and started his journey to freedom.〕
Now, Kim Dokja could also escape.
In this reality, he didn’t have to be a tool, didn’t have to drag the story along — he didn’t even have to follow the story.
This would be a good time to test his free will, determine the limits of his own autonomy.
Explore the possibility of deviating away from the narration.
Kim Dokja hardened his heart.
Yoo Joonghyuk had never said anything to him, not a single word. Even though Kim Dokja had helped him eat, the protagonist had still looked at him with animosity and wariness.
He only knew what the future Yoo Joonghyuk would do, the feats he would accomplish.
But what about the current Yoo Joonghyuk?
To Kim Dokja, Yoo Joonghyuk was a stranger.
「That’s right.」
He didn’t know anything about ‘this’ Yoo Joonghyuk.
And Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know anything about Kim Dokja.
They hadn’t gone through adversity together. They weren’t life-and-death companions.
At most, they were passing acquaintances who just happened to end up in the same prison cell for a time.
As for the future death flag for the character ‘Kim Dokja’, well…
It was easy to evade wasn’t it?
He would just avoid Yoo Joonghyuk all together.
He didn’t have to interfere with the plot line at all.
Kim Dokja wasn’t greedy nor was he ambitious. He didn’t feel the need to chase after or hunt down all of the power ups that would help the protagonist along.
If he were really honest…
He kind of just wanted to be a by-stander in all of this.
He wasn’t particularly motivated to follow the narration — not when there was potential for something else.
Something new .
Kim Dokja stood. His shadow casted like a veil, blocking out his view of Yoo Joonghyuk.
He clenched his fists, the pain a sharp reminder that he should grasp this opportunity with both hands.
In this way, he would survive.
Kim Dokja turned around and walked towards the opening. He looked beyond the wall, checking that it was clear.
Scaling the rubble was easier the second time. He was somewhat breathless when he finally climbed up onto the dirt pathway.
The chaos still seemed to be far enough from his location. The slavers’ that were manning the prison must have rushed out to join the fight, leaving this area unmanned.
Kim Dokja couldn’t figure out what had caused the explosion to begin with, but he found that he didn’t care to find out.
There was the sound of rushing water to his left.
He decided that would be a good direction to go.
The prison cell was quiet. The sounds from the outside echoed over the distance.
In the silence.
Yoo Joonghyuk opened his eyes, a hint of disdain flashing through their depths.