Chapter Text
Kim Dokja was poor.
Not dirt poor but poor enough to eat convenience store kimbap as breakfast on a daily basis, wear clothes too thin for the weather and barely manage to save any money after paying his bills. His life was sad and monotonous. Always have been. And he didn't seem to mind it all that much except for the harsh winters when he had to endure the freezing cold because he couldn't afford to pay extra for wanting to keep his room warm. His salary wasn't high enough for him to live a comfortable life.
It was all okay though. He had a way to escape reality. Romance Fantasy. It was a genre of fiction that Kim Dokja had come to adore over the years. He first discovered it during high school. A bullied teenager who found salvation in a world that was perfect, so very different from the real world that was filled with injustice and cruelty.
Now working as an invisible employee at a large corporate office, he slaves away in his cubicle during the day and reads romance fantasy manhwas at night. It was just another night of binging manhwas for him till late at night. He woke up with the motivation of a dead fish, got himself ready and grabbed a kimbap from the convenience store near his house on his way to work.
The day passed in a blur as the clock soon struck 5 in the evening. Kim Dokja gathered his things and got off work on time. No overtime, no lecture from his superior at work. Maybe it was his lucky day. It was unusual for him to feel this light. As he was waiting at the signal to cross the road, he heard it. The urgent horn of a truck. The breaks of the vehicle seemed to have failed and the driver was trying to find a way to minimize the damage. People around him screamed and ran in whichever direction they could, prioritising safety over anything else.
Kim Dokja stood there. Like an idiot. Feet glued to the concrete of the ground, as if something was gripping his ankles, preventing him from running to safety. So this was why he felt weirdly energetic after getting off work. He was about to die. He sighed, resigning himself to fate. He still wanted to finish the manhwa he started the night before. Talk about having rotten luck.
He closed his eyes as his frail body collided with the tremendous force of the truck. He felt himself flying, the sensation of bones breaking, pain engulfed all his senses. The feeling of death wasn't pleasant, he concluded while remembering the pathetic excuse of a life he led on earth before he felt, from behind his closed eye lids, his whole body being cradled in the arms of darkness.
____________
He could hear something. More accurately, someone. The person's voice sounded..worried? But who could it be? His piece of shit father was dead and his mother was in prison. And as far as he could recall, he wasn't supposed to survive the accident. Not with that lanky, underweight body. Wait- was he in hell? Perhaps the low-grade demon appointed to torture him was bothered by him still not being fully awake.
He furrowed his eyebrows. Even trying to open his eyes was proving to be rather difficult. Maybe if he tried hard enough he could succeed.
The first thing that blessed his sight was not the ugly face of a low grade demon, but rather it was a fancy looking Victorian ceiling with a very intricate design. And was that a chandelier hanging? How cliche, he thought.
"My lord!" He flinched when a strange woman jumpscared him from the side. She was wearing a French maid outfit.
"You had me worried sick. I thought.." She choked on her tears before she could complete the sentence. She kept expressing her concern while profusely wiping away her tears with a handkerchief.
"..What happened to me?" He decided to ask but got surprised by the voice that came out of his throat.
"You were suffering from fever, my lord. You have been unconscious for two whole days. Even the physicians had given up" She answered, now a bit more composed.
Kim Dokja blinked twice then looked at the woman and asked if he could have something warm to eat because he was starving. The woman scrambled to get up. Mumbling an apology, she quickly made her way out of the room, leaving Dokja alone.
Kim Dokja took this chance to actually look around the room. Every piece of furniture was accented with gold and had elaborate designs on them. The bed he was lying on probably costs more than his whole apartment back on earth. It was spacious, fluffy and even had a pretty white canopy made of lace.
As he tried to get off the bed, he realised something was truly wrong. His hands, legs, his whole being felt smaller. What in the fuckity fuck..
His fear proved to be true when he ran to the dressing table and looked at himself in the mirror. Or more accurately, saw the upper half of his face. Because he seemed to have become a midget. So that's why the room looked ginormous. He climbed on the chair that was in front of the dressing table. This time he got a proper look at his appearance. Jet black straight hair, black iris, sickly pale skin- hold on this was just him when he was younger.
"Tsk"
He clicked his tongue in irritation. Even after getting transmigrated he still looked the same. Couldn't the god of this world or whatever divine force that brought him here give him a more conventionally attractive body? The only difference between his past and present self was the number of eyelashes. This body had more. It made him look like the female lead of a shoujo manga. He scoffed at himself.
“What a terrible joke” He said, looking at his reflection in the mirror. Sighing, he got off the chair and crawled back into the bed. The woman from before was back with a tray of hot food soon after.
______________
A week into his isekai journey Kim Dokja got to know which manhwa he was inside of. Love & Abduction. Kim Dokja made a gagging sound. A generic manhwa with a generic name and an even more generic plot. It was marketed as ‘dark romance’ when in reality it was a story that belonged to the true crime documentary genre.
The only thing that made it ‘mainstream’ was the art. Kim Dokja wanted to know why an artist with such a gorgeous art style would pick up a novel as trashy as that? What a waste of beautiful art.
With a male lead who has two default emotions and a female lead built on the internalised misogyny of the author along with bad writing, the manhwa had Kim Dokja awake at 3 a.m., rage reading it and cursing at every panel.
The male lead grew up with a diamond spoon. The worst thing he ever experienced in life was the negligence of his father. The female lead on the other hand, was an orphan who never knew happiness, went through hardships her whole life and just when things were getting better for her, the bastard male lead laid his ominous eyes on her.
“Poor guy. He only wanted to be loved”, “He loved her but didn't know how to show it”, were the things the male lead’s fans used to say in his defence. The said ‘poor guy’ stalked the female lead, made advances on her even after she said she didn't like him, kidnapped her, kept her imprisoned in his mansion, eliminated her foster family and people she was close with, manipulated her into falling in love with him. And when he got his so-called character development, he just set her free. No apology or anything. All while knowing fully well that she had nowhere to go but return to him.
Kim Dokja had screamed, strangled his pillow while imagining it was Yoo Joonghyuk, the male lead, cursed the author for writing such trash. He left a one star review, silently praying that the author falls into a writer's block so severe that they never become able to pick up a pen again.
Now, sitting under the cool shade of a tree in the garden of Yoo duchy, Kim Dokja was laughing at his own fate. Not only did he transmigrate into the manhwa he hated the most, he was also the step-brother of Yoo Joonghyuk. His mother in this world, a dancer from the neighbouring country, was married to the current duke.
“Haha..”
Kim Dokja could feel himself crumbling away with the wind. It made sense why his appearance did not change much even after transmigration. The character he possessed had the exact same name as him and he always thought that they looked quite similar. Despite being a side character, Kim Dokja in the manhwa was drawn with precision and care. He was sure 50% of that ‘care’ went into drawing him with a voluptuous butt. It was probably because of his living conditions(or perhaps the artist’s obsession with drawing male characters with perky buttocks).
Manhwa Kim Dokja didn't have to worry about work, rent, food, water bill or electricity bill. All he did was spend his step father’s money, look pretty and be a hindrance to Yoo Joonghyuk. Maybe that was the reason for his ultimate demise.
The character of Kim Dokja was greedy, materialistic and vile. He did everything he could to make Yoo Joonghyuk’s father, the duke, favour him so that he could snag a big portion of the property. The duke did favour him a bit more than his other biological children because he was witty and could match the Duke's wickedness. However, his name was never added to the family registry, for the duke feared that he, a half blood, would try to become the heir of the duchy. Thus, he remained a Kim till the end of his days.
The duke favoured him not because he liked him, his favour was solely contingent on Kim Dokja's loyalty toward him. He followed the Duke's orders like a dog ; running secret errands for him, spying on Yoo Joonghyuk, attending social gatherings as his eyes and ears, Kim Dokja did it all.
On the Duke's orders he tried getting rid of Lee Seolhwa, the female protagonist, when the woman was being held captive in the castle in the name of work. But it backfired as Yoo Joonghyuk turned into a raging bull and massacred everyone in his family, including Kim Dokja after finding out that Lee Seolhwa went missing because of him. The only living being that was spared was his sister Yoo Mia. In the end the two main leads had a beautiful reunion according to the readers which changed Yoo Joonghyuk for the ‘better’.
Present Kim Dokja grimaced at how cliche the plot was. Nevertheless, those events happen way far in the future. His body was currently ten years old so that must mean Yoo Joonghyuk was still just an eight year old snotty brat. He was fated to die by his hands at the age of twenty-two. He had twelve whole years to get close to this homicidal scumbag.
He could do it.
__________
For a whole month, he couldn't catch a glimpse of Yoo Joonghyuk.
Kim Dokja asked the maids for his schedule and found out that he takes swordsmanship classes at dawn, then attends etiquette lessons. After that he receives individual classes on various subjects and lastly the succession lessons. The only time he is free is when he goes to bed after finishing his homework.
Kim Dokja was shocked. How could this be normal? Even though he was a piece of shit in the manhwa, in this world he was just eight. A literal child. Isn't it too much to force a child to abandon his childhood in order to mature quickly? There was something genuinely wrong with this family.
But Kim Dokja wasn't someone to give up easily. He will tame that Yoo brat and make him a better person so that the female lead doesn't have to put up with his bullshit.
With newfound determination, Kim Dokja headed towards the kitchen. The quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, they say. He was going to test if that theory is real or not.
“My lord? What brings you here?” The head chef asked upon seeing him entering the kitchen.
“I'm here for some snacks actually”
“You could've sent a maid instead, my lord” The chef said, rushing to get a plate and stacking sweet snacks on it.
“Oh! Please give me something savoury too” He said suddenly remembering that adult Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't a big fan of sweets. He only hoped Joonghyuk would take at least something out of the plate that the head chef handed him.
The sun had set by the time Joonghyuk's succession lessons ended. He goes straight to the library after that to finish his homework and self-study before having dinner. It was the perfect time for Dokja to make an appearance.
He swiftly sneaked into the library. To his surprise, Joonghyuk was nowhere to be found. But before the disappointment could hit, the size of the library left his jaw slack. Painted high ceilings, tall bookshelves, numerous hardcover books and the smell of old paper. He had seen these types of places only in pictures. Now seeing it upfront had him in awe.
Setting the plate of snacks down on a nearby table, he walked towards a shelf and touched the spines of books within his reach. It felt unreal.
“Why are you here?”
Startled, Kim Dokja turned around as fast as a rat that got caught trying to steal cheese in the middle of the night.
Hostile eyes, perpetual frown and an air of gloominess unusual for an eight year old kid, ah…there was the yandere king standing a few feet away from Dokja. His stare did not have an ounce of respect. He looked at Dokja as if he was an annoying insect buzzing around him.
“And why can't I be here?”
“People come here to study,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied monotonously, pulling a chair and sitting on it. Already cracking open his homework.
Kim Dokja’s brow twitched at the implication. This rude brat. He took a deep breath to calm himself down. He has to do it. Get close to this snob to survive.
He took the chair opposite of Joonghyuk's and grabbed a macaroon from the plate.
“Mhm!” He didn't mean to make any sound but the taste of the snack caught him off guard.
Glancing at Joonghyuk, Kim Dokja found the younger one glaring at him then at the plate in front of him.
Ah..
Kim Dokja’s metaphorical devil tail started swaying. A look of mirth appeared on his face. The protagonist was still a kid afterall. Little kids love snacks. Even more so when they're forbidden from having any. And who was Kim Dokja to not take advantage of that? He sighed in contentment after taking another bite. Yoo Joonghyuk's brow twitched.
“Stop making such a commotion” He said with a scowl.
Kim Dokja only blinked innocently.
“They are really delicious. Do you want one ?” He offered, nudging the plate towards him. But Joonghyuk flat out ignored him.
Kim Dokja's smile twitched but did not vanish. He shrugged and proceeded to have a few more of the delectable food. He couldn't even dream of eating something like this in his previous life.
“What are you doing anyway?” He asked while munching on a chocolate chip cookie.
“Mind your own business”
Kim Dokja got up and sat beside him and in a whiny voice said, “But I don't want tooo”. Even he was surprised at how irritating he sounded.
Yoo Joonghyuk gritted his teeth, giving him a scathing look, “Get lost!”
Just as he yelled, a loud growling noise came from his stomach. The eight year old’s face went completely red as he hugged his stomach to try and prevent any more noise from coming out.
Kim Dokja's inner ragebaiter rejoiced at his embarrassment. Who knew the protagonist would be this easy to rile up ? Or maybe he was just naturally talented at getting on people's last nerves.
“Aw, is little Hyukie hungry?”
The nickname made Joonghyuk visibly cringe. He jumped off the chair and angrily gathered his things then stormed out of the library. Kim Dokja sat there staring at the closed door. He took another cookie and shoved it in his mouth.
Well this is going to be a long journey.