readsagain | INBOX (labyrinthum)

And we're back to "I told him to not abandon his companions in the third round".

[ The cyclical (to him) conversation makes him roll his eyes, wincing at her bony elbow - it's all dramatics.

At risk of being completely wrong about why she's here and making her angry for a different reason, he says: ]

If you're hear to read me the riot act about the Hanahaki, that was months ago, Suyeong. Nobody else was here.

[His reward for that guess is an absolutely withering glare, because damn it, she was sure she was coming at this with the maximum of subtlety.]

[A long moment of silence follows, as she visibly struggles to shift gears and tactics -- a struggle that actually shows in her hands as they start to tremble. And there's all sorts of emotions in her eyes she can't hide, and doesn't bother trying to. He'll pretend he didn't see a single one of them, after all.]

[When her voice does come out finally, it's a low tone that scrapes.]

I'm going to try to put this in terms you will come about a city's length from understanding, Kim Dokja, because that's as close as I think I can get you. I want you to picture the first day you showed up her. Fix it in your head. Imagine the arrival. Finding that potion. Walking out of that forest maze. Running into new people.

[She jabs him with one finger. Hard, not that it matters, because she's just a girl, not a constellation, not a Demon King, not even an incarnation.]

And those people say, "Oh, Kim Dokja? There was someone who knew you here. They're dead now."

[ His mask is difficult to keep on, for once. There's a tightness to his jaw when he sees the pain in her eyes, when she recounts the story of waking up and potentially finding out she came too late to save him.

He tucks his hands into his pockets, so she can't see the way he digs his nails into his hands. He doesn't sass her, telling her that his first day here he'd met a child with a knife who had cut themselves to show off their healing power. ]

I wouldn't have done it if I didn't already know that this place doesn't let people die, Suyeong. Even I'm not that reckless.

[ He's silent for a moment. ]

I killed another man dying of Hanahaki - mercied him. I saw him again three days later, as hale and healthy as he'd been before the flowers.

You don't know.

[Stepping back, she folds her arms, tight enough that she's almost squeezing herself.]

It could have been different that time. That could have been the exception. The Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds to whatever this land's Eight Lives is. Something you don't have a book telling you about. It was your life, you idiot! You're so damn used to giving it up you don't have any idea it's actually important!

[In this moment, her hopes and dreams of convincing Dokja to not sacrifice himself at the end of all things seems foolish and very distant indeed. He's writing it into himself, underlining and emphasizing, pressing so hard that even if you ripped the words away the notches would be visible beneath.]

[She wishes, she wishes so badly, that he at least remembered Kaizenix. Then she'd have a real weapon to use against him. Even now she knows perfectly well she's reacting too harshly, taking it too personally, to really pretend she's from just after the 10th scenario. But she can't stop. All she can do is hope he's too busy dealing with everything else she's lashing out at him with to notice that.]

[ He's not shocked she's mad - she's already made her dislike clear. He is shocked by the ferocity of it, by the burgeoning sense of despair he can see in her eyes. Yet again, a look he's seen previously - a look he's ignored easily - seems to cut him sharper than before.

Without thinking he raises a hand to rub at his chest, where something heavy feels like it's sitting in his lungs. ]

I -

[ He shakes his head a little, mentally, grits his teeth. ]

Suyeong, there was no evidence to support that I'd die and never come back. The one man who stayed dead had deliberately given up his power to stop a disaster.

Everyone else - every Dreamer - has returned. I had two proofs against none. It wasn't a casual decision!

That is NOT a NORMAL equation for people to risk their lives on just to not tell a secret!

Like!

[She stomps one foot hard, then kicks the nearest chair, because she can't punch and kick Dokja.]

Maybe! It was the only way to beat the lesser disaster. MAYBE! It was the only way to deal with Nirvana! MAYBE it was the only way to deal with the 10th scenario! I don't think so, but I'll assume! For the sake of argument! That you thought about it and couldn't come up with literally anything else. Maybe each and every one of those was justified.

[After a couple of more kicks to the furniture, she rounds on him, somehow managing to stare down at him in cold fury despite being much shorter.]

You tell me. You make your very best argument. As to why dying instead of telling a secret was the only acceptable way.

[ He tries to say We're not exactly normal people anymore, Suyeong but she kicks one of his chairs and he snaps his mouth shut. He knows she can't do any damage to him, and the furniture is replaceable - but he's rarely seen her angry enough to lash out like this.

He watches her, warily, like a weasel inside a trap. ]

They weren't my secrets to tell.

[ He seems bitterly convicted of this. ]

They're all things I learned about someone from a book, pieces of a future I learned from that same book. They're about Junghyeok, or Namwoon, or Yoosung, who never had a choice to tell me about them.

The only secret about me is actually my mother's.

[ For a man who so casually plundered those secrets, he seems oddly intense about not spilling them. ]

[She facepalms so hard she actually hurts herself. The slap leaves one of her eyes twinging for a moment, both of them squeezed shut. When her fingers curl, they leave red marks where they press hard against her skin, and it's only by luck she doesn't gouge herself with her own fingernails.]

I wish I had Avatar. I wish I had Avatar. Because even if the real Yoosung isn't here, I could at least pop out a clone that looks just like her, and you could have the absolute pleasure of looking into those big, wide, trusting eyes your incarnation has, and telling her, "I died to keep a secret of yours!"

I've told you before to leave her out of this.

[ The surge of paternal (?) protectiveness still surprises him. It's been stronger since he's been here - he supposes it's because absence makes the heart grow fonder or something trite like that.

But he still glares at Suyeong nonetheless. ]

You can have whatever umbrage you want but don't bring them into this.

Edited 2025-07-25 03:12 (UTC)

[Every time he actually gets angry, instead of hangdog glum or passive-aggressive, she's surprised. The slight flicker in her expression is entirely due to that. Not regret or contrition, that's for sure.]

You brought her into it. You brought everyone into it when you said that keeping their secrets was more important than your life. Yeah, that's me, and Junghyeok, but it's also the people who aren't here.

[She's not any less angry, and that's obvious: it shows in her eyes and the tension of her muscles. But she is getting calmer. That might be a very bad sign... for him, anyway. For her, less so, because there's another way this conversation could have gone, and another path her emotions could have taken. Because it keeps bringing to mind the final moments of the 1865th, and how terribly and helplessly she'd cried then.]

I know how you are, you've pulled this on me -- you decide what's best for everyone, set it up, and then shrug helplessly when it all comes to pass. Let your friends stab you! Let the people who care about you watch you die! Because conveniently, every time you die you're never there to deal with the consequences of your behavior. This is just that again. You want to decide your life is less important than our secrets? Fine, but I'm not letting you escape from the fact that not one single person you're making that decision for feels the same way. Maybe you can look me straight in the face and tell me keeping my so-called secrets are more important to you than I am --

--because after all, what am I to you--

[What he will do isn't what he has done. Isn't that something both Dokja and Junghyeok struggled with, in their time? The people who betrayed in one regression are treated as betrayers in the next from the start. The people who showed a cruel and unkind face on the page are assumed to be that way through and through. This Dokja isn't the one who'd promised to read her next book. It's so easy to forget that.]

--but I'm not letting you get away with it on behalf of everyone else.

I don't understand why a death matters so much to you all!

[ When she puts it like that the guilt that never seemed to affect him before gets worse; his heart sits heavy thinking of Yoosung and Gilyoung waiting for him to come back. He knows his trip outside the story zone is not going to be a short one. It could be literal years before he comes back.

That guilt pushes him towards anger, though, and he pulls his hands out, opening them to the sky in a pleading gesture. ]

I'm just a simple reader - I'm no one important.

[ No one has ever cared for me before, so I shouldn't expect anyone to. ]

My only worth is in keeping the constellations entertained so I can finish this story.

[ So I can protect everyone, even at the cost of my own life. ]

I was the only reader - so I - everything that's happened, I have to pay Junghyeok back.

[ Because I kept reading the story, so the story continued being written. ]

Edited 2025-07-27 06:35 (UTC)

[If not for how serious the situation is, her flailing would be hysterical, as she first throws up her hands, then midway through that points at him, then flicks her fingers back and forth, before finally just throwing her arms out to her side. And then up, and then down, so she can start counting on her fingers now that she can actually form words.]

One against the lesser fire dragon. One against the Disaster of Floods. One against Nirvana. The, uh, incident. [Time and experience have made that particular problem extremely embarrassing.] I can give you a pass on that one because it wasn't your plan. And then the Demon King thing. Am I missing any?

[The depressing part is that she probably is, and so she turns her glare back on him before he can comment.]

A death, huh? I said it once and I'll say it again, you've made dying into your version of regressing, and it's twisting your mind same as regressing did to Junghyeok. It's not a last-case everything-doomed only-choice option any more, it's practically your Stigma at this point.

[Not Sacrificial Will, of course, but just... Dropping Dead to Solve Problems.]

And the proof is that you thought it was appropriate to do rather than tell someone's secret even though you absolutely know that someone would want you to tell it instead of die.

[The worst part.. ]

[...the absolute worst part of his attitude is knowing that it never changes. Not through a hundred scenarios. Not through everything they'd been through. At the end of it all, he'll view himself the same -- and would even if he had heard Huiwon declare, with the full will of her being and absolute certainty, "That man is the world I want to save."]

[That more than anything has her sticking one finger right into his chest.]

You don't decide what other people think you're worth. You can't get that power no matter what you do, it's not yours.

[ The odd thing is -

When she says it's like Junghyeok and regressing, some of the anger drains out. His initial instinct is to deny that, that he's only doing what's necessary to save everyone, that he'd rather only gamble with his own life - but in a sense she's right.

He can't control how much other people think he's worth - whether that's less than or more than. Instead, after her poke, she might notice he's begun to tremble slightly. ]

And what am I supposed to do? Ask the others to take gambles on their lives instead of letting me take responsibility?

[ that's terrifying. if he fucks up and dies, it's on him. if he fucks up and kills someone else, it will break him. ]

People have discarded me for years, Suyeong. It's not easy to believe when people choose me over someone else.

[ When Gilyoung chose him over Junghyeok. When Yoosung chose to entrust her soul to him.

What he won't say is that he's afraid. ]

[Talk about a relief. That whole death=regression argument was her best one, and what she'd been trying to guide the conversation towards when she arrived. Now she'd delivered it without the setup she'd considered important, and without the clever turn of words where she'd say something like, "You had a good insight. Things won't get better just because someone keeps dying over and over again. Oops, I mean regressing." But it still seems to have hit the mark.]

[And now...]

[There's a moment in writing -- for those authors who happen to be incredible beautiful geniuses committed to letting the story play out as it will rather than forcing it into some narrow pre-planned mold that strangles it rather than strengthen it -- when things fall out just perfectly, and the next words on the page write themselves. The story finds its path and walks it, and the author can't turn away from the next step, it just isn't possible. Not that they would want to, because that moment of perfect clarity is practically religious; a moment of revelation, epiphany, ecstasy.]

[She snaps one arm out at him, but rather than a poke or prod, she's only pointing. And instead of vehemence, the silent moment that follows is almost triumphant.]

What you are supposed to do, Kim Dokja, is let us make our own choices.

[Now her finger crosses the rest of the gap, but if this is a poke, it's the lightest one imaginable, as it comes to rest on his chest, just above his heart.]

You know I'm the only one you have to worry about lying to you or manipulating you, right? The rest of them, they're all way too pure. Sangah, Hyunsung, the kids, they're all straightforward and honest. Huiwon's basically your knight. And Junghyeok's too proud and stubborn... the closest that man came to developing a secret plan you wouldn't approve of was just to save your stupid life. If any of them tell you something, you can believe it, and you probably should because after everything they've done, you know they deserve it.

[This is her fate now. She's being honest about how she can lie and manipulate him, so she can lie and manipulate him, by telling him the complete and total truth. It's too much, but she can't stop now.]

As for me? Yeah, you shouldn't trust me based on my nature. I'm the villain, remember? So I'm gonna play another card, and let you decide what you think, after I rallied everyone to attack you. Try and get a good picture in your mind of what my eyes looked like when I was doing that, okay? A nice mental picture will help you decide!

[Breaking eye contact with him is unfairly easy, because she's short and can just stop looking up. A couple 'attaboy' smacks on the shoulder help her quell the intensity of her thoughts and blunt the sharpness of her feelings, as she steps back and lets him work on all that without her being right up in his personal space.]

[13 years. 3,149 chapters.]

[You idiot. Someone had been there for you, putting you first, for all that time.]

[You have no idea how much you matter.]

[ Kim Dokja is not a writer. He practices what he wants to say in his head, rehearses his karaoke songs before he ever attempts them in public; stumbles and loses his head when he's backed into a corner.

He has no poetic words for what happens as he listens to Suyeong. Instead it's like something in him... unfurls, for a lack of a better word. A small child curled up in his chest, shutting the world out so that no one can hurt him, no one can abandon him, if they were never close to him to begin with.

The child doesn't exactly change his mind. But he finally peeks one eye open over the edge of the books held tightly to his chest.

Dokja feels some kind of weight he wasn't aware he was carrying get lighter, just a little bit. His shoulders slump a little more as Suyeong speaks to him - and even as she professes that she's the villain, that she'll lie, he watches her carefully.

It's a look that she might not see often on Dokja - but it's one she has seen before, grateful and tired after listening to her. Usually, she shoves lemon candy into his mouth by now. ]

Suyeong...

[ Her name says what he can't yet, not quite. Thank you seems too small for what it is. His gazes flicks away to the side for a moment, before it returns to her, sad and calculating both. ]

You're not the Suyeong from after the 10th scenario, are you.

[ It's soft, not accusatory at all - just a statement of fact he's suspected for a long time now. ]

Edited (missed word, repeated action) 2025-07-30 11:00 (UTC)

[Now there's a habit she'd been holding back on. The time blurs together in her mind, in no small part because Avatar has chipped away at the more trivial parts -- so she can't remember just when or where she started harassing him with her favorite sweet.]

[But hey, maybe now she can start again.]

[She saw this coming. From the start she knew she wouldn't be able to fake being her old self perfectly. Too long ago, too many lost memories, too many gained memories thanks to the 1863rd. Hell, the damn Oracle on the phones kept pinning her actual age, which wasn't exactly great for the deceit! Plus all this--]

[--let's call it an aggressive attempt to moderate his ways, because calling it caring would be awkward for all concerned--]

[--is a bit too intense for the her she tried to portray herself as.]

[But the way he phrases it demands, indeed invokes, an immediate response. She props her hands on her hips, smirking up at him.]

Of course I am!

[But she can only hold that for a second and a half, give or take, before her shoulders drop a little and her smirk turns sheepish.]

Just maybe also a little more than that.

[ He chuckles quietly, looking down at his feet. There's so many things he wants to ask; how long it took him to come back, which scenario she's on, if she's at The End. Matters big and small both.

He suspects if he wheedled enough she'd tell him, but -

If he knows the ending, will it change?

He's always believed the first time you read a story you shouldn't look ahead. The temptation is there, but ultimately he manages to ignore it. ]

You know me a little too well for Suyeong at the 10th.

[ He admits the biggest thing he noticed. ]

Still as much of a pain as ever, though.

Edited 2025-07-30 13:50 (UTC)

[If he wheedled enough... ]

[She wouldn't tell him, because she can't. It just doesn't work. You can't skip ahead a couple of chapters and possibly understand the context. Maybe drips and drabs here. "You manipulated Anna Croft in an auction and got sent to hell for it, as per your intent." "Uriel fought Uriel, it was epic." Stuff like that.]

[But the big stuff? "You and Junghyeok failed so badly at communicating I died." "I told you how to solve a scenario by marrying me but you refused because you cared about me too much." "We bankrupted Mass Production Maker." It'd take so long to explain all those that living them would be faster! It's not that she wants to hide the future, to keep secrets -- it's that telling them would make things worse, at best.]

[But his reaction is nothing less than intense relief. If he's angry, or upset, he's at least choosing to hide it, and moreover, hide it behind a little bit of fondness. So she relaxes a little, half-turning so she can bump her elbow into his stomach.]

You're wrong there. I'm way more of a pain now. All you've done is take my shackles off.

You think I'll listen to you just because you're from a later part of the story?

[ He's teasing, and he suspects she knows that. Still, he can't help but push back against her. Especially when she bumps her elbow into his stomach, and he rubs it theatrically like she's hurt him. ]

Suyeong is Suyeong, no matter how where you're from.

[ And just to be obnoxious, he reaches up and flicks her forehead. ]

But I suppose I'll actually need to worry when you get your abilities back.

Wanna die?!

[She smacks at his hand, for a brief moment feeling nothing but the reactive vitriol that boils up instinctively whenever he pulls a stunt like that. The white-hot relief that floods in a moment later is embarrassing, though, which is why she flails a bit longer than strictly necessary.]

It's not like being farther than I said is much of a difference here. I don't need to tell you this never happened as far as I know. You definitely never said anything about it later.

[That, of course, is telling him a few things -- that eventually he gets back into the scenarios, and their paths cross once more. But she assumes those things are so obvious they're giving nothing away.]

[ Those things she tells him were what he was striving to do anyways, so he doesn't consider them a big surprise. Still, her words do make him sober a little bit, raising a hand to touch his chin thoughtfully. ]

It'd be one thing if only I potentially remembered and never mentioned it. But if you haven't either, or Junghyeok... then this place really does exist out of sight of the Star Stream to some degree.

[ His knowledge should include the Outer Gods, but not what they are - the failed timelines all seeking the Oldest Dream. There's still a chance this is some strange timeline cooked up by the Oldest Dream himself.

Dokja doesn't know that, though. ]

And whether it happened or not, the crux of the issue seems to be that returning makes you forget it happened at all.

I think we know too much to say that's actually true.

[She knows a thing or two about forgetting things, after all! Not just from Avatar, but Kaizenix -- why does everything revolve around Kaizenix!? -- and the complete subsumption of her personality beneath Yuri di Aristel. What was that if not forgetting? But she and the others had all come out of it, reminded eventually.]

[A moment's thought is all she needs to come up with an answer.]

It's more likely something stupid is happening with worldlines. If we got dropped back into our worldline, we'd remember, but no other worldline's us would because they hadn't been through it. So if someone shows up here saying that their friend here never remembered this place, them being from different worldlines is probably to blame.

[It isn't the cleanest answer, because she knows full well that the two of them, and maybe the others who weren't characters, are unique as far as the Star Stream goes. But it's still the most logical answer, especially if they assume they're in a different story altogether -- a different system, with different rules, maybe. One in which they are characters, as far as this world is concerned, and might iterate throughout any number of repetitions. How would that affect going back home? A worldline where only they knew, and countless who didn't?]

[Stupid system. Stupid book. Stupid lack of cause and effect. This is way too much.]

Just forget it! Don't worry about that now! It doesn't matter to us right at this moment!

[ He's already falling deep into contemplative thought, mumbling to himself about worldlines, when she tells him to forget it. He startles a little bit, shaking his head, and frowns at her. ]

You can't tell me not to consider something that vast and unexplained ...!

[ He does, obligingly, drop it for now. ]

That does explain why it's harder to get a read on Junghyeok, however. I thought just knowing how the story went would allow me to adjust how I handle him, but I've already influenced him more than I thought.

[ Just the Demon King scenario alone.... ]

Yeah. I don't have a handle on how much he knows.

[About the novel? Yes. About the 1863rd? She has to figure he'd act differently around her than he currently is. Angrier, maybe, if nothing else.]

There's definitely been a lot more than you know. Maybe admit that to him. I think he'd like to at least hear that you understand that you DON'T understand a lot of things. Even if he doesn't admit it, of course.

[That sentence needs to be added to literally every discussion about that man. Groaning, she slaps her face with both hands twice, lightly, like she's trying to knock herself back on track.]

[And then prods him again.]

I'm gonna give you a special forbidden taste of a little actual honesty as repayment for the lying and deceiving you. You guys being at odds is absolutely killing me. If you won't do more to fix things for your own sake, then consider me a little!

[ Dokja makes a face like he's tasted something particularly sour - or tomatoes. He doesn't like admitting when he's not sure of something, and only readily does so with Suyeong. He knows she's right, though, and heaves a sigh. ]

I'll think about it.

[ Which is as good as a promise that he will do it, honestly. ]

Killing you? Aren't you the one always insisting you don't care what we do?

[ The lilt of his lips indicates he knows she does care. ]

INBOX (labyrinthum)

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cw: self harm, not dokja

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wrap soon? they're probably jus gonna banter from here

As they do! o7