Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were thirty seconds left on the dokkaebi’s timer, red numbers counting down in the increasingly chaotic subway car. Thirty seconds until this scenario ended along with the lives of most of the people here. The screams and frantic cries behind him grew louder and louder, but Kim Dokja couldn’t afford to turn around.

All his attention was on the would-be murderer - the teenager, he was only a stupid teenager - trembling on his knees before him. Begging for mercy from the person he had just tried to kill, and who they both already knew would kill him instead. 

Thirty seconds until Kim Namwoon died due to the actions of Kim Dokja. 

“H-Help me! Please help me, I’m begging you!”

“Why should I?” Namwoon might be only a teenager, but Kim Dokja of all people could attest to the cruelty of teenagers. To how most of those same teenagers got older but never grew up, never faced consequences for their treatment of others except for the same cyclical struggle that chewed up and spat out soul after soul. How many times had he seen them transition from high school to college to the workforce, learning different methods for their cruelty but never actually changing or stopping? 

At the end of the world, should such people be spared? Should they be allowed to run wild, now provided with excuse after excuse to give into their darkest impulses? Kim Namwoon would die if Dokja did not move. Who knows how many people would die if Dokja did. 

“Well - people’s lives are important!” The high schooler argued, eyes wide and hands trembling from where he begged on his knees. His green uniform pants were turning darker by the moment, smudged with the dirt and drying blood of the subway. Soon, his own blood would join what was already pooling below. “It’s only right that you save me!”

“That’s how things were in the old world. You said so yourself - a new world needs new rules.” Tears finally spilled over desperate red eyes as the boy surged forward, not to attack but to cling to Dokja’s pants as he begged. 

Distantly, some part of him registered that he’d always assumed he’d feel… better… in this kind of situation. If he was in a position of power for once over those who had so enthusiastically abused him in high school, if he was for once not the one begging on the floor, but rather the hero standing strong-

But there were no heroes in the apocalypse. Even his beloved and beloathed protagonist couldn’t be described so simply as a ‘hero.’ There were only survivors, and those they left behind. 

And soon, it would be Namwoon that died, and Dokja that survived.

“N-No! I don’t want to die! Fuck, please, I don’t want to die!” Even as Dokja stared down at the crumpled teenager, outwardly implacable, internally his mind was churning relentlessly. 

‘Read it again,’ his mother had said. And Dokja had, with everything, but nothing so thoroughly as Three Ways to Survive. He had read TWSA again and again, from every regression and every character’s viewpoint, until Dokja knew the world of the apocalypse better than the reality genre he was stuck in. He had hated and loved each one of those characters for thirteen years, accompanied them on every step of their journey. 

So, looking down at the trembling and begging form of Kim Namwoon - how could Dokja ever let one of his precious main characters die? How could Yoo Joonghyuk ever reach a perfect happy ending if one of his companions died this early? How could Dokja kill off someone who may as well have been part of himself?

(Easily, one step after the other-)

In the end, Dokja was only a selfish reader. He didn't know most of the others in this subway car. He didn't know or care for the majority of people currently fighting and dying in the city beyond, all of them with their own stories and struggles that Dokja didn't know and never would. They had never cared for him, after all, so why should he carry the guilt of their deaths on his own? No one had ever done anything for him besides his mother, and even then- Well. Even then.

But he did know Kim Namwoon. And supporting character or not, this murderous brat had survived thirteen years with him. 

It would be too much of a shame to break that streak now, at the real start of it all. 

“Please! Help me!”

Kim Dokja dropped the half-destroyed grasshopper before Kim Namwoon, face blank and words harsh. “Crush it.”

“Damn you,” the teenager growled, even as his hand lashed out in a blaze of purple and black energy, desperate enough to try crushing even a discarded carcass. Namwoon knew it was just a taunt, just the opportunity to dangle the slightest bit of hope in front of him before he died for the bastard’s sick amusement, but if there was even the slightest chance-

"H-Huh?"