Chapter Text
Friendships don't have business hours. 'But maybe they should' thought Kim Dokja.
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"No" Kim Dokja said immediately upon opening his front door to one very wet and very disgruntled looking Han Sooyoung.
"Don't be a bitch about this" the woman said, baring her pointy teeth at him in a snarl.
It was obvious that she was in a bad mood, but Kim Dokja still thought she had no right to be this rude to him. Not after spending a good five minutes banging on his front door like a lunatic. At three in the morning at that.
"Three in the morning" he repeated out loud, to make sure they were on the same page here. "You do realize that I have neighbours? What if they called the police with a noise complaint?"
Han Sooyoung merely continued to glower at him, not looking apologetic in the slightest. Not for possibly besmirching his squeaky clean public record and definitely not for robbing him of what little sleep he got in the first place. People tended to ask him why he always looked tired. Well, this was why. This woman was to blame.
"Just let me in" said woman demanded, crossing her arms in front of her chest and hunching her shoulders defensively. Maybe she was trying to hide the shivers that wracked her body whenever a gust of wind blew through the corridor. If so, she was not doing a good job at it.
Kim Dokja gave her a once over. Slow and deliberate, so she would know he was judging her right now. Her clothes were drenched, water still dripping from the tips of her hair and hitting the ground with a rhythmic tap-ta-tap. There was a literal puddle forming around her feet.
‘She looks like a drowned cat’ Kim Dokja thought, feeling a twinge of sympathy before aggressively shoving the emotion to the back of his mind. He reminded himself that it was three in the fucking morning and that the person in front of him was not someone pitiful, but Han Sooyoung. ‘Whatever the reason for her current state, she likely deserves it.’
But alas, he had never been great at controlling his emotions the normal way and so the unwarranted sympathy remained right were it was. In the back of his mind, where it gnawed at his conscience like some parasite that was trying to eat away his better judgement.
"It's not even raining" he pointed out, trying to stall for time while he tried to mentally pep-talk himself into closing the door into the woman's face.
Surely, not having to look at the utterly pathetic picture she was striking would alleviate his guilt. Though, he wasn't sure if it would be worth her ire. Not when there was the very real possibility of her knocking down his door in revenge - both metaphorically and literally that was.
"Congratulations, you can tell the fucking weather" Han Sooyoung answered.
And then, because she had neither patience nor a sense of propriety, she shouldered her way past him. Entering his apartment without waiting for an invite.
"Alright" Kim Dokja said. He was still staring at the puddle in front of his door, doing his best to ignore the disgusting squelching sounds her sneakers made with every step she took down his corridor. “Welcome. I guess.”
Sighing in defeat he closed the door again, his eyes drifting to the wet shoe prints that now decorated his parquet floor.
‘At least I don't have a carpet anymore. he mused, before forcefully shoving that thought away as well.
He did not need to remember why exactly he had lost that one.
That time too, Han Sooyoung had been standing in front of his door at an ungodly hour, dripping with something a lot less innocuous than water.
"Hey where are your towels?!" Han Sooyoung's obnoxiously loud voice rang out from the direction of his bedroom and Kim Dokja heard the unmistakable sound of his drawers being opened and closed with a vengeance. For a moment he wondered if the woman even understood what "being considerate" meant. He knew she had used the term in one of her novels before, so she should at least comprehend the concept, no?
“Eww that one is full of your underwear” her loud complaint sounded through the hall. Kim Dokja decided right in that moment that – Nope. She likely just googled around for pretty words and inserted them into her stories without actually understanding their meaning.
He closed his front door and made his way towards his bathroom, where pulled out a clean towel from the cupboard under his sink. In his bedroom he found Han Sooyoung, now forming another puddle in front of his bed as she unabashedly violated the privacy of his wardrobe.
"Here" he said, throwing the fluffy white towel at her head. To his disappointment Han Sooyoung turned around in a flash, catching the towel easily before it could hit her in the face. She gave it a critical look.
"Is it used?" she asked as if she actually had the right to be picky.
"It's fresh." Kim Dokja answered, raising one of his eyebrows. "Why? Are you scared of catching my cooties?"
"More like, I don't want your STDs" Han Sooyoung replied without missing a beat.
"That's rich coming from you. Aren’t you the one that usually tells me I'm not getting laid enough?"
"One thing doesn't negate the other. If you’d paid attention in sex-ed you’d know that" Han Sooyoung replied haughtily. She grabbed the hem of her giant sweater and pulled it over her head.
It hit the ground with a wet slap.
"If you are going to strip, do it in the bathroom please. I already have enough mental trauma as it is. I don’t need to add a new one to the list" Kim Dokja asked like any reasonable person would. "And also clean up after yourself, I don't want the floor to end up with water damage."
"Your floor isn't even real wood" the woman replied with a huff, but picked up her sweater anyway.
"And FYI, my body is fantastic and you should feel honoured. It's the most action you get anyway."
"Ah back to the old shtick, I see" Kim Dokja nodded. "And here I tough I had STDs?"
"Yeah, as in Severe -" there was a brief pause in which she must have chosen to simply spew out the first thing that came to mind.
"-Turd. Disease."
Kim Dokja stared at her. Han Sooyoung stared back.
There was a glint in her eyes, daring him to comment on what had just come out of her mouth. Kim Dokja couldn't stop the smirk forming on his face. He was never one to back down from a challenge. Well, at least not when it involved making fun of one Han Sooyoung. Otherwise he backed down from pretty much every challenge thrown his way.
"Wow" he said. "That was astonishingly lame. I'm kinda impressed actually."
"Shut up."
"I mean, was that even an insult? I can't tell because I don't speak toddler."
"I said shut up."
"And where is your pride as an author? Couldn't you have come up with something a little more sophisticated at least? Like Twat or Troglodyte? That's a fancy word isn't it? Come on, say it with me: Trog – Lo – Dyte."
"I said to shut your ugly squid mouth!" Han Sooyoung shouted. She looked even more like an angry cat than she had before. With a hiss she threw her wet sweater at him, only to glare when Kim Dokja – in a rare and unexpected show of quick reflexes – managed to snatch it out of the air before it could slap him in the face.
He chuckled a little, holding the wet piece of fabric away from himself and out of the woman's reach. Just in case she decided to make a second go for it.
"Now, don't throw a tantrum - " he started, fully intending on mocking her a little more. He was still bitter about being woken up this early in the morning.
His next words got stuck in his throat however, when his eyes landed landed on Han Sooyoung again. He blinked in surprise when he suddenly realized – for the first time that evening – how sorry her current state really was.
He had originality thought she’d had a tiny mishap with a nearby pond. Or maybe another broken fire hydrant. But the picture that now presented itself to him was a vastly different from his initial expectations.
Without her sweater and dressed in only a dark tank-top, Han Sooyoung's arms were on full display. And so were the numerous injuries that littered her skin.
Now that they weren't hidden by her oversized sweater, his eyes traced over familiar scars - each of them a story if its own - before coming to rest on her biceps.
There, the clear beginning of a massive bruise could be seen peeking out from under her tank-top. It started below the fabric, sneaking its way over her collarbone and up her left shoulder. Along her arms, smaller but equally fresh bruises and cuts were littering her skin. Many of the bruises were still faint, barely visible in the shoddy lightening of his apartment. But Kim Dokja knew, without a doubt, that come morning their faint reddish hues would have transformed into much darker tones of blue and purple.
"Hey" he said, smirk now fully wiped away and replaced by a worried frown "I know I'll regret asking this, but what exactly happened to you?"
Han Sooyoung shrugged – only with her right shoulder he noted – and rolled her eyes as if his question was a nuisance to her.
"Just some assholes that wanted to pick a fight with me for absolutely no reason."
Kim Dokja highly doubted the accuracy of this statement.
"Sounds unlikely" he pointed out. "Most people that pick a fight with you actually have pretty good reasons for doing so."
"Ugh, like I said it was pointless. Some pig wanted to challenge me for territory, so I gave him a smack-down. But because the guy didn't even have the decency to go down quietly some nearby guard dogs got alerted and decided to come sniffing."
"So which one tried to drown you? The pig or the dogs?"
"Neither" Han Sooyoung admitted and to his horror Kim Dokja could make out a small blush on her face. "I tried to escape by climbing on one of the cranes by the Han River. The really tall one right next to the bridge."
Kim Dokja's eyes widened "Don't tell me you -"
"I didn't jump." Han Sooyoung clarified before he could even finish his question "Unlike certain people, I am not a suicidal idiot. I was just trying to get onto the bridge. Would have made it too, if not for your favourite asshole deciding to show up and ruin the party for everyone. Tipped the crane over like the lunatic he is and I was thrown into the water."
He gracefully decided to ignore the obvious insult against his person and instead addressed the more pressing matter.
"Are you saying The Regressor showed up?"
"Who else could I mean? After all you fanboy about him all the damn time. Plus, he's the only one crazy enough to down an entire fucking crane without thinking of the consequences first."
Kim Dokja had to admit that was a fair assessment. On both accounts.
The Regressor was an infamous vigilante that had been active around the city for nearly a decade. With a powerful ability, impressive hand to hand combat skills and generally overpowered stats, the man was know as one of the strongest individuals in Seoul, if not the whole of Korea.
What made the Regressor truly dangerous however, wasn't so much what was known about him, rather than what remained unknown. Because – despite close to ten years of activity and countless records of him using it in battle - the exact nature of his ability still remained a mystery to the general public.
Not even Kim Dokja was certain about its specifics. And he actually prided himself of being rather talented at identifying the exact ways in which a given ability worked. He had theories of course, countless of them in fact, but the evidence behind them remained weak and none of them struck him as the right one.
Not that he truly minded. After all it had been this exact sense of mystery that had first drawn him to the Regressor.
Well, that and his general appearance. The Regressor was a perfect example of the trope "dark, silent stranger". Or maybe even "the saviour", who came to save the day whenever the heroes couldn’t.
Tall, mysterious and dominating every fight The man was the embodiment of what a younger Kim Dokja had thought of as ‘cool’.
Adding to this was the fact that the man was not an official hero, but a vigilante. The stereotypical anti-hero. Like someone had taken a look at the protagonist of a popular comic book and decided to build a real person out of it.
He was even know for carrying around an honest-to-god sword with him for crying out loud!
No wonder that Teenage Kim Dokja had been certain the man had to be the Coolest Thing Ever™.
Adult Kim Dokja still thought he was cool, but knew better than to admit it.
After all, even he had to admit that the man's apparel was a little, well, Chuuni, and that the Regressor had a tendency to act a little impulsive at times. Also, to quote Han Sooyoung – Who even uses swords in this time and age when there are perfectly acceptable semi-automatic guns available on the black market?
Personally, Kim Dokja rather liked the sword aesthetic, but that might have been because the mere concept of a gun wielding Regressor was a bit unsettling. As fascinating as the Regressor was, he wasn't exactly known for being a sensible human being.
Which, kind of brought him back to the problem at hand.
"If you fought the Regressor this could have gone a whole lot worse" he said. "You are lucky to have landed in the Han River. Not that a fall from such a height wasn't still dangerous. Do you think anything is broken?"
"Nah." Han Sooyoung shrugged again, only to flinch when she forgot not to use her right shoulder. She really needed to stop doing that, but apparently old habits cared little about newly acquired injuries.
"Though it still hurts like a bitch. I dislocated my shoulder when I fell. Had to pop it back in."
Kim Dokja winced at the image, knowing full well how painful a dislocated shoulder could be. Having to pop it back in while trying to stay afloat in the middle of the Han river in the dark must have been a real pain.
"Alright" he said after a moment of contemplation. "Considering the circumstances I forgive you for waking me up in the middle of the night -"
"I neither want nor need your forgiveness."
"- and will allow you to sleep in my bed for the night, while I take the couch in the other room."
"Gee thanks. How gracious of you." Han Sooyoung did not sound thankful in the slightest but Kim Dokja decided to ignore her rudeness yet again. It wasn't like she could help it. She was just born like that.
"Now go and take a warm shower before you catch a cold on top of everything. I'll leave fresh clothes on the bed for you and some painkillers on the night-stand."
"Thanks" she repeated, already making her way past him and into the bathroom.
This time it nearly sounded sincere.
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In the end, Kim Dokja barely managed to get three additional hours of sleep before being awoken for the second time. This time by the sound of his phone's alarm going off next his ear.
A look at his calendar revealed it was 7 o'clock on a Friday, which meant he only had one more day to go before the weekend. However, it also that he had to get up right now if he still wanted to make it to work on time and that really kind of sucked.
Kim Dokja had no delusions about his work ethos – the truth was, he had none – but even he tried to fulfil at least the absolute minimum requirements set by his company. Such as showing up to work, being fully dressed and pretending to work while at the office.
With a groan he forced himself up from the sofa he had spent his night on. Squinting his eyes against the light that shone in through his living room window he staggered his way towards his bathroom.
After brushing his teeth he realized he had forgotten to bring new clothes the previous night and so had no choice but to sneak into his own bedroom.
He did his best to stay quiet while rummaging through his drawers, terrified of accidentally waking up the woman that lay sprawled across his bed. Luckily her face was turned away from him, buried into his pillow while the rest of her body was wrapped into the sheets like they were some kind of twisted tunica.
The painkillers on the night-stand were gone and judging by the loud snores coming from Han Sooyoung’s direction, she hadn't gone and died on him during the night. Which was both a good thing and surprisingly polite of her.
He wouldn't put it past her to die on his bed out of pure spite, laughing at him from the afterlife as he was forced to deal with her remains.
He could vividly imagine himself having to explain to the police why there was a female corpse on his bed.
Or worse yet, having to ask his adoptive parents for help.
Either way, Han Sooyoung would have gotten a kick out of his suffering.
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Fifteen minutes later and with his hair still damp Kim Dokja was ready to head out.
Despite the nightly interruption and the fact that it was a workday his mood hadn't gone down too much. As such, he decided to be nice for once and leave Han Sooyoung a friendly goodbye message.
'Kimbabs in fridge, Painkillers in left cupboard’ the yellow post-it note read from where he had stuck it to her forehead. He had actually lifted her head to get it there, but despite his manhandling the woman hadn't even so much as stirred from her sleep. She must have been more exhausted than she'd initially let on.
The note was simple but sweet. At least Kim Dokja thought so. After all, it was not every day that he decided to give his lunch away without asking for anything in return.
When he left his apartment, he made sure to double check that his door was closed properly. It wouldn’t do for someone to break in while he was gone. Not when there was an injured and likely prissy Han Sooyoung in the house. No one deserved that fate. Especially not some poor robber that was down on his luck and had mistakenly assumed that Kim Dokja owned anything worth stealing.
"Good morning Hyung!" A familiar voice greeted him the moment he made it to the ground floor.
Even this early in the morning, Lee Gilyoung – his neighbour’s nephew – was full of energy as he smiled up at the older man from where he crouched next to the stairs
Kim Dokja smiled back. "Good morning Lee Gilyoung. What are you doing down there?"
"Watching the ants" the young teen declared, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Judging by who was talking it might as well have been.
"That's nice" Kim Dokja said, glancing at his phone for a moment "But shouldn't you be heading to school? There is only twenty minutes left until eight."
"Yeah, I guess" Lee Gilyoung agreed, not sounding all that enthusiastic about it. He continued to look down at the ground for a little longer, his eyes following the path of one of the ants as it made its way towards Kim Dokja's feet.
When he glanced back up at him it was with questioning eyes. There was something else too, something that Kim Dokja couldn't identify but didn't like nonetheless.
"Hey Hyung, are you also taking the bus today?"
Lee Gilyoung always took the bus to school. It was, in fact, the place they had first met.
It had been winter and the boy had forgotten his ticket. Kim Dokja – who had heard his conversation with the driver and had always been weak when it came to children – had decided to buy him a new one.
He hadn’t even known that they were neighbours back then. It was only after getting out at the same bus stop and walking to the same building that either of them had realized the truth.
The entire thing hadn’t been a big deal for Kim Dokja, but for some reason the boy had decided to stick to him since that day. Calling him “Hyung” and greeting him happily whenever they saw each other on the street.
Usually that was also the only place that they met each other, because Kim Dokja took the subway to work and not the bus. The bus was merely the alternative for those days, on which the trains weren't running on schedule. Either due to maintenance or another 'accident' happening in the middle of rush-hour. The latter being a depressingly common occurrence in Seoul.
So the answer should have been no. Kim Dokja had no intention of going by bus that day.
"Yes" was came out of his mouth instead and Lee Gilyoung’s eyes lit up.
How odd, having someone react to his words in such a manner. He had never understood what the boy saw in him and some part of him dreaded the day the kid realized the truth. That Kim Dokja was, in fact, no one special. At least not special enough to warrant that kind of reaction.
"Let's go together then!" Lee Gilyoung exclaimed, getting up and immediately plastering himself to his side. “Then I can tell you all about that really cool mantis I found the other day. I named her Titano!”
"Of course." Kim Dokja said and together they made their way towards the nearby bus stop.
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