Chapter Text
i. drifter
Waking up, the first thing that greets Dohyeon is the light. He closes his eyes, but the subdued apricot haze still seeps through his lids. The soft rumpled sheets against the brush of his hands, inviting him to stay a little bit longer. The spread of his arms felt unusually wider, like there’s a space he didn’t account for.
When he opens his eyes again, the curtain is not navy blue. The twin bed that should be opposite his in the room is gone. Propping up on his elbows, he frowns at how much bigger in size the mattress he’s lying down is. The ceiling above and the walls are not the ones he stared at every waking midday.
He isn’t sure if he owned the pair of glasses within his reach but he tests it out of necessity.
The clock at the bedside table reads 7am. And he has no reason to be awake this early when the last thing he remembers is ending solo queue practice at 5am.
Everything looks lived in—the clutter in the desk, the slightly gaping closet door that revealed haphazardly hanging clothes as though someone scoured through them and left in a rush, the shelf that's packed row after row of books—but not his lived in.
He follows the hushed tunes playing outside, the muffled noise of cutlery telling him someone has to be outside eating right now.
“Good morning,” greets Wangho. Seeing his roommate, he breathes in a fleeting sense of relief, only to be immediately clouded by the feeling that things aren't where they should be.
“Why are we here?” asks Dohyeon.
“Where else would we be?” He reacts like nothing's out of place. He’s just here, like any other day, having breakfast?
“Uh, the dorms?”
Maybe they’re on an impromptu vacation. Unlikely, because the new season just started and they have games to play, games to win. Maybe their dorms are getting renovated so they had to stay at a nearby house, or apartment, or whatever. Why the manager didn’t inform him, or how he doesn’t remember, Dohyeon doesn’t know. Maybe the layout of the dorms just magically changed overnight. How would that explain the one bed?
“This is the dorm, if you can even call it that.” Wangho answers like Dohyeon’s not making any sense. He’s not making any sense.
Dohyeon exhales, not really getting Wangho’s jokes, if he even is joking. He’s just eating. Like normal. A little bit in a rush that he doesn’t give full attention to Dohyeon, and he honestly can’t get any weirder now.
Before Dohyeon can say something, Wangho warns, “Get ready if you want me to drop you off. I can’t be late because of you.”
“Late for what?”
“Work, Dohyeon, keep up.” Now, this is going too far.
“Isn’t it too early, though?”
“It’s past 7am.” Wangho gives him full attention now and points at a clock on the wall, then at him. “Did you somehow drink last night without me?”
“How can I drink when we were practicing until 5am?”
“Practicing? You call that practicing?” Like he just said the most absurd thing ever, “We were probably done by 10 or 11pm, 5am is quite an exaggeration.”
Now that is absurd, he is usually solo queueing around that time after he’s done working out at the gym. Why is Wangho confusing their schedules? What else would they be doing that would be finished by 10 or 11pm?
“I don’t know why we're here, hyung, but I’m going back to sleep.” He says mostly in defiance, when he didn’t even feel sleepy despite the maximum two hours of rest, according to his calculation, that is, if he doesn’t count the usual late conversations with his roommate before they go to bed–separate beds, by the way. Strange. “Practice doesn’t start until 2pm.”
“You and your practice. Practice commuting or walking to work on your own because I can’t with whatever joke you’re pulling right now. I’m done here anyway,” Wangho gets up and takes his dishes to the sink. “Help yourself.”
“But—”
“I’ll pick you up later after work.” He puts a hand on Dohyeon's shoulder and carefully trails it down his arm, and the younger shivers at the unfamiliar tenderness.
It’s as jarring as Wangho taking one of the two helmets on a stand near the door and a set of keys clanking loudly on his way out. In their player contracts, they are not allowed to ride bikes or scooters, alongside a bunch of other physical activities that can potentially risk wrist injuries. Why would Wangho need a helmet and keys, as if they are his necessities before going out, Dohyeon can't figure out. Did Hanhwa get him something? Why would he be exempted to that rule?
Something is definitely wrong.
As soon as the door closes behind Wangho, the first thing Dohyeon looks for is a computer. He gets back to the bedroom where he'd woken up from, and finds a laptop and a phone that sits next to it on the desk. Naver… he quickly searches LCK and he sighs in relief as he sees that HLE's games are still just as scheduled. Esports is a real thing, then, that's for sure. But that relief fades as he stares at the search bar and something unsettling stalls in the back of his mind.
He searches 바이퍼. A car company, a dictionary entry for snake, a fitness equipment, a page related to MapleStory, and a mixed martial arts fighter came up. But none of the results show him. He searches Viper, and his NamuWiki page doesn't exist.
Park "Viper" Dohyeon is not a League of Legends Esports professional player, and he did not debut in November 20, 2017. He did not become a World Champion his first year in the LPL with Edward Gaming in 2021, and he is not the current AD Carry for Hanhwa Life Esports.
Who the hell is he?
*
There must be glitches in the website. Maybe he's searching the wrong characters, the wrong letters. Maybe the governing body of the sport is doing a little prank on him, maybe Riot Games is throwing a special party he's not happy to be invited to, maybe his organization is behind all of this, maybe, maybe.
He has never imagined a world where he doesn't exist just as who he is. Much of his life he spent taking the world as it is, as he knows it. Now, the world is telling him it may not be what he thinks it is. Well, fuck you, Park Dohyeon. You are nothing, the world says.
Dohyeon lays out all the possibilities. This is a different world he woke up in and he just left his esports player life behind. This is the reality and the other was a past life, maybe a dream, maybe a fantasy, maybe a hallucination. This is a nightmare and the other life is just waiting for him, maybe he'll wake up soon and everything will be fine. This is the life he has to live now, and the other life was…
Alternate realities, parallel universes, multiple timelines, quantum fucking whatever. Is he being punished?
He quickly searches for other articles. Han "Peanut" Wangho is his only clue right now, did he come to this world with him or is he not the Wangho he knows? Apparently, he's not a professional player here either, wherever here is. All current LCK rosters are the same, except HLE has a different jungler, ADC, and support. He did not win the 2024 Summer Split with them, he did not lift the trophy with his teammates. He did not renew the contract for the following year. He is not one of them.
Dohyeon startles as the phone rings. 7:32am, it reads. Time is still a thing, he guesses.
It's Wangho on the other end of the line and he says, “Hwanjoong messaged me. Are you still not at work?” Hwanjoong.
There's a lump in his throat, and solid clumps of heat are making backflips inside his stomach, threatening to escape through his esophagus. “I’m still home." Is here home? "I don’t really know how to get to work.” What is work here?
“Do you need me to come back?” As opposed to Wangho's tone during breakfast, worry is now evident in his voice. He's Wangho. He sounds like Wangho. But not Wangho.
“Will you?” His hands are sweaty. He hates that he can feel his body, like it is a body, a vessel, all bones and skin and muscles and veins, and everything is real.
“I can just wait for Jongin hyung to come in and I’ll come back for you.” Why does he sound like that? Has Wangho ever sounded that affectionate with him? He is not Wangho. Maybe, he is not Dohyeon. “I’m sorry I was in a hurry earlier, I told you yesterday about this client I’m meeting today.”
Client. He has clients. Hell, what else does he have?
“Wait. If that meeting is important, can you just tell me how to get there?” He blinks. "I mean, work."
There's a pause. Quite a long pause. And Dohyeon's sure there's a question he's asking, you really don’t know? It remains unasked, though. “It’s a fifteen-minute walk from home." Home, it is home, Dohyeon repeats until it's real. "Find your ID, the name of the high school is there. You know how to use GPS and maps app in your phone, right?”
He probably thinks Dohyeon is spiraling. Or he just got amnesia. Is memory a thing? Maybe he should go get checked. “Hmm.”
“Dohyeon-ah, will you be okay?” That tone is starting to piss off Dohyeon as much as it is making his heart accelerate to a thousand beats per minute, if that even is a fucking thing. Is a thing a thing?
“Yes.”
“We’ll talk later.” Wangho clears his throat and mutters, “Love you.”
Someone should point a gun at Dohyeon's skull and shoot him right this moment.
*
“Something is going on with Dohyeon,” is what Wangho tells Jongin the minute the door chime signals him making an entrance to the store.
He marches towards where Wangho stands and says, “What ever happened to good morning?"
“He was talking about practice, and breakfast at 7am being too early. Heck, he woke up late today. That man is never late.”
“Practice?” He sips from his coffee and places the cup on top of the counter.
“Yeah. Said we were doing it until 5am?”
“Odd word choice for sex.” Wangho gives him a deadpan stare but he continues, “Maybe it’s a new kink?”
“It's too specific. There's a schedule.” He taps his fingers on the folder he's holding, then scratches his nose. “And he suddenly doesn’t know how to get to work. And I left him because I had to hurry for our meeting with Mr. Lim. I feel like an asshole.”
“How would he not know how to get to work?” Any other day, Wangho would find the look on Jongin's face funny, but the present subject matter makes it hard for him to.
"Tell me about it."
Wangho sighs after a moment, and Jongin responds with a sympathetic look, “I know a doctor he can see. You never know if these things are serious or not.” Great, he'll now think about this the whole day until he can wrap Dohyeon's waist around his arms when he gets home. "But for now, Mr. Lim. Meeting. Designs. Let's do this first, okay?"
He nods. He tries to brush off the fact that the last two words he said to Dohyeon during their call went unanswered. It's probably nothing.
Right?
*
His ID reads Park Dohyeon. He teaches English. His superior asked him if he has finalized his students' grades and report cards for their graduation. He needs to write recommendation letters for the seniors. He has to do a motivational speech for the 2nd years who will take their CSAT next academic year. He wishes there's a manual for how to do all that, because for fuck's sake, he is a known high school dropout who pursued a career in playing video games.
Hwanjoong teaches Science. Of course, he does. A dropout from Mokpo Central High School's Shipbuilding Industry Department. One of the best supports in the league. His support.
And, by the way, just like that, his X billion won annual salary is gone. Probably should be the least of his worries but holy fuck.