Come back, so I can tell you. (a joongdok fic)

Come back, so I can tell you.

hello orv community, I have come to bestow upon you all an angsty joongdok fanfic because I love pain and since you're here, you do too! This almost took me two weeks to write because this made me very sad and I had to revisit certain chapters to get the result I wanted.

also I may have gotten too emotional towards the end so uhhhh yeah

This is a one-shot.

Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't one to reminisce on the past.

After all, what was the point of it? What happened, happened. Things couldn't be changed no matter what, so it was pointless to waste time thinking of such things. The present is what matters, and how you should spend it. Yoo Joonghyuk thought this as he went through the scenarios, through every regression. After every loss, every defeat, every failure, Yoo Joonghyuk stood up and moved forward because that was the only thing he could do, he had to do. Otherwise, he would risk falling into bouts of insanity and finding himself in a dark place that even the brightest sun would never reach.

So, Yoo Joonghyuk tossed the memories of the past to the side, barely sparing a glance just for his survival.

Yet, why...?

「Release your hand and get lost, you damn son of a bitch.」

「I understand you better than anyone else.」

「Hey, can you finish me off? You...always wanted to kill me.」

「Yoo Joonghyuk, wake up. Don't think things will improve if you repeat them a few times.」

Why was he still remembering this?

「Yoo Joonghyuk, you stupid bastard!」

「You saved me, so I will save you.」

「It was a great story, wasn't it? Let's meet again, Yoo Joonghyuk.」

Why...

「It has always been once for me.」

「My name is Kim Dokja. Twenty-eight...No, wait. I was twenty-eight, and I was an employee of a game company. My hobby was reading webnovels...It's pathetic, right? Well, this is who I am...Yoo Joonghyuk, who are you?」

Why couldn't he stop thinking about him?

Yoo Joonghyuk couldn't understand. It had been two years already, and for someone like him, that was ample enough time to move on with his life. That guy's companions had already done so, even that woman. So, why couldn't he? Why was he stuck living in a dreary apartment, spending hours of his life mindlessly killing digital monsters while feeling this insurmountable emptiness swirl around inside him, as if it was slowly eating him alive?

He averted his still gaze towards the window, watching the streets of Seoul bustle, a full recovery of what it once was before the scenarios. He watched the people walk to and fro', the cars speeding past, and the ads on the large screens play with their obnoxious music. Slowly, his eyes began to shift toward the bottom left corner of the window, where his gaze deepened.

There was the entrance to the subway station, the name of the city plastered across the black title card.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched people leave that station.

He watched for a while, and the more he watched, the more this emptiness inside him grew. It grew, grew, and grew, to the point it threatened to swallow him up like a large vortex. Still, he did not look away once. His gaze was fixed and searching.

Searching for a certain black-haired man.

But in the end, Yoo Joonghyuk eventually looked away, a hollowness filling up the black holes in his eyes.