Random thoughts

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Kim Dokja’s phone alarm bipped shrilly.

He groaned in protest. What? No. It was Saturday. It was definitely Saturday. Why had he set his alarm? Had work stolen so much soul and joy from him that he had forgotten about the existence of weekends?

He groped for the offending noise machine and turned it off. One half of his face still buried in his pillow, he squinted at the screen.

Friday.

What?

“Oh, fuck you, you sunfish,” he said, with feeling.

Yoo Joonghyuk was back on his bullshit.

***

It was really a scam how much having a Quirk mattered in this society. Kim Dokja’s desk neighbor at Mino Soft could make colored burps. It wasn’t just useless, it was outright distasteful (just like the guy himself, come to think out of it), yet Kim Dokja was the one who got told in no uncertain terms that he was hired to fill the company’s handicap quota and he could sit on the hope of ever receiving a promotion or a raise.

He wasn’t even really Quirkless. If he had been, he wouldn’t be going through the torture of living through two Fridays in one week. But a kid telling the family doctor that time occasionally went wonky around him apparently qualified him for ADHD tests, not a referral to a Quirk specialist.

Well, he wasn’t hyperactive. If anything, he was actively underactive most days.

By 1pm, Kim Dokja had finished redoing all the work he had already gone through the previous (now nonexistent) day. He spent an hour or two reading webnovels on his phone in the break room. When he started receiving stink eyes from his colleagues, he shuffled back to his desk and started scrolling through news feeds. He didn’t remember clocking off work before he woke up in his bed, so Yoo Joonghyuk should be showing up sometimes soon.

Ah, there he was.

BREAKING NEWS Quirk-user altercation in progress in Seongbuk-du. Vigilante “Supreme King” and American Pro Hero “Las Vegas Prophet” spotted. Caution recommended if you’re in the area.

Kim Dokja’s eyebrows rose. What was an American pro hero doing in Seoul? He opened a new tab and looked up that Prophet dude. Ah, it turned out Anna Croft was more of a prophetess. Which didn’t answer his question, but he wasn’t that curious. Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t needed to turn back time more than once per fight in years. He would be done soon, and Kim Dokja could finally have his weekend--

His phone alarm bipped shrilly.

Kim Dokja jerked up in bed. The sun was just rising behind the window blinds. He scrambled for his phone, nearly sent it flying.

Friday.

Okay. Now he was mad.

***

It only took one more time loop before he broke.

“Yoo Joonghyuk is back on his bullshit,” he informed Han Sooyoung as soon as she opened her door.

She looked him up and down, unimpressed. She was wearing a ratty sweatshirt and her glasses were perched on her head, worsening the cowlicks she always got from running her hands through her hair. He had interrupted her in the middle of a writing spree, then. That was unfortunate. It always made her extra uncooperative.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” she drawled.

“This is my fourth Friday, Han Sooyoung. If I have to go through Deputy Yoon’s weekly team-building garbage again before a full week has passed, I will stab someone. It doesn’t have to be Deputy Yoon or Yoo Joonghyuk.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but opened her door wider to let him in.

“I really don’t get what Yoo Sangah sees in you.”

“She’s a person of good taste.”

“Shut up. What do you want?”

“Anything you can write me on an American hero named Anna Croft.”

“You couldn’t look her up online?”

“I did. Everything about her is in English, and I need to check something.”

She swore and grabbed a single sheet of paper.

“I’m not writing you her damn biography. I have a fucking deadline. I wouldn’t whine aboutgetting more than twenty-four hours in a day.”

Kim Dokja didn’t even bother retorting. He’d like to see her have to rewrite the same chapter from the start every time she opened her eyes in the morning.

Han Sooyoung poised a ballpoint pen over the sheet. Her eyes turned sharp, her arm tensed. The pen began to glow, a dull blue shine. It flew across the surface. For a minute or two, its scratches were the only sound in the room.

Han Sooyoung’s Quirk, Character Analysis.

Han Sooyoung only bothered lowering her glasses onto her face once she had leaned back. She skimmed through what she had written.

“Huh,” she said.

Kim Dokja, reading over her shoulder, sighed in agreement.

‘Dedicated to upholding law and order,’ was written there. ‘Hostile to vigilantes.’ And even more damning, ‘Quirk: Future Sight.’

“No wonder a regressor would have trouble with her,” Han Sooyoung said. “It doesn’t matter what new tactics he’ll try, she’ll see them coming.”

“I just want to sleep in on Saturday mornings,” Kim Dokja lamented. “Is that too much to ask?”

“Get out of my house if you’re just going to complain. You know what to do, don’t you?”

“Ugh.”

***

The thing was, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t particularly want to be a vigilante. A few years back, he had let Steel Sword convince him to go public. Only, becoming a Pro Hero meant being transparent about your Quirk.

No sooner had Yoo Joonghyuk’s info become available that his name was being dragged through the dirt. With a Quirk like Regression, you could get away with so many things, people had argued; you could murder and rape, then turn back time so no one would be the wiser; you could cheat your way into becoming a billionaire by betting on events you had already lived through; you could find out state secrets and then make it so no one was aware you knew. Could the guy even be held in a prison? Could he even die?

The public panic had been so overwrought that it had been obvious to Kim Dokja it was the result of a villain’s smear campaign.

Yoo Joonghyuk had initially powered through. That had impressed Kim Dokja, who remembered being six and going through five-minute-long time loops that could only have been provoked by a child’s temper tantrums. Yoo Joonghyuk used to turn on his Quirk for anything and nothing when they were young. He had calmed down as he aged and only rarely used it now. Kim Dokja could only speculate that Regression had some drawbacks Yoo Joonghyuk had become wary of over time.

Then the mob had turned on his kid sister.

That was the only occasion Yoo Joonghyuk had ever turned back time by a full week. Kim Dokja had woken up sick and dizzy.

He hadn’t blamed him.

So now Yoo Joonghyuk was once more a vigilante, and Kim Dokja was the only member of the public who hadn’t forgotten what he had learned back then. Supreme King’s name, his Quirk’s title, his family history, his face.

The face especially was annoying. The bastard could at least have had the decency of being ugly under that mask.

BREAKING NEWS Quirk-user altercation in progress in Seongbuk-du. Vigilante “Supreme King” and American Pro Hero “Las Vegas Prophet” spotted…

Damn it, why was this still happening? Couldn’t Yoo Joonghyuk just avoid Seongbuk-du? Surely he wasn’t that stupid.

At least it made them easy to find. It only took two more loops before Kim Dokja pinpointed the battle’s exact location. By that point, he had turned calling in sick to work into an art. He could have won an Oscar with that cough.

When he finally turned up in time to catch the entire thing, he had to groan.

It was a fucking dog. A dog who slipped its leash and attempted to run into a busy intersection. Supreme King swooped out of nowhere, scooped up the mutt and shoved it into its owner’s arms. The poor lady was gaping. It wasn’t every day a six-foot-tall wall of muscles in a flapping black coat with an actual sword strapped to his waist blinked into existence to glare at you for your poor dog-handling.

And Kim Dokja could see it now. The pile-up that had probably happened during the first loop.

That was the other thing about Yoo Joonghyuk. If he couldn’t be a Pro Hero, he didn’t have to be a vigilante either. He could just let people sort themselves out.

But no. Of course the sunfish wasn’t capable of doing that.

Damn it. He wasn’t feeling fond. No matter how many drinks Han Sooyoung plied him with, he was admitting to nothing. (He ignored the nagging feeling that he already had, because he couldn’t remember spilling Supreme King’s birth name to her, but she sure was fond of using it to his face. Surely that was because of her Quirk.)

His act of dog-sitting accomplished, Yoo Joonghyuk whirled around to leave. Kim Dokja caught a glimpse of his face and realized he wasn’t wearing his mask. Was he attempting to mislead Las Vegas Prophet by showing up as his civilian self? He might have wanted to ditch the sword if that was the case.

“Stop right there, Supreme King!”

A tall blonde woman in a black and gold costume sailed through the crowd on the sidewalk. Yoo Joonghyuk stopped, his jaw tight and a vein beating at his temple.

“Are you speaking to me?” he said.

The words sounded like gravel in his throat, and he didn’t seem to have much hope that the Prophet would let him speak his way out of this. He turned to face her. As he did so, his eyes slid over Kim Dokja. He frowned.

Kim Dokja’s heart skipped a beat. He slipped behind a corner before Yoo Joonghyuk could do a double take. Had the jerk really already memorized all the faces standing at the intersection during his fight?

Either way, showing up without his mask could only be a desperate move on Yoo Joonghyuk’s part. That whole unmasking fiasco back then had spooked him too much for him to risk his identity casually.

Other costumes materialized out of the crowd to back up the American heroine. She really was well prepared. Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t usually the type to back out of a fight, but that wasn’t what he had been trying to achieve in this loop. If his identity was compromised, that was it for him.

Kim Dokja was unsurprised when he blinked and found himself back in his bed.

Wow, he hated this alarm. He’d replace it as soon as the loop was over. Something with bird song and chimes, maybe.

***

So. At least this was an easily solvable problem.

Frankly, Yoo Joonghyuk could have solved it in a heartbeat if he had just been willing to trust one single person with his Quirk. Literally all he had to do was tell Steel Sword Lee Hyunsung he knew the future, and ask the Pro Hero to rescue the stupid dog.

“Excuse me,” Kim Dokja said, smiling politely at the middle-aged lady. “Your dog is adorable. Do you mind if I pet him?”

Not at all, she said, smiling back, please go ahead. He likes chin scratches. Kim Dokja sank into a squat, gave the squirming fur ball chin scratches, and took advantage of the thick fur to reclip the leash properly with her none the wiser.

“Thank you,” he said as he rose. “You two have a good day.”

The lady and her dog went on their way. He scowled at the pale fur stuck on his gray suit jacket. He wasn’t much of a dog person.

When he looked up, Las Vegas Prophet was standing right there. She was staring at him.

“Who are you?”

“Excuse me?” he said innocently.

Suspicion sparked in her eyes.

“Hmm… Forgive me, but may I ask what your Quirk is?”

“No?” he said, pitching in his voice exactly the right mix of confusion and vague outrage of a peaceful citizen getting interrogated out-of-the-blue. “Am I under suspicion of something? I’m going to need to see a Pro Hero card if so. I’ve never seen you in the news. Are you even official?”

Being accused of vigilantism, of all things, must have hit her hard. Color rose in what could be seen of her cheeks around the mask.

Nevertheless, she managed a tense smile. This Las Vegas Prophet didn’t remember all her altercations with Supreme King. She only knew that her Quirk had expected to find him here, and he wasn’t. It wasn’t exactly reasonable to make a scene about it to a random Korean pedestrian.

“My apologies. I must have mistaken you for someone else.”

She walked around him, her eyes scanning the street. Kim Dokja waited until she was gone before stretching languorously.

Finally. Saturday, here he came.

He hadn’t taken two steps down the sidewalk before a fist closed around his collar and yanked him into a side alley. His back hit the wall. A black mask was shoved into his face.

“Who are you?” came the guttural growl.

Ugh. There had really been no way to do this without being noticed. Still, the bastard could have done him the courtesy of letting it go.

“You’re welcome,” Kim Dokja hissed back.

Supreme King pulled him back from the wall and slammed him back against it. His other hand was wrapped tightly around the hilt of this sword.

“Knock it off,” Kim Dokja whisper-yelled, now fully indignant. “She’ll find you just as easily without her Quirk if people report you!”

Supreme King froze. His eyes flitted between Kim Dokja and the busy street a few feet from them. Kim Dokja squirmed free. Supreme King allowed it with a freezing glare, but blocked his way back. Kim Dokja rolled his eyes.

“Come on,” he said, heading deeper into the alley.

That was obviously not what the vigilante had been expecting. It took him a few seconds to start following him. Kim Dokja stopped once they were fully out of view.

“Now, what do you want? I need to go get the dog fur out of this suit.”

“I saw you yesterday.”

“Congrats,” he grumbled, rubbing at his sleeve. “Not many people can pick me out of a lineup.”

“Is that your Quirk? Some kind of invisibility?”

“No?” Kim Dokja said in incredulity. He wasn’t sure what was more offending: people’s obsession with Quirks or the fact that he was a perfectly forgettable man, no mind’s tricks necessary, and had just admitted as much himself. “How would that make sense in this scenario? Are you even using your brain?”

Supreme King thumbed his sword out of his scabbard by a few centimeters.

“You’re very free with your words,” he grunted, shoulders tensed in anger.

“Counterpoint: you lose a lot of your intimidation factor when people know how much of a softie you are, Supreme King.”

The sword unsheathed fully and caught an errant ray of sunlight on its sharp edge. Kim Dokja huffed.

“It’s Time Displacement,” he said flatly.

“… What?”

“My Quirk. Isn’t that what you were so up in arms about? A friend of mine described it as ‘standing a step to the left of the normal flow of time, or whatever.’”

Han Sooyoung was the closest he had come to an actual Quirk assessor. Whatever, at least being labeled Quirkless had gotten him a stable job. You couldn’t spit on that in this kind of economy.

“What does that mean?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked.

“What do you think it means? Time-based Quirks go wonky around me. That’s it. Not exactly anything to write home about.”

Kim Dokja smirked.

“Although knowing it works on precognition Quirks… Did you see Anna Croft’s face?” he said in relish.

So sue him, he had a bit of a petty streak.

Yoo Joonghyuk paced deeper into the alley, then back.

“She can’t see me because you’re here?” he said finally.

“Because I caused your future to change, and she can’t see the new one. I don’t think the effect will last once I leave, though, so try to avoid her from now on, Yoo Joonghyuk.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stopped mid-step.

“What did you call me?” The words came out of his mouth like gravel.

Kim Dokja ignored him.

“Or at least do your hide-and-seek routine on a weekend. I know you don’t have a nine-to-five, but some of us aren’t so lucky.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. He was staring at him, his grip tight on his sword. Kim Dokja shrugged and leaned against the alley wall.

“Relax,” he sighed. “I’m not fucking Asmodeus.”

“… You know about that.”

Notorious villain Asmodeus had mysteriously ended up dead not long after the whole ill-fated reveal incident. It hadn’t been hard to connect the dots.

“I remember about that. And I haven’t said anything that whole time, have I? You want to stay anonymous, it’s no skin of my back.”

Yoo Joonghyuk just looked at him.

“Your name?” he said after a long moment.

“Huh,” Kim Dokja said, blinking. That’s right, he hadn’t introduced himself. Well, Yoo Joonghyuk had been rude first, dragging him into dark corners like that. “It’s Kim Dokja.”

The sword went back into its scabbard. Yoo Joonghyuk took his mask off. Dark eyes landed once again on Kim Dokja, evaluating.

The years had been kind to the bastard. Kim Dokja had long held the theory that Regression made him age faster, as he had noticed Supreme King gaining a few premature white hairs over the years, but it was impossible to tell for sure from that face. That jawline was still infuriatingly beautiful.

Kim Dokja looked away and swallowed.

“Anyway, this loop was messy. It was just a dog, Yoo Joonghyuk. Even your sister could have taken care of it.”

“If you know, you know I don’t want her involved in this. And she has school today.”

“And I had work!” Kim Dokja complained, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Where am I going to get a doctor’s note, now? They aren’t going to fire me, but-”

“I’ll get you one.”

“Huh. Wait. Really?”

“I know someone.”

Kim Dokja stared. Yoo Joonghyuk seemed serious. Look at that? Wasn’t the jerk unexpectedly helpful?

“How about making it last until Wednesday? I think you owe me a long weekend,” he said, never above pushing his luck.

“Fine.”

Huh! What was he supposed to say to that? Kim Dokja was never that lucky. There had to be a catch. He narrowed his eyes.

Yoo Joonghyuk smiled.

Which was, for the record, a magnitude of unfairness never before seen in this life. Surely that smile had to be illegal. It bloomed slowly until his teeth showed, confident amusement lighting up his eyes.

“She’ll help if she knows it’s for someone who will help me in the future.”

“That… No?” Kim Dokja sputtered. “That was a one-time deal! How are you trying to rope me into vigilantism? I’m basically Quirless!”

“You were the one complaining it would be simpler if I had someone in the know. Are you saying you’re registered as Quirkless?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Nobody will suspect you.”

“They won’t, because I’m not going to do anything! Saving puppies and orphans is your thing, not mine.”

“I made you regress through six Fridays in a row.”

That was factually what had happened. But said like that, it very much sounded like a threat. Kim Dokja bit his tongue, fuming.

“You remember all of them,” Yoo Joonghyuk deduced, darkly satisfied. “Phone.”

He held out his hand in command.

“I hate you,” Kim Dokja said in wonder.

“I’ll make your note last all of next week.”

“Bribing me, now?” Kim Dokja said, examining Yoo Joonghyuk keenly.

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a placid blink.

Kim Dokja dropped his phone into the waiting hand.

“Bribing is fine,” he sniffed. “Carry on.”

Yoo Joonghyuk snorted as he input his number. One dark eye stayed on Kim Dokja, looking him up and down. Unused to the attention, Kim Dokja stared at the sky.