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Feast upon the fruits of land

For the gif:

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ORV!!! On Ice Official Wikia ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ... 8. Canon Discrepancies: One controversy between fans has been the conflicting information in the official sourcebook[12] about Kim Dokja's career change and what was shown in the Episode 10 extended ED [14][15][16]. Some interpretations imply that Kim Dokja was in fact injured by his crash into the zamboni in Episode 2, however, there is no indication of... Notes: ... [12] The self-written biography says it was "a new path after a career ending accident[13]" [13] The accident was popping a boner every three seconds at Yoo Joonghyuk's ass in tights [14] before Han Sooyoung showed up and made it zero [15] (and then it was really career ending) (how can you spin with all that extra drag) (all the time) [16] ...

For the still image:

Yoo Joonghyuk was, by most everyone's standards, a wholly unremarkable man. His troubles were the troubles of ordinary men—if he was able to provide for his family, if the price of tteokbokki at the corner shop went up, and if this life of monotony was really what he was put on this Earth for. Not to say that Yoo Joonghyuk was particularly religious; he went to church on Sundays, not out of any belief in a higher power, but because they had offered free childcare when Yoo Mia finally started going to school and his manager had refused to shift his hours. He had at first tried to volunteer his body as labour in repayment, but the pastor gently turned him down. What the Lord needs, he proclaimed, is not your body but your soul. I would rather you open your heart and mind, and attend our meetings once in awhile.

Despite trying his best, Yoo Joonghyuk was only able to fulfill the latter part of the pastor's request. No matter how he thought about it, the beings that he was truly thankful towards were the other people themselves, who had offered freely their open arms and hearts to care for Yoo Mia. God, or Jesus Christ, or whatever other names they preached seemed to have very little to do with anything at all. He could easily open his heart and mind to his fellow men and women, but struggled deeply to do the same for a nebulous figure he couldn't comprehend.

And so, he stuck to dropping a little extra in the donation box when he could afford it. Nowadays, he had to scan a QR code on a flyer, and use KakaoPay to send the money over. Almost nobody brought cash or coins with them anymore.

On the whole, by all means and measurements, Yoo Joonghyuk's life was quite good. He had found a different job working night shifts as a bar cook, frying wings and chips and fishcakes on skewers, which let him see his sister to and from school without issue. The front-of-the-house was friendly, and he had made tentative acquaintances with a bartender named Jung Heewon. She, like him, had a younger sibling to take care of, and spent most of her time complaining about how her little brother insisted on slacking off in school and kept on hanging about with the wrong sort of boys, who went around throwing trash and bumming illicit cigarettes off of someone's high school brother. It was bad enough that she had to go home in the mornings smelling like old smoke and sweat, he didn't need to be doing it too.

This alarmed Yoo Joonghyuk greatly. He started bringing a second set of clothes to work in a garbage bag, and made sure to change before he went back to the apartment. For extra security he would shower quickly with cold water (as the cranky hot water heater would make an awful rumbling noise) before reheating breakfast and waking Yoo Mia up for school. Perhaps variety was a bit lacking, but the bar owner letting Yoo Joonghyuk take what was leftover from the late night menu was a godsend. Various rolled gimbap and stewed seaweed and pork chitterlings; deep fried chicken and shrimp tempura; green onion kimchi and classic baechu-kimchi; these became the staples of their small table. 

Mostly what Yoo Joonghyuk prepared at home was rice and more vegetables. It wasn't healthy to be only eating all that grease, despite Yoo Mia's best arguments. The school provided free lunch for her, and he would sleep in the daytime hours until it was time to pick her up. Dinner would be whatever was leftover from breakfast, and after Yoo Mia finished her homework and fell asleep, he would double-check her emergency flip phone was in reach then, always carefully, locked everything up before biking to work.

Just like so, their grocery bills dropped to very little, and this meant Yoo Joonghyuk found himself with a bit of extra money to spend. It was for this reason he eventually picked up a book called Han Sooyoung Versus The Titan World. Yoo Mia was doing well in her classes, and he wanted to reward her with something special—but nothing that would cause her undue distraction, like games or membership to the local PC bang—and eventually settled on a good fantasy novel. He went to the bookstore and politely asked the attendant for suitable books to purchase for a ten-year-old girl. She had smiled and pointed him at a table near the front; they had a promotion going on, because the author just released a new book in the series.

The covers were bright and colourful, with a short black-haired girl sat astride a wicked looking dragon, a rich purple and menacing. She was also swinging a massive flaming sword. Yoo Joonghyuk snorted. This would be right up Yoo Mia's alley, he thought. Ever since he took her to watch the high school girls' open fencing tournament, Yoo Mia was obsessed with all kinds of swordfighting.

But fencing was well out of his current budget. The book, albeit hardcover and new, wasn't. Yoo Joonghyuk thanked the attendant and hurriedly biked home. He wanted time to wrap the book up with some nice newspaper before Yoo Mia came back.

***

To his great chagrin, Yoo Mia did not like the book. Specifically, she seemed to have a great grudge against the main character, Han Sooyoung, and talked his ear off about just how annoying she was, and how unrealistic every single one of her decisions were. Yoo Mia would never do anything like that, oppa, she's so stupid, I can't believe she let the titan prince get away like that, and so forth. It got to the point where she started making him read passages from the book so he could "fully understand the depths" of her complaining.

Yoo Joonghyuk sighed. It appeared he would have to make time to read the whole thing cover to cover. Sleeping half an hour later every day was a small sacrifice to make his sister happy. Besides, the book couldn't be that bad, could it?

***

Yoo Joonghyuk read a story.

***

It was, Yoo Joonghyuk concluded, best described as a book written for children. He had just closed the acknowledgments, thinking that it was a perfectly engaging and nice read, when he noticed that there was something wet dripping down his nose and threatening to drop onto the paper. The shock made him jolt back and realise how late it had gotten—he should've slept four hours ago.

The tears confused him. Nothing particularly sad or tragic had happened in the story. Han Sooyoung was young and determined to take the world on, unwilling to compromise for anyone or anything except her own desires. Sure, she had left behind her family, but they weren't particularly close to each other, and it was in fact a relief to Han Sooyoung to be away from people who didn't care for her, free to scream and laugh at the sky, defiant and proud. The fighting was intense but emotionally safe, because nothing could really go wrong if there fifteen more books after this one.

Maybe it was the eyestrain—no. Yoo Joonghyuk scrabbled at his cheeks. He wasn't in a habit of intentionally lying to himself and he wasn't about to start now. And nor was he stupid, despite what other people commonly thought about a man who dropped out of high school.

It was because Han Sooyoung was brilliantly alive in a way in a way that reminded him how much he wasn't. Didn't he have dreams, once? When was the last time Yoo Joonghyuk had made a decision for himself? 

It was a terrible, hollowing realisation to have. His life could be beautiful and good and simultaneously empty of anything really Yoo Joonghyuk. He had difficulty remembering he was once a person outside of his love and duty towards Yoo Mia, such that his life orbited around hers. When Han Sooyoung was sixteen, she found a dragon and then left home forever. When he was sixteen, he found a baby sister who was, truthfully speaking, his daughter more than anything else. One day she would grow up and go to university, studying things beyond him like aerospace engineering or genetic transference or literature from the Joseon dynasty. Where would that leave Yoo Joonghyuk?