Every day I wake up and think about JoongDok

****

“What are you doing?”

Kim Dokja cut himself off mid-yawn and glanced over his shoulder. A shadowy figure with blazing eyes loomed in the darkened doorway. The Fourth Wall would have probably had to work overtime to manage his shock if he hadn’t already recognized the voice. He raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Cooking myself breakfast? Yoo Joonghyuk, what does it look like I’m doing?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stepped into the strange pale pink light of the kitchen. The (so-called!) Yoo Joonghyuk-Kim Dokja complex may have been integrated into Seoul, but it still had its cultural oddities; the ceiling lights were random, mismatched colors, you could see gears spinning on the sides of the appliances when you turned them on, and kitchens were communal, even though bathrooms were not.

“It’s four am,” Yoo Joonghyuk rumbled.

“Yet here you are too.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a suspicious glare. He peered into the bowl into which Kim Dokja was cracking eggs. Kim Dokja rolled his eyes where he wouldn’t be seen.

His return to Seoul and the 46th scenario that had followed were still very new, so he tried to be patient with everyone. He understood that it was out of worry that his own companions had locked him up and tried to force him to take a nap, so he let them fuss.

It didn’t make it any less annoying when some of them acted like his most mundane acts were a prelude to some convoluted escape plot. Yoo Joonghyuk was definitely the worse offender. One would have thought he would have settled after the 46th scenario, but saying so would have been a stretch.

“You know how to cook?” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

“Hey, can you sound a little less condescending? I’ve lived as a bachelor all this time, and takeout costs money, you know. Obviously, I can feed myself.”

Yoo Joonghyuk snorted. He did not sound less condescending. He watched Kim Dokja add a pinch of salt to his eggs, whip them, and pour them into a hot pan.

“That’s all the seasoning you’re adding?” he said, appalled.

A muscle ticked on Kim Dokja’s brow.

“How about you worry about your own cooking, Yoo Joonghyuk? The kitchen isn’t that small.”

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored him to turn a deeply judgmental look on the rice cooker Kim Dokja had, in his unparalleled generosity, refilled for everyone.

“Are you being serious right now?” Kim Dokja gritted out. “It’s rice, Yoo Joonghyuk. Are you so picky that you won’t eat rice made by someone else? How do you think anyone could mess up using a rice cooker? What, do you put in rose-flavored water? Is it bad rice if I didn’t use the eleven herbs and spices?”

“The fact that you don’t know is the problem,” Yoo Joonghyuk hit him with.

Yet he left the rice cooker alone, so Kim Dokja decided he was just complaining to be a brat.

Yoo Joonghyuk took his coat off. He was definitely in a bratty mood, because he purposefully draped it over Kim Dokja’s own coat, which Kim Dokja had left on the back of a nearby chair. A dozen chairs around the kitchen table, and he had to pick that one. If Yoo Joonghyuk had meant to annoy him, however, it backfired. Looking at the white fabric peeking below the black, Kim Dokja only felt a wave of amusement and fondness. What was that? That was so petty.

Anyway, now Kim Dokja had to pay attention to his omelet. If he so much as charred it a bit, Yoo Joonghyuk would be insufferable.

He stayed focused on his pan while Yoo Joonghyuk came and went around him, opening cabinets and taking over the counter space. The silence between them bled into the quiet night, softening it.

Kim Dokja wasn’t used to living in the complex yet. As a constellation, he didn’t sleep much. It was fine usually, but it felt strange to share living quarters with people, for once in his life, and yet to be so completely alone in the small hours of the night. There was only so long he could spent reading and plotting in his room, especially when they were between scenarios. Someone else probably would have asked Yoo Joonghyuk why he was up so early too. But why bother? Yoo Joonghyuk had more than enough nightmare material to justify poor sleep.

As Kim Dokja slid his omelet over his bowl of rice, he finally glanced at the man. He huffed a laugh. At least Yoo Joonghyuk knew how to keep himself busy. How many bowls and measuring cups did that make? Kim Dokja had barely freed the stove that Yoo Joonghyuk was already invading it with multiple pans. Had he chosen his most complex recipe or what?

“Is Yoo Mia going to eat all that?” Kim Dokja teased. “I’ll take the leftovers out of your hands if you don’t know what to do with them.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a grumpy look, but declined to comment. That was surprising in itself, but… well, it had been three years. Presumably, everyone else in the company had learned not to expect food from him, so Yoo Joonghyuk no longer felt the need to make his point.

Unless…

“Do you usually cook for everyone, Yoo Joonghyuk?”

“No,” was the immediate answer.

As expected. To learn otherwise that would have been a shock.

Then again, what did Kim Dokja know about that hobby of Yoo Joonghyuk’s? TWSA might have mentioned him cooking a few times, but it had never put much stress on it. Kim Dokja hadn’t even known he was so obsessive about only eating things he had cooked himself.

Kim Dokja sat at the table with his breakfast, feeling strangely adrift.

“When did you learn to cook, anyway?” he found himself asking, helplessly. “When did you have time?”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a strange look.

“Before the scenarios.”

“Ah.”

Yes, that… that was logical, wasn’t it? The fact that Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t existed before the scenarios was irrelevant. He remembered existing.

Kim Dokja took a bite of his omelet, feeling foolish.

“Did you learn to cook for someone special?” he needled to save face.

“Mia.”

Kim Dokja snorted in his rice.

“Anyone else?”

“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, and though Kim Dokja had fully expected him to so summarily shoot down the conversation, he was taken aback by the wry look it got him. There was even the hint of a smile at the corner of Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips, if one were to believe in rainbows and unicorns. Yoo Joonghyuk turned back to his mixing bowl. “There was no one else.”

Kim Dokja fidgeted with his cutlery. The logical follow-up would have been to bring up Yoo Joonghyuk’s relationship with Lee Seolhwa, but he didn’t really feel like continuing this conversation. He let it drop, allowing the silence to fall once more.

By the time he finished his meal, Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t turned back from his cooking even once. Huh. So that’s how you could get him distracted enough that he’d stop watching Kim Dokja like a hawk.

Kim Dokja pondered this for a little while. He looked down. He had sat in the chair he had left his coat on, because leaving a piece of clothing on the back of a chair was a common way to mark that chair as yours for the duration, and it was none of his business if Yoo Joonghyuk had all the social grace of a Neanderthal. And since Yoo Joonghyuk’s coat was right there, well, there was really nothing to stop him from being nosy.

It took Yoo Joonghyuk nearly five minutes to notice him rooting through the pockets.

“Kim Dokja,” he sneered with a white-knuckled grip on a spatula. “Do you want to die?”

“The Book of Thoth? Nice,” Kim Dokja said, turning the book over in his hands before putting it back in the pocket’s subspace. “You’ve got a good haul in there, Yoo Joonghyuk. How about you lend me some of these items some time?”

“Pay for them.”

“Don’t be like that. We’re a nebula now, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we share resources?”

“Then share your coins.”

“Hey, are you that hard up for cash—”

He cut himself off as he felt the next item under his fingers. He drew it out. The golden watch gleamed in his palm. For an item that had gone through three years of scenarios, it was near pristine. Only a few scratches marred the cover. When he opened it, the hinges pivoted as easily as when he had first received it from Aileen. The glass underneath was spotless.

By contrast, the large hand that closed around the watch showed far more use and tear. But Yoo Joonghyuk’s movements were resolute when he snatched the watch from him, slipped it in his pants’ pocket, and drew the chain to tie it to his belt loop. All the while, he was glaring at Kim Dokja.

Kim Dokja’s lips twitched.

“You wear it with the chain? That’s a bit old-fashioned, Yoo Joonghyuk.”

It suited him, though.

Yoo Joonghyuk bent over the table and extended an arm. Kim Dokja leaned away from it, mildly alarmed—surely this wasn’t what would drew Yoo Joonghyuk to violence if the earlier teasing hadn’t done it—but all Yoo Joonghyuk did was yank his coat from behind him.

“Stop being a nuisance,” Yoo Joonghyuk growled.

He left the black coat in a heap on a chair closer to him.

“All right, all right, Joonghyuk-ah. I’ll behave.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a doubtful look, but Kim Dokja was already settling back with his phone.

He didn’t actually want to get kicked out of the kitchen. The lights here were a nice change from the one in his room, and the oven kept the place warm. That’s why it was more comfortable than his bedroom.

He decided to see what parts of TWSA mentioned Yoo Joonghyuk cooking. Was the novel truly as sparse on the topic as he remembered it?

He ended up so deep in his research rabbit hole that he didn’t notice the sun rising, or Yoo Joonghyuk turning off the ceiling light.

The bowl clacking on the table in front of him nearly had him jump out of his skin.

“Huh?” he said.

The food was steaming hot and wafting heavenly scents toward his nose. He found himself inhaling deeply before he caught himself.

“Yoo Joonghyuk?” he said, confused, as the man himself headed for the door with a full tray. “So there were leftovers?”

Yoo Joonghyuk sent him a dry look. He disappeared without answering.

Kim Dokja looked around. The kitchen was already spotless, every dish cleaned and back in its place. There was no one else around, and the food was only going to get cold, so…