#yappost

Commission info...would be nice if yall would share around :3!!

Today's victim is.. everyone's favorite traumatized hero,

Kino Estere!

In front of the general public, he puts on this brave, carefree front, pretending he isn't paranoid as hell and on the verge of tears at any given moment

but yeah, he is UNWELL. long-lasting family curse that makes the person with the curse bleed more, unable to recover from wounds properly (basically all of em scar) and die young??? bucko lives with a sense of doom hanging over his head he'd feel weird without at this point

he had an ordinary childhood up until his 6th birthday, when his parents were like, "HEY, kino, we have a surprise 4 u," and then they told him he was never gonna hit thirty and died

his older sister, now his only surviving family member, chucked him at an orphanage and said to put him in the family home once he was old enough

like a year later this girl accidentally threw a ball at kinos window and was like "sorry also u look like you haven't seen the sun in months wanna hang out with me and my friend" and he didn't say ok she just thought he nodded and dragged him outside to her friend who was a fish

and Friendship :)

until kino decided to take up sword fighting and oh no monster

Shizu Da Fish is died.... Kino is trauma again... Tetra didn't see it because she was told to go get help

Time skip to when Kino's starting to Hero

Fnaf.. Kino... Fnaf Kino... Omg

Anyways, another skip.. he's famous now bc he does a really good job at saving and helping people yahoo

It's Shizu again she lived and she's wackus bonkus now and trying to kill kino so he's like "girl I was 13 what did you expect me to do?? suddenly have the skill and experiences of a 30 year old hero who's been fighting since they were 2??" and now she's really died because Self Defense.

Oh no he got seen... he tried to be like "pls don't tell it was self defense she was ranting about wanting me dead very graphically and then lunged at me with a knife" but Mr Worldwide Won't Believe A Word This Guy Says doesn't believe him and then falls down the stairs to kinos family tomb crypt basement thing and dies so kinos like "FUCK I DID THAT AAAGH" and hides the bodies and only tells tetra the shizu part of the story

Kino is really good at faking things.

and he goes to the store one day and finds this fellow who's being accused of theft and when the shopkeeper reveals there is ZERO evidence the fellow did it kino calls him an idiot, grabs the fellow, and skips away

He gets talking about his hero days and suddenly he has an apprentice

Insert Training Montage

Kino remembers he only has food for one guy so he goes to get his apprentice Gabriel a sword and food that isn't fancy cereal, a loaf of bread, fish shaped candy, sandwich toppings, and a box of assorted berries when..

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT?!?!?!?!!!!

Kino gets 2 arrows to the shoulder and knee each, an arrow to his mid-arm, a nasty knife wound to his left eye, blinding it?!?@?@?@ and also to his right arm and also gets one of his earrings ripped out.

Ouch!

he skedaddles and falls into a cave real hard also probably breaking a rib or two (he doesn't know, he just knows it hurts to breathe deeply)

he deals with his wounds using Ripped Up Shirt and then cries for a bit

and then he decides to use the old broken mask and magic hoodie he found in the cave to resort to crime

and he eventually has a mental breakdown because isolation (he isn't talking to people. only steal.) and also being haunted by his past in a damp cave

He's really flippin scared in there someone give him. a very gentle hug because he is also in physical pain

During scenarios KDJ only dies to achieve something. To save someone, to fulfill a condition, or to outmaneuver the story. His death is the final move in a plan, it's the button he presses after exhausting every other option. It solves something because he made it solve something. People like to downplay those moments because they're reading it from the outside, but if you were actually in those situations, you'd probably make the same call (if you were clever enough to figure out how to get back, which is another thing people like to downplay about his character). KDJ also spends time preparing his companions for his absence when he knows it'll be the outcome of his plan. He makes sure they'll be okay without him.

YJH's deaths are different though. He doesn't die to fix a specific problem. He dies to escape, to try again because he couldn't make this round work, but he never learns because the trauma just keeps stacking. His deaths are an admission of failure, a way to abandon the timeline and all the people in it and start over. It doesn't solve anything. It just leaves everyone else to deal with the aftermath of him being gone, which is textbook suicidal behavior.

Super ironic that the guy the fandom made into the "he likes to die cuz why not lol" actually uses death as a controlled and meaningful tool, and the guy who genuinely treats his own life as disposable and has killed himself more times than anyone can count barely gets talked about in this aspect (because it's not as funny I guess?? or just because this fandom obviously doesn't like him as much??). Meanwhile the "sunfish" nickname is right there in the text, constantly and directly pointing back to YJH's self-destructive tendencies.

The fact that people miss that while making KDJ the dramatic suicidal one is impressively unimpressive.

Kim Dokja is obsessed. He has been obsessed since he was a malnourished bullied fifteen years old domestic violence and suicide attempt survivor, reading about a fictional character who was cooler and stronger and more dramatic than anyone in real life. And now that character is real, and he's right there, and KDJ has to actively stop himself from staring (which fails miserably every damn time).

Yoo Joonghyuk is washing dishes. His sleeves are rolled up and his forearms are—

Stop looking.

He's not looking.

He's definitely looking.

When YJH does something impressive like cuts down a monster in one epic swing or solves a problem KDJ was struggling with (and KDJ rarely struggles with that kind of stuff so it's even more impressive), or even just exists in the same space, KDJ has to physically bite his tongue to keep from saying something cringe and embarrassing.

You're so cool.

I've never met anyone like you.

I read about you for thirteen years and you're still more than I imagined.

He says none of this, because he'd rather die forever than say it out loud. He says "sunfish bastard" and "emo jerk" and "you're so dramatic" instead. Because that's the language they speak, the one where insults are endearments and silence is devotion. But sometimes, late at night, when YJH is probably asleep and KDJ is laying awake watching the ceiling, he thinks about how lucky in the most fucked up way he is. How damn absurd. How this man—this protagonist, his protagonist—chose him. Some random guy from the bridge he's never met before. A false prophet. A reader. A nobody.

And he thinks, I would burn down the Star Stream for you.

And then he goes to sleep and pretends he didn't.

YJH calls KDJ by his name more than necessary. "Kim Dokja". Not "you" or "hey" or nothing. The name, like he's testing that KDJ is still there to answer.

On those rare main scenario window days with no crisis and no urgency, they sit in the same room. KDJ reads TWOS on his phone (yes, despite YJH being right there. so greedy). YJH polishes his sword with that unnecessarily terrifying focus or just digs through something in the system or just sits. They don't talk. But then KDJ will look up and catch YJH watching him. Not like, staring menacingly or judgmentally. Just resting his eyes on KDJ, his oh so beautiful face fully relaxed. Like KDJ is a landscape he's memorized but keeps looking at anyway.

And YJH won't look away when caught, that bastard. He'll hold eye contact for a beat too long and then return to whatever he was doing. And KDJ, who has spent his whole life being looked through, not looked at, feels something crack open in his chest.

He doesn't say anything and neither does YJH. But later, when they're alone, YJH will stand a little closer and let their shoulders touch. Let KDJ lean into him for just a second before stepping away.

KDJ notices all of this. Thinks about it at 3AM when he can't sleep.

Thinks, he probably does this for everyone.

He doesn't, and KDJ knows better than anyone that he doesn't. But believing that YJH is doing it for him is terrifying, because what if he's wrong? What if he's reading into things? What if he lets himself want this and then it just gets taken away?? So he builds a mental case and files all the evidence and tells himself he'll believe it when he has enough proof.

Every time someone calls Yoo Joonghyuk a lone wolf in that tone I want to chew through a wall to this person and knock them on the head. Cuz people say it as something cool and badass, alpha male sigma grindset or whatever the fuck. And that's not what a lone wolf is.

A lone wolf isn't natural and it's not cool. It's a wolf that has lost something essential to its nature.

It can't defend territory. A pack announces itself through howls that overlap. A single wolf howling isn't a warning. It's an invitation. It's a question. It's a voice calling into the dark, hoping something will answer. When another pack hears a lone wolf, they don't retreat. They investigate, chase it off, kill it if they can. The lone wolf doesn't hold territory. It moves through the spaces between packs. Always passing through, never belonging anywhere long enough to actually rest.

It can't howl with anything resembling happiness. Wolves howl for all sorts of things—to assemble the pack, warn rivals, coordinate the hunt, but they also howl just because they're together. It's the sound of belonging. A lone wolf can howl, but its howl is never answered. It calls into the silence and the silence sends nothing back. The lone wolf never howls for joy, because it doesn't even remember what joy sounds like.

Wolves don't choose to be alone.

The lone wolf is NOT some badass fucking alpha who rejected the pack and not a rogue who struck out on its own for freedom. It's an exile. An orphan. A survivor whose pack got destroyed by hunters or disease or a rival pack that killed everyone it loved. It's the wolf that made one mistake too many and got driven out. It's the wolf that left not because it wanted to, but because the territory couldn't feed another mouth and staying would mean starvation for everyone.

The lone wolf is alone because something was taken from it. Because it lost. Because it failed. Because it's the one who lived when no one else did.

Every lone wolf carries a loss it can't name. Every lone wolf is looking for something it can't find alone. Every lone wolf is a wound shaped like an animal. This is why YJH's character is so freaking sad to me. Not because he's cold or distant or refuses to explain himself and then gets misunderstood terribly by everyone who's not KDJ (who still manages to misinterpret him constantly. they're both hopeless). He's sad because he's been a lone wolf for 1863 lifetimes. He's watched his pack die, over and over and over. He's watched them die so many times that he's forced himself to not care in some regressions because the grief was just too heavy to carry again. He's walked through worlds alone, carrying the memory of people who don't exist anymore, howling into silence that never answers.

He's not an alpha who chose solitude. He's a wolf who lost everything so many times that he forgot what it felt like to have anything.

And then Kim Dokja appeared.

KDJ, who is somehow the most clever person in the room and also the dumbest when it comes to himself. Who lies as easily as he breathes and thinks he's being subtle when he's about as subtle as a brick through a window. Who will manipulate everyone around him "for their own good" and then act shocked when they're upset about it. Genuinely one of the most exhausting fucking people YJH has ever met, and YJH has met a lot of people over 1863 rounds.

And KDJ didn't ask to join that sad one person pack. He just refused to leave. He scavenged from the wolf's kills and figured out the wolf's patterns before the wolf even knew he was being watched, and then started inserting himself at exactly the right moments. Died for the wolf and its companions. Came back. Died again. Stayed. Stayed. Stayed again.

Insufferable. Too stubborn to die properly. Gave the wolf some gray hairs but also the reason the wolf hasn't completely lost its mind. The reason why slowly, the lone wolf remembered.

Remembered that it was lonely. That it had been lonely for so long that the loneliness had become invisible, had become the water it swam in, had become indistinguishable from its own body. It had forgotten that there was another way to exist. It had forgotten that the absence of pack wasn't a natural state but a wound.

KDJ didn't heal the wound—that's not how that type of wounds work. But he made the wolf feel it again. Made the wolf remember that it was missing something.

This is why YJH's anger at KDJ's sacrifices is so immense. Not because KDJ is weak (he's not, despite y'all's love to infantilize him) or because he's stealing YJH's perceived leader role or his companions. Because YJH spent 1863 lifetimes learning not to love, not to need, and not to hope. He built himself into something that could survive anything because he had nothing left to lose. And then this annoying impossible motherfucker anomaly appeared and gave him something he could actually lose forever. YJH didn't ask for it and didn't want it.

But for the first time in 1863 lifetimes, the hurt and loneliness weren't the only things. And turns out, KDJ isn't the only bastard who doesn't know how to let go.

Being in KDJ's head isn't a limitation—it's the opposite, actually. It's the whole point. He's literally the one person who's been paying attention to YJH for over a decade before the story even started. He notices the micro-expressions, the patterns, the things YJH never says out loud. He reads his fucking thoughts. He's constantly observing, correcting his own assumptions, and learning to see him as a person instead of a character. And yeah, KDJ gets things wrong, no shit. He admits it himself at one point. But he keeps trying. He doesn't just settle on a surface-level reading and call it a day. He keeps paying attention and keeps adjusting his understanding and realizing he was wrong and trying again. That's literally the novel's whole thing about false dichotomies. It's constantly showing you that the lines we draw between "real" and "fake", "character" and "person", "I understand" and "I don't" are all just lines in the sand. They're meant to be crossed.

Like, people will say YJH's deaths are "off-screen" or "filtered through TWSA" as if that makes them less real, when we're supposed to feel the weight of them through KDJ—the guy who read every single one of them for God knows how many times. The guy who knows the number, knows the details, knows how much it destroyed him just to read about it. So if you're reading from KDJ's perspective and you don't feel the devastation of YJH's deaths, you're not reading KDJ right. He's carrying that grief the entire time. It's not "on the sidelines", it's fucking built into his bones. Also, the 1863rd round exists. We literally see YJH's spiral, see him split himself in half because he just can't handle the pain clawing inside his ribs anymore. We see him give up. We see him turn into something else entirely. The novel is explicitly showing you exactly how broken he is.

Saying "we don't see YJH's deaths" is just not true, you're just refusing to look. We see the aftermath, we see the cumulative damage, we see the person he becomes after dying 1863 times (speaking of which, no one seems to understand the relationship between KDJ and SP and just crumples it into something reductive, but I'll cover it later). That's more impactful than watching him die on-screen for the nth time. The novel trusts you to understand the weight of that without showing you every single death, but apparently that was a mistake.

And it's not even like YJH's near-death moments are hard to find. The obvious ones that immediately come to mind as great examples are when he tried to sacrifice himself to become the 73rd Demon King to save KDJ from having to do it, or when he got burned alive by Surya after standing against him defending an unconscious KDJ. He was ready to die so often during the story, not because he wanted to, but because he thought his own death wouldn't matter as much as KDJ's. That's the self-destructive mindset people pretend doesn't exist because it's not as funny as "lol KDJ dies again".

If you're reading from KDJ's perspective and still don't understand YJH, that's not because his POV is just so unreliable or wrong or whatever the fuck. That's because you stopped paying proper attention to the narrator you're reading. The novel gives you everything you need to understand YJH even if you personally can't relate to getting yourself killed way over a thousand times (neither can I, who'd have guessed??). It's just that understanding him requires you to actually engage with what KDJ is observing and recognizing the patterns instead of expecting everything to be spelled out in bold letters.

People say readers relate to KDJ because he's the center of the story and everything revolves around him. And yeah, that's true in a narrative sense, but the fucking thing is that KDJ himself revolves around Yoo Joonghyuk. His whole existence, his motivation, his reason for even being in the scenarios. It's all tied to YJH. He built his entire identity around him. So if you relate to KDJ, you're relating to someone whose entire orbit is Yoo Joonghyuk. You can't claim KDJ as your self-insert and then ignore the person he's built his whole world around, that's not how it works.

Yoo Joonghyuk, as a regressor, has a fundamentally broken relationship with time.

For normal people, time is linear. Finite. You get one shot. Hours matter, days matter, the clock ticking forward means something because you can't go back and redo. But for YJH time is a resource. It's a tool. Something to optimize, speedrun, or trash when a run goes bad. He's lived through hundreds of years across dozens of regressions. What's one more hour? One more day? One more companion dying (...)? He's seen it all before. Time just stops holding weight when you have infinite resets.

And KDJ gave him a pocket watch not because YJH needed to tell time, but because he needed to care about it again. Because he wanted YJH to care about it again. The watch is a physical object that serves a purpose other than just a courting gift. This moment matters. This second passing is not something you get back. Live like it.

It's KDJ trying to reintroduce scarcity into YJH's perception of time, to make him feel the weight of a single life again. To remind him that even if he has infinite chances, the people around him don't. The world around him doesn't. This regression isn't just another draft to be thrown away—it's the one where things are, and will be, different. And that difference includes him learning to value the ticking clock.

But it's also deeply ironic, because KDJ is such a fucking hypocrite about it (anyone's surprised? no? me neither). He gives YJH a watch to teach him that time matters. Meanwhile, KDJ is busy quietly burning through his own lifespan and sacrificing years of his own existence for YJH's (and everyone else's) happy ending. He's trying to make YJH feel the weight of time, while simultaneously treating his own time as fucking expendable. It's not malicious. It's just. Kim Dokja. He wants for YJH what he can't give himself. That's how he's always been.

And after KDJ is gone—after he's scattered himself across worldlines, after he's become the Oldest Dream again, after he's just asleep on that damn subway train with no way to wake up—YJH still has it. KDJ gave him a pocket watch to ground him in time. And in the end, it's the thing that keeps YJH grounded in him.