Kim Dokja almost forgot about his dinner with Yoo Joonghyuk and had to rush to get ready.
They were meeting at the same restaurant as last time. The dishes were different today, all the specialities were seafood and Kim Dokja didn't know fish could taste that good. It felt like it was melting on his tongue and the flesh detached from the bone easily.
"I was thinking something light tonight," Yoo Joonghyuk was saying when Kim Dokja complimented the food.
"Let's go somewhere after this, if you don't mind."
"Where?" Kim Dokja said.
"There's a Karaoke place," Yoo Joonghyuk's voice dropped a little and he was looking pointedly at his food. . .Was he feeling shy? Kim Dokja couldn't tell, so he brushed it away. Not like it mattered to him.
He nodded along. He liked karaoke. He used to be indifferent to it until some time back, but now he had a good memory to attach it to.
"Was your secretary mad when you said you had something to do?" Kim Dokja asked.
Yoo Joonghyuk frowned wearily and gave a single nod.
"I had to tell her I was meeting with an independent consultant," Yoo Joonghyuk said. "And she threatened to bankrupt N'gai if I ever lied to her again."
Kim Dokja chuckled. "She sounds a bit like my friend," he said.
"Not Yoo Joonghyuk," he added when he saw Yoo Joonghyuk's dark glare. "I told you, I have other friends."
"I am aware," Yoo Joonghyuk said. "I did a background check on you, remember?"
"You even found all my friends?" Kim Dokja questioned and Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.
"The places you visit frequently, the people you contact often," Yoo Joonghyuk said simply. "Your address, everything."
Then he stiffened. "My intention wasn't stalking you," he said quickly. "I was trying to check if you were a danger to me or my company. It was to remove any doubt that you were sent by someone to bring me to ruin."
"Oh, I got that," Kim Dokja said, waving his hand to show that he didn't mind. "It's understandable. I would have done that too, if I were in your place. I'm glad you told me though. . .Ah, please don't go stalking my friends. They won't like it very much and they're not going to take it as lightheartedly as I did."
"Of course," Yoo Joonghyuk promised. "My focus was you, not your friends. Your friends simply popped up as your close acquaintances."
"I see."
"Three hours?" Yoo Joonghyuk said. "Isn't that a lot?"
"Remember last time?" Kim Dokja told him. "We took way longer, and had to rebook the slot over four times."
"True. . .How drunk do you plan on getting?"
"I'm not really thinking of getting drunk," Kim Dokja said honestly. "Just a little. Like a wee bit woozy?"
"I see. . .Are you going to get the taxi?"
"That was the plan."
"I'll drop you. I already have my driver coming."
"Sorry for the trouble—"
"It's not," Yoo Joonghyuk said firmly. "Just accept it."
Kim Dokja thought for a few moments before giving in.
"Alright," he muttered.
"Good. Come on, now."
Karaoke was such a strange thing to do, but that's exactly what they were doing. It was silly, really.
Yoo Joonghyuk's singing was still off-key and it was as funny as it was annoying. He sang in a way that had Kim Dokja dying while he tried to keep his laughter inside and yet he got high points.
One time he got a full hundred and Kim Dokja almost kicked the stupid machine. Yoo Joonghyuk only laughed at his indignance.
Kim Dokja usually just sang the songs he was familiar with and had practised before. He was by no means a good singer, average at best. The kind that anyone who could sing the national anthem could. But under Yoo Joonghyuk's insistence, he picked up new songs, unfamiliar ones and gave it a go.
It had Yoo Joonghyuk wheezing. Then he pretended like he didn't laugh at all.
Kim Dokja almost choked to death when Yoo Joonghyuk sang some girl group's song, mic in one hand, a near-light stick in his other hand, waving it to the beat. What made it even better was how he had his usual deadpan look on his face, completely serious about his performance while he sang some cute song.
Kim Dokja was afraid that he'd end up cracking a rib and puncturing his lung with all the effort he was putting into keeping his laughs silent.
Kim Dokja broke when Yoo Joonghyuk sang some old love ballad. He fell onto the leather couch, tears forming in his eyes from how hard he was guffawing.
Yoo Joonghyuk didn't look like he minded at all. If anything, he sang with more zeal. He got a hundred for that performance. Kim Dokja still thought it was fucking bullshit.
"Your accent is...pleasant to listen to," Yoo Joonghyuk said matter-of-factly when Kim Dokja sang some pop song that had one too many English phrases.
Kim Dokja blinked. What was that supposed to mean? Pleasant to listen to?
"How so?" he asked.
"I do not know," Yoo Joonghyuk gave the tiniest shrug of his shoulders. "I just felt so."
"Weird."
"Perhaps," Yoo Joonghyuk said nonchalantly.
"Why do you have no accent?" Kim Dokja asked.
"I do have an accent," Yoo Joonghyuk said loftily. "Everyone has an accent."
Kim Dokja rolled his eyes. "You know what I meant. You sound like in the movies."
"I lived overseas for a while and had the chance to practice," Yoo Joonghyuk explained. "I picked it from there."
"Oooh."
"I am by no means perfect," he said. "There are still words that have a Korean accent since English isn't my native language. And there are nuances, subtleties the locals use that I can't imitate."
"Like our dialects?" Kim Dokja said.
"Pretty much," Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.
"We have a lot of dialects."
"We do."
"Interesting how language works, isn't it?" Kim Dokja mused.
"Is it?"
"I think so."
"I see."
They spoke non-stop during the drive to Kim Dokja's apartment, probably due to the alcohol in their system. He couldn't be bothered to think too much about it.
He spoke about stuff, and Yoo Joonghyuk listened and asked questions. Yoo Joonghyuk spoke about stuff, and Kim Dokja listened and asked questions. And they just kept it going, no set topic in place, simply talking, talking and talking.
"Thank you for the ride, Joonghyuk-ssi," Kim Dokja said once he closed the car door behind him. Yoo Joonghyuk had rolled the windows down to be able to talk to him easily.
"Don't mention it."
"It was pretty fun," Kim Dokja said brightly.
"It was," Yoo Joonghyuk nodded. "We should do it often."
"We should. . .Goodnight, then."
"Until next time, Dokja-ssi."
Kim Dokja smiled and it came very easily to him.
"Goodnight."
He waved Yoo Joonghyuk goodbye and walked past the gates of the tiny apartment building once the sleek car was ten feet away.
The full exhaustion of the day only hit him when he opened his unit's door and stepped inside the familiar space.
His throat was hurting a little, he didn't usually give it so much workout. His arms were aching, shaking that tambourine took effort. Kim Dokja found his jaw was hurting too. When was the last time he'd laughed so much? When was the last time he had enjoyed himself so much?
He was beat. He didn't make it to the bathroom and the second he was out of his pants, belt and shirt, he fell onto his bed and fell asleep.
He had nothing to do on Sunday.
He just lazed around for a while. Gave his resume a touchup, though it didn't do much to make it desirable, but he ignored it and sent it out to as many companies as he could. He didn't have long until his contract terminated.
He did the laundry and put it to dry on the stand he had on the balcony. The afternoon sun and heat should have his clothes dried quickly.
Kim Dokja, having nothing better to do, lay in bed, on his stomach, forearms propped up on his pillow as he used his phone. He looked up Yoo Joonghyuk. The first thing that came up was his professional gamer best friend.
But that wasn't the person he was looking for that day.
He added a new word to the search bar.
'N'gai'
This Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't searched often, but he did exist. Sometimes Kim Dokja felt it was all a lie.
But it was an actual person, the exact same as Yoo Joonghyuk was in real life. He had very few pictures of him and even those didn't do him any justice to the striking beauty the man was. He could have easily made it as a model.
But his actual accomplishments were so much more impressive.
He built N'gai Enterprises from scratch according to the few resources online. Kim Dokja thought he would ask the man himself when they met face-to-face next time.
Would that be rude? Was anything rude between them? They weren't completely honest with each other, but they did get over the harder things to talk about quickly. They treated it like facts and moved on.
. . .Maybe Yoo Joonghyuk was right. Maybe they were a little similar after all.
It was really strange, sure a few drinks and some casual encounters had lowered his guard, but Kim Dokja was a bit too open with that man, wasn't he? And he felt Yoo Joonghyuk was the same too.
Why? It was so strange.
What were they? Some strange category of friends? It was like going to a weird, shrink, but to have fun rather than solve the underlying issues that were causing them mental distress.
Kim Dokja got a very angry call in the evening from Yoo Joonghyuk, asking why he didn't come to the park to meet the kids that afternoon like they always did.
Kim Dokja had forgotten about that.
Shit!
Right. Sunday, summer vacation, the park, the kids—Fuck.
"I—I forgot," Kim Dokja said anxiously into the phone. He had probably made the kids sad. Damn it.
"You're forgetting a lot of things these days," Yoo Joonghyuk huffed.
"I'm sorry. I'll put a reminder next time. I just fell asleep and forgot about it. Tell the kids I'm sorry too, yeah?"
He heard Yoo Joonghyuk let out a loud sigh.
"Kim Dokja," the man said. "What's going on with you these days?"
"What do you mean?" Kim Dokja said. "Nothing?"
"Do you. . .Do you want to stay with us for a while?" Yoo Joonghyuk said hesitantly.
That was a horrible idea. Kim Dokja would rather jump into the Han River.
"Nah," he said dismissively. "I'm fine, dude. Just a little busy. My contract with Minosoft's coming to an end soon. I fell asleep editing my CV."
"You got another job then?"
"Nope. Not yet. . .Something will come up, don't worry," Kim Dokja said lightheartedly. "It always does. I'll see how it goes."
"You—Just. . .Okay," Yoo Joonghyuk decided to keep whatever words he was thinking to himself. Kim Dokja didn't mind.
"Tell the kids I'm really, really sorry, okay?" Kim Dokja said. "And tell them I'm really repenting too. I'll be there next weekend for sure. Without fail. It's a promise."
"Whatever," Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed. "Put a reminder if that's what it takes."
Kim Dokja set a reminder immediately. He did not want to do that to the kids again.
July came to an end and so did Kim Dokja's microwave oven's lifespan.
It was a third-hand thing, having gone for repair countless times and it was a miracle that it had functioned to so far. It had served him to the best of its capabilities and Kim Dokja was truly thankful for that machine.
He used the microwave pretty often, but now that he didn't have one, he would have to do something else to heat up his stuff. There were other ways to heat up things. People still survived before the microwave was invented. Kim Dokja had survived before he ever owned a microwave.
He took the thing outside and put it beside the recycling bin. He didn't think he could throw it in, so he put it outside. They would probably see that it was ruined and would take it away when they came to collect the garbage.
There was an empty space in his kitchen now. It looked incredibly out of place and he had nothing to fill that spot.
Which one of his appliances would stop working next? Kim Dokja cast an eye around, it would probably be his refrigerator. That wasn't his, per se. It was left there out of pity by his old landlord.
He was a nice old man, but he had passed away a couple of years ago and his daughter took over this. And she was one of the most horrible creatures Kim Dokja had the misfortune of meeting.
But beggars couldn't be choosers. He wouldn't get such a deal anywhere else. . .He should start saving up for his rent that month. His old landlord might have been easygoing and let him take a few days and pay him the rent later, but his current landlady wasn't so.
Two more months left at Minosoft and Kim Dokja gave up on work completely. Whatever, he didn't care.
He extensively read and researched about VR for some reason. He felt like a complete dolt, but he wanted something to do and there were no good web novels to read.
There was so much he didn't know and he didn't understand how he had said something so stupid and how that man had praised it as though it was a stroke of genius.
It wasn't easy. It simply wasn't going to be easy. He was bound to get cut off immediately, Kim Dokja could just tell.
Trends. . .He could pick up trends, that Yoo Joonghyuk had said. What did that even mean? He was just a little curious and that curiosity was fueled by the fictional world of a novel, making Kim Dokja search for stuff on the internet so that he had some clue about it.
It was like looking up the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
Kim Dokja got scolded at work for wasting time, he gave some bullshit excuse and slipped off.
Then he went back to his little research project.
Turned out, Kim Dokja wasn't the only person who had thought of it. Obviously. And a few projects were going on abroad, but they got overshadowed by the other fancy stuff.
Did Yoo Joonghyuk know of this? He probably did, didn't he? He would have looked it up if he was actually trying to pursue this seriously. That was the other thing, was he even considering this seriously or was it just some exaggeration?
Yoo Joonghyuk had a strange type. Kim Dokja wasn't the kind that people would like, his appearance wasn't seductive at all.
Yoo Joonghyuk's strange offer made sense if he thought about it in that way. Sure, it sounded so much like a crappy romance novel with the obsessive, possessive CEO male lead. And Kim Dokja wasn't saying that he was the female lead, but there was a chance that he had pissed off Yoo Joonghyuk by rejecting him the first time.
And it was the CEO's way of getting back at him. The VR thing and the offer were probably just excuses. It was a whimsical idea after all, and it wasn't exactly a pioneer in the field either.
He should stop communicating with Yoo Joonghyuk then, should he?
Kim Dokja found he didn't really care. He couldn't control the way life went anyway, if it took him to hell, to hell he would go.
It was Yoo Joonghyuk's birthday. Both the Yoo Joonghyuks he knew.
He sent CEO Yoo Joonghyuk a birthday wish in the morning and the man sent a question mark in return for the text.
Ah, did Kim Dokja read the licence wrong?
Kim Dokja hastily typed out a text and sent it.
'Is today not your birthday, Joonghyuk-ssi?'
He got the reply immediately.
'It is
How did you know?'
'I saw your DOB on your license when you showed me
I remember it because my friend's birthday is today too'
'I see
Thank you for the birthday wishes'
Now what? Kim Dokja's fingers hovered over the screen for a few seconds before he tentatively began typing.
'Any birthday plans?'
'None'
That was one way to end a conversation. What was he supposed to say to that? Don't work too hard? Could he tell that to a CEO?
'Eeh??
No party?
No cake?'
'No'
Now Kim Dokja just felt bad for the man.
'You should then, Joonghyuk-ssi
Get a cake, some candles'
'It's just going to be me and my secretary
It's unnecessary'
'I think that's the whole point about birthdays
Celebrating something unnecessary and making it special
Even if it is just you, I think you should give yourself at least some time
Maybe have a cupcake or something
A little treat for yourself'