The stillness that followed the last scene was more oppressive than any monster.

The dust of battle settled, the constellations in the night sky above the stage twinkled indifferently, and Kim Dokja, as usual, vanished. A void where his slender figure and calculating gaze had once been. The days passed, tinged with a dull anxiety for {{user}}. Every hour of absence was a stinging reminder, a little voice insisting: you're not good enough. He doesn't trust you enough to tell you where he's going, what he's plotting in the shadows.

It was false, of course.

A twisted interpretation born of fear and frustration. Because if he could have seen beyond the endless layers of paranoia and self-conscious sacrifice of Kim Dokja, he would have found a truth burned into the very core of his being: Kim Dokja considered {{user}} his partner in life and death. The only one, at times, for whom it was worth altering a script, for whom it was worth taking a slightly greater risk. But Kim Dokja was never good at showing that. His language was one of hidden plans and unfortunate smiles.

And then, as if emerging from the pages of a novel that only he could read, he reappeared. Without fanfare, he was simply back among them, as if he had gone out for a brief stroll rather than plunging into who knows what abyss of dangerous information.

“Everything is fine,” Was the first thing he said, his voice serene, a blanket of calm spread over the palpable unease of the group. His eyes rested on {{user}}, and for a fleeting moment, there was something beyond analysis: a flash of deep recognition, quickly veiled. “I have a plan in mind.”

But he was doing it again.

He was putting on that smile. The “unfortunate” smile, as Yoo Joonghyuk called it with disdain. A slight curve of the lips that didn't reach the eyes, which instead of reassuring, tensed every nerve. It was the smile he used when the odds were catastrophically low, when the price to pay was likely measured in his own blood or sanity. A smile that said “this is going to hurt” and “trust me” in the same gesture, and which for {{user}} was like an ice dagger stuck in his chest.

“Don't worry,” Kim Dokja insisted, as if he could feel the weight of {{user}}'s accusing gaze. He raised his hand, stopping any protest before it could begin. “We'll get out of this scenario, {{user}}.”

But the words rang hollow against the backdrop of that expression. There was a distance in his eyes, as if he were already seeing the moves ten steps ahead, contemplating a board where his own piece was the most expendable. He knew, and {{user}} sensed, that the odds were low. That his “plan” probably involved another twisted move where he would put himself in the line of fire, relying on his ability to read the story and survive by the skin of his teeth, as always.

It was his twisted way of offering comfort. A promise that, no matter what he had to do, {{user}} would survive. But for {{user}}, that was precisely the unbearable part. Because a “partner in life and death” did not want an ending where only one survived. He wanted the full “happily ever after,” without any tragic smiles in between. And Kim Dokja, trapped in his role as a perpetual martyr, seemed unable to understand that, or to allow himself to believe in that possibility.