[LOTM x ORV] dreaming, together

extras: I'm Glad You're Here/Turned Into Cannon Fodder?!?!

hi guys... think of this as a sort of.. side story? extra? i just felt like writing something lately. to celebrate orv volume one being published, maybe? yippee!

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(not particular to this fanfic, more aligning with canon)

1. I'm Glad You're Here

My confession?

Hmm.. I've done many bad things. Putting salt and pepper into my bosses' coffee cups? Hehe.

There was someone there when I tried to secretly sprinkle salt and pepper into the cup. Naturally, it was my coworker at the time, Kim Dokja.

Now that I know him better, I can figure that it may have been his insecurity that played a part in him not snitching. Maybe he felt that people wouldn't believe him when the oh-so-perfect Yoo Sangah would do such a thing. Maybe he didn't want to lose the only person that would try to talk to him. Maybe he felt he didn't have a voice at all.

Whatever the reason, I'm grateful to him. Really, I'm always grateful. 

I told him once. That, if he'd given me the chance, we could've been friends. We could've rode bikes together, maybe to work or to wherever we desired to go. We could've learned Spanish together, recommended books to each other. We could've picked homes for each other, been each other's neighbors and waved hi when the sun hung brightly in the sky.

We could've grown old together, could've been in neighboring rooms in the same hospital.

Do I love him? Of course? We all love him. And he loved, loves all of us too.

I love him, not in the same way lovers do, but in a way that life-long friends do. I like to think it's a love that transcends romance. 

Even before the scenarios, he never looked at me like I should be someone chased after. There were no expectations, just that I was a human. Like I was a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be defined. Waiting to have legible words written on it.

When we first met, we were both lost and trying to find our department. I'm not going to say something cringey, like, maybe I was a little lost in the figurative sense. I wasn't. I never was. I rebelled against my parents, any expectations they set for me. I felt I knew where I would be worth. And, rather than feeling something was lost in the first place, I found him. 

I didn't know I could've found him when there was nothing missing in my mind. It was unexpected. It was miraculous. I wanted to be his friend. I persisted everyday, talking to him, ignoring my male coworkers' strange stares.

I laughed a little when I read about myself in Dokja-ssi's inner library. Kind? Nice? Like the perfect female protagonist? But there were never things about the mean things I did. Maybe he agreed with me. I don't know, because those are thoughts for himself. There's no need for him to think anything of it. Somehow, I feel I don't want him to.

Even the scenarios he never expected that much of me. He saved me in the first scenario, when he threw that cage of grasshoppers at me. He kept me around, and let me know my worth.

That was why I didn't want to depend on him anymore. Ah, I was a little offended when Han Sooyoung-ssi said I was suspicious. I had no choice but to improve in no time to be useful in the scenarios. I couldn't let myself be behind when others were ahead, no?

Do I forgive him? Should I? I don't think I should decide. Rather, I was the lucky one. Dokja-ssi and I are more alike than one can think. We both have many friends here, people we can call family. 

I don't have the guts to care about those other people. I only want to think about my now family.

So, my confession. I confess that I'm glad Dokja-ssi was born. I'm glad I met him.