Chapter Text
Well, shit. It seemed like Kim Dokja was inside a tank again.
Around him milled several of his fellow squids. He wasn’t one to initiate conversation usually, but he was disoriented and lost. He steeled himself and swam up to a slouching, grey-looking squid that was gurgling sadly.
“Hey,” started Kim Dokja, but the other squid looked away and slumped deeper into itself. Kim Dokja soldiered on. “I’m new here. Mind telling me what’s going on?”
The other squid looked him over lazily, floundered its tentacles around for a bit, and went right back to slumping.
So, from what Kim Dokja picked up from that interaction: life is hopeless.
Amazing.
He went around the tank, introducing himself to the others and asking where they were. By the end of an agonizing day, Kim Dokja was able to gather that they were all doomed to be eaten by humans.
From his journey to this tank, Kim Dokja remembered exiting the aquarium, walking for a short while on the pavement while admiring the melancholy of the sparkling sunset on the sea, and then entering a bustling establishment of many, many humans crammed into a small space.
Who puts a seafood restaurant next to an aquarium? Kim Dokja wondered. Apparently, Star Stream did. Nothing like having a meal and then, for a little bit of friendly exercise, learning about the very creatures being digested in real time!
Kim Dokja’s thoughts began to wander at the mention of the aquarium. He thought about his valiant battle upon entering the tank, the strange scrutiny of the humans within, and a certain ugly sunfish.
Yoo Joonghyuk.
Well, Kim Dokja had never been one to sit around and wait to be rescued like some damsel in distress. He was going to craft his own escape plan and create his own ending.
For the next few days, as his fellow squids were taken and butchered one by one like the livestock they were, Kim Dokja explored his tank and the small world beyond it. He formulated a plan.
He’d have to escape the tank somehow. The human staff on squid duty took frequent breaks, so Kim Dokja would make his move during one of these periods of inattentiveness. He’d suction his way up the tank walls and climb out from the opened top, then plop onto the floor, as incognito as a squid could be.
Then he would run.
The humans, he observed, rarely looked downwards. As long as he avoided being trampled by their overly large feet, Kim Dokja would be able to make his way outside the building and into the sunlight. According to his calculations, it would take three minutes of difficult squelching to plop himself into the ocean. From there, he’d latch onto a fishing boat bringing food into the aquarium, squeeze himself into a collecting net, and make his way back to Yoo Joonghyuk’s tank.
It was flawless, of course.
The next day, Kim Dokja initiated his grand escape.
When the squid staff looked the other way, Kim Dokja tried to suction his way up the tank–
–only to plop back into the water before he’d even passed the halfway mark.
The old, deflated squid next in line for butchering looked at him sadly. With a wave of its tentacles, it conveyed to Kim Dokja that the walls were so soiled and crusty, their powerful squid suction efforts were wasted on escape.
Fuck. Kim Dokja needed a change of plan.
In a burst of inspiration, Kim Dokja began to rouse all the deflating, depressed squids around him out of their misery.
“Don’t you all want to escape? To see the light?”
The squids were despondent. Kim Dokja pictured Yoo Joonghyuk and his stupid sunfish face and his unjustifiable confidence despite the world and evolution itself being against him. He would channel his companion until the end.
“Where did you all come from?” Kim Dokja continued, not yet devoid of hope. “I was picked off the ocean floor. They took me from my home, those bastards! You!”
He jabbed imperiously at an older squid, who gave a start.
“Yes, you! You have a family, don’t you?”
It had been a wild guess, but the squid nodded, body swelling with longing.
“Did you know that the ocean is just a few feet away from the back exit of this place?” Kim Dokja roused. “Don’t you want to go home?”
The squid and a few of the less-droopy others stirred, their misty eyes beginning to focus on him at last.
Kim Dokja pressed on. “And what do these humans have that we squids don’t? Size? We’re smaller! Strength? We can slip from their grasps! Hands? We have tentacles! Humans have nothing on us great sea creatures! We are masters of evolution who existed in droves eons before the first human ancestors were even conceived!”
Most of the squids in the tank had their gazes on Kim Dokja now. Some even had their heads raised in curiosity.
“And what will we do?” Kim Dokja was practically shouting now. He paced along the bottom of the tank like a drill sergeant, gesturing wildly with his arms. “Sit around and let them devour us? No! Humans are degenerate trash! We can defeat them all!”
At least three of his fellow squids began to rise to the greater cause. Their tentacles waved frantically, expressing their frustration and hatred towards those who imprisoned them.
“Exactly right,” agreed Kim Dokja as even the less energetic squids began to move restlessly. At their agitation, he squid-smirked deviously. “And I have a plan for this all to come to fruition.”
Long into the night they schemed, editing and revising what Kim Dokja had already thought out. The tanks were sealed for the night, but the next day’s rising sun would herald a new rebellion.
–
“It’s time,” whispered Kim Dokja. Their tank’s lid had been lifted as the restaurant opened for the afternoon, and the dumbass of a staff member had just turned their back on the squids, blissfully ignorant of the terror the day would bring. “Commence Operation Sunfish!”
The squids began their frenzied movement. Each squid took its place in the predetermined lineup and wrapped its tentacles around its neighbors’, forming a long squid chain.
“Youngest first!” commanded Kim Dokja, and the smallest squids began to clamber up the chain and out of the tank. As the tank emptied one squid at a time, Kim Dokja looked on in satisfaction.
Yoo Joonghyuk, just hold on. I’ll be there soon.
As the one to come up with the plan, Kim Dokja had convinced the other squids to go before him so he could see everyone out safely. He thought it strange that the restaurant was unusually deserted for the time of day, but he would take any blessing that would aid in their escape.
The staff member had long since disappeared into the breakroom, shouting at his colleagues to “go watch the news! Something strange is happening at the place across the street!”
Kim Dokja had no idea what the humans were on about, but he was glad for the distraction as an older squid pulled him up and out of the tank. Upon landing with a wet squelch on the counter, Kim Dokja surveyed his resistance team.
They all had resilient gleams in their eyes, alive for the first time since being abducted from their homes. Kim Dokja clicked his beak in satisfaction.
“Good job, team; flawless completion of Phase One. Commence Phase Two! Let’s move out!”
With the back door as their goal, the line of squids slowly suctioned their way onto the restaurant’s walls. This phase was the most dangerous part of their escape plan; the squids would have to discreetly stick to the walls and edge past the employee breakroom without getting noticed, down the short hallway, and through the back door which was perpetually left open for efficiency.
Kim Dokja would forever praise the carelessness of humans.
Phase Two was progressing seamlessly until, without warning, the restaurant doors burst open and people flooded inside, chattering excitedly.
The squids at the front of the line froze in fear, and Kim Dokja felt a spike of panic.
“Go go go!” he shouted. “Don’t lose concentration and don’t look back, just keep moving!”
At his insistence, the line of squids moved forward at an even more frantic pace than before.
“Holy shit,” said an unfamiliar voice.
Kim Dokja’s cold blood ran even colder. He turned to see one of the human staff gawking up at the line of escaping squids on the wall.
“Keep going,” he told his fellow squids heavily. “I’ll take care of this one.”
The squid in the back of the line made a frantic gesture, but Kim Dokja interrupted it.
“No. This was my idea, so the best thing you all can do is to make it to safety. Don’t let any opportunity go to waste and keep moving!”
With those final words, Kim Dokja launched himself off the wall and straight at the human’s face. He squirted a large blot of ink in the general vicinity of the eyes of the human, who screamed, clawing at his face.
“Help! The squid’s attacking me!” he bellowed. Seizing on this moment of distraction, Kim Dokja chanced a glance up towards the back exit just in time to see the last of his squid brethen inching past the door to freedom.
Comforted that his sacrifice hadn’t been wasted, Kim Dokja redoubled his attack efforts on the human beneath him.
“Kim Namwoon!” shouted the voice of another human, female this time. “We don’t have time for your bullshit! Yoo Joonghyuk and his paparazzi are here in this restaurant; we need to–what the fuck.”
For just as the new human entered the staff hallway to be met with the sight of a white squid mauling Kim Namwoon’s face, Kim Dokja had frozen still at the sound of Yoo Joonghyuk’s name.
Kim Namwoon wasted no time in initiating his counterattack.
“Ha! Gotcha!”
Kim Dokja’s tentacles released his target with a small pop as Kim Namwoon pulled him off his face. Shit.
“You’re gonna pay for doing this,” he motioned at the dark inky mess that had spread from his face into his hair, “to me.” Laughing maniacally, Kim Namwoon stomped back to the front counter where the live seafood tanks were kept. It was almost comical how he froze in his tracks, staring at the empty squid tank. “J-J-Jung Heewon!” he stammered.
The woman from before seemed to have snapped out of her disbelieving stupor. “What is it now, dumbass? Another squid attack?”
Kim Namwoon shook his head vigorously, then pointed wordlessly at the empty squid tank. “Th-they’ve escaped!”
Kim Dokja cackled as the human staff fell into disarray around him. Jung Heewon evidently wanted to prioritize the restaurant’s sudden influx of hungry customers, but Kim Namwoon wanted nothing more than to find the escaped squids.
“What,” he demanded, bringing Kim Dokja to eye level, “did you do to my squids?”
Kim Dokja squirted another glob of ink into the human’s eye. As Kim Namwoon screamed and flailed, Kim Dokja began assessing the room for escape routes again. He was ruling out the ceiling (he would just be found again) and the floor (there were too many people to plausibly avoid) when his eyes wandered to the restaurant’s entrance and met the gaze of what might possibly have been the most beautiful living organism he had ever seen.
The man’s immaculate eyebrows swept up in surprise and his gaze, as dark as obsidian, took in Kim Dokja’s desperate struggle in Kim Namwoon’s punishing grip. The man was opening his beautiful mouth when Kim Namwoon shook Kim Dokja violently, tearing his focus away from the doorway.
“Tell me you squid, where did you put my squids?”
“Fuck off,” Kim Dokja spat at him before swinging himself bonelessly onto his captor’s face.
“AHHHH!” Kim Namwoon clawed at himself, trying unsuccessfully to pry off his squid attacker. “Get off, get off!”
Kim Dokja felt the heavy impact of Kim Namwoon’s hand on his body followed by a fierce, tearing pain in half of his appendages. When he looked down, Kim Namwoon was holding half his arms in one hand.
Cursing, Kim Dokja willed his remaining spasming muscles to withstand the agony. He was going to fall onto the ground, he realized with sudden fear half a second before it happened; and then he was plummetting, not into the safety of water this time, but onto the harsh and cold reality of solid tile.
I’m sorry, Yoo Joonghyuk , he thought desperately.
He had barely braced for impact when he felt the comfort of an indescibably warm embrace.
Kim Dokja knew this feeling; it was one he’d only ever felt when he was with a certain sunfish.
…He couldn’t be here, could he?
As the beatiful man from the entrance raised Kim Dokja tenderly to his strangely familiar face, Kim Dokja shook off the impossible, overly hope-filled idea. It couldn’t be.
But when the man smiled and his eyes lit up, deep as the oceans and as beautiful as the stars, Kim Dokja knew.
“Yoo…Yoo Joonghyuk?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s–the human sunfish Yoo Joonghyuk’s–breath hitched. Even with Kim Dokja as a collapsed, bleeding mess of squid on his palm, his companion was looking at him as if he were the only one he cared for in the world.
“It’s me, Kim Dokja.” His smile was blinding. Kim Dokja couldn’t look away. “I told you I’d see you again.”
Kim Dokja wanted to break down sobbing. “What happened to you?” he asked shakily.
Yoo Joonghyuk brought him closer. “A miracle,” he whispered.
And then he kissed him.
The beautiful sunfish-turned-human Yoo Joonghyuk kissed the slimy pile of collapsed tentacles that was Kim Dokja.
Kim Dokja couldn’t breathe. All of a sudden, his pain disappeared in a blinding flash of light. He felt weightless and feather-light; in fact, he couldn’t feel anything but the pure sensation of Yoo Joonghyuk’s presence and warmth against what felt like his own bare soul.
In this moment, he and Yoo Joonghyuk were the only ones in the world. Nothing separated them; not the humans, not the ecological food chain, and not the stigma of physical manifestations. It was just Kim Dokja and the one he loved, and he never wanted this moment to end.
When it did, however, Kim Dokja didn’t grieve for it. He felt warm, blanketed by someone else’s affection in a way he had never been before.
“I missed you, Yoo Joonghyuk,” he mumbled into a firm chest.
“I’m here with you now, you fool,” came the rumble of his sunfish’s gentle, familiar voice. “Everything’s okay now.”
It was only then that Kim Dokja felt that there were strong arms around him, cradling him with such tenderness and warmth, he never wanted to face the world again.
Hold on…something seemed off.
Kim Dokja opened his eyes, then immediately balked that he had eyelids to open. He looked down in alarm and found arms.
Shit, he had arms. And legs, and a torso of smooth, flawless skin.
He was a human.
Kim Dokja looked, dumbfounded, into Yoo Joonghyuk’s smiling, star-streaked eyes. “What did you do to me?”
“I don’t know,” Yoo Joonghyuk said quietly, burying his face into Kim Dokja’s hair. “I just wished that we could be together.”
Kim Dokja felt a strange swell of emotion accompany the fluttering warmth in his stomach. “Well,” he said, smiling gradually, “this is okay, too.” Swallowing the lump in his throat, Kim Dokja wrapped his arms around his stupid sunfish.
There was a moment of sweet, blissful silence. Then, the restaurant erupted into insanity.
“It was a true love’s kiss!”
“Wait, you’re telling me we had the Demon Squid here all along?”
“HAHAHAHA–”
“Fuck, I forgot there were humans here–”
“Over here, Yoo Joonghyuk oppa! Look here!”
“Kyaa! They’re both soooo hot!”
“Damn, get me a partner who’ll look at me the way Yoo Joonghyuk looks at Kim Dokja–”
“HAHAHAHHAAHHAAHAAAA–”
“Someone get this man some clothes!”
“What about my crab leg soup?”
“L-l-l-life and death companions!!”
“Why are you crying? Please stop!”
“Well, this is my sign to swear off seafood forever.”
Through the chaos, Kim Dokja grabbed hold of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Yoo Joonghyuk hastily shrugged off his coat to drape over Kim Dokja. “Go where?”
Kim Dokja smiled, brighter than the sun’s reflection off of the ocean’s waves. “Anywhere. As long as we go together.”