“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he said, frowning. “These are relics from the other timeline. I thought if I showed you proof—”
“It doesn’t prove anything,” I said, tugging my bag over myshoulder. “Look, I know I’m not as smart as our”—I glanced around in case anyone was listening—“classmates,” I said at last. “I know I’m a foreigner and no one trusts me. But if you want me kicked out of the descendants, you’re gonna have to try harder than that.”
He reeled back as if I’d slapped him. “I don’t want you to get kicked out,” he said, his voice so gentle and hurt that if I were anyone else, maybe I would have fallen for it.
Descendants are good liars, I reminded myself, turning around before he could say anything else to try to persuade me. I sensed him following me, but I stormed into the girls’ bathroom—the one place he couldn’t follow—then locked myself in a stall and took out my phone.
I found a rogue, I texted Hyebin, a cold jolt of satisfaction washing through me. She didn’t respond right away, but that was normal—she never let anything break her focus.
What wasn’t normal was that five minutes later, while I waited for the sound of Yejun walking away, she still hadn’t responded.
Hyebin never spent more than three minutes on any single mission. Even if she’d just started when I texted her, she should have been done by now.
I gnawed my lip. The thought of going through the rest of the school day with Yejun trailing after me sounded about as fun as walking barefoot over needles.
I tugged a long pink sweatshirt out of my bag and pulled it over my head, covering up most of my school uniform, then shoved open the sliding window and climbed outside, crushing decorative plants as I landed. I walked confidently down the front stairs of the school—that was what Hyebin taught me—no one questioned where you were going or what you were doing if you looked confident—and made it out to the street. If Hyebin wouldn’t answer her phone, I would tell her myself.
Maybe skipping school wasn’t the smartest idea for someone indanger of failing, but all I could think about was that photo of maybe-Hana, and how happy Yejun was to taunt me with the only thing that I cared about. Punching him in the face and getting kicked out of school was arguably worse than disappearing for a few periods.
I stormed toward headquarters, bending my knees so I wouldn’t roll down the incline again. My school sat at the top of a hill, all of western Eungam spread out beneath me.
Before I’d come to Seoul, I’d imagined polished glass skyscrapers that echoed the whole city back at you, flashing neon signs, and a sky lit by fluorescent office lights instead of stars. But that was just the rich parts of Seoul.
Here, on the western side, the tallest buildings were a mix of faded gray concrete and weathered brick, each with perfect rows of square windows like a thousand gaping mouths on haunted faces. Far in the distance, a row of identical concrete skyscrapers stood like sentinels, the barrier between Seoul and the mountains of Gyeonggi. With the haze of fine dust blown over from China, the tops of the distant buildings blurred away, like everything beyond the border of Seoul was no more than a dream.
As I descended the hill, the street rose higher and blocked my view to the west. I reached street level and waited at the intersection, wordlessly accepting a handful of commercial fliers that some old lady handed me. A bicycle sliced diagonally through the crosswalk and nearly ran over my toes, but I made it to the other side of the street unscathed and could finally breathe easier with my school far behind me.
After a few minutes, I reached the tallest building in Eunpyeong. On paper, it was a grocery store, but in reality it was something far more important to humanity.
Emart was the Korean equivalent of Walmart if you could only build up instead of out; a towering Eye of Sauron in the western part of Seoul, except instead of black slate and evil incarnate, it wasfull of seven-dollar peanut butter and old ladies trying to run me over with their shopping carts. It was ten stories of everything you could possibly want to buy, plus an eleventh floor that was mysteriously always “under construction.”
I grabbed a two-pack of banana milk on the first floor, because after dealing with Kim Yejun all morning, it was the least I deserved. I hesitated for a second at the smell of the bakery, my hand lingering over the knotted sausage-and-cheese bread, but thought better of it because Hyebin would surely not appreciate it if I had greasy hands. I picked up a prepackaged vegetable kimbap and hurried upstairs, swearing under my breath when a family with a grocery cart blocked the entire escalator. I managed to rush around them and cut ahead before they could turn the corner for the next escalator, then I was fast-walking as subtly as humanly possible up to the clothing level.
A headache started brewing behind my eyes. I groaned, closing my eyes against the bright fluorescent lighting.Just what I needed.
I knew this kind of pain well—the kind of headache that cast star flashes across my vision and threatened to pop my eyes out. It was a symptom of timesickness, which you only felt if you were part of an incomplete time loop. I hadn’t yet gone back in time to pour banana milk on my own shoes, so that was probably why I was feeling sick. I would have to check my new missions to see the exact time and date I needed to close the loop.
As the escalator carried me up, the flip-flops and BB Cream on the lower level disappeared into the depths of the basement, followed by the pots and pans and shower curtains. The escalator dumped me out on the electronics floor, but there was still one more level to go.
I skirted around the edge of the floor, to the elevator markedOUT OF SERVICE, and hit the lightless call button four times while stuffing a piece of kimbap in my mouth. Headquarters paid ridiculously high rent to this building, so it was somewhat of an unspokenrule that descendants could help ourselves to whatever we wanted, as long as we didn’t cause a scene.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside, finally cracking open my long-awaited banana milk. But the moment it touched my lips, I remembered the curdled scent of it that had soaked into my sneakers after my Echo poured it over me. Even after I’d run my shoes through the washer twice, they’d smelled faintly of rotten milk and feet. I grimaced, lowering the bottle as the elevator dinged and reached the eleventh floor.
I entered the sterile lobby, where Seulgi was sitting on her desk, kicking her feet and texting. She looked up as the doors opened and waved with one hand while continuing to text with the other.
Min Seulgi was the world’s most unlikely security guard. She had a higher concentration of dragon blood than most descendants, so she looked about eighteen even though she was closer to thirty-five. She wore tulle dresses and circle lenses and looked like her thin arms would snap if she tried to carry her groceries home, but she also had claws that could slice cement like cream. It was her job to make sure no humans wandered into headquarters, and to cut down anyone who tried to get through anyway.
“Hi Seulgi-nim,” I said. “Want some banana milk?”
She looked up, a sharp flash of gold blazing through her eyes.
I tensed, taking a step back. Had I said something wrong? Was banana milk offensive to dragons in some way?
“How did you know it was my favorite?” Seulgi whispered.
I relaxed my shoulders and handed her the bottle. “Lucky guess,” I said.
The nail on her index finger sharpened into a claw as she stabbed through the foil, then downed the bottle in half a second as the claw retracted into her hand. “Thanks, Mina,” she said, wiping her lips on her sleeve and stepping aside to let me into headquarters.
