“What do you mean youthink?” I said, stabbing a piece of tteokbokki. Every time we spoke, Yejun only left me with more questions.
He pressed his lips together, gaze darting around the various dishes at the table like he couldn’t decide where to look. After a moment, he crossed his arms, hiding the tattoo. “The thing is,” he said quietly, “I have no memory of ever having a mom.”
My hand froze, tteokbokki falling from my chopsticks to my plate with a wet splash. “What?” I whispered.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “Everyone has a mom, right? Sometimes they die, or leave you, but they never just… don’t exist. And yet it was always just me and my dad, and I don’t understand why I never asked, why he never told me anything about her before he died.”
I felt a strange ringing in my ears, a crystal vibration that hummed through my whole body, like I was suddenly hollow. Surely Yejun wasn’t saying—
“There’s just this hole in my life,” he said, staring at the steaming food on his plate. “Even when there’s no reason to feel upset, it’s like I just know something is wrong. Something is missing. It’s like I had all this love for someone and—”
“And now there’s nowhere for it to go,” I said, setting my chopsticks down, no longer hungry.
The steam from the food spiraled between us, the room vibrating with music, a pulsing heartbeat through the floor below.
Yejun cleared his throat. “Do you—”
“My sister,” I said quietly. “I think she’s… like your mom.”
Yejun’s gaze softened. “I’m sorry, Mina.”
I stared at my slowly cooling plate of food rather than acknowledge his words. I didn’t want him looking at me like I was some wounded animal. I didn’t want him looking at me at all. Unless…
“Do you think,” I said, “hypothetically, that my sister still exists on Timeline Alpha?”
Yejun stared at me without blinking for a long moment, as if searching for something in my eyes. “Hypothetically, yes,” he said. “Bringing back Timeline Alpha requires eliminating the person who split the timelines in the first place, the person responsible for erasing other descendants.”
“Hong Gildong,” we said at the same time. I laughed at how earnestly we’d both said such an obviously fake name.
“He has to die for this to work?” I said.
Yejun nodded slowly, edging away like he was afraid of my response.
I thought of the way Hong Gildong had stood over the woman we’d neutralized—I’d wanted to at least hold on to her name, to keep her alive in that small way, but that memory was gone.
But even if I couldn’t remember her face, I could rememberhis. The bright flash of gold in his eyes as he’d looked down on her. The twinkling amusement in the corners of his mouth when I spoke,like I was someone to laugh at, someone who could never hurt him. He knew exactly who I was, exactly what he’d taken from me.
“I need help learning calculus,” I said at last. “If I fail, then I’ll lose all my infiltration missions and get kicked out for not meeting my quotas.”
Yejun smirked. “You want my hypothetical help?”
I placed my hands in my lap, looking him dead in the eye. “No.”
The smile fell off his face. “No?” he said tentatively.
“Not hypothetically,” I said, my voice wavering.
The words I was about to say could spell out my death. No, worse than death—my erasure from all timelines.
But I would do it for Hana. For the person I could have been in another world. For the truth.
“Help me pass calculus, and I’ll help you fix the timeline,” I said. “I want to put things back the way they’re supposed to be.”
Yejun stared at me blankly for a moment, then a grin spread across his face. He lifted his Sprite—too eagerly, spilling half of it on the table. “Here’s to the way things are supposed to be.”
I raised my soju glass against his can, and this time I turned away as I drank.
From the window, I looked down on the busy street below and imagined all the people transforming into their real selves, the signs on all the shops changing colors, the sky clearing up, the flowers blooming. The world would shed this dead skin, and below it, I would have my answer.
