One thing was certain: This wasn’t about Yejun.
If she knew about him, she would look angry, not nervous. In fact, she would already have my head on a pike.
“Mina,” Hyebin said, her voice low, her gaze fixed on my reflection in the scratched bus window. “I was wondering…”
I held my breath as I waited for her next words. Call it a dragon sense, or a hunch, or just overactive anxiety, but I sensed that her next words were of great importance.
She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it and looked away.
“This is our stop,” she said.
As we stepped off the bus and walked back to headquarters, I realized that I had learned something valuable that day.
I couldn’t lie to Jang Hyebin, but Jang Hyebin couldn’t lie to me either.
The city unfolded beneath me as I rode the bus up to Namsan Seoul Tower that afternoon. It was a tourist trap, one of the Top Ten Places to See in Seoul. Maybe Yejun hoped the crush of foreign tourists would make a good distraction when we started destroying the timeline in broad daylight.
It was a bad-air day, so the panoramic view from the top of the hill hid behind a silk veil, and I doubted the view from the observation deck was much better. People came here to take scenic pictures of the whole city from behind fingerprinted glass, but they were going to be disappointed if they came today.
I stepped off the bus and lingered outside the main entrance, staying far away from the neon love staircase and the locks that annoying couples clipped to all the railings to promise their eternal devotion—I was pretty sure that maintenance had to come around with clippers every month and prune the gate just so no one got tetanus from all the rust.
Yejun hadn’t told me how to find him once I arrived, and I felt too awkward waiting by the door, so I ducked into the OLED tunnel by the main entrance. There were panels like this all over the tower—screens so crisp that they looked more like windows to another universe. This one played a video of outer space rushing over my head, like I was in a rocket spiraling upward into oblivion.
The sharp brightness of the digital stars made my eyes hurt, yet another headache stabbing into my skull. I’d had a headache all morning and Advil hadn’t even touched it, supporting my theory that it was timesickness. But I didn’t know how to fix it when I couldn’t figure out where I’d left a loop open.
In the panels overhead, the spinning stars grew dim. The camera panned to the fiery red surface of the sun, scarlet flames lashing their tongues at the darkness, gold simmering beneath the surface. Something about its brightness ignited a warmth inside my rib cage, relaxing my muscles, forcing my jaw to unclench.
Dragons were creatures of water, not fire, but we were also drawn to gold. It was a symbol of power in both Korea and Japan. Every year, there was a golden dragon dance in Tokyo that was meant to celebrate the return of golden dragons to heaven.
Descendants were only echoes of dragons. But sometimes—like now—I could sense the sizzling embers of who I used to be, the fire waiting for oxygen to breathe it back to life. I looked at my hands, imagining my nails sharpening into claws.
A shadow spilled across my feet as someone blocked the light behind me. I turned around.
Yejun stood at the mouth of the tunnel, a Paris Baguette bag in one hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder. With stars flashing by in the OLED panels all around him, he looked like a falling star tearing through the night sky.
“Yes, I got your cheesecake,” he said, grinning and waving for me to follow him.
“I didn’t say you had to get me cheesecake every time we met,” I said as I emerged from the tunnel, snatching the bag from him anyway and peering inside at the slice of cheesecake with a little plastic lid over the top—strawberry, just like I’d had at the café. I hated that he’d remembered. He probably felt so smug about it, probably expected me to be impressed.
Yejun shrugged and turned left, away from the lobby entrance. “It seemed like an investment in my safety. I don’t know how you eat something so heavy, though. Have you ever tried banana milk mixed with melon milk and a ginseng candy chaser? That’s the best dessert.”
“That sounds disgusting,” I said.
“Excuse you, I don’t insult your precious cheesecake,” Yejun said. He came to a stop in front of the panda garden—a staircase decorated with round plastic pandas for tourists to take pictures with—and sat down next to a particularly chubby panda, waving for me tosit. I sat a careful distance from him as he unzipped his backpack, pulled out a small plastic tray, and set it on the bench between us.
“Is this a picnic?” I said.
Yejun shook his head, rooting around in his backpack. “I’m showing you the plan,” he said. Then he pulled out a bottle of strawberry milk, peeled back the foil, and poured it across the tray.
I flinched as some of it splashed onto my skirt. “Why does your plan involve wasting milk?”
“Milk is less reflective than water, so it’s better for scrying,” Yejun said, already tracing his signature into the shallow pool. “You don’t want to leave a paper trail, do you?”
“I… guess not,” I said, frowning at the aggressive fake-strawberry scent. I leaned closer as Yejun opened a file and text appeared in the pale pink surface.
Popularize candy corn in Korea
Rescue the dung beetles
