I frowned, peering down between the branches. “What? How is that possible?”
“They all opted for the brain wipe,” Hyebin said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter.
When descendants turned twenty, we could opt to turn in our magic and have our memories scrubbed rather than serve the timeline. As tempting as it was at times, my mom told me that it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. The descendants didn’t put new memories in place of the years you’d spent training. Instead, they ripped out everything even remotely related to time travel. If Hyebin’s parents had had their memories erased, there were probably huge chunks of Hyebin’s childhood they couldn’t remember at all.
No wonder Hyebin seemed like such a lone wolf. She really had no one.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Hyebin’s expression twisted like she’d eaten something sour. “I’m not,” she said. “They’re not the ones pulling stinky fruit from a tree right now. Speaking of…” She gestured impatiently toward the tree.
I sighed and turned back to the tree, tugging myself up high enough to pluck the last two eunhaeng. I let out a breath as I dropped them into Hyebin’s basket. That was one more mission I’d managed not to mess up. Ever since the wedding incident, I was hyperaware that the next mission I failed would probably be my last.
I was just about to climb back down when a low rumble shook the earth.
I grabbed the nearest branch for support as the leaves andeunhaeng trembled. Hyebin steadied herself on the ladder and looked around.
“Earthquake?” I said, digging my hands into the bark as the ground shook even harder.
Hyebin ignored me, narrowing her eyes and peering around as if she could smell a change in the air. The world lurched again and I smacked my head against the side of the tree.
“We have to go,” Hyebin said suddenly.
“Uh, okay,” I said. “What should I do with the eunhaeng?”
“Yang,now!” Hyebin said, her eyes wide.
I reached out for her hand, but another vibration shook the ground, and Hyebin’s ladder tilted to the side, her fingers sliding away from me. Hyebin hopped off the ladder and landed easily on her feet as it clattered to the ground, then hurried to pick it up and settle it against the shivering tree again. I clung to the trunk, praying that the whole tree didn’t topple over with me on it.
On the horizon, a wave of white began to roll in.
At first, I thought it was a tsunami, but those were far more common in Japan than Korea. Something that resembled ocean foam rolled closer and closer, until I realized it wasn’t water at all, but… nothing.
It was as if a wave of bleach was flooding the horizon, stripping the colors from the storefronts and sidewalks, leaving the world a vacant white with nothing but ghostly outlines of what remained. The wave devoured the skyline and all the buildings on the horizon, slowly ripping a hole in the sky. People on the streets sprinted away, tripping over each other and running out into traffic.
My fingers on the upper branch stung with a sharp coldness. I looked at the branches overhead, now white as a birch tree, the eunhaeng gray like rocks. The wave of white had begun to wash over my hand, which was quickly going numb.
I scrambled to a different branch as the whiteness crept fartherdown the tree, breathing frigid air over me. I was positive I had never learned about anything like this in my descendant classes.
Hyebin gave up on trying to steady the ladder, tossing it aside with a frustrated cry when the ground shook even harder beneath her. She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the white approaching from all sides, then held a hand out to me, one palm glowing blue. “Just jump!” she said.
It was too far to jump. I was going to crush her into the ground. “I don’t think—”
“Yes,don’t think!” Hyebin said, her eyes wide and desperate. “Just jump!”
As always, I listened to Hyebin.
I dropped from the tree right as the whiteness devoured my branch. My left hand closed around Hyebin’s, and the world exploded into color.
We tumbled to the sidewalk, crushing a display of grapes spread out on blankets in front of a market. An old woman started yelling at us, but Hyebin had already rolled to her feet and yanked me upright, gripping me by the shoulders.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I looked to my hand, which had returned to its natural color. “I think so,” I said, though I lurched unsteadily to one side because the ground felt a bit more like gelatin than cement.
Hyebin frowned and tugged at a lock of my hair near my face. Before I could ask her what was wrong, the lock fell in front of my eyes, and I realized it was stark white. Frantically, I tugged at the rest of my hair, relieved that most of it was still brown. “What was that?” I said.
Hyebin passed the grape vendor a 50,000 won note and mumbled an apology before tugging me away from the scene of the crime, then uttered the most terrifying words I’d ever heard Jang Hyebin say.
