“October 1, 2015,” I said at last. “Before lunch.”
“Why then?” Yejun asked.
I looked down at my shoes. “My parents took me out for lunch and told me I was a descendant,” I said.
At the time, it had been exciting. What kid wouldn’t be thrilled at the idea of time travel being real? But that was also the day that any dream of what I could have done with my life had died. I must have had dreams before that day, but I couldn’t remember them. Maybe if I’d run away, things could have been different. Maybe if Hana had left when she found out, she’d be hiding in Tokyo instead of wiped from existence.
“I get it,” Yejun said quietly. I believed him, because I’d tasted the sadness in his soul in the moment our magic touched. Being a descendant felt like a great adventure on some days, but it was also lonely, especially for a rogue like him.
“What about you?” I said when the silence had stretched out too long.
Yejun crossed his arms, leaning back in thought. He looked up at the sky as a flock of birds arced overhead. The clouds shifted and the sun fell at a sharp angle over the stream, which glinted like it was full of crystals.
“Here,” he said at last.
I frowned. “The Bulgwang stream?”
He shook his head. “This moment. Right here, right now.”
I recoiled, gripping the edges of my skirt with hands that were suddenly sweaty. “Why?” I said.
“Because right now, I feel hopeful,” he said, still looking at the sky, a calm smile on his face. “It’s not every day that I get to feel this way.”
Hopeful?I thought. It was a strange word for a descendant touse. Hope was a shield against uncertainty, and there was so little uncertainty in the life of time travelers. Descendants didn’t have hope, we had timeline adjustments.
But in that moment, as I watched the flock of birds grow smaller on the blue horizon, the sun warming my face, I felt it too—that warm ember of forbidden hope deep inside me, a secret that existed only in this moment.
Chapter Eleven
Sprinting to school in the morning wasn’t my favorite activity, but that was the consequence of staying up thinking about paradoxes and forgetting to set your alarm. The irony of a time traveler running late wasn’t lost on me.
As if that weren’t a bad enough omen, the air quality was also in the red zone, the sky a sickly shade of gray. I’d grabbed one of my dad’s large dust masks by accident and it was slipping off my face as I dodged old ladies pushing their carts on the sidewalk, desperate to cross while I still had the walk light. I was pulling my weight in calculus class recently, thanks to Yejun’s tutoring, but that didn’t mean I could afford to lose any participation points by showing up late.
I ran past the bench by the stream where Yejun and I had sat only a few days ago. I found myself slowing down, my gaze lingering on the empty seat. I shook my head and forced myself to keep walking, not to recall in vivid detail how the sunlight reflected in Yejun’s eyes and made them look golden brown, or how long his eyelashes were, or how delicately he’d touched my face, or…
I let out a frustrated sound and stormed past the bench.
It wasn’t my fault I was acting like this—Yejun looked like an actor from a face soap commercial. Whowouldn’tfeel nervous if he wanted to hold their hand all the time? Plus, he was tutoring me, and people fell for their tutors all the time—something about emotional transference or admiration for kindness and intelligence or some other knee-jerk reaction to being helped. Falling for Yejun was like getting sucked into white water rapids—there was nothing I could do about it.
About two blocks from school, I gave up on trying to hold my sweaty mask tight to my face and accepted that I was just going to breathe in toxic smog today. It wouldn’t be the most dangerous thing I’d done by a long shot. I was coughing within half a block, but it would wear off once I got inside. At least, I hoped so.
As if the universe was intent on sabotaging me that morning, a minitruck turned a corner too sharply in front of me, dumping its load of watermelons into the street.
By some miracle, I managed not to crush my toes under any melons or get hit by a car in the chaos. Traffic came to a standstill; drivers peered out their windows wondering whose job it was to push the watermelons out of the road, or if they should just barrel through them.
That was when I saw Yejun.
I didn’t normally run into him before class because he always strolled in right before the bell. But that morning, I spotted his blond hair from the other side of the crosswalk.Am I actually later than Kim Yejun?I thought, grimacing.How far I’ve fallen.
But as the crowd dispersed on the other side of the street, Yejun placed his hand on the waist of a girl next to him.
I drew to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, my breath caught in my throat. Yejun knew other girls? When had he even had time to get that close to someone? I squinted but couldn’t figure out whothe girl was—everyone wore the same school uniform, and almost every girl had dark hair. She and Yejun turned the corner and disappeared.
I felt the inexplicable urge to turn around and run back home, go back to bed and try again tomorrow. My face felt hot, my skin prickling, throat tight with something dangerously close to tears.
Of course I wasn’t the only girl Yejun was trying to charm. Maybe he needed me to fix the timeline, but he needed another girl to make him dinner, another to drive him around, another to help him bleach his frustratingly perfect hair. He was handsome enough that all he’d have to do was ask nicely and let them hold his hand for a bit and they’d do whatever he asked, just like me.
I thought back to earlier this week, how I’d wondered if he’d taken me on a date, and my face burned with embarrassment for having been so foolish, for thinking Yejun would ever want me that way. We were only working together because I was a foreigner—he’d said so himself. The other girl was probably smart and sweet and fluent in Korean, probably didn’t have huge feet and hair that frizzed in the rain and was probably an acceptable height for a high school girl instead of a crooked string bean like me.
