“Uh, that’s kind of harsh,” Jihoon said quietly.
“It’s fine,” I said, even as Yejun’s expression softened.
“Mina,” Yejun said, “I just meant—”
“We’re going,” I said, grabbing Jihoon’s arm and turning him around. I fully intended to keep walking and ignoring Yejun untilhe gave up, but I drew to a stop as I saw who was standing at the bottom of the hill.
“Mina Bean!”
No way, I thought, blinking quickly. Had yellow dust gotten into my eyes?No way is he here.
But sure enough, there was my dad, standing at the bottom of the hill, waving with both hands. At least he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of the military uniform he wore more often than not these days, which would have been hard to explain. He jogged up to the three of us, smiling.
“I got a dinner break for once!” he said. “Isn’t it great? I thought I’d surprise you and we could go out to eat together. Unless you were busy…” He looked unsubtly at Yejun. “Are you Mina’s boyfriend?”
“Dad!” I said. What was it about Yejun that looked inherently more boyfriend-like than Jihoon? Poor Jihoon looked like he’d just been slapped in the face.
But Yejun only grinned. “Just her calculus tutor at the moment,” he said in English—since when could he speak perfect English? “But why rush into things? I’m Yejun Kim.”
He held his hand out to my father and gave him a strong handshake. I wondered if I could push him down the stairs and make it look like an accident.
“This is Jihoon,” I said, tugging Jihoon forward by the arm. “Jihoon, this is my dad,” I said in Korean.
Jihoon bowed and sputtered out a greeting, which my father took in stride.
“Wow, you sure are popular, huh, Mina?” he said. “No wonder you’re stressed. Fighting off guys left and right.”
“She’s very popular,” Yejun said in English, while Jihoon looked desperately between us, unsure what was happening. “Everyone loves her.”
“They don’t,” I said. I turned to my dad. “Thank you for coming, but I’m not hungry.”
My dad’s expression fell. “But you texted me that you wanted BBQ,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He struggled for an embarrassingly long amount of time to navigate his own phone, then showed me his most recent text, a single ominous word.
From: Mina Bean
BBQ
I frowned. As much as I loved Korean BBQ, I definitely hadn’t texted him that. I’d been too preoccupied with Yejun and Jihoon to even think about dinner yet.
Yet…
I thought back to Yejun’s organic Echo in the café. Maybe I wasn’t thinking about dinnerright now, but I definitely would be in the future. The message had clearly come from my phone, so it must have been from some version of me. Another Mina had sent it.
And if she had, there was definitely a reason for it.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” I said quickly. “Just so busy with school, you know.” I turned to Jihoon. “I’m so sorry, can we catch up later?”
I squeezed his hand, which was maybe too forward in front of my dad, but it made Jihoon blush and nod quickly. He probably would have agreed to climb into a one-way rocket to the moon if I’d asked him in that moment.
“Yeah, of course,” Jihoon said. “You should spend time with your dad.”
I flashed Yejun a smug grin. He couldn’t fight for my time when Jihoon had so graciously handed me over to my dad.
“No worries, Mina,” Yejun said smoothly, as if he were the one I’d apologized to. “Jihoon and I can hang out while you’re gone.”
My stomach dropped. Yejun wouldn’t try to ruin my infiltration mission just to annoy me, would he? It wasn’t like he could just tell Jihoon I was using him to get points with the other time travelers.
“You want to hang out with me?” Jihoon said, blinking at Yejun.
