“Um,” said a timid woman’s voice from the other side of the curtain. “Excuse me?”
Yejun sighed, then opened the changing stall curtain. An employee was standing just outside, gaping at us. Yejun brushed past her and stormed away, ignoring me when I called for him.
He shoved open the front door of the thrift store and hurried into the street. I chased after him but immediately choked at the taste of the air—somehow we’d landed in an awful air quality day, as if this couldn’t get any worse.
“You said you wouldn’t lie to me,” I said, grabbing Yejun’s sleeve and wincing as my timesickness headache flared up again. “Omission is still lying. So tell me what your problem is. Don’t make me guess.”
Yejun’s expression pinched. He glared at the horizon, looking like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. After a moment, he sighed and dropped his gaze to his shoes. “I just can’t believe you actually went out with Jihoon,” he said at last. His voice no longer sounded bright and annoyingly confident, but oddly fragile, barely above a whisper. “I thought we…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
My face suddenly felt far too warm, every muscle wound tight. Yejun was actually jealous of Jihoon. “How can you be mad aboutme going out with Jihoon when you did the same thing?” I said, a raw edge to my voice that I was sure gave away my sadness, but it was too late to take it back.
Yejun raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t kiss Jihoon,” he said.
I scoffed. “No, obviously not Jihoon!” I said. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I really don’t,” Yejun said, checking his watch. He jolted at whatever he saw, then took off down the sidewalk, waving for me to follow. “Sorry, but we’re on a tight schedule here. I didn’t script a lot of small talk when I ran this scenario.”
I scowled but hurried after him anyway. We reached an intersection not far from our school. Yejun stopped just before the crosswalk and pulled a water balloon from his backpack.
“Cover me,” he said.
“Cover youhow?” I said.
But he didn’t wait for me to figure it out. He only turned and reeled back, then hurled the balloon into the intersection, where it burst on the windshield of a passing car.
The car swerved as it sailed through the intersection, forcing a minitruck to turn sharply to avoid it. The truck was loaded with fruit and overbalanced at the sudden turn, spilling watermelons into the street.
Brakes screeched behind us as drivers dodged errant melons. One rolled over my foot and nearly toppled me like a bowling pin, but Yejun clamped his hand around my waist to steady me. I looked up at him, my left hand clutching the back of his uniform jacket for balance, my side pressed up against his.
I had been here before.
A day when the air quality was in the red zone, when an overturned cart of watermelons caused a traffic jam right outside my school, when Yejun had held another girl by the waist on the other side of the intersection. Except, it hadn’t been another girl at all.
It wasme.
“Oh no,” I whispered, clinging to Yejun’s sleeve, his bright brown eyes locked on mine. “Oh, this is all my fault, isn’t it?”
“What?” Yejun said, frowning.
I used his arm to pull myself up but didn’t let go of his sleeve. All this time, I’d thought Yejun was a player, sneaking around with other girls behind my back. But all he’d been doing was crossing the timeline with me.
Crap.
What was I supposed to do to fix this? If our roles were reversed, I probably would have bought the world’s biggest apology cheesecake, but Yejun had never taken a single bite of any of my cheesecake slices, so I doubted that was his preferred dessert.
But maybe there was something else I could get him. He’d mentioned it once, on the day we went to Namsan Seoul Tower.
“Come on,” I said, gripping his arm and tugging him around the corner. He seemed too startled at the gesture to protest, his arm limp as I dragged him down the street toward the nearest convenience store.
“Where are you going?” Yejun said. “The adjustment—”
“Just give me a minute,” I said, running faster and stifling a cough. I really shouldn’t have been running without a mask when there was so much fine dust in the air, but this was too important to wait.
I hurried into CU and rushed to the refrigerated section, then grabbed some banana milk, melon milk, and a bag of red ginseng candies. Yejun watched with wide eyes as I dumped the strange combination of foods onto the counter and passed the cashier a 10,000 won note.
“What are you doing?” Yejun said.
“Getting you your favorite snack,” I snapped, accepting the bag from the cashier with a smile.
