You don’t know what love is, I wanted to say.If the descendants can take it away from you so easily, then it isn’t love.
“I love you too,” I said quietly, then shut my bedroom door.
My parents were leaving early in the morning, so that might be the last time I ever saw my mom. I would never be able to kill someone knowing it would start a war, which meant Yejun would take me to headquarters to be erased or kill me on the spot—either way, I’d be gone from their lives. Hong Gildong would probably do some selective mind wiping on my parents regardless, just to make sure they stayed obedient worker bees. The idea of my parents not even missing me was so much worse than them mourning me.
I tore a sheet of paper out of my notebook and set it on my desk. Yejun had said paper materials didn’t reset as easily as phones during a timeline refresh, so maybe, somehow, this would survive.
I picked up a pen and wrote a letter to my parents.
My name is Mina. If you don’t know who I am, then the descendants have already taken me from you. Once, Iwas your daughter. I love you always, even if you forget me. The descendants can never change that.
I crept back into the hallway and tucked the note into my mom’s coin purse, where she probably wouldn’t notice it for a few days, until she was safely in Japan. Maybe the timeline refresh would destroy it anyway and she would never read it. But I knew now that erasing someone wasn’t a clean process, that there were always loose threads. I prayed that this was one of them.
I took out Hana’s note and clutched it to my chest as I lay down in bed.
You have to trust, my mom had said.
But I couldn’t trust the descendants, or Yejun, or even my parents. The only person I could trust was someone I couldn’t even see. I was somehow both trapped under Hong Gildong’s thumb yet still as isolated as a rogue agent. I might as well have gone rogue at that point, for all the good my friends and family had done me.
Slowly, I pulled Hana’s note from my chest, letting the pale moonlight illuminate her words.
Hana had to have gone rogue in order to leave me this note. That meant she had survived the timeline refresh. And if she could, maybe I could too. It wasn’t a hundred percent chance, but I liked the odds of surviving the timeline refresh better than my odds of surviving Yejun’s gun to my head or Hong Gildong shoving my time magic down my throat. All I had to do was get Yejun out of my way before he could tell on me.
I crushed Hana’s note close to my heart, feeling like she was here with me once more.
You’re smarter than them, she would tell me.Just like the ladybug, you can slip away when they least expect it.
They’d tested me because I was foreign, average, no one special. But underestimating me would be their last mistake.
Chapter Eighteen
The next morning, I finished my red velvet cheesecake and wiped my mouth, reapplied my lip balm, then took out my phone and dropped Yejun a pin with my location, followed by a panicked text.
THERE’S A PARADOX HERE.
I pushed my plate away and leaned back in the booth. My phone lit up with texts, but I ignored them all and examined my new locks of white hair in my phone camera. It had taken a metric ton of bleach to make it look like the timeline had stripped part of my hair of color, and it still looked a bit too yellow, but I figured it looked convincing enough for Yejun. It wasn’t like he was a hairdresser who would know the difference.
My parents had left for their flight before sunrise, leaving me full reign of the house to destroy the bathroom with bleach. I’d even bleached half an old shirt for good measure, which I was currently wearing. It was a pretty basic scenario setup—I wasn’t Yejun, after all—but I was good at lying, and that was how I would sell it.
I silenced my phone, because it was still lighting up with texts from my dad, updating me on every nanosecond of their travel.
Just arrived at the airport! Got through security—mom almost lost a shoe. Waiting at the gate eating a sandwich—not very good.
My phone started vibrating, but I ignored that as well, wondering if I had time to get another piece of cheesecake before Yejun showed up. It was tempting, but the last thing I wanted was for him to arrive and see me calmly eating cheesecake.
I’d come to a caféin Hapjeong early that morning and tucked myself into a back booth, shielded from view by a huge model train—the caféhad some sort of steampunk theme, with giant gears and dissected clocks sparkling on every wall.
I’d chosen this location partially because all the chaos would make time travel easier, and partially because it was famous for its huge selection of cheesecakes. A long display case stretched across the room, filled with an array of cheesecake flavors—chocolate, red velvet, raspberry, coconut, peanut butter. I told myself that this was a strategic choice because most Koreans didn’t want cheesecake for breakfast, which made the caféless crowded this early in the morning, but mostly I’d just wanted to sample the different flavors.
I scrolled on my phone for another fifteen minutes, then scattered my silverware across the table, messed up my hair a bit, and tried to work myself up to near tears, which was hard to do when my dad kept bombarding me with ridiculous texts.
Airplane food is OK. Was hoping no one would sit near us. Should I trust airplane sushi? Is it legal to paint nails on plane? Mom wants to know. Should we eat BBQ or ramen when we land?
I started to type up a response, when Yejun rushed through the door, his hair wet and sticking up, a bright blue raincoat flapping behind him, gaze darting around frantically. He locked eyes with me and hurried across the café.
I jumped up and rushed into his arms, letting him sweep me into a hug. It was almost physically painful the way his magic hummed through my bones, warming me as I pressed against him. Now that I knew all of this was a lie, each beautiful moment felt so sharp.
But I was good at infiltration missions, at pretending not to feel. It was the only reason I’d made it this far.
