Sincerely,
A less-successful Yejun
P.S. She loves cheesecake.
Slowly, I looked up and met Yejun’s gaze. His eyes were no longer gold with dragon fire or blue with time magic but a warm, human shade of brown.
I knew, in that moment, that he was sincere.
Not because I tasted it in his magic, or because I could see it written on the map of his heart, or because I could detect the speed of his pulse with my dragon senses.
I knew it because I knew Kim Yejun, and I always had.
It was funny the way the timeline worked—I didn’t remember falling for him before, and the version of me who did was not the same as I was now. But being with Yejun was inevitable, and the timeline knew it, just as it knew that Hana’s love for me survived against all logic. Just as some people believed in God, I believed in love that could not be seen, or touched, or explained.
“Kim Yejun,” I said at last, “you’re going to have to buy me a metric ton of cheesecake to make up for this.”
He let out a sharp laugh, then reached for my hand once more. This time, I let him take it, lacing his fingers with mine.
“I fully intend to,” he said, “but how about we figure out how to survive the rest of the week first?”
With my cheesecake replenished and an empty bingsu-bowl-turned-scrying-pool on the table in front of us, we got to work.
“Can your amazing architect skills find a way to save us and stop a war?” I said.
“I hope so,” Yejun said, digging through his backpack. He pulled out a small, worn notebook and set it on the table. As he flipped through it, I caught a glimpse of tiny scrawl crammed into every page, so tightly that there was almost no white space.
“What isthat?” I said, squinting to discern the writing.
“From the shoe rack,” Yejun said, smoothing it out as he reached a blank page. “Plans I’ve tried before that haven’t worked.”
I gripped the edge of my seat. “You’ve tried all of that and none of it has worked before?”
Yejun shot me a withering smile. “It’s a good thing—we won’t repeat the same mistake twice.”
I groaned and flopped back in my seat. “This is hopeless.”
“It’s not,” Yejun said, pulling the bingsu bowl closer. “We just need to find a way to find your sister—”
“Wait,” I said, dread lancing through my stomach. “If there’s no Timeline Alpha to bring back, how can I save Hana?”
“If Hana is still communicating with you, then she can’t be completely erased,” Yejun said. “Maybe they didn’t wipe her from a certain moment or place and she managed to move around the timeline. If we can read her file, maybe we can figure out how to help her.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Okay, so we just need to break into Hong Gildong’s office and scrying pool even though he can see the whole timeline and is definitely keeping a very close eye on both of us?”
“By tomorrow,” Yejun added helpfully.
We stared blankly at each other for a moment before he sighed and stood up. “We’re going to need more caffeine for this,” he said.
While he went to order coffee, I scrolled through my phone and tried to think of anything I could possibly google that might help. I didn’t want Yejun to do all the work, but there was a reasonhewas training to be a timeline architect whileIwas focusing on infiltration missions. I flipped back to the barrage of texts from my dad and typed out a quick response about BBQ restaurants, sending it before I remembered that I wasn’t in the present and it probably wouldn’t even go through.
Yejun returned to the table with two coffees in hand, then got to work at his scrying pool. His fingers danced across the surface as he typed with one hand and scrolled with the other, two different windows open at once.
“I’m searching your family file through the back end, but I can’t find anything about Yang Hana,” he said. “What do you know about her that I might be able to use?”
Hardly anything, I thought, too embarrassed to voice this out loud. “She had a pink sweater?” I said quietly.
Yejun lifted an eyebrow, his fingers hesitating over the water. “Anything else?”
