“Oh, uh…” Jihoon looked away, blushing. “My mom made me eggs and rice, but I dropped them. In hindsight, that’s not a very good reason to cry, but in my defense, it was 6A.M.and I was very tired.”
“That is absolutely worth crying over,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I once cried because I had a doughnut so good it changed my life.”
Jihoon laughed. “I hope that’s why you’re crying now. And that you have more doughnuts to share.”
“I wish,” I said, slumping back against the bench.
Jihoon said nothing, but his unasked question lingered in the air. I’d lied enough to Jihoon, and I couldn’t quite conjure up a good excuse when my brain felt like mashed potatoes.
“My sister is gone,” I said. “I don’t know where she is, or if I’ll ever see her again. For so long, everything I did had meaning because it was all for her. But now I don’t know what the point of anything is anymore because nothing will bring me closer to her. I gave so much to find her and now she’s…”
I trailed off, looking away from Jihoon. I’d used him to find her, and now it was all for nothing. She was never even here.
“I’m so sorry, Mina,” Jihoon said. He balled up a tissue and wiped my face, even though tears were still falling. I wanted him to give me a solution like Yejun had, to tell me I could bring her back if I was smart and strong enough, that there was still a way, that she wasn’t gone.
But Jihoon didn’t live in a world like that. The most he could do was wipe my tears and pat my hair, and something about giving in to that pathetic, human helplessness felt like a relief.
“Are you in a solutions mindset?” Jihoon said quietly. “Or would you rather just get some ice cream?”
I laughed, wiping my eyes. “Ice cream can be a solution,” I said. “Maybe not now, but it can solve more problems than you’d think.”
“I have never once underestimated ice cream,” Jihoon said. “Or you, Mina.”
I looked up.
“Your sister is lucky to have someone like you, who cares about her so much,” Jihoon said. “Someone so smart and devoted. If anyone can find her, it’s you.”
I sighed. “I’m not smart,” I said.
Jihoon frowned. “Of course you are.”
I shook my head. “You have no idea.”
“Oh?” Jihoon said. “Is that why you asked Yejun to tutor you in calculus instead of me?”
I grimaced. “Uh, I mean—”
“It’s because you didn’t want me to think you weren’t smart, right?”
My shoulders drooped. “Yeah, basically.”
“But I never would have thought that, Mina,” he said, setting his hand on mine. “You work so hard at everything. Nothing ever stops you, no matter how difficult. You moved here in the middle of the school year and caught up so quickly. You were kind to me even when I spilled orange juice on you when we first met. Did you know that last year, before I grew six inches and got my braces off, no girls would even talk to me? I still feel like that person sometimes, but not around you. That’s why I like you, Mina. Not because of your calculus scores.” He swallowed, dropping his gaze to his shoes. “And, I mean, you’re also really pretty, so that’s part of it too.”
I leaned forward and hugged Jihoon. As always, he was kinder than anyone deserved.
I never should have dragged him into this. It had been so easy to say it was my mission, that I had no choice because I was a descendant and this was what descendants did. But I’d known all along that descendants could be cruel and unfair. I’d tried to make myself one of them so I could find Hana.
But I would never be a true descendant, and I didn’t have to play by their rules anymore.
“Jihoon, I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling away. “I think we should just be friends.”
Jihoon froze. “Oh,” he said quietly, drawing his hand away from my back.
“You’re going to have a good life without me,” I said. “You’re going to be an accountant, which is kind of boring, but you’ll like it anyway. You’re going to meet someone in grad school who youreally love. You’re going to get this cute little dog together and dress her up in sweaters in the winter. You’ll have two kids, and you’ll live to be ninety-four, and when you die, everyone will talk about how kind you were, even to people who didn’t deserve it, like me.”
Jihoon blinked at me with his big, adorable eyes, and I realized how strange this must have sounded to someone who wasn’t a descendant and hadn’t read the file of his life according to the current timeline.
“I mean, that’s what I want for you,” I said quickly. “That’s the story I imagine for you.”
