22. The Boy and His Drawing
First/Original Timeline
O nce, there was a boy whose drawing sprung to life, forever altering his journey in every timeline.
Jo Wooju loved expressing his feelings through art. When lonely, he’d illustrate what made him happy: kids laughing and playing on the beach, his father snapping pictures at the beauty of nature with the setting sun painting the sky in gold, his brother smiling and poking him on the forehead before heading to school.
When happy, he’d draw their random visits to the lantern bridge, his vivid dreams, and all the beautiful living things in the world. Wooju loved sharing his thoughts about his drawings with his deceased mother before placing them at her grave. He didn’t want her to feel left behind.
One of the things Wooju had drawn was a large doe, a unique celestial being with antlers illuminated by a cloud of fireflies. It was something he’d only seen in his dreams and the only drawing he carried with him in his backpack.
It was also the only one salvageable after he’d accidentally fallen into the river with it.
Sadly, his memories of the lantern bridge weren’t all filled with happiness.
Wooju drowned there when he was a child, but he wasn’t the only one. After a valiant attempt to rescue him, Wooju’s father was swept away by the tide and lost his life.
Wooju’s older brother managed to extract Wooju from the water before their father’s grasp slipped away, but he later drowned himself in alcohol, guilt, and animosity.
After losing their father, Wooju’s brother became a completely different person. Rage altered his once warm demeanor irrevocably, driving a wedge between them.
All Wooju had left was his drawing of the celestial being. It should’ve been destroyed by the river, but it inexplicably survived. In fact, it looked as if it never touched the water at all, like magic ...
... a miracle just waiting to be validated.
The first time Wooju actually saw the antlered doe from his drawing, he pretended it was all in his mind.
But he came back to the lantern bridge over and over and over again, without a word, never questioning why the doe stood there in silence, observing him for so many years.
“Eomma,” then Wooju finally called to the doe one night, a few days after Ri Yunho’s first death.
The distance that lay between them did not hinder Wooju from discerning the clarity in the spirit animal’s eyes. The way they glistened like crystals under the moonlight was impossible to miss.
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
Wooju believed it was his mother. It had to be , he thought. After all, he’d drawn the magical creature for her.
“If you’re really there, can you please,” Wooju went on, his breath turning into fog, his eyes red from all the crying, “please bring him back to me?” He lowered his head, his heart threatening to erupt from his chest.
As if lured by his pleas, a sudden burst of light gleamed against his face.
Wooju instinctively used his right arm to shield his eyes. It was then that he noticed the ripple in reality as the world around him distorted. As soon as he brought his arm down and dared open his eyes again, the bridge had vanished.
Instead, Wooju found himself sitting on the passenger seat of a parked car, with his best friend sitting on his left, smiling at him and very much alive.
“Yunho?”
With a tilt of the head, Yunho remarked, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong?—”
Before Yunho could finish his words, Wooju enveloped the baffled boy in his warm embrace, clutching him so tightly as though he never wanted to let him go, ever again.
The first time Wooju leaped through time, he thought he was walking through a dream.
Until Yunho died again.
With a knife impaled in his chest.
As soon as the paramedics announced the time of death, Wooju, still dirty with soot and blood, hurried back to the lantern bridge in hopes of crossing time to save his friend.
He waited three days before the doe reappeared, thrusting him back in time with its shiny antlers.
Nonetheless, despite his best efforts to prevent the tragedy, Yunho still passed away.
So Wooju tried again, and again, and then again.
Soon, he came to understand one thing.
Time travel wasn’t a choice. It was a curse.