Chapter Five #2
The automatic doors slid open, and we stepped into the night.
The crowd on the sidewalk flowed faster than the elderly Emart shoppers inside, so I had to focus more intently on avoiding humans while staying as close to Hyebin as possible.
I followed her around a few sharp corners until we drew to a stop in front of a café with flower garlands in the window.
Several customers sat at the outdoor tables, where strands of fairy lights illuminated their ceramic plates of pastries and steaming cups of coffee.
I knew right away which person was our target.
There was only one woman sitting alone. Surely the descendants wouldn’t grab someone off the street in front of their spouse or friends, so it had to be her.
She was wearing a green summer dress, her auburn hair tied in a ponytail.
Her back was turned to us, but I could see her reflection in the window of the café as she carefully tore off a piece of croissant, then adjusted the shopping bags at her feet.
I imagined Hana sitting down to eat a croissant and ending up dead before she could finish it. My headache returned, and my throat tightened with nausea.
All three descendants turned to Hong Gildong, who checked his watch, then nodded.
The two high-level descendants shot forward.
Before I could blink, each of them grabbed one of the woman’s arms. One of them clapped a hand over the woman’s mouth, sweeping her into the alley.
They’d moved like a passing shadow, so fast that no one on the street so much as turned to look.
Hyebin swooped in and cleared the table, snatched the bags, and shoved the chair back in place.
In the blink of an eye, it was as if the woman hadn’t been there at all.
I tensed when I realized even Hong Gildong was gone, and I was standing alone in front of the café. I hurried into the alley, barely catching Hyebin’s glare as she waved for me to hurry up. The descendants dragged the writhing woman into a building, and I slipped inside behind them.
“Lock the door,” Hyebin said over her shoulder.
I bolted the door, sealing us in an office space filled with drab furniture and pale carpets.
The other two descendants kicked rolling tables and chairs out of the way and pressed the woman to the floor, finally releasing the gloved hand from her mouth.
The woman had wide honey-brown eyes and pink lipstick smeared on her cheek, her auburn hair falling loose from a silk hair tie.
She gripped a descendant’s wrist with a thin hand, a loose engagement ring sliding up and down her finger.
Hong Gildong took a step forward, crossing his arms.
“Sajangnim?” the woman said as his shadow fell over her. “What’s going on?”
“Oh Jia,” Hong Gildong said, no longer using the cool and indifferent tone he’d had in the elevator.
Now his words echoed as if spoken into a deep cavern, so low that they hummed through the floor and vibrated in my bones.
Hyebin had told me that long ago, dragons could cause earthquakes with their harsh words.
“You have betrayed our ancestors and knowingly defied orders, damaging the timeline that the rest of us work tirelessly to protect,” Hong Gildong said.
I couldn’t help taking a step closer to Hyebin at the sound of his disapproval, like some instinctive part of me knew to fear him.
I could taste Oh Jia’s terror in the air, for she had gone very pale, her hands trembling and eyes wide.
She shook her head, slowly at first, then frantically, her struggling renewed.
It was useless, for the other two descendants still had her pinned to the carpet.
“I didn’t!” she said, looking between me and Hyebin, as if either of us could save her.
I looked away like a coward, but I could still hear her desperate words choked with tears, her panicked breaths, her cries as she struggled to get up.
I couldn’t have helped Oh Jia even if I’d wanted to. My feet felt rooted in place, my blood so cold that my teeth were chattering. Maybe it was the effect of standing so close to an angry, powerful descendant like Hong Gildong. Or maybe it was because I knew exactly what it meant to erase someone.
“On October 11, 2033,” Hong Gildong went on, “you took an unauthorized trip back to 1951 and deliberately interfered with the war.”
Oh Jia let out a choked sound of disbelief. “That hasn’t happened yet!” she said, thrashing against the hands. “I won’t do it, I swear! I wouldn’t betray you.”
Hong Gildong sighed and stepped back. “You already have,” he said, nodding at Hyebin.
Hyebin strode forward, and I suddenly felt exposed without her between me and Hong Gildong.
Hyebin straddled the woman, digging through Oh Jia’s pockets until she pulled out a glowing blue yeouiju.
Its light pulsed weakly, illuminating every bone in Hyebin’s hand and casting a ghostly glow over the room.
Hyebin passed the yeouiju to Hong Gildong with both hands, then helped hold the woman down.
“Oh Jia,” Hong Gildong said, “I hereby sentence you to complete erasure from all timelines.”
I froze, the words repeating in my head as if echoing across an endless cavern.
All timelines.
Meaning, there was more than one.
But there wasn’t time to think about it, because Hyebin pried the woman’s jaw open with a crack.
Hong Gildong knelt down and forced the yeouiju between Jia’s teeth with the heel of his palm.
Oh Jia coughed, trying to force it back out, but the yeouiju slid down her throat, its light fading as it disappeared inside her.
Oh Jia gasped for breath, the only sound in the sudden darkness. The other descendants stood up and took a step back.
That’s it? I thought. Somehow, I’d always imagined that erasing someone meant killing them and tossing their corpse into some void for the timeline to devour. But Oh Jia was still breathing, even as she lay flat on the carpet, tears spilling unstopped from her eyes.
On Oh Jia’s next ragged breath, she opened her mouth as if struggling for air that wouldn’t come. Then her jaw yawned wider and wider, lips peeled back to reveal her teeth, and I didn’t realize until her jaw hit the carpeted floor that it wasn’t opening, it was dissolving.
Her face crumbled inward like wet sand, sparks of gray ashes flying from her fingertips as the invisible fires of time seared through her flesh. In half a breath, she’d changed from a person to a pile of ashes that the carpet breathed in, and then she was gone forever.
This is what they did to Hana, I thought, my ears ringing. I pictured them holding her down this way, ignoring her as she screamed and cried. Was she a child when it happened? Would they even care? In the reverent darkness, the unofficial moment of silence, I turned my gaze to Hong Gildong.
He gave the order. He remembered my sister, and yet he had dragged me on this mission to watch another descendant’s undoing.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine anything except Hana turning into dust, but the thought seared through me, hotter and brighter than Hong Gildong’s time magic, than the sun itself.
I felt like I’d swallowed an entire star, that it had burst into a supernova in my stomach, ready to devour the world as soon as I opened my mouth.
I was standing next to the person who erased my sister.
“Let’s go,” Hyebin said, shoving my shoulder.
I opened my eyes, unclenching my fists one finger at a time. I couldn’t react now, because I wasn’t supposed to know about Hana. If I ever wanted her back, I had to wait.
When I looked to where the woman had been, even her muddy footprints had vanished, her handbag missing from the corner where Hyebin had tossed it.
I tried to conjure the memory of her face in her last moments but could no longer visualize her at all.
I couldn’t recall what color her coat had been, or the sound of her voice, or the bright fear that I knew had been in her eyes.
I had a hazy recollection of her existence, but it was like her memory had been ripped out from the root, leaving only a hole behind.
Feet stopped in front of me, but I tensed when I realized it wasn’t Hyebin as I’d expected.
“Yang Mina,” Hong Gildong said. Up close, the gold in his eyes gleamed even brighter, like staring into a gilded kaleidoscope.
“Yes, Sajangnim?” I said stiffly, withering under his gaze.
“This is your first neutralization?” he said, even though he surely knew the answer.
I nodded. “Yes, Sajangnim.”
“I realize it’s rather … disturbing,” he said. “Walk with me for a moment?”
“Sajangnim?” Hyebin said behind him, looking between us in confusion.
“Hyebin, you finish up,” Hong Gildong said, passing her the gun in his belt, probably to return to the police station. “I’ll bring Mina back when we’re finished.”
Hyebin’s stern gaze drifted to me, as if warning me not to say something I’d regret, then she bowed and hurried away.
I stood alone with Hong Gildong, my stomach clenched like I was staring down the edge of an abyss. If I could make him respect me, then he would trust me the way he trusted Hyebin, and one day I would have my truth.
Hong Gildong waved for me to follow him into the night.
Unlike Hyebin, he didn’t seem concerned about lingering too long in any one particular time period.
No one even seemed to notice him, despite his hair the color of starlight.
The crowd parted easily around him as he walked unhurriedly down the street.
Even the smoke from passing food sellers seemed to blow away from him, the whole world a sea parting to let him pass.
He drew to a stop on a bridge overlooking the Bulgwang stream, the same place I’d paused to look at the sky, thinking about Hana.
“I don’t like to do these sorts of missions,” he said at last, resting his hands on the railing.
He wore an array of rings in various shades of silver and gold, his fingers glistening like claws under the moonlight.
Descendants with stronger dragon blood couldn’t resist the temptation to hoard riches.
“It seems unfair in some ways, doesn’t it? ” he said. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
Surely this was a trick question. I bowed my head slightly while thinking over my answer. “No,” I said quietly. “I trust your decisions, Sajangnim.”
He threw his head back and laughed, the sound star-bright as it echoed across the water. “It wasn’t a test, Mina. I was only making conversation. It’s a flawed process, I know that.”
He turned toward me, the gold in his eyes flaring bright. “To err is human, and in many ways, descendants are closer to humans now than the dragons we came from. But what many of us have forgotten is that we’re not, and will never be, human.”
I swallowed and nodded. Hong Gildong certainly didn’t seem human, but I didn’t see how I could be anything else.
“Humans are allowed to make mistakes,” he went on. “It’s necessary for their growth. But descendants cannot make mistakes.”
He looked to me as if expecting a response, so I nodded in agreement. “Mistakes are dangerous in this line of work,” I said, something Hyebin had said to me many times.
“Exactly,” Hong Gildong said. “This is what it means to be a descendant. We were not put on this earth to be heroes. If we do our job correctly, no one will ever thank us, and some will even hate us. But we are stronger than humans, so we bear the shame in our hearts so that they don’t have to. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, Sajangnim,” I said automatically, even though none of it did.
All I could think about was Hana on the ground, her tortoiseshell box forced between her teeth.
He was right about one thing—we were no heroes.
Even in this moment, we were existing unnecessarily outside of our origin timeline.
Surely Hong Gildong planned to smooth over any ripple effects later on.
He could adjust the timeline as he wanted to, yet he claimed the timeline was his god, that he was helpless to do anything but what others had already determined.
But I’d given the right answer, so he nodded in approval and turned back to the sky. “Do you know why I wanted to come here?” he said.
I shook my head.
“It’s a clear night,” he said, pointing overhead, “a good view of Horologium.”
“I’m … sorry?” I said, squinting into the darkness.
He gestured for me to step to the left, then pointed once more. “It’s my favorite constellation,” he said. “It looks like a clock and a pendulum. Do you see it?”
I followed the direction of his finger, frowning at where he pointed. I could just barely make out the crooked shape of a swinging pendulum, etched into the sky by six dim stars.
“As long as they’re stationary, pendulum clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world,” he said. “Descendants cannot afford to overlook a single moment. That is what this constellation reminds me.”
“That’s … poetic,” I said politely. But I must not have sounded very enthused, because Hong Gildong laughed.
“By the way, Mina, I’ve begun planning next year’s roster. We are, as you know, a bit short-staffed. I would love to have you continue to work with Hyebin, but I feel compelled to remind you that you have a quota to hit.”
My face burned. “Yes, Sajangnim,” I said stiffly. “I won’t disappoint you.”
“I should hope not,” he said, smiling knowingly before turning back toward headquarters. His grin lasted only a moment, but I swore that his teeth caught the glare of moonlight, illuminating the sharp points of his fangs.