Chapter Twelve
During the two-hour mandatory workshop on scrying pool maintenance that night, I’d missed three calls and twenty-one texts from my dad. I nearly dropped my phone as I scrolled through the notifications, sure that absolutely everyone must have died.
As soon as I unlocked my phone, a picture of a fat panda sitting in a basketball hoop filled the screen.
I blinked, then scrolled down through my dad’s texts, which were all pictures of pandas behaving like large furry toddlers. At the very end he’d asked if I wanted fried chicken for dinner tomorrow, complete with six chicken emojis.
Clearly I hadn’t done a very good job concealing how much I didn’t want to move, and now he was worried. Annoyingly, he also seemed to think food solved all my problems. And pandas, though I was fine with that part.
I’d typed out half a response when a hand seized my backpack strap.
I let out an undignified squawk as I was yanked back, catching the attention of a couple waiting in line at the pharmacy ten feet from me. Am I really being jumped between a ramen shop and an Emart? I thought.
I whirled around, wincing as my backpack seams let out a tearing sound. But instead of a masked robber or armed descendant or even Hyebin fetching me for another mission, it was only Kim Yejun.
“Oh, it’s just you,” I said, relaxing my shoulders.
“Yes, just me, who you ditched even though we had work to do,” he said, glaring at me.
I thought of the girl I’d seen him with that morning, his hand around her waist, the way he’d looked down at her so kindly. I clenched my teeth and sharpened that feeling into anger, rather than risk crying.
“You do plenty of things outside of work, but I can’t?” I said, crossing my arms.
Yejun raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
I shook my head. “Where’s Jihoon?” I said, ignoring his question.
“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re implying,” Yejun said, rolling his eyes. “He had to go to tutoring. Now, can we get back to saving the world, or did you want to play around with Jihoon some more?”
“I’m not playing with him!” I said. “And even if I was, I would rather do that than spend a single second with you!”
“Why are you suddenly mad at me?” Yejun said, throwing his arms up. “I mean, I know you’re not my biggest fan, but you’re acting like I spit in your coffee.”
Because you can’t just take me on what is basically a date and then put your hand on another girl’s waist, I thought. You can’t bring me cheesecake and hold my hand and put your arm around me if it doesn’t mean anything to you, because it means something to me.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, looking away. “You’re projecting.”
“You’re mad about something,” he said. Then he pointed at me. “There, that facial expression! You’re angry.”
“Who wouldn’t be angry around you?” I said.
“You’re smug, and annoying, and can’t take a hint!
You tried to mess up my infiltration mission.
You think the world revolves around you and that I have nothing better to do than wait around for you.
You think so highly of yourself, right down to your stupid blond hair! ”
Yejun pouted. “You don’t like my blond hair?”
“Why is that the part you’re stuck on?” I said. “And no! I mean, if anything, you’re way too aware of how good it looks. You’re so full of yourself.”
His face brightened. “You think it looks good?”
I let out a frustrated sound and turned away as a sharp pain bloomed across my palms. I looked down at my hands, which had four even cuts across each palm, bleeding slowly.
Yejun appeared over my shoulder. “I think you need to trim your nails,” he said.
“No one asked you!” I said way too loudly. Everyone on the sidewalk turned to look in our direction.
Yejun let out an awkward laugh and grabbed my arm, tugging me down the sidewalk. “Can you keep it down?” he said under his breath. “I don’t want to be the star of a K-drama.”
I don’t care what you want! was what I was about to shout back at him, onlookers be damned. But then he put his arm over my shoulders and tugged me close as a car raced down the narrow road, the side mirror nearly clipping my arm.
“And watch where you’re going,” he said. “I know you like sugar, but try your best not to actually become a pancake.”
Any intelligent response melted away. I could feel Yejun’s heartbeat through his side, which was still pressed against mine. I’d always thought I was too tall for Korea, but I fit so perfectly under his arm, two puzzle pieces slotted neatly together.
“Now,” he said, finally releasing me, “how do you feel about sushi?”
“I thought you wanted to talk about saving the world,” I said stiffly.
“I do, and we can do that over sushi,” he said. “So do you like it or not?”
I frowned as he led us down a side street. This was a residential area, with no sushi restaurants that I was aware of.
“Are you assuming I like sushi because I’m Japanese?”
“I’m assuming you like sushi because everyone likes sushi, and you need to occasionally eat something besides cheesecake,” he said. “There’s a sushi place in 2010 near the next adjustment—which I was trying to tell you about today. Would that work?”
I crossed my arms, thinking it over. I didn’t want him to get used to smoothing over his flaws with food.
But … my mom always said that there was very little that some good sushi couldn’t fix. If I had to travel with Yejun anyway, I might as well get a meal out of it.
“It better be good,” I said. “You’re talking to someone who lived in Japan. I know good sushi.”
“Oh, this is good, believe me,” Yejun said as he grinned and walked faster down the street. He stopped suddenly, looked around, then yanked me down behind a parked car.
“No cameras here,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Okay, 2010, April 11, 14:45:11.” Then he held his hand out, fingertips already sparkling blue.
I hesitated, remembering the last time we’d shared magic.
For a brief moment, I felt like I’d seen Yejun’s soul.
Did that mean he had seen mine as well? I pictured his soft brown eyes unmaking me, tearing away every part of the human mask that I wore until there was nothing but time magic and dragon fire that no one else had ever seen.
Though I didn’t reach out, ribbons of his magic unfurled from his fingertips, tracing gently across my cheeks. At their touch, I felt like sunlight bloomed inside me, my vision sparkling gold at the edges—that same feeling of weightlessness as before.
Slowly, I set my hand in his.
Our magic knit together instantly this time, the indigo light brightening, still tangled with both light blue and deep purple.
Like northern lights.
I jolted, because the thought wasn’t mine. It echoed through me in Yejun’s voice. I looked up at the blue light in his eyes.
Our magic together, he said. It looks like the northern lights.
I’ve never seen them, I thought. I didn’t know if Yejun could hear me, but he smiled as if he could.
No need, he said. This is better.
“You’re right,” I said—two words I never thought I would say to Kim Yejun, of all people. I put a piece of salmon egg sushi in my mouth and took my time before swallowing, ignoring Yejun’s look of triumph. “This is the best sushi I’ve had outside of Japan.”
“The sushi chef is from Ishikawa,” Yejun said, stealing a piece off my plate. “You should know that I wouldn’t joke about something as serious as sushi with a Japanese girl.”
I groaned and leaned back in my seat. “I think I might explode if I keep eating, but there’s no way I’m throwing any of this away.”
“It would be a great sacrifice, but I think I could help you with that,” Yejun said, reaching forward to snatch another piece.
I smacked his chopsticks away with my own. “Get your own sushi,” I said.
“I’m paying,” he said, pouting.
“I thought this was a gift?”
“I thought we lived in a civilized society where people shared.”
“You thought incorrectly,” I said.
Yejun laughed. “Fine, I should know better than to get between a girl and her sushi,” he said, pushing his plate toward me. “Save a piece of salmon, though. We need to feed it to a pigeon.”
“For the adjustment?”
“No, for my amusement,” he said. “Yes, for the adjustment. You think I would waste salmon this good?”
“That’s the only reason I would give up a piece of this to anyone,” I said, taking a sip of water. “Are you going to tell me what you needed to talk about?”
Yejun shook his head. “You’re trying to make me talk so I can’t eat sushi.”
I rolled my eyes and set my chopsticks on the table, holding my hands up in surrender. Yejun quickly popped a piece of my sushi in his mouth before setting his down too.
He fished out two folded pieces of paper from his pocket and slid them toward me. I raised an eyebrow, but he only gestured for me to take them. I unfolded them both and set them side by side.
Two copies of an article on dung beetles.
“This one is from before we made the change,” Yejun said, tapping the article on the left, “and the one on the right is from this morning.”
I used my dragon eyes to quickly scan for differences. Immediately, one line of text stood out to me. In the first article, it said:
The dung beetle was an insect native to the Korean Peninsula and Jeju Island, presumed extinct after a drop in population in the 1970s.
The article on the right said:
The dung beetle is an insect native to the Korean Peninsula and Jeju Island.
I looked up at Yejun, who grinned expectantly.
“We saved the dung beetles?” I said.
Yejun nodded quickly. “We’re shifting in the right direction.”
I’m getting closer to Hana, I thought. I could almost feel her next to me right now, leaning against my arm, snatching pieces of sushi off my place.
I imagined her warmth, the scratchiness of her striped sweater against my arm, the way she might tie her hair back with a black elastic. Soon, she would be real.
I felt tears that I knew I couldn’t stop, so I did the only logical thing: stuffed a bunch of wasabi in my mouth.