Chapter Sixteen #2
Yejun sighed impatiently. “We’re not the first people to try to stop it from sinking,” he said after a moment.
“Other rogues have tried, and other descendants have stopped them. We’re going to stop a descendant from going back and interfering with a different rogue’s plans.
He’ll show up late to work and miss his traveling window, then the rogue will report the ferry’s owner for making illegal modifications that let him cram too many passengers on board. ”
“Wow,” I said. “You take the butterfly principle seriously. That’s so indirect.”
“Why do work ourselves when we could let someone else do it for us?” Yejun said with a shrug. “It’s less risky.”
I said nothing out of fear that I’d accidentally compliment him again. Hong Gildong had truly messed up by losing Yejun as a timeline architect. I envied how easily he seemed to choreograph his plans across the whole timeline while my greatest skill seemed to be lying.
As we drew closer to the store, I walked faster so I could enter first and not wait to see whether he would hold the door for me or decide not to—I wasn’t sure which was worse.
I walked inside, then grabbed a random men’s shirt off the rack and headed straight for the changing rooms. Luckily, this was a small store with only a tiny section of curtained stalls, which was easier than sneaking Yejun into the woman’s changing rooms.
I pulled back the curtain to the closest stall, waving for Yejun to walk faster before someone caught us. He followed me inside and yanked the curtain shut around us as I hung up the shirt on a hook.
I had to stand uncomfortably close to Yejun in the tiny stall. He held his hand out, as far away from me as he could manage in the small space. I gritted my teeth and took his hand.
“Let’s get this over with,” Yejun said.
This time, his magic burned.
The blue and purple strands knotted together too tightly, my muscles tensing at the blaring surge of magic that forced its way through my bones. My mouth tasted like it was full of ashes, and each wisp of blue light stung my eyes as it lashed around my face.
The moment we landed in the past, I yanked my hand away from his.
“What’s your problem?” I said.
“Shh! Mina, not here!” he said, trying to cover my mouth.
I shoved his hand away. “Why are you angry with me?”
“I’m not—”
“I can see it in your magic!” I said.
Yejun’s expression darkened. “If you can tell what I’m feeling through my magic, then stop pretending you have no idea why I’m mad!”
I froze, remembering the thousand images of myself I’d seen in his soul. But I couldn’t be the one to say it out loud, to be wrong.
“Um,” said a timid woman’s voice from the other side of the curtain. “Excuse me?”
Yejun sighed, then opened the changing stall curtain. An employee was standing just outside, gaping at us. Yejun brushed past her and stormed away, ignoring me when I called for him.
He shoved open the front door of the thrift store and hurried into the street. I chased after him but immediately choked at the taste of the air—somehow we’d landed in an awful air quality day, as if this couldn’t get any worse.
“You said you wouldn’t lie to me,” I said, grabbing Yejun’s sleeve and wincing as my timesickness headache flared up again. “Omission is still lying. So tell me what your problem is. Don’t make me guess.”
Yejun’s expression pinched. He glared at the horizon, looking like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.
After a moment, he sighed and dropped his gaze to his shoes.
“I just can’t believe you actually went out with Jihoon,” he said at last. His voice no longer sounded bright and annoyingly confident, but oddly fragile, barely above a whisper.
“I thought we…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
My face suddenly felt far too warm, every muscle wound tight. Yejun was actually jealous of Jihoon. “How can you be mad about me going out with Jihoon when you did the same thing?” I said, a raw edge to my voice that I was sure gave away my sadness, but it was too late to take it back.
Yejun raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t kiss Jihoon,” he said.
I scoffed. “No, obviously not Jihoon!” I said. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I really don’t,” Yejun said, checking his watch. He jolted at whatever he saw, then took off down the sidewalk, waving for me to follow. “Sorry, but we’re on a tight schedule here. I didn’t script a lot of small talk when I ran this scenario.”
I scowled but hurried after him anyway. We reached an intersection not far from our school. Yejun stopped just before the crosswalk and pulled a water balloon from his backpack.
“Cover me,” he said.
“Cover you how?” I said.
But he didn’t wait for me to figure it out. He only turned and reeled back, then hurled the balloon into the intersection, where it burst on the windshield of a passing car.
The car swerved as it sailed through the intersection, forcing a minitruck to turn sharply to avoid it. The truck was loaded with fruit and overbalanced at the sudden turn, spilling watermelons into the street.
Brakes screeched behind us as drivers dodged errant melons.
One rolled over my foot and nearly toppled me like a bowling pin, but Yejun clamped his hand around my waist to steady me.
I looked up at him, my left hand clutching the back of his uniform jacket for balance, my side pressed up against his.
I had been here before.
A day when the air quality was in the red zone, when an overturned cart of watermelons caused a traffic jam right outside my school, when Yejun had held another girl by the waist on the other side of the intersection. Except, it hadn’t been another girl at all.
It was me.
“Oh no,” I whispered, clinging to Yejun’s sleeve, his bright brown eyes locked on mine. “Oh, this is all my fault, isn’t it?”
“What?” Yejun said, frowning.
I used his arm to pull myself up but didn’t let go of his sleeve. All this time, I’d thought Yejun was a player, sneaking around with other girls behind my back. But all he’d been doing was crossing the timeline with me.
Crap.
What was I supposed to do to fix this? If our roles were reversed, I probably would have bought the world’s biggest apology cheesecake, but Yejun had never taken a single bite of any of my cheesecake slices, so I doubted that was his preferred dessert.
But maybe there was something else I could get him. He’d mentioned it once, on the day we went to Namsan Seoul Tower.
“Come on,” I said, gripping his arm and tugging him around the corner. He seemed too startled at the gesture to protest, his arm limp as I dragged him down the street toward the nearest convenience store.
“Where are you going?” Yejun said. “The adjustment—”
“Just give me a minute,” I said, running faster and stifling a cough. I really shouldn’t have been running without a mask when there was so much fine dust in the air, but this was too important to wait.
I hurried into CU and rushed to the refrigerated section, then grabbed some banana milk, melon milk, and a bag of red ginseng candies. Yejun watched with wide eyes as I dumped the strange combination of foods onto the counter and passed the cashier a 10,000 won note.
“What are you doing?” Yejun said.
“Getting you your favorite snack,” I snapped, accepting the bag from the cashier with a smile.
“But … why?” Yejun said, stepping aside as I pushed open the front door and dropped the snacks onto the metal table.
I sat down and kicked out the other metal chair, gesturing for him to sit. “Because you always get me my favorite food to make up for annoying me,” I said. “So here is your banana-melon-ginseng monstrosity.”
He stood awkwardly beside the table, eyeing the food like it was a trap.
I sighed and dropped my gaze to my lap, fidgeting with the hem of my skirt.
“About Jihoon,” I said. “I did that mission so I could stay in Seoul. My family is moving to Hokkaido, and if I don’t get a promotion, I have to go with them.
I wanted to stay here. I wanted to stay with”—I dared to glance up, losing all my courage once my gaze locked with Yejun’s—“with you,” I finished quietly.
Yejun sat down slowly, blinking at the snacks like I’d presented him with radioactive rocks. Then, abruptly, he folded over laughing.
My face burned. “What?” I said. “Why are you—”
“Mina,” he said, wiping back tears of laughter. “When I told you I loved mixing banana and melon milk with red ginseng candy, I was joking.”
He flopped over on the table, laughing even harder while I felt my whole face heat up. “Who jokes about that?” I said. “I just thought you were a weirdo! Is that really so hard to believe?”
He couldn’t answer, too busy laughing. It turned out his laughter was contagious, because despite everything, I felt a smile creep across my face. I started to laugh too once I realized the cashier probably thought we’d lost our minds, crying-laughing over a couple bottles of milk.
But my laughter didn’t last long, because something tickled my throat, and I had to turn away to hide a grating cough in my sleeve.
Yejun quickly calmed down and opened the banana milk, offering me a sip. I waved it away, so he opened the melon milk for me, which I downed in a few gulps.
“Are you okay?” Yejun said.
I nodded, though my eyes had started watering from all the coughing. “It’s the fine dust,” I said, gesturing to the gray sky.
Yejun scowled and shook his fist up melodramatically at the hazy sky. “I’d fight the sky for you, if I could,” he said. “Actually, maybe I can do you one better.”
He pulled out his phone and quickly searched for something, then swept the snacks into the plastic bag and reached for my hand. “Let’s go back a few days,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to run the scenario first?”
“Already did,” he said with a wink.
“When could you possibly have done that?”