Chapter Eighteen #3
Not because I tasted it in his magic, or because I could see it written on the map of his heart, or because I could detect the speed of his pulse with my dragon senses.
I knew it because I knew Kim Yejun, and I always had.
It was funny the way the timeline worked—I didn’t remember falling for him before, and the version of me who did was not the same as I was now.
But being with Yejun was inevitable, and the timeline knew it, just as it knew that Hana’s love for me survived against all logic.
Just as some people believed in God, I believed in love that could not be seen, or touched, or explained.
“Kim Yejun,” I said at last, “you’re going to have to buy me a metric ton of cheesecake to make up for this.”
He let out a sharp laugh, then reached for my hand once more. This time, I let him take it, lacing his fingers with mine.
“I fully intend to,” he said, “but how about we figure out how to survive the rest of the week first?”
With my cheesecake replenished and an empty bingsu-bowl-turned-scrying-pool on the table in front of us, we got to work.
“Can your amazing architect skills find a way to save us and stop a war?” I said.
“I hope so,” Yejun said, digging through his backpack. He pulled out a small, worn notebook and set it on the table. As he flipped through it, I caught a glimpse of tiny scrawl crammed into every page, so tightly that there was almost no white space.
“What is that?” I said, squinting to discern the writing.
“From the shoe rack,” Yejun said, smoothing it out as he reached a blank page. “Plans I’ve tried before that haven’t worked.”
I gripped the edge of my seat. “You’ve tried all of that and none of it has worked before?”
Yejun shot me a withering smile. “It’s a good thing—we won’t repeat the same mistake twice.”
I groaned and flopped back in my seat. “This is hopeless.”
“It’s not,” Yejun said, pulling the bingsu bowl closer. “We just need to find a way to find your sister—”
“Wait,” I said, dread lancing through my stomach. “If there’s no Timeline Alpha to bring back, how can I save Hana?”
“If Hana is still communicating with you, then she can’t be completely erased,” Yejun said. “Maybe they didn’t wipe her from a certain moment or place and she managed to move around the timeline. If we can read her file, maybe we can figure out how to help her.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Okay, so we just need to break into Hong Gildong’s office and scrying pool even though he can see the whole timeline and is definitely keeping a very close eye on both of us?”
“By tomorrow,” Yejun added helpfully.
We stared blankly at each other for a moment before he sighed and stood up. “We’re going to need more caffeine for this,” he said.
While he went to order coffee, I scrolled through my phone and tried to think of anything I could possibly google that might help.
I didn’t want Yejun to do all the work, but there was a reason he was training to be a timeline architect while I was focusing on infiltration missions.
I flipped back to the barrage of texts from my dad and typed out a quick response about BBQ restaurants, sending it before I remembered that I wasn’t in the present and it probably wouldn’t even go through.
Yejun returned to the table with two coffees in hand, then got to work at his scrying pool. His fingers danced across the surface as he typed with one hand and scrolled with the other, two different windows open at once.
“I’m searching your family file through the back end, but I can’t find anything about Yang Hana,” he said. “What do you know about her that I might be able to use?”
Hardly anything, I thought, too embarrassed to voice this out loud. “She had a pink sweater?” I said quietly.
Yejun lifted an eyebrow, his fingers hesitating over the water. “Anything else?”
“She left me a note? Does that help?”
Yejun looked up sharply. “When?”
“I found it on September second,” I said.
Yejun nodded and turned back to the pool. “I can search the mission logs and narrow it by that date,” he said.
“Aren’t the mission logs classified?” I said.
“Yeah, if your hacking skills are worse than those of a twelve-year-old,” Yejun said.
“Most mission logs are only level two, which is easy to hack into. Level one is another story.” Then his eyes lit up.
“Found it,” he said, waving for me to come to his side of the table.
I shoved out my chair and hurried around.
In the scrying pool, he’d pulled up what looked like an advanced search function, with only one item populated at the top.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2025, GREENVIEW OFFICETEL ROOM 325, UNAUTHORIZED AGENT, DURATION: 5 MINUTES
“That must be her!” I said, squeezing Yejun’s arm. “That’s when Hana went to my apartment!”
“I know, I know, I’m brilliant,” Yejun said, grinning.
I hugged him from the side, feeling as though my whole body was made of sunlight. I had never felt so close to finding Hana before. It was like only a thin pane of glass stood between us, and all that was left was to shatter it.
Yejun’s yeouiju glowed warmly against my side, and I remembered that I still had it on me. Before I pulled away, I slipped it back into his pocket.
“So we just have to intercept her there,” I said as I leaned back.
“Well, yes,” Yejun said uneasily, “but that still leaves the problem of how we could do that without getting caught. Hong Gildong knows you want to find Hana, and if we could figure out where she’s been, he definitely has. He probably has supervising agents staking out your apartment on that day.”
I sank back against the seat, glaring at the ceiling as if it would tell me the answer. Yejun let out a hiss, and I turned to see him examining a paper cut on his finger before jamming it in his mouth.
“I have Band-Aids, you monster,” I said, reaching for my backpack.
I slid my hand into the middle pocket for my first-aid pack, but my fingers closed around the ladybug key chain from Hyebin.
It looked so smiley and silly—a complete contrast to Hyebin herself.
I remembered us catching the ladybug together over the bridge, back when everything had seemed so simple.
If only I were able to hide from the descendants the way the ladybug had.
I tensed, sitting up straight. The ladybug had managed to evade the descendants, so why couldn’t I? What had Hyebin said again? Something about daylight savings. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sound of her voice, imagining her on the bus beside me as we rolled through western Seoul.
Daylight savings was tested in 1988 for the Olympics. So there’s no 2:00 A.M. through 2:59 A.M. in the spring, and there’s duplicate times for 1:00 A.M. through 1:59 A.M. in the fall that year.
That meant there was an hour on the timeline that didn’t exist.
Except … there were no holes in the timeline. Time flowed continuously and for all of eternity, but measuring time was a concept engineered by humans. The world had still existed from 2:00 A.M. to 2:59 A.M. in 1988, but for people who relied on the social construct of time …
It would be a blind spot in our records.
“Mina,” Yejun said, “what about—”
“Shh!” I said, closing my eyes and trying to chase the thought, clinging to it like an umbrella seized in a storm.
The ladybug went from not being on the timeline at all to landing at 3:00 A.M. on May 8. It was kind of like being born on that day—1988 became its new origin timeline.
I pictured Hyebin squishing the ladybug inside the bag, just like Hong Gildong would squash me if given the chance. He’d mark my execution as MISSION COMPLETE in his scrying pool and I’d disappear into the abyss of archived files, forgotten …
Forgotten.
“What if,” I said, sitting up straight, “I died at the rally?”
Yejun frowned. “You’re not going to—”
“But what if I did?” I said, leaning closer. “What if I failed the mission and you killed me?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Yejun said with a scowl. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“What if the descendants thought you killed me?” I said.
Yejun froze, slowly sinking back in his seat. “Then they wouldn’t be watching you anymore,” he said. “At least, for a few minutes. But as soon as the timeline refreshed, and your file stayed open, they would know you were alive.”
“Unless I didn’t exist,” I said. “Unless I was somewhere they couldn’t find me.”
A small smile curled the corner of Yejun’s mouth. “Mina, what are you planning?”
“Do you think one hour is enough time to save my sister and then the world?” I said, scooping up another bite of cheesecake.
“It might be cutting it close,” Yejun said, “but I think you can make it work.”