Chapter 28

For two full seconds, I had stared at the deadbolt in disbelief before whipping my head around. “Ji Gyu-hwa. Have you lost your mind? Where did you learn manners like that?”

Knowing full well he had crossed a line, the boy had ducked his chin and stared at the wall without an excuse. Stuffing four cartons of black-bean soy milk from our pantry into my jacket pockets, I had grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and marched him straight to the shoe rack.

“Put your sneakers on. Right now.”

When I pulled the door open again, the poor landlady was still standing frozen on the landing with her mouth half-open around her tray of pears. The instant I shoved Gyu-hwa forward by the shoulder, he folded at the waist in a crisp ninety-degree bow.

“I’m deeply sorry, ma’am. I acted inexcusably.”

“Oh—oh my goodness, don’t scold the boy so harshly, Bachelor Jun-geon!” Flustered by the sudden formality, she waved her hand frantically. “With final exams coming up, the poor student must be stressed out of his wits! Here, take the fruit and go back inside where it’s warm!”

Pressing the four cartons of soy milk into her hands with an apologetic smile, I had told her, “It’s what our kid drinks every morning, ma’am, and they say black beans are wonderful for the complexion.”

“My word, for a young man with such intimidating shoulders, you really are sweet as honey—though I suppose with a face that delicate, you could be a model!”

Laughing while swatting my bicep three times, she had fished a ballpoint pen from her apron and scribbled eleven digits across the back of a crumpled flyer:

By the time I carried the persimmons into the kitchen and walked back out to the foyer, that scrap of paper had mysteriously vanished into thin air—no prize for guessing who had disposed of it—yet the memory was clearly still festering in the boy’s chest three days later.

“What blind date?” I snorted, leaning against the bookshelf. “You know my situation better than anyone.”

From the sound of it, the landlady’s niece was a bright, accomplished young woman with her whole life ahead of her; getting tangled up with an undocumented time-slip refugee who was going to evaporate into thin air in less than a year would only ruin her life.

At my flat dismissal, the sharp tension around Gyu-hwa’s eyes melted away in an instant. Gathering four thick exam workbooks into his arms, he nodded toward the checkout counter. “Let’s go pay.”

“Got everything on your list?”

“Yes.”

Watching his noticeably lighter step as he carried two extra reference books back to the upper shelf to return them, I shook my head inwardly. Because I always refused to lie and promise him forever, the kid lived on a hair-trigger whenever anything threatened to pull my attention away from our little apartment.

“Here, pass me those,” I said, stepping up beside him to slot the heavy books onto the top shelf.

“Thank you,” he murmured—and as he stood flush against my shoulder, my eyes landed squarely on the crown of his head, and I frowned.

Wait a second. The first day I dragged him out of the rain in seventh grade, the top of his head had barely cleared my sternum—somewhere around 165 centimeters at best. Now, at the tail end of eighth grade, his temple was practically level with my nose.

“Ji Gyu-hwa.”

“Yes?”

“…When was the last time you stood under a height rod?”

“Last spring, I think.”

“The second we walk through the front door, go put on your formal winter school uniform.”

Though his brow twitched at the random order, he nodded without complaint. Twenty minutes later, when he stepped out of his bedroom in his navy wool trousers and winter zip-up jacket, I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned out loud.

The hems of his uniform trousers rode a full three inches above his ankle bones like flood pants, and the ribbed cuffs of his jacket stopped halfway up his forearms. Because he had missed the initial uniform order deadline after transferring and bought an oversized PE tracksuit from leftover stock, he had worn that baggy tracksuit almost exclusively to school all autumn—and at home, he lived in my oversized sweatshirts. Between the two of us seeing each other every single morning, neither of us had noticed that he was shooting up like bamboo after a monsoon.

“You’re banned from wearing my hoodies around the house starting today,” I declared, appalled at my own negligence. How did kids order new uniforms in middle school again? …Right, my mom handled all of it. Truly, I had grown up like a pampered greenhouse sprout. “Has the school’s winter uniform re-order window closed?”

“No, the order forms go out right after finals.”

“We’re ordering you a whole new set the day forms open. And right now, put your shoes back on.”

Marching him straight down the street to the only neighborhood clinic equipped with a mechanical stadiometer, I stood beside the nurse as the metal bar clicked down onto his crown.

When she read the number off the scale, my jaw dropped open.

“…One-seventy-six?! One hundred and seventy-six centimeters? Are you sure that scale isn’t marked in millimeters?!”

Gyu-hwa stepped off the platform and shot me a dry look. “Were you a liberal arts major in school, hyung?”

“Hey, nurse, measure him again! He grew eleven centimeters in fourteen months?!”

Doing rapid mental arithmetic on my fingers, I backed up a step in horror. “If you’re growing eleven centimeters a year, by the end of ninth grade you’ll be 187, by tenth grade 198, by eleventh grade two meters and nine centimeters, and by graduation you’ll be two meters twenty—!”

“Hyung,” Gyu-hwa sighed, pulling his jacket back on. “When you boil five packets of instant ramen in one pot, do you boil them for fifteen minutes?”

Okay, fair point. Still, working backward from the nearly two-meter frame of the adult Jaguar I knew, the boy was slated to pack on another fifteen centimeters before he finished high school—which meant I’d be buying him a new uniform every six months if I stayed. No wonder my back had been twinging lately whenever I hauled him off his feet in a bear hug; he wasn’t a scrawny little kid anymore.

“Hyung,” Gyu-hwa called out as I stood dazed in the clinic lobby.

The waiting room of the tiny rural clinic was plastered floor-to-ceiling with garish posters advertising:

It made the place look less like a medical facility and more like a traveling snake-oil tent. Standing beside the pharmacy counter in my stolen sweatshirt, Gyu-hwa held out a small glass bottle bearing a bright yellow label:

“I just paid for it at the counter,” he said, pressing the warm bottle into my palm. “Drink it on the walk home.”

Only a few days ago, the boy had tried to hand over his entire three-million-won scholarship envelope to me, and I had shoved it right back into his hands, ordering him to spend it on snacks and outings with his friends rather than hoarding it like a little old man. Seeing him spend his pocket money on a five-thousand-won fatigue tonic for me made my ears burn as foolishly as if someone had handed me a bouquet of roses.

“…Thanks,” I murmured, cracking the cap. “I’ll drink every drop.”

Averting his gaze toward the clinic door, Gyu-hwa pressed his lips together as the corners of his mouth curved into a quiet, bashful smile. Beneath the neat, stylish haircut we had gotten at the big salon downtown before his scholarship ceremony, there wasn’t a single shadow left in his eyes.

Wait a minute. Top marks in physical fitness, climbing steadily into the upper ranks of his class with his tutor, surrounded by friends who called his name on the street, and standing tall enough to look most grown men in the eye…

Ji Gyu-hwa doesn’t need me hovering over him to survive anymore.

A bittersweet relief washed through my chest. He wasn’t the half-starved, bruised stray in the rain anymore; even when I vanished six months from now, this boy would stand strong and whole on his own two feet.

And perhaps because I finally knew he would be alright, my thoughts drifted across the water toward Seoul—where, in this timeline, my mother, my father, and my older sister were still breathing under the same roof.

In my original history, a separatist cult bomb had taken all three of them in a single afternoon shortly after I enlisted. My older sister, who had just relocated to Seoul from her provincial posting to keep our parents company after their youngest son left for basic training, had been visiting the house that weekend. My father had closed his eyes forever before seeing the son who idolized him earn the Special Operations patch; my mother, who had begged both her husband and her son to hang up their rifles and live ordinary lives, had never gotten to see me come home.

Right now, a four-hour intercity bus ride from this island, all three of them were alive.

For over a year, the only reason I hadn’t boarded that bus was sheer cowardice. Having already survived the agony of burying them once, I knew that if I looked into their living faces and heard their voices again, losing them a second time when I snapped back to the future would tear my sanity to shreds.

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