Chapter 4

“Won’t even cry,” the thug muttered, letting out a breathless, exasperated laugh. “Tough little bastard, aren’t you?”

I pulled the balaclava over my head and stepped out from the wall. Of course he’s tough. Jaguar has always been a vicious bastard. Back at headquarters, the mere mention of the call sign Jaguar was enough to make half the battalion grind their teeth.

In a single breath, I closed the distance between us. The thug was burly enough, but standing in the upper 180s, I towered a full head above him. The instant my shadow swallowed him and I crowded into his space, the stocky man flinched and stumbled a step back. Clicking my tongue, I looked down at the boy curled at my feet.

“Get up, Ji Gyu-hwa,” I said.

His face was smeared crimson from a streaming nosebleed. Even I had never gotten the chance to smack Ji Gyu-hwa across the face.

“Who the hell are you?” the thug barked, recovering his bluster. “Look, pal, this is none of your business, so beat it.”

He sighed as if he had chased off plenty of neighborhood busybodies before, yet my bizarre getup—a military combat shirt paired with a black tactical mask in the middle of the afternoon—clearly gave him pause. His eyes darted up and down my frame, his guard snapping up. Most of the time I projected intimidation on purpose, but even when I wasn’t trying, my build and posture tended to trigger an immediate survival instinct in people.

Beside me, the boy swayed, struggling to push himself up off the pavement. Reaching down, I gripped his shoulder, hauled him upright, and nudged him behind my back. Beneath my palm, his collarbone and shoulder felt shockingly frail, all sharp bone and thin skin. Even a jaguar had a cub phase once upon a time.

“I asked what you think you’re doing, pal,” the thug growled, stepping forward. “Mind your own damn business.”

Wiping his split lip and bloodied chin with his uniform sleeve, young Ji Gyu-hwa peered up at me from behind my elbow. I tugged the top edge of my balaclava higher, cinching it right beneath my lower lashes. I can’t let myself become someone he remembers. Just Passing Stranger Number One, Good Samaritan Number One… Don’t mess with the timeline. That’s the whole reason I left Seoul in the first place. Just resolve this cleanly without leaving a mark.

Except I couldn’t. I ended up fucking with the timeline something fierce.

Five minutes later, I stood over the wreckage and realized I was royally screwed. I had really gone and caused an incident. Since I had shattered the men’s bones into splinters rather than spilling their guts, no actual blood stained my palms, yet it was a bloodbath all the same—a bloodless catastrophe. If the adult Jaguar had been standing beside me right now, he would have been livid. Frankly, a screaming rage would have been preferable. For a blunder of this magnitude, Lieutenant Ji Gyu-hwa would have stared at me in glacial silence until my blood froze solid, then murmured that if I kept acting so recklessly, I’d drop dead soon enough without him needing to dirty his own hands.

…No, wait. Hear me out. It’s not like I prevented an event that was fated to happen before it even started. I merely stopped a beating that was already underway from getting worse. So the timeline hasn’t ruptured or collapsed or whatever else that doctor was hyperventilating about. At least, not yet.

Besides, nobody knew what would have happened next. Maybe after beating Ji Gyu-hwa today, these two thugs had originally found Jesus on the way home and repented, or met a righteous monk and reformed so thoroughly they never laid a finger on the kid again. How was I supposed to know? The man never talked about his childhood. Really, this was entirely Jaguar’s fault for failing to give his maknae a blow-by-blow briefing on his personal history.

“…”

Letting out a breath, I ripped a clean strip of cloth from one thug’s shirt and walked over to the boy. Ever since I dislocated the first man’s shoulder with a loud crack, Ji Gyu-hwa had been watching me with a peculiar look in his dark eyes; by the time the men’s shrieks reached a fever pitch, he had casually plopped down on the bottom step as if watching a live ringside match. The kid really was cut from a different cloth.

“Wipe your face,” I said, holding out the makeshift rag.

His nosebleed had clotted, but dark red crusts still smeared his cheeks and chin, flaking off onto his collar whenever his hands moved.

“Are you all right?” I asked, knowing full well he wasn’t. If he admitted it hurt, I planned to pat his shoulder and buy him something hot to eat.

Instead, Ji Gyu-hwa scrambled to his feet before I could blink, slung his dusty backpack over one bony shoulder, and answered, “Yes.” It was an unsettlingly mature reflex for a kid his age—the ingrained habit of a child who already understood that his pain was nothing more than a burden to others.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing politely at the waist. He dipped his head a second time for good measure, then turned and walked back into the villa.

Didn’t talk much as a kid either, huh. Well, whatever. If he peeled off this cleanly, I ought to be grateful. Lingering and chatting for no good reason would only leave a deeper footprint on the timeline.

“Khh… ugh…”

Glancing down at the two men groaning through bubbles of bloody spit, I nudged them with my boot and rolled them both into the dry flowerbed bordering the villa wall, where only bare, thorny twigs poked out of the dirt.

“Let’s make sure we never see each other’s faces again,” I muttered, kicking a few handfuls of loose soil over them before wiping the sweat from my brow.

Now that the mess was sorted, I could leave this village with a clear conscience. All I had to do was hike back to the main road, catch a bus, and head somewhere else. Six hundred and sixteen days. Assuming the number on that timer meant days, and counting today as Day One, I only had to lie low and survive for six hundred and fifteen more. …Though how I’m supposed to buy a bus ticket without a single coin to my name is another question entirely.

Disguising a genuine breath of relief as a weary sigh, I turned toward the dirt path—only to hear the rapid patter of small sneakers behind me. Shoving open the villa’s scarred glass door with one shoulder, the boy darted out onto the stoop, his eyes sweeping the yard as if searching for someone. Spotting me beside the flowerbed, he ran straight over and wordlessly thrust something at my chest.

“What’s this?” I blinked down at his outstretched hand. “Water?”

Clutched in his fingers was a five-hundred-milliliter plastic bottle, freshly cracked open and filled to the brim with cold water.

“Giving me cold water to cool off since I worked up a sweat beating those bastards to a pulp?” I teased.

It was a passable joke in my book, but the boy didn’t crack a smile. At an age when most middle school boys never shut their mouths, his deadpan silence was no fun at all.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle. “I appreciate it.”

Turning my back to him, I tugged my mask up to the bridge of my nose and drained the entire bottle in a single long pull. Sweet nectar didn’t even begin to cover it. It went down crisper and colder than any sports drink guzzled after a bone-grinding training march, any lukewarm canteen gulped on the transport back from a live mission, or even the first frosty draft of beer after clocking off duty—the most refreshing mouthful of water I had ever tasted in my life.

Lowering the empty bottle, I turned back around to offer a parting wave. “Take good care of yourself, kid. Stay safe.”

Once I walked down that dirt road, our paths would never cross again. Too much had happened today, and all I wanted was to find a quiet corner to sleep rough for three days straight. I was just pivoting to leave when a brazen question stopped me in my tracks.

“Who sent you?”

I paused, glancing back over my shoulder. “Who sent me to you? Nobody.”

“How did you know my name?”

“…”

Not an easy mark, is he. Truly cut from a different cloth—a Jaguar whose claws were sharp right from the sprout. Admiration aside, a bead of cold sweat trickled down my spine. This was bad.

“I don’t know it,” I lied flatly. “How would I know your name?”

“You said my name.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I said I didn’t.”

“You called me by it.”

“No, I didn’t! Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t!” I crushed the empty plastic bottle in my fist with a loud crunch and barked at him to cover my slip. “How the hell would I know whether your name is Ji Gyu-hwa or not? And where do you get off talking so cheekily to an adult without honorifics, huh? Want a scolding? Aren’t you going home? Go on, get inside and do your homework!”

At my shameless outburst, that same peculiar, measuring gaze settled on my face. Dropping his eyes to my scuffed boots for a beat, Ji Gyu-hwa seemed to give up on pressing the issue and gave another polite bow.

“Thank you for everything,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah. Study hard,” I muttered, waving him off before another stream of unsolicited nagging rolled right off my tongue. “Run hard, too. Build up your stamina. And don’t stare at your phone in the dark—you’ll ruin your eyesight.”

In all my years of service, I had never seen a finer soldier than Ji Gyu-hwa, nor a deadlier sniper. If that future version of him was going to come to pass, a little preventative nagging felt entirely justified.

Staring up at me with that unreadable expression, the boy gave a single silent nod and pulled open the villa’s glass door. With a rusty creak, the door swung shut behind him, and quiet settled over the yard once more. A chance encounter with the young Ji Gyu-hwa—one that would never be repeated, destined to remain the strangest memory of my life. What an unbelievable twist of fate.

“Phew,” I breathed out, rolling my stiff shoulders.

Today had effortlessly claimed the number-one spot as the most chaotic day of my entire life. Once I get out of this village, I’m sleeping for three days straight.

* * *