Chapter 5

Then again, human beings are funny creatures. Excessive optimism breeds carelessness, and carelessness is fatal to the timeline. What if those loan sharks nursed a grudge, realized I wasn’t around anymore, and came back to make good on their threat to sell the kid off? His personality in the future might be rotten to the core, but Jaguar was a remarkably handsome man.

“Why bother throwing flashbangs? Just flash Ji Gyu-hwa’s face at the hostiles and they’ll be too dazzled to shoot. Jag-men.”

He was good-looking enough that the guys on our team tossed around stupid jokes like that on the regular. If a pair of desperate thugs noticed the budding features of a pretty boy and decided to traffic young Ji Gyu-hwa to pay off his father’s debts, it would trigger a catastrophic timeline collapse—which was nothing short of an act of terror against history itself. And I was an operative of the Counter-Terrorism Special Operations Task Force. Preventing terrorism was literally my job description.

That was why I still hadn’t left town. Even I had to admit, it was a masterpiece of flawless logic.

Not only had I failed to leave, I had even talked my way into a room for the night. I had no choice; my battered body was screaming far too loudly for rest to hike back out to the highway. Just one day, I told myself. I’ll sleep for one single day.

Then it became two days. Really, just two days. Whenever I tried to haul myself off the mattress, every muscle and joint groaned in mutiny. Besides, I had spotted Ji Gyu-hwa walking home in one piece earlier today, which meant my self-assigned security detail was going smoothly. Counting today, I would rest for exactly forty-eight hours and vanish into thin air.

Except two was an inherently unstable, incomplete number. Three, on the other hand, was the number of balance and perfection. In that spirit, resting for three full days felt only right.

On my way back from covertly checking on Ji Gyu-hwa for the third afternoon in a row, I bumped into the guesthouse landlady in the courtyard. After listening to my sob story—the creatures that popped up across the countryside made a wonderfully convenient excuse for losing one’s wallet and ID—she offered me a day-labor arrangement. She would let me stay three nights free of charge if I worked for her for the following three days. When I pointed out that I’d still need a roof over my head during the three days I was working off the debt, she paused, wore a look that said Huh, fair point, and told me to start working immediately.

When I protested that my body was still half-wrecked, she countered with an offer to haul heavy stock at her restaurant instead. If I started lending a hand next week, she would waive my lodging fees altogether and pay me a daily cash wage on top of it. To a penniless vagabond who couldn’t even afford bus fare or a bowl of rice, it was an irresistible proposition—which only made me twice as suspicious.

Just what kind of monstrous restaurant grinds young men into dust like this? The deal reeked of an exploitative rural sweatshop from a mile away. Still, I was a Tier-1 special forces operative; no kitchen on earth could be more grueling than hell week. Figuring I could map out my long-term survival plan while scrubbing dishes, I shook her hand.

…Granted, it wasn’t harder than military training, but it came damn close.

At the end of my first full shift, the landlady counted a little over a hundred thousand won into my palm. Still wearing my damp kitchen apron, I stepped out under the darkening eaves, tipped my chin toward the evening sky, and wedged a cigarette between my lips. Life really was fucking unpredictable. Selected for the Special Operations Task Force at the youngest age on record, I had always assumed my career would be full of threats to my life, never threats to my bank balance. Yet here I was, flat broke in a world sixteen years behind my time, hiding my face like a fugitive while scrubbing grease off iron pans. People said no honest labor was beneath a man, but the hollowness gnawing at my ribs had nothing to do with the dishes.

Phew… Under the amber halo of a streetlamp shrouded in cool night air, I exhaled a long plume of gray smoke. Once I scrape together a little more cash, I’m taking off for good. For real this time. I’ve checked on Ji Gyu-hwa plenty, and those thugs haven’t come back. The kid will manage fine on his own.

Right as I drew another breath, cementing my resolve to skip town at the first opportunity, the soft crunch of small footsteps reached my ears.

Without thinking, I turned my head toward the sound. Emerging from the shadows beyond the yellow puddle of the streetlamp came a pair of worn sneakers, followed by a boy staring fixedly at the ground. It was young Ji Gyu-hwa.

Blowing my smoke sharply to the side so it wouldn’t drift into his face, I tugged the black mask from beneath my chin back up over my nose. As if his gaze were weighted with lead, the boy never once glanced up at the night sky or noticed me standing outside the restaurant. His soles scraped quietly over the cracked cement and loose gravel. He didn’t look ahead. Unfeeling and detached, with hollow eyes that looked ready to ignore the world even if it split in two around him, he simply trudged past like a wound-up automaton.

My eyes tracked his small silhouette all the way down the lane. To the very end, he never once turned his head. Burnt down to the filter, my cigarette butt slipped from my fingers and hit the dirt.

“Uhh, over theere—if you head thaat way, you’ll hit the supermarket,” the landlady drawled the next morning, pointing down the road. “And this way takes you straight to the bus stop. Just five minutes on foot!”

…And that was how I ended up renting a room by the month. Honestly, even I couldn’t explain why I had just agreed to a month-long stay instead of a week. It baffled me, too.

“That little room you slept in before was basically a storage closet!” she added cheerfully, patting the wall of the new unit. “That one’s for transient folks—y’know, those guesters. Guesters! This one here is for proper residents! You’ll be much comfier here, young man.”

The monthly rent for the proper room was manageable enough on my daily cash wages, though the security deposit had been a sticking point. When I hedged and mumbled that I didn’t have a lump sum on me, the landlady clicked her tongue and offered to waive the deposit entirely in exchange for slightly higher monthly rent. Well, having a private floor to stretch my legs on was all that mattered right now.

Taken at face value, she seemed like a generous soul—except the supermarket she swore was a five-minute stroll away took a full eighteen minutes at my brisk, long-legged soldier’s march. I had been blatantly swindled. Was her five-minute estimate clocked aboard a speeding Mugunghwa train? Even so, hunting for another room would mean saving up a deposit from scratch, and if any other landlord demanded a formal lease or an ID card, I’d be dead in the water. In this timeline, the real Seon Na-won was an elementary schooler in Seoul whose highest form of identification was a neighborhood library card.

Since it’s come to this, I might as well rest up properly and build a war chest before moving on.

That afternoon, I pushed open the door to one of the only two day-labor dispatch agencies in the district. Ever since anomalous creatures first emerged, industries tied to them had expanded exponentially year after year. For bottom-rung outfits that handled carcass disposal and byproduct harvesting rather than live combat subjugation, however—fourth-tier subcontractors of subcontractors—working conditions sixteen years ago were no better than in my own time. The daily payout beat hauling bricks on a construction site, sure, but it was hardly a fortune. Still, a diamond in the rough like me was bound to catch someone’s eye soon enough.

“How old’re ya?” the agency boss grunted from behind a battered metal desk, squinting at me through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Got hair on your balls yet?”

I did, of course, though for reasons of personal hygiene and aesthetics I kept things neatly maintained.

“You even know which end of a gun shoots?” he pressed.

In my era, the ministry had revised the curriculum so students didn’t touch live firearms until high school, but back in my school days—and Ji Gyu-hwa’s—mandatory military preparedness classes began the moment you entered seventh grade. By the second semester of your first year in middle school, you had already finished rifle theory and moved on to live-fire range drills. Which meant this old geezer was basically asking if I was still in elementary school. Ridiculous.

“Boss, got any work left for today?” I asked, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe.

“Morning crew rolled out at dawn,” he said, waving a hand. “What business does a green kid like you have sniffing around a place like this?”

“I need cash fast. Nothing open? Anything creature-related works.”

Clicking his tongue, the boss raked his eyes up and down my frame. It was the weary, familiar look of an old-timer watching another reckless young buck march eagerly toward an early grave. Should I make him a bet, even if I’m broke? Five hundred thousand won says I work every single day this week without missing a shift and walk back in here without a scratch.

“Well,” he muttered, rubbing his stubbled jaw, “there is one spot.”

“Better snap me up while I’m offering, Boss. Don’t come clinging to my pant leg in tears later when other crews try to poach me.”

“Well, listen to this punk.”

When I flashed him an easy grin behind my mask, the man barked out a hearty laugh. Hovering on the cusp between late summer and early autumn, the afternoon air still carried a sticky, muggy heat. Time to make some money. Once I get my first payout, I’m buying myself an ice cream bar. …And if there’s change left over, maybe I’ll toss a snack to my future commanding officer. Not that we’ll ever cross paths again, but just in case.

“We’re closed out for today, so show up at dawn tomorrow,” the boss said, pulling a clipboard across the desk. “Make sure you eat a solid breakfast before you come.”

“You don’t even feed the crew?”

“We hand out lunch boxes on site, but don’t go expecting a feast. Pack your own extra rice if you’ve got a big appetite.”

The benefits were absolute dogshit, but a bad gig beats an empty pocket. Scrawling an alias onto the roster, I stepped back out into the glare and decided to follow the boss’s advice by hitting the supermarket for a proper meal.

That was when I learned a fundamental truth about rural village life: while a town might boast half a dozen dusty corner bodegas, the local supermarket holds an absolute monopoly.

Barely ten minutes after assuring myself that Ji Gyu-hwa and I would never cross paths again, I spotted the young Jaguar walking straight out the supermarket’s sliding doors. My hand flew to my face on pure reflex. Thank God I had kept my mask on to block the roadside dust. Can’t let my guard down for a single second. Living in this town is going to shave ten years off my lifespan.

Pausing by the entrance, the boy slipped a blue plastic card into his pocket. Unless my eyes deceived me, it was a municipal youth welfare card. Through the thin white plastic of his grocery bag, the outlines of his purchases showed clearly—a bottle of shampoo, dish soap, and a multipack of instant ramen.

“Hey,” I called out, strolling up to him.

The boy lifted his expressionless face, recognized me, and bent neatly at the waist in a polite bow. I returned the greeting with a casual nod and pointed my chin at his bag.

“Is that brand any good?”

Standing there with a sullen, guarded look, Ji Gyu-hwa glanced down at the red packaging showing through the plastic. “It’s edible.”

“Too spicy,” I said, shaking my head. “Tastes like pure capsaicin.”

“Ramen’s only good when it’s spicy.”

“Kid, when it comes to instant ramen, Mild Neoguri and Mild Jin are the absolute gospel.”

He blinked up at me. “I didn’t think Neoguri even made a mild version.”

Oh, yes they do. Clearly, this was a deprived child who had yet to experience the finer things in life. “That’s only because you’ve never made a habit of eating the good stuff.”

“Okay,” he said flatly.

If I fed him decent meals every now and then, maybe he would finally see the light and accept the supreme truth of Mild Jin and Mild Neoguri. Devoid of a single drop of warmth, the boy tossed out that clipped okay and pivoted to walk away.