The Time Travel Addict 1

I am a time travel addict. You might wonder what I mean by that, but it's exactly what it sounds like. I am addicted to time travel.

Unless you look closely, it appears to be nothing more than a worn old pendant — but this device has a special function that sends me somewhere in the past. It's roughly the size of a 500-won coin, with four round beads arranged so that three form an equilateral triangle at the top and both sides, and one sits in the middle. I'm not sure exactly what it's made of, but the countless scratches and scuffs tell me it was built well enough to last a long time. The topmost bead is for the year, the lower left for the month, the lower right for the day, and the middle bead — for some reason — doesn't move. And all of this timekeeping is done by the lunar calendar, of course. It took me quite a long time to figure out that it ran on the lunar calendar. On the back of the pendant were various small buttons, though I still don't know how to use them.

Would you believe that I flew into the past while trying to clean this old, dust-covered pendant I found while unpacking at my new studio apartment I'd recently moved into? The confusion I felt in that moment is beyond any words I could use to describe it.

Anyway, I'll explain later how I ended up in the unfamiliar sea of Busan in the 1990s and how I managed to get back. What matters is that after several experimental trips, I figured out how this time machine works. My lunar calendar calculations are still rough, so I can't get exactly where I want to go just yet — but close enough.

For example, I turn a bead upward until the white mark appears, or until it can't turn any further. This is the present. After turning all the beads that way, I click the year bead 3 times — click, click — turn the month bead 5 times, and I am sent back to that day, three years and five months ago.

To the period just a few months before Haeseo and I broke up.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana

T13

The protagonist Tim in the film About Time has time travel running through his blood. The difference between Tim and me is how time travel works. Tim goes back as his past self — but I go back to the past as my present self.

Which means my past self still exists in the past.

My past self's time continues to flow in the past.

My present self's time continues to flow in the present.

There are certainly unknown rules I have yet to discover, but this is what I've figured out so far. And even this much came at the cost of several trials and errors and moments so hair-raising they made my spine go cold.

I could never relate to the fact that when Tim learns of his time travel ability, the first thing he does with it is to get a girlfriend.

I mean — buy stocks.

Buy lottery tickets.

Or at the very least, retake an exam.

I always thought it was only natural to use it for something that would benefit yourself. Every time I said that, Haeseo would scold me — you really have no sense of romance, you're truly not a romantic person at all.

Even Haeseo, who knew everything about me, probably didn't see this coming. Me, traveling to the past just to see her.

I wonder — if the Haeseo of now could see me like this, would she call it romantic? Or would she say it gives her the creeps?

I slowed my steps a little. With a nervous heart, I idly tapped the frozen ground with my toes. Two cats that had leaped down from below a stone wall crept under a recently parked car and showed no sign of coming out. I went to the convenience store a little further down and bought two cans of cat food, which I set down somewhere in the empty space between the parked cars.

With the days growing short, darkness had already fallen by seven-thirty — and she always passed through this alley at exactly this time.

Up on the low hill where the residential houses sat, a streetlight blinked its dim amber eye as if it begrudged even that faint glow, staring down at the frozen ground. I stood beneath it, waiting for Haeseo, not knowing when she might arrive. Having forgotten just how bitterly cold it had been roughly three years ago, I had carelessly thrown on an old baseball jacket I'd bought ages ago. After waiting for over an hour, my entire body had gone numb and my ears had flushed so red I began to wonder if I had frostbite. If only my hair had been longer it might have helped, but since college I had been keeping the bob cut that Haeseo liked, which left the back of my neck completely exposed.

To fight off the cold I walked back and forth, then bounced up and down like I was jumping rope, over and over — until finally I pulled the frayed orange sleeves over my hands and tried to warm them with my breath from inside. And yet, whenever a silhouette appeared in the distance, even knowing it wasn't Haeseo, I couldn't shake the tension and shrank into myself like a mimosa pudica.

After spotting my past self walking alongside Haeseo on a previous trip, I'd had to think carefully about which point in time to return to in order to avoid running into my past self. I dug through several old diaries from that period and decided the best option was to go back to the hardest stretch of my life — the tail end of my second year of job hunting.

We had barely seen each other back then.

I was slow at everything. I was a year late starting university because of a retake year, and unlike Haeseo — who had entered the history department right on schedule and graduated half a semester early — I couldn't adjust to engineering school, took a year off, and then extended my enrollment by another year because jobs weren't coming through. Meanwhile, Haeseo had earned recognition at her company and was about to be promoted to assistant manager despite being not even three years in. So Haeseo was busy with work, I was absorbed in job hunting, and we barely saw each other even on weekends. And then, about a year and a half later — in mid-January of the following year, which from this point in time was roughly a month and a half away — we would break up.

To be precise: I get dumped. And in a truly wretched way, at a truly wretched time.

I was on my way to Haeseo's company for an interview when I was hit by a hit-and-run driver. I was seriously injured and was in a coma for several days — and the moment I woke up, Haeseo told me it was over. That she couldn't do it anymore.

At the start of that year, I had to cancel every interview I had scheduled, gained a large scar connecting the back of my neck to my shoulder, and lost the person I loved.

I'd told myself I was coming to see Haeseo, but I had absolutely no intention of speaking to her or making myself known. I just wanted to watch her safely make it home, and then leave. I wanted to see her face, not just her back. I didn't yet have the courage to face her directly. That's why I was standing under this particular streetlight — the most unreliable-looking one on the whole street, the one that let in almost no light.

Then I heard the sound of heels. Haeseo's heels. We were close enough that I could recognize her just by her footsteps. I pulled my cap down further and watched the silhouette slowly climbing the hill. Her wavy brown hair whipped in the cold wind, and Haeseo paused briefly to push it back from her face. A long exhale — huu — carried all the way to where I stood. The white light from the convenience store on the way up caught her face. The beige coat I had bought her to celebrate her getting hired, paired with a black scarf — she looked no different from the Haeseo of now. She seemed a little worn down, somehow. You had it hard too, didn't you, I thought.

Haeseo, in the middle of pushing her hair back, glanced toward me. Not wanting to seem threatening, I deliberately tucked myself further into the shadow. Her pace quickened. I suppose anyone would find it suspicious — a person in a pulled-down cap standing under a streetlight — so I turned around and started walking away. I consoled myself: I saw her, even if from a distance. That's enough.

That was when my hand was grabbed.

"What are you doing here?"

"...Huh?"

I was too startled — and my frozen mouth too stiff — to get any words out. The cold had flushed Haeseo's cheeks red, just like mine. Haeseo had sensitive skin and struggled in both summer and winter alike. On days this cold she had to keep reapplying moisturizer and couldn't wear proper makeup. Maybe that was why her face looked even more clear and bare.

"Were you waiting for me?"

Instead of answering, I nodded.

"Like this?"

"…"

"You…"

"…"

"Do you know how cold it is right now? Are you crazy, why did you come out like this."

"..."

"What if I'd been working overtime?"

Saying that, Haeseo didn't even bother properly unwrapping her scarf — she simply pulled her own head out of it and slipped it over mine, wrapping it around my neck. Then she reached into my pocket, drew out my frozen hand, and pressed it against her neck. The hand that touched Haeseo's neck began slowly thawing in her warmth. Your hands are like ice, she said, and began warming the parts of me exposed to the cold with her hands.

"How long have you been waiting?"

"Not that long."

My lips were so frozen the words came out slurred. Haeseo cupped my ears in her hands. Then, quietly, she said: liar.

"You could have called… did you eat dinner?"

For some reason, tears came. Haeseo, seen properly for the first time in three years — the Haeseo of three years ago was exactly as gentle as I remembered. Just as I had faintly recalled from time to time, and yet this was deeper and more vivid than any of those memories. And that was what made me cry.

How might people look at a grown woman crying in a dark alley? An older woman walking past with a shopping basket glanced over at us, let out a quiet tsk, and moved on. I paid her no mind. The tears — half longing, half regret — fell and hit the frozen ground with a soft thud.

"Eun, are you crying?"

Not wanting Haeseo to see me cry, I turned my face away and wiped my tears on the frayed sleeve of my baseball jacket. But that sort of thing never worked on Haeseo. She caught my chin as it drooped and lifted it, looking at me with those eyes of hers, full of her particular kind of worry.

"What's wrong, did something happen?"

At those words, I couldn't stop the sobs that came pouring out. The regret and longing crashed over me like a tidal wave — more than I could bear — and I buried my face in Haeseo's shoulder and shook with it. The faint scent of peony reached me with every breath.

"Something must have happened."

Being held by Haeseo after so long felt slightly unfamiliar.

"Look at me, Eun — what is it, tell me…"

Haeseo gently pried me away from where I was clinging, unwilling to let go. I kept my head hung low and avoided her eyes. I'm not someone who cries easily. The only time I ever cried was… at night. Crying in the daytime was Haeseo's specialty. Unlike clumsy, thick-skinned me, Haeseo was more soft-hearted and far more sensitive. That's why I knew she was this worried now.

"Jueun."

Haeseo wiped the tears running down both my cheeks with her own sleeve. The beige coat sleeve darkened faintly. Having seemingly given up on getting an answer out of me, Haeseo murmured this won't do — and took my hand, still crying, and began to walk.

"W-wait, where are we going."

"It's cold, let's go cry at home."

"…"

"You're going to catch a cold."

I let out a short, helpless laugh through my tears.

"Is that what matters right now? Idiot."

"It matters. You look like you're going to freeze to death."

"…"

"Ha… no. I — I have to go."

I pulled Haeseo back and stopped her. The clear thought came to me: if I go to Haeseo's apartment now, I won't be able to leave. We had nearly climbed all the way up the hill, and just a little further would be too late.

"I just came to see your face."

"…"

"Because I missed you."

"You expect me to believe that…"

"It's true, I really have to go. I have somewhere to be."

I said it in a voice that had calmed somewhat. My crying had made Haeseo's eyes go red in turn.

With my lips pressed tightly shut, Haeseo finally seemed to give up and threw her hands in the air.

"Can't you at least tell me why you were crying before you go?"

"I'll tell you later, over the phone…"

Later would never come.

"I'm really going to be late."

"Jueun."

I pulled Haeseo into a deliberate, tight embrace. Then I whispered: I'm sorry for worrying you. I unwound the scarf that had been around my neck and wrapped it back around its rightful owner. Through it all, Haeseo watched me with eyes full of worry — and the helplessness of someone with no way to stop what was happening.

"Seo Jueun… you…"

"I'm going."

I ran, leaving Haeseo standing behind me, rooted to the spot like a stone figure waiting for someone who would never return. I rounded the corner quickly and slipped into a shadowed recess. To get back to the present, I pressed the button on the time travel device I had been clutching tightly in my hand.

Yes. I had… been repeating trips like this — exactly like this — already, more times than I could count.