All his life, he has never seen a sky this massive.
The sky he’d grew up knowing was the kind that filled in the spaces in between skyscrapers. Like a filler chapter of a trilogy of novels; barely noticeable, vaguely important. A sky that made him feel trapped and claustrophobic, surrounded by a lush jungle of concrete, glass and metal. He’d walked for miles and never get more than a glimpse of the pale blue light from above. Here in old Seoul, he’d only took mere steps out of the heart of the bustling city for the sky to explode into the plane of his vision.
He keeps his head held high and eyes on the big, big sky; This particular shade of pale blue, the subtly significant calmness of it that envelopes everything underneath like a veil laced with the softest clouds, swaying from the gentlest breeze of budding spring.
He wonders if that’s what keeping Hyunwoo here. He wonders if he’d stay here himself.
Maybe, just maybe he will. At least for a little bit.
He pulls up his sleeve slightly, just enough to take a peek at his watch. “1950, March 25th,” he said to himself. This is where his friend’s tracker has led the time traveller to, and Hyungwon has just become a guest in his friend’s new reality. He turns a knob on the side of the timepiece, revealing a map on its face. Right in the middle a red dot blinks to signify himself, with a green ‘target’ one blinking on the top left corner of the map: Hyunwoo is nearby.
He pushes the watch back into his long sleeves and tugs on his shirt, making sure that it’s unwrinkled and neatly tucked-in. Wearing his grandfather’s oversized light brown button-up - which he’d dug up from the old musty attic of his home - he strides along the semi-paved roads laden with dirt and manure from the fields and the farm animals.
He stole short glances at the people that passes him by as he strides along the outskirts of Seoul, glad that most of them didn’t even notice the awkward time traveller on an urgent mission to find his friend. It’s a sunny morning, with farmers guiding ox-pulled carts of vegetables and tanned men and women in their 30’s carrying stacks and baskets of produce on their backs, all heading towards the city where Hyungwon had just came from.
He couldn’t help himself from marvelling at the acres of lush green land laid out on both his sides, accenting the dark brown houses planted among the crops that he’d only ever seen in browning pictures of his grandparents. Kids of all ages huddle in a group on a clearing by the farms, playing jump-ropes or whatever chasing game that clearly had not survive the test of time. It’s all so fascinating to the boy from the future: the retro tempo of life in the 50’s. Once in a while, he’d meet eyes with a woman or two passing by, causing gazes to be lowered in surprise, cheeks pinking behind raised handkerchiefs.
He turns a corner and subtly checks on his map again to determine Hyunwoo’s location. The two spots on his watch have now merged into one; His friend should be right where he is standing. The time traveller scans around the horizon, squinting to focus on every man he comes across hoping to find one that matches his friend’s strong features.
He was about to start panicking - because if the watch glitches on this, who knows what else might go wrong on this trip, and what might’ve happened to his friends that have now been scattered all over the timeline of the universe - when a particularly lanky figure with broad shoulders came into view, standing in the middle of a paddy field with his pants rolled up. The man in the field wipes the sweat off his face as his gaze falls upon Hyungwon, who’s closing in on him swiftly, waving and smiling. Sun-tanned to a golden bronze, Hyunwoo seems so much older now, compared to the time Hyungwon had last seen him.
“There you are!” Hyungwon exclaimed to the man, who’s now with a deep crease formed in between his brows as he stares at the time traveller who’s so clearly out of place in his well-pressed, clean button-up amidst the locals in their well-worn yellowing shirts and pants with mud-stained cuffs. The slim man with a pretty face looks familiar to him, like someone he’d known from a dream.
“His memory is fading,” the thought immediately came to the time traveller. They’d expected this before embarking on their trips, and Hyungwon knows just the thing to trigger the older man’s memories.
“Well now that you’re all tanned and macho-looking, no one is ever gonna think that we’re related, Shownu,” the time traveller said in his most nonchalant tone, as if finding his friend in weird places is a norm in their friendship. The man’s eyes widened, and the brightest smile forms on the chiselled face. People had sometimes gotten their names mixed up, so much that the older man started to introduce himself using his nickname, Shownu. Back home, his nickname has become his identity to the general public, while his real name has become a special, intimate thing that only the people closest to him addresses him by.
He waddles over to the edge of the field, being careful not to step on the stalks of grass, and with a big stride he ascends to the side of the unpaved portion of the road where the younger man stands. Without a single word, he extends his arms out and pulls Hyungwon into a hearty embrace. It’s been three months since he’d last seen his friend, now that his memory is slowly returning to him. Hyungwon reciprocates the gesture with an equally strong clamp of his arms on the man.
"Hey we're barely related, Mr. Chae," the older man chuckles, the vibration of his voice felt on Hyungwon's chest as he speaks.
“How have you been?” Hyungwon asks when they break apart from their hug.
“Good,” he utters, “You?”
“Same ol’ same ol’.”
“How’s the others?”
“They’re… alright. The clubhouse has been so quiet without you guys around.”
“Really? How long have I been gone?”
“Three weeks.”
“Only three weeks?! Man.”
“I know. It seems time slows down as you go back. I haven’t check up on the other guys, so I can’t say for sure that this is how time works,” the time traveller said.
They walk, the older man leading the other, to Hyunwoo’s place where he’s renting a room at an elderly couple’s home. The old lady, upon seeing the men entering the courtyard, greeted them warmly. They returned the greeting courteously, and proceeded to Hyunwoo’s room to continue their conversation in a more private setting, just in case the extraordinary things that they talk about gets overheard by unsuspecting locals.
“If anything, it sure feels like that’s how it is. I’ve been here so long that I woke up today convinced that I was born in this era,” Hyunwoo said, turning to face the pieces of papers he’d stuck on the wall beside his rolled up mattress.
“These notes, the diary that I’d brought with me here, all those ‘reminders’ we thought should keep our memories intact, they’d stop working weeks ago. I’d look at them, and thought to myself that I’d lost my mind, that my neighbour Hanseong’s home-brewed soju must’ve gotten me so hammered up that I’d started hallucinating about a magical watch and lightboxes and small metal plates people talk into, and six men that I only see and talk to in my dreams. I’m… I’m not going crazy, right? You’re really here, right Hyungwon?”
Seated at Hyunwoo’s desk and looking at him, Hyungwon answers in all seriousness, “ Of course I’m here, I’m real, the watch worked. The tracker we’d put in you worked too.”
He gets up and goes to his concerned and troubled friend, putting his hand on Hyunwoo’s shoulder, “Time travelling is real, and we’re the pioneers of this scientific breakthrough. Everything from here onwards is nothing but risks, which is why I’m here to check on you and bring you back with me.”
“Wait. Go back?” backing away, Hyunwoo asked, strangely surprised.
Hyungwon’s brows furrowed, “Well, yeah. That was the plan, wasn’t it? We make the watch, give it a test run, collect data, and go back with a Nobel Prize each.”
To that, Hyunwoo gave no reply. The seconds-long pause between the two felt like minutes before he finally says to the time traveller, “Hyungwon… I… I need more time here.” Hyungwon’s gaze falls to the ground.
“But...why?” the curious man asked. Now that he thinks about it, he starts to wonder why Hyunwoo was so eager to participate in this project, and was so precise on choosing 1950 as the year to travel to as his maiden trip outside of their own time in 2018. He was the first to volunteer to try the device out too. He travelled to willingly with Hyungwon and the watch without a single doubt that maybe all of this was just bullshit that could’ve cost them their lives.
Why 1950. Why Seoul. Why did he find Hyunwoo here, farming, of all things. He could’ve gone to the future. He could’ve gone anywhere in the fabric of time. Heck, he could’ve gone to the 70s and go crazy in discos every night for all Hyungwon knows. Why 1950.
“It’s… complicated. I just… I just need to be here, okay?”
The older man’s secrecy is starting to annoy Hyungwon. He did not just travel decades away from home to be lied to.
“What’s so complicated that you can’t tell anybody about it? C’mon, let it out. I’ve got time,” the time traveller scoffed, folding his arms.
“Hyungwon…”
“Tell me. Tell me before I activate the watch and zap us both back to 2018, with or without your consent,” he threatened.
“It’s just…’
“TELL ME.”
“You need to sit down first.”
He strides back to the desk, and sits down, staring piercingly at his friend as Hyunwoo lets himself fall onto floor with a deep sigh.
“Do you remember my grandaunt, Baram?” Hyunwoo asked.
Creasing his brows, Hyungwon thinks a little.
“The one that passed away a few years ago? I mean… in 20… 2012?”
“Yeah, her.”
“What about her?”
“You see, I don’t have much memories of her except when I was really young, she used to baby-sit me while my parents are away on business trips. I’d always thought of her simply as some distant relative that was just very kind to help a couple out with their newborn, and totally forgot about her as years gone by and we moved away from my hometown. She never called, ever. And we never visited, somehow. Then one day in 2012 the hospital called, looking for a Sohn Hyunwoo. That got my parents worried, and rang me immediately and repeatedly until Prof Kim sent me out of the hall for disturbing his lecture. Turns out, Granny Baram was dying, and she wanted to see me before she… you know… leaves.”
“Out of the blue? After almost 20 years?”
“Yeah.”
“She must’ve missed you a lot, huh.”
“Well… that’s complicated.”
“Why?”
“She was barely conscious when I got to her ward, and she was hooked up to so many machines and pipes she couldn’t even speak if she wanted to. But she had her lawyer there by her bed, and after she took one proper look at me, the ECG went flat.”
“Seems like you meant a lot to her, but then why didn’t she call or kept in touch all those years ago?”
“Because she couldn’t”
“She… couldn’t?”
Hyunwoo reaches under his mattress and pulls out a tattered leather book. He extends it to the younger man.
“Why are you giving me your diary?” Hyungwon asked, holding the book in his hands.
“Open it.”
“3rd February 1950. Dear diary, the strangest man stumbled into village today, wearing clothes I’ve never seen too. ‘Polo shirt’, he said it was. What a weird name for a shirt. No identification, and no family too. Hyunwoo, he said his name is. The poor man said he was mugged. The chief took him in for the night, said he’ll help him figure out where he can go and what he can do to rebuild his life.”
“Wait… is this… her diary? The grandaunt?” Hyungwon asked, to which his friend nodded.
“You’re here, to find her?! Are you crazy?!” he exclaimed. Hyunwoo lunges at him and cups his lips to silence him.
The man continues in a hushed tone,“This is wrong!”
“I know!” Hyunwoo replied in a similar manner.
“Then why are you still doing this?!”
“Just...well...keep reading!”
Hyungwon flips to the next page young Baram’s diary and continues reading. Quietly he reads her story, learning how her recent month was like after she’d met Hyunwoo, prior to Hyungwon’s arrival. He reads about how the young woman became acquainted with him, and became his friend.
“This is so bizarre.”
“But they are all true. Word for word. I tried to change it, read one of the entries ahead of time, then when the day came I deliberately did something different than what was in the diary. Then I came back, and found the words changed. The events in her life changed, so did the contents in her diary.”
“O… of course… this object here is from the future after all… it still retains its bond to the future,” Hyungwon said, holding his head an in attempt to stop his mind from spinning. All those sci-fi stories of time travel he’d loved are coming true. Fiction is turning into actual facts. If Hyunwoo changing small incidents in his life here changed the contents in future Baram’s diary, then can changing the past, really change the future?
“Take a minute, let it sink in. I know it’s a lot,” Hyunwoo said.
“Y...yeah.”
Silence ensues as Hyunwoo steps out to get Hyungwon some water. The kitchen isn’t very far away from his room, but the old lady of the house enjoys talking to Hyunwoo so much that it was no less than 15 minutes later when he could finally return to his room with a glass of water. By then, Hyungwon has calmed down a little, and processed maybe 50% of what had just happened to their lives. Now, it’s no longer some crazy little time travelling adventures. They can take one step out of their designated path, and have their whole lives altered in the future, that is, if their action did not result in a future where they were never born. Walking on eggshells seems like a breeze compared to what they are trudging on in this moment.
“So you’ve been reading the diary and doing everything it says?” he asked.
“N...no. I only read it after I’d lived through the day.”
“What?! Why?! What if you did something differently that what originally happened?!”
“Because I tried it once, reading ahead and following it’s directions. And I almost died chasing after schedules that apparently wasn’t accurate, because guess what, a diary is just a record of a person’s experiences, and one’s memory can trick and fool themselves into believing a different truth. This is not a scientific document, Hyungwon. It’s not 100% accurate, and not everything that happened ends up in the book.”
Hyungwon presses his hand onto his eyes, “Shit. Man.”
“Yeah.”
“We gotta go back, now. Before more damage is done. Who knows what the future will be like if we stayed longer.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well f*cking why, Hyunwoo?!”
“I… I can’t.”
Hyungwon grunts and scowls at his friend in disbelief. Then, he suddenly realizes the reason why Hyunwoo is staying, which sends a thundering sense of outrage all over his whole being. He springs up from his seat and lunges towards his friend.
“You… bastard. You’re in love with her?! You have any idea how twisted this is?!” he cried as he shoves Hyunwoo onto the wooden floor, with one hand holding his friend’s chest while pulling a fist back, aiming it straight at the older man’s face.
He pauses, towering over the older man, his gaze piercing into his friend’s as Hyunwoo lays there under his grip, motionless.
“You’re not even fighting back.”
“I’m not going to fight you, Hyungwon.”
The sensation of his knuckles colliding with the flesh and bones of Hyunwoo’s jaws isn’t something that he’d ever thought he would experience in his lifetime. But there he was, one arm still pinning his friend down while the other started to throb from the punch. His friend, though, is adamant on not hurting Hyungwon. Hyunwoo can be stubborn like that sometimes.
“Fight back,” he demands, his eyes turning red from fury.
“No,” he replied, his teeth turning a slight pink from the blood in his mouth.
“Fight back. That’s the only help you can give me at this point,” he said, raising a clenched fist again.
“Hyungwon…”
“You know you can take me down easily, so do it. Be an asshole. Then at least I can go back feeling better about abandoning my friend,” he added, the angry expression his face contorted into one of agony.
“You know that there’s nothing you can do that can spite me enough to actually hurt you. Our friendship goes deeper than that,” Hyunwoo protested.
“God… why must you be so damn difficult.”
“I’m sorry… I really am. I only wanted to find out what really happened, whether or not what’s written in this book is true. Now that I got to know her, everything changed.”
“Yeah, no shit,” he said, as he loosens his grip on Hyunwoo and drops his fist, crashing onto the floor next to the other man.
“Don’t think I don’t find all this weird. Granny Baram is still an old lady with all the cords and pipes connected to her on the hospital bed. She’s family. She’s blood. I know that. I really do, Hyungwon.”
“I just… I don’t know what else to say. This is all new to me too. How does one react to his friend getting close to their relative's younger self from a different time period.”
“There isn’t a reaction. Like you’ve said, we’re the pioneers of this time travelling thing now. Everything from here onwards is nothing but risks.”
“All because of f*cking curiosity… and alcohol.”
“A shit tonne of alcohol.”
“What were we thinking, seven guys that know and understand nothing of this world.”
“We weren’t.”
“...we weren’t.”
The day was getting hotter as the sun beats down on their roof, as more movements are heard from the outside; people are returning from the farms for lunch and a short rest, before going back to work, while the two men from the future lay on the cramped single bed, staring at the low ceiling above them.
“So… what do we do now?” the younger one asked.
“Lunch.”
“Then… goodbye?”
“Then stay. At least for one night, so we can wrap things up properly,” the older man said with a heavy heart.
There’s nothing Hyungwon could say but a brief, “Okay.” Relations aside, Hyunwoo has been one of the closest friend since high school, and now they’re about to never see each other again; Hyungwon was not going to come back and risk changing the future, and clearly Hyunwoo was not going to stop seeing Baram. It’s one thing to move towns and not keeping in touch with a friend, it’s another to send them into a different time period and abandoning them to fend for themselves outside of their elements. Hyunwoo will always be the man from the future. He will never completely belong in the past. And only Hyunwoo alone will know the full effects of living in a wrong time period for a prolonged period of time. He will eventually lose all memories of home, of everyone he’d loved, and his mind will adjust to the new reality and root itself so deep into his brain that he will be convinced that he is a simple, normal man in the outskirts of old Seoul. He will never see Hyungwon and the rest of their friends; they will be nothing but a distant dream to him. His family at home might file for a missing person’s report, or maybe the memory of him might be wiped out from their minds. There’s no telling what will happen to them from now on. There’s nothing but risks from here onwards.
Lunch went by quietly, although the two tried to act as normal as they could, filling up the silence with short conversations. Dinner, though, was more lively, when Hyunwoo brought bottles of Hanseong’s soju back to his room.
“This is the last time that we’ll have a chance like this. Let’s make it count,” he said to Hyungwon. The younger man chuckles and holds out two glasses as the older uncaps a bottle and fill the glasses with the clear liquid.
Shot after shot each took. The more they drink, the more it feels like the good old days with just them and a few more of their friends all sitting around the table, talking nonsense while uncovering the philosophies of life through distorted visions and weightless minds.
“Teelll me… h-ave you allwaays kneww that we willl succcceed at making this..thiisss watch and y-you’ll travel back intime...eehhhhhh?” Hyungwon slurred as he drunkenly points at his wrist.
Hyunwoo giggles, “...y--yeeah…”
“So y-ou’d alllways kneeewww….weellllll no wwooondder you voluntttteee-r-erred so q-q-q-quickkly… you asssss… could’veee just told uuss caan’t you?”
“Whhhat difference do-does-essses it makke? We’re h-h-h….”
“Weell I would’vvveve beeen more co-confident in the project! Y-y-you knowww…”
The older man giggles some more, “YOOUUuuuu woul’ve w-would-d-d-’ve thought that I-I-IIII was cr-crazyyy yooou lit’l...littt’l s-s-shit.”
Hyungwon laughs, “.........y-ou. Are r-right… eveen now that we’r’r’e here, I still cann’t belielieve those th-things in the diiaryyy.”
“But….it’s true.”
“I know… a-are you sure you’re stayingggg? You’re really n-noot c-c-commingg withth meee?”
“....yeeep.”
“You’re g-gon-gonna be Hyunwoo t-th-the faaaarmerr...beccau-se-se of her?”
“.....yeah…”
“....creep.”
“H-hey hey HEYY don’ttt make me punch yo-you in the face……..jerk.”
“Y-you shouldldve done it when I to-old you to….joke’s ononnn you.”
“I’ll brrring you to meeeeet her tommomorow… you’lll seeeeeeee…”
And so they drink, and they talk, and they argue, and then drink some more, until their bodies can take no more of the hard liquor and render themselves unconscious.
*
The bedroom door slams, and the glare from the morning sun hits Hyunwon like a speeding truck. He winces.
“Can you be any louder? I’m not sure I heard you coming in just now,” he barks with his hoarse voice.
“You wouldn’t be feeling this way if you worked out more,” his friend said as he buttons his shirt.
“And I’d shut the door as gently as I could, okay. You’re just too hungover,” he added, to which Hyungwon retaliates with pressing his pillow to his head.
When he’s finally dressed, Hyunwoo goes over to the bed and tap on Hyungwon, “Get up, it’s 9.30 already.” When there is no respond from the younger man, he smacks Hyungwon on the shoulder.
“Hey!!” the man hissed, tossing his blanket off in a fit.
“Good, you’re up. Go wash up and get dressed, don’t make her wait.”
The memory of their conversation the night before jolts him up; he’ll be meeting the infamous Baram today, before he leaves. The thought of saying goodbye to Hyunwoo floods his mind with sadness once more.
Maybe, he should stay for one more day. Or maybe, a few more days.
He could convince him. Give him a bit more time to think about it.
Maybe by then Hyunwoo will realize that he's better off coming back to the present time, where he belongs.
No.
Hyunwoo is not the type to change his mind so easily. There’s no point in dragging this out. He’s made his decision. It’s final.
Defeated by his own rebuttal, Hyungwon drags his body off the bed and out of the room. When he returns, he pulls on his clothes from the day before, and straightens them out the best he can so he looks presentable.
Just like the day before, Hyunwoo walks in front of Hyungwon, guiding the way to wherever they’re going. The sun is still shining as brightly as it was in the morning, over-exposing everything around them, making him squint as they make their towards a hill, where the overgrown trees and bushes provide a welcoming shade to the men. They hike along the foot of the hill, comfortably on the footpath formed from the many years of hikers taking the same route.
“Do you think she’ll like me?” the younger man asked, garnering a chuckle from his friend.
“Oh now you care how she feels?”
“I’m always nervous meeting people for the first time, doesn’t matter who it is.”
“She’ll like you.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“I just do,” Hyunwoo replied with a smile, and continues on the path.
First he hears the sound of running water, and before long a brook came into view. He knew that water in the rivers and streams in the past look so much cleaner and clearer than the ones he’s seen when he was young. But just like how he saw the sky for the first time, he’s surprised by the clarity of water gently flowing by him as Hyunwoo turns back to him, telling him that they’ve arrived at the meeting point. Baram isn’t here yet, but Hyungwon is too absorbed in watching the fishes in the stream to mind it.
“Pretty amazing, huh,” Hyunwoo said, standing by the man crouching by the water.
“Back home, we have to hike for hours deep into jungles to be able to see something like this,” the younger man stated.
“...and risk getting fined if we want to dip our fingers into the water,” the older man added.
“Here, no one even fusses over it, like it’s not a big deal having clean water and lush green trees all around.”
They hear a rustle coming from behind them, and turn around to see a woman in a light blue button-up paired with a navy knee-length skirt approaching them, smiling and waving the net she holds in her hands.
“Hey Hyunwoo!” she greets, to which the man reciprocated.
“Hyungwon, this is Baram,” he introduces her to his friend.
“Baram, this is…”
“Hyungwon, hello!” she chirps cheerfully, extending her hand forward and adds, “You look exactly like how I remembered you!”
Shaking her hand, Hyungwon’s head cocked to a side upon hearing what she said.
“She meant in her head. I’ve told her about you, and all the other guys, so she kinda has a hint of how you look like,” Hyunwoo explains. The woman giggles in agreement.
“Oh… what else did he tell you about me?” he directs the question to the woman.
With a playful smirk she replies, “Oh… so many things…” and watches a little panic creeps onto Hyunwoo’s face before she continues, “all good things, of course.”
“She’s not what she seems to be,” Hyungwon thought to himself.
There’s something different in the way she carries herself, an air of confidence in her steps and a sprinkle of charisma in her words. Her eyes sparkles from the sunlight and her smile persuades you to trust its owner with your deepest secrets. Hyungwon hasn’t spent much time here, but something in him tells him that not many girls behave the same way she does in this particular time in Korea. Or maybe children of the Sohn family were just brought up differently than the rest of the locals. Hyunwoo had told him how even at 75 years old his grandfather would often single-handedly keep him and all his young cousins under control with his stories and little magic tricks. It should come as no surprise to Hyungwon that the old man’s baby sister inherited some of the Sohn family charms too.
“So you and Hyunwoo, you’ve known each other since young?” she asked, stepping close to the edge of the brook with her net.
“Yeah, we went to school together. How about you? How did you two meet?” he asked in return, though he already knows the answer from reading her diary.
“Oh he just came to the village one day, all lost and clueless. The chief took him in for a while, then the council decided to find him a job and let him stay. I just started to talk to him because he intrigues me.”
“Oh...did he?” he smirks at Hyunwoo.
“Yeah, because it’s not everyday you get to meet a man from the future,” she answered as she watches the colours drain from Hyungwon’s face.
“You… you know about him? About us?”
“It was hard to believe at first, but he showed me proof,” she said, this time the tone in her voice sounded earnest and sincere. She looks at Hyunwoo with a sympathetic smile, as if assuring him that whatever they have between them is safe in her protection.
“How much do you know?” the time traveller asked.
“Enough to convince me that this is real, and not some sick voodoo prank. It’s amazing, what you and your friends have discovered,” she added. “I’d give anything to be able to experience that for myself, but alas, this opportunity is not mine to have. Well, at least I get the next best thing: having the future brought to me in the flesh.”
“Being able to time travel is not necessarily a good thing, we don’t know exactly what will happen from this,” Hyunwoo said.
“Maybe something bad, or maybe nothing at all. Never try, never know, right?” the woman suggests.
“Never try, never know,” Hyungwon chimes.
The younger man showed the woman his time travelling device, describing to her how it works and explain to her how it was made.
“Why did you make only one? Will you be making more in the future?”
“I… I don’t know. We never expected this to work, and it’s only been a few weeks since we got it functioning. This is… more like a prototype, and the few of us are the white mice of the experiment. We can’t make any certain conclusion until time is better understood.”
“I see… that’s a smart move. At least if it fails, only a small minority is affected. The damage can still be contained.”
“Right.”
It was close to noon when they came back out from the forest, and decided to gather at Hyunwoo’s place for lunch. Upon entering the courtyard, they met the old lady again, and Baram entertained the old woman while the men proceeded to the kitchen to plate up the food the old lady has prepared for them. While eating, Baram and the men chatted in hushed tones, so their conversation about the future and time travelling remained just between them.
Halfway through their meal, came a knock on the door. It was Hanseong.
“I need to get to the field for a while,” Hyunwoo said to the two seated at the dining table, and left.
Without the older man as their buffer, an awkward silence fills in the space between them.
“He’s staying here for good, you know that, right?”
She nods, “I tried to talk him out of it. It’s crazy, why would anyone want to live in the past, when they came from a place of luxury and convenience.”
“You don’t know?”
She looks at him, understanding exactly why Hyunwoo chose to give up his real home to be here.
“Hyungwon, we’re blood, him and I. I can’t get over this fact no matter how close we’ve gotten over the months.”
“He wouldn’t listen.”
“I know. At least one of us need to be the sensible one here.”
“I’m glad you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, the choice is his. We have to respect that at least. Take care of him, alright? He can be so clueless and careless sometimes.”
“I will, don’t worry. How long do I still have with you before you have to go?”
“Not long, in a couple of hours. Before sunset.”
“That’s too soon. We could’ve been such good friends.”
“Do not make me stay, Sohn Baram.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve always felt different from all the other kids my age, like I can’t relate to them, and they can’t relate to me. Meeting Hyunwoo is the first time since forever that I felt like I have someone I can talk to, someone that understands me and my strange thoughts. I always thought I was existing in the wrong time, and you guys just confirms my suspicions. It’s just sad to see you go, while at the same time I feel guilty for Hyunwoo’s decision to stay.”
“My whole purpose of coming here was to bring him back with me, so yeah, it sucks losing a friend and a fellow researcher. But he’s happy, I can tell he is, so no matter how much it pains me to leave him here, his happiness will always be more important to me than everything else. Sounds corny, but I’m old fashioned, I’ll admit to that.”
As evening approaches, the three of them hike back to the brook with clear water because Hyungwon wants to see it one more time before he returns home. The sun was just beginning to set on the distant horizon as the sound of running waters was heard again, followed by the welcoming sight of the stream.
It was time to say goodbye, for one last time.
He shakes the woman’s hand for one last time, and gave his friend one final, warm hug.
Standing at the edge of the water, Hyungwon stares at his reflection floating above the swimming fishes. He knows, he hates that he has to leave Hyunwoo. And he hates himself to have to leave him anyway.
“Here, take this,” the older man said to him. He turns towards his friend and sees the leather book in his hands.
“Baram’s diary?”
Hyunwoo nods, “I have no need for this anymore. The mystery behind it has led me to her. It’s time for me to live and find out what comes next as it happens in real time.”
Holding it in his hands; the book becomes one of his prized possession.
“I’ll take good care of this. I promise,” he said, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a picture of them and their friends.
“Take this, so you’ll remember all of us, even for a short few months.”
He pulls back his sleeve, revealing the watch and turns the dial to 2018. He takes one final look at the man and woman in front of him, blurry eyed, then press on the button on the side of the device and watch the world around him disappear into pitch black.