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“Do you get, like, dialogue options or something?” Ryujin asks. “And your gift tells you which one is the best?”
Sayeon mulls it over. Haltingly, she says, “I suppose you could say that’s the end result?”
“In what way?”
It somehow feels intimate, talking to Ryujin so openly like this. “I wouldn’t say it shows me the best option. More like I know which is the wrong one.”
“Hm,” Ryujin says, and her brows furrow the way they do when she’s actually using her brain. It’s endearing to Sayeon.
Sayeon is writing a report and Ryujin is laying on their bed. Then she says, “Is it going back in time?”
“What?” Sayeon drops her pen and turns around.
“Your gift,” Ryujin says. “Is it going back in time?”
“A gift like that would be absurd,” Sayeon says, but her voice is too tight.
“After weeks of thinking about your gift, I’m pretty sure this is the only one that makes sense.” Ryujin doesn’t seem perturbed by Sayeon’s denial. Maybe because it’s paper thin. She’s going to have to rewind this, anyway, so she might as well see where Ryujin’s idea stems from. Maybe she can nip it in the bud.
“Time travel doesn’t make sense at all,” Sayeon says. “What, the entire universe caters to one gift?”
“You haven’t said no.” Ryujin raises an eyebrow.
“Because it’s a ridiculous premise.” Sayeon turns back around, waving her hand flippantly.
“So, how far can you go?”
“That’s not my gift,” Sayeon says stubbornly. “You got it wrong.”
“You have never reacted like this, Lee,” Ryujin says. “I hate to tell you, but it’s written all over your face. Even if I’m not exactly right, I’m closer than you wanted.”
“How long have you been thinking a stupid thing like that?”
“You’re way too defensive for me to be wrong, actually,” Ryujin decides. “And honestly? I’ve been thinking about it for a week or so now.”
Sayeon’s chest tightens. She’s frozen like a rabbit. She hoped Ryujin had maybe just thought of this, that she could go back and immediately leave the room, do something different—
“Yeah, that’s what I expected you to act like when I said that,” Ryujin admits. “I didn’t want to bring it up immediately in case I was right. But I feel like you can’t go back that far. So now you’re locked in a timeline where it’s always going to be in the back of my head.”
Sayeon has nothing to say to that. She’s right. She lifts her hand, thumb and middle finger pressed together, and Ryujin laughs.
“Are you going back to before I said anything? You think you can weasel out of this now?”
“I can get myself out of anything,” Sayeon says, and her fingers snap.
She takes a moment to lean back in her chair. Ryujin is seconds from asking her, so Sayeon pushes her foot one last time against the wall, and the chair crashes backwards. Sayeon hits her head on the floor way harder than she intended to, but at least that gives her even more of an excuse to leave.
She groans, rubbing her head in what she hopes isn’t a theatrical manner, and stands up. “Well,” she says to Ryujin, who silently watches the entire performance, “I’m gonna go get some ice.”
“Don’t lean so far back next time, idiot,” Ryujin says. Sayeon doesn’t respond.
Later that afternoon, they’re walking back from training with Juni when Ryujin does it again. Abruptly, she says, “Is it going back in time?”
This time, Sayeon stops in her tracks and presses her lips in a thin line. After a moment, she says, “Why do you think that?”
Ryujin seems unperturbed. “I have a lot of reasons to think that. Is it your gift?”
“What reasons?” Sayeon asks stubbornly.
“It is, isn’t it?” Ryujin says. “That’s why you’re so fucking weird.”
Instead of responding, Sayeon snaps her fingers. They’re walking again, and Sayeon smacks her hand to her forehead.
“Shoot!” She says, turning to Ryujin. “I forgot I have to go talk to Min about something. I’ll see you later.”
With that, she leaves her in the hallway.
The third time Ryujin does this, it puts Sayeon on high alert.
She’s walking away, as quickly as possible, brain scrambling to understand where Ryujin got this idea from. It’s absurd! She wants to scream, because it is. A gift that turns back time? A gift that can undo anything in the world? It’s ludicrous in a way it wasn’t before Ryujin verbalized it.
Hours later, after her 10pm cigarette, Ryujin corners Sayeon in their room.
At first, she straddles her like before, and Sayeon finds herself excited. She wraps her arms around Ryujin and leans up to kiss her, nasty taste of tar be damned.
“Do you want to know what I did this morning?” Ryujin asks.
“Sure,” Sayeon says, smiling blissfully.
“I told myself that by the end of today, I was going to ask you a question no matter what.” She raises her eyebrow at Sayeon. “But I think you already know what the question is, just like I think I already know the answer.”
Sayeon’s smile fades.
“I’m gonna take that as an affirmative answer,” Ryujin whispers.
Sayeon’s brain is running at a million miles per hour. Her heart feels stuck in her throat. WhatdoIdowhatdoIdowhattheFUCKDOIDO—
“Because, you know,” Ryujin says, like she’s discussing the weather, “every time today I was just about to ask, you magically found a way to disappear.”
Ryujin looks at her expectantly, and Sayeon realizes she won’t talk until Sayeon does. Her tongue feels too big for her mouth. Could she pretend? Come up with a different question? Invent a new gift? Turn back time right now? Finally make a deal with the godling to get out of this for good?
She would just think it happened in another timeline.
“Please don’t,” Sayeon whispers instead.
“You really do use it on us all the time.”
“Please don’t,” she repeats.
“Please don’t what?” Ryujin asks, voice hardening.
After a moment, Sayeon settles on, “Ask me questions.”
“Are you serious?”
Sayeon lets her head fall forward, resting against Ryujin’s chest, and she squeezes her arms where they rest on Ryujin’s waist. “Yes.”
“Are you always this unbelievable?”
Sayeon’s lips press into a thin line. “You don’t even know half of it.”
That brings a beat of silence. Finally, Sayeon peeks up and asks.
“How did you figure it out?”
Ryujin smirks. “I realized I was asking the wrong questions. I was trying to figure out what kind of gift doesn’t need essence activation. But that — even for a teal gift — must be impossible.”
“Kind of a strong word for a gift that seems impossible,” Sayeon says.
“There would’ve been a myth about it by now,” Ryujin says dismissively. “So I had to ask, what kind of gift could conceal activation so thoroughly? I can’t tell when you activate your gift. But I can tell, sometimes, when you’ve depleted your essence. So whatever the gift was, it still needs to be activated.”
“‘Going back in time’ still seems like a leap.”
“Yes,” Ryujin admits, “but everything else I could think of had been ruled out. People can’t have two gifts, and anything like clairvoyance or mind reading wouldn’t also cover up essence activation. So what kind of gift could do both? Give you that information and cover up an activation?” She shrugs. “At first, I thought you could see the future. But like I said, that wouldn’t account for covering up the essence activation. And then I remembered a couple of weeks ago, when you absolutely lost your shit during the warehouse mission.”
“When we slept together?” Sayeon asks, hoping to derail the conversation.
But Ryujin is on a warpath. “When you said I ‘didn’t make it.’ I argued that the mission was fine because we all made it out, and you said it didn’t. That kind of thing can’t be explained by anything simple like amnesia or dialogue options. So that left going back in time.”
Once upon a time, Ryujin had that thought. Is it seeing the future? She had said. Or is it going back in—?
“And then when I thought about how you act sometimes, I realized it made perfect sense.”
“What do you mean?” She’s falling. The ground has disappeared from beneath her feet and she’s falling.
Ryujin holds up three fingers. “First, when we were Day 1 baby crows. You tackled me to the ground and saved my life.” She grimaces. “Which means I died. I got shot in the head on my first Corps mission. Embarrassing. But it explained how you knew the bullet was coming. Second, when you stomped on my hat. You thought you’d be able to get me to react, use my gift so you’d know what it was, and then you could erase it like nothing happened. Right?”
Weakly, Sayeon says, “Right.”
“But you woke up 20 minutes later, a total mess, wracked with guilt over something you very deliberately did do. Which confused the fuck out of me. Until I realized that if I hadn’t knocked you out, you might have figured out my gift and rewound it without having ever done anything to the hat.”
“…Right,” Sayeon repeats.
Ryujin leans in closely. “And third,” she says quietly, “the kid you threatened Yesol with.”
Sayeon’s stomach turns.
“You had genuine murderous intent towards that kid because you would have killed him,” Ryujin says, voice dripping with reproach. “You would have killed him and just turned back time and no one would have been the wiser.”
Since she knows Ryujin will ask anyway, Sayeon says, “I never killed him.”
“How could I ever know if you’re telling me the truth?” Ryujin asks softly.
“Because you fucked up my plan,” Sayeon insists, and she shuts her mouth abruptly upon hearing the desperation in her tone. The entire conversation feels like Ryujin has flayed her and left her out to dry for the world — for Ryujin — to see, and she’s desperate to hear you’re not a monster. “I—I would have. I would have killed him. And I rationalized it because I can go back and it would’ve been like it never happened, you’re right. But then you threatened me, and it threw the entire plan out of order, and he never died. Not in any timeline.”
But Ryujin still has her eyes narrowed.
Back to the wall, she finds a last ditch opportunity.
Sayeon lowers her head. She squeezes her eyes shut and admits, voice strained, “Iseul did.”
“What?”
“Yesol killed Iseul,” Sayeon says, fighting to keep her voice steady. If you cry, you lose!
It’s not fair. Ryujin would have judged Sayeon harshly if she had killed that child, but Yesol still killed Iseul in a timeline she had no idea would be erased.
“I thought Yesol would take that man hostage because I watched Iseul’s head fall on the ground while he was trying to comfort that kid.”
And part of her — a very small part — can admit to herself that she’s just angry and taking it out on Ryujin by saying What about what your friend did?
“Well, she thought Iseul was a member of the Corps threatening the kid,” Ryujin says defensively.
Sayeon laughs. “Right, so it’s okay, then? She didn’t yell. She didn’t warn us. She didn’t threaten us or try to get away with no harm done. She went straight for the kill.”
“It’s not the same,” Ryujin says again, but it’s weaker this time.
“Why isn’t it the same?” Sayeon argues. “Why isn’t what she did worse? I knew I could undo it, I knew that kid wasn’t going to really die. Yesol doesn’t know death can be undone, and she killed Iseul anyway.”
“It’s just different!” Ryujin snaps. “And that kid would have really died. Just like I really died. But that’s the other thing, you know? You completely lost it during that mission, but I’m sure I’ve died a lot, haven’t I?”
Sayeon closes her eyes. “You ask this almost every time.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Ryujin says.
“Too many to count.”
Ryujin’s jaw visibly flexes and Sayeon swears she can hear the squeal of her teeth grinding. “So what was so different about the mission we went on a couple weeks ago? When we split up from Min and Iseul?”
Sayeon leans forward, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair and Ryujin’s chest. “Please don’t ask me about that.”
“Why did you completely blow your lid?” Ryujin demands. “I mean, fuck, I die a lot! You said too many to count! We’re in the Corps! So why the fuck did you lose your shit like that?”
Sayeon squeezes tighter. “I didn’t… see you die. So. I didn’t know if it was too late. If you had been dead longer than I could go back.”
The implication hangs in the air, thick and heavy.
“So I almost… died,” Ryujin says. “Permanently.”
“Yes.” Sayeon doesn’t want to think about it. “Any other questions?” Anything to get Ryujin’s dead body out of her head.
“Did your mother have the same gift?”
“Hm?”
“Your mother,” Ryujin repeats. “You said you never saw her activate her essence, but she must have had a gift.”
“Ah,” Sayeon says. “Yes, but she… could go much farther than me.”
“How far?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Sayeon admits. “It might have been months.”
“Months?” Ryujin sounds incredulous.
“I’m also honestly not certain that she did have this gift,” Sayeon confesses. “She was… odd. She might have been able to go forward. Maybe she could stop time entirely and move freely, maybe she could view different timelines and choose which one came true. I just don’t know.”
Then it’s silent again. Ryujin hasn’t looked away from Sayeon’s face which, for once, makes her uncomfortable. She tries to read her, but Ryujin’s poker face is made of stone.
“Do you hate me?” Sayeon whispers.
Ryujin huffs and smiles faintly, like the question is amusing. “You’ve already asked me this. No, Sayeon Lee, I do not hate you. Do you need reassurance that badly?”
It’s clearly meant as a provocation, but Sayeon is too desperate for approval to care. “From you, yes. And that was before this conversation happened.”
“I… need to think on it,” Ryujin says hesitantly. “But I don’t hate you. I don’t know if I could at this point, anyway.”
It’s reassuring to hear from her. “Are you going to tell Min or Iseul?”
Ryujin blows a strand of hair from her face. “No. They know you’re a big fat liar, so that’s enough, anyway. They can figure it out themselves.”
It’s a relief. But it still serves to amplify the feeling of being imprisoned by this disclosure to Ryujin.
Then, “How much of our relationship do I even know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is this… whatever this is, don’t turn this around on me — is it even real? Or just something you managed to manufacture after going back in time so much?”
“It’s real!” Sayeon feels a little embarrassed at how quickly she says it. “It’s real. I’m not — this isn’t me being manipulative.”
“What have you done that I don’t remember?”
“Well… I said ‘I love you’ a lot before I stopped rewinding it.” She rubs her temples, trying to think. “Sometimes I would vent to you. Our first kiss was our first kiss.”
“You used it when we slept together,” Ryujin says suddenly. “Why did you do that?”
Now it feels embarrassing to say out loud. “I… didn’t want to make mistakes.”
Ryujin stares. “Okay,” she finally says. “But you can’t keep using it on me.”
Sayeon doesn’t respond.
“I’m serious. You want my trust?” She puts her hands on Sayeon’s shoulders. “You can have it. You can have all of it. But that kind of gift…” She grimaces. “I’m sure that’s why you didn’t tell us about it. It’s not the kind of gift people can trust. So you can have my trust, but you can lose it if you use that gift on me outside of missions.”
Sayeon is elated. She resists the urge to smile, but she can feel it cracking through her lips. “You still trust me?”
“Don’t make me regret it, Lee,” Ryujin warns. “And I’m serious. If I feel your essence drain around me, you can forget about having an ounce of my trust ever again.”
And for some reason, Ryujin’s trust is the most valuable currency in Sayeon’s world. And now, she knows she really does have it. Here she lay, cornered, stripped bare of any capacity for deceit, with every ugly part of her soul on display. Yet, here Ryujin stays, by her side, in spite of it all.
She can’t help herself. She leans in, closing her lips over Ryujin’s, ribs swelling with overwhelming gratitude.
Later that evening, nose tucked into Ryujin’s curls, she wonders how she could ever accept the godling’s deal when the deity most worthy of her worship is wrapped in her arms.