My mom might have been content with being a takeout family, but I was starting to feel like my veins were full of oil. I couldn’t stand any more takeout pizza, so I did my best to chop up some kimchi and make some semblance of a meal with the frozen rice, vegetable bags, and freezer-burned garlic cloves. A runny egg and some scallions on top would fix just about anything, anyway.
I made extra, hoping my parents would be home to eat it but knowing they probably wouldn’t be. I hadn’t seen them at home in days, so they were either coming and going while I was at school or they hadn’t returned at all. It wasn’t unusual for floating agents, so I wasn’t worried yet.
As I scraped some rice onto a plate, a sharp pain stabbed behind my eye and my hand twitched, dumping so much rice out that it spilled over the counter. I’d been getting headaches more frequently lately, but every time I checked, the banana milk mission still hadn’t populated in my assignment list. I would have to talk to Hyebin about it the next time I saw her.
My eyes throbbed again and I set down the pan, sliding back against the cabinets. I fished an ice pack from the freezer and slapped it over my eyes as I lay down on the floor. When the pain faded, I realized I was lying across my mom’s shoes, which were spilling out of the overstuffed shoe rack in the hyeon gwan and slowly migrating into the kitchen. I tossed the ice pack in the sink and gathered up the shoes so no one tripped and fell to their death when returning home at three in the morning.
As I matched up all the boots and sandals, I thought about Yejun’s mother and her green shoe. What if my mom dissolved like Yejun’s mom and left nothing behind but a mismatched shoe? If I got caught, maybe Hong Gildong would erase my parents too just for good measure—raising two traitor daughters probably wouldn’t look good on their records, even if none of it was their fault. I tucked my mom’s boots into the rack as gently as possible. No matter what happened to me, I had to make sure my parents were safe.
I grabbed my backpack and fished out my wallet, then pulled out Hana’s note and read it with one side of my face pressed against the cool laminate of the front door, letting her words and the cold temperature slow my heart rate.
When you’re ready, come find me. I will keep you safe.
I tried to imagine, as Yejun had, what kind of person Hana was. I pictured her hunched over a desk, writing the note with a fine-tip pen, blowing on it to dry the ink. I already knew what clothes she would have worn, because I had her hand-me-downs. I pictured her in my striped pink-and-orange sweater, gray sweatpants, and maybe fuzzy purple socks. Yes, that felt like something Hana would wear. But still, I couldn’t imagine her face at all. I could only see her shoulders, her spine, her coppery hair draped down her back. Maybe my imagination just wasn’t as good asYejun’s, or maybe I just didn’t want to be wrong, to love someone who wasn’t real.
Hana will keep me safe, I thought, hugging the note close to my chest.She promised. She wouldn’t promise that unless she was still here, somehow.
The door pulled away and I fell into the hallway, where my dad took a startled step back.
“Oh, sorry!” he said, frowning as I scrambled to my feet. “Were you… sleeping on the floor?”
“I was rearranging the shoes in the shoe rack,” I said quickly, folding up the note and stuffing it in my pocket so he wouldn’t see. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you home so soon.”
I all but ran back inside, too conscious of the wary look on my dad’s face as he sat down to untie his boots.
“I made kimchi fried rice,” I said quickly, trying to disperse the awkwardness from the air. “Or something close to it. Want me to add another egg for you?”
My dad took his time putting his shoes away before answering. “Are you all right, Mina Bean?” he said. “You seem… on edge.”
I swallowed, feeling like I was on another infiltration mission.Of course I’m on edge, I thought.I’m a traitor waiting for the guillotine blade to fall.But I couldn’t say that to my dad, and denying it would only make him more suspicious.
“Just a lot of work at school,” I said, looking away. “Calculus is hard.”
My dad nodded sympathetically, the tension leaving his shoulders. “Make sure you’re getting enough sleep,” he said. “You’re not a calculator—your brain won’t work if you don’t recharge it.”
“I’ll go to bed after I eat,” I said, cracking an egg over the pan of rice. I could feel my dad’s eyes on me as I cooked, so I ate as fast as I could before saying good night and hurrying to my room. Once I locked my door, I let out a breath. I pulled down the shades andput Hana’s note back in its designated place in my wallet, safe and secret.
“That’s twenty-five,” Hyebin said as I dropped another eunhaeng into her bag.
“It’s twenty-six,” I said, frowning and swaying precariously on my tree branch as it wobbled in the breeze.
“I know how to count, Yang,” Hyebin said.
I sighed and resigned myself to plucking another two eunhaeng just to placate Hyebin.
After school on Monday, Hyebin and I traveled to May of 2013 for a mission of paramount importance: plucking twenty-seven pieces of stinky fruit off one specific tree in Olympic Park. Eunhaeng looked like yellow cherries and smelled like garbage when they fell to the ground and burst under people’s shoes. Removing twenty-seven of them from this tree was supposed to prevent a truck rollover on the highway in three days, though I hadn’t bothered to look up exactly how that worked. I’d stayed up half the night finishing my calculus homework, so at this point, if Hyebin had asked me to lick eunhaeng off the sidewalk, I probably would have done it just to finish the mission quickly.
I stretched higher, trying to reach the closest eunhaeng, but my fingertips barely brushed it. I wasn’t keen on taking a heroic dive and plummeting to the ground.
“Reach for it, Yang,” Hyebin said. “You move like my grandmother.”
I hesitated before making another grab, looking over my shoulder at Hyebin. “You have a grandmother?” I said before I could help it. I’d always thought of Hyebin as totally unattached, floating around across the timelines without a tether.
Her expression went blank. “Everyone has a grandmother,” she said—a calculated non-answer.
“Is she a descendant?” I said, stretching my wrist. I imagined an older version of Hyebin and cowered at the thought. The only thing scarier than Jang Hyebin was Jang Hyebin with the authority of a halmeoni.
Hyebin took so long to respond that at first, I thought she hadn’t heard me. When I looked over my shoulder, she was staring into her fruit bag. “I’m the only descendant left in my family,” she said at last.
