the summer of 1993 ── dohwa baek - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

11:58 PM.
The red numbers on Y/N's bedside table burned her eyes, reminding her that in six hours and two minutes, she would have to brave all her fears and get up for school.
It had been hours of her repeating that, her resolve gradually growing into restlessness. At 9:31, she had plopped against her soft mattress, fully prepared to sleep. At 10:34, agitation began to climb up the base of her spine. At 11:15, she got up, pacing back and forth in her room to tire her brain out. At 11:52, she stared at the brand new clock again—an expensive birthday gift from her mother's friend—watching the time swish by.
While she lay there, wide awake, there were a hundred things for her to think about. Her schoolwork. Her friends. Her parents. Her academy. Her cat, who was curled up next to her. Seo Taiji & Boys. Eunji's Sulppang that she'd just eaten after her dinner. Her grades. Her classroom. Her nightmares.
No, none of those thoughts lingered for more than a second, turning into mere wisps of smoke as soon as they manifested in her mind.
Y/N's head was full of Baek Dohwa.
He had told her that Su-ae knew his worth. What did he mean by that? And why was she so annoyed? She had known since the dawn of her friendship with him, that he had a big, fat crush on that girl. Yes, for a brief moment, it almost looked like he had moved on, but his slip-up yesterday confirmed that he hadn't. But who was she to care? It was none of her business. None of her business. Nope.
Then her mind conjured up an image of the blond's features, smiling, laughing—wait, was that glitter? Hearts? Why was he shining?
She was repelled.
"Get out."
Her whisper died in her throat. Of course he wasn't actually in front of her, but she didn't particularly enjoy staring at the fragment of him for a literal millennia. What sort of witchcraft did that boy do? She was perfectly fine until—
Halt. Was she really?
She could recall the loud thumping of her heart in her ears when she dragged Dohwa by his hand, feeling the skin of his palm against hers. The warmth creeping up the veins of her neck when their noses almost touched. The anticipation of hearing his voice each evening. It had started building slowly, step by step, until it got so much that she couldn't fall asleep.
Oh no.
This was bad.
"I wasn't this nervous when I talked to him..." Y/N said to herself, her gaze falling on the table fan next to her. It was hardly doing anything to ease her discomfort.
She didn't realise when her relentless struggle to invite drowsiness ended, when her body finally relaxed, when the night air grew from humid to pleasant — because Dohwa was still reigning her senses, in her reality and her dreams.
"Y/N?"
She didn't even get to savour the twinkling city lights from the rooftop.
"Dohwa!" Her excitement was followed by a smile, that faltered soon after assessing the dread in his expression. He looked like he could cry any second. "Hey. What's wrong?"
He shook his head, the gloss in his eyes disappearing. "You're here. Really here."
It wasn't his words that caught Y/N by surprise, but his actions. His finger poked her cheek, over and over, to check if she was actually solid or a mere apparition that he was imagining. Her brows were pinched together, visualising her confusion. What could he possibly be fretting about?
"Don't do that." She said, taking a step back. However, that increase in distance didn't help much.
His pokes morphed into a caress, his hand tender against her skin. A sphere of heat exploded in the pit of her stomach. The hazel of his irises bloomed with a softness she had never seen, and that only added to her suffering. He was doing this on purpose. To see her squirm and stutter under the weight of their proximity.
"You're alive." Dohwa's shoulders sagged, as if he was just given respite from eons of suffering. "I thought..."
Her breath hitched. "What do you mean? Of course I'm alive!"
"No, like— you're whole and standing in front of me. I can't believe it." He answered, his hand falling to his side, breaking the contact between them.
"You sound like a supervillain right now."
He spluttered out a laugh, his nose turning the faintest shade of roseate. Y/N couldn't believe someone as flippant as him could be this disordered. She'd only ever seen him be nonchalant, even when the situations demanded otherwise. When she was clinging to a precipice, unable to digest the reality the two of them were living in, he showed no signs of losing his composure. When she told him that they didn't exist together, in the same timeline, he brushed it off with a shrug. Why was he like this now?
"I... I think I know, Y/N. The meaning behind your nightmares. The reason why we met each other." His words slipped into each other like dominoes, messy and nervous. "I don't know how to live with it, though."
"What?"
Dohwa nodded eagerly. "Yes. Okay, hear me out."
She didn't know what she was supposed to say. Or do, for that matter. Perplexity tugged at each of her five senses. The only thing she could manage was to brace herself while Dohwa prepared to recite his findings.
"You were supposed to die."
Oh my, what a starter.
"On the day you called me for the first time, you were supposed to die. The recurring dream where you kept finding yourself in a car accident?" He continued, "This was what was supposed to happen. And it did happen—in my universe. You're dead in my timeline, Y/N, and it's been more than three decades since then."
She was stupid with disbelief, her mouth hanging open. "I'm... dead?"
He nodded. "I've checked. Because I was as shocked as you are. Your friend Eunji—the one you told me about—confirmed it in 2010. And I thought really hard, y'know. She said you got into a car accident in 1993, and I was like, hey, that sounds familiar. Isn't that what the two of us have been seeing for the past few months? You walk to the telephone booth, you call someone, they don't pick up, you leave and once you reach the intersection, a car speeds by and hits you."
"But... but I'm alive right now. And—"
That was when she realised.
She survived in this timeline because of Dohwa.
She had memorised the details of the day she first entered the old, tattered telephone booth, because her mind had replayed it in the nightmares more than she would've liked. The white tank top, the jeans, the receiver in her grasp—she was there for Kai. He didn't answer her, and she saw the consequence of that an uncomfortable number of times. That was what happened to her, in the world Dohwa lived in. It caught up to her like it was a debt left unpaid.
That was the price she paid for leaving the booth early, and reaching the intersection precisely at the time of the speeding car.
But in hers—Dohwa picked up the call that was meant for Kai. If he hadn't, her fate would have repeated the same thing, leading her to the same ending. He was meant to save her, in one way or another. And he did.
"I'm just... I just..." His tone was frail against the silence in the atmosphere. "I had a hope that we could meet. Not in dreams, but actually meet. In person. I thought..."
Y/N's throat burned with a stinging sensation. "We defied all laws of physics and still managed to stumble into each other. Why are you sad about that?"
His soul dipped near hers when no power allowed that, as stars once a year brushed the earth. Such a constellation he was to her.
"Why am I sad?" He parroted, scoffing. "Because it fucking kills me!"
He hadn't screamed. He hadn't yelled. He wasn't even loud. The sound was no short of a rustle amid a pile of autumn leaves. Yet, Y/N had to bite back a flinch, for she didn't expect him to be a canvas of his emotions, painted in the brightest shades of red. It was a sight to behold, as if nothing could have been more beautiful than the truth of him.
Her heart hammered. She had always known Dohwa was beautiful, but she had never viewed him from the lens she was using now. One that highlighted every crease, every vehement ember that mirrored his fire.
His voice brought her back to him, to the little haven they had found in each other. "You come into my life and make me get used to you, you give me something to look forward to when my days feel like shackles, and then I find out you're somewhere I can't even reach. Our phone calls. Our dreams. Those are the only two things we have, Y/N, and if they stop..."
If they stop, something spoke into the girl's ear, the story ends.
"They won't stop. They can't." She ignored the fear that festered within her, "You said that we met for a reason, they can't un-meet us!"
Dohwa exhaled shakily. "I hope not. You're important to me."
Y/N wondered if he had forgotten to add 'friend' next to it. Hopefully not. Hopefully he had meant the sentence as it was. Some part of her drooped like a sunflower kept indoors at the thought, and she was unaware as to why. She remembered wanting him to call her his friend, badly. Why did the notion leave a sour taste in her mouth now?
A mini Y/N with a halo popped into her mind. That's because you want to be his best friend!, she exclaimed.
Oh. Thank you, I was getting a bit worried there, Y/N replied with a relieved sigh.
Regaining her previous self after the silent exchange she had with her apparent guardian angel, she beamed, attempting to lighten the damp mood.
"Watch out, you almost sound like a lovesick puppy."
She was awaiting a cocky response, or an exaggerated, dramatic one, but neither of the two came. Instead, she saw him turn all shades of pink within a span of thirty seconds. She desperately searched for her guardian angel again, needing a simplified explanation of whatever this reaction was.
Surely he was just cold. Surely he was wearing a blush. Surely—
"I don't," He muttered, his gaze averted to the sky above. "I'm just worried about losing my closest friend, okay?"
That made her his best friend by default, didn't it? She should be overjoyed. But she wanted to hurl across the floor and throw up, which was quite contrary to what she was expecting. How odd.
"Closest friend? You flatter me."
"You're the first person I've seen who's flattered by me friend-zoning them."
She snorted. "Like you aren't NPC-zoned by Su-ae and her boyfriend."
He gasped, his hand on his chest. "We just had a heart-to-heart and you still choose to betray me like this? You ancient Grandma with withering bones..."
A smile found the corners of Y/N's lips, brimming with something she dutifully disregarded for her mental well-being.
"Right. How can I forget? You're the sun I revolve around."