Chapter 76
AttayearThe next few hours were a whirlwind of activity. Every able-bodied person on board (with the exception of Baekhyun, which really grated on him even though he knew the reason why he had to stay behind) returned to the hospital with Minseok to help bring back everybody there. Everyone who’d been brought back from the dead was still recovering from the violent aftershocks of their bodies readjusting. Jinsu stayed with them and busied herself with getting them all toothbrushes and toothpaste and glasses of water to wash their mouths out with.
As people began to arrive back, Jinsu found herself busier and busier and the Attayear filled with noise. Everybody had to clear out of the atrium as it was the place where all the time-healing for the injuries was going on. There was a general air of bustle that the Attayear just hadn’t had since they’d landed during the Japanese occupation, and after so long without it, Jinsu found it incredibly disorientating.
In the middle of it all, Jino found her, still looking pale and a little ill but on his feet and steady.
“I need a witness,” he said as she took a couple of moments out to ice the bruises on her almost-completely-healed fingers. Jinsu looked up at him in surprise.
“What for?”
“Spending all our secret reserves of gold on requisitioning fuel to return home.”
“We have secret reserves?”
Taking it as a yes, Jino took her to said reserves (locked in a cabinet in Minseok’s room), explaining that the government had provided it in case of emergency, but that, since receipts weren’t necessarily easy to come by at various points in the past, an eyewitness was needed to declare it and sign for official purposes if it was ever used. Jinsu dutifully signed the paper Jino at her as he heaved the rucksack full of gold onto his back.
“Are we really going to be able to find somewhere just to get a whole lot of fuel?” Jinsu asked as he cobbled a passing Chanyeol on their way along the balcony and got her cousin to join them so that he could carry things.
“No, it’s the middle of a war,” said Jino, “but if we request and requisition and buy just a little bit here and there, we can built up a very big supply, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
As they climbed out of a porthole to avoid disrupting the time vacuums in the atrium (or being injured by them), Jino started questioning Jinsu on how they’d managed to discover a way to turn back time. He’d been told enough to know that he’d died trying to protect everybody from a grenade, and his instinct, like Jinsu’s, was that this was a technology that ought to be buried. Chanyeol was very quiet for a while, apparently not having quite believed he’d died too rather than just going into a coma for a reason he was unable to remember, but then he started asking questions about what had happened to him.
The trip to gain resources was successful. Gold was a highly sought after commodity in times of economic uncertainty and the Americans and Koreans and other people that they met were happy to syphon off a small percentage of the fuel they were using in exchange for gold. It turned out that Jino’s English was completely fluent. Jinsu discovered on the way back, as Chanyeol carried the last container and the fog began to blacken in the night sky, that like her brother, Jino had spent several years in the States as a teenager, which was where he’d learnt. Others who were well enough had joined them for the fuel runs, but Jino had refused to let Jinsu carry anything so that her hands weren’t put in a condition where they wouldn’t fully recover. Instead, she was in charge of recording what the gold had been spent on, how much of it, and who it had been given to.
She found an exhausted Baekhyun sitting outside her room when she got back. He’d half dozed off, his head against the door, and she prodded him back to life with her fingers as she let herself in, keeping the door open for him. Startled, Baekhyun scrambled up, but a warm smile cracked over his face when he saw who it was and followed her in.
“Hey,” he said softly, shutting the door behind him. Jinsu smiled back as he pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms around her and yawning loudly.
“Long day?” she asked.
“Mm.” Jinsu could feel Baekhyun nodding. He let go of her to plop himself down on her bed, letting out another yawn.
“Come here,” he murmured, holding his arms open. “We’ll be home soon and this’ll be much more difficult.”
Jinsu was only too happy to curl up beside him with his arms tucked around her again. Baekhyun let out a contented sigh. She could tell he was fighting to stay awake, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him to go back to his own room.
“How did we even get to this stage?” Baekhyun asked in a mumble, almost unintelligible around yet another yawn.
There was a sudden hum of energy as the Attayear’s engines kicked in. Jinsu sat up, but Baekhyun whined and pulled her back down again.
“Stay,” he insisted.
“It’s my room,” Jinsu pointed out with amusement. His arms tightened.
“You’re my Jinsu.”
She had to laugh at that. It was too much sleepy logic for her not to. On impulse, she reached up and pinched at his cheek. A lazy sleeve paw tried and failed to swat her away.
“Not cute enough for that,” he mumbled.
Jinsu snorted. “Baekhyun, you’re adorable when you’re shattered. Deal with it.”
“Not,” he protested, but Jinsu could see him smiling. She pinched his cheek again. He gave another whine, punctuated by another humongous yawn, and rolled over, pulling Jinsu on top of him. Blinking a few times, he shook himself briskly and reached up to push stray strands of hair off Jinsu’s face. Amazingly, he looked a tad more awake than before.
Jinsu could feel her cheeks heating up just from the way he was looking at her, and she scrabbled around for something to say. She didn’t get there before he lifted his head to kiss her, and then she found herself wondering why she’d bothered trying. Kissing Baekhyun was much better than an awkward conversation.
He ro
Comments