A/N: Hi, everyone. Happy new year! This is a short fic I make during the holidays. It’s a time travel fic set in the faraway future (let’s pretend that climate change won’t end us all yet) and it’s related to the previous stories in this collection.

You may want to read the previous stories at least once before you read this. Enjoy!

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10th February, 3120

Irene opened her eyes to the same dull monotony she had been waking up to for the past two years. Grey ceilings, quiet bedroom and pale sunlight greeted her.

Her hand still naturally reached to the right side of her bed, and the cold empty space she found there still greeted her the same way it had done for the past two years too.

It really had been two years, she tried to convince herself again.

So, why exactly did the wound in her heart still feel so fresh and raw?

She sat up on her bed and put her feet down on the cold marble floor, eyes staring at the digital calendar blinking on her bedside table.

7.15 AM, 10th February 3120.

Seulgi’s supposedly 29th birthday, if only she was still alive.

Irene’s heart seized again at the bitter reminder with much sharper pain this time. The pang was actually so strong, someone might as well drive a knife to her heart and twist it inward.

It might have hurt less.

She clutched her chest and tried to breathe, willing herself to stand up and proceed with mundane things in life because that was the only thing she could do now.

Her mobile phone rang on the kitchen isle as she exited her bedroom and she snapped her fingers so all the lights in the room would turn on.

“Answer.” She ordered the device, making her way to the now brightened kitchenette and preparing to make herself a pancake.

“Hello! Good morning, my friend! Are you ready to go out with me on this beautiful, sunny day? I hope you don’t forget that you have promised me to go to the Tech Expo downtown today.” Joy’s voice was way too loud and way too cheerful for seven in the morning.

Irene winced and told her phone to decrease the call volume. “Lower.”

“Did you just tell your phone to make my voice smaller?”

“Yes, no.” She corrected herself and ran her fingers through her brown hair frustratedly, flipping her pancake tiredly. “Why are you so excited about this expo anyway? It’s not like you work in tech or follow their updates regularly. This is so out of character.”

“Well, because –” Joy paused and even Irene knew that she couldn’t finish that sentence.

Because you always get extremely sad whenever it’s Seulgi’s birthday and she doesn’t want you to spend the entire day moping alone in your room, she finished the sentence in her head.

She knew it and she appreciated it, really.

But she also knew that no amount of distraction or cheer would be able to make her feel better throughout this day.

This day always felt like such a mockery for what they could have had in their still early marriage.

So much possibilities. So much happiness and promising future all went down the drains just because of a single reckless driver.

Irene felt sick to her stomach.

“Irene? Are you still there?” Joy’s voice yanked her out of her trance, and she shook her head shortly to get herself together.

Her pancake was burned, she noticed with a sigh.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour. Don’t take too long to dress up, will you?”

“Yes, ma’am! You have my word. I’ll be standing outside my door before you even leave your house, promise!” Joy sounded excited and relieved that she didn’t cancel on her.

Irene tapped the stove off and stared at her now off phone.

It seemed like she would just skip breakfast.

She never really needed breakfast anyway.

Seulgi was the one who loved it.

Irene only loved it because they would have it together.

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“Wow, the world is such a weird place now. Can you believe that woman we’ve just talked to is a robot? I almost asked for her number.” Joy glanced back at the pretty, blonde lady they had just left in front of one of the stores with awe and disbelief.

Irene had to laugh at her. “You could still kind of tell from the way she spoke so stiffly if you weren’t too smitten by her green eyes.”

The taller girl immediately shut her gaping mouth and feigned an offended look. “Excuse me. Nothing’s wrong with admiring beautiful women, organic or robotic.”

“And now you make us sound like vegetables.”

“Damn right we are vegetables and we are a meal.” She straightened her back proudly and flipped her long black hair for effect.

Irene shook her head at her friend’s antics.

They squeezed through the crowd slowly, stopping by several stores every now and then to check out whatever mind-blowing invention advanced technology had to offer them.

Joy seemed to be interested in a store offering a doghouse fully equipped with automatic cleaning, feeding service and heater so Irene left her to her own device.

She was reaching the end of the expo when a particular store caught her attention.

Unlike many other stores which put up dozens of objects on display to attract customers, this huge, pristine white store with futuristic design was void of anything save for the two ladies who were dressed in the same pristine white outfits attending to it.

About five other customers lingered to check the pamphlets on the silver display counters they had.

“Welcome.” One of the store attendants smiled and greeted her politely.

Irene noticed that even the attendants had a different air to them.

They looked very…elegant and expensive somehow.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. How may I help you?” The other store attendant approached her and Irene spotted the nametag above her pocket which read as ‘Krystal’.

“Uh…hi, Krystal.” She looked around uncertainly. “I’m not sure. Can you please explain to me about what you have here?”

Krystal smiled understandingly and went to a nearby desk to fetch a small black box.

“We are from DX Corp, one of the leading tech companies in Asia. However, our main work is not to create advanced robotic devices like many others. Rather, we create a new type and a new level of recreation for our users.”

Irene blinked, trying to comprehend what she had just heard. Her accounting background didn’t really help her much with technology. “So, you are saying you provide some kind of virtual reality for entertainment?”

The neatly dressed lady smiled. “Not VR. Virtual reality, no matter how elaborated, has been explored to its full capacity many years ago. We offer something new. Our latest invention is not a simulated reality but rather a real reality, taken from the past.”

Irene’s even bigger confusion must have shown on her face because Krystal tried to explain more simply. “To put it short, we provide time travel experience for our customers’ recreation. Not with a physical time machine, may I inform you beforehand, but with a very small, easy to use device that works with your brainwave instead.”

From the black box she had fetched earlier, she took out a pair of silver, round devices the size of two coins.

“We call this the Transporter. You put them on your temples for them to work. Instead of transporting your body and consciousness back to the past, it will only transport your consciousness back to the time it remembers – and doesn’t remember. Your body will remain here, in the present, unconscious throughout the ‘trip’. This device is designed to magnify the strength of your unconscious mind and to show you old memories, even the ones you don’t remember from long, long ago.”

Irene blinked up at her from the said device and felt a growing hope she didn’t want to allow in her heart spiral bigger by the second against her will.

The question she knew she shouldn’t ask left her lips before she could stop it.

“Can I choose the time frame I want to visit when I’m using it?” Her voice was shaking and her heart was pounding uncontrollably in her chest.

Krystal seemed to be familiar with her reaction – probably having seen many others who shared the same intention after suffering a loss – and her gaze turned softer. “You can. However, please remember that you will not be able to interact with anything or anyone during those ‘trips.’ You will only be a spectator of your past. Sometimes, from a different lifetime too, if you wish.”

Irene swallowed deeply and shattered her last wall of restraint.

“I’ll take them.” She looked up to Krystal with decision in her eyes, voice breaking free of all her previous hesitation.

She would like to see Seulgi again, no matter how painful it would be.

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Irene sat on her bed that night with the tiny black box clutched tightly in her hands.

She stared at the device for a very long moment, partially feeling nervous about what she was about to do and partially feeling full of anticipation about seeing Seulgi again.

Her heart thumped anxiously in her chest and her hands trembled a bit as they moved to take the Transporter out of its box.

She settled the empty box aside and lay on her bed, turning the lights off and staring at the ceilings in darkness.

When she was certain that her heartbeat had steadied, she plastered the two devices on either side of her temples.

Instantly, the devices glowed bright blue and projected a large hologram screen that hovered above her.

“Good evening, Irene.” A recorded female voice greeted her professionally and showed her various range of numbers that she realized were past years arranged in groups. “I am Earl, your personal Transporter assistant. What lifetime would you like to visit tonight? My system detects at least 10 different lifetimes you can choose to re-visit.”

Irene blinked, not really believing what she heard.

Ten?

When Krystal had said that she could visit another lifetime, she had thought it would be two or three lifetimes at most.

Was human consciousness really traveling from one life to another through that many centuries?

She was astounded.

“You could always start with the latest one, your most current one, if you would like to.” Earl offered helpfully. “But I sense your brain activity to be feeling fear and worry about facing the past of your current lifetime.”

Irene was surprised and was about to ask the virtual assistant how she managed to know her thoughts when she remembered that the very thing was connected to her brain.

It probably knew more about herself than she did.

She sighed and tried to relax. “What do you advise for me then, Earl? This is my first time, so I’m feeling quite nervous. You can guide me through it as you deem fit.”

Earl seemed to go over through all her memories for a fraction of second before speaking again. “I think in your case, starting from the very first one will be the best choice. I will show you memories that I know you would like to see the most. Now, sleep…I will take you to your trip.”

With that Irene closed her eyes and felt a sudden, heavy drowsiness come to claim her.

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“Joohyun, come on, let’s eat!”

Irene recognized that voice first before she recognized anything else.

She opened her eyes to find herself standing under a blinding sunlight, the sound of sea waves crashing languidly against the shore resonating all around her.

The air smelled strong of salt and the air felt hot and humid on her skin.

She was on a beach, she realized belatedly, and the beach was surprisingly very natural.

It looked exactly like the old pictures she had seen in her History class; a vast, endless horizon of blue and clean golden sands adorned by nothing but tall coconut trees.

A real mesmerizing beach birthed by nature, she thought with awe, and not just a mockery of its remnants polluted by industrial waste like what they had in the present.

“Joohyun, come on, I’m starving and I’m going to pass out any time now if we don’t eat immediately.”

That voice again.

Irene swiveled around, heart seizing to a stop at the sound of that very familiar voice she had missed so much.

Seulgi.

She would know that voice anytime, anywhere, in a single heartbeat.

Seulgi was there with her.

How could it be?

Earl had said that they would visit her very first lifetime.

Irene ran around the perimeter of the beach frantically to find her other half, still not daring to believe her own hearing.

She came to a stop in front of a small beachside hut, eyes widening at what she saw.

“There you are! Oh, come on. Have you really been ignoring me to read a book?”

Seulgi was standing there with her arms crossed, dressed in a white silk shirt and a brown leather pants and pretending to be offended at Irene.

Irene blinked at the girl who looked exactly like her – only with her hair appearing midnight black instead of brown and her skin looking much paler than her.

Almost too unnaturally pale for any human who lived on a beach.

Irene – Joohyun – Irene noticed that was what Seulgi called her in this lifetime, looked up from the book she was reading and beamed at Seulgi.

She seemed so much happier, so much brighter and livelier than the weary shell Irene had now become.

When was the last time she was that happy?

“God, perhaps Seungwan and I teaching you how to read was the biggest mistake of my life. Now you won’t even look at me and prefer to stare at all these new things you have learned about the human world.”

Seulgi was joking and Joohyun was aware of it