Lana hovered in the doorway as she breathed in the fresh air of 2033. Everything looked just as she had last seen it. The antique bus had landed on the very same street it was parked on when she first boarded, and the drunken man who accosted her a week ago now was ambling back down the alleyway as if nothing ever happened.

To him, nothing had happened.

Stepping off the bus now, Lana would be able to go straight back to the home she missed, to find her brother locked away with his video games and her parents returning from the airport a while later. For them, it would be like she was never gone, like she had never even missed a beat, not even for a second. Dad would still be livid, and Mom would still be, well, Mom.

Nothing would change for the Wu family, but for Lana, even looking at them right now was hard to imagine. She had seen and heard a little too much. She needed more time to cool off and to let the revelations sink in. Plus, there might have been a teeny-tiny part of her hidden somewhere beneath the off-putting surface that didn’t want to tell Kyungsoo goodbye just yet. After all, she had realized long ago that she would never be able to see him again once they parted. The two would never walk the same Earth again—not really, at least.

Lana turned back to the driver’s seat, finding the time-traveling teen boy staring straight down at the ground. She frowned, taking in a deep breath. She knew it was a better idea to get off the bus now and never look back. Time travel was risky, no matter what her friend said. But she didn’t really want to leave anymore. Sighing, she told him, “Kyungsoo, I wasn’t going to ask you to take me home.”

He glanced up at her with a lost look on his face. “But...”

“You can bring me back here whenever, right?” she continued. “So I don’t really have to go right now... Unless you want me to, that is.”

Kyungsoo’s face lit up into a beam that stretched from ear to ear. He jumped up from the driver’s seat and nearly tackled his friend, pulling her into a tight squeeze. “Of course not!” he squealed. “I don’t mind the company at all!”

Lana pulled away, smirking at his enthusiasm. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she huffed. Half lying, she added, “I just want to find out more about my parents before I go home. Maybe you’re right that I’m wrong about them.” She shrugged. “Of course, I don’t just wanna see them. You could take me skating on Saturn’s rings in 5013—”

“50323,” Kyungsoo corrected. He grabbed her hands, zealously bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “There’s so much we could do! We could see ancient Roman gladiators! We could go to an American high school prom in the 1980s! We could give cinnamon rolls to the starving homeless in the Great Depression!”

Lana couldn’t help but laugh as he went on and on, enumerating the countless possibilities. There was so much he wanted to do that she would probably be seventy by the time she came back to 2033. But traveling with him would be fun, she realized. She wouldn’t regret it at all.

Lana wasn’t really keeping track of time, but she guessed that about a week had passed since she decided to travel with Kyungsoo of her own volition. In that short period of time, the two had already seen and done more together than most people could even dream of experiencing in a lifetime. During a quick trip back to the 1950s, they snuck onto the movie set of an old horror film disguised as extras. Lana made a mental note to rent Monster from the Dead Sea as soon as she had access to a video store. Maybe she could find Kyungsoo and herself in the background of the scene where the creature breaks out of its cage and terrorizes the city.

They ended up in 14364 to revisit Action Park 32. They traveled back to 1992 and volunteered at an elementary school Lana’s five-year-old father attended at the time. During recess, a little brat with eyebrows she would recognize anywhere kicked her in the shin. She was pretty sure that was considered child abuse. Afterward, Kyungsoo convinced her to attempt another prank on her young mother. The two ended up trailing Yunee one night back in 2012 and even threw an unused Trojan out of the bus window upon catching her walking down the street with Uncle Sehun.

The teens made a quick stop in 2029 to pick up lunch from Lana’s favorite restaurant. Much to Lana’s disappointment, the establishment had closed a short year later, leaving her without her beloved Italian cuisine. With takeout bags in tow, the bus zapped back to a more scenic time and place somewhen in the 1700s on a clear autumn day.

Lana and Kyungsoo set up a picnic deep within an apple orchard, out of sight of any American pioneers who might have found them. On the lush green grass they unfurled a traditional red-and-white checkered cloth that the boy had unearthed from somewhere in the bus. They even stowed their lunch away in a wicker picnic basket to make the experience more authentic.

Lana was silently munching on a piece of ciabatta while Kyungsoo rambled on and on about the history of apple farms. She had all but tuned him out, instead enjoying the peaceful scenery and the light breeze, when she suddenly realized he had fallen silent. Glancing back to him, she found he had broken into a sly smirk.

“What?” she mumbled, swiping at to make sure she wasn’t accidentally wearing a layer of crumbs on her face.

“I bet I can prove that your parents like each other,” he asserted.

Lana raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” she questioned, not completely surprised that the conversation had taken this direction. After all, the two had visited her younger parents once or twice over the past few days.

He nodded fervently but didn’t say more. It wasn’t until the teens had packed up the picnic and were back on the bus that the topic came up again. Kyungsoo seated himself in the driver’s seat and prodded, “Do you remember anything about your parents’ wedding?”

“Of course not,” Lana tutted. “My mom was pregnant with me, but I wasn’t exactly born yet.”

Kyungsoo grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “What I meant was, do you know when it was exactly?”

Lana frowned, quickly realizing the direction this conversation was heading. “You’re going to take me to their wedding, aren’t you?”

“Duh!” he chirped. “I figured, what better way to show you that your parents are in love than to bring you to the day they made their vows, for better or for worse, till death do them part, et cetera?” He shrugged. “So, do you know when it is? If not, we can probably guess with a little help from the time encyclopedia.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Lana groaned. “There’s no way I could ever forget a single detail about my parents’ wedding. Mom still retells the tale to this day. Every single July 1^st, she reminds me and Sam of the ‘wonderful, joyous’ day she was married to Dad by this diva she calls Salon. Trust me, I know exactly where to find them. Do we have to?”

“Of course!” Kyungsoo exclaimed, shifting the bus into gear and apparently forgetting Lana hadn’t even told him where to go yet. “Adventure, ho!”

Author's Note
I’m baaack! I just want to say thank you for commenting and voting for this fic! ^^ It means a lot to me.