The two of them are standing, facing each other. The weather had taken an icy turn despite the sunny skies. A gust of wind made the air chilly, and it makes JongIn shiver.

It seems a little colder on the roof top of the abandoned building. It's walls crumbling, and mold creeping along the corners. Stagnant water motionless is the little empty flower pots that litter the floor. A garden might have been here, a long time ago, but only graffiti and cigarette buts of neighborhood delinquents remained.

LuHan doesn't say anything. In fact, neither of them say anything for quite some time. Instead, their eyes remain locked in some sort of trance full of intimidation and challenge. When they breathe, their breath escapes in the form of wispy clouds.

LuHan isn't bleeding. Neither a bruise nor cut is present on his jaw where JongIn had struck him. His flawless face remained perfect like always. JongIn, on the other hand, wasn't quite in the same condition.

His right hand is swollen and covered in drying blood. Several slivers of glass are still edged deep in the wound. Maybe a few bones are broken, but the cuts cover up the pain. JongIn isn't sure if that's a positive or negative.

“What's the problem?” LuHan asks.

JongIn is fuming.

“Don't act all innocent,” he snaps. “You know exactly what's wrong.”

LuHan puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his head to one side.

“Did I breach the contract?”

It takes up most of JongIn's strength to refrain from striking LuHan for a second time.
“He doesn't remember me!” JongIn snarls. “You were just supposed to turn back time, not change everything! And now Kyungsoo's memory is gone!”

LuHan waits a moment for JongIn to calm down.

“JongIn,” LuHan says quietly. “Time travel...it isn't perfect. I told you it would be...risky. These things aren't easy to do. If you change time like that, you know there a lot of things that could go wrong--”

JongIn laughs. It sounds cruel and sarcastic in the silence. “Oh, and you couldn't have put this in the contract somewhere?”

LuHan looks up, unfazed by JongIn. “It is. Everything is. It's all written down there. I even wrote that memory is affected.”

“Well, that sounds important, doesn't it?” JongIn scoffs. “You couldn't have mentioned that? When you said I didn't have to read the whole thing?”

LuHan stares at JongIn for a moment, not saying anything at all. Then he looks downwards, at the street below, and JongIn follows his gaze.

Several students, perhaps no more than six or seven years old, we crossing the street. With their little colorful lunchboxes, they skipped down the road like everything in their little worlds were perfect. They weren't concerned with the worries of the others. They didn't wonder if tomorrow would come. They didn't notice the way the Devil was watching them. They also didn't seem to notice the speeding bus coming their way. The driver is tired, after being on a the twelve hour night shift. Drunk, too. Harmless, he had thought, it was just a bottle or two.

JongIn watched in utter horror when a girl in pigtails gets caught in the middle of the street. Held rooted to the spot by some kind of invisible force. JongIn turns to LuHan, who has his gaze locked intently on the girl.

The bus approaches.

It moves far too fast to stop now.

The air is filled with the scream of a girl in fear as she struggles to pull herself free from something that isn't there.

“What the hell are you doing?!” JongIn yells.

LuHan stays silent.

There are only twenty yards left.

The sound of frantic screams.

“She doesn't have to get out of the street,” LuHan says, his voice calm and patient. “I mean, it's best if she does, you know, but it's not mandatory it she does--”
“Let her go!” JongIn cries. Desperation and anger contorts his voice into something he doesn't recognize.

Ten yards.

The girl struggles harder than ever.
“LuHan!” JongIn looks between the little girl and the Devil himself. “I said, let her go!”
Eight yards.

The girl starts crying now.

“What do you want?” JongIn demands. “What exactly are you trying to prove? That's an innocent kid there--”

“I was hoping you'd understand,” LuHan replies coldly. “I'm trying to explain that it's not my fault you didn't read that contract carefully. You didn't have to listen to my advice. Any smart person would have read it anyway--”
“Okay, okay!” JongIn can't handle it anymore.

Three yards.

“Fine, I get it!” yells JongIn. “I get it, I get it! Just, LuHan, p-please, just let her go!”
LuHan doesn't say anything for a moment, but then his eyes break contact with the little girl, and she scrambles across the street unscathed. Tears are streaming down her face, but LuHan doesn't notice.

“You're a monster,” JongIn mutters.

LuHan doesn't say anything, because any attempt to refute what JongIn says would be a lie.

And the Devil can't lie.

----

JongIn walks down the street, his hand broken and bleeding. He stuffs it into the pocket of his sweatshirt in some sort of feeble attempt to stop people from staring.
He ponders about all the little things. The way gum wrapper litters the storm drains. The way water pools from a leaking faucet. The way grass doesn't grow from the cracks in the cement.

He doesn't think about the big things, because the big things hurt. They pain him and crush him, and he's overcome with the feelings of guilt and anger and regret.

By the time he gets to his apartment, the blood from his hands are already dry, but it doesn't stop them from hurting.

He stumbles into his room and picks up the contract. When he does, the corners are covered in his bloodied fingerprints.

He reads every word. Every page. One time at first, then twice. After the fifth time, JongIn screams. He throws the packet across the room, and the paper flutters into a mess on the ground.

He screams because he hates it. He hates all of it. He hates how he was stupid before and didn't read before signing.

He hates everything the contract says.

How Kyungsoo's memory is gone.

How he will have to drink a serum for the next six months.

How there's a stranger living with Kyungsoo.
How he can't back out now.

He hates how it says Kim JongIn is going to be dead once the borrowed time is up.