Sitting on my bed, I nervously bit the end of my pencil, studying the words I had just written down on a piece of paper attached to the clipboard that was currently in my hands. I had promised myself not to act carelessly anymore, to think everything through before making a decision, because fiddling with your future could bring more harm than good. But the whole situation was so twisted, I couldn’t help but write every fact that I knew down to keep my sanity. It was supposed to help me clear my mind, but in all honesty, it made me even angrier at Sehun.

I dropped my eyes to my freshly-made notes and read them through once again, trying to make sense of the hurriedly scribbled words.

The first ones on the paper were the two important rules of time travel my future self had told me about – those were easy to understand. Time travel was possible for people who had gone through clinical death and whose hearts had stopped beating – no matter how long – but which had later been revived. Visiting your past was possible only if the person from the future who wanted to time travel was sleeping in the same time his past self was. That meant that if I were asleep while my future self was awake, we wouldn’t be able to meet in our dreams.

The other half of my notes was already giving me a headache.

I looked down at the last sentence, which I had underlined twice: ‘Sehun has contact with his future self too’. He obviously had known about time travel before I’d even started having these strange dreams. He could time travel, and that meant he’d gone through some heart-stopping accident. What was that, come to think of it? I had no idea, but whatever it was, it had given his older self access to his dreams and had enabled him to warn Sehun about the future. In my case I hadn’t yet experienced a near-death situation, which had made time travel impossible for me, but at least I’d been safe and sound. Until, of course, Sehun had decided to kill me just because his future self told him to.

I’d spent the past two hours trying to find a good explanation for his reckless actions, but...how hard had he had to hit his head in order for him to have actually tried risking my life due to some stupid dream?!

I tossed the clipboard aside with a scoff and buried my face in hands, taking a deep breath to relax and soothe my nerves. There were too many questions piling up in my head that I didn’t have the answers to, and I was growing angry at my helplessness. I wanted to know when Sehun had started having visits from his future self and what he knew because, whatever his older self had told him, it must’ve been enough of a shock for him to actually believe it and throw me into a bathtub filled with water.

Literally.

I closed my eyes tightly in an attempt to focus. Or, more accurately, calm down. I rocked back and forth in my bed, trying to put an end to the continuous chills running down my spine. I’d been shaking since I woke up, feeling sick to my stomach. The information I had received was too much to handle, and I felt like my composure along with the remaining pieces of my common sense had vanished irretrievably the moment I learned that my best friend had tried to kill me.

Right then, I wasn’t only scared of the future; the present was freaking me out, too.

But I knew I had to force myself to move forward. There surely was a reason for everything that was happening to me. And if I wanted to find it, I had no choice but to confront Sehun. No matter how betrayed and petrified I was, right now he was the only source of information I had.

I straightened up, looking around the room to find my phone. It was lying on the nightstand near my bed, and I lunged forward to grab it and check the time. It was 4:30 in the morning, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Sehun’s apartment was just around a 15-minute walk from my own and, without thinking twice, I grabbed the first sweater I found, put my shoes on, and dashed out through the door.

When I reached Sehun’s apartment, drops of sweats were running down my face and neck. I had run the whole way, so my lungs were burning due to the lack of air, forcing me to bend down and place my hands on my knees in an attempt to take a few deep breaths. I shoved the wet hair sticking to my forehead away and, straightening up, I knocked urgently on his door.

There wasn’t any sign of life on the other side, but I knew he was a heavy sleeper, so I knocked again – this time harder. “Sehun! Open the friggin’ door!”

When I had decided to pound on the door with both fists now, like there was no tomorrow, Sehun finally opened it with a loud, ‘WHAT THE HELL?!’

I took one step backwards to take in the view in front of me. Sehun was dressed in a black tank top and long grey sweatpants. He didn’t seem happy to see me so early in the morning. Huffing once, he looked at me with one eye still closed and the other squinted due to the bright light in the staircase. His hair was sticking up in every direction, and he made even worse by tousling it as an angry growl escaped his lips.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” he whined like a kid, rubbing his eyes with the back of his free hand. “Jesus, it’s five in the morning, couldn’t you have just waited one more hour?”

Definitely not.

“There’s something bothering me,” I began with my rapid heartbeat echoing in my ears, and he growled again. I ignored his displeasure and continued, getting straight to the point. “Did you ever have a really, really bad accident that you never told me about?”

“What?” he winced, closing both eyes now and leaning against the doorframe in an attempt to catch some sleep while standing. “What are you talking about? Is there something wrong with my working insurance or what?”

“Yeah,” I lied, taking advantage of his current sleepy state. “Did you ever hurt yourself really badly?”

Sehun squeezed his eyelids tighter, thinking about possible accidents from the past. There was a grimace of aversion on his face as he struggled to find the answer I needed. He turned a little, his back now against the doorframe and his head hanging down. “I guess?” he finally muttered, in a voice still husky with sleep. “There was one when I was sixteen.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I exhaled in a shaky breath. “What happened?”

“I was snowboarding with my friends and one guy ran into me on the hillside,” he muttered, obediently answering my question. “I lost balance and sidetracked, ending up colliding with the first tree in my path. They said I almost kicked the bucket because I crashed into the tree chest first, and the blow stopped my heart.” He lifted his head and stretched his arms with a yawn, his eyes still closed. “I think I was unconscious for a week or so.”

That was all I needed to know. I was so mad right now, I could barely hold myself back from yelling at him for almost killing me. But I knew better. I needed a confirmation that he actually knew about time travel and it wasn’t just me randomly guessing. I had to ask him one simple thing and see his reaction to find out if this was all actually true. I glanced at Sehun, who was struggling to stand up straight, and gulped nervously. Time to find out the ugly truth.

“Sehun,” I said loudly and clearly, accentuating every word. When he hummed a tired yes, I continued, “Do you believe in time travel?”

His eyes snapped open immediately, and as he looked at me in terror and shock, suddenly wide awake, I knew I had gotten my answer.

“You bastard.” I shook my head with disbelief, pushing him back into his apartment and letting the door swing shut behind me. “You could’ve killed me! What the is wrong with you?! Huh?!”

“Hey—wait!” he yelped, almost tripping over his shoes when I pushed him forcefully again. Grabbing both my wrists, he tried to hold me still and look me in the eye, but I was too furious now to stop tussling with him. Just as I was about to wrest myself from his grip, he tightened his fingers around my wrists and shook me once – hard – to wake me up from my blind fury. “I didn’t do it, okay?! God, it was an accident!”

“How can putting an unconscious person in a bathtub full of water be an accident?” I shouted back at him, and with one, quick move, I freed myself from his grip. Both of us breathing heavily, we locked gazes in a sudden, unexpected silence. Sehun ran a shaky hand through his hair but stopped halfway, leaving the black strands tangled between his fingers. Looking utterly confused and heartbroken, he scanned my face, and I blinked a few times, feeling uninvited tears pooling in my eyes as the level of adrenaline in