In some worlds, it’s you who pull the trigger.

He falls to the ground with a smile on his face like you have given him everything he could have asked for. You stand still and feel the sand under your toes, listen to the crash of the waves. You think about how much he loved the ocean and something inside you screams.

Sometimes Yongguk has a gun too, and he’s just a bit faster, and you never get to see what his eyes look like the second before the bullet hits you. In those worlds, there is no waves, no beaches, and the two of you have never blazed like shooting stars. It’s just you, and him, and his sobs echoing through the darkness.

You hate those worlds the most, because they are the ones where he will be alone.

Only in some lifetimes do you get to touch him. He leads rebellions and helps you sneak into secret bases at night, and when the missions are over the two of you lean into each other and breathe, and you listen to his heartbeat. You fight side by side, and he is beautiful and precise, breathtaking as he forges through a line of enemies. When the time comes, you die in each other’s arms, and it’s the happiest you can recall yourself being.

But most of the time, you are on the opposite sides of the war. He lives longer this way, under his Queen’s protection, so you gather yourself and keep going as well. You want him to be happy, but the thought of watching him die early and broken terrifies you. You call yourself his enemy. You fight. And when the time comes, you always pull the trigger.

(In one lifetime, something great and terrible moved inside you and you didn’t shoot. His eyes were tired and the smirk he wore felt like glass shards in your throat. But you didn’t shoot. Not when you could feel the phantom press of his smile against your lips, taste his laughter, hear the way he sounded when he read aloud from strategy books.

You kept him alive, and watched him wither into nothing. Met his dead eyes over a chess board, and vowed to never make this mistake again.)

There are numbers and statistics inside your head, but you don’t want to know how many times you failed. You wonder how it is that despite your lauded brilliance and logic, you never managed to save him even once.

You are hatefully aware of your own uselessness. You count Yongguk’s smiles and keep them close to your heart, and ignore everything else.

In this new world, you are hesitant and tired down to your bones; there are no wars to be fought but you have nightmares anyway, and you read death in everyone around you and shy away. You know things that cannot be known and look at the world with too-old eyes, solemn and sad.

You have faint memories of the lives you have lived before, and they make you anxious, knowing that there is something coming for you. Your brother Himchan tries his best to tell you that it’s okay, but it just makes you retreat further, and eventually you stop speaking entirely unless someone asks you a direct question.

You practice in the mirror to make your eyes look blank instead of frightened, and hope that everybody will accept that that’s just who you are.

You grow up with little notice, punctuated occasionally by flashes of memories so vivid they make you gasp. You see the world, crumbled to pieces and on fire, human lives reduced to their bare bones. You dream of ageing as a soldier and being terribly in love with the very person you should hate. You remember the specific curve of a handsome smile, eyes the soft shade of black you have never seen anywhere else, and a name to go with them: Bang Yongguk.

By the time you are in high school, you have settled into your skin. You sit at the back of your classes and spend entire lessons looking out the window, but manage to breeze through every exam. You have friends, which takes you by surprise — they are kind and boisterous, letting exaggerated groans when you come on top of every class, including you in conversations when they have no reason to.

Each act of kindness wrings a desperate sort of gratitude in you, masked by your now permanent poker face.

It’s a gentler world, a world full of second chances and smiles. You ache to share it with Yongguk, and you know you will see him, you can feel it in your bones.

You’re right, as you often are: in your second year of high school, Yongguk arrives in a gust of cherry blossoms and causes a stir in the neighbourhood. You hear rumours of a tall, crescent-eyed senior who transferred in, and you clench your fists until your knuckles turn white. You have been patient for so long, telling yourself over and over it was fate, but now that you finally know where Yongguk is, it’s shockingly hard to hold back.

You feel like running through the streets shouting Yongguk’s name. Suddenly you can feel all the lifetimes you two have shared slipping through your fingertips. Calm down, you tell yourself, He might not even remember you. The thought terrifies you and make you tremble to the bones.

You are painstakingly thorough, and you choose your time carefully, marching into the library, but stop dead at the sight of him.

Yongguk looks like he is born for this soft world, his cloudy hair catching the sunlight that slants in through the windows, his fingers long and delicate on the pages of his book. He is so familiar yet not: the set of his shoulders is gentler, neither caved in nor hiked aggressively high. You watch him turn a page and realise it all over again: this is a world made for Yongguk, the world he had been fighting for.

A world where he doesn’t need you to survive.

You don’t realise you have begun to turn away until a pair of dark eyes catch yours. Your name slips out from Yongguk’s mouth and you freeze.

It’s been a lifetime since you last heard that deep voice. Your body trembles and your knees go weak.

Yongguk half-stands, expression distraught. “Are you alright? I’m sorry, I don’t know what made me say that. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He moves forward, arms reached out but immediately stops when he sees you stiffen. “Sorry,” he says it again, scratching his head with his outstretched hand. “I think I must have seen you somewhere before, even though we’ve never been introduced. I didn’t realise I knew your name.” He pauses. “Is that — er — your name, I wonder?”

You get up on your own, as you can and always will. You are glad, you are very glad that none of your emotions show on your face. Before you can recover from your fall — you have several dozen explanations on the tip of your tongue, each more logical than the next — you stagger and watch in slow motion as Yongguk’s eyes grow wide, his long hands reaching out again.

“I’m fine,” you huff. You chide yourself. You should pay better attention to what you are doing, but — it’s been so long. Yongguk is alive and whole and in front of you, hands fluttering like agitated birds as he tries to help, and you cannot stop staring.

Yongguk makes a questioning sound and you cast about for something to say to get the worry out of his eyes. “I’m fine,” you end up repeating. “I lost my balance.”

Yongguk seems to accept this. “Perhaps you should sit down?”

The chair pushes through the carpet as Yongguk draws it out. It’s the one next to his, and the legs knock against each other as they move.

“Thank you, Yongguk,” you say, taking your seat but freezes again, horrified at the words that tumbled out of your mouth. Your heart thunders in your ears; you feel sick.

Yongguk, when you dare to look at him, has his mouth open in both surprise and confusion. “You know my name… Do we know each other…?” he trails off into uncertainty.

He looks good in his uniform, you notice. It’s not the first timeline you went to school together, but you never got to talk like this, with the soft background chatters of the school, the world alive and thriving around you. This beautiful world needs neither of you to carry on.

“It’s a small town, Yongguk-ssi,” you say evasively. “Perhaps I know your name the same way you know mine.”

“But I don’t…” Yongguk frowns, but shakes his head and then begins to chuckle. “This is so strange. I’m sure I’ve never seen you before in my life, and yet… Ah, I can’t quite place a finger on it.”

“We’ve never met in this life, you mean,” you say under your breath, and is glad when Yongguk doesn’t hear you.

“Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,” Yongguk says with his wide gummy smile. “I’m Bang Yongguk, but you already knew that.”

You allow yourself to return a smile, just a little. You say, “What are you reading?”

“The Art of War by Sun Tzu,” he says with another lighthearted chuckle.

“If you want to know about wars and battle strategy, you can ask me,” you say because you cannot help yourself. “I know all about them.”

Yongguk’s interest peaks, his cheeks flush and he looks over his shoulders before leaning in and gushes out in excitement, “Do you? It’s one of my greatest interests, but don’t tell anyone. People might think I’m crazy. I can’t believe I finally found someone who cares about what I care about. How did you learn about them, exactly?”

His enthusiasm puts a smile on your face, but your heart burns with the recollections of how each of them turned out for you and for him.

“I was in all of them,” you reply.

Yongguk stares before breaking out in bright, good-natured laughter. You smile in return.

This world looks good on him.