The room shook like a switch had been flicked. There was no buildup, or soft rattling, no pre-warning for the way the walls began to shake as if they were going to unhinge themselves from the structure, as if the floor was about to give way to the earth. The shelf at the other side of the kitchen shakes vigorously– the pots, cutlery and utensils placed upon dropping one by one until the entire foundation crumbles on itself, taking down two of the dining chairs with it.

There’s a scream, high pitched and scared coming from the living room and in the back of Mark’s mind he knows he needs to get to Mihyun, to make sure she’s okay but his hands are clamped to the island counter, his eyes boring holes into Jinyoung.

Jinyoung’s bent down, balled into the ground, groaning and wailing in pain as if something was trying to clamber out of his throat. That’s not what’s frightening Mark though, he wonders if it’s the room shaking, playing with his eyes but he can’t mistake the way Jinyoung’s hands are dug into the floor, he’s made craters into the marble tiles, his fingers dug into the ground as if it were made of putty.

Youngjae says something from beside him but Mark isn’t concentrating, all he sees is a swift movement of Youngjae’s hand and suddenly everything stops. The world comes to a haunting still in a fraction of a second. Mark can’t even hear the beat of his own heart, he thinks maybe it’s just stopped, as frozen as Jinyoung with his nails dug into floor and back hunched over, as if his spine was just going to pop out of alignment and he’d metamorph into something.

“Well,” Youngjae lets out a sigh, breathless almost. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

That unlocks Mark from his statue state and suddenly he’s shoving at Youngjae’s shoulder, turning him round to face him. “What did you just do?” He hisses.

“I told you I came to test something,” Youngjae says, his eyes wide and jittery. “You called asking to meet and I told you I was here to see Jinyoung, you just came rushing even though you knew he wasn’t here.”

“Youngjae answer me, did you just- did you just make that earthquake?” Mark exasperates, his grip on the other professor’s shoulders weak.

Youngjae at his lips and looks away, “I didn’t. Jinyoung did.”

“But you did something!” Mark snaps.

“Mark!” Youngjae shouts, the confusion now evident on his face and in his voice. “I told you before, right? I’d been trying to make him remember, and things only started to open when he met you. I told you but this...this is something entirely different.”

“What do you mean?”

“I also told you that these spirits, when they were entities in themselves, when they could still roam the earth, they were powerful. I don’t mean bull magic tricks, I mean power, like drowning an entire city in sand if they wanted to.” Youngjae’s eyes are wide, roaming the room frantically.

“And what? Are you telling me their powers- that inside Jinyoung, those powers are coming out?” Mark turns round to look over his shoulder only to find Jinyoung slumped onto the ground. He moves his hands off Youngjae and immediately makes his way to Jinyoung, so fragile and small where he is.

“It may be worse than I thought,” Youngjae mumbles as Mark moves Jinyoung’s head off the ground and places it upon his lap. Sweat coats his forehead and Mark brushes away the damp strands of hair away from his face. “It really locked itself away.”

“The spirit? The... demon?” Mark replies weakly, staring down at Jinyoung’s peaceful sleeping face. Or at least he’d like to think Jinyoung was at peace now, even for a fraction of a moment. “What happened, Youngjae? What could have been so bad that not even a demon that could sink entire cities could handle it?”

He looks up at Youngjae to find an expression upon his usually flaccid face filled with fear, his eyes glistening slightly in the light. “Youngjae? Is it so bad even someone like you... someone like Carl couldn’t even talk about it?”

Youngjae lets out a shaky breath, “It was- it was... in Japan, our last life.”

Mark nods, “I figured, it’d make sense, he’s been speaking Japanese. He keeps talking about a bird falling from the sky.”

Youngjae opens his mouth and then closes it. The scratch on his face has gone a deep red, a faint line of blood scabbing and it looks stark against his pale skin. “1945... August 6th... we died.” Youngjae says through his teeth as if something was tugging at his jaw to keep his mouth shut. He places a hand to his forehead and rubs at his temples.

“1945...” Mark repeats in a mutter, his eyebrows scrunching together. “August 6th... why does it sound familiar?”

“The bird falling-” Youngjae gasps harshly, his hands flying to his head. “Stop.” He whispers to himself.

“Youngjae?” Mark calls out to him confused but Youngjae’s face is scrunched up in pain and he’s pushed himself into a hunched ball as he fights within himself.

“August 6th, 1945,” Mihyun’s voice comes from the entrance of the kitchen. Mark looks up to find her dishevelled, her eyes red as if from crying and her hands shaking by her side. “It’s when the first atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima.”

“The bird falling...” Mark shakingly exhales and looks down to find Jinyoung awake, staring up at Mark with a new set of eyes, a new vastness in the black hole of his pupils.

Something has changed.

“It was a bomb.” Jinyoung says, his eyes flicker to the ceiling as if he could see the bird once again. “It fell silently and then the darkness came.”

“Pain.” Youngjae croaks out as he tries to straighten himself up, his jaw set hard. “Pain is what followed, pain to be remembered for thousands of years. It wasn’t instant, it wasn’t over in a second. It dragged out, dragged out so long it made the prior four hundred years feel like nothing. You don’t remember? The feeling of your skin melting away, fire burning its way through your muscles to your bones till you become nothing but a blackened corpse.”

“I remember,” Jinyoung says flatly, pushing himself up to his feet. His knees wobble and he has to hold onto Mark’s shoulder for balance, but he gets up and faces Youngjae. “I remember everything.”

Youngjae in a breath, his usual calculating face exchanged with tear-lined eyes and a frown, a frown so sad Mark could hardly hold onto the anger that had been swirling around his head so furiously before. “It’s good to finally see you again.” Youngjae scoffs, his eyes drop down to where his glasses lie broken on the floor. Jinyoung follows his line of sight and makes a move to pick them up before he does.

“I’m not happy to see you at all,” Jinyoung says, looking down at the bent frames and cracked lens. “I was finally living, you know.”

Youngjae’s face twitches, “I know.”

“You know I’ve never asked you before… but you see it, don’t you? See them.” Jinyoung says, his fingers gliding down the metal of the glasses. “Memories that don’t exist.”

Youngjae flinches as if he’d been slapped across the face. Jinyoung finally looks up at him, his own face relaxed and contemplative as he offers Youngjae back his wounded glasses. There’s a conversation being exchanged between them but Mark picks up nothing but silence, and within the next few seconds, Youngjae takes his glasses and turns to leave.

He pauses, just in front of Mihyun who blocks his path. She looks up at him, red eyes and fury burning hot enough to make two holes through Youngjae’s skull. Unfortunately for Mark, Youngjae’s eyes don’t fall out of their sockets nor does his brain spill from the back of his head. Eventually he just slides past Mihyun, the bang of the front door the only indication that he’d finally left.

Mark exhales harshly, barely being able to keep himself up, let alone Jinyoung. Noticing this, Jinyoung takes his hand off Mark’s shoulders and steps back towards the glass doors of the garden. Mark looks at him, blue skies and grape-vined fences frame him and the sun halos his head and for a moment he is a painting, frozen in brush of colour and jagged edges of a pencil.

“I’m not going to ask a single thing,” To Mark’s surprise it is Mihyun that is first to speak. She has her hands fisted into her skirt and a frown twisting at her cheeks, her stiffness and fear so clear and so unusual on her that Mark felt like he was in some sense intruding on something private. “I won’t ask, I just want to know, are you okay?” She says the words through her teeth, the letters tight with her breath.

Jinyoung gives her a soft look, or maybe it was the sun softening his expression, and then nods. A fraction of a movement but it’s enough to satisfy Mihyun, and soon enough, she turns and then there is another click of the door to indicate that she’d left too.

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to be so easily swept aside, do you?” Jinyoung says, his tone harsh, but smooth like the edge of a newly sharpened knife.

“Depends, I think I should be the one asking the questions?” Mark retorts, which earns him a snort, a bitter sound that felt unfamiliar from Jinyoung.

“You lied to me.” Jinyoung says flatly, pushing himself up away from the glass, his hands wrapped across his chest.

“I was protecting you.”

“You were unsure.”

Mark moves around the table, giving the graveyard of pots and pans on the kitchen floor a flat look. “Yes, I was unsure and I was protecting you. I didn’t know what you would do if you found out. I didn’t know what Youngjae would do.”

“You didn’t know the future and that held you back in the present?” Jinyoung squints his eyes, a half smile on his lips like he’d found something funny. “It is kind of hilarious how people never change.”

“A couple of memories back and suddenly you’re talking like a wise, old, knowing man?” Mark scoffs and goes to bend on his knees, picking up cutlery. An attempt in ordering a havoc that cannot be sorted because the shelf has come apart.

“Old and knowing, yeah kind of, not so sure about the other stuff.” Jinyoung says as he makes his way across the opposite side of the disaster zone, leveling himself down to Mark where he idly picks up a small metal pot.

Mark stares down at the stone pot, somehow having found its previous grave in the crack of the floor. “So, you remember everything now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Not really, no.”

Mark flashes his eyes up to meet Jinyoung’s, waiting, and a little coaxing, inviting him into a fight. “Even after all this, even after all these… centuries, you still plan to keep me in the dark?”

Jinyoung blinks, thinking, absentmindedly placing a mismatched lid to the metal pot in his hand. “It’s kind of funny, four hundred years of you never knowing who I was, and me remembering you, protecting- trying to protect you and loving you. It feels odd now.”

“Me protecting you feels odd?” Mark says with a raise of his eyebrows.

“Six years.” Jinyoung says abruptly.

“What?”

“We’re six years apart. That’s never happened before and even if we had an it was only ever a few months and I was always older than you.” Jinyoung says curiously, his eyes moving across the floor quickly.

Mark looks down too, as if he could see Jinyoung’s thoughts among the clutter of kitchen utensils but instead he finds his own. “It didn’t want to wake up.” Mark says. “Even a demon has things it doesn’t want to remember.”

“Demons.” Jinyoung repeats. “Other entities with evil connotations are called demons so what are humans with bad intentions called?”

“Villains?” Mark mocks. “But it’s never so black and white.”

“Isn’t it? Things may seem complicated at first but in the end they can always be stripped down to the very simple points.” He says, solemnly. “People are just made up of good or bad.”

“Wrong.” Mark retorts quickly. “I don’t really know who I’m speaking to right now. Maybe it’s Jinyoung, maybe it’s all of you. Maybe all of you is all I’ll ever get to speak to now, but if that’s how you think of people, how you’ve been thinking of people for the past five hundred years… then god help you.”

Jinyoung’s face twitches but he doesn’t make any effort to refute Mark so he continues.

“People aren’t made up of a percentage of good or bad, it’s not possible to categorise people like that. There’s no way to measure it, there’s no way to put it into statistics. Are people bad because they think bad things or are people bad because they do bad things? Are you bad if you think something but don’t act upon it? Or does that make you good? Are you good because you do kind things? Even though doing kind things means you’re going out of your way? Even though sometimes people’s kindness can just be a guilt-free form of their selfishness?” Mark moves to sit upon the floor, staring down at the large stone pot, its edge perfectly snug into the crack into the floor. His eyes then slowly travel across the kitchen, underneath the table and towards the island where he stares into the ten small holes in the floor. “People can only be stripped down to reasons. People are just a clutter of faint memories and reasons.”

A sigh, full of relief and a hint of a smile brings Mark’s attention back to Jinyoung. “Incredible.”

Mark blinks. “What is?”

“You’d think being five hundred years old would mean there’s only so much learning you could still do but you always surprise me, you always somehow teach me something.” Jinyoung laughs lightly, his eyebrows slightly scrunched together.

“You could never be too old to be relieved of ignorance.” Mark says with a of his head.
“So tell me… there must have been reasons for what you did? For that thing you did that was so horrible it got you and me sentenced to an infinity of suffering?”

Jinyoung gives Mark a hard stare and something in Mark’s chest sinks as he notices that for the first time since he’d met Jinyoung, he couldn’t see anything. “Jinyoung didn’t do anything, I did.”

“And… who are you? You’re speaking Korean.” Mark mutters back a reply. There’s something different about this one, the way he holds himself and speaks.

“We all have access to each other’s languages—it only makes sense to—we just use our respective languages for the sake of mental barriers or something. Not particularly foolproof but it helps a little I suppose.” He shrugs.

“I’ve never met you.”

“You wouldn’t have because I never decided to show myself to you.”

“Decided?” Mark echoes. “Since when were any of you in control enough to come and go as you please.”

“Let’s say I’ve had more practice than the others,” Jinyoung chuckles.

Mark bites the inside of his cheek and shrinks back a little. “Who are you?” Mark asks again, his voice small.

Jinyoung settles down the mismatched pot and its lid on the ground, keeping his eyes low. “You wouldn’t know even if I told you.”

“Being vague is better than nothing.”

“Nothing is better than anything.” Jinyoung retorts calmly, his eyes drifting around the room. “But keeping myself hidden is pointless anyway, he remembers everything now. He’ll tell you.”

“Everything?” Mark repeats. “Is he going to be okay?”

Jinyoung offers him a contemplative look, the person inside weighing the words in his head as if he couldn’t figure out what fit together better. “If you mean remembering five hundred years of life, I would think not, no he isn’t going to be okay, but he’ll survive as he has done, as all the others from before him have. He also has you, and that is not something any of us have had the pleasure of for even a small period of time. So have faith in yourself.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

He raises an eyebrow, “Question?”

“What did you do?” Mark pushes. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the beginning.”

Jinyoung’s eye flicker up to Mark’s. “Jinyoung wouldn’t be happy if I told you. I don’t think any of us would be.”

“What- why?”

Jinyoung lifts a finger, pointing it towards Mark and he traces something in the air. “Do you not fear the thought of the person you love the most growing to hate you?”

Mark’s lips twitch. “Holding back the present in fear of an unknown future?”

A smirk grows on Jinyoung’s face, wide and amused. “Like I said, people don’t change.”

“You’re changing the topic-”

“I am.” Jinyoung says sharply, all amusement on his face having disintegrated. “I have to address one more thing before I leave… Barrick.”

Mark’s hand flies to his head with the feeling like a needle slowly makes it’s way through the side of his skull. “W-what are you doing?” Mark gasps, the words barely audible with the pain so overwhelming.

“Barrick.” Mark wonders if it’s the pain but Jinyoung’s voice grows deeper, demanding, and midst the blinding ache, Mark feels a little frightened. “Enough, stop hurting him. Your revenge is fruitless.”

“Why!?” The words fly out of Mark’s mouth. “Why is it fruitless!?”

“The petty revenge you wish for will get you nowhere. You will just increase everyone’s suffering.” Jinyoung flatly states, his voice cold and emotionless.

“He killed Henrikka.” The name comes out like a whimper from Mark’s mouth, and suddenly the pain in Mark’s head fades away into the kind of agony that could only infect the soul. “He destroyed everything.”

“He did not do it.” Jinyoung says. “Carl did not start the fire, Barrick.”

“What did you say?”

“He did not start the fire, Barrick.” Jinyoung punches out the words and Mark can’t tell who is talking, can’t tell who he is right now, emotions and pain fading in and out like a radio station with bad signal.

“Don’t lie- you all died in it, how would you know...” The words come out of Mark, breathless and confused.

Jinyoung’s stoic face falters for a moment, his eyebrows dip and his eyes fall back onto the mess before them. “We are all here for something I did. This is my punishment, you are my punishment. You have to understand that Youngjae and all those before him, they did not curse us for the sake of it. People are made of reasons, are they not?”

“Then what is it? Tell me what you did.” This, Mark forced out himself, even though the muscles in his body contracted as if trying to restrict him from his own body. “Why are you defending him?”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, instead he offers a sad smile.

“At least tell me your name.” Mark demands in a whisper. The strength slowly beginning to return to him as he feels Barrick dwindle backwards, taking his thoughts and confusion into a dark corner to the back of Mark’s mind.

Jinyoung looks to the side for a long time and then eventually returns it back to Mark, weighing his answer heavily. “Hakim- Hakim Najjar.”

Mark in a breath.

Footsteps in the sand, too soon taken by the wind. Warped and star-filled skies. Silk dancing with storms. Cracked lips and parched mouths. A distance made of nothing but possibilities and hope.

Mark blinks furiously, his eyes swirling around the room for a moment before they gravitate towards Jinyoung. Jinyoung, who sits across from Mark on the cold kitchen floor surrounded by cracks in the marble and empty pots, looking at him and crying.

“Jinyoung?” Mark breathes out the name in a beg.

Jinyoung’s lip twists down horribly, “Professor.” He calls out, his voice broken and small and it was enough to pull Mark across the clutter, kicking pots and knives, boards and pans out of his way and bring himself down onto Jinyoung.

“Jesus christ,” Mark sighs, his arms quick to wrap around Jinyoung, his lips pressed against the curve of his neck. “Are you okay?”

Jinyoung quickly brings his arms up around Mark, his finger digging into his shirt, clutching onto the professor for dear life as he smothers his face into his shoulder. “I remember- I remember everything…” He cries. “I see everything now, all of it.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mark murmurs, tightening his grip, knuckles stretched white, clutching onto Jinyoung. “It’s okay, everything’s okay.”

“It’s not, it’s not okay…” Jinyoung wails. “It’s not okay. I did- I’ve done so much. I did it all.”

“Stop, stop, Jinyoung, please,” Mark whispers, a lump growing in his throat. “You didn’t do anything, you didn’t do anything at all. Do you hear me?” Mark says as he pulls back to look down at him. Jinyoung’s eyes are red, and so very wide, they are his eyes. Mark sighs a little in relief and goes to press his lips to Jinyoung’s forehead. “You didn’t do anything wrong, you hear me?” He says against his skin, trailing his lips down to his eyes where his kisses tasted like salt and sadness.

“I killed them all, Mark… Mark, I killed them all.” Jinyoung cries, his words breaking with sobs. “I can still hear them…” He gasps, his breaths becoming shallower every time he tried to take them in. His hands shake as they dig into Mark’s arms and he looks up at him with those wide, scared eyes of his. “I can hear them screaming.”

Mark’s eyebrows knit together and his grip on Jinyoung grows tighter. “What happened, Jinyoung? You can tell me.”

Jinyoung vigorously shakes his head and almost tries to tug his way out of Mark’s grip. “You’d hate me, you’d hate me. Sadiya would hate me.” Jinyoung mumbles, his lip trembling and his eyes skittery. “You’ll all hate us.” He gasps.

Mark takes one hand and tries to Jinyoung’s head comfortingly, “Why would we hate you? Jinyoung, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Jinyoung shouts. “It’s not okay. Mark… you said people aren’t good or bad, right? But you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

“Jinyoung, you aren’t a bad person.”

Jinyoung takes in a deep breath and although Mark could still feel him tremble underneath his grip, he seemed to force himself to at least look calmer. “Hiroshima. What would you said about those that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? Are they not bad people?”

The words get caught inside Mark’s throat, “Jinyoung… what are you trying to say? What has this got to do with you?”

“I did it.” Jinyoung mutters, tears spilling silently down his face. “I had it coming. It wasn’t enough to remember for five hundred years, I had to feel it to.”

“Jinyoung, please…” Mark’s voice breaks and he takes in a heavy breath in attempt to settle himself. He felt on edge, he couldn’t bear seeing Jinyoung look so distressed and saddened and feel like nothing he could say or do would change it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe it’s better.” Jinyoung says to himself. “Maybe I don’t deserve you, maybe I never deserved you, maybe that’s why you were always taken from me.”

“Jinyoung-”

Jinyoung looks up at Mark with some new kind of resolution. A hard stare that made Mark feel sick in the bottom of his stomach. “Do you know why we’re convinced Youngjae didn’t start the fire? Because he wouldn’t, it would go against everything he stands for, his very existence for the last five hundred years.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asks weakly.

“If… if I were a prisoner, then he would be my guard. He’s always been around to keep me in check, to make sure this… this circle kept going. To make sure I always remembered, and to make sure I always suffered… even though that meant he had to suffer with me.” Jinyoung explains, his breathing now settled and his body slumping a little. He looks tired. “I could make you remember, you know. All your lives. I could always do it but I never did.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want you to hurt.”

“We could have hurt together.” Mark replies, now sat back onto the floor, his grip loose on Jinyoung, having shrunk back enough to just hold him by the tip of his finger.

“No, you didn’t deserve it. This was my punishment.” Jinyoung mutters, looking down at where their hands met. “Hiroshima… was too much. I understand now, the shadows, the bird… moments before, during and after I died. True destruction, true evil and pain. I didn’t want to wake up Mark, I didn’t want to see anymore. I had died in one war only to wake up into another one. The world never gets better and when I realised that, I didn’t want to see anymore… but I could only sleep for so long.” He sighs, his fingers moving now to interlock between Mark’s. “It’s all so hypocritical.”

“Hyportical?” Mark repeats and then bites his tongue. The look that Jinyoung gives him, like he’d just been sentenced to death makes him cringe back. He was going to beg him not to tell him, he felt it then, if he’d heard the next words out of his mouth, something was going to change.

Jinyoung took in one single breath and said the words like he was bidding goodbye to the dead.

“Five hundred years ago… I had a spirit set a city alight and bury it into the ground.”

There was once a woman, made of bronze skin and wrapped in silk.
Lived upon land made of sand and skies made of heat. Air as thick as labneh and days as hot as the furnaces they cooked their bread in.
She had never cursed the deserts she lived upon, in fact she craved the sand, the vast planes of golden mountains. The edges of the world she could only dream of where the sun fell and the moon rose.
As a child she was adventurous, unlike a woman, her mother had always told her. She knew, however, her time was running out. She’d known that when her body grew, when her chest would enlarge and her jaw would sharpen, that what would once be words would turn into chains. Her freedom was small now, but it was freedom that she knew would disappear into the desert wind when she grew of age.
So she drank it in, with thirst and she did what she could as a child.
However, a child is a matter of mistakes waiting to be made, to be learnt from. A collection of ignorance and naivety waiting to be made rid of.
She had climbed a wall, to the outside, to the desert sands only men could cross. She’d crossed it and in return, she was given a mark to remember the mistake she had done as a child forever.
A slash across the face, a jagged cut that clotted and left a mark for what was to be a reminder of a girl that had once made a mistake.
She grew with this reminder for ten long years. Ten years had come and gone and she was reminded with this mistake, she’d be forever unwanted. She had passed the age she had been waiting for like a death sentence and in more ways than one, this mistake had given her freedom, but it had also given her loneliness.
She was a widow before she had even married, and eventually she’d be rid of by parents that could no longer house an unwanted woman.
In these long days of loneliness, of darkness enough to rot away her soul, she’d think of the deserts and the sand. She’d dream of storms made from the ground and mountains made up from the wind. She’d think of the wall she had tried to climb as a child, the same wall that looked so small to her now and the longer she thought, the stronger her resolution grew.
She’d leave this city.
This city of damnation, with nothing but its walls as prison and its people slaves to a system, a world that could only render her to her body.
She’d leave and she’d walk the desert, for as long as she could. Even if it mean her dying in the sand, at least her bones would become the dunes and her ashes the wind, at least she would not die in the years to come behind those walls made up of nothing but loneliness.
She’d be free in the desert.

The earthquake had been reported on the news as an after shock. Even though there was no real explanation for it, no sense to be made of it. Everyone tried so incredibly hard to sweep it away as an unexpected form of nature. There was, in a sense, an irony to it.

Mark, however, did not think about it. He simply did his best in reordering the house to what it once was. Luckily the earthquake was not as strong as the first one, so the old, sick shelf in the kitchen was the only thing to come down. It could only take so much stress.

Insook, as usual, did not ask questions. Did not ask why Jinyoung had locked himself in his room. Why there were holes in the ground like someone tried to dig into the floor tiles. She simply found space to place the homeless pots and cutlery and cleaned up what she could of what had broke.

Watching her sweep up the broken stone pots that had held fermented beans, Mark thought idly to himself if there was a way to clean up things that had fallen apart without throwing them away, without losing them completely.

“Mark,” Insook calls out. She’s standing before him with a tray of hot food, a stone pot of warm stew and a sheltered bowl of rice placed upon it. “Stop being useless and take these up to Jinyoung already.”

“He won’t answer the door,” Mark replies, making no effort to take the tray from her.

She makes a huffing sound and shoves the spread of food in his face, “He hasn’t eaten for a whole day now. Either he answers the door or you force it open. Got it?” She demands as she presses her heel into Mark’s foot.

“I’m going, I’m going.” Mark groans, hopping quickly up onto his feet. He grabs the tray from the old woman reluctantly, pretending he didn’t see the awful glare she gave him as he made his way into the hallway.

The journey up the stairs and down the corridor goes by too quickly. Mark, too soon, being put face to face with Jinyoung’s door. He could essentially just leave the food on the floor, knock and leave. However, that’d be telling Jinyoung that Mark didn’t want to see him. That maybe what he told him really may have ended up with Mark hating him. But it wasn’t true. Maybe because it hadn’t sunk in or maybe because he just couldn’t picture it.

He didn’t know the Sadiya and Hakim that started all of this. He didn’t know of the city and the people Jinyoung had damned. He knew nothing of the guilt Jinyoung and all those before him were carrying. He knew nothing, so how could he feel anything?

So if Jinyoung was so damned in believing Mark was going to hate him, then he’d prove him wrong. He’d prove them all wrong.

Mark knocks twice, hard. “Jinyoung, I’ve brought food.” He announces and not to his surprise, he gets no response. He doesn’t even bother for a second try before he barges in to find Jinyoung lying sprawled on the bed, staring up out through the window.

“If someone doesn’t respond to a knock that means they’re not here or they don’t want company.” Jinyoung says flatly.

“Yeah, well, too bad.” Mark retorts, settling the tray of food on the empty desk. “Ahjumma went out of her way to make you your own stew so you better eat it.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care, you haven’t eaten in over twenty four hours.” Mark snaps.

“Oh save it, you may be older than me in this life but it doesn’t change anything.” Jinyoung huffs and goes to turn onto his side, giving Mark his back.

Mark doesn’t think twice as he stomps his way to Jinyoung’s bed and kicks him with his foot, shoving him close to the edge of the bed. He yelps and jolts upright, quick to turn and give Mark a sparky glare. “What the hell?”

“Get over yourself, Jinyoung.” Mark snaps. “How long are you going to act like this? Are you just going to mope in bed and starve yourself until you die?”

“Maybe. At least I won’t have to deal with this any more and I can just watch the next one from the sidelines-” Jinyoung sputters, his sentence unfinished after getting hit square in the face with a pillow. “Will you stop hitting me!?”

“Don’t joke about things like that, I swear to god Jinyoung.” Mark huffs, his chest rising and dropping heavily.

Jinyoung’s face falters. What was once a demeanor of anger and irritation quickly fell apart into exhaustion as he crumbles down into the bed, his head dropping into his hands. “I’m sorry. I just- I’m not adjusting well. All of them before me… they grew up with these memories, they were people made out of these memories but… it’s not like that for me. I can’t seem to meld them together with me, I feel so out of place.”

Mark settles himself on the other side of the bed, staring at Jinyoung for a moment before taking his eyes to the view outside. It’s bright today, not a single cloud in the sky. “That makes the both of us.”

Jinyoung lifts his face up from his palms, “What do you mean?”

“Come on Jinyoung…” Mark sighs. “You and Youngjae, you guys remember everything, you know more than I ever did, more than I ever will. I’m part of a curse, I’m just an effect of a curse. I’m blessed with ignorance? None of this feels like a blessing.”

“It’s better you don’t remember.”

“And so you guys keep telling me but how can I not think about the past when its clearly had such a big impact on the present? Has such an impact on you?” Mark says heavily.

“So what? What do you want me to tell you? Because five hundred years worth of life is a long time.” Jinyoung mutters, looking down at the duvet where he picks at the embroidery of the sheets.

“If I ask the questions, will you answer them? Truthfully?” Mark asks, wishing Jinyoung would look up at meet his eyes but he seems to be too far deep into ruining Insook’s bedding. “Jinyoung.”

“I got it, I got it already… what do you want to know?” Jinyoung sighs and flops down onto the bed, his face smothered into the pillow that had once hit him in the face.

“Do you know why I remember Barrick?” Mark starts. “If the impact in Hiroshima was such a big thing it broke whatever this circle is, why was it Barrick of all people to come through?”

Jinyoung cranes his neck up and lays on his cheek, giving Mark a look with a half-scrunched up face and a pout. “You said he’d been trying to for 200 hundred years, didn’t you? He simply saw an opportunity and took it.”

“Opportunity?”

“I don’t really get the details but the spirit Hakim gave himself to… they feel too, you know. Pain, sadness, happiness… their kind rarely had opportunities to feel like that among themselves, that’s why they were so enchanted with humans, why they stuck around them. Maybe they didn’t really understand what living for eternity meant, or maybe they underestimated the kind of destruction humans could make. Either way, it couldn’t take it. It tried to lock itself away after Hiroshima, it broke, and tried to end this curse or whatever. Maybe that’s why Barrick got in, he slipped through when it was at its weakest.” Jinyoung explains solemnly, his lip twisting awkwardly as he continues to pick at the stitches of Insook’s bedding.

“Feelings so strong they could break a curse,” Mark whispers to himself.

“To what extent could you do everything you could for someone you love? Even defy death?” Jinyoung says like he’s speaking his thoughts out loud.

“Even bury a city into the ground?” Mark says and that finally brings Jinyoung’s eyes up to meet his, those eyes Mark knew so well. He realises then, that it’s when they look at each other does Mark feel at his calmest, that the confusion becomes nothing but dwindling smoke, that he feels like himself more than he has ever felt it before.

Jinyoung’s eyebrows tighten together and he looks as if he is going to cry but the tears simply well up in his eyes. “Even bury a city of… people.”

“You know what my next question is Jinyoung…” Mark says slowly, as if in fear Jinyoung was going to fly off the bed and jolt out the room, but instead he just sits up. “What happened five hundred years ago? Who were we?”

Jinyoung inhales deeply and his lips. His whole body stiff with reluctance.

“Jinyoung, please.”

Jinyoung flickers his eyes up to Mark’s but quickly lets them drop again. His voice coming out small when he speaks, “You were a girl called Sadiya, you ran away from home when you were twenty. I had found you in the desert, half-dead due to dehydration.”

“You? As in Hakim?”

“He was a traveller, trade merchant on the- well, what we know as the silk roads. He’d found Sadiya when he was searching for a place to set up for the night. Long story short, although she wasn’t very trustful of him at first, she ended up travelling with him under the guise that she was his wife. Although it was uncommon for travelling men to take their wives along with them, it made up for a better excuse than anything else. It didn’t matter much though because in the end they fell in love and got married. Officially, unofficially…I’m not really sure but.. they were happy. On the road, they were rarely bothered by people, they had their own world on that one cart and camel they owned. Things were good. Things weren’t perfect but if there’s anything so close to happiness in this world, then they had that.” Jinyoung takes in a shaky breath, pausing for a moment to rub at his face. “Then she got pregnant and eventually travelling took a toll on her. She also wanted her parents’ blessings for her marriage. So the two of them decided to travel to her hometown and by the time they’d arrived, Sadiya was already showing since it took several months to reach the city. Hakim couldn’t get into the city though, he was a foreigner to them after all so they were skeptical in letting him in, so he was made to stay outside and had to wait for Sadiya to return.”

“What neither of them had anticipated was how fast word could spread. The entire city had found out about her return, seen her stomach and rumours grew faster than any fire could have. Before she could even make it to her parents, they all believed Sadiya had gotten pregnant unmarried and run off with the father of the child. It didn’t make sense, she’d had left for over a year but this could have been her second child or her third. It didn’t matter because they didn’t care. I don’t know what happened, or how it happened. I think the only blessing we’ve ever had all these years was that we didn’t know how it happened but after four nights of not hearing back from her, Hakim finally went and paid a guard for information. He’d simply told him her body was left on the other side of the city walls-” Jinyoung his lips, his breathing now heavier and his hands visibly trembling. “T-They killed her and they killed... our child.”

Mark tries to swallow but he finds his throat has closed off, and when he opens his mouth to breathe, he suddenly tastes salt. Tears fell down his face in streams and his heart ached as if the memories were there but too far to clutch. “Jinyoung… it’s enough-”

“There’d been stories before,” Jinyoung continues, his jaw tight and his eyes red. “Apparently there’d been a surge in the deserts, of men and women giving themselves up to a Jinn, to selling their souls for wishes. So he wished and wished for hours, days, on her body crying, he wished for an entire city and its people to burn and disappear into the ground and it did. He watched it, watched a city made up of sand go up in flames and he revelled in the sound of their screams and tortured cries. Children, Mark, children were in there. People that possibly had nothing to do with what happened to her suffered and died too but he didn’t care.”

“His wife- his wife and child had died…” Mark chokes out but even his own words were unconvincing to him.

“He was blinded in grief.” Jinyoung says sadly. “He was mourning and he was offered revenge, power. He made a mistake, a horrible mistake.”

“And he’s repented, hasn’t he?” Mark retorts, his hand clutching at his chest.

“Has he?” Jinyong whispers, blinking furiously in attempt to keep the tears back but it only helps them spill down his cheek. “I don’t know, I wonder if the same thing happened again... in this life or the ones before, do you think we’d still make the same decision?”

“You’re all different people, you don’t know that-”

“But we’re all connected for a reason. We’ve been reincarnated from each other for a reason. Maybe the point is that we’re not so different.” Jinyoung says as if damning himself, burying himself in a guilt he would never be able to rise out from.

“Jinyoung, you can’t ever know that. People aren’t pre-decided, people are made up as they grow.” Mark says comfortingly but the attempt seems fruitless.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Jinyoung sighs and flops back onto the bed. “The point is that I remember everything now and this curse will carry on as it should.”

“Jinyoung, you can’t be serious.” Mark exasperates. “We need to- we still need to find a way to end this. We can end this.”

Jinyoung looks away from the ceiling and towards Mark, a face of defeat completely encompassing him. “Don’t you understand by now, Mark? There’s no way break this. This isn’t a curse...”

“What do you mean-”

“This was a deal and I have to hold my end up for eternity.”