The moment Minkyung hits the floor, she remembers. 

Well—not everything.

It comes in flashes, like the snap of a camera or a jolt of lightning. 

She sees Yebin’s frightened face against the dark of night, Nayoung’s body tumbling off the edge of a cliff, Jieqiong’s shaking hands as blood drips down the corner of her lips. It comes back, like watching a TV show you’ve seen before but barely can recall, scenes suddenly appearing in your memory as the episode progresses. But all these memories are like loose puzzle pieces. They don’t even fit together.

She looks at Yebin, who is staring, expectantly, waiting for her to say something, anything. They’re surrounded by shattered plates broken glass, and Minkyung realizes she’s cut her hand. She hadn’t even noticed the pain, she’d been so caught up in this flurry of memories. 

“I remember... I remember something.” she finally says. 

Yebin just inhales, sharply, like Minkyung knows she does when she’s nervous.

“We didn’t believe it at first. We thought that Jieqiong was making all this bull up.” Minkyung continues. “But when we saw it—the glitch—we knew something was horribly wrong with our world. We were lucky. Nayoung told us that the other times, we had never been so early to figure it out. But then the dreams came. I started seeing it all, past and future, how it was only going to get worse. I figured out how I could manipulate the glitch, just for a minute or two, and I delivered a message, to me. But I couldn’t stop from losing my memories, because harnessing those powers, even for a second,  began cracking everything at the seams. I told Nayoung to deliver it to myself by the 23rd run. And now I’m here, and I feel like I’m dying because everything’s coming back to me because nothing makes sense and—“ Minkyung takes a massive inhale, like all of the previous words had just spouted out like a faucet accidentally being . She falls forward into a confused Yebin’s arms, who gently wraps her arms around her. 

“Here’s what we know.”

Nayoung stands, arms crossed, at the front of the room. Its a small study area in the back of the library that no one uses, and against the wall leans an intricately assembled board of evidence, all connected with red string. 

“The glitch came to our town the night Minkyung’s parents died. When that car hit the bottom of the canyon, something happened. Jieqiong saw it.”

“An explosion of red light.” Jieqiong says quietly from the corner, blowing her nose into a tissue. 

“This was the first run. It was a relatively normal two years for all of us. When the first two years were up, Jieqiong was the first sacrifice. She died by lightning strike on the bridge.” Nayoung gazes down somberly. “Then things began to break. The anomalies began. Jieqiong, Wonwoo, and I could all remember the previous run. My hypothesis is because we were all close enough to the initial accident to somehow let the glitch affect us.” 

Wonwoo, sitting in an armchair next to the board, nods. 

“Eventually, the glitch demands a sacrifice. It’s random, but usually someone close to the accident, emotionally or physically. It’s taken all of us at least once. Even you two.” He looks directly at Minkyung and Yebin, who are sitting in chairs facing the rather ominous trio, both looking rather overwhelmed.

“I died?” Yebin gasps. “How?” 

“On the bridge. Like Jieqiong.”

“And me?” Minkyung asks, the feeling crawling up her back that she somehow already knows the answer.

“Drowning. In the waterfall in the woods.”

Both girls feel a deep pit in their stomach begin to form. 

“Jieqiong has died the most out of all of us.” Nayoung says rather plainly. “Then me. But it’s obvious this is having an effect on Jieiqong’s health.”

“I am fine!” Jieqiong exclaims. “This is irrelevant. Can we please get back on topic. I didn’t spend all this time working on that board for nothing.” 

“Fine. What I’m trying to get at—whenever someone dies we reset. But when we reset, it gets worse. The timelines are shifting and bleeding into each other. This is what causes those figures you may remember, Yebin, and the various time skips. This glitch is leaking in various dimensions, various timelines, until our entire town becomes nothing. And we are fading too. We are starting to forget, and break. Especially Jieqiong. And no offense, Minkyung, but whatever message you tried to deliver, only made it worse. This could be our last chance. We are on the cusp of everything falling apart. The fact that all of us have our memories, in whatever shape or form they may be, is—“

Nayoung stops in the middle of her sentence, staring straight ahead. Yebin and Minkyung turn to see something. At the entrance to the study room stands well—its hard to know what it is. It’s there. Minkyung knows its there. But she can’t conceive it. It’s humanoid in shape, hunched over, composed of nothing but the absence of something and a familiar red, glowing fuzz. It seems bony, ravenous—hungry. It’s not like the other figures that haunt her memory. This is a monster. 

Minkyung sees Yebin next to her, fishing through her bag in a panic. The creature growls, but its not a normal growls, it sounds more like a pitched down static, low and guttural and unnatural.  

Yebin grabs her camera, and Minkyung looks at her, confused as the girl next to her raises it with shaky hands and clicks the button. 

With the sudden flash, the monster yowls in a mix of sped-up trumpet noise and pure distorted static, and seems to freeze in time.

Yebin breathes heavily as everyone stares at her, awestruck.

Then Nayoung yells. 

“Run!”