It was later in the evening now. Lu Han chewed on his lower lip, desperate to keep straight in his head everything he'd heard explained. Across the ballroom Minseok was conferring with Yixing about something in a frantic whisper. Junmyeon stood beside the machine and examined his nails. He looked impatient of a sort, but Lu Han couldn't put a finger on it. Perhaps he really was just in a hurry for this 'nightmare' as he so called it to come to an end. A nightmare he'd said only Lu Han could fix. 

Lu Han stared at the machine. Despite the fact it had practically scared him to death when Minseok first pointed it out, it looked so innocuous now. What had seemed large was not quite small in the grand scheme of the world, and Lu Han had visited now several different worlds. If everything he'd been told was true, he would be visiting others too in the future, or the past. But how? And Why? Because somehow Lu Han had figured out a solution to a problem in a future timeline that no one had as yet been able to solve? 

He shook his head, recognizing the beginnings of another headache setting in. Something was wrong. Something didn't make sense. And Junmyeon's suggestion to just zap Lu Han back into the past and stop Minseok was building a machine seemed almost... too easy? Never mind the face he had no idea how he was supposed to 'woo' Minseok in the first place. Or was it in the last place. Or the middle place- oh, bother! 

"My good man, is something the matter?" asked Junmyeon.

Lu Han stared abruptly at him. 

"No. Nothing." He smiled. 

Across the ballroom Minseok was finally coming this direction. He was not smiling. 

In some forgotten corner of the room, a rat squeaked. 

"Okay," said Minseok. "Junmyeon tell us this calibration you apparently worked out from Luhan in the future. And then let's get on with this."

He looked so eager to go. Too eager, Lu Han thought. 

Junmyeon approached the side of the machine with Minseok's dials. "I know it. I can enter it for you."

"No, thank you," said Minseok. "You can tell me, and I will enter the numbers. I think you underestimate me, uncle, but I do know some things about this machine you claim I should never have created. Are ten years enough time? I recall beginning work on this project at least eight or nine year ago, but then I've also lived fragments of a thousand other lives since then, so..." He began fidgeting with the dials.

"Ten years, yes. And... here." From his jacket pocket he handed Minseok a small pad of paper. Whatever was written on it Lu Han could not tell, but Minseok looked it over and seemed satisfied. 

"Lu Han? Please?" Minseok pointed him to the chair. As with every time before Lu Han sat carefully onto the device and leaned back. Minseok swiftly applied the wires about his body. Lu Han closed his eyes hard for one final moment, then opened them anew. He saw Yixing hovering close at hand. He saw Minseok nodding to the servant with great, hidden meaning. He saw Junmyeon smiling... oddly triumphant. The rat squeaked, again. 

Someone screamed. "Baekhyun what have you--!" 

But then Lu Han was gone. into the veil of time, his body spasmed and torqued. He cried aloud but there was nobody to hear him. His head felt like bursting, his stomach twisted like he were about to vomit. However long it took, he could not say... 

With a jolt, everything stopped. And Lu Han did throw up, this time. Pebbles pressed under his palms, his knees were bruised. Panicked, Lu Han looked up and saw he was alone and in a dark alleyway. A carriage rumbled past on the nearest main street. 

"Ten years ago, indeed..." he said in wonder. And he smiled, because Lu Han definitely knew this place. In fact, he was practically home. At least the home he'd had in the city exactly--

"Ten years ago, indeed," said an echo to his back. 

Lu Han flung around. Contrary to what he'd thought, he was not alone in the alley. Behind him on the ground there was a man, about his height and build wearing a similar calf length wool coat, stockings and boots. He had not gotten up yet, was still on all fours kneeling awkwardly on the ground. Kind of like Lu Han had been just seconds before.

"What... nightmare is this," said Lu Han.

His eyes enflamed on the second man, who looked up suddenly and said, "Excuse me, I think that was my line." 

Then Lu Han stood up before him. Or, a man who looked exactly like Lu Han. 

"What... who are you...?" asked Lu Han to the second Lu Han. 

The second one chuckled. "I'm you, obviously. Oh please tell me I got the calibrations right this time. Is this not the place where you first went back ten years in time? If not, Minseok is going to kill me for getting it wrong."

Lu Han paled completely in the moonlight. "Minseok... sent you... I mean, me, back two times?" 

The other him smiled. "Well, not sequentially of course. How was he to know the first time that dear old Uncle Junmyeon was setting us up! Though he did reason something was fishy, as did you I believe. Or myself. One of us, or both. How odd. I always knew talking to myself was going to be interesting but this is especially hard. Walk with me and let's get this show started, alright?"

"I don't understand," said Lu Han to his doppelgänger. 

"Of course you don't, but if we don't hurry we'll miss our window of opportunity. Minseok is waiting for us, and unfortunately... poor old boy at this point in his life hasn't met either of us. Let's try not to shock him too badly. Don't worry though, I'll be here to walk you through everything we need to do. You do trust me, right? I am you after all."

Lu Han actually didn't. He trusted that his eyes were looking at someone who looked exactly like himself, at a person who knew what Lu Han knew and more besides. He just didn't know how to tell himself that he was scared and terribly confused. "You said Minseok was waiting. Is it just the one or did both of you come back too?"

The other Lu Han shook his head. "No. It doesn't work that way. Minseok, and all his family, they're technically.... you remember that tree metaphor that scoundrel Junmyeon told us about? Well he's right in the sense that their bodies are connected to a single tree, so to speak. But the leaves... seriously it's a crazy metaphor in that it actually makes sense... well, the leaves are both interrelated, and not. When anyone of them in their original tree form falls asleep they scatter across time and space, and that's how they leave those echoes everywhere they've been. But when they wake up, they're back to being a tree. Now if, as most of them do, if they return to somewhere they've already been, they basically step into the same self! Those fragments never disappear after the main body awakens; they just keep on existing in those timelines until they die there. That's part of their curse, they live everywhere but they also die everywhere and when the main tree dies, they're stuck, forever living, forever dying. Sad isn't it? That's why we've got to go get Minseok and save him from that fate." 

They had come to a back door way that Lu Han recognized as a the back entrance to his townhome. He fiddled in his pockets for a key, but the other Lu Han laughed. "You forgot your key the first time. Here, I remembered it this time, so be sure to thank yourself." He winked. Lu Han balked. 

"We're not going to find the original Lu Han who lived here at this time, right?" he just had to ask. 

The other one laughed. "At least now you're thinking right. But nah, pretty sure he's out of town this week. Doesn't mean we don't need to keep a watch out for him though. See, the difference between us and the Kim family... whenever we travel using Minseok's device, we don't meet and reincorporate into the previously existing self. We just keep leaving more and more copies in the same damn place. Can get a little crowded, if you know what I mean." 

They stepped inside, Lu Han wondering at this place he hadn't visited in ten years. It was dark, familiar, homey. 

"Wait a sec," he stopped and asked his other self. "What about Minseok's device? Aren't I... we... here to make him forget about making it?"

The other Lu Han grinned in a matter Lu Han recognized well enough from his younger days of adventure and debauchery. "Well, not exactly."

"So... we're not supposed to woo him?" The thought disappointed him.

Until the other said, "Oh... we still need to woo him. And Lu Han, my favorite self, the wooing part is... awesome!