Wendy feels her heart on as she closes her eyes. She needs to look at the calendar but she just can't…she couldn't handle another disappointing result, it would be too much. Slowly, Wendy flutters her eyes open and let's out a broken whimper

August 1, 2025

She waits, just a few seconds

The cars buzz on the outside, running down the streets and they sound their loud horns. Wendy feels her office is way colder now even when she turned off the air conditioner before the trip. All is the same: the window overlooking the city, the digital clock blinking slowly, the small white Maltese dog in the corner lying on top of a dirty looking pillow, the calendar signaling August 1 of the year 2025

Then, the radio in her office blares white noise before a muffled voice speaks quickly

“There's been a huge fire in the central office of town! We recommend to everyone going around that zone to stop what you're doing and get back home safely!”

Wendy closes her eyes, trying to hold back the tears but she's not strong enough and a pair of them roll down her cheeks and lands on top of the small blue watch in her wrist. She opens her eyes again, looking at the tired Maltese with a lump in

“I'm sorry, Haetnim... I couldn't bring her back”

“Please, let's give a huge round of applause to Kang Seulgi!”

As Seulgi stands in the middle of the stage, of this place where she belongs as much as she belongs everywhere, she feels sweat dripping down her face and neck. She bows and people clap and cheer like no one else. The lights won't let her see but she knows there's an empty spot in the front row and Seulgi suddenly feels so tired, so damn exhausted of being a fool and dream…

She storms to the venue's backstage as soon as the show ends. Tired, dragging her feet and with a lump in . Five years, they're about to get married next week and she still won't act like a proper girlfriend…

Why?

“Nice job back there, unnie!” Yeri, the blonde much younger girl that works as Seulgi's manager since some months ago, lifts her hand in the air and expects a high five…but her hand remains in the air and Seulgi walks past her like she isn't even there “Unnie? Are you okay?”

Seulgi sits down in front of a mirror. Her waiting room is big, maybe a little too big for her. The vanity's mirror covers almost the whole wall and the chair is small. Seulgi looks at her reflection: not much make-up, not too vivid clothes, there's not much she can show when she's a concert pianist since she was a teenager. The name Kang Seulgi is everywhere and she feels suffocated by it

“Where is she?” she whispers to Yeri, looking at her with hopeful eyes “Is she here?”

Yeri lowers her gaze and maybe that's the only thing that Seulgi needs to see as she chokes back a sob in

“I'm sorry, unnie. I swear I tried to call Irene-unnie but her phone is out of service”

Seulgi slowly nods, trying to digest every single of Yeri's words and not feel pained by the horrible feeling pooling in her chest and filling every corner of her heart. This is too much, this was the last straw and Seulgi wonders if she should cancel everything when the wedding is already ready, when the guests are just waiting the day, when her white dress is so beautifully hanging on the wall of her bedroom…

“There's someone who wants to see you, unnie” Yeri says after some quiet moments “She's a music student, the best of her class and she's excited to meet you"

The words seem low and awful as Seulgi hears them, the words hurt but she can hold back the pain. Seulgi straightens her back and gets up without saying much as she walks past Yeri one more time

“I'm sorry but I'm not in the mood for visits. Maybe some other time"

Seulgi forgets she's still wearing her concert attire as she walks out of the waiting room into the hallway that leads to the emergency exit of the venue, her eyes softly look at the beautiful wedding ring on her finger: made out of white gold, covered in rubies and sapphires, valued in much more than just a few thousands. It looks so empty to her now, so ugly and void of feelings

As she walks through the parking lot, she sees a woman wrapped in a short coat standing near an Audi, looking directly as Seulgi as she gets inside the Mercedes Benz. Her gaze is heavy, maybe as much as Irene's when she looks at her, when she thought about love and their future together as a family…

Seulgi ignores the woman, maybe she's just some fan, and she gets her car roaring down the streets on the way home. Her phone dings with a new message, Seulgi ignores it since her eyes are fixed on the road and the heavy traffic around the area. There's a warning sign near the sidewalk stating that the red in the next traffic light won't work so people need to be careful while the workers fix them

Another message to her phone, she keeps ignoring

Then, the phone rings with a call and Seulgi groans when she sees the caller ID

“Irene…”

“Seul…oh god, I didn't meant to…you know how is work”

She's tired of this excuse, she's tired of hearing the same damn thing every time and she hates that she's so in love with this woman who just breaks her heart again and again like Seulgi is made out of rubber and won't feel a single thing

“I know…” Seulgi takes a breath, a long one “And I don't wanna hear from you again”

Just as Irene is about to say something, Seulgi hangs up her phone. But when the concert pianist looks up to the road she realizes that she forgot about the red light that won't work, her car crosses an intersection and she stares directly at the headlights of another car coming her way from the left side

The car hits on her side and then, everything is black

Wendy gets to the hospital in a rush, out of breath as she crosses the front door and quickly makes her way to the reception where a nurse is calmly typing some info

“Miss! Miss! I need information about Son Sooyoung! Please, she's my sister!”

The nurse looks at her with a skeptic look but then searches something in the computer and ends up looking at Wendy one more time without changing her monotone and cold tone of voice

“She's in ER right now, the doctors are operating your sister at this moment”

Wendy feels her whole soul leave her body and she loses strength in her arms and legs, she can't stand up anymore, she can't be like this anymore when there's so much going on in her mind right now. Wendy forgets about the nurse and all the people around her as she sits in one of the chairs of the waiting room, she takes a deep breath and tries not to cry

Tears still sting her eyes as she takes a look to the blue watch in her wrist

August 1, 2019

This is the day her sister died

For the tenth time, Wendy had to experience her sister dying in August 1 and she can't make anything about it. Wendy can just sit and wait for the devastating news of the doctor, telling her that her sister is dead after five hours of useless surgery trying to restructure every bone of her body just to find out she had too many injuries and her organs were mashed into a puddle like they were made out of glass…

Wendy sits back on her chair

“Relatives of Son Sooyoung!”

And she breaks down

Wendy comes back home to a place that doesn't feel like home

Since Sooyoung died six years ago, the whole place seems to be void of any feeling, empty, cold, dead and a tiny bit of lonely. Everything is just the same as six years ago: their pictures framed on the wall, the old looking TV that doesn't work anymore, the dirty kitchen and an old Haetnim, Sooyoung beloved puppy who's no longer a puppy anymore.

The doggy sits on a corner of Wendy's office, in a pillow that needs to be replaced as soon as she can. Wendy easily loses track of time when she's here, when she's coming and going between past and future, trying to stop the death of her sister

Because Sooyoung was so, so young. Barely 23 years old and with too many dreams to count, too many things to do and so little time

Wendy looks at her blue watch on her wrist and then at the calendar: the day is August 2, 2025. She needs to make sure the dates in her watch and calendar match or then she would end up travelling to a much too different time and place. She doesn't want to alter parallel timelines, just hers…just that one where her sister died...

The older sister looks at the wall next to her door, just above Haetnim bed, she nailed a board to the wall and pasted all kind of newspapers and interesting pictures from six years ago and from all the different timelines she has visited in all those times she been trying to solve her future, anything that can help her to stop Sooyoung car accident. At this moment, too tired and confused but determined to solve everything, Wendy takes one last look to the board

And she realizes one thing she never, never saw before

“August 1, 2019: Kang Seulgi, famous concert pianist, dies in devastating car accident”

August 1, 2020: Actress and model Bae Irene commits suicide. She suffered from severe depression after the sudden death of her fiancee: Kang Seulgi

Wendy blinks, she knows there's something there

Another timeline, Wendy reads the headlines

“August 1, 2019: Car crash kills two in the center of the city”

September 20, 2019: Famous concert pianist and actress get married

Wendy finally puts all the pieces together, she runs around her office grabbing pencil and paper to make messy writings on top of it and paste it on the board. She takes a deep breath and sets the date of her watch to August 1, 2019

Kang Seulgi and Bae Irene appear in every timeline

A/N: Hi everyone! So this is a teaser for a story I've been planning for a long time. I got a horrible writer block and thought that maybe posting something can take me away from it. I hope everyone liked it and I promise to update with the full chapter soon. Thanks for reading!