“Chaeyeon!” She screamed as a young man jumped from the shadows.

“Hahaha! I can’t believe Mister Tough Guy would...” Yena’s voiced trailed off as his expression morphed into one of surprise and confusion.

“C-Chaeyeon?” he asked tremulously.

“Y-yes?” Chaeyeon stuttered, now covering her body with her arms. Yena started screaming, making Chaeyeon jump out of the water. Seeing the man who was clearly a woman come near, Yena walked backwards, screaming even more.

“Yena. Yena. Yena!” Chaeyeon finally got close enough to slap his head, effectively shutting him up.

“You... you are...”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Chaeyeon pleaded, knowing what she could expect if everyone else found out.

“A woman. You are a woman,” Yena completed his sentence.

“You can’t tell anybody. Do you know what they’ll do to me?” Chaeyeon pleaded again. Yena seemed to be trying to get himself together, but in the meantime, he asked awkwardly, “Uhm, could you please put on some...?”

“Ah, yes.” Chaeyeon’s face burned bright as she put her clothes on. It didn’t matter anymore if she was still wet. When she turned to look at Yena, he was now covering his eyes with his hands.

“You can look now.” At the prompt, Yena took his hands away from his face.

The silence was awkward and pained. Chaeyeon wanted to plead with Yena again, else she would have to run away, but Yena seemed to still be processing it.

“So,” Yena started after a long time. “Does this mean you are now Miss Tough Girl...?” At Yena’s awkward (and terribly unfunny) joke, Chaeyeon laughed, feeling relief course through every limb in her body. She hadn’t even noticed how winded up she was. Yena also laughed, each second passing less awkwardly, until he sounded like his joking self.

“I get it, Chaeyeon. I really do,” he said more soberly when their laughter had died out.

“I don’t want you to treat me differently. I mean it,” Chaeyeon said, her voice now having gained more confidence.

“Nah, after tonight, I’ll ever forget this even happened,” Yena assured her, even though he still seemed somehow lost.

True to form, next morning, when Chaeyeon had finally arrived where everyone lay (as he had to asleep far from everyone, just in case), Yena was already awake, eating some fruit. He greeted him enthusiastically, offering him some fruit. The younger man declined, wanting to wait for everyone to wake up. It seemed impolite to grab some food without permission.

They talked a bit more, and when it was time to part, Yena cheered Chaeyeon on, telling him with gestures that his secret was safe, and they would see each other in the capital. Chaeyeon only waved, feeling well-rested, physically and mentally.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have a friend in this era.

--

--

Having returned to Master Shinyu, things had considerably slowed down. Thinking he would immediately get onto the next delivery, he was, instead, laid off for the next couple of days. He hadn’t seen Daehwi after they finished their delivery, so he was completely alone.

Not everything was lost, though. Many men were on deliveries of their own, so, at nighttime, many mats were empty, which gave Chaeyeon a bigger sense of liberty and security. There would be less danger for him. As a plus, he was able to spend his monthly cycle in a safe place, and it was a relief to not have to deal with the pain and blood while traveling, luxury he knew he wouldn’t always enjoy.

There was one downside to it.

Having not much to do, gave him a lot of time to think, which completely left him vulnerable to the accusations his own conscience threw at him.

Images of the fate of his sisters agitated him. He tried convincing himself that nothing he imagined would happen to them, but he knew quite as well that, without him, there was no one to take care of them, as his father had fled the country as soon as he could, thinking naively that the men wouldn’t go after his remaining family.

Chaeyeon had never told his dad about his involvement with the loan sharks, as he already feared that one day he would get tired of sending them money, and would disappear from their lives forever.

He also hid that from his sisters, not wanting to scare them nor guilt them into also trying to help.

However, if she was not there, would they come back? Would Chaeryeong and Chaemin leave this world to go find mom? Or would Chaeryeong be offered the same thing Chaeyeon was offered when he was merely seventeen? He found out he disliked any of those alternatives.

Other thougths were of guilt for stabbing that man’s ankle. He had had to defend himself before, and he had never felt anything else but justification at his actions. After all, what those people were trying to do to him was way worse that him just punching them. Plus, that man had tried robbing them first, then had tried to kill them. It was completely justifiable to defend himself and his companion.

But no matter how much he told himself this, he still felt guilt at the thought of that man’s howls of pain, the feeling of the knife going through his flesh.

He got tired of those thoughts circling his head, so he decided to pay a visit to the market to find the restaurant owner. He hoped the man did come to like him enough to entertain him with a job or two.

To Chaeyeon’s relief, he did have some sort of affection for him, as he was greeted warmly. After hearing Chaeyeon’s request and an assurance of his cooking prowess, the man had let him work on his restaurant with the reward of food and a few coins.

This would prove to be a break from his mind’s accusations, and subsequent nightmares. Despite usually having dream-less sleep, since the day he started working with the restaurant owner, he started having nightmares, particularly involving that monster that had thrown him in this predicament. He would often taunt him, laugh in his face, and say cryptic things that he would forget as soon as he woke up, and when he woke up, he would get that horrible feeling of his insides being ripped into two.

Was this all a sign? Were those dreams meant to direct him to solve the puzzle and get home? Or was that creature just mocking him?

He tried not to think about it, but he knew, deep down, that it was starting to wear him thin.

Yena found him like this when he returned from his own delivery.

“You look half-dead, man,” Yena pointed out as he ate some gruel Chaeyeon had cooked for him.

“Thanks, I hadn’t really noticed,” Chaeyeon answered listlessly, not feeling like hearing Yena talk.

“I’m serious,” Yena said, biting on a bun Chaeyeon had just brought him. “What I think you need is a change in scenery,” he advised, humming in pleasure as he chewed the bun.

“And how would I get that change in scenery? Doing another delivery?”

“Not just any delivery, Chaeyeon-ah,” the older man answered, patting Chaeyeon’s shoulder. “One night, when I was sleeping, some of the top delivery dogs were talking between each other, probably thinking we weren’t able to hear them because we were asleep, and I think the others were, but I was awake because I needed to relieve my bladder but couldn’t let them know that I wasn’t asleep.” Yena gave another bite to the bun.

“Not to interrupt your story, but your point is?”

“Yeah, was just getting to that,” he answered before tilting the bowl to drink some of the gruel. “Ah, that’s good. Anyways, they thought we were all asleep, and they were talking about this great delivery that couldn’t be rivaled to any deliveries made. Supposedly, there is this special shipment that has been brought straight from the Tang Empire, and has to be delivered to Japan.”

“And?”

“And we could try to get them to include us in that delivery!” Yena finished, obviously enthused about the prospect. “Could you imagine, meeting new lands AND being part of a thing bigger than ourselves?”

“And how would we do that?” Chaeyeon asked skeptically. “If those ‘top delivery dogs’ were talking about this when they thought you were are asleep, then it means that we weren’t going to be included in the first place. Moreover, even if we tried to be included, would we even be able to take care of ourselves? Wouldn’t we risk our lives even more?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Chaeyeon-ah! If we are only meant to be peasants in this life, why not be well-traveled peasants!”

“I don’t like it,” Chaeyeon remarked. It was impossible for him to even think about leaving the country, when his main mission was to return to his time. What would happen if, instead of trying to find a way home, he ended up embroiled in other things that weren’t his business?

“You seriously aren’t any fun,” Yena remarked, deflated. It made the younger man feel bad, but he had things more important right now than embarking in a travesty. Still, Yena continued pouting, even as he ate, which destroyed Chaeyeon’s defenses in no time. He sighed.

“Do you want some bibimbap?”

“Yes, please.” Yena grinned with a mouth full of bread.

--

Walking towards the stable, Yena was still talking about his journey, but Chaeyeon was distracted, as a feeling had settled in him as soon as they had left the restaurant. It was the same feeling he got whenever he woke up from a nightmare. Like being ripped into two.

“Hey, are you even listening?”

“Yes, I...” Chaeyeon almost swallowed his tongue when he saw, instead of his friend, the monster. His beady eyes managed to freeze her into place. His smile widened when he saw the horror growing in her face.

“How rude, your friend was so excited about his journey and you weren’t even listening. How about more selflessness, Chaeyeon?” However, the girl couldn’t even speak, the fear had clamped shut and was, at the moment, choking her. Ah, no, that was that monster’s hand. On .

“You won’t answer? That’s fine, I get that you are a shy girl.” The man’s laughter was like a ice sliding through her back. “Anyways, I feel quite saddened because you haven’t been listening, Chaeyeon. You haven’t been listening at all. I come to you every night, hoping to catch your attention, but you just ignore me, just like you are doing now, just like you have been doing for the past two years.”

“And the worst thing is, I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help you get back to your sisters. Oh, don’t worry,” he added with a honeyed voice at the sight of Chaeyeon’s panic. “Nothing has happened to them. In fact, nothing will happen to them. I’m not a monster, as you so kindly have been calling me. I know your sisters have nothing to do with this. When you return back to your time, you will return exactly to the time you left, to the last place you were. They won’t even miss you. They won’t even know you left.”

“I’m running out of time, so I’ll just say this last thing. It would be in your best interest to get that ‘special shipment’. I won’t give you any more hints because that would take away the fun! So, I hope we’ll see each other again soon,” he said, smiling, and started applying more pressure on , effectively depriving her of oxygen.

Chaeyeon tried clawing on the man’s hands, hoping she wouldn’t die now, but he had an iron-grip, and she was losing strength and consciousness quickly. Just as she was preparing herself to die, she felt she was being shaken wildly.

--

“Chaeyeon! Chaeyeon!”

He finally opened his eyes, the first thing he saw being a panicked Yena, who was still shaking him.

“What? What happened?” he asked groggily, feeling his throat burn.

“Are you okay? Should I try to call for a doctor?”

“I am okay,” Chaeyeon replied, trying to shake himself out of sleep. His body felt like lead, and it seemed like a gigantic task to even try to sit down, but he had to do it.

“You are not. Your forehead is burning and you are sweating like crazy!”

“I’ll be okay, just give me a moment.” Somehow, Chaeyeon knew he would be fine and the pain and feebleness would go away. He didn’t know how he knew it, but it was a certainty in his mind. Not for the first time, he thought, ‘What did that monster do to me?’

Yena seemed reluctant to listen to the younger man’s reassurances, but did it, anyways, as he wanted to be next to Chaeyeon if something worse happened to him.

Little by little, his strength returned, making him open his eyes more widely. Yena could sense the change in him, and beamed when Chaeyeon spoke.

“What were you saying about that grand delivery?”

--

--

Hello! Me again. I've finally uploaded a new chapter. Where you expecting Yena's reaction or did you think Yena was going to react badly? I had actually thought about making Yena a woman at first, but decided that it would serve better for the plot to only have one cross-dressing girl. So, in this one, Yena is a man.

Thank you so much for reading and commenting. Hopefully I'll upload the next chapter sooner.