A few minutes after parting with Yeri, Sooyoung flew above the remnants of Bristol University and Brunswick. As she crossed over one of the many intersecting avenues that branched from Main, she caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye. The terrible, pulsating aberration that was Bridge Tower occupied a fair bit of her attention, so it took her a moment to pick up on it. Reluctantly, she looked away from the evil spectacle, down and to the left of her. What she saw made her furrow her brow. A shorter woman was standing at the top of a parking deck, waving frantically at Sooyoung. She didn’t seem like she was in any immediate danger; there were no Sirdar there. Aside from a few leftover parked cars, she was totally alone.

Sooyoung adjusted her flight and swept toward the girl, noting with some curiosity that the girl was wrapped up in a laced hoodie and a cloth face mask. Maybe she’d bundled up from the sudden cold that had come before? Slung across the girl’s back was a crossbow, a large one like the kind Sooyoung had seen in zombie movies. Given what the world had come to these days, it didn’t look exactly out of place.

“Is everything okay?” Sooyoung asked as she landed in front of the girl.

A pair of striking, wide brown eyes met her own, and she felt a sudden movement inside her head, almost as if her brain was trying to work out details, to bring forth a buried, dusty memory from its deepest trenches. By a reflex that didn’t belong to her, Sooyoung tensed, excitement fluttering in her gut like a million butterflies.

The girl pulled her hood back, revealing a short crop of shiny brown hair. She yanked her mask down, showing a thumb-sized, delicate nose above a chin that came to a soft point. As if it existed solely to punctuate her smooth, strongly feminine jawline.

Sooyoung felt her own eyes widening, jaw dropping against her will. The urge to remember poked itself against her skull, tapping at her, insisting that she address recollections that she didn’t have.

“Y-Yeri?”

The girl - Yeri, apparently - smiled. Cheeks bunching up with sculpted dimples, slightly lopsided lips favoring the right side, showing two rows of tiny square teeth.

Without warning, the brown-haired Yeri ran forward, wrapped her arms around Sooyoung’s shoulders, and hugged her. For part of a second, Sooyoung was taken by surprise, but her shock was stifled by a massive, undeniable tsunami of realization. From this other Yeri came a wave of connection, running from the points where their bodies met and sparking an entire lifetime of existence within Sooyoung’s mind. She gasped.

The flash of a knife in the moonlight. A house in the woods. A spot of blood on a white shirt. A sandy beach, with slow tides and endless sand. A column of light hurtling into the sky. The abyss of eternity.

From within her unraveled the folded, hidden tapestry of a second life. The story of that second life - a second life filled with strife and hurt, with death and traumas so severe that it led to mental desolation - scrolled through her, as if she was made to read all of the world’s knowledge within the span of a second. For a terrifying, fleeting moment, she feared that her brain couldn’t process this information quickly enough, and that it would overwhelm her, driving her into insanity, torn between two personalities. It seemed neverending, that tapestry, with its images of blood and romance and magic.

Around her body, Sooyoung’s Vis flared up, bathing her and Yeri in golden light.  The power worked its way through Sooyoung’s soul and mind. It took the garbled, foreign language scrawled on her mind’s tapestry and translated it into words she could understand.

The memories, the sensations, the experiences all became a part of her. Rather than shoving two people within a single body, she instead existed as a person who had lived several lives. A doorway to the past had been opened. Through it she could walk the halls of time, explore the past in the eyes of one who belonged there, observe the intricate workings of the places above the multiverse.

Sooyoung opened her eyes, took the brunette in her arms, looked down at her smiling, tear-stained face.

“Do you remember?”

“I do,” Sooyoung whispered. Two separate lives existed within her like the two sides of a coin.

Was this how Seulgi had felt with Stardust? Probably not, Sooyoung decided. The additional life within her wasn’t a Representation of something. It was a tangible, formerly living person. Not just a piece of sentient personality.

“Oh God, Yerimmie, I remember everything.” Sooyoung said, still awestruck.

Yerimmie looked as though she were about to lean in, but twitched and she stopped herself. Sooyoung felt a low whine drawing up in , weirdly childlike. It felt foreign but somehow appropriate. 

Yerimmie smiled, ran a finger along the length of Sooyoung’s jaw. Her touch was reverent and probing, as if making sure that what she was seeing before her was real. Neither of Sooyoung’s personalities could blame her for that.

“I want to kiss you, Sooyoungie. I really do. But you’re not mine to kiss anymore.”

The pain in her voice made Sooyoung’s tears come faster. Yerimmie wiped them away with her thumbs.

“How? Why? Wh-what…”

“You have a lot of questions, I know,” Yerimmie said, shifting her hands down to Sooyoung’s arms, rubbing and massaging them. “You didn’t expect to come back from the dead again, did you?”

Sooyoung shook her head.

“Neither did I. But I had hope. If you could do it once, for whatever reason, that had to mean you were special, right? That you could do it again,” Yerimmie’s smile widened even further. “When you gave me your life force, it created a bond between us. It let me feel where you were, regardless of your location in the multiverse. It wasn’t very precise, but it was always there. It took me a few years to realize what it was, and by then I had developed my powers to the point where I was confident enough to try and find you. It’s been a long journey, but… , Sooyoungie, it was totally worth it just to feel you in my arms again.”

Sooyoung found Yerimmie’s cursing to be hilarious, and couldn’t stop herself from laughing. Even through the tears.

“Sorry, I know I’ve got a bit of a potty mouth…” Yerimmie said with a grin, “I’ve been meaning to work on it, but the multiverse isn’t exactly a very kind place. Sometimes you have to throw a swear in there.”

Sooyoung and Yerimmie remained holding one another. On one hand, Sooyoung’s guilt at holding another woman - even another Yeri - was impossible to shake. On the other, this felt like where she truly belonged. In Yerimmie’s arms, protected by her crossbow-wielding, -kicking warrior.

“You’ve got some bad guys to fight, I see,” Yerimmie said, nodding toward Bridge Tower. “Let me guess… an eldritch horror from before time?”

Sooyoung grinned. “I think I would agree, if I knew what eldritch meant.”

“Generally, it means ty and murderous,” Yerimmie said, staring at Eodum’s raging cloud, “It reminds me of the basement demon I fought.”

Sooyoung’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “Well, I guess it’s my turn. I’ll try my best not to get stabbed in the gut.”

Yerimmie chuckled, motioned like she was going for a kiss again, then visibly stopped herself.

“I have a feeling you’re much better prepared than I was when I fought my demon,” Yerimmie said. “Back then, I was just a depressed kid with a crossbow. You… you’re almost a goddess. The main reason I was even able to locate you is the intensity of the power you hold. It pulses off of you like waves. I could feel it all the way from California.”

Sooyoung raised her eyebrows. “You were in California?”

“Yeah,” Yerimmie said, “Me and a couple of friends helped protect a neighborhood in Diamond Bar.”

In Sooyoung’s excitement, the words spilled from her like water from a faucet. “Wait. Did you meet a tall guy named Bogum there? He’s kinda goofy looking, but handsome in an effeminate way, and-”

Yerim placed a calming hand on the neck of Sooyoung’s neck, cutting her off in the kindest manner possible. “I did. He was Seulgi Stardust’s brother.”

Sooyoung nodded.

“Seulgi Stardust…” Yerim said contemplatively. “She seems really interesting. Was that her who destroyed the eternal night?”

Sooyoung felt grief rising in her and shoved it down. “Yeah. It was her. She gave her life to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Yerimmie said earnestly, giving the taller girl a squeeze, “I know that story all too well.” 

A quick silence came over them as they processed the events that had brought them here. Despite its vastness, its unfathomable depths, the silence was easy and comforting. The two women served as islands of calm, oases of stability linked by a solid, unbreakable bridge forged by love.

“I won’t remember all this stuff forever, will I?” Sooyoung asked after a time. It was less of a question, more of a statement.

A blank, composed expression came to Yerimmie’s face. “You don’t have to, no. The reaction of our Essences touching can be reversed. Think of it like hiding something in a safe. In this example, your brain is the safe.” Yerimmie gave a half-smile, trying - and failing - to keep her composure at the thought of such a ridiculous image.

Sooyoung giggled as well, and together they slipped smoothly into amicable, full laughter. Under a post-apocalyptic sky, rent so harshly that space itself gaped, those two sisters fell into dual fits of merriment. The avatar of Darkness remained waiting for Sooyoung, yet she laughed anyway, until her abdomen was sore and her eyes were blurry with tears.

“So,” Yerimmie continued finally, wiping her eyes. “I can take everything that was stored in that safe and lock it back away. I can’t change the fact that it’s there, and you’ll always have some awareness of it, but you won’t be able to do anything unless I personally unlock it again. Or, of course, someone else who knows multiversal manipulation as well as me.”

“I think it would be for the best if you locked it away again after,” Sooyoung said. “The burden of having lived two lives was almost too much for me. If I didn’t have my Vis to help me process it, I might’ve gone crazy.”

Yerimmie paled, mouth turning downward into a look of such horror that Sooyoung felt her heart sway. She so badly wanted to kiss that frown away forever.

    “I… I had no idea,” the brunette said, pupils darting back and forth as if she were reading through an invisible book, searching for information. “I didn’t even take that into account. Jesus ing Chirst, Sooyoungie, I’m sorry, I-”

    It was Sooyoung’s turn to shush Yerimmie with a caress to the side of the neck. “It’s fine. It turned out okay. See? I’m fine. Totally sane... Well, by most definitions, I guess.”

    The short-haired girl gave a stiff, terse nod, appearing not to have noticed Sooyoung’s attempt at humor.

    Sooyoung looked Yerimmie over, noting the differences between her and this universe’s version of her. Aside from hair length and color, Yerimmie had a build that was closer to muscular than slim, shoulders squared out and thighs defined against the fabric of her pants. She had imperfections that a normal young woman would have, things that this universe’s Yeri didn’t; a little bit of acne, some hyperpigmentation, a few loose strands of hair sticking up and wavering in the wind. None of these were blemishes in Sooyoung’s eyes. In fact, they seemed to make Yerimmie all the more beautiful... as cliche as that sounded.

    With a surreal, vague curiosity, Sooyoung allowed her hand to travel to the hem of Yerimmie’s hoodie. The younger girl reacted by resting her forehead against the top of Sooyoung’s chest, remaining there while her clothes were lifted, revealing a swath of abdomen and a glimmer of hip bone. The scar was less than three inches across, running parallel to her navel, a slight jagged quality to it that was reminiscent of Eodum’s lightning.

    “You still have it…” Sooyoung whispered, running a finger slowly across the length of the scar. It was alternatingly bumpy and smooth. “I thought it would have healed completely.”

    Yerimmie shrugged and let out a long, slow exhale. Sooyoung could feel the heat of that breath as it splashed against her collarbone. “Me too. But it’s still there. I like it, you know. It reminds me of you. In a good way.”

    They held each other for a bit longer. The unforgiving, claustrophobia-inducing curtain of time was descending on them, threatening to pop their bubble of solitude.

    “Sorry that I kinda came out of nowhere,” Yerimmie said, straightening but staying in Sooyoung’s arms, “I didn’t mean to interrupt the of your story.”

    Sooyoung glanced at Bridge Tower, filled with trepidation.

    “You’re going to be okay. You can do this.”

    “I don’t even know what to do,” Sooyoung admitted, staring at the billowing pillar of smoke, “How am I supposed to fight that?”

    “It’s funny. I had the same thought when I walked into the basement of your house,” Yerimmie said. “All alone, with a crossbow that I’d only learned to use a week ago, without even the most basic knowledge of how to use the powers that I’d been given. , I didn’t even know I had them. None of the other girls knew what to expect down there. I had help along the way, from people that shouldn’t have been there to begin with. The multiverse was watching out for me, in its own erted, twisted way.”

    She gave Sooyoung a squeeze before walking to the edge of the rooftop. She then reached into one of many pockets at her belt and fished out a necklace. Its chain was made of gold, with a fingernail-sized, multifaceted ruby as its sole ornament. “In this case, I think that maybe I’m your ‘help along the way’.”

    Sooyoung joined Yerimmie by her side and took her hand. The familiarity of that small, secure grip was woefully nostalgic. With her free hand, Yerimmie swept the necklace over Sooyoung’s head, tucked the pendant deep into her shirt, uncaring of the intimacy of such a touch.

    “This is a warding necklace that my version of Joohyun gave me. I’ve been researching it for awhile now, but the spell on it is complicated. It might not help, but it certainly won’t hurt you.”

    Sooyoung the chain, continuing to stand beside Yerimmie, making her best efforts not to take the shorter girl in her arms again. “How’s everyone doing in your world?”

    Yerimmie took on a far-off, contemplative look. “Well, Joohyun and Seulgi are two of the people I’ve been trying to track down, besides you. I haven’t had much luck finding them, but I know where they’re going. They leave a certain… trail through the multiverse that’s very easy to track.”

    By her demeanor, it was clear Yerimmie wasn’t too keen on that particular subject. Sooyoung was interested, but she decided to drop the topic of the two witches.

    “What about your Seungwan? Are you looking for her, too?”

    Yerimmie frowned in a peculiar way, then held up her left hand. On her fourth finger was a small band of mixed silver and gold.

    “Y-you’re married?” Sooyoung said in shock.

    “Last time I visited my world, we made it official,” the brunette said, “No ceremony, of course.”

    “I don’t know whether to cry or congratulate you,” Sooyoung said, running a hand through her own hair. “I guess I can’t be mad, right? I have my own Yeri here.”

    Yerimmie huffed. “It’s a Yerim sale. Buy one get one free, like a cheap doll. Or a pair of shoes.”

    There came a brief hesitation before the two women shared another protracted, hearty laugh. Neither of Sooyoung’s personalities would have found that joke overly funny, but coming from Yerimmie, it had an extra spice of humor that they were unable to resist.

    When their fit had retracted into subdued giggles, Sooyoung felt a powerful melancholy come over her. She tapped into the extra part of her personality and allowed its emotions to become predominant within her.

    “Yerimmie, it was wonderful to see you again,” Sooyoung said gently, turning to the brunette, “But I do think it’s time to go now. My world needs me.”

    Yerimmie paused, staring down at her feet, the ghost of her smile fading away from her face like rose petals caught in a chill breeze.

    “You’re right,” the brunette said, turning to Sooyoung with a steely gaze. There was a certain resilience there that Sooyoung wasn’t used to seeing in her Yerimmie’s eyes. “But one thing first.”

    Yerimmie unslung the crossbow from her back, turned to face Bridge Tower, and took aim at it. A mild pressure came to the air around them, followed by a flurry of yellow specks that drew themselves to the barrel of the weapon. The string pulled itself backward as a long bolt of yellow material formed. Sooyoung knew right away that it wasn’t Vis; it was too solid, and gave off no intrinsic light from within. Had she not seen the bolt come to life before her, she might have believed it to be made of painted iron or plastic.

    The brunette brushed a lock of hair from her face, then aimed down the foresight of the weapon. Her finger lay patiently to the side of the trigger as she searched for her mark. Bridge Tower was still two miles away - an impossible shot normally - but it only took her a handful of seconds to prepare. Before she made the shot, her entire body became a statue, stilled by the stony calm of preparation.

    Yerimmie pulled the trigger, and the bolt darted forward. It trailed through the air with a doubling effect, spectral afterimages of the projectile appearing several yards behind it as it went. Sooyoung noticed that Yerimmie hadn’t relaxed after taking the shot; she kept that same relaxed immobility. The only part of her body that moved were her pupils as they followed the bolt’s path.

    The time from preparation to impact was in all about twenty seconds. Sooyoung wasn’t able to track the bolt after a certain point, but the sensation of it colliding with what was left of Eodum’s eternal night rocked the Earth. A blast of hot wind washed across her, sending her hair flying backward, making her shield her eyes with her arm. From the Astral Plane there was a scream of pain, and Eodum’s influence began to retreat even further, as if shying away from the point where the bolt had made contact with him. Rather than covering half of the building, he retreated to about a quarter of the way up. The smoke was more potent in those areas, but it had lost much of its abyssal luster, crimson lightning reduced to a mild field of intermittent, weak sparks.

    “What did that do?” Sooyoung asked when the gale had passed. Yerimmie hadn’t flinched in the wake of the shot, and instead took the opportunity to sling her crossbow back over her shoulder.

    “Nothing to Eodum himself, aside from a little pain,” Yerimmie said, “I did something similar to what Stardust did. Kinda building on what she did. Bringing his guard down, decreasing his influence, making him weaker. I’m not sure what you’ll face when you go in there, but that should have made it easier.”

    “Thank you,” Sooyoung said, brushing against the brunette’s hand, mostly just an excuse to touch her again.

    Without warning, Yerimmie shrugged Sooyoung’s hand away, spun, and threw herself into the taller girl’s arms. Wordlessly, they stood together, a fantasy of twins, lovers taken from one another by cruel chronology and the pit of multiversal mortality. Destined to revolve around separate stars, with irregular orbits that overlapped once a century, brief passings in the void of creation that brought great ecstasy at the cost of near-destruction.

    “Oh God, it was so good to see you again,” Yerimmie croaked, snuggling into Sooyoung. “I love you.”

    “I love you, too, Yerimmie,” Sooyoung whispered. “I know you said that I’m not yours to kiss anymore, and I know you aren’t mine either, but I don’t think my Yeri or your Seungwan would mind if-”

    Sooyoung’s words were stifled by a pair of lips. Tiny, sweet, and familiarly tinged by copper. They were transient, gracing her with barely a second of contact, but the moment imprinted upon her. A sweep of numbness began to tingle across her skin, making her face and head feel simultaneously hot and cold, as if her muscles were just awakening after being immobile for a period. The sensation seeped into her consciousness, and she felt a fleeting despair as she realized what was happening. The piece of her that had been activated by Yerimmie was being sealed away again, made dormant, hidden away in the unreachable corners of her mind.

    “D-don’t go, Yerimmie,” Sooyoung whined, wanting to yell, but finding herself unable to do so. “Don’t leave me.”

    “Shhhh, Sooyoungie,” a distant voice whispered. “I promise that I’ll see you again. I can’t promise that it’ll be soon, but we’ll meet again. Like a good friend of mine says, this isn’t goodbye. It’s just ‘see you later’.”

    Those words brought Sooyoung the ultimate comfort, immediately eliminating all remnants of negativity she felt. Though she was crying, she couldn’t help but smile.

    “Then until next time, my love,” Sooyoungie said, final words hugging the empty air, echoing across the multiverse, a timeless, permanent declaration. 

    The names had been changed, the door had been shut, and the casket was buried once more.

Sooyoung blinked, found herself standing alone atop an empty parking deck roof. She frowned, squinting as a ray of sunlight fell directly upon her.

Why did I stop here? Was there... someone flagging me down, or something? Someone who needed help?

Well, whoever they were, they were gone now. Sooyoung gathered her Vis, rose into the sky, and resumed her flight toward Bridge Tower.

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A little bit of sentimental fan service for people who've read "Peek-a-boo".

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