The young man sighed as he adjusted himself in his seat. He examined the room he occupied. Everything was white. The bed was white; the walls were white; the ceiling and floor were white; the machinery was white as well. The smell of anesthetics infiltrated his nose. A constant beeping noise rang throughout the room.

Beep

Beep

Beep

The young man frowned, irritated by the beeping of the heart monitor.

God, he hated hospitals with a vengeance.

His eyes fell upon the old woman who occupied the hospital bed in front of him. The woman’s breathing was small and labored. She clenched and unclenched her bed sheets. Various wires and other medical supplies adorned her body. Some were injected into her pale skin while others were just taped on, monitoring her heart beats.

The young man fidgeted in his chair. His legs were restless. He was bored. He had been sitting in this same chair, in this same room, in this same building for the past four hours. The young man wasn’t a happy camper.

“Woohyun…” a frail voice brought said man out of his irritated mood. The young man, now known as Woohyun, quickly stood up and rushed over to the bed. He sat on the edge, grabbing on to the old woman’s bony hands.

“I’m here, Mom,” he rubbed smoothing circles in to her hands, comforting her, letting her know that he has been by her side for a long time.

“You’re here,” his mother opened her eyes, staring into space. “Why are you here?”

Woohyun rolled his eyes. He and his mother have never been on good terms. “I got a call earlier. They said you collapsed at home. They also… said that–”

“That I don’t have much time left. I know.” They were silent for a while. Both of them were lost in their own thoughts.

“I thought you were doing good…” Woohyun whispered. Although their relationship was rocky, he still loved his mother just like how any man should love the person who gave birth to them.

“We aren’t immortal, Woohyun. No one can live forever. The doctor told us a long time ago that I wouldn’t have–” A cough erupted from her. She was talking too much. Her lungs wouldn’t allow her to speak for so long.

She cleared after her coughing fit. She continued, “I remembered he said, ‘Bae Suji! You only have two years left… Five, if you’re lucky!’” She flailed her arms around, poorly imitating the doctor who told her how long she had to live.

She sounded nothing like him.

“Mom, calm down before you rupture an artery or something,” Suji lowered her arms, growing quiet.

Woohyun stayed in his spot on the bed next to her for a while, enjoying the silence between the two. He took this chance to examine his mother one last time before he lost her forever.

She was extremely pale. Deathly pale… She lost a lot of weight after she grew ill. Her bones protruded everywhere, forcing her skin to stretch. Her cheeks slightly caved in, making her cheek bones look sharp and prominent. But not in a good way.

“Woohyun, let me tell you a little story.”

“Mom,” Woohyun groaned. If there was one thing he hated most in the world, it was his mother’s stories of her past, her childhood. They never made sense, and he was pretty sure that nothing like the stories she told actually happened to her.

Come on, wars, a corrupted government killing their own people, experimenting on their own people, resistance groups trying to win their country back, super human soldiers and armies, time traveling… Like any of that stuff was believable, especially the last one, right?

Time travel! Woohyun mentally scoffed at the thought.

His mother is about eighty years old–or at least Woohyun thinks she is (she's actually fifty)–and if she was telling the truth about some big old war that happened when she was kid, then wouldn’t his generation still be recovering from it?

Last time Woohyun checked, a war in his country hasn’t taken place for over four centuries.

“You know how I was part of the resistance, right?” His mother began. Apparently, Suji was a part of some resistance group in her time. Apparently, she did a lot of reconnaissance work.

“Mom, can we not do this? We don’t have much–” The glare Suji gave him. If looks could kill…

“The leader of my group,” she sighed. “He was so handsome. I never loved another man like I did him. I knew him since I was a kid. He was always there for me, watching out for me, protecting me. I always dreamed that once we saved the country, we would get married and have many kids,” Suji sighed again, closing her eyes.

“What happened to this guy?” Woohyun decided to play along and listen to her story one last time.

“I don’t really know. The government found our hideout one evening, and they killed a lot of our men. Our leader, he got hurt badly. You see, one of our guys was actually a mole. He had been working for our enemies the entire time. It made sense why they always seemed to be one step ahead of us whenever we attempted to infiltrate their headquarters.

“During this attack, they took several of us. They captured our people and threw them into vans, taking them back to their labs to experiment on,” she pulled her hand out of Woohyun’s grip and placed it over her heart. “I was one of them.”

“What did they do to you?” Woohyun was fully into her story now. She always talked about her missions, and the things she came across in her life. But she never actually talked about her life in the group, and why she wasn’t in it anymore.

“Just like what they did to several innocent people out there, they experimented on me. They injected many drugs and liquids into my system. I think they were trying to create some sort of super human. Something they could use against their enemies.

“I don’t know how long I was cooped up in there. For a long time I’m sure… I remember, one day, they switched their tactics. They stopped giving me drugs and started putting me through these tests of some sort. They were trying to perfect time traveling.”

Woohyun rolled his eyes at the word. That was one subject his mother constantly mentioned in her stories.

“You know how I’ve been telling you how time travel was possible in my time? We were able to go back a few minutes or seconds, but not actual decades or centuries. Not over eight hundred years in the past or future,” Suji coughed. All this talking was starting to gravely affect her. If this continued, she wouldn’t last for another hour. “Something went wrong with the test. There was an earthquake. It destroyed half of the building. The cracks formed everywhere, and below within those cracks some sort wormhole was created. I fell into the hole, and I woke up here in this time. Fifty eight hundred years into the past.”

“Time travel,” Woohyun concluded. Suji nodded.

“I never saw him again… I did everything in my power to figure out a way to get back home, but nothing ever worked. You know, I told him how I felt before...”

“What did he say?”

“…he was in love with someone…”

“What then?”

“I gave up trying to find a way back home. I eventually met your father and then had you and your brother. And now we’re here,” Suji gestured to the room they were in.

Woohyun sighed, standing up. He walked over to the nearby window. He leaned against the window sill, gazing into the outside world.

“He was so handsome,” Suji repeated. “My leader, my savior…” Woohyun tuned her out as Suji continued her ranting.

“My love, how I miss you...”

Her voice lowered.

“Sunggyu…” 

The heart monitor flat lined.