-

Kai dashes in the direction of the wooden house. All he can think to tell his body is to run. He sees the tall palace, way too far away from him in the distance.

He almost stumbles and falls when he sees the old man, sunken into a rocking chair on the porch of the farm house. Kai stops, looks from the old man to the palace, and blurts, “What year is this?”

The old man gives Kai an unreadable look. “Well what do you know,” he grumbles. “Someone else asked me the same thing, sometime last week. What’s the matter with you young people? Why don’t you keep up with these things?”

Kai scrunches his nose in confusion. “Uhh… Sorry?”

The man snorts. “It’s 1985, .”

Kai nods and stumbles away as the old man continues to gripe inaudibly behind him.

His body feels battered and exhausted, but he looks at the palace in the distance and forces his feet to go faster. He and Krystal aimed for two years back from 1987. 1985. They got the year exactly right.

He gets into the urban district and weaves around people dressed in ancient-looking farmer’s clothes. He’s afraid one of them is going to point at him and start yelling. He’s afraid to make any kind of eye contact. But he has to keep his eyes moving around him, because Krystal might be somewhere.

The last image he saw of Taemin before traveling back in time flashes through his mind. Impulsively, his mind conjures up the image of Jessica’s dead body, too. His brain tries to go on, tries to get at Krystal. But Kai stops it, swearing in between ragged breaths.

The palace is still a good distance away. Kai feels like he’s been running for a lifetime. He’s panting, and he just feels like giving up and throwing himself on the ground.

He hears faint yelling down the street and imagines it’s some hunter calling to kill him. He sees a man watching him run down the street with curiosity and imagines the man alerting the hunters to come. His thoughts are jumbled and cruel. They distract him and make him bump into strangers, who eye him oddly. Kai mumbles in apology and picks up pace again.

His muscles scream at him to stop running. Kai knows it’s the toll of the endless time traveling, and traveling with dangerous, unprecedented parameters. It’s not a certainty, but Kai suspects that neither he nor Krystal can make it to 1983 without the other. Single person time travel would require two time jumps to make the leftover two years. But physical stamina would run out before.

It doesn’t really matter, Kai tells himself. Because no matter what, he’s not leaving this year without Krystal. His brain continues to taunt him with images of Taemin’s and Jessica’s deaths replaying in his head, and images of hunters with guns who can outnumber Krystal. The looming, stone walls of the palace tower over him. Almost there.

Kai can’t feel his feet as he turns down the last street. His heart sinks when he sees the familiar area next to the side wall of the palace, empty.

His footsteps drum inside his ears. But they sound too frequent. And the realization makes Kai look up ahead of him with wide, searching eyes.

He sees Krystal’s black hair flying behind her as she sprints toward the palace from the opposite direction. She sees him too. Adrenaline courses through Kai’s muscles. His head loops around for a quick second, looking for any signs of black uniformed hunters.

With a grimace, Kai’s much bigger body crashes into her. He traps Krystal between his body and his extended arms. She holds onto him and tightens their embrace, her arms locking behind Kai’s back. They pant in gasps against each other. Kai painfully forces his lungs to calm down, and breathlessly asks, “Did you see any of them? Hunters?”

Krystal’s curtain of tangled, black hair moves side to side. The relief pours into Kai’s brain and floods the previous, taunting images out of his mind.

“It’s 1985,” Kai exhales. “We can make it, Krystal.”

They release each other. Kai looks into her eyes and lets her take his hand. They move to the palace wall, it’s stone surface as cold and menacing as ever.

Krystal takes a deep breath before counting. Kai tightens his grip on Krystal’s hand until he’s sure he’s hurting her. An invisible force wipes them away and swirls in their brains.

They appear standing upright on their feet. Hands linked. Eyes right in front of the palace wall. This time, on the cold stone surface, Kai sees white writing etched in mineral powder. The sign is shockingly simple.

1983 → 2030.

“You’ve made it to safety,” a voice says behind them.

-

The man with dark-rimmed eyes, a sharp nose, and thick strands of pitch black hair is Zitao. The woman who looks like a clone of Krystal with brown hair and lighter eyes is Yoona. They are the creators of the time machine, and operate the path for backward time travelers to transport to the safe future.

“Are either of you hurt?” Is the first thing the woman, Yoona, asks Kai and Krystal. They both shake their heads.

Kai shudders when he sees the time machine. It’s a giant system of wires, thick mechanical tubes, robotic columns, and holographic control screens, all either directly connected to or centered around a huge cylindrical chamber.

Zitao begins operating odd controls in the time machine as soon as they reach the basement location. “Yoona and I used to be scientists for the League of Hunters. They wanted to develop more and more advanced technology to track and kill time travelers faster. We left because we realized, that these hunters aren’t just flocking the word justice around to quench their thirst for blood. They’re too hungry for the power they aren’t meant to be born with, and went mad because of it,” The dark-eyed man says, while Kai eyes the man's flurry of movements wearily.

“How many time travelers have already reached this year and gone forward into the future?” Krystal asks.

“There have been... many,” Yoona responds, but her expression is dark. Kai understands. The many time travelers that Tao and Yoona have sent off to the future, are only the survivors of larger groups that started off. Like him and Krystal.

Zitao talks about how the complete time travel operation came to be, while Yoona sits both Kai and Krystal down and takes their temperatures, blood pressures, body scans. “We have to make sure you guys are in the right conditions. Time travel, especially a lengthy time jump like the 47 year leap you two are going to make from now to 2030, can really damage the physical body if your conditions aren’t healthy,” Yoona explains.

“47 years…” Krystal mutters. Kai steps out of a metallic body scanner and watches Krystal file in to be scanned. The purplish light illuminates her face and Kai notices the fairly fresh tear marks around her eyes. He silently thanks her inside, for mourning his friend Taemin’s death with him.

“Yes, 47 years, is a long time for any human to cut across the natural flow of time. Unfortunately, this is the only way, and there are some consequences you will have to overcome for your survival,” Zitao pronounces. The man’s stark, dark eyes gleam as he goes on. “I’m sure you two have noticed the physical fatigue that comes with your traveling back for greater amounts of time. Your bodies and genes are equipped with functions that allow you to withstand that kind of time protrusion, to an extent. Using this artificial method of time travel is similar. Your bodies are equipped for it, but there will be effects.”

Kai numbs himself rather than trying to figure out the complex impossibility that is time travel. “And those are…” he mumbles.

“We weren’t able to actually find out until time travelers came back to this year to tell us that the time machine was successful. It's not exactly critical, but this type of lengthy leap in your body systems will speed up your body’s biological processes. Not as much as the number of years you will travel forward in time, thankfully your bodies are adapted to that, but still, when the two of you arrive in 2030, you won’t be the same age you are now,” Zitao states.

The body scanner whirs and Yoona peers at Kai and Krystal's results. "Healthy. Fatigued from time travel, but both of you are fine to go on," she cuts in.

Despite what the body scanner claims, Kai's muscles feel like lead. He wonders how tired Krystal must be. “So... forward time travel is going to make us older,” Krystal remarks. Both Zitao and Yoona nod.

“That’s… nothing,” Krystal adds, “For the price of survival.”

Kai silently agrees. Before he knows it, it’s time for him and Krystal to enter the cylindrical chamber, the center of the time machine.

Yoona gives the two of them soft smiles as the cylindrical chamber slides open. “Good luck,” the woman tells them, and Kai circles his head around the basement room one more time, before he and Krystal step in and the chamber closes behind them.

There’s plenty of space, almost too much space for just the two of them. Kai’s eyes unfocus, his mind conjuring images of Taemin and Jessica standing in the time machine chamber with them.

Krystal lets out a shaky breath, breaking into Kai's thoughts. He looks at her, and she looks back at him with eyes full of uncertainty. “We'll be okay…” Kai feels the need to tell her.

They stand in the center of the chamber and Kai draws Krystal close to him, wrapping his arms securely around her. With a calmer sigh, Krystal puts her head against his chest and clings to him. When Zitao’s voice speaks into the chamber, Kai’s mind is lingering on the ominous fact, that Krystal is all he has left.

“Just relax and do everything basically the same, like you’re time traveling yourself,” Zitao says. “And, ready.”

The inside of the chamber brightens intensely and Kai is forced to close his eyes. He feels his heartbeat quicken and is sure Krystal can feel it too. He holds onto her tighter as a sharp buzzing penetrates his head, and he feels the force, whipping the two of them out of time.

-

Sorry for the long wait guyss...

Next part coming up in just a few minutes...