pre A/N: I just want to suggest something. this rendition of the song is my favorite, and this is where I got the inspiration for this fic. listen to it if you'd like. here it is! 

okay, let's read!

2035.  

Lee Minhyuk feels like he’s going to throw up the noodles he had just eaten. For the first time in his life, anxiety attacks him to the point that it makes his breathing ragged. He feels like his heart had just skipped a beat. He rises from his seat but he has to hold onto the edge of the table. He puts his hand on his chest. 2035. This is wrong—wrong, on so many levels.

“Sir? Are you alright?” the guy on the counter asks as Minhyuk passes by him swiftly; the former noticed the uncomfortable look on the latter’s face. Unfortunately the guy is given no answer.

Lee Minhyuk waits for a cab to hail outside the store. Soon enough one comes, and, hopping in, he directs the driver to the address he knows—he exactly knows—located in Chungdam-dong.

He has no idea what he’s doing, but all he knows is that his instincts are the ones functioning right now. There’s no time to waste. It’s here now, all laid in front of him, and though the idea he’s conscious of is vague, for him, he’s certain of it. He knows now. There’s only one reason why he’s living this life. It’s to fill someone else’s.

On the way to the home he is going to earn for the rest of his life, Lee Minhyuk is excited, though at the same time agonized, on how it would look like, but on top of that he is excited to see the people who (sadly) remain there. He jitters in his seat uncontrollably, thinking of endless possibilities. He’s happy, in a tragic way, because he knows now—his time is limited. Literally.

When the cab pulls over he pays up, and instantly hops out, and he finds himself staring at a grey-colored gate. The sensation is overwhelming; there’s this wave of inexplicable joy inside him, and though it’s threatened to be marred by sadness, Lee Minhyuk chooses not to mind that. Here it is, his entire future all laid in front of him like a red carpet, the only thing he’s been longing for in his years of loneliness.  He knows it’s this house. How could he not—when he’s always planned to have his family reside in Chungdam-dong? He felt tears clouding his sight at the image of his dream house. It was everything his mind’s eye had imagined, and the best thing about it is that it’s not empty.

With a thrilled inhale he pushes the gate and it opens, and he’s a bit startled when a dog barks at him. It’s not the sort of reproachful, fierce bark, but an excited one. It’s a cocker spaniel, he realizes, and though the cute pup is adorable, it sure barks as loud as heck.

“Donggeun-ah!” someone interjects, probably referring to the dog, and Lee Minhyuk hears the front door open. “Stop barking! What are you—” but the speaker is forced to stop mid-sentence, as their gazes collide. The girl with long black hair gapes at the sight of Lee Minhyuk.

He’s possessed by the urge to ask, who are you? But he knows it’s futile, because inside him, he knows the answer already. This girl is his flesh and blood; the shape of , the way she blinks her eyes—it’s altogether blatant.

They stand there for a short, yet very long while, and Minhyuk’s knees buck when the girl, whom he is very sure is his daughter—or will be—calls out, turning her head to one side but not taking her eyes off of him, “Eomma? Can you come out for a moment?”

Lee Minhyuk inhales. After a few seconds another person emerges from the inside of the house, and they both stop breathing upon seeing each other.

Here she is, standing before him having aged greatly, when Lee Minhyuk could still vividly remember how she looked like, a couple of years back, or to exactly point out—how she looks like in his year.

Partly, there is bewilderment in Lee Minhyuk, but in the gaze of the woman who is presumably his wife (or will be) there is so much warmth, resemblance, and if he must add, love. He remains rooted in his position, still planning on how he is supposed to react.

 As he is in the midst of it, though, the woman covers with both of her hands, and tears start to stream down from her eyes. It startles Minhyuk, but before he could say something she beats him to it. “It’s you,” she breathes, in between hiccoughs. “It’s really you,” she slowly walks to him, in groggy, careful steps. He remains paralyzed. “It’s really you. I can’t believe it,” she cries upon reaching him, slowly putting her hands on his forearms, and repeatedly gently squeezes him, while looking at him from head to toe, out of mere incredulity.

Lee Minhyuk knows her. He absolutely does. She has aged twice as much as he had last seen her, but the twinkle in her eyes is unmistakable. There’s the glimmer of the resurrection of a certain dead hope, and the responsibility is his. Her tears are making her eyes shine literally.

And just as he had done today in school, he falls in love with her…yet again.

He has no idea what to say, but he surprises himself when he manages to take out of his throat, “How are you?” he mentally kicks himself for such a lame query, but the older woman doesn’t find it funny or odd in any way.

“I-I’m fine,” she answers, chuckling in the midst of her cry. She puts her hand on again and gasps air, exhibiting a euphoric sensation that words cannot even compensate for.

“H-happy birthday,” Minhyuk stutters. He realizes that someone else is also having her birthday too, so she turns to the lady’s daughter, and he greets, somewhat shyly, “H-happy birthd-day to you too, M-Minkyung-ah,”

The daughter laughs, and unclasps her folded arms to wipe the tear that hung on the corner of her eye. She runs to Minhyuk, and hugs him. “Thank you for coming, Appa,”

It feels weird, Minhyuk admits internally, being a father when he has not even married yet, but as if naturally, the paternal instinct pushes him to reply, “You’re welcome,” and then he turns to the girl’s mother to telepathically ask she knows that I time-travel? To which the mother just nods with a loving smile.

But just when he finally feels at home, Time attacks him again. He winces when the sharp sensation in his gut hits him, that he takes a step back.

 “Appa! W-what’s wrong?” his daughter yelps, holding fast to his arm to keep him steady.

“I-I…” he squeezes between gritted teeth. His and his wife’s gazes meet, and there is sadness in her eyes. He knows that she knows what this means. “I think I-I have to…go.”

“But…” his daughter’s grip slowly loosens. She eventually lets go of him. She doesn’t continue her sentence.

Minhyuk takes a few steps back, until he is a good pace away from them. He bravely shows them his smiling face, to not let them worry about anything.

“What year are you from?” His wife asks.

“2013.” Minhyuk grins, despite of the ache in his gut. “It’s your birthday, and you just beat me in a recitation in Philosophy class,”

They chuckle, as if there’s no need to hurry. As if all is well. For one last time, his wife-to-be runs to Minhyuk, and he’s taken aback when she puts on his. He gets lost in the kiss soon enough though. The feeling is bittersweet, he realizes, because he knows now how much time is left. How much time he has left. She draws out, eventually, and Minhyuk looks down, with this somewhat empty feeling. “I love you,” she mutters, in a small voice, because sacred things deserve to be spoken in such way.

A certain curiosity strikes Lee Minhyuk, and he wills himself to inquire, “How will I find you?”

She smiles. “No worries. You’ve already found me,”

“I-I mean—” he winces. He’s only got a few seconds now. “How are we gonna get together? H-how…how am I going to…make you mine?”

“Don’t fret,” she puts a finger on his lip. “One step at a time. That’s how you got me. You will know what to do once you get back,” looking back at him, Minhyuk’s wife saw that the young version of her husband looks genuinely worried, so to ease him, she remarks, in half-jest and half-assurance, “Everything will lead to this. You will prove me that Predestination is right,”

Minhyuk’s eyes smile along with his mouth, before he bids a sad “I’ll be back,” to his wife and daughter.

***

His back hurts like crazy and his lower lip is busted. When he gets up Lee Minhyuk grunts, and he finds himself in the middle of a dark street, with a lamp on the side that’s perpetually blinking a yellow light. He inhales, and it’s the air he’s accustomed to, not the metal-smelled milieu from a while ago.

He stands straight, and tries sorting out where he is. It’s Seoul, and he looks around a little longer. Chungdam-dong. His attention is snagged when he hears steps approaching; the sound of heels tapping and scratching against the concrete. In the distance, he sees a female figure walking in disoriented, drunken steps. Her head is cast down, and she’s holding her right arm tightly, as she sways to and fro. Though injured himself, Lee Minhyuk rushes to the drunken girl.

“Miss!” he exclaims, just before she completely blacks out. He holds her tight in his arms, trying to shake some consciousness into her. She doesn’t respond though. When the light from the street-lamp hits her face, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on their ends, when the recognition registers.

It’s the birthday girl.

He gulps.

Since he just resides somewhere in Chungdam-dong, he travels by foot. Carefully mounting the invalid on his back, he carries her, with the intention of taking her to his home.

He plops her limp body on the bed; he removes her shoes, and carefully tucks her in. “What have you done to yourself?” he asks, gathering his breath while he sits down on the bedside. He puts his hand on her forehead. “You don’t really look like someone who’d get this drunk,”

Lee Minhyuk takes a good moment to take in the image before him. She’s really pretty, he concludes, with that dark hair and all. There’s the lethargic paleness of her skin borne of a long day’s hard party, and she looks like she’s been mauled by an animal, but nonetheless, she’s beautiful. For Minhyuk it’s a big question how he’s supposed to make her fall for him, but the older self of this girl says that he will, eventually, so he decides to put his faith on that. One step at a time.

And maybe this is the first step.

He goes out to take a bath and to brush his teeth. Who knows, maybe his disheveled appearance may strike as a threat to her. He takes probably half an hour doing so, and on his way back to the guest’s room he carries a glass of water. When he enters he’s surprised to find the drunken girl awake.

He rushes to her side. She’s rubbing her head, regaining her bearings. “W-where am I?”

“Stellar question. But I’ll answer that later,” Minhyuk chuckles, and offers her the glass.

She swallows rapidly, greedily, like it’s her first time drinking water.

“You want some more? I’ll go get—” but he’s grabbed by the arm.

She shakes her head slowly, with a humble smile.

A moment of silence falls between them then. Minhyuk sits on the side of the bed, observing her, while she tries to think clearly despite of her splitting headache.

“You’ve no plan of harming me, I hope?” she asks, cool but slightly pompous, with a caustic smile.

Minhyuk smiles. “I’ve no plan like that,”

She laughs. Another pause follows, but he doesn’t feel any awkwardness in the air. It’s the kind of peace that’s waiting to be broken, the kind of peace that’s anticipating in thrill. “It’s my birthday today,” she says, finally. There’s a thick edge of sadness and bitterness in her voice.

Minhyuk wants to say that he knows, but he says instead, “Is this how you usually celebrate your day?”

It takes several seconds before he gets answered. “Yes, but this is my first time getting this drunk that a stranger has to lend me a hand,”

“I’m not a stranger,” Minhyuk says cockily. “I’m a classmate,”

“Whatever you say,” she replies. “You know, once, someone asked me why I’m sad on my birthday, when it’s supposed to be an occasion when you should be happy,”

That was me, the time-traveler thinks. “Why are you not happy then? Shouldn’t you celebrate it with your family? Eomma? Appa?”

“Good question,” the girl answers, with a laugh, and a chill travels along Minhyuk’s spine when he realizes that the laugh is not out of amusement; it sounds icy, sarcastic, full of misery. “There’s this story when I was a kid. I was, I think, five years old? My father brought me to a family friend’s wedding. As a kid, I found it magical, beautiful, with all those pretty flowers and all; the bride was wearing a white flowing gown, and she was very pretty, I thought a goddess was going to get married. I was too young to understand, but I saw how the groom and bride looked at each other. In their eyes there was this thing called love. I found it very romantic—a bit unlikely for my age, but since then, I wished for nothing but to meet that someone who would look at me that way.

“Every year, on my birthday, I would always wish to meet that someone, but it never came true. I wished for it for years and years, but…nothing. And in all those years I saw my father and mother doing nothing but fight. It’s either over him spending too much time on his work, my dad being accused of having another woman, or my mom seeing another guy. But you know what I really think?” here she looks at Minhyuk, and he feels like his heart would break. “They fell out of love.”

Silence.

Minhyuk tries so hard to think of something to say, his ability to think is paralyzed.

The girl snickers. “So I stopped wishing. I consoled myself by writing romance stories, and since then it became my outlet for my frustrations,” she heaves a sigh, and she turns to him. “Pretty pathetic, don’t you think?”

Lee Minhyuk had been sad many a time in his life, but to listen to a story firsthand, makes him feel that his troubles had been very, very small; hers is simple to the eyes, but stinging to the heart, painful to the spirit. It’s the kind of burden that’s long been in carriage that it has become a natural part of the being now.

He’s been to the end, to the beginning, but now he’s stuck in the middle. How is he going to rescue himself—or more importantly, how is he going to rescue her poor soul from this loneliness?

“You will know what to do once you get back,” he recalls her future words, but he’s still at a loss. There’s no one to coach him now. What if he fails? What if he does something that was not a part of the plan, and he ends up changing the events in the rest of the continuum?  “You know what I think,” he puts on a happy façade, but he’s just playing it. “The world isn’t as cruel as you may take it to be. You know, I have a secret. But I’ll only tell you in one condition,” he smiles.

She narrows her eyes askance, but she complies. “What is it?”

“Tell me your name.”

 “Don’t think I don’t know where you’re going with this, alright,” The girl sniggers. But she introduces herself nevertheless, and Minhyuk finds it droll that her surname’s Cho. It’s ironic in a sweet way. Cho, he thinks, ready to keep it in memory, because he’s going to change that with Lee someday. It means second. Upon this thought he takes an unconscious glance at the clock, and he clandestinely smiles at the hand that’s constantly moving, the smallest thing in relevance to all other people, yet very important to him, because, simply put, his life depends on it. The second hand of time.

“Nice to meet you. Now, for my part of the deal,” he clears his throat with a princely air. “Can you promise me not to tell someone else?”

“Ne,”

“Well, I am a time-traveler,”

There’s a brief moment of shock, but her eyes revert to their listless expression. “Time-traveler. Really. This isn’t a movie, you know,”

Minhyuk snorts out of mock amusement. “It’s true though. You know one,”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“February 9, 1995. You were outside your school waiting for your parents to pick you up. A guy offered to treat you ice cream. It was your birthday. The same date, two years later, you met an oppa that was from the high school next to your school. He knew it was your birthday, so he gave you a present, a little pink bear which you displayed on the bedside table in your room. The next year, you found a cupcake in your locker. There was a little tag on it. And then on your tenth birthday, you remembered that the guy who sent you those gifts, and the guy whom you would see, is the same person,” he sees her eyes slowly widen, but he’s not done yet. “And today that guy flashed forward to twenty-two years from now, and he met someone, a girl named Lee Minkyung,” Minhyuk smiles. The truth, and nothing but the truth. “She has long black wavy hair, and she has your eyes,” he describes, his euphoria on the brink of overtaking him. “But you know the best thing about her?” he puts his hand on her cheek, when she starts to sniffle, and a tear skids down her cheek.

She encloses her hand in his, and she’s truly crying now. She’s found him—or, no—he’s found her. And, even, they’ve found each other a long, long time ago. “W-what is…?” she chokes, her voice barely audible.

“Her parents love each other very, very much,” and Lee Minhyuk finds himself crying too. Two lost souls have finally found their half in each other.

In an explosion of bliss, she throws her arms around him, and sobs. She chokes out words and Minhyuk catches only very few of the words, but what he keeps on repeating, is that it’s alright now. “Go to sleep,” he tells her when they draw out. “Take some rest. You need it.”

“You’ll still be here when I awake, right?” her question sounds genuinely troubled.

“Of course,” he tucks the girl’s hair behind her ear. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” he guided her with care in lying down, and, draping over her the blanket, he bid her a good night’s sleep.

“Good night,” she mutters, and adds in a smaller voice, “Minhyuk-oppa,”

***

The next morning, when she awakes, she doesn’t recognize her surroundings. Her head hurts from hangover. Upon trying to remember what had taken place last night, she fails, but what she does remember are fragments. Although quite uncertain, she feels light, happy, for something was inexplicably good about this morning.

She rises from her lain position, and is a little startled when a voice breaks out, “Good morning,” she turns, and an awfully familiar (good-looking) guy is the first person she encounters at the start of the day. He’s prepared a breakfast tray, she sees, with that bowl of rice and colourful side dishes. “Breakfast?”

The natural human instinct to be cynical towards a stranger takes over her. “Who are you?”

He chuckles, eye-smile showing, and his slightly big two front teeth exhibited. He gets the chopsticks, unclasps them, and clips  a few pills of rice. “Let’s just say…I’m a friend,”

“Really,”

“Really.”

“What’s your name?”

He laughs when he sees her expression change from a dubious one to an incredulous, pleasantly surprised one. His name leaves agape. “Lee Minhyuk,”

Sure, there are hundreds of Minhyuks in existence, but something in the smile, the face, and the comfortable, warm aura he brings about, not to mention the sense of familiarity begging to be paid attention to, makes her at ease. The memories from last night suddenly play a movie at the back of her mind.

She knows now. “Minhyuk,” she says. “I know someone at that,”

He giggles. “You sure do,”

And they share a smile, looking at each other, a sense of happiness and the assurance that they’re not alone now, heartfelt. Lee Minhyuk left out the part that he’s only got twenty-two years left, but he can’t let that impending tragedy overshadow the good life ahead of them.

Happiness is temporal, but he will make it lasting, just for her. Time after time.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

it's done! it's done! IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!! 

LILYYY ! did you like it? :D

anyway thank you very much to everyone who read! do tell me what you think .___.

peniel made a cameo appearance LOL

thank you very muchiii! more blessings to you!!!

I feel kind of sad that this has come to an end :(

okay bye.

-b