11th March, 2013 (Joohyun is almost 22)

Joohyun’s outside her apartment complex’s front doorstep in her slippers, waving into the distance of a murky Spring morning. Chorong had found a boyfriend, found a place - she basically found a situation easier to deal with than a broke roommate who couldn’t help disappearing every few random moments. The Joohyun Situation.

And Joohyun’s especially down in the dumps about this, because Chorong was really nice to have. She’d driven off to save Joohyun from some strange teleporting experiences in the past (her past, not necessarily Joohyun’s past) at least monthly and covered for her on numerous occasions.

But everyone has to leave her and her disjointed lifestyle sooner or later, Joohyun thinks while still waving aimlessly into the empty distance with the gravel beneath her being soggy and ruining her slippers. She’s pondered over her loneliness for so long that it doesn’t even cause her too much immediate hurt - it just makes her feel all the more numb. She’s financially broke and her life is slipping away.

Even as a born romantic she hasn’t had the courage to date anyone because they could be creeped out by her sudden disappearing and reappearing, and bolt. And even as an intelligent girl she’s had to drop out of school because of all the times she’s accidentally time travelled during exams as a result of too much stress. No one ever came up with a reason - they thought she was some budding magician, escape artist, maybe an uncharacteristically sheepish rebel. She wasn’t fit for this world she was born in where no one could possibly understand.

Joohyun furrows her eyebrows and steps out of the puddle, straightens up her body. Too much moping in one morning. Today she has a plan set out to get on with her life.

---

“Welcome aboard,” She’s grinned at by an alarmingly tall, stunning woman with slightly accented Korean. Her jet black hair cascades down to her waist, where her hands are bent upwards either side grasping onto Joohyun’s name tag.

Joohyun should be delighted but she’s confused. “Did you even read my CV?”

“Of course,” Victoria makes a face, but it’s a pleasant face that highlights the laugh lines drawn below her cheeks, “You’ll be a great sales assistant.”

Joohyun’s still staring really blankly at her boss and it takes her a few seconds to realise she must look like the perfect combination of rude and dumb.

“I mean,” Joohyun hesitates, “I have pretty much no qualifications.”

Victoria’s eyes widen briefly as if everything about how Joohyun’s acting finally makes sense. Before making her way across the clothes store she playfully tosses the name tag over, turns back and smiles. “Sure you do. You’re pretty.”

Suddenly Joohyun felt like a stranded child, lost in this big store without any sort of guidance. Victoria left her with pretty much nothing to lead on from, but also had this put together and successful edge to her that hinted to Joohyun that everything would make sense soon enough.

She knows that stress is one of her time travelling triggers, and she really doesn’t want her disappearing and flying off to 2050 being what happens on her first day on the job. It can be quite challenging to forget your worries when you’re standing in a new place which might just be the exact source of them.

“Bae Joohyun?”

She darts her head up at her name, curious. The voice is kind of husky but also very chirpy and Joohyun tries to match it to a person.

Almost straight away her eyes come to terms with a girl who practically radiates light. She’s determined looking and small - Joohyun can barely see her from across the clothes rails. As she comes into full focus, she really does have a smile so bright Joohyun considers investing in a sun vizor.

“You’re Joohyun?” The girl asks and bounds over, not looking a day older than sixteen with her hair long and black but simultaneously sounding older than she does. Joohyun blinks and nods. “Hello! I’m Son Seungwan and I’m also a sales assistant, I’ll be helping you pick up the basics.”

“Hi, Seungwan.” Joohyun offers a slight smile. Something about the name Seungwan seems familiar but foreign and her mind’s a mess of particles of flashbacks and some sort of nausea. But something about this bright girl makes her feel a great deal calmer, so she blanks it out.

“Let’s get you started, then.” Seungwan grins and claps to herself and Joohyun kind of gives her a look, but Seungwan takes it as a good reaction and just keeps clapping.

At first Seungwan tries to give her tips of dealing with customer complaints and helping them find what they were looking first, but realises soon enough that Joohyun’s not the extroverted type and would much rather focus on stock management. Luckily Joohyun’s polite, she likes stocking shelves and attaching price tags and almost loves the idea of tidying the entire store.

“I always want to give this place a good vacuum clean too.” Seungwan says - Korean ever so clumsy, voice tinkering on whether she should stick to being formal or not - when Joohyun’s eyes light up once she’s read off that part of the job description.

Seungwan taps her nails (both bitten down and painted blue) along the paper file she’s holding and after some mental analysis, giggles. “I suppose because of how pretty you are, Victoria-unnie wants you at the front greeting customers.”

“Oh, please,” Joohyun scrunches up her eyes as her face reddens. She’s super conscious of how soft her voice sounds what with Seungwan’s being so loud and raw. “If I’m at the front, I’d rather just be putting up displays.”

“Careful the display doesn’t fall on you.” Seungwan murmurs as she scribbles something down, holding the pen like a toddler’s crayon. Joohyun freezes up.

Seungwan’s big eyes snap up with a hint of embarrassment. “I’m really clumsy so I know.”

Joohyun doesn’t want to dig up any bad memories of Seungwan’s dark sales assistant past but feels comfortable enough around this girl already that she snorts at the mental image.

Seungwan seems even tinier than she is.

“How old are you, by the way?” Joohyun queries, ears trying to faze out the sound of numerous babies crying around the shopping complex.

“Nineteen since a couple of weeks ago.”

Joohyun’s eyes widen, “Wow, you couldn’t have been working here long?”

Seungwan shrugs. She pouts out her lips, probably having a lot to say and wondering whether or not she should go into a full life monologue with this employee she’s just met and should be helping. But Joohyun’s gaze looks softened, like she’s becoming fond of the idea of Seungwan talking about Seungwan things to her all day. She guesses she is.

“I actually moved over here from Canada at eighteen, and because I was away from my parents I needed a good job fast so I somehow landed over here.” She waves her hands around for a moment, and then her cheeks suddenly flush with modesty. “Apparently, I don’t know, I fit the personality of an ideal shopping assistant pretty well so I managed to move up in ranks quite quickly. I’m kind of juggling a Music course on the side too.”

“Wow.” Joohyun deflates. Seungwan does seem very highly strung and it’s probably to do with all of the stress she just relayed to her but somehow Joohyun does feel a lot of jealousy. This is how much normal people can fit into their lives. She’s had to drop everything thanks to an irritating gene malfunction that gets her teleporting around the boundaries of time.

“It’s okay, though,” Seungwan notices Joohyun’s demeanour and rambles. “Like - I’m sure you have a whole lot on your plate too.”

Joohyun’s grin is false, but trying. “You could say that.”

Seungwan shoots her a face of genuine sympathy and intrigue. She’s just about ready to ask her about her life but respects her boundaries, and Joohyun really likes that. Maybe this could be someone who could one day get her. She’s become an expert at pushing people away for their own sake, but something about this girl and her demeanour and the way her name is uniquely Seungwan makes her want to let her in.

Seungwan…

---

Joohyun’s a bit late for work the next day because on the way there she’s overcome by the need to vomit. Knowing what’s happening, she tries to find some sort of empty alleyway in which she can hide, while her body fades into nothingness in the present and takes her to some other time.

April 27th, 2011 (Real-time Joohyun is 22; Joohyun from this past is 20 somewhere, Seungwan is 17)

Joohyun’s heels scuff over a soggy evening sidewalk. Her vision collects and it’s pretty dark, looking down she’s tempted to buckle over and heave into the gutter along the road.

She blinks the nauseating sting from her eyes and she’s up. Sheepishly looking behind her it doesn’t seem as though anyone saw her condense in out of nowhere. The only interaction she’s had is almost instant, when there’s a random guy with hair the colour of charcoal who pats her round the shoulder and laughs.

“Drank one too many, huh princess?” And he’s off. Joohyun literally doesn’t understand anything he just said. It was definitely in a foreign language, so maybe a tourist just confused her for someone who looked western. She got teleported to the road behind what she thinks is a nightclub, though from the beginning the heavy bass thump congealed with her throbbing headache so it took a while for her to tell.

And looking around, something tells her she’s not in Korea.

There’s bustle. The sky is marooned with violet. Over her twenty two years of living with this strange resetting genetic clock she’s become pretty good at guessing the time of day, month, year, though a night sky like this is hardest to pinpoint. It could either be 5pm in winter or 9pm in spring.

But this time Joohyun’s not too bothered about that. Her face is frozen with concern. It’s just she doesn’t recognise this point of life from her own past in the slightest, so she has no idea why she’s here.

She thinks she might as well try to blend within the group of people there, her introverted self not wanting to look out of place, and luckily whichever area she ended up in seems quite culturally diverse. Outside the building there’s a big chalk board titling who’s playing (she assumes, it’s all in English) which probably means her nightclub assumption was incorrect. You see this type of thing more at a cozy bar, she hums - people settled up on round tables with a beer in hand, watching washed up stars or timid youths pluck for inspiration in the spotlight. The board also has the date scribbled down which proves incredibly helpful. Thank God, numbers are universal! She feels all too lopsided but without knowing how long she’ll be here, Joohyun decides to go in and maybe enjoy two years ago.

(Joohyun was probably meeting Chorong for the first time in 2011. She smiles to herself with partial soreness in her heart, because Chorong was such a huge turning point. Chorong was the only person she ever knew who’d let a frazzled, socially awkward, frequently disappearing college drop-out stay with her.)

“Next up,” A withered bartender trying to sound enthusiastic announces over a mic while Joohyun scans around for a free seat, “We have a talented girl from right here in Toronto. She’s only seventeen so please be nice.” Everyone around her starts whooping and cheering wildly. She sits down in a free seat next to an old white man and squints, seeing if there are any words she recognises that could help her. Toronto. Toronto is in Canada. Why is she in Canada?

“Give it up for Wendy!”

It’s so dark that she can barely see, and Joohyun furrows her eyelids shut in order to get to grips with the situation. She can hear some careful strumming, nods along until she feels a nudge.

A waitress has approached her with a clean, tiny notepad. “What would you like to order?” She asks. Joohyun understands what she’s asking due to context and goes for whatever drink is the same in Korean. “Lemonade,” she sounds out, “Please.”

She can hear that the Wendy girl is singing now across the room, and it’s beautiful. Her voice is mature and seems to glide with an added husky element that Joohyun can’t help but feel she knows. When she finally looks at this Wendy goes dry.

There she is, a younger Seungwan, singing in a language Joohyun doesn’t understand properly which is so foreign but so believably her. Not that Joohyun even really knows Seungwan, but she did mention she grew up in Canada.

In the instant shock of it all Joohyun chokes back on something and it’s loud and slightly distracting because Wendy-Seungwan actually looks up at her for a split moment. Her coughing fit continues for much longer than she wanted it to, and the old white man next to her seems to be jabbing his water at her but she politely declines.

A weird part of Joohyun expects Seungwan to recognise her when she sees her, wonders if she feels that sickening pull of recognition in her heart too, but this isn’t nineteen year old Seungwan. She has to drum it into her skull in order for this to feel real. This is seventeen year old Wendy.

For another hour this very talented Wendy-Seungwan sings song after song, and Joohyun gradually gets calmer and calmer, eyelids fluttering and falling deeper and deeper into this loving state of awe.

---

12th March, 2013 (Joohyun is almost 22, Seungwan is 19)

Joohyun’s lying on the floor of her and was-Chorong’s little bathroom, too drummed down to think and vomits hazardously into the toilet. She gives herself a moment to get back to proper consciousness and then cleans herself meticulously. She doesn’t know what to think or feel, doesn’t know why she spent a couple of hours in Seungwan’s past or whether this’ll be a recurring thing. It’s all so odd. She only met Seungwan yesterday.

She pats her hands on her purple towel and recalls the overwhelmingly serene, almost melting sensation she had felt just before she out and found herself back here. Young Seungwan was confident and beautiful, and the bar atmosphere was filled with the silent gasp of every person listening to her. She had more fullness to her body and shorter hair that Joohyun knows her to now.

Joohyun’s startled to remember that she has her second day of work today and doesn’t even want to know how late she is. A couple of hours in the past could be either minutes or days in the future. She swallows, fumbles for her phone in the front pocket of her well-travelled coat and doesn’t just check the time - she checks the date.

“Thank God,” She mumbles under her breath. She’s about 45 minutes late, which isn’t great on most people’s watch but is incredible for her because she’s always crippled by the fear that she’s made her way over to the next month. Straightening herself up in the mirror, she probably has to reapply her makeup, do something to get the worried mats out of her hair.

She wipes away the eyeliner smudges under her eyes and dabs powder lightly over her nose. It’s probably a bit half-assed because questions are still heavy on her mind and she can’t concentrate. Why did Seungwan move over here when she had such a promising career in music? Why of all things did she land in retail?

When she sees her for the second time in the present, is it going to feel weird?

---

Victoria didn’t seem too bothered that Joohyun got there about an hour later than planned. Maybe she was thankful enough she actually had people working there, because the clothes store’s tacky and cheap - but so cheap half of the country practically shops there.

Joohyun wants to promise her it won’t happen again but she knows she really can’t, instead bows in thanks and automatically searches for the only other employee she knows the name of. (Well, now, names of)

“Oh, Joohyun. Better late than never.” Seungwan spins around to look at her and winks, and Joohyun can’t help it. Before her eyes, Seungwan morphed into her seventeen year old self for a split second and then back again. And it does feel weird.

Joohyun tries to avoid eye contact, but replies to her kindly, and she doesn’t know if it’s just because she’s highly sensitive to seeming odd at this point in time or if Seungwan really is kind of staring at her. Her eyes are too noticeably intense and Joohyun’s insecure.

“What?” She asks after a moment later.

“What, what?”

“You were staring.” Joohyun swallows, tries to make her voice sound as nonchalant as possible.

Seungwan lets of her tense presence and bounces back into life. “Was I? Oh, sorry, it’s just-” she chuckles and shakes her head, “I keep feeling like I’ve seen you around before.”

A/N: About three months in and I finally wrote the first chapter lol. It's not all that often I come up with WenRene prompts so this has been fun :) I hope I'll be able to write the next chapter soon enough, it's just complicated to deal with so many time frames all at once hahaha. I hope it's understandable so far! <3