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chibirii · 5 years

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Slate: Chapter One

Chapter One: A Scrap of a Ticket

“Where’re you going? Let’s go on the subway together!”, one of her coworkers, a tiny blonde girl named Anna, called, as Lily was ending the day at her cookie-cutter office job.

She worked on the forty-fourth floor of a forty-five story building, in a small accounting firm. The hours were decent (except for when tax season came around), the employees kind (except for when there was some office drama going around), and the paycheck rather good; everything she could possibly want in a job. It wasn’t her passion, but she was still saving up for medical school.

Lily had always wanted to be a doctor, ever since she was young, and she was rather smart, but not smart enough to go to college on a scholarship, and not nearly rich enough to afford it without one; after graduating with thousands of dollars of debt, she thought it was clear another four years of being a student would leave her family bankrupt. So, instead, when she’d graduated college a year ago, she took a cushy, well-paying job, as she was a sensible type when it came to matters like these, and she’d seen the looks her parents exchanged behind her back, wondering if they could really pay for it, though they put on cheery fake smiles in front of her.

“I have to pick up groceries, sorry!”, she replied apologetically, and it was true, though she was secretly glad about it: she rather liked her coworkers, but she wasn’t close to any one of them – she hadn’t wanted to make friends when she’d arrived because she thought she would be leaving soon, and by the time she realized she’d be there until at least twenty-six paying off loans, it had been too late, and now everyone thought she was very quiet, though she was really not – and so she thought it would be rather awkward to ride on the subway with Anna.

“Well, bye then!” Anna waved, and Lily waved back, and made her way to the elevator.

It was a rather boring ride down, and it took a bit to get down forty-four floors, but Lily didn’t mind it, for the views she got at the office when she stayed late (which she did quite often, as she had nothing much else to do and overtime pay was high) were splendid precisely because of the height.

Lily checked to make sure she had her wallet and keys while she waited patiently for the door to open at the bottom, and once it did, she stepped out quickly, the clop-clop-clop of her heels pounding down on the tile. To her, it felt like the loudest noise on Earth, but no one in the lobby even noticed: they were far too busy getting their own work done, she knew, to care about her – but that didn’t make her feel any less awkward.

Having walked the short ten-foot distance from the lobby to the entrance, she pushed open one of the heavy glass double doors (it was the only building with them nearby, and though most of Lily’s coworkers scoffed at them, saying they were “just a way to make a shabby building pretend to be a nice one”, she rather liked them – they gave off a certain air of elegance, a certain je ne sais quoi, in a way that made her want to wear high heels and suit dresses and use words like ‘je ne sais quoi’).

When the hot air hit her, Lily blinked, as it seemed almost abnormally stuffy, but held her head high and in the sticky July heat, made the short walk from the elevator to the grocery store. Of course, she could have gone to the grocery store near her house, but that was far more expensive, and it really wasn’t much of a hassle, she reasoned.

An hour later, her grocery shopping was over, and she carried four large grocery bags worth of salad ingredients and chicken breast -- she wasn’t a great cook but still liked to eat somewhat healthy.

As Lily boarded the subway, she felt a little lonely, but she wasn’t sure why, as she made the same trip two times a day, and also rather tired, because of all the bags she was holding. Luckily, the train was nearly deserted, because it was almost seven, and she was accompanied by only a couple of tired-looking men in suits, so she could plop down on a seat. Lily popped in an earbud and turned on “Shuffle” in her favorite songs playlist. BTS’ Heartbeat started playing, and when she thought about it later, she’d realize it was an important detail to pick up on, for it was the first odd thing about that day, because she didn’t like Heartbeat that much, and didn’t even listen to BTS often; at the time, though, she was content to simply sit back and listen to the song.

The subway ride seemed to past by rather quickly, and before she knew it, she was crossing the bridge to get back to your home, a small high-rise apartment on the fifth floor in one of the nicer areas of the city. Lily had chosen it for the clean white interior and the balcony where she sometimes out with a mug of something warm to gaze at the sunset. It was a rather sentimental thing to do, she knew, the type of things that you read about in blogs and amateur novels, but it was alright, because she had a romantic kind of character.

Walking back, she noticed the full moon above her – was it really that late? By her estimate, it should only have been about seven-thirty, and it was the middle of summer – and she could see the sea through the bridge. She kept her eyes on the coarse pavement of the bridge, though, as she didn’t have any time to be dawdling on the bridge with groceries in hand, especially at night, with all the danger she’d heard about on the news.

Suddenly, Lily saw a glimmer in the ocean. The sky was almost black now, and she was almost across the bridge, and her building was across the street from it, so she allowed herself to sneak a peek. The first thing she noticed was how calm the water looked: the waves were not lapping gently as usual, but seemed to have stopped entirely.

Curious, she set the bags down and peered through the short bridge gate into the sea. In this time of night, it barely looked like the sea at all – it was not fully dark, owing to the moon, but it had certainly taken on a deep navy, and looked eerie. Lily shivered involuntarily, but she kept looking for the object she had seen in the corner of her eye.

Then, she felt a hand on her back, and suddenly, she was pushed into the water.

The last thing she felt was the icy water enveloping her, and somehow her hand grasped the thing that had been floating, and rather tightly, considering she were drifting unconscious.

When Lily opened her eyes, she saw the roof of someone’s house – was it hers? No, this was a faded yellow, and hers was cream white.

Realizing she’d either been kidnapped or rescued, she pushed herself awake quickly, and pulled the soft aquamarine blanket she had been under off, though she regretted it not even a second later because although everything in her body seemed to be fine, she was very, very cold. Looking around, she saw the room was small, with only a single cot and many different shelves, filled with various knickknacks and cooking pots: storage room? Point one for kidnapped, Lily thought grimly.

Next, she searched her jacket pockets, and found her phone still in one, along with a waterlogged wallet (it was a good thing she didn’t carry much cash) and keys (at least those didn’t have any signs of damage, though she felt like she’d been chilled to the bone when she touched them), and tried turning it on desperately. Of course, she thought, as you’ve just, been pushed into the ocean, Lily, it wouldn’t work. Point two for being kidnapped? Well really, she thought, this was neither. It was a real shame, too – she’d only bought the phone last month, and she didn’t think “being pushed into the ocean” would be accepted for the warranty: they’d definitely think she’d simply dropped it. Maybe she could give them the police report?

The doorknob rattled, knocking Lily out of her thoughts, and she held her phone in front of her like a weapon, though she knew she wasn’t exactly threatening, what with her still shivering from the cold and all.

The person who opened the door, though, was a frail-looking old woman carrying a plate of food, and she nearly dropped the phone in surprise, chiding herself silently for putting her guard down – old women could be kidnappers, too.

“Oh, good, you’re awake”, she said, “it’s been a couple hours and I was worried.”

“Did you… find me in the ocean?” Lily lowered the phone, somehow sensing her honesty, and she nodded.

“Just a couple hours ago.”

“What time is it right now?”

“It’s about ten o’clock.” Lily’s eyes widened, and she sat up straighter.

“Ten hours in the ocean… I should be dead.”

“Well, I took you to the hospital, and they said you were alright – apparently, there was nothing wrong with you at all.”

She wanted to believe the woman, but it was just so impossible: she’d never heard of someone surviving in the water for even two or three hours with no problem in any of the medical textbooks she’d read, never mind the whole night. And how had she not drowned?

Lily shook her head disbelievingly, and the woman looked at her with sympathetic eyes.

“Would you like to go outside?”, she asked kindly, and Lily nodded once again.

The woman led her outside of the room to a small shop with many display cases filled with the most delicious-looking rice cakes Lily had ever seen, though that wasn’t saying much as she didn’t like rice cakes much, and rarely bought them.

“I run this shop”, she explained as an answer to the questioning look Lily hadn’t realized was on her face, “and my grandson and I live on the top floor”.

Then, she beckoned for Lily to eat the tray of food, which – surprisingly enough – didn’t include rice cakes.

She waited for Lily to finish patiently, which Lily was confused by – didn’t she have a shop to run? Not a single customer had come in.

The woman seemed to anticipate her question once again (if she hadn’t known better, Lily might have said she was psychic, but she didn’t believe in things like that), and said “I closed the shop today.”

Lily wondered whether it was rude of her to protest, because then she’d be assuming the shop was closed because of her, and ultimately decided to not say anything at all.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”, the woman questioned, and Lily was confused, until she realized that the woman probably thought she’d jumped into the water.

“O-oh, yeah of course I do!”, Lily answered quickly, and it was at this time that she realized she had to go and reassure everyone she was alright: her parents still called her every day, and she hadn’t called off for work. Her wallet was soaked, but the credit card would hopefully still be working, she thought, and got up to leave.

“Well, alright then, but you’re welcome here if you ever need a place to stay.” Lily nodded, and continued on her way out

Right as she pushed open the door, though, the woman cried “Wait!” and, ducking inside the corridor Lily had come from, brought her what looked like a laminated ticket to a BTS concert, except all of the members’ faces had faded away. “You were holding on to this when I found you, so I thought it might be important, and dried it.”

So, that was what she had seen. Lily took it with a sincere “thanks”, and stepped outside.

She knew where this was: it was the neighborhood on the coastline, and Lily could see the sea only a few hundred meters away. The shops here were small, but quaint, and the owners, usually retirees or descendants of people who had lived in this part of the city for generations, offered mostly handmade goods. It seemed like a very pleasant sort of place, and she kept the number on the front of the rice cake woman’s shop – 4419 – in mind, so Lily could come back later, to thank her.

Apparently, a new subway had just been built: there was an abundance of signs marking its opening, so Lily followed them. She thought it would be interesting to see a subway when it’d just been built: was everything shiny and new at first, or did the layer of gray ‘subway grime’ on the floor exist from the first day? The subway she took to work every day had opened in 2014, so, although somewhat new for a subway, it was still quite established by the time Lily had started taking it. Opening a second subway in the same city, though, seemed like an odd idea, but she supposed it was because of some political thing, a way to get more funds or something like that. She’d heard of that once, in the Government class she’d taken in high school, but she wasn’t usually paying attention in that class, so she couldn’t be sure.

The sky was bright today, but the air was much cooler: it was a pleasant sort of the day, the perfect type to have a picnic or walk to the ice cream shop. The suffocating heat of yesterday seemed worlds away, and Lily resolved to not waste this: once she’d assured everyone everything was fine, and gone to the police station to file an official report, and gotten more groceries (she winced at how much money had been wasted yesterday), she’d go to the park.

As she walked down the sidewalk, Lily felt fine, though she knew she was shelving all the fear of yesterday and today, to be opened at a better time, perhaps in the solitude of her apartment with ice cream and a Hallmark romcom. She knew once the tears had started, they wouldn’t stop, and she’d have nightmares about this, but she made herself be okay because she couldn’t afford to do anything else.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes of walking, she arrived at the steps to the station. She climbed down them, and to her surprise, the station looked the exact same as her usual one, except a bit cleaner (clearly, the subway grime was a part of the subway from a start. Lily supposed it made sense, because otherwise it’d get a bit confusing to talk about ‘the subway’, though she wondered why they would advertise it as ‘new’ then. Walking up to the ticket stand, she gave the attendant her card, asking for a ticket to her regular station.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not a station that exists?” He looked at her quizzically, and Lily blinked and tilted her head in response.

“Are you sure? I just rode on it yesterday?”

“Yesterday, this station wasn’t even open…?”

“Er, alright.” Lily was rather confused, and a bit embarrassed, because she hadn’t realized that this was actually a new subway, and asked how to get to her part of town, instead.

“Like where the car park is?”

“No, the apartment complexes.” Now, she was even more confused – Lily had never seen a car park the whole time you’d been living there.

“There are no apartment complexes in that area.”

Something about what he said struck her: there had been a car park, before, and considering it was the ‘grand opening’ of this subway… But it couldn’t be. But hadn’t she noticed that everything seemed just a bit different? And that she shouldn’t have lived through that jump? Lily knew it was a ridiculous notion, and she’d never think of asking the question normally, but some part of her deep inside encouraged it, so she did.

“Could you tell me what the date is?”

“July 1st, 2014.”, he replied confidently, apparently glad that Lily were no longer talking nonsense.

“Y—you’re sure?”

“Yes, of course.” And the smile he’d had on his face disappeared again.

Lily told him that she no longer needed a ticket, and went to sit down on the brown-and-green bench she had spotted a few feet away.

“He must be playing a prank on me, or something.”, she told herself, and started asking random passengers what the date was.

Nearly a half hour later, with everyone having said “July first, two thousand fourteen.”, Lily was forced to acknowledge the reality: somehow, she was now in 2014. Was this a dream? Was she dead, and this was the afterlife? Why would she even be taken to an afterlife where it was 2014? Or had you really traveled back in time?

She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind, and realized that there were more pressing issues right now, namely how to find a house and a job when she was five years into the past. So, she went job hunting.

“I’m sorry, we aren’t hiring.”, was the first store’s response, and about three hundred of them after that said the same thing.

“Do you have any relevant work experience?”, had been the second’s, and though she did as a 23-year-old, Lily was only 18 in 2014 – not only did she not have a resume, but she lived in a whole different state.

After hours of combing through the city (on foot, because her credit card no longer worked), Lily finally found a burger joint that was willing to take her in, but then, disaster struck in the form of a very pleasant question.

“I’m looking forward to having you on board! Could you give me a valid form of ID?”

But of course, a driver’s license (Lily had learned to drive in high school, but nowadays she only used the subway and had just gotten a license for this exact sort of situation) that had the date “05/04/2018” stamped on it would not do.

Finally, sitting on a park bench in the middle of the beach at sunset (she was glad that that was still there), Lily didn’t know what to do. She could spend the night in a park, but that was rather dangerous, and especially for a woman. The homeless shelter was full, and she couldn’t get a job, and her parents were a state away, so she had no way of paying the deposit for any sort of living space.

Lily felt tears stream down her cheeks, and numbly realized she was crying, which was a shock to her because she knew she had to find somewhere to go, and now – usually that’d be enough to hold off the tears, but today her usually-iron resolve was crumbling.

She wasn’t sure why, maybe she’d held it in too long, or maybe it was because she was alone, or maybe it was because she hated getting help from strangers, but it was as she’d thought earlier – she couldn’t stop herself, and tears kept running down her cheeks no matter how she tried to quell them. She put her head in her hands, and let herself cry, because this seemed like the only deserted place in the whole city, and there was still some time before the sun truly set, and this was bad, damn it.

“Are you alright?”, a soft voice called out, and Lily wondered how this could get any worse. She lifted her head up, wiped her cheeks with her hands, and looked at the person standing in front of her who had so rudely interrupted her feel-sorry-for-myself session.

The first thing she noticed was that he was a rather brilliant lookalike of Jimin from BTS, which struck her as terribly funny, and she started laughing in spite of herself. He looked incredibly bewildered, and Lily tried to explain between her laughs.

“I’m sorry--you look--- exactly like--this guy from an idol group.” She managed to finish, and though he still looked quite confused (was BTS around in this time? Lily wondered, but she thought they probably would be), he gave her a weak smile.

“I’ve been told I’m handsome a bit, but mostly by my grandma.”, the boy offered shyly, and the word grandma made Lily realize where she was again.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t very funny--are you alright?”, asked the lookalike, as Lily’s face had become tense and stony, while tears welled up in her eyes.

“No, it’s alright, it’s just been a really bad day.”

“What happened?” He sat down on the bench next to her.

“Things.” She couldn’t very well say that she’d been pushed into the ocean and had woken up five years into the past, could she?

“Oh.”

“I—I just don’t want to do this, because I hate needing help from people, and I’m Lily, and I’m supposed to be independent, you know, because I’m Lily, and—” She burst into tears again there, and the boy patted her hand, a bit awkwardly, but comforting nonetheless.

“Since when did being independent mean you had to do everything yourself?”

“But this isn’t even a small thing, you don’t understand, I’m asking someone I don’t even know to take me in because I have absolutely no where else to go, and I just—” She broke off.

“Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“So, why are you here?” Lily asked, because she could see his eyes simmering with emotion, just below the surface, and she did not think for a minute he’d just come to see the view.

He seemed taken aback, but responded anyways, in such a quiet voice she’d almost classify it as a whisper.

“I’m feeling a bit seasick.”

“So you came to the sea?”

“Isn’t it better to face your fears head-on?”

“I suppose. But what’s making you feel seasick when you’re not near the sea?”

“I’ve been delaying making a choice for two years, or maybe even longer, and I feel like I’ve missed the timing.”

“I know the feeling.”, Lily replied, as she was notoriously slow at making decisions.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

They were silent for a couple minutes, looking out at the waves rushing out towards the sand and the reddish-golden glow of the sunset (the atmosphere was quite pleasant, unlike yesterday), until she decided she needed to speak, because she had something she needed to say.

“Don’t wait.”

“What?” He turned to look at her again, and she met his dark brown eyes with her own.

“Make the decision, now.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“When I said ‘make the decision’, did one of the options come to your mind?”

“Yes.”, he replied hesitantly.

“Then do it. Whatever it is. Because if you don’t do it, then trust me, you’ll regret it, so, so much.” Once Lily was finished talking, she trained her eyes back to the horizon, because she hadn’t wanted to say it, since she didn’t like to think about the past, but she knew that if someone had told that to her in 2014, she would have been happier. Less accomplished, probably, and maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything at all, but she thought it would, because happiness was the sort of thing that you got when you did what you wanted to do, or at least tried.

“What if it’s more difficult?”

“Isn’t it better to regret the things that you did do than the ones you didn’t?”

“Shouldn’t you be doing what you need to do, then?”

Lily didn’t reply, but she knew he was right, and she hoped he would listen to her advice, too.

She got up to leave, but another question occurred to her.

“Do you know where 4419 is?”, she questioned, gesturing to the shops behind them.

“Oh, that’s my grandmother’s house. Do you need anything?”

“See, I don’t know how to tell you this but…” Lily trailed off, wondering why, out of all the people who could have stumbled upon her, did it have to be him?

It seemed he’d understood, and he awkwardly smiled, holding out one of his hands.

“Hi, I’m Jimin Park.” Lily thought it was rather odd that he’d share the same name as a member of BTS, too, but it was a somewhat common name, and anyways they couldn’t be the same, because she was now sure that they had been a group in 2014, and this Jimin was nowhere near their training studio in Seoul.

“Lily Olfson.”, she returned, and shook his hand.

“C’mon, I’ll show you the way.” He started walking, and Lily followed.

She still felt rather awkward about spilling her heart out to essentially a complete stranger, but the most important thing now was to make sure she had a place to sleep tonight. Would the old woman be alright with Lily staying the night?

As it turned out, she looked rather happy that Lily had come back, and with Jimin in tow to boot.

“You can help me out in the shop in exchange for living here – and call me Grandmother”, she’d said to Lily, and Lily guiltily taken the offer. She felt bad about deceiving Mrs. Park (“Grandmother” brought up too many bad memories in her head), but what else could she do? Say she was from the future? Now, she was seated on the couch of the living room with Jimin, and the tension felt thick in the air.

“You know, you like an awful lot like the Jimin from BTS”, Lily said finally, because it was true, and she thought jokes might be a good idea in this situation.

“What’s BTS?”

“Oh, they’re an idol group.”

“I don’t think any idol groups right now have the name BTS.”

“They’re pretty underrated. If you give me your phone, I can show you.” Looking confused but also a bit bemused, he complied.

Lily opened up YouTube, and typed in BTS.

Nothing came up.

Then, she tried BigHit.

Nothing came up.

Finally, she tried looking them up on Google.

Only a single article, titled Bighit cancels new rookie group, came up.

She turned back to him, wide-eyed.

“Jimin, what’s your birthday?”

“October 13, 1995, why?”

“Something…. Something is wrong.”

Introduction

Next Chapter: 7.10.2019

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