JOUSKA: A HYPOTHETICAL CONVERSATION THAT YOU COMPULSIVELY PLAY OUT IN YOUR HEAD

It was time to have a talk with Hyungwon.

After long long hours, actually sixteen hours— I awoke from repose to realize I had missed university hours, which meant two important course lectures, and my part-time hours too were ticking by. Normal me would've jumped out of the bed, ran around screaming like a neanderthal, and would've panicked like it was the end of the world.

I couldn't feel any of that no matter what. When I yawned and patted my face I could feel it was puffy. Swollen with the hours of sleep, botched up like a plastic surgery gone wrong. Quietly sitting on the bed with my eyes leaden, I could hear the sound of a drizzle outside on the rooftop.

It was raining. And I really wanted to talk to Hyungwon. I needed to before I'd lose my mind.

Changing out into a fresh pair of pajamas I took the white translucent umbrella I'd recently bought (it was going to be my first time using it tonight). The material was still crisp until the rain wetted it. Minutes later I found myself rapping on Hyungwon's door. A side of me wanted him to be absent. The opaque glass of his window was darkened.

It lighted up and a rustling sound of unlocking the door followed. He pulled it a silver aside. A pair of big eyes, in a pair of sunken holes, met me.

He closed it, right to my face.

I was baffled, standing on the balcony. My umbrella still wide open though the rain was only hitting my back slightly when it pelted on the railings, and the water reflected on the rusty metal.

There were noises coming from inside, Hyungwon shuffling around loudly. I didn't know whether to leave or not. Before I could make up my mind he opened the door again, this time swinging it fully to the side and revealing his brooding self. He was wearing a plaid shirt and trousers, his hair disheveled and countenance, ashen. One look said he was a nocturnal creature.

"Um, hi," I commenced. He probably uttered a hi back but I heard nothing and only saw his protruding lips moving.

"Can I come inside?" This was a wrong move, my mind told me but my mouth said otherwise.

If I wanted to talk to him I could've done that somewhere else, actually, I could've done that some other time. Not on a lonely night with the rain pouring down.

He moved aside hence there was no turning back. I went inside a stranger's house and it didn't make me feel anxious or scared, nor even when I fully stepped inside and saw that it was the same single-sized bed, the beaten-up couch that had lost almost all its leather material and only the once-white-now-grey foam was visible, the dilapidated, small coffee table too. Everything else was gone. Those remained from the last tenant, that guy around my age.

Why did I not feel anything?

When he closed the door from behind, and gingerly took my wet umbrella to lay it in a corner, I went and sat down on the contagious looking couch. The last time I'd visited, almost a year ago the plaster and the wallpapers were on the verge of ruination. He had posters of old action movies on those dingy, patched up walls. He was a die-hard fan of the movie die hard.

For Hyungwon, there was nothing. Freshly painted off-white walls, not actually fresh because the landlord must have painted when the other guy moved. The place looked way nicer anyway. There wasn't much in the room. The bed was unmade, the coffee table trashed with papers strewn across here and there, pens, pencils and erasers, stained coffee mugs, and used paper cups. Two stubbed cigarettes in one of the coffee mugs.

Following my gaze, Hyungwon hurriedly leaped towards the floor. Pushed all that cups and mugs aside under his small bed. I wondered how such a tall person could even fit in that little bed without his feet dangling off.

"I don't really smoke often," he said, his voice nervous. He looked awfully guilty as he turned to me.

He then got up and rashly walked towards the only window in the room. He opened it, letting the cold and rainy breeze outside immediately wash off the stale smell of cigarettes.

"I have instant coffee." He stood at a side, his hands unconsciously pulling on the hem of his already oversized shirt.

"I'm okay," I responded. My eyes averted to the table approximately a feet away from me. On that massive pile of cluttered sheets of papers, only one thing arrested my vision.

"I thought you always wore that watch." A twinkle was visible on the four crowns of the watch today, the buckle and the crystal glimmering. The brown straps didn't look so worn out anymore.

I had never seen Hyungwon without that watch, though our meetings were countable using two hands and only the fingers. Hyungwon came and bent down to the low table. He picked up the watch.

"I... I was working on it. Apart from cleaning it of course."

I gave him a small nod, trying to go over the hypothetical conversation with him that I'd made up in my mind, only to realize I hadn't constructed a script, an agenda to get on the conversation.

"That watch," I fumbled around in my head for a better choice of words but my vocabulary was limited when it came to talking upfront like this. "T-that, it helps you to time travel?"

"Time and space travel, yes," he replied, cautiously holding the watch as if it was a fragile thing.

How's that really possible? Even after going through all those hours of talking with Minhyuk and others, surfing through the web, and brainstorming on my own, I wasn't prepared for any of this.

"So you've come from the future?"

He had already told that to me before, and he bobbed his head up and down, again telling me that it was true.

But how would I know it was true?

"Out of all the people, why did you come to me?" As I asked that, I realized it only implied that I believed his statement to be true.

A frown appeared on his small face for a singular moment before it waned away. "Did Changkyun tell you that?" He interrogated and then his brows met in the middle again. "Did you tell him about me?"

A sudden thud in my chest ringed in my ears, the air in the room felt stagnant yet so cold that I could feel my bones inside freezing. After the consecutive hot days, the rain was supposed to bring comfort, but for me, I could feel the icy nails clawing at my gut.

Yet I didn't feel scared, not that emotion or feeling at least.

"What do you know about me? About my past?" I was freaking out a bit, or a lot. That was the normal response in this situation, or so I was telling myself to actually calm my nerves down.

"You sound eerily like Jooheon," he muttered. I half-listened, half-read his lips to fully comprehend.

That was it, he knew all of them. He knew about yesterday or more. How? The neurons in my whole body were sending electric jolts to the brain, ransacking it all inside. It was chaos. I tried to hold onto one signal, and it told me he could have bugged me like those action-thriller movies. If that was the case I'd better run for my life.

"I didn't stalk you if that's what you're thinking." His voice was rather lucid this time, cutting through the frozen, invisible walls between us.

"It doesn't matter if you told others about me. But it will take more time to convince them, and we might run out of time again if we do that," he added, his tone unnerving.

I didn't tell anyone. No voice came out of me anyway until few moments later.

"No one knows," I said, my eyes on my balled-up fists and then I looked up at him standing by the bed. When our eyes met, he glanced away and then with effort looked at me again.

"We might run out of time for what?" I pulled on his last spoken words.

"To save Wonho."

His response was terse and short. Under my strong questioning stare, he said more. I wished he actually didn't after he said the words.

"On November 1 this year, he's going to die. He's going to kill himself."

Why would he ever? I wanted to shout, but I realized I didn't even know him fully. Fuck, I knew nothing. Why was I believing this strange person?

"The bracelet I gave you, it's yours. The future yours. You know it's difficult to recreate it right? Given all the combinations one could form mixing the beads as they are all different from the other." He sounded almost desperate, a hand clutching on the device. The watch looked no longer delicate to him, but the only thing he was holding onto for life.

I let my back hit the couch. He was right, he was right at least about that. I was having vertigo and now I really was out of ways and thoughts to proceed.

"I think I need that instant coffee."

---
A/n: if someone comes to you and tells you they've come from a different time, what would be your reaction?