_Tomorrow’s #1: Lovely Runner

Chapter 4

“So, remember what I said?” asked the teacher. “This is the implementation the Law of Uniform Land Tax. You can solve this problem if you understand the tax system in the Joseon Dynasty. So what’s the keyword here?”

I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve basically gone back to my life in tenth grade. Class, break time, class, break time… My day kept switching back and forth between the two. I was trapped in this schedule, which meant I had to live by it—every minute and every second of my life.

I tugged at my bangs, then felt someone staring at me. When I turned my head, Eunhee was looking at me strangely. She leaned close and whispered, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been acting weird since yesterday.”

Right, I’m sure I look weird in your eyes. This is odd to me, too. I let go of my bangs and scooted my chair closer to Eunhee. “Hey, so… You wake up and suddenly find yourself six years in the past. You think it’s a dream, but you can’t wake up. What do you even call something like that?” I asked.

Eunhee opened her eyes widely, blinked several times, and then whispered, “A time leap?”

“Time leap? What’s that?”

Eunhee wrote it down in a blank space in my textbook. “It’s in the name. You jump through time. It’s basically time travel,” she explained.

As soon as Eunhee finished speaking, a piece of chalk bounced off my desk. When I looked up, my history teacher was glaring at me. Eunhee coughed and looked down at her textbook.

“No talking during class,” the teacher growled.

“Sorry,” I answered. I dropped my head and looked at the scribbled letters in my textbook. Time leap…

□ ■ □

For the final period of the day, we had study hall instead of supplementary classes.

I looked up “time leap” on my phone. As related searches, I got “time travel,” “time slip,” and “time machine.” I clicked on each and read about them.

Time travel is escaping the general flow of time and going to the future or the past… A time slip is when someone or a group of people goes against the flow of time and ends up in the future or past… And a time machine is a science fiction device that makes traveling to the past or future possible.

“What the…?” I mumbled. I turned my phone over, lay my arms across my desk, and thought about what happened on December 31st. I drank a carton of soju, though I didn’t get wasted, just tipsy. I cried over Sunjae, and I heard the bell ring for New Year’s Eve. That was all I did. And when the new year came, I randomly went back six years in time.

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t call this a dream. It was all too ordinary to be a dream, except for the fact I knew everything that would happen for the next six years.

I banged my head against my desk in frustration. Eunhee quickly grabbed my shoulder and stopped me. “Why are you hitting your head? Is something wrong?” she asked.

“That time leap you told me about… I think I might have done that.”

“What?” Eunhee opened her eyes wide and then burst into laughter.

She might have laughed, but I was serious. “No, really. I’m not joking around. I drank some soju before falling asleep, so I thought I was having a weird dream. But no matter how I look at it, I don’t think this is a dream.”

“Sol, you drink?” asked Eunhee. Her face stiffened.

“No, I’m talking about the past. The year I was twenty-three… Though it was New Year’s, so I guess I was going to be twenty-four. I was in university. I didn’t have a job yet. I was just a pathetic student and an idol stan, but I was still studying, at least.”

“So… You’re from the future?”

I nodded purposefully.

“You went back to the past, just like that?”

I nodded almost maniacally. “My favorite idol died, so I was crying with my covers pulled over my head. Then suddenly, the covers were filled with light. When I opened my eyes, I was in this classroom.”

Eunhee looked at me worriedly and patted my shoulder. I thought she understood, but she suddenly pulled her desk away from mine. Not only that, but she shielded her face from me with her hand to avoid my gaze.

How could she? I sighed, clutched my forehead, and looked down at my desk. Someone had written “Im Sol ♡” in giant letters with a marker—Hyunjoo.

Hyunjoo and I met in middle school, ended up going to the same high school, and became best friends. She was the only one I hung around with, but when her dad’s work moved him away from Seoul, she had to move. She transferred to another school after the college entrance test mock exam in September of tenth grade. Maybe Hyunjoo would’ve believed me if she were here, I thought.

I was a depressed tenth grader six years ago. I fought with my mom and said that I was going to drop out of school and get my GED. When I told her that, she whacked me on the head several times with a soup ladle and kicked me out of the house. Whenever I had to give an excuse about my poor grades, I’d tell people it was because my mom smacked me on the head with a ladle.

I rubbed Hyunjoo’s writing with my finger. It was written with a permanent marker, so it didn’t fade and could never be erased, no matter how hard I rubbed.

I got chills all over when I realized everything was exactly how my past had been, down to a tee. My heart began to race. I don’t know why it happened, but did I really travel through time? Then—

The bell rang. I grabbed my bag and stood.

Eunhee had distanced herself from me, and she looked at me when I suddenly sprang up. “Aren’t you going to stay behind for the evening self-study session?” she asked.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and shook my head. “What’s the point of doing that all over again? There’s no such thing as ‘slaying the college entrance exams.’ I even carried a four-leaf clover in my pocket.”

I pushed in my chair in and patted Eunhee on the shoulder. “Study hard,” I told her. You’re gonna bomb the college entrance exam and end up retaking it.

I opened the classroom door and stepped out into the hallway. This was an opportunity to prevent Sunjae from joining Potato Pancakes as their fifth member and to stop Potato War and Potato Battle from ever being created. This was my last chance to save Sunjae, who ended up dying at twenty-three because he combined the wrong medication. The reason he had suffered from insomnia in the first place was all because of Potato War and Potato Battle.

Since I’m eighteen again, I only have one goal. I call it “Mission: Prevent Ryu Sunjae From Joining Potato Pancakes.” I’m going to save my number one.

□ ■ □

I stood in front of the entrance of Jagam High School again. As far as I knew, Sunjae stopped going to after-school self-study sessions when he joined the agency and began his trainee life.

It’s 6:10 P.M., so self-study has surely begun. The lights were on at the school, and it was silent. I’d come to Sunjae’s school in the hopes that he would still be here.

If I’m lucky, we might run into each other. If we don’t, I’m going to come even earlier tomorrow. I’m going to stop Sunjae from joining Potato Pancakes at all costs. I will yank the root of his insomnia right out of the ground! And I’m going to save him no matter what!

“Let’s go! I can do this!” I shouted. I clenched my fists and put them on my hips.

“Isn’t that the girl from yesterday? The one who cried while yelling Sunjae’s name?”

I turned my head with my fists still on my hips and my knees bent. Two girls with popsicles in their mouths stared at me while stepping through the school gate.

“It is her…” one of them said, and the girls both stopped.

Why did they stop? Are they— But before I could finish the thought, they were suddenly standing right in front of me.

The one with clumpy mascara on her eyelashes read the name tag on my uniform. “Im Sol?”

The girl standing next to her scanned me from head to toe. When she reached my feet, her eyes returned to my face. “What’s your relationship with Sunjae? Are you two dating?” she asked.

“What?” I blurted out, blushing. Oh my god! I can’t believe people think that we’re dating. My face turned red at just the thought, so I covered my cheeks. “No way. How could I possibly go out with the Great Sunjae?”

The girls frowned at me as I blushed and then burst into laughter, though it sounded closer to scoffing.

“‘The Great Sunjae?’ Wow, what a name,” one of the girls said, sneering.

My hands naturally came together docilely. The girls sounded like bullies. I’m such a loser…

“You wailed for the world to hear and shouted how much you love him. Is that some kind of new attention-seeking tactic?” the other girl asked.

“Excuse me? Tactic?” I tried to smile as nicely as possible. Why are you doing this? You’re scaring me. Please go back to the self-study session and study!

“Don’t even think about calling dibs on Sunjae like that. You’re too late. I already claimed him on the first day of high school,” said the first girl, who had her hair in a bun. Her name tag read “Kim Oksoon.” She glared at me viciously.

“Um…” I muttered.

“Just ‘um?’ Is that all?”

“Sorry,” I said, nodding. I backed down. Isn’t it enough? Now please hurry back to your studies.

One thing that hadn’t changed was how scared I became in front of bullies wearing uniforms. They’re the scariest beings in the world, I thought.

Oksoon and the girl with cakey mascara went through the school gate.

“They were scary,” I whispered.

I stood before the school gate and waited for Sunjae to come out. I was kicking rocks to kill time, then I got the urge to swing my bag in front of me, open the zipper, and pull out the letter I wrote. I didn’t think I would be able to say what I wanted to, so I had written it down in a letter. I had written many letters to Sunjae before, but this was my first time giving one to him in person.

My heart raced a thousand miles per minute. I had picked out the letter paper and envelope with great care, choosing a design with huge hearts. I ran my fingers across the envelope, then pulled out the letter. When I unfolded the paper that I had carefully folded in half, I saw small, neat handwriting that had clearly been written very carefully.

The letter began with “Dear Sunjae.” I scanned it, then stopped.

“Huh?” I rubbed my eyes and checked again. My eyes wide with surprise. No matter how many times I looked, the most important sentences had been erased.

—You’ll get a cold on XX/XX/XXXX. You’ll be suffering from insomnia, so you’re going to look for sleeping pills. But you can’t take any medicine or vitamins that day, even if it’s difficult not to. If you do, it will put you in danger.

This crucial part I had written was no longer there. I questioned myself, wondering if I had actually written down my thoughts. But that part was a big chunk in the middle of the letter, and there was now an empty gap where it used to be. And my closing—“Love, Your Fan”—was still there at the very end.

“Wait, what happened?” I couldn’t believe my eyes.

But I used a pen… My tears wouldn’t stop falling even when I wrote this letter, so the writing got all smudged, and I had to rewrite it three times.

“How could this be…?” I couldn’t possibly bring myself to tell Sunjae in person that he was going to die like that in the future, so I needed to write this letter to inform him.

“Huh?”

I heard someone’s voice from ahead, so I looked up with my mouth gaped open. Inhyuk and Sunjae were walking toward me. I quickly shoved my letter in my pocket.

“Did you come here to see Sunjae?” asked Inhyuk. He looked back and forth between us.

I had, but that was before I checked my letter. I came here to see Sunjae and give him this… But darn it, why did my letter end up like that?

“N-no,” I blurted out. “I came to see a friend.”

“A friend?” asked Inhyuk. “You have a friend who goes to this school?”

“Yes, I do. Her name is Dukbae.”

“Dukbae?” Inhyuk mockingly asked. His face seemed to say, “Is there a girl with a name like that in this school?”

I coughed awkwardly and looked at the schoolyard, as if Sunjae wasn’t the reason I was here.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go,” Sunjae muttered in his low voice and walked away. Inhyuk muttered “Dukbae” several times, then followed him with the same perplexed face.

I poked my head through the gate and looked at the schoolyard as if I were really waiting for Dukbae to come out. Suddenly, a thought flashed in my mind. I took the letter from my pocket and unfolded it. “Wait. Am I unable to say what happens in the future?” There is no other reason why only this part of the letter vanished.

I hung my head and sighed. I had a feeling that the road ahead wouldn’t be easy.