Chapter Text
1905, Torana
“Promise it will protect me?” An unease voice rose above the silence as its source observed the pair of hands smoothing out the figure in front of them.
“Mrs. Snowman will keep you safe. Cross my heart.” The taller girl reinforces her promise to the much younger girl by gesturing a cross over her chest and a wide confident gummy smile on her face.
The younger girl returns the smile with her own gummy smile albeit more bashly. She reaches out and fiddles with the ends of the much older girl’s scarf that was dangling down to her height before asking, “Be back home soon, okay?”
“I will. And you...” She fixes the worn out beanie resting on top of the little girl’s raven head and coat on top of layers of clothes insulating her petite frame from the cold winter air. “Behave, alright? I better see everything in one piece when I come back...especially you.”
The bashful demeanor of the girl immediately shifts into a feisty spirit as she stomps her little feet on the snow-covered ground as she tries to make herself appear bigger than she really was. She takes a big breath of air before huffing out with her arms folded. “Of course, I’ll be good. What do you think of me, Nayeon-unnie? I’m already eight-years-old. That’s just like your age but 10 years and one much younger and cuter.”
“Why you…” The older girl named Nayeon mocks a look of pure offense. “Mina-yah, since when did you learn to be so rude?”
“None of your business.” Mina relentlessly continues her act trying to get a reaction out of Nayeon.
“Unbelievable. Fine, I’ll let you have this one since it’s Christmas, and I’m the world’s best sister.” She rose back to her height accompanied with a flip of her hair and began to walk towards the wooden gate separating her from her horse, Kookeu, who was attached to a carriage she was going to board on. “Anyway, it’s almost noon. I have to go now before my employer starts turning the whole store upside down looking for me to take his place. You know how he can be. I just don’t understand why he has to open the store on Chri-”
“Unnie!” Mina cuts her sister’s rants off, effectively stopping Nayeon in her tracks and making turn back around to face her again.
“What is it?”
“I love you.” Mina runs and throws herself into the arms of Nayeon giving her the tightest hug that spoke a thousand words.
And Nayeon understood everything.
Hidden from the view of her little sister, Nayeon’s face quietly breaks down. She returns the hug and embraces Mina even tighter. “I know. ...I love you, too, always.”
Nayeon and Mina were the closest sisters and both were almost so physically alike that most people never thought otherwise. To Mina, Nayeon had always been there with her since she could remember; Nayeon was ten when the younger girl was found at the doorstep of the orphanage.
It was not until almost two years later when a couple who meant to adopt only a child was immediately smitten by Nayeon and Mina. They couldn’t bear separating the two from each other, and so decided to simply raise both of them into their family. They were not exactly one of the bourgeois who can give all the luxuries in the world in fairytale books, but they knew they could provide comfortably enough of what the girls needed and a whole lot of love. And they did, until they didn’t…
The country of Torana was not always a peaceful country, it still is not. Peace was only disguised by the lavish luxuries the privileged flaunt in the city streets to feign their strength among other powerful nations, while everyone less was tucked into the outskirts of the cities–much like the couple who adopted Nayeon and Mina live in the countryside–as if they were unwanted when they were in fact the driving workforce that runs the economy of the country. The rich had always gotten their way whether it was for the benefit of everyone or for their own selfish reasons, the latter being the most common motive which eventually led to the death of Nayeon and Mina’s adoptive parents.
It had only been three months since men in uniforms came knocking on their doors one evening and demanded for their father to sell some more of their employers’ smuggled contrabands.
Nayeon and Mina were just on their way back to their homes from playing outside when they heard a gunshot followed by a chilling shriek and one final gunshot before deafening silence filled the winter air. Despite the shock, Nayeon was quick-witted and hid both of them behind the nearest boulder. Not more than a minute later, two men came out with their rifles hanging on their shoulders.
“What are we going to tell him?!” The shortest of the men asked.
“We’ll just find another pathetic man who can do the job for us. He’s just another guy who thought his morals could keep him alive. There are more men out there who are smarter than him.” The other man casually explains as he mounts the saddle of his horse.
The older girl overhears as she waits for them to ride away and to completely disappear from view before taking Mina into her arms and to protect and to hide her from the horrors that awaits them as she dashed straight back home. Everything feels like forever to both of them.
The past three months had not been the easiest for both sisters. Both felt like they had to quickly grow up and learn the ropes around trying to keep each other alive. Especially Nayeon, who had just turned 18 since the horrific incident, felt like she had to learn everything she thought she would have years to learn from their parents now on her own. The only two things the older of the two could be thankful for are one, she was already considered an adult when it all happened, meaning she has custody of her the eight-year-old and could be there to comfort Mina in whatever way she needs knowing of how traumatizing the event could be for the younger girl; and two, the cobbling skills she had learned from her late father, which enabled her to get a job at a shoe store downtown to keep both of them fed and alive.
Already more skilled than the other men trying to apply for the job, Nayeon’s beauty especially came in handy against other applicants. She knows that she could do better than just assisting at the shoe store and being the pretty face that attracts potential customers into the shop. She wishes that she could reclaim the shoe business their father ran. With Mina in mind, Nayeon thought this was the safest option if she was to make sure that the men who murdered her parents will not come after her if ever word gets out that she was associated with her father and was in the same trade in case of some unfinished business.
And so, there was Mina left all alone at their humble wooden abode trying to let time pass by playing with her bears, particularly her favorite button-eyed bear named Tim who had its tongue perpetually sticking out. Every now and then, she would check on the snowman she and her sister Nayeon had built right front of the gaping hole situated right beside their house.
Despite having the wildest imagination, Mina was smart and knew that the gaping hole was barely an entrance to a tunnel as it only went as far as only three meters long from the opening. She was not afraid of what might come out of it but of what might hide inside it when she’s not looking. It was never something that Mina had an issue with until the day before when a raccoon jumped at her from the hole when she went out to play in the snow. From that, thoughts of even scarier and more dangerous things hiding in it to pounce at her haunted her mind, so Nayeon thought it would be a great idea to spend the morning with her sister building a snowman just big enough to keep the hole blocked.
It had only been an hour since her sister had gone off to work and Mina was quietly watching the falling snow outside from the window with Tim bear in her arms. “Look, there’s Mrs. Snowman. She’s here to prote-”
Her words were cut short when a bright ray of light beamed through the body of the snowman before it exploded and something that emerged from Mrs. Snowman herself came barreling into the pile of snow a few meters across it.
“MRS. SNOWMAN!” She grabs her beanie and rushes outside with Tim in her arms towards the spot where the big blur that came out of the snowman shot out. She whispers, “Tim, we have to check on her.”
The completely whiteout panoramic view of the landscape completely with only the woods and the sisters’ home giving a contrast to the color, paired with the quiescent still air and the cawing of crows in the distant, almost paints a ghastly picture as Mina’s tiny figure leaves small footsteps behind her while carefully treading through the winter air.
She stills to a complete stop when the figure that cannon balled into the snow began to move. A gloved hand trying to grasp at the crumbling snow first peaks out followed by a pair of wiggling legs. Whatever was the subject of Mina’s curiosity makes small noises as it huffs and puffs trying to support itself back on its feet until its pair of feet finally touches down on solid ground.
“My snowman...you’re alive.” Mina loudly whispers in amazement.
“Huh? What snowman?” The figure in the shape of a girl as small as Mina, although a little bit taller, crunches her face in confusion. The girl looks around trying to make sense of what is going on. Her voice rose in panic as she began to regain her bearing and things started to dawn on her. “Where am I?! What happened?!”
“You! My snowman! My snowman who looks just like me!” Mina begins to explain excitedly and begins to point at the spot where Mrs. Snowman previously stood, “You were there and then you exploded!”
The girl holds her head in both her hands messing her medium length black hair in the process. With eyes wide open and her face scrunched in panic, she walks toward the direction Mina was pointing at in hopes that she would find an answer to placate her distressed self. She walks into the gaping hole and begins pressing against the rock wall as if any force she adds to it would somehow make it budge.
Mina follows her and asks, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to go home,” the girl helplessly responds, her voice cracking from trying to keep her tears from falling as she slowly realizes that no matter how hard pushes, the wall will not magically swallow and throw her back out to where she was from.
“Home? But you’re Mrs. Snowman.” Mina timidly creeps behind the mysterious girl.
“I’M NOT MRS. SNOWMAN OR SNOWMAN ANYTHING! OKAY! I JUST WANNA GO BACK HOME!” The girl bursts out crying.
Mina steps back a bit after being taken aback by her outburst.
Now, Mina was confused. What does the girl mean by “go home” and why was she trying to break through the wall of rock? She couldn’t have been stuck in the gaping hole when Nayeon and her built the snowman earlier this morning. They made sure that the hole was empty, and she saw with her own eyes that this girl burst out of a perfect good snowman before it was ruined. Her grip on her Tim bear tightens as she tries to figure out what to do herself.
She observes the girl who sat slouched on the ground crying in helplessness. Aside from the sudden outburst a few minutes ago, the girl does not seem to scare her if anything she took pity on her with the girl’s show of vulnerability. Taking note of how Nayeon comforts her whenever she wakes up from one of her nightmares, she carefully closes the few couple of feet from the slouched figure and crouches down to her height and begins consoling her. “There, there. I’m here.”
Mina offers Tim bear for the girl to hold on which shushes the latter momentarily to study Mina with her puffy eyes before gently taking the bear from Mina’s hold as she goes back to crying while trying to let out a “thank you” in between sobs. Mina patiently runs her small hands at the back of the crying in an attempt to give comfort but also out of curiosity to the texture of the girl’s coat–it was all new to her. In fact, the more she studies the girl, the more she realizes how oddly dressed she was with her pants and the coat that has a different texture from what she was familiar with. It took a loud growl from the girl’s stomach to finally slowly shush the girl from crying.
“By...any...chance,” the girl chokes out in between breaths while slowly turning to face Mina, “do you have...any food with you?”
Her own bright doe eyes, as compared to the other whose pair was already red and puffy, widened in shock by the girl’s question and how quickly it took for her to calm down with just a growl from her stomach. She holds back a chuckle and clears her throat before answering, “...I have some melonpan my unnie made for me at home.”
The girl nodded her head and slowly stood up from the ground with the help of Mina. The girl was taller than her by a few centimeters. With the right hand of the girl holding on to Tim, Mina holds the free hand and guides her out from the hole and to her home. “What’s your name?”
“Jeongyeonnie,” the girls struggles to let out from the hiccups that followed after calming down, “my name is Jeongyeon.”
“Jeongyeonnie,” Mina repeats after her and chuckles which made the girl named Jeongyeon bashfully laugh after hearing another person address her in such a way. Mina gives Jeongyeon’s hand a squeeze instead of shaking it as she introduces herself. “I’m Mina.”
Both Mina and Jeongyeon sat by the open door as they both munch over the melonpan Nayeon had made for Mina in case she gets hungry after their meal they had together before she left for work. They sat comfortably admiring the vast expanse of snow without getting completely cold.
“So you’re not my snowman?” Mina hesitantly asks as she looks at Jeongyeon from the corner of her eyes.
This time, instead of agitated outcry, Jeongyeon replies with a chuckle, “No. I’m just Jeongyeonnie.”
“Oh, are you like me?” Mina asks with her eyes taking in all of Jeongyeon now that they were not out of the hole’s shadows.
Weirded out but amused by Mina’s questions, Jeongyeon turns to face Mina before responding. “Depends. Are you a human like me?”
Mina slowly slowly nods.
“Then, yes, I am like you,” Jeongyeon grins at her with a lopsided smile.
“But what do you mean by ‘go home’?” Mina counters, but Jeongyeon’s smile disappears and is replaced with a frown. Thick silence befalls upon them as the latter goes back to eating her melonpan. Mina figured that she won’t be getting any answer anytime soon, so she, too, focuses her attention on filling her stomach with the bread. Both girls sitting in silence sidebyside at the porch as they finish their own food while watching the snowfall in front of them.
It was not until Jeongyeon finished her own bread did she begin to speak again. “Do you think I’ll be able to go back home again?”
“Huh?” Mina asks, surprised by Jeongyeon’s voice.
“What if...” Jeongyeon pauses as she tries to hold back the tears from falling again. “...What if I can’t go back home to my family again? And...and I never got to say sorry to my mom for being bad?”
“Bad?”
Jeongyeon’s tears begin to fall as she helplessly wipe them away as she explains further. “I made her mad at me... I always wanted to have a cat, and she always tells me that she’ll get me one next time. And...and it’s Christmas, but still...no, cat… So I got upset and then she got mad at me and told me that I can’t have one because of...because of my allergies. But I don’t care! So, I...so I ran away to our gardens.”
Mina’s hand found the back of Jeongyeon and began to rub comforting circles as the other girl tried to explain what happened to her.
“When I got there, there was a brown puppy wandering around, so I kind of just stayed there to play with it.” Jeongyeon’s brown eyes drifted to the hole she spent crying in earlier on and pointed at it, “We have something like that at home, too, in our garden...then it started glowing like the rays of sunshine… I was distracted by it, I didn’t notice the dog I was playing with ran into it. When I got there to bring the dog away from it, everything suddenly started...changing...started disappearing…”
Jeongyeon started to tremble while recounting her surreal experience in the hole. “It was so dark...I was so scared. And then...I saw a light, but it was sucking me towards it. I...I think I was shot out of that hole before I crashed into the pile of snow.”
“There, there. I’m here,” Mina repeats the phrase she had learned from Nayeon. The same phrase she had told Jeongyeon earlier. From her position, Mina awkwardly tries to hug the girl beside her and let her cry her fears into her arms.
Mina’s curious mind wanted to know more about how that exactly happened to Jeongyeon. How could she have appeared in that hole when it was not even a tunnel that could have led somewhere. Did some magical glowing light, the same ray of light that Mina saw moments before the girl blasted through the snowman, responsible for Jeongyeon being here? Mina wanted to ask more but felt that everything she just heard from Jeongyeon was the limits of the girl's knowledge on the subject of her inquisition, and so did not pry further and did whatever she could to make Jeongyeon feel less scared.
Time flew by after Mina introduced Jeongyeon to her collection of bears and began playing with them. The taller girl had even been acquainted with the bear Mina had lent her earlier and how it was Mina’s favorite.
“Tim reminds me of my own dog back home,” Jeongyeon blurts out in the middle of playing with Mina. She runs her hand through the material of the stuffed bear, before giving it a hug and sighing out, “Nanan. She’s a brown poodle.”
Mina watches Jeongyeon quietly. She can feel how much Jeongyeon misses her dog, afterall, that’s the kind of hug she gives Nayeon whenever she misses her or when she wishes that Nayeon could stay with her instead of going to work. Tim is her favorite bear. She would not let anything happen to him or have him separate from her, but it seems like Jeongyeon needs him more than she does now, and so she offers, “You can have him if you want.”
Jeongyeon removes Tim from her embrace and looks at Mina in disbelief, “But it’s your favorite…
Mina slowly nods her head. “It’s yours if it would make you feel less alone here.”
“Mina, no, I can’t,” Jeongyeon quickly puts the bear back into Mina’s arms. “And I’m not alone. You’re here with me. You’re my friend.”
“Friend?” Mina asks.
“Yep!” Jeongyeon smiles at her. “I mean, aren’t you? You gave me some of that bread your sister had prepared for you just in case you get hungry and have been keeping me company.:
“I-I guess so,” Mina smiles at that thought. She’s not a social pariah or one to struggle socially. In fact, Mina does pretty well making friends. It just gets pretty lonely sometimes at home when they live quite far from where people her age do live.
“Good!” Jeongyeon says with even a bigger lopsided smile. “Besides, I’m not really into stuffed bears. I’m more into Pokemon plushies,” Jeongyeon answers.
“Pokemon plushies?” Mina asks.
“Yeah, like Bulbasaur, Pikachu, Charmander, Eevee, Jigglypuff…” Jeongyeon gets lost enumerating as many as she could until she notices Mina's confused look. “Wow, you really don’t know Pokemon?!”
Mina shakes her head no while bearing a very confused expression.
“Oh my god, I gotta to tell you about them,” Jeongyeon tells her before giving Mina the up-down. “And Mina…”
“Yes, Jeongyeonnie?” Mina asks.
“I hope you don’t find it rude, but...I thought I died a while ago outside.” Jeongyeon hesitantly says.
“Huh? Dead?” Mina was not sure what about Jeongyeon thinking she died earlier would be something she would find rude. A tragic thought, yes? Rude? No.
“Sorry, I mean. I thought I woke up in heaven, because everything was so white except for you and a few other things.” Jeongyeon quickly corrects herself. “And I’ve never seen anyone my age dressed like you. It just seems so...old.”
“What?” Mina looks at what she’s wearing and then turns to Jeongyeon with scrunched eyebrows. ”Everyone at school wears something like this. Your clothes are odd!”
“‘Odd’,” Jeongyeon, surprised by her words, immediately realized what Mina said and looked down on her own clothes for something she did not notice the whole day she was wearing it, “What do you mean? Everyone in 2005 wears this.”
“‘2005’,” Mina chuckles after her, “It’s 1905, silly!”
“What? No, it’s 2005,” Jeongyeon argues her brows scrunching together again.
“It’s 1905!” Mina walks to the kitchen table where a newspaper lays at rest. She takes it to Jeongyeon to support her argument and reads it, “‘25th of December, 1905.’ See!”
Jeongyeon quickly takes the newspaper off her hand and reads the dates. She wishes that it was all just a mean prank but the newspaper was completely crisp and new and did not seem like it was just printed out from a personal printer. She then looks around Mina’s house and tries to take in everything, not that she was not paying attention when she stepped in earlier. It was just that she had thought it was Mina and her family’s choice of aesthetic that could explain why everything seemed so antique, even her new friend’s fashion. Then, did things really begin to dawn on her as if being transported to a different place was not bad enough reality for her.
“Mina…” Jeongyeon drops the newspaper on the ground and runs to hug Mina before releasing a sob on the latter’s shoulder. “I’ll never be able to go home...will I?”
“Jeongyeonnie, what are you-” Mina was cut short by her realization, “Are you saying, that...that you’re from the future?”
Jeongyeon nods against her shoulder.
If somehow a girl teleporting from someplace far away to the yard in front of her eyes still does not make this Christmas the most bizarre one in Mina’s entire existence, then it was now.
It was less than half an hour before sunset. Though obscured by the layers of clouds hanging above them, the sun setting creates a beautiful painting on the sky by its rays bouncing on different particles handing in the space above.
Mina and Jeongyeon have gone outside after sometime when Jeongyeon finally calmed down.
They went to check on the hole again trying to find a way to get Jeongyeon back to her time and place. Jeongyeon even went as far as chanting something that sounded like “jjirit, jjirit, jjirit” to Mina while the taller girl stood at the center. It was accompanied with a dance that involved only extending the outer fingers and then pointing the thumbs to your head while the pinky pointed up. Mina would have laughed at how adorable the girl in front of her was trying to concentrate if not for the gravity of the situation for Jeongyeon. She holds it back instead and crosses her fingers that it would somehow work.
It didn’t.
Jeongyeon, tired from crying and being upset for almost the entire day, gives up and lies on the snow-covered ground instead, and Mina lies besides her with their heads side by side.
Just as Mina had been doing the entire day, she reassures her that she’ll be here with Jeongyeon throughout this whole ordeal especially since they were friends now, until eventually, their conversation shifted to them sharing little details about each other such as their birthdays and their favorite hobbies while absentmindedly creating snow angels on the snow.
“Mina-yah, where are your parents?”
Silence.
“What’s wrong?” Jeongyeon asked when she felt Mina standing up after a minute a bit too long, she turned her head to look over but was met with a snowball straight to her face.
Mina stood there giggling at the older girl’s appalled expression. “Got you.”
“MINA! Not fair!” Jeongyeon screams out before standing up to join Mina in this war the latter had started.
Now, Mina and Jeongyeon sat quietly watching the sun set into the horizon after their exhausting snowball fight. If not for Jeongyeon’s situation, it would have been the most fun Christmas Jeongyeon had. Mina, too.
“Je-” The sun completely sank down into the horizon when Mina was cut off by the same bright light like rays of sunshine started glowing at the same hole Jeongyeon appeared from, “JEONGYEONNIE!”
Both were quickly on their feet and began running towards the light.
Jeongyeon halts in her steps a few feet away from the hole and calls out to Mina, “MINA-YAH!”
Mina stops and turns around to look at the taller girl, “Mina-yah, what if it doesn't take me back home?”
Jeongyeon’s eyes were glazed with confusion and fear, and Mina understood why. They cannot be completely sure that whatever time and space this new glowing portal is going to be the same one that Jeongyeon belonged to. Mina runs back to Jeongyeon and takes the older girl’s hands and gives it a tight squeeze.
And just like that Jeongyeon worries were laid ease. She releases her hands from Mina’s hold and gives the younger girl the tightest embrace, “Thank you for everything. I’ll find my way back home, Mina.”
For Mina, it also would have been the best Christmas if only her family were there for her to spend it with; but, in a way, Jeongyeon’s unexpected appearance made everything better and an adventure straight from the storybooks she used to read. She could only selfishly wish that her new friend could stay always by her side, but she knew that Jeongyeon has her own family that she wanted to go home to and who was also probably looking for her, too, despite whatever fight they had earlier that day.
“I’ll never forget today,” Mina responds with a hint of sadness. “You can always visit me again, Jeongyeonnie.”
Mina is broken out of her bittersweet stupor by Jeongyeon hugging her tightly, “I will.”
The shorter girl hugs Jeongyeon just as tight.
“See you again, Mina.”
Jeongyeon then waves at Mina one last time before she runs to the glowing bright light.
And just like that, everything was quiet.
The bright sky was no more but a shade of navy blue as the owl from the woods filled the air with the hoots.
“Mina!” A voice called out.
Mina, still distracted by the space where her new friend had just disappeared to, did not notice her sister arriving home a couple minutes after everything transpired. “Minaaaa!”
“Nayeon-unnie!” Mina screams in surprise.
“Now what exactly are you doing outside? It’s dark out. You know it’s dangerous,” Nayeon tells her off in concern.
“But, Nayeon-unnie, it’s fine. I just saw my friend off!” Mina says as if it was nothing.
“Friend?” Nayeon’s eyes squinted in suspicion and suddenly became protective of Mina. “Have you been talking to strangers? You know I told you not to. Oh, Mina. I’m so sorry. I should have never left you alone at home. I promise I’ll never leave you at home for so long again. You’re still too young.”
In the process of Nayeon’s word vomit of her worries, she had entrapped Mina into a tight hug. Mina smiles at the promise of Nayeon but thought to ease her sister with what really happened. She struggles out of the hug to face Nayeon, and begins to explain excitedly, “Unnie, no! She was harmless. In fact, she’s just my age, and she’s from the future.”
Nayeon was not sure what to do with that information, but she thought it was all just a result of Mina’s imagination after being left alone for a little bit over five hours. She decides to conceal her worries and ride along with Mina for now, “Well, tell me about her later over dinner, because I have a surprise for you...”
“What is it?” Mina’s curiosity gets the best of her as she excitedly tries to look at the huge basket Nayeon had laid on the ground behind her prior to confronting Mina as her sister was reaching for it.
With her own gummy smile that emphasized her two rosy cheeks, Nayeon simply crouches down to her sister’s height and opens the lid of the basket and urges Mina to look into it. “Go on.”
Before Mina even find the chance to fish out whatever Nayeon has in surprise for her, a a head of a puppy pops out, its snout hitting the tip of Mina’s nose making the girl fall flat on her bottom. “Ahhh!”
“Such a scaredy-cat, and I thought you were a grown up now,” Nayeon teases her.
Mina stood up and dusted off her behind and went straight for the basket with the dog completely ignoring her sister’s teasing. She then scoops the dog right into her arms and starts cooing at it.
Nayeon smiles at the sight of her sister happily trying to introduce herself to the puppy. “I found him on my way home a few minutes away from here. Thank God, the sun was still up or else I might have run him over with Kookeu. The puppy seems lost, and I remember you complaining about how lonely you are with no one your age to play with.”
Mina held the puppy in her one arm and began to walk closer to where her sister was to listen better.
“As I said, you wanted someone to play with your age, and you think I’m too old,” Nayeon rolls her eyes at her own use of words, “Anyway, I thought it would be a great idea to take this puppy home for you instead...since you’re both babies and all.”
Mina was too happy to try and be snarky with her sister. Instead, she simply hugged her sister as tightly as she could with one arm and said, “Thank you.”
The last three months may have not been kind to young Mina, but, somehow, she felt that everything will eventually get better little by little.
The night always comes around to haunt her, but just as often as its existence is daylight’s. After the frightening dark comes the rays of sunshine that give hope and strength for a better tomorrow no matter how many times it is lost in darkness. It always finds a way to shine through.
“What are you going to name him?” Nayeon asks.
“Ray. Ray-chan.”