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After waking up from the serum, Hyunjin asks just three questions.
The first is already interrupted before she can get past “What happened?” She listens to Sooyoung’s explanation in silence, still numb from the drug; she can’t feel her hands. Sooyoung talks about a nanodocket barrier and two hypnotic serums and a plan. She is very thorough. She covers all the necessary details and leaves no room for argument, no gaps for questioning aside from the fact that she doesn’t say Jinsol’s name once.
The second, to Heejin at her bedside, to Heejin’s hand clasping her own, so tightly it pales the skin: “Did you know?”
“No, Hyunjin, I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t.” Tears are streaming down Heejin’s face. She’s always been an ugly crier, her sobs loud and demanding and honest, her hair half-stuck to her cheek. Hyunjin thinks of reaching out to brush it away, and wonders idly why her hand won’t move.
The third, when it arrives after a long silence, is delivered as a command to an empty spot in the air: “Could I be left alone please.”
It’s answered as requested.
1. State your name, age, and educational background.
She bangs open the door with her shoulder, steps inside and scans the room. KARI’s cadet dorms are much nicer than some of the other quarters she’s had to sleep in, but she’s bunking with five other roommates and she’d prefer not to have an audience for this. No luck: a startled face stares back at her from one of the beds on the far side of the room, lit up by the glow of her laptop. Oh, well. Cat’s out of the bag—literally.
“Hey. It’s Heejin, right?” Hyunjin says, like she hasn’t been keeping track of the name and face rising fast on the academic ranking results.
Heejin blinks at her. Her hair’s rumpled from the giant stack of pillows propped up behind her against her headboard. ‘Uh—yeah.”
“Will you help me?” Hyunjin asks.
“What?”
Hyunjin nods down at the mewling cat bundled up in a towel in her arms.
“I,” Heejin says. “Oh shit. Okay.” She’s scrambling to shut her laptop and throw back her covers at the same time, and ends up knocking her opened textbook to the ground with a thump. “Shit, sorry. What is it, uh, is that your cat?”
Hyunjin keeps her face straight. “No, I found him out by the cafeteria building, digging into the trash. I already gave him a bath in the dorm showers, and now I’m going to go buy some cat food, but I need to keep him somewhere warm and comfortable in the meantime. Can you grab my blanket from my bed—it’s that one, there—and put it on the floor?”
“Yeah, sure. Hold on—” Heejin jumps off her bed, and Hyunjin watches in surprise as she first takes her own blanket and spreads it out on the floor before doing the same with Hyunjin’s overtop.
“Thanks,” Hyunjin says, and carefully lets down the cat, towel and all. He mews again, tail flicking back and forth, then burrows into the soft pile of blankets.
“Well,” Heejin says, letting out a breath. “I think he’s happy.”
Hyunjin goes to fill a bowl with water. When she returns Heejin’s knelt on the ground by the blankets, making cooing noises. Her pajamas are yellow, patterned with ducks. Her feet are bare.
“You have a cat back at home?” Hyunjin asks, setting the bowl down on the floor. Heejin looks startled again, face a little flushed as she clears her throat.
“No, I don’t, actually. I grew up with dogs.” A wistful note enters her voice. “I miss them a lot.” She looks at Hyunjin. “But you do, then?”
“I used to.” Hyunjin settles down on her knees next to her.
“So... are you planning to keep him?” Heejin asks.
“I’ve already brought him here, haven’t I?”
“Well, then,” Heejin says. “What are you going to name him?”
Hyunjin thinks about it. “How about Donald?”
Heejin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously?”
“Why not?”
Heejin’s grinning again. “No, nothing. I just didn’t think... that’d be the name you’d go for, that’s all.”
“I’m full of surprises,” Hyunjin says lightly.
Heejin points at the cat. “Obviously.”
They both watch him lap at the water for a moment.
“You know, pets aren’t allowed in the dorms,” Heejin says.
Hyunjin tenses.
“So we’re going to have to be really careful.”
Hyunjin looks up. Heejin is watching her. Hyunjin smiles back at her, a secret for the both of them to share. Heejin’s eyes widen a little.
“I’ve got to go get the cat food,” Hyunjin says. “Will you stay here to watch him? Sorry—I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
“Oh,” Heejin says. “Me? You sure? I could go and you could stay, if you want—”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Hyunjin says. “Thank you.” She pauses. “Oh. I’m Kim Hyunjin, by the way.”
“Yeah,” Heejin says. She shakes her head a little and laughs, tongue darting out to wet her lips. When she flicks her gaze back up at her, it lingers. “Yeah, I know.”
2. Why are you applying for the Divert Project?
They’re still staying in the Faculty Quarters, each of them that are left. Hyunjin suspects they wouldn’t be able to leave if they tried—they’re under investigation for what happened with the mission, after all. But they haven’t tried. Where else is there to go? In a short matter of time they’ll get what’s coming to them either way. At least from here they’ll have a spectacular view.
After Hyunjin is recovered enough to stand without shaking, after she sits through the rounds of military and council questioning, after she uselessly repeats I didn’t know I didn’t know I didn’t know over and over like a broken instrument, she goes to the library. Their mattresses are still spread out there from the night before, the last night. Hers and Heejin’s. Her throat dries looking at them. She doesn’t look at them. She lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling and thinks about how childish it is to be angry with someone who saved her life and then to take it out on the one who loves her. To waste what she’s been given. This life; this body; this time. Sixteen days. She counts the dots on the ceiling like stars.
Jinsol loved this library. It was her sanctuary; she was the only one who ever really used it. At the time Hyunjin thought of it affectionately, Jinsol’s inability to let go of whatever studies and stories were captivating her attention. Now she realizes just what it must have been she was poring over with such intent.
Loves, Hyunjin corrects herself. Jinsol loves.
She must fall asleep, because when she blinks open her eyes again it’s too dark to see. Her throat hurts; her neck is stiff. That gnawing feeling, she recognizes, is hunger. All these aches and pains she’s been trying to train away, pumping her body faster and stronger in order to leave it behind. The medical exam that had cleared her fit enough to die. She lets herself feel them now. She has the time.
When she makes her way to the common area, she finds it’s occupied.
Sooyoung looks up at her from where she’s bent over one of her potted plants, a water bottle in one hand, the other grasping a waxy green leaf. She’s framed by the pale violet glow of the humidifier, its clouds of mist. Her face is gaunt with exhaustion.
“How are you feeling?” Sooyoung asks.
Neither of them ask why the other isn’t sleeping.
“Like I was drugged,” Hyunjin says.
Sooyoung returns her attention to the plants. She tends to them carefully, parting the leaves with gentle hands, as though caressing an animal. “You should eat,” she says. “Heejin’s worried about you.”
“You knew,” Hyunjin says.
Sooyoung doesn’t pause in her work. “Jinsol told me.” Hyunjin is surprised her voice doesn’t crack on the name. “A few days before the launch. She asked me not to tell anyone else. It would have jeopardized the mission.”
Hyunjin already knows the facts stacked against her. She can put them together for herself: Jinsol is the one who understands how the nanotech barrier works. Jinsol is the one who helped put it together in the first place. Jinsol is the bravest person I have ever known. So she doesn’t bother arguing.
Instead, she says all there is left to say without them, which is, “It should have been me.”
Sooyoung looks up. Her eyes flash. “No,” she says. “It could have been you. So thank your lucky stars for Jung Jinsol.”
Hyunjin’s fist clenches at her side. “How can you say that?”
“What do you mean?”
“The woman you love is up there, in space, alone, ” Hyunjin says. “You can’t possibly look me in the eye and tell me you don’t wish it were me. Like it was supposed to be. How could you let her go? How can you live with that? How can I?”
They stare at each other. Hyunjin is breathing heavily. Through the window the night sky is inscrutable, empty save for the red dot on the horizon, bright enough to be mistaken for a star.
“If I hadn’t been so scared,” Hyunjin says, only just realizing it. “If I hadn’t been so weak, all the time, in front of her. Maybe then she could have trusted me. Maybe she’d still be here.”
“You were one of the first to volunteer for the mission.” Sooyoung’s voice is edged low and sharp. “You ranked as the most capable candidate in the entire organization. No one doubted your heart for a second.”
There’s a pause.
“I did,” Hyunjin whispers, her voice breaking under all the weight of her confession.
Sooyoung’s gaze is level. She speaks again, in the same tone, but with different words: “You volunteered for the mission without hesitation so that you could protect the ones you love. You ranked as the most capable candidate in order to ensure your sacrifice and their survival—their future. Don’t you think that had something to do with why Jinsol did what she did? Don’t you think her choice shows what she thinks of you?”
“She shouldn’t have had to choose that alone,” Hyunjin insists. “She’s only one person. We were supposed to be partners. I let her down.”
“Hyunjin,” Sooyoung says, and Hyunjin doesn’t like that her voice is softer now, as though Hyunjin is something that requires it. “It was her only hope, too.”
“It was my duty. I failed.” Everything Hyunjin has to say is so childish, so futile. She says it anyway: “It isn’t fair.”
“If it were me,” Sooyoung says.
“What?”
“If it were me, and I found out that I could be together with the one I love for however much time we had left, down here on the earth, I wouldn’t question it.”
“But,” Hyunjin says.
“I would be thankful I was scared. I would be thankful I was weak. I would be so, so selfish, and I would be thankful for that, too.”
Sooyoung’s voice is shaking. But her hands are steady as she waters her plants, as the soil darkens in their pots, as the fronds rustle beneath her touch. Haloed by light, surrounded by all the living, breathing things that outnumber them both.
“Teach,” Hyunjin says. Her voice sounds so small. Her throat feels tender. She swallows; Sooyoung wordlessly offers her the water bottle in her hand, and it’s that gesture that pricks tears to the corners of Hyunjin’s eyes. She blinks them away and takes a long drink. The water is cool.
“Teach,” she says again. Sooyoung waits patiently, like they are professor and student again, like there is still so much Hyunjin has left to learn. “Do you really... You think it’s going to work?”
Sooyoung spares her a smile. She understands: they both already know the answer, but Hyunjin needs her to say it out loud, needs it to be real, needs to believe it.
“I know,” Sooyoung says. “She’s going to come back to us.”
Hyunjin’s eyes fill up with tears. She takes a deep breath. She nods.
“Good night, Teach,” she says.
She goes to find Heejin.
3. What final quote would you like to be memorialized with should you succeed in diverting the asteroid?
After they’ve said good night to Jinsol and Sooyoung they make their way to the library, where they settle on their mattresses and talk for hours on end, too keyed up to sleep. Something restless to their conversation, something desperate. It’s the eve of the launch and Hyunjin feels a little drunk, even though she hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in ages, not since the news of the end of the world. At some point in her life, she had her last drink. At some point in her life, everything she did was for the last time. Even this thought doesn’t sober her up. Here on her last night on Earth, moments in time spill through her in a stream, too much to hold onto all at once: the warmth of coming back inside from the cold, the sensation of wet hair clinging to her bare shoulders after a shower, the taste of cool water, Jinsol’s open-mouthed laugh at one of her own jokes, the way Sooyoung rolls her eyes with a poorly-concealed smile, the colour of sunset that passes through the glass to fall upon the nape of Heejin’s neck, the slant of her cheek, the flutter of her lashes.
“Hey,” Heejin says.
Hyunjin turns her head. Heejin’s cradling Hyunjin’s cat plushie to her chest. Her face is thoughtful.
“Remember that time Donald tore up your expensive running shoes and you didn’t even scold him?”
Hyunjin snorts. “Why would I scold him?”
“You loved those shoes!”
“He was a stray cat.” Hyunjin shrugs. “I was the one responsible for him. I knew the risk I was taking.”
“Uh-huh,” Heejin says, eyebrow arched. “Remember that time we bet on who would get the highest grade in Teach’s flight simulation exam, and then we ended up getting the exact same score?”
“Yeah, I remember.” A smile tugs at Hyunjin’s lips. “The stakes were having to do anything the other person asked.”
“But we both won.” Heejin laughs. “Or we both lost?”
“If I had won,” Hyunjin says, “I was going to ask you to go out with me.”
“What?” Heejin says, confused. “But we were already dating by then.”
“So what? That’s the only thing I wanted.”
“Ugh!” Heejin dives for her and tackles Hyunjin flat to her mattress, crushing her with the weight of her own cat plushie. “You’re too much!”
Hyunjin flips them both over, grinning as her hair falls down onto Heejin’s face. Heejin huffs out a breath, blowing strands away from her mouth with an annoyed pout. Hyunjin kisses the wrinkle of her nose.
“Hey,” Heejin says after a beat, quieter now. “Remember that night we stayed up late after exams and got drunk and played truth or dare, but after a while we forgot to dare each other and kept telling truths instead?”
“Of course I remember,” Hyunjin says.
“Hmm,” Heejin says. This close, Hyunjin can feel it, the vibration of Heejin’s throat. She’s staring up at her, eyes dark as though distant in time, watching Hyunjin from years and worlds away. Which of them is lost, Hyunjin can’t say.
“Ask me,” Heejin says.
Hyunjin blinks. “What?”
“Ask me for a truth.”
That’s not how the game is played, Heejin. Hyunjin swallows. “Truth?”
“Truth,” Heejin says. “I wish we had never become cadets.”
Hyunjin leans back, shocked. Heejin’s gaze is unblinking. Her mouth firm.
“But,” Hyunjin says. “But then we would never have met.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Heejin says with such force Hyunjin flinches away. “If that’s the price of you getting to live—it doesn’t matter. And besides—how can you say that? How can you say for sure? If there was time—” She cuts herself off, biting her lip.
Hyunjin smooths the terse line of Heejin’s mouth with her thumb, gentle over the spot Heejin had tugged at with teeth. What is there to say to that, she thinks. Her chest feels hollowed but fond, like the inside of an instrument that makes an echoing sound when the string is plucked. Skin of a drum. It’s too late to save me, Heejin. But I love you for trying.
“You’re right,” Hyunjin says instead, after a pause. “A lot is possible, as long as you have time.”
Heejin rubs at her eyes with the backs of her hands. Hyunjin reaches out, wipes the wetness away from Heejin’s cheeks, holds her face in her palms.
“Ask me,” she says.
Heejin doesn’t look away. “Truth?”
“Truth,” Hyunjin says. Gentle, so gentle. “It matters.”
Heejin’s expression folds in on itself.
“I’m glad we met,” Hyunjin continues, “even though it happened this way.” She runs a finger along the tremble of Heejin’s throat. “Even though it ends this way.”
She feels the shaky breath Heejin takes.
“Truth,” Heejin says. “I don’t want you to go.”
In the end, it’s Hyunjin who looks away first. She buries her head in the crook of Heejin’s neck, hair tickling her face, and breathes in, long and slow.
“Truth,” Hyunjin murmurs into Heejin’s skin: “It’ll be okay.”
She can feel Heejin’s pulse, beating in tune with her heart.
“Liar,” Heejin says.
After, when they’ve fumbled off their clothes and kissed all the words left from their mouths and Heejin’s drifted into sleep, Hyunjin props herself up on one elbow. They’ve turned out the light, but her eyes have adjusted to the dark by now, enough to make out the sleeping silhouette beside her, familiar and beloved. She brushes Heejin’s hair away from her face. Leans in close, careful, quiet.
“Truth,” Hyunjin whispers into the shell of Heejin’s ear: “I don’t want to die.”
She wonders what Heejin is dreaming of. She wonders if she can join her there.
Eventually the morning arrives, as it always has. The entire way to the loading dock Hyunjin can still feel the warmth of the kiss Heejin pressed to the back of her neck before she readied herself and walked away. She did not look back. Even now she keeps her eyes forward. Beyond the loading dock is the debriefing chamber; the decontamination chamber; the lift chamber. The loading bridge, every step of it, Jinsol’s hand in hers; beyond that, the ship, dormant and waiting.
Beyond that—
On the night of impact the three of them gather together outside under the stars. It’s snowing, but they brave the cold in their coats and scarves, watching their breath turn silver in the air. Asteroid X-2050 hangs heavy over their heads, patient to the end. The ship itself isn’t visible from here with the naked eye, but Jinsol is up there somewhere, gaining ground, drawing ever closer. They should be following the monitors, the reports in real time, but instead they’ve chosen the silent audience of the trees to join them in bearing witness to the end of the world as they know it.
Heejin’s made them hot chocolate. “A good way to go, right?” she says softly. There are dark circles under her eyes. None of them have been getting much sleep, because of the looming asteroid in the sky, because of the person travelling out to meet it, and also because of how Heejin keeps startling everyone awake in the dead of night. “Sorry, sorry,” she says every time, fumbling blindly in the dark. “I just—Hyunjin? Are you—”
Every time, Hyunjin takes her hands with a firm grasp. “I’m here,” she says. “It’s real. I’m really here.”
“Oh,” Heejin says. “I thought it was a dream.”
And then she cries, and Hyunjin cries too, and they hold each other because that’s all there is to do with all this time.
So Heejin doesn’t look well-rested. But she looks happy. Hyunjin, too, feels good and strong. Her body’s long recovered from the aftereffects of the hypnotic serum, from everything. When she breathes, the air is cold in her lungs. When she drinks from her cup, it’s warm. What a simple and impossible thing it is, to be living.
“When all this is over,” Sooyoung says, “we’ll have to go out for a meal.”
Heejin audibly sucks a breath in through her teeth. “When this is over,” she repeats.
Hyunjin nods. “To celebrate.” She smiles. “The four of us. Drinks on me.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Sooyoung says.
Heejin reaches out to lightly tap her finger beside Hyunjin’s mouth, under her cheek.
“What?” Hyunjin says.
“Dimple,” Heejin says, and smiles, too.
All over the world, there must be people gathered just like this, on rooftops and balconies and before their television sets. They, too, must be making promises for the future, or for the next life. Or have they buried themselves deep in underground bunkers, convinced they can outlast the apocalypse? What kind of world is it they will emerge to in the morning?
Sooyoung’s gaze is fixed back up on the sky. Hyunjin thinks back to the disaster of the simulated test run, how the usually exhilarating freedom of zero gravity had lurched her gut with nausea, how Jinsol had kept holding onto her arm the whole time, even though back then Hyunjin could hardly appreciate the comfort of her closeness. Up in space, in the real thing, there’s no one for Jinsol to hold onto. Only the lonely company of the stars.
Hyunjin takes Sooyoung’s hand. Sooyoung squeezes it without looking in her direction, face still upturned. She has eyes only for what comes next, and what’s waiting for her there.
Heejin takes a step closer and tilts her head sideways, resting it on Hyunjin’s shoulder. Flakes of snow are melting in her hair. Hyunjin shifts to accommodate her weight, to make her comfortable.
There are minutes to impact. They have nothing, Hyunjin thinks, but time.
She looks up at the sky, watching for when the collision inevitably arrives, for everything that will follow after. It’s going to be so big, it’s going to be so bright, and Hyunjin isn’t going to look away. She isn’t going to miss a second of it.