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He’s midway through a brush stroke when his power tugs at him from the inside, catapulting him through time. The feeling spreads across his whole body, like a ripple, but this time he feels it travel right to the end of the bristles too, the point where the paint clings to his power and travels with him.
When he arrives, he’s sat on a knackered, broken desk, in what looks like the middle of a warehouse. The room is full of people, maybe fourty or fifty dirty, frightened people, most of them looking his way. He’s heard that his time jumps are a noisy crack upon arrival or departure, so he puts his hands up to show a lack of weapon. Just a paintbrush that was seconds ago pressed against their bedroom wall. Hopefully Mark and Jeno won’t miss it while he’s gone.
“It’s okay, I’m here to help,” because even if he doesn’t know when or where he is, he’s only ever time-travelled when there’s a need for him. It’s never by choice.
He stands up on the desk to see over everyone’s heads, looking for any sign of his teammates. There, over the other side of the room, Donghyuck is standing with his hands in the air, mouth parted at the sight of Renjun.
“Renjun?”
“Hi. What do I need to do?” he asks, sliding the paintbrush into his pocket. It’s not like his clothes aren’t already covered in paint, courtesy of Jeno thinking it would be fun to have a playful wrestle with paint-covered hands. “These people need taking somewhere, I’m guessing?”
Donghyuck shakes his head, then abruptly nods. “Yes. The hospital.”
“Where are we? What’s the nearest hospital?”
“St. Ignatius.”
“Okay.” He steps down off the desk. “Everyone, I’m here to get you out. I need everyone to hold hands in a big circle. Hand-to-hand contact, firm grasp. That’s it, everyone in.” He takes the hand of a young woman next to him who is shaking so badly it shakes him too, and a teenage boy with a swollen eye and swollen ankle. “We’re going in three, two, one…”
It’s a large amount of people to teleport. In his younger years, it would leave him gasping and panting, dizzy from the load. Now he’s experienced enough that it’s manageable, and he sees them all to the entrance of the hospital before teleporting back to the warehouse.
“It’s done,” he says, and when he arrives back in front of Donghyuck, Jaemin now is stood next to him. They both look his way, and Renjun wonders where he himself is on this mission, that his future self wasn’t available to do the heavy lifting. “Do I need to pick anyone up?”
“Hell,” Jaemin says, looking Renjun up and down. “That is weird, even for me.”
“Are you seeing double?” Donghyuck asks him, and Jaemin shakes his head, not taking his eyes off Renjun.
“No. Just the one.”
They look at each other meaningfully, but Renjun has no idea what they’re talking about. That’s not unusual when it comes to Jaemin and Donghyuck, though.
“Guys,” he says impatiently. “Are we done?”
“Good question,” Donghyuck says, and he’s still looking at him strangely. Renjun can’t figure out what the look means.
The door bursts open on the other side of the room, Chenle ramming it down easily. “What the hell is taking you—”
He stops in his tracks upon seeing Renjun, expression falling, and Jisung runs in after him. He also stops still at seeing Renjun there, and it’s getting unnerving now.
“What? Before you even say it, I know I have paint on my face,” Renjun says. “Does anyone else need help?”
“Hyung,” Jisung says, walking over to him slowly. When he opens his arms out, almost nervously, and Renjun comes in for the hug without question. “Hyung.”
“Yes, that’s me.” He looks over Jisung’s shoulder at Chenle. His brother is still stood in place, staring at him, expression unreadable. When Jisung pulls back, he’s grimacing in that way that means he’s about to start crying.
“We sorted them out downstairs,” Mark’s voice comes from the hallway. “Did you get to evacuate—”
Again, he trails off as he enters the room and sees Renjun. Jeno is right on his tail, nearly tripping over his own feet when he sees Renjun stood there.
“Oh, hell,” Mark says. “What the hell?”
“When are you from, Renjun?” Jaemin asks, a little smile on his face. “What year?”
“2021,” Jeno answers before he can. “Spring time. When we moved in together, and we were painting the second bedroom.”
“Yes,” he replies. He’s got a bad feeling about the way they’re all watching him now, as if afraid for him to disappear again. It makes him want to go back to his own spot in the timeline already, but he’s not very good at controlling when that happens. “This is your fault,” he says, pointing at the paint he knows is smudged on his cheek and splattered all over his clothes.
Jeno smiles at him like he doesn’t regret it, but it’s not got that same bright ease as he’s used to. This is a Jeno who is several years older, and much more worn down for it.
“How long was that jump?” Mark asks Jeno, without turning away from Renjun. “Twelve hours?”
“I think it was less than six,” Jeno says. “He came back after dinner.”
“Jisung,” Chenle suddenly speaks up for the first time. “I’m cashing in my favour.”
That’s never a good sign on the best of days. Jisung knows it too, turning to Chenle apprehensively.
“Chenle,” Donghyuck says warningly, but Chenle ignores him.
“We should have this discussion back at base,” he says, coming up behind Jisung and leaning up to whisper something in his ear. Jisung looks at him, then back at Renjun, apprehensive.
“Chenle,” Renjun says. “What’s going on?”
“I heard a rumour,” Jisung starts, and Renjun’s mind goes blank, his body becoming light.
The next thing he knows he’s stood in the middle of a huge glass chamber, the size of a small room. The chamber looms over his head, wide and tall, completely transparent but for two huge metal boxes at either end of it. One contains a door, which looks to be shut tight, while the other contains something whirring, working.
Kun is standing up from his seat on the other side of the glass. He’s in a room at the academy, he knows, but it doesn’t look the way he remembers it. This must be the ballroom, transformed into some sort of workspace for Kun.
“Renjun?” he says, voice betraying his utter shock. Renjun steps towards the glass, putting a fist up against it. It’s thick.
“Hyung,” he says, looking around him. “What am I doing here?”
“You just teleported in,” Kun says, haltingly. “But you—what time did you come from?”
“2021,” he says slowly, moving over towards the door. “But I was with the others—then I think Chenle asked Jisung to rumour me. What did he do, that little shit?”
Kun doesn’t say anything, but watches Renjun go over to the door and try tugging on it. It’s firmly locked. “Can you let me out?”
“I’m…” Kun starts, then exhales, long and loud. “I’ll let you know when the others get here.”
“Hyung,” he starts indignantly. “Whatever hair-brained scheme Chenle has cooked up, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like it.” He tries to teleport out of the glass, but the usual ripple of his power never comes. The shock of it turns his blood cold for a moment—it feels like suddenly realising he’s lost both hands.
“It’s a hyper-suppression chamber, Renjun,” Kun says, sitting back down in his seat. “It’s designed to contain people by cancelling out their abilities.”
Renjun looks his way. They meet eyes, and realise at the same moment there’s something they both don’t know about why he’s here.
“He’s the worst brother ever,” Renjun resorts to saying instead, pacing back into the middle of the empty room. He’s not usually a claustrophobic person, but it’s deeply unnerving to be trapped like an animal in a cage, completely helpless without his powers.
Kun takes a moment to collect himself, standing again and straightening out his shirt. “Can I get you something while we wait for them? Tea?”
“Tea would be good, thank you,” he says, sitting himself on the floor, cross-legged.
Kun is able to fetch him some tea, make him some noodles, and heaves one of their armchairs into the metal box with the door. As it turns out, the box contains two doors, one on Renjun’s side and one on Kun’s. He can take the food and drink without being released from the chamber, though he doesn’t deem to drag the chair into the chamber just yet. That would mean he’s going to be in here longer than it takes for Mark to press the switch and release him from this ridiculous situation, which he’s really hoping isn’t the case.
When the team eventually do barge in, it’s clear they’ve been fighting. Jeno looks distinctly uncomfortable, the way he does whenever anyone has even the most minor conflict, and Mark looks pissed. Donghyuck and Jaemin hang at the back of the group, the most reluctant other than Jisung, who looks like he’s been crying.
Chenle leads the way forward with determination. He comes up to the glass wall and looks in on Renjun, who glares at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, frank. “But I had to do it.”
“Why on earth would you need to put me in Kun’s cage the minute I teleport in from a different time?” he says, resting his teacup back down on its saucer. “Did I do something, in the future? Is there a reason I’m not here with you all?”
Chenle is silent for a moment. “I’m going to save your life.”
Renjun’s breath catches. “Save my life?” His stomach swoops with a sickening feeling. “So I’m dead.”
“No,” Chenle says. “You were, but now you’re not.”
“Chenle,” he says, everything dawning on him at once. The looks they were giving him—his own mysterious absence—Chenle’s overreaction. He must’ve been killed, probably on a mission, probably not too long ago. He swallows, forces the words out even if he doesn’t want to say them. “You can’t stop things like this from happening.”
“Yes I can. If you stay in here, you won’t go back. You won’t be able to.”
“So you’re planning to keep me in a cage? Forever? What, are you going to sit out there and watch me every day like I’m your pet?”
“Obviously not,” Chenle says, turning back to Kun. “We’re going to figure something out, right?”
Kun, watching their exchange, leans forward in his chair. “What exactly are you asking of me?”
“If we could miniaturise this technology, we could make it work,” he says, gesturing to the chamber. “What about bracelets, or implants? Or some kind of medication? Whatever it is, I’ll fund it, and you can call Doyoung to help you—”
“So you’re going to forcibly take my powers away from me so that I can’t run away from you,” Renjun says, standing as close to the glass as he can get to face Chenle. “Do you hear yourself? What is wrong with you?”
“I’m saving your life,” Chenle says, whirling on him again. “We can do it, I know it. You just have to believe in us. Isn’t living without your powers better than dying before you can reach twenty-five?”
“I don’t want to change anything. I have never changed how things happen in the timeline, you know I can’t.”
“Isn’t now the time to try?” Chenle shouts, but the sound bounces off the glass wall Renjun is trapped behind, comes through to him all muted. “If you were ever going to use your power for your own sake, now is the time to do it!”
“The consequences could be so much bigger than just me, Chenle,” he says, putting a hand against the glass. “This isn’t negotiable. I’m not doing it.”
“I don’t care what you want,” Chenle says, and Renjun has never seen him this angry, this wild-eyed. “I’m not giving up, not until we’ve tried all we can.”
He pushes back off the glass, blinking slowly. His death is so fresh for Chenle that he can practically smell the rot on him. His grief is hard to look at.
“Mark,” he says gently, looking over at him. “Jeno?”
His boyfriends look at each other, then back at Renjun. When Mark moves forward to come and stand next to Chenle, he seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He puts his hand up to the glass. “We’ve really missed you, baby.”
His voice is what breaks Renjun, finally letting tears spill out, burning his eyes. “Come on, not you too.”
“The first thing Jeno did was restrain Chenle and demand to know what he was doing,” Mark says. “We were ready to come here and break the damn chamber open ourselves. But then Jaemin said something.”
All eyes in the room turn to Jaemin, who is perched sideways on a little table in the corner, watching over the room keenly. He smiles and waves when Renjun looks his way.
“You look healthy, Renjunnie.”
“He can’t see your ghost anymore,” Donghyuck supplies from next to him. “As soon as you turned up, your ghost disappeared.”
Renjun closes his eyes. He hadn’t thought about that. Jaemin living with his ghost for God knows how long.
“It’s a sign,” Chenle says with conviction. “It means you’re not dead anymore, you’re alive, like I said. If we figure out a way to stop you from jumping back in time, it means you can stay here. You skip over the mission that killed you, you skip about four years of your life, but in return you get to live, Renjun. We can bring you back.”
“This isn’t right,” he says, fear pushing up into his chest, making it hard to breathe. “It’ll mess things up, Chenle, you’ve already messed things up by telling me I’ll die, but at least I can still go back and die at the right time. If I don’t go back and die, then you’ll never have any reason to keep me here in the first place. You’ll create a paradox, and it’ll break things on a huge scale.”
“No, it’ll create a divergent timeline. This one will be a new future. In the old one you’ll still die young, but in this one you’ll go missing for years then turn up again. Those events don’t need to contradict each other if they’re different histories.”
“Then you’ll break your own mind,” Renjun insists, slamming his palm against the glass. “Even if the timeline does diverge instead of break, everyone who knows me will remember the truth, and the contradictory history will start to split your mind in half. You’ll struggle to remember if I’m really dead or alive. Jeno and Mark will have experienced a completely different relationship, one with years where I was there, one where I wasn’t. It’ll start to fracture the rest of your memories, too—it sends you mad, by the end.”
“You’re making things up,” Chenle says. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Renjun insists. “I do. Don’t you remember the first time I time-travelled? I was fifteen. It was out of nowhere, while we were eating dinner. I was gone for four hours.”
Chenle frowns. “You told us you went to the future. You saw Kun, way before we met him.”
“I did. That’s true. But Kun told me then that there would come a time my brother would try to convince me to change the past, and he told me what the consequences were. It’s what I just described to you. Word for word. It’s why I’ve never wanted to time travel, and it’s why I’ve never changed major events even if I could. When we tried that, it killed you, in at least one version of the future.”
Chenle shakes his head, looking back at Kun as if he’ll have the answers. But the Kun Renjun had met back then was much, much older. “That means I succeeded. You were able to live here.”
“Yes,” he says, and it dawns on him for the first time the cruelty of it all. Only one of them can live, no matter what they do. He’d never known that the event Chenle had tried to change was his own death—but he supposes he should’ve expected this, in a line of work like his. “Which is exactly why I’m telling you we can’t go through with it now. Risking all your lives for the chance of saving mine is not a good trade.”
“You’re trying to change the future, then,” Jeno says, quietly.
“No,” Renjun says, standing back now. Chenle’s body is tense. “Just trying to revert it to its original state.”
Chenle slams both of his hands against the glass with a bang, then leans forward so his forehead touches it, screwing up his face like he’s trying not to cry or explode with anger. “It’s not fair,” he hisses. “All the things we can do, and we can’t have this?”
Renjun leans his head against where Chenle has placed his, so they’d be touching if not for the glass. “I’m sorry. But time is bigger than all of us.”
When he looks over, Jeno is smiling at him, a stray tear running down his cheek. Mark steps up behind Chenle, a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time to let him out now, Chenle. We have a few hours with him that have been given back to us. Let’s make the most of it.”
Chenle leans back to look at Renjun, cheeks pink, eyes wet. “I forgot you were like this, you know.”
“Like what?”
Chenle shakes his head, sniffs. “Always outsmarting me.”
“I wish this was a time when I didn’t have to.” Chenle draws back, covering his face with his hands. He hates crying in front of people. “Open the doors, Chenle.”
“No,” he spits, turning away. “We’re not done yet.”
“Yes we are.”
“No, we’re not. We still have Jisung.”
“Oh, no, not again,” Jisung says, watery voice adamant.
“Stop forcing the hand of everyone around you to get what you want. It’s childish, Chenle.”
“I don’t care,” Chenle says, and Renjun can tell he truly doesn’t. “Listen to me. What if Jisung rumoured you into staying? That way you can still use your powers to teleport in space, but not in time. Then what if he also rumoured us all into forgetting that you ever died in the first place? No mind break, no madness. There are ways around this, we can be clever. There must be an answer.”
“Stop it now,” Renjun says, trying to even out his breathing. “I said no.”
“I don’t want to,” Jisung says, but Chenle has a bright glint to his eyes.
“But it could work. You’re not denying that.”
“That’s a very big but, Chenle. You said yourself that we don’t know the limit of Jisung’s powers. I’m not putting all of our lives on the line for this.”
“You don’t have to. We’ll do it for you.”
“It could actually work,” Mark says, and that feels like a punch to the gut. Renjun has always trusted Mark to be their leader, the one who keeps his feet on the ground, the logical thinker amongst them.
Renjun was one of the few people who had ever convinced Mark to do spontaneous, irrational things. Their date up by the lakes, where they took a late bus with no idea where they were going. Kissing Jeno at that party, though everything that followed was much more carefully planned. Mark was the one who considered every little detail that went into making the three of them work together.
“No it can’t,” he says again, but Chenle and Mark are looking at each other like he’s not even speaking. “Don’t ignore me! I’m not doing it!”
“Guys,” Jeno says quietly from where he’s stood off to the side. “He said no.”
“We’re saving his life, Jeno, that’s what we do.”
“Not me, not now,” Renjun says, unable to stop his voice from getting more hysterical, tears brimming over now. It’s being in this damn cage, useless and trapped. He’s never felt smaller. “Please, please don’t. I would rather be dead than do this.”
“I have a feeling ghost Renjun would say the same thing,” Jaemin says, resting back on his palm. “Let’s be honest, Chenle, it’s not Renjun you’re doing this for.”
“I’m doing it for all of us,” Chenle snaps.
“I don’t know,” Donghyuck says. “It seems like you’re doing it for you.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Jisung says. “Renjun doesn’t want to, so I won’t.”
“We’re talking about his life, not his feelings,” Chenle shouts, storming over to Jisung, who starts backing up into the wall. “He’ll thank you when he’s alive again.”
“Please let me out,” Renjun says, starting to feel lightheaded. There’s a tug at something inside him—he has the feeling it’s the past calling him back, but he can’t respond. It feels incredibly wrong. “Don’t keep me in here.”
Jeno’s chest collapses open into the dark, crawling portal that summons his eldritch horror, four tentacles bursting forward and heading for the switches outside the chamber. A knife crosses their path before they can get there, slicing through two tentacles, and Jeno reels them back with a cry.
Mark stands up straight, a second knife in hand.
“Mark,” Donghyuck says, sharp, though Jeno looks the most shocked by the assault.
“Just wait,” Mark says, voice wavering. “Please. We could still figure something out.”
“Let me out,” Renjun says again. He needs to stop this before everyone spirals.
“Let him out,” Donghyuck says. “Or I will.”
“I heard a rumour—” Jisung starts, but is silenced by Chenle arresting him at the shoulders, pushing him down to his knees, and clasping a hand over his mouth.
“Chenle is right,” Mark says, rushed. “If we have a way to fix this, we should explore every avenue.”
“Renjun will not thank you for it. Neither will anyone else. I didn’t think you were that selfish,” Donghyuck says, moving forward. His eyes are glowing silver, which is never a good sign for the state of everything and everyone around him.
Chenle, hand still firmly clasped over Jisung’s mouth, starts to drag him to stand in front of Donghyuck. Chenle’s ability to mirror the damage done to him means he’s as deadly as the person he’s up against—in this case, he’s the only one in the room who is a threat to Donghyuck’s firepower.
“Move, Chenle,” Donghyuck says.
“Make me.”
“Don’t fight, please, just let me out,” Renjun gasps, but he’s not sure the sound of his voice can carry through the glass. He’s bent double, trying to catch his breath, skin burning up—
There’s a click over to his left, and the door opens. Kun stands by the switch, and Renjun doesn’t waste another second, teleporting out of there in an instant.
He ends up in his living room out of instinct—cold and empty without Jeno or Mark here. It’s more cluttered in the future, the furniture more worn. The plant in the corner is gone. The blankets he likes to keep on the end of the sofa are gone.
The pull in his chest is waning. He thinks it wasn’t actually his power after all, but some kind of panic attack. He lies down on the floor and stares up at the mottled ceiling, trying to catch his breath.
When he’s calmed enough to clear his vision and lessen the shake in his hands, he stands and goes to the window. The view is still the same. It must’ve been a sudden death, he thinks, to sour the morale of the group this much.
He teleports back into the ballroom.
“Chenle,” he says, approaching him calmly. Jisung has been released, and has curled himself into a ball on the floor. “If you don’t give this up right now, I’m going back in time and killing you myself.”
“Sometimes I wish you would,” Chenle says, and Renjun grabs him and holds him close so he won’t say something like that again.
“I’m dead,” he tells him. “You have to move on. You can’t do it like this.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Chenle says, like a child, voice breaking and holding Renjun harder. “I don’t.”
“Yes you do. You do. If you’re going to listen to me once in your life, listen to me now. Move on.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
Chenle hugs him back so tightly he feels breathless, holds him for longer than ever before. He’s broken down properly now, crying into Renjun’s shoulder in a way he never has, not even when they were kids. He can’t suppress his own tears at feeling his little brother shake like this, in so much pain. Pain he’s the cause of.
“I know it’s hard, but you can. You can.”
There’s a tingle in his fingertips he knows precedes a big jump. The air around them tightens, and they all know it’s a sign he’s about to jump back.
It summons Jeno to his side, embracing Renjun on his left and planting a kiss to the side of his face. He’s able to beckon Mark over with his right hand, though he looks reluctant and guilty. Utterly defeated in a way that’s so wrong.
“Come here,” he says, rushing to get the words out. “I love you. All of you. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time.”
Mark’s hand comes to stroke his hair, and Chenle holds him tighter, mumbling.
“Get in, get in the chamber, we can still stop it, I don’t want you to go. Don’t go.”
“I love you,” Renjun whispers to him, but he can’t hold on much longer. “You’re going to be okay. I love you. Don’t fight each other, okay?”
Then he’s snapped back, landing and then falling from the stool he was using to paint, thudding to the floor. It seems like more time has passed back at home than had in the future, because the room is dark now, and fully painted.
“Renjun?” Jeno’s voice comes from the hallway, and he enters the room to find Renjun shaking and crying on the floor, hugging himself. “Baby, where did you go?”
Renjun just shakes his head, burying his face into Jeno’s shoulder as he lets go and cries properly. A twisted sense of grief plagues him for a future he’ll never have.
The kicker is, he can’t tell anyone what he knows. Not if he wants the timeline to stay intact. Not if he wants everyone he loves to be safe.
Mark comes in not long later, kneeling down and waiting with them. They’re patient with him, and gentle. Much less haunted than his boyfriends four years from now.
When he can finally speak again, he feels as though he might break with the pressure of it, like fine glass spun around an explosive. “I’m sorry. It was a pretty bad one.”
“Well, you’re home now,” Mark says, caressing his back gently, up and down. “You want dinner? We saved you a plate.”
This is it, then. A roughly three-year countdown until he’s going to die, and no one can know but him.
What does he do now?
“Yes. I want dinner.”
The apartment looks the same, but different. He has three years left to live.
He kisses Jeno before he sits down in front of his plate. Everything has to proceed as normal.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jeno asks as he picks up his chopsticks.
He’s going to die.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It can’t be helped now. Let’s just spend the night together, please.”
“We can do that,” Mark says with conviction, like he can fix everything by tucking Renjun under a blanket.
Jeno looks at him still. “Are you sure?”
“You know I can’t talk about the future,” Renjun says, prodding at his rice without meeting Jeno’s eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”
Jeno nods, more out of obedience than anything. “Promise?”
Renjun swallows around nothing, blinks away tears. He’s going to die.
“It’s nothing at all. I promise.”