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tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
each tick and each tock knocks against your skull in the otherwise quiet hallway. it's all you can hear, it's all you can see. your vision is a blur, and your hands are shaking as your grasp at your knees, and the chair you're sitting in is too fucking hard.
tick.
you are fifteen again, kicking rocks across the sidewalk as you trudge towards yet another new school. the school uniform is too tight at your collar, and your shoes are too scuffed against the pristine white of your socks. someone shoves past you, cackling at something his friend says. you stumble. he doesn't say sorry.
someone grabs your elbow. steadies you. you look up, and the boy is tan and ruffled, his buttons uneven and his tie loose, his grin askew.
he says, "what an asshole."
he sticks out his hand.
"the name's wooyoung. jung wooyoung."
you smile.
tock.
you are nineteen again. you are in a long dried up cornfield, screaming, "wooyoung sit the fuck down!"
his laughter is loud, boisterous, echoing through the fields as he clings to the back of the pickup truck. the kite he spent months upon months modifying in his parent's old shed zips above the speeding truck as it plows through dried corn husks.
"faster mingi!"
"no don't you dar -" you screech when mingi slams on the gas, grabbing wooyoung's free hand over the console even as mingi's deep laugh joins wooyoung's, even as his kite flies. wooyoung cuts the cord and it flies. it flies on its own. it soars. you haven't seen anything like it in a while. wind whips at your face. you let out a terrified laugh, eyes watering. wooyoung squeezes your hand back, even as he grins down at both of you.
tick.
you are twenty-three again.
"do you think there's a point to this anymore?" you ask. your throat is itchy and dry - but that is common nowadays, when the very earth has become a dried up husk of what it once was, and dust settles over everything, even the inside of everyone's lungs.
wooyoung stays his hand against the door handle and turns to look at you. you're both needed at the office - wooyoung is a top researcher and you run the hr department and you know the point is to save earth from its impending doom, but you could not help but ask. just last week, you two had seen footage of a brawl break out over a measly basket of food.
"we have to keep trying, don't we?"
"i suppose we do," you mumble.
tock.
you are twenty five again, sitting in a conference room with the few people left who decided to keep trying. professor hongjoong's words ring through the silence.
"the last people to starve will be the first to suffocate," hongjoong says. "but we can still save humanity. there is a wormhole - born from a gravitational anomaly next to saturn - and it can take us to a different universe. one that could have a planet that can sustain life."
"sustain us." mingi says in awe.
the excitement is clear in his deep voice. and when you look to wooyoung, it lights up his eyes, his face, the same way the kite had in that dried up cornfield when you were nineteen. your heart clenches.
this is a room full of scientists and researchers, professor hongjoong and mingi and wooyoung, choi san, and kang yeosang, whose need to try far outweighs whatever survival extincts had convinced everyone else to long abandon this effort. you are merely a human resources representative, meant to sit and do paperwork professor hongjoong or senior analyst seonghwa could not be bothered with.
"how do we know if it can?" you ask, your voice echoing in the room. all eyes flit to you. "you said could have. how do we know for certain that there is a planet that can sustain life, let alone us?"
"we need a team to go in first."
hongjoong looks around the room.
his smile falters.
"there's a catch, isn't there?" san leans onto his elbows against the conference table. yeosang's brows furrow. you find your gaze flitting to wooyoung.
"the wormhole has a massive gravitational pull. i don't know what it will do, or how this will turn out. time will become relative. an hour there could be years here or vice versa. but i need a team of four researchers out there who understand that, who understand the importance of this mission, and who are willing to go into the unknown for humanity. the data you collect from that black hole will give us the ability to fuel humanity's escape. the rest of us will prepare here and help you however we can."
"we get to go through a wormhole?" wooyoung asks, and the childlike glee is endearing, if it were not for the heavy weight settling on your chest.
hongjoong nods, grinning.
tick.
twenty two again, and wooyoung holds a hand out to you, threads his fingers through yours, and the two of you peer up at the night sky. he says, "it's beautiful, isn't it?"
"you think everything is beautiful."
you feel his eyes on your face. you look at him. he looks at you as if you are the stars he's always been so fascinated by. your heart skips a beat. he just hums in agreement.
tock.
twenty six again. you find wooyoung nervously tapping his fingers against the cafeteria table and staring off into space. his thermal spacesuit is folded neatly in front of him. san gets to his feet when he sees you. he shakes his head before you can say anything, and pats your shoulder as he moves past you, leaving you and wooyoung alone.
you sit across from him. he keeps drumming his fingers against the table.
"excited?" you ask.
he leaves tomorrow.
he meets your gaze, and his shoulders loosen a bit. he nods, "and nervous."
"me too." you say.
wooyoung peers at you, as if he's memorizing your face. you don't like the thought of that. after a beat, he asks, "what do you think is worse? staying or leaving?"
"i don't know. staying feels pretty shitty right now."
"you could ask me, you know." wooyoung's fingers still against the table. "to stay."
you laugh, "i could never."
he is born for this. to soar. to explore. he loves you, you know it, you've always known it, even without either of you ever saying it, but he loved learning, he loved the pursuit of knowledge, more.
wooyoung lets out his own shaky laugh.
tick.
twenty five again, and you're standing with your arms crossed over hongjoong's desk, ignoring seonghwa and jongho's presence in the corner.
"let me go, too."
"no, you're a liability."
"i work here too."
"you do paperwork, y/n. what the hell could you possibly do on a spaceship?"
"then why the hell did you let me in that room?" your voice rises, and your chest hurts, and suddenly all the anger and fear you've felt since that meeting bursts from your chest. you bang your hands on his table, and you say, "why the hell are you telling me what's going to happen? why the hell am i being kept in the loop when i have no say in any of this?"
hongjoong's gaze flicks from your face to your curled, shaking fists. he doesn't say anything.
"please, let me go with them."
"no."
you open your mouth. you want to say, then don't let him go. but you can't. you cannot.
you could never.
hongjoong's gaze softens. he says, "if you go with him, he won't have a reason to come back. he won't fight for it. he'll stay out there forever. he belongs out there. i need wooyoung to fight to come back, no matter what happens out there."
you press your hand to your mouth, you say, "and if that's not enough?"
hongjoong just shakes his head, "you are. you have to be."
tock.
you aren't.
seonghwa opens the door in front of you.
the ticking stops as abruptly as the door opens.
seonghwa looks at you with furrowed brows and gentle eyes, and he holds out a hand you do not take. you pants crumple in the death grip you have on your knees.
you are much older now then you had been when you helped wooyoung put on his space suit. he'd held your hands between his for a long, long time, until yeosang clapped his hand on wooyoung's back, and said it was time to go.
it's been twenty-two years since then.
wooyoung's face takes up the entirety of the command center's screen. the room is empty, except for hongjoong. he gets up from the chair, and lets you take it. the door to the command center room clicks shut behind you.
wooyoung hasn't aged a day.
"an hour on the planet they've landed on is seven years on ours," jongho told you quietly when he came to pick you up this morning.
it's only been a few hours for him.
"y/n?" he says, and his voice cracks into a million pieces. you want to pick up all those pieces as best as you can, but you can't. you are too far away. he doesn't exist in the same time as you.
"am i that unrecognizable?"
he is the size of the moon, and that is only half of how you see him. you'd started to forget how he looked.
he shakes his head, blinking rapidly, and he says, "you look better than ever."
"can't say the same thing about you."
he lets out another laugh. his voice is filled with crackles, with static, but it is the same boisterous laugh it's always been.
he says, "did they tell you what's happened?"
you nod, swallowing the lump in your throat, "you're stranded there."
"there's another ship, from a previous expedition."
"is it far?"
"it's only a kilometer out."
"are you going to come back?"
wooyoung closes his eyes, then. he opens his eyes, his brown eyes soft and sad and so so sorry, but so full of the resolve you'd always loved and will continue to love. "i have to keep trying."
"please, just come home," you say, you beg really. twenty-two years ago, you could never. but now, you whisper, voice breaking around the lump in your throat, "i need you to come home."
wooyoung brushes at his eyes with the back of his hand. he bites his lip, and he says, "i have to finish this."
"okay," you say, because that's all you can say.
but you never know if he finishes it or not. you never know if he comes home or not.
tick tock.
you are twenty again, and a book flies off wooyoung's bookshelf. another one. another one.
you frown at wooyoung, baffled, really at his intrigue, though you can't help but smile at the way he paces. you sit on the floor watching him. he shrugs his coat off and places it gently over your crossed legs before he starts pacing again. mingi peers in from behind the door, a plate of snacks in his hand, "are you both done messing with the ghosts?"
you shake your head. mingi rolls his eyes and leaves.
that night, wooyoung shakes you awake from the floor. you'd fallen asleep and he must have tucked a pillow under your head at some point. he whisper-shouts, "this is binary code, y/n. the books. they fell out in code."
you blink away sleep, "what?"
"they're coordinates."
"to where?"
wooyoung lifts his bright phone screen to your face. you squint, blinded by the light, before you read, "AZ Space Station? why there?"
wooyoung shrugs.
"so," you sit up, "we're going, aren't we?"
wooyoung grins, clasping your face between his hands in excitement as he nods. you grin back, laughing.
tick tock.
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