Chapter Text
PART I: ANTE MERIDIEM.
i.
THE LAST DOOR.
🕰
I went the wrong way again, didn’t I?
The tears in your eyes tell me so. You never cry. Most often, this moment is the first time I realize you can.
“Look at me,” you beg, and I wish you’d know that I’m trying.
I am looking, but there’s so much to see that the colors blind me, so many voices that I can barely find yours. You want me to look at you, but first I have to look for you. I think that’s right. I think that’s the order.
You’re here with me, and then you’re not. I see your eyes as brown, then gold, then red, then blue; they are kind, then cold, then bright, then suffering. You wear them all so well, every fractured version of you, that sometimes I forget to be frightened of what I don’t understand.
Even when you look at me this way, you’re beautiful.
“I’ll get it right this time,” I mumble. It’s too difficult to resist leaning into your touch against my cheek.
In one world, I lean to the right, against the soothing chill of your clockwork hand, listening for the tick-tock beat of your clockwork heart that echoes through the metal.
In the other, I lean to the left, against the soothing warmth of your palm that fits perfectly into mine, searching for the quickened pulse of humanity through your wrist.
I can see through both doors, though I shouldn’t be able to—though I don’t know which one I’ve chosen—though it only worsens the cracks that creep through my glass.
(I can’t see these cracks, but I know you can. Yet I can feel them, even when you can’t.)
(Let me be selfish enough to live in both worlds for now.)
A sigh escapes you, deep and time-weary, as you press a kiss to the top of my head. You linger there until my eyes close, and the constant is what grounds me.
I can still see, but it’s duller now. I can hear you better.
“You know the way, stardust,” you murmur. The subtle vibration of your words lets me know you’ve guided my face into the crook of your neck, the way you’ve learned comforts me. “Don’t wander so far again.”
“Then keep me close. You know what I was looking for.”
“Did you find it?”
You’re careful not to sound too hopeful. I love you for it. You know how it makes me feel to break your absent heart.
“Not this time.”
The blood from my nose stains your robes; I am the only one you allow to do so. You are the only one I allow to hold me so gently, as if your touch would break me faster than the weight of everything that is, was, could be.
Your hold tightens. You must be seeing cracks that I can’t feel anymore.
“It’s okay,” I whisper into your neck, and now it’s your turn to lean into the hand I press to your cheek. I wish I could do more for you. “This isn’t the only way this ends, Kiri.”
“I know.” Even with my eyes closed, you’re beautiful. “But I hate it when it does.”
The universe is created out of infinite possibility, invisible to the human eye. As is the nature of infinity, there are an unlimited amount of variables and a limited few constants.
Of those few constants, one of them is this: you are always holding me when my glass shatters.
What a privilege it is to know that. What an honor it is to share infinity with you.
I’ll do better next time. I’ll get it right.
ii.
THE FIRST DOOR.
🕰
Her name is Hana Song.
She is her homeland’s finest daughter, the greatest warrior they will see for generations. She is a compassionate leader, the noblest heart they will see for eons.
She is loved, more than she will ever know; more than she could ever fathom.
She is 21 years old the day their army arrives to her village, and her legacy is lionized.
The first breath that leaves her is sharp, ragged, and tasting of copper—then cut short. The next is easier.
Hana opens her eyes.
She’s sitting cross-legged in an unfamiliar courtyard, back straight as if interrupted from perfect meditation. She already knows that can’t be right. She’s never been good at it before. Too much sitting around, not enough doing.
Doing. She needs to do something. She needs to— That’s it, she needs to stand up. She just needs to remember how.
Before her, a marble tower breaches the sky. It seems to shimmer strangely in the early dawn’s light; like a mirage in the desert she’s never been to, or a dream that she’s never had before.
A winding staircase wraps around the outside. It’s impossible to say how tall the tower really is once it disappears past an unbroken layer of clouds.
There’s no birdsong, no breeze, no battle. The trees do not sway and those clouds do not drift.
But the strangest fact is this: at the bottom of the staircase, a girl is hovered mid-step.
She has a white hood pulled over her head and a miniature hourglass hanging from her neck. There’s an open tome in her hands, but it’s Hana that she peers at with tempered curiosity.
Hana’s heart hammers as if woken from a horrible dream.
The girl’s head cocks.
“Oh. It’s you.”
She considers Hana again for a long moment. Then, she continues walking, her footsteps silent against the solid stone of the courtyard.
Her book seems interesting. It must be, if a stranger appearing out of the air is a minor novelty.
In contrast, Hana’s footsteps thunder against the stone as she dashes after her. The girl with the hourglass doesn’t slow her pace, but she doesn’t try to stop her either.
“You!” Hana nearly trips over nothing. “You— Who are you? Where am I?”
Simple questions, but they’re all she can think of.
She’s chased the strange girl out of the courtyard and onto an expansive pathway. It’s bordered by hedges and marble pillars, which wouldn’t be unusual if this was a castle, but it’s not.
Hana’s never seen a castle with bridges that lead to nowhere, or fountains that don’t flow, or marble pillars that sprout roots at the base.
She’s never even seen a person like this before, whose left arm gleams gold in the sun as if made of metal. It would be mesmerizing if the glare wasn’t so hard to look at.
She wonders if she’s also hard to look at, because the girl with the crease to her brow hasn’t spared her a glance.
“Try again.”
“Excuse me?”
“Try another question. That wasn’t the right one.”
Hana falters for a moment, then has to hurry to catch up.
“I don’t care if it’s right,” she protests hotly, the thickness in her chest outweighing her discipline. “Questions don’t have to be right. That’s— That’s why they’re questions and answers are answers.”
“I care.”
She bites back an undignified sputter.
“Why?”
“Mm. Better this time. But room for improvement.”
The girl with the blasé tone does nothing to put Hana at ease. She swallows harshly, heart continuing to pound as she spins around. She looks up for the first time since passing under the arched pavilion.
It’s like staring into a mirror. The ceiling is a perfect upside-down replica of where they stand, marble pillars pointed the opposite direction and roots spreading into the sky.
Hana hasn’t felt this sick to her stomach since her first summer at sea.
In the few seconds she's looked away, she’s somehow fallen several meters behind.
This time when Hana catches up, she grabs her shoulder and pushes her against the nearest wall. She tries to be gentle, but her hands are forgetful. The girl with the glare of livid surprise almost stops her in her tracks—but only almost.
She’s sorry. She needs to know.
“How did I get here?”
“How did you?” The girl looks like she’s trying to control her displeasure, lips pressed tightly together. “I’d like to know as well, trespasser.”
“I don’t—” Hana starts to say. It could be ‘I don’t know’ or even ‘I don’t care, let me out right now,’ but it’s not. “…I don’t remember.”
She stops.
She does not remember.
Of course, she knows her name; she knows that she’s a proud warrior of great standing, loyal to her people; she knows that she’s a good friend, and a playful sister, and a dangerous enemy.
She does not remember how the pieces fit together.
Hana is tall (mostly), and strong (always), and fearless (to a fault). She must make a cutting image, with her red-gold armor and sword dauntlessly strapped to her back.
And despite it all, her lower lip is still trembling.
The girl who has other places to be releases an irate sigh, long and drawn out. She eyes Hana warily.
“I suppose if I leave you alone out here, you’re going to touch something, aren’t you?”
Hana looks around at the double-vision pillars, the frozen garden, the walls she will no doubt scale if left to her own ingenuity.
With sincerity, she nods several times.
There’s a long beat of scrutiny that Hana, to her credit, doesn’t wilt under. Finally, the girl seems to find what she’s looking for.
“Okay.” She nods simply. “I’ll take my chances. Clean up whatever you break, please.”
She presses a hand to the wall she’s pinned against. Hana doesn’t even have a chance to stop her—or apologize. The stone wall crumbles away as if faded by age, and the girl with the glowing eyes pushes Hana off of her, only to step through the doorway she’s created.
“Try again when you think of a better question.”
The wall seals up behind her in perfect reverse, each white brick reforming what had fallen away.
It takes a long minute for Hana, frozen in dumb shock, to comprehend what she’s witnessed.
When she looks upwards, she realizes that the wall she’s standing in front of belongs to the tower, and she is back in the courtyard where they first began minutes ago.
The winding staircase beckons to her.
With no better idea, Hana tightens her boot laces and begins to climb.
The girl with the wry smile is waiting for her at an upper level, just as Hana had wondered if she would be.
“Well?” she asks, turning a page in her book as she leans against an archway. “Had enough time to think?”
Yes. She has.
“Will you help me?”
The girl arches a brow and regards her coolly; Hana, with her doe-brown eyes and still-trembling lip and pitiful sag to her shoulders.
Finally, she shrugs one shoulder and snaps her book shut.
“Close enough.”
As she’s led through the equally-winding interior of the tower, Hana learns that the girl calls herself a timekeeper.
The timekeeper with the quick step and the quick wit tells Hana a story that would get her laughed out of any tavern on the south coast. She tells her—without humor—that this tower exists outside of time itself, and naturally, it is her responsibility to ensure it remains that way.
Hana also learns that this tower belongs to the timekeeper in the way a mountain could possibly belong to a man. That is to say, it does not, but she likes it here anyways.
There is something very serious she says about the natural laws being open to persuasion within its walls, once she bats Hana’s hand away from a grand piano they pass in an unused music room. It might be a warning, but there’s a glint to her eye too.
Hana doesn’t quite understand this either, but she does get the feeling that the timekeeper (1) does not enjoy laws, and (2) is very persuasive.
When Hana decides she has learned enough about the universe for today, she lets her voice drift into a distant buzz and studies her oddly.
Something otherworldly stands out about the timekeeper. It’s not the way her windswept hair, cleverly braided at the sides, shines with a silver moonlit hue under the sunshine; not even the way the hourglass around her neck hangs upside down, its sands drifting from bottom to top.
Hana thinks it might be her eyes. The timekeeper’s eyes are an icy blue, like the lake she and her sister would skate on as children. She’s not sure why—they’re very pretty eyes—but blue is the wrong color for her.
“Any questions?” the timekeeper finally asks, once she finishes telling Hana that everything, everywhere, is happening at the same time and she can see every bit of it.
Hana doesn’t miss a beat.
“What’s your name?”
The timekeeper does. She lets her gaze sweep over Hana from the corner of her eye.
“What’s yours?”
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you second.”
The two come to a stop, facing each other. The timekeeper is taller than her, but not by much. Hana doesn’t have to tilt her chin far to match her impassive look with a stubborn stare of her own.
Neither of them move.
Eventually, Hana decides she has better things to do than stare her down for eternity. The timekeeper disagrees, which Hana also decides makes her wrong, so it’s not considered losing when she relents.
“Hana.”
“Hana?”
She’s not sure what to make of the way the timekeeper says her name, as if she’s holding it in her grasp or tasting it on her tongue. Hana’s given her name countless times before. She’s never once felt as if she’s given it away.
“My, my, Hana,” the girl with the glittering eyes finally murmurs. “You’re a long ways from home, aren’t you?”
Hana doesn’t look away.
“So you see my problem.”
“I see a lot of things. And you, trespasser, have a lot of problems.”
She refuses to rise to the bait, even as the distance between them unintentionally grows smaller.
“I need to get home,” Hana says softly.
“I agree.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
“No.”
Instead of allowing her frustration to grow, she’s quiet as she studies the timekeeper’s kept-aloof eyes. It’s easier to read them than she expects. It feels like she knows the words already.
“Can you help me?”
Those eyes light up with satisfaction.
“No,” the timekeeper tells her, slightly warmer this time.
Hana’s always been a quick learner. Catching on, she continues curiously, “Would you help me?”
“If I could.”
“But you don’t know how.”
“Correct.”
Hana bites the inside of her cheek. She’s beginning to understand that the timekeeper is playing a game.
“How do you leave the tower?”
“I don’t.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Never had a reason.”
“Could you leave if you did?”
There’s a certain way the timekeeper’s lips lift, not quite a smile and still not a smirk.
“You have a lot of questions, Hana.”
“You asked if I had any,” Hana reminds her with an arched brow. “You didn’t ask how many. Maybe you should’ve tried a better question.”
The timekeeper’s head cocks in a long moment of consideration. Then, unexpectedly, she lets out a short laugh. That’s how Hana knows she’s got her.
iii.
THE WANDERING KEYS.
🕰
The answer to the first mystery comes sooner than expected.
“Good morning, Kiriko,” Hana says the very next day, or what she would consider the next day. The sun has yet to change position, and in the borrowed bedroom she’d been shown to, it’d been impossible to sleep even with the curtains drawn tight.
It’s not the only reason it’d been impossible to sleep, but it’s easier to be annoyed at the tower’s strangeness.
The timekeeper—Kiriko, whose strangeness may yet be forgiven—blinks with owlish eyes from her perch on a windowsill. Those same eyes begin to glow the way they had before, and she tilts her head with a thoughtful frown.
Later, Hana will come to learn that this look means that Kiriko is sifting through the many moments they’ll spend in this tower, searching for their current place like a dog-ear in her books.
Right now, Hana only makes a note that Kiriko is quick to stick her head in the clouds.
“You’re not supposed to know that yet,” the timekeeper finally says.
Hana shrugs, holding a folded note between two fingers.
“Keep better secrets then.”
The note she’d found on her bedside table helpfully instructs her to wander the tower as she pleases, but should any doors appear locked to her, then they are locked for a reason.
Yours Always, Kiriko.
It’s full of strange phrasings, but Hana’s already concluded that so is the timekeeper.
Kiriko plucks the note from her fingers—which Hana allows, otherwise she couldn’t—and reads it to herself. She mouths the words once, then twice, then sighs.
“Sometimes I forget I have a sense of humor,” she mutters under her breath. She doesn’t seem to expect a response, because next she looks at Hana and asks, “What makes you so sure I wrote this? You haven’t explored the tower yet. Maybe there’s somebody else here by that name.”
It’s a challenge, for whatever reason Kiriko is peering at her so curiously. Hana likes challenges just as much as she likes games. Regrettably, this one is easy.
“You drew a picture of yourself at the bottom,” she helpfully reminds her.
It’s kinder than saying she’s sure Kiriko lives alone here, because she very much speaks like a person who does.
“Oh.” There’s a beat while she’s fact-checked. “So I will.”
Kiriko is still frowning, unlike the little cartoon of herself which is smiling. But the timekeeper’s pause, admittedly, gives Hana pause in return.
“You will?” she repeats.
“Haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“But you already did.”
“That’s also true.”
Hana narrows her eyes and cocks her head. Kiriko seems entirely unconcerned.
“Do you ever make sense?”
“I have enough of it, why make more?”
She was right. She does have a sense of humor, doesn’t she? Hana can’t imagine having anything to smile about right now, but the timekeeper’s wit takes her by surprise so quickly that she almost lets out a disbelieving laugh.
Thankfully, she doesn’t. If there’s one question she doesn’t want answered, it’s how insufferable the timekeeper may get if she thinks Hana finds her funny.
“I do agree, however,” Kiriko remarks, handing the note back. “You may go anywhere you’d like while you’re here, except where you shouldn’t.”
The locked doors. Hana tries to think back to their rush of a tour, but Kiriko hadn’t given her much time to look around. She does recall that most rooms had been separated only by open archways, not by doors of any kind.
Perhaps it’s convenient that the wind doesn’t blow. The tower would be drafty if it did.
“Where are these doors?” Hana questions, because questions seem to get her the farthest with Kiriko. “I haven’t seen any.”
“You can’t see them. They’re simply there.”
“So they’re imaginary?
“Now that, trespasser, is a question that plenty of men have dedicated their lives to answering.”
Hana crosses her arms and leans against the windowsill that Kiriko’s still perched on. Plenty of men dedicate their lives to stupid things all the time. She’s not impressed yet with these ‘doors’.
“Uh-huh. Any of them figured it out yet?”
“They—” Kiriko starts to say, before she stops. The way she taps her chin seems surprisingly sincere. “You know? It’s been a while since I’ve checked.”
Hana does not, in fact, know. She appreciates the timekeeper’s confidence in her anyways.
“I don’t want their answer, even if they have one,” she says, only because their answers are not readily available. “I’d rather have yours.”
Kiriko’s pleased with her, which Hana can tell by the way she laughs under her breath, ever-aloof. It’s the only place she’s seen her laugh so far, even though her eyes often glint mischievously like a person who should laugh much more.
“What makes something real to you, Hana?”
She seems like she’s taking it seriously now, and Hana wants her to take it seriously, but she also can’t help but snort.
“You mean men haven’t found that answer either?”
“I don’t want anybody else’s answer,” Kiriko says, because of course she does. “I want yours.”
Hana tries to think, though she’s getting tired of it already. She blows several strands of loose hair, all escaped from her topknot, out of her face with a huff.
“Something I can touch,” she decides. She doesn’t debate for long, because she can already guess that Kiriko will correct any answer she comes up with.
“Something you can touch,” Kiriko repeats in a musing tone. Hana is often a very good guesser. “What about the things you can’t? Your friends, your family, your home. Are they still real?”
The loss is still fresh. Taken by surprise, Hana stands up straighter, eyes narrowing in warning. This timekeeper should be very careful with what she says next about her home.
“Of course they are.”
“But you can’t touch them. You can’t see them or listen to their voice. How do you know they’re real?”
Hana finds the answer on the tip of her tongue, as if it’d only been waiting for the question to be asked.
“Because I have before. Because I know they’re out there.”
She expects Kiriko to point out the obvious flaws in her thinking, and she prepares herself to stubbornly argue back, because they’re all real and her question is stupid and she doesn’t have to prove it.
Instead, the timekeeper’s eyes brighten with curious delight.
“Then I suppose, by your logic, that the doors in this tower are very real as well.”
Hana still doesn’t understand, but the way Kiriko continues to look at her—pleased and knowing—makes her reluctant to admit it. She looks away first, brow furrowed and bottom lip tugged between her teeth.
“Why are they locked?” she questions instead.
“Because they’re not unlocked.”
“Can they be?”
“If you find the right key.”
“What makes a key right or wrong?”
“You’re getting better at this,” Kiriko comments as she hops down from the windowsill.
She stretches with her arms above her head, perhaps like a cat, but perhaps like something else—the answer is also on the tip of Hana’s tongue, but unlike before, she can’t quite find it yet.
“At asking questions?” Hana’s brow arches in cool skepticism.
“At looking at the world,” Kiriko corrects in that way she seems to do, as if up is down and left is right, and anyone who believes differently is, in fact, absurd. “What are questions if not lenses in which to view it?”
Hana tries to agree with her, but she’s still of the firm belief that left is, in fact, left.
“You should work on your answers,” she says instead. “Lots of room for improvement.”
There’s a certain way that her lips lift, which definitely is a smirk.
The timekeeper, smug and strange as she is, seems to press her lips tightly together to avoid returning it. Hana doesn’t know her well—not at all, even—but she also knows somehow that Kiriko wants to.
“Perhaps you’ll learn to find your own, and you won’t need me anymore,” she coolly returns.
“Really? Then what would you do?”
“Retire,” Kiriko says without hesitation, “to a faraway island where nobody can find me. I’ll spend the rest of forever putting seashells in buckets, and that’s where I’ll wait for you.”
Hana’s not sure what to think of that. Her question had only been meant to mock her, even if she knows she shouldn’t. She swallows past her suddenly dry mouth and clasps her hands behind her back as if standing at attention. It feels more comfortable this way.
“If nobody can find you, how do you expect me to?” she finally asks, because while she’s not sure what to think, she’s even less sure what to say.
“Nobody’s supposed to find me ever, and yet here you are,” Kiriko points out, eyebrows raising. She doesn’t seem bothered by Hana’s reticence, but then again, she’s only seemed bothered when shoved against a wall. “So I have to assume that if I left you here alone, I’d never hear the end of it.”
That is… That sounds like it could be true. Hana will admit that. But the timekeeper certainly is full of strange phrasings, isn’t she? It makes her uneasy.
Kiriko, despite her fascination with time, gives Hana little of it as she collects her book from the windowsill.
“Now, if you’re all set,” Kiriko says meaningfully, and she doesn’t say much more. She wants to be excused. Hana thinks she’s rather polite in a very impolite way sometimes.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
It’s a strange concept. She can’t remember the last time she’s ever had the freedom to do whatever she’d like.
“Will I see you again?”
The thought strikes her suddenly that she might not, and Hana discovers that it worries her—she suddenly doesn’t want Kiriko to go, because then she’ll be alone. But she also thinks that maybe she does want to be alone, at least a little bit, at least for a little while.
Hana is very brave, but if she weren’t so brave, she thinks she’d find Kiriko rather off-putting.
Kiriko, off-puttingly, tilts her head as she studies Hana curiously.
“Of course you will,” she promises, like she could understand the entire universe, but not why Hana is asking her silly questions after such good ones. “You’ll see me often. Behind every door, in fact, including the next one.”
“How do I find these doors?”
“Mm. If I had to guess? Likely the same way you found this one.”
Before Hana can so much as part her lips to ask another silly question, Kiriko dispels it with a wave of her hand.
“Goodbye, Hana,” she says more meaningfully this time, though she casts her one glance over her shoulder. It’s pensive and lingering and Hana doesn’t like it.
Finally, she shakes her head.
“You may wander the tower as you please,” she says, and Hana thinks she’s repeating the note she’d left for her, until she doesn’t. “But consider this your warning. Not every door is meant to be opened."
Hana doesn't like that either, but she likes being afraid even less.
"How will I know the difference?" she asks softly.
Kiriko doesn't answer. Instead, she tells her in a voice even more quiet, "Do not wander far."
(You worry too much for me, Kiri. You always do. I'll find it this time. I'll make this right.)