Archive of Our Own

Soft sunlight streaming in through the window and a sufficiently rested body and mind wake Euijoo gently. It’s Sunday morning; he slowly eases himself awake, no alarm needed on his day off. He is tucked into a cocoon of his own warmth, wrapped up in his duvet. He sheds it off, padding over to the window to pull open the curtains and let more light in. He checks the time on his phone—9:35 AM. The glory of sleeping in.

It has been a while since Euijoo has had to do anything on a Sunday, but today feels particularly lazy. There is nowhere he needs to be, and the thought is as freeing as it is isolating. Euijoo is used to order. Used to a concise schedule of when to arrive at work and when to leave, how to respond to emails, sitting in meetings, perfecting presentations. He has been complimented for his focus. He has also been warned to ease out of his cycle, just a bit, before work becomes his entire life.

Euijoo has a life though. He has friends and hobbies, though he doesn’t plan on indulging in either today. He has other things to keep him busy, like errands to run and groceries to buy.

His phone vibrates on his pillow with an incoming call from his mother. “Hi, Mom,” Euijoo says, holding his phone to his ear.

“Hi, sweetie,” she replies. “Just calling to see if you’ll make it to dinner tonight.”

Right. Euijoo has Sunday dinner with his parents. It’s the little things, he’s found, that fulfill him. Euijoo doesn’t need any grandeur. “I’ll be there,” he confirms.

His mom wants to chat about a few more things—his father, his sister, work. It’s always nice to catch up, but Euijoo’s interest is cut off by the rumble of his empty stomach, and he tells his mom he has to let her go in order to eat. “Take care of yourself,” she orders.

“I will,” he says. “See you later, mom. I love you.”

Breakfast is a simple affair. Euijoo roots through his fridge for leftovers until he plates up a rough approximation of a meal. He sits by the window in his kitchen as he eats, watching people walk the street down below. If people watching counts as a hobby, then that’s one he’s indulging in.

Euijoo likes a slow Sunday morning like this. At least he convinces himself he does. It’s good, he thinks, to unwind. To slow down, to give in to the luxury of lazing around all morning. He likes it.

Lazing can only last so long though, because his fridge was looking sparse and the grocery store is calling his name. There’s one just down the street in walking distance, so Euijoo quickly gets dressed, grabbing his reusable bags before heading out. The weather is great, the perfect balance between hot and cold with the warm sun shining down on him and the cool breeze that follows behind. Euijoo decides to change course toward the grocery store a few more blocks away, enjoying the weather so thoroughly. He just needs to turn at the next light and continue on his way. It's still early enough in the day, before the sun beats down on his back and the streets are too crowded, that Euijoo finds himself quite enjoying his walk. He soaks it all in, the warmth on his skin, the birds chirping, the white, fluffy clouds passing by idly.

The crosswalk symbol changes to walk right as Euijoo steps up to the curb, and he's starting to think this might be a lucky day for him. As he begins crossing the street, a red sedan whizzes through the intersection parallel to Euijoo. At least they had a green light, Euijoo thinks, but the speeding through town has gotten out of hand lately.

The rest of the trip is uneventful and Euijoo makes quick work once he is in the store. He picks up a few basics—eggs, fresh veggies, some meat to grill for dinner throughout the week. He stops in the ramen aisle for the inevitable days where even just grilling meat feels like a bit too much work.

Euijoo is alone, except for the pink-haired boy intensely browsing the selection. Euijoo doesn’t mean to stare, but he is standing right in front of the brand Euijoo is looking for, and then he tries to reach up to the top shelf in a way that Euijoo can’t seem to look away from. His tongue pokes out of his mouth in deep focus, up on his tiptoes and everything, but his fingertips still barely brush the package that he’s reaching for. As if defeated, the guy drops back down to his heels. He looks around, meeting Euijoo’s eyes briefly before snapping his gaze back up to the ramen with a new determination present. No matter how hard he tries, how far he reaches, he just can’t grab it. Euijoo even sees his fingertips inadvertently pushing the package further back on the shelf in his efforts to pull it down. He looks back at Euijoo once again, giving him a full once-over.

“Hey,” he says, scanning Euijoo, as if to see if he's fit for it. “Would you mind..?”

He sidesteps to leave his desired ramen pack accessible, and Euijoo reaches up and grabs it easily, placing it in the man’s awaiting arms.

“Thanks,” he says. He’s almost sheepish, as Euijoo just made the task he was struggling terribly with look like a simple feat. But he also looks a little more like he’s happy to have had the task done for him and brushes off any embarrassment easily. “I appreciate it.”

“No worries,” Euijoo replies. He hardly gives the pink-haired man another look, already feeling guilty for watching his struggle. He just reaches down to a lower shelf for his own ramen.

The guy is still doing his full body scan of Euijoo though, standing off to the side and observing Euijoo’s movements like a scientist looking at his test subjects. “You’re pretty tall,” he notes, fascination coloring his voice.

Which is a little bit weird, but not something Euijoo hasn’t heard before. He just doesn’t understand why this guy is inspecting him so closely, like he’s considering hiring him for all his reaching needs.

Euijoo just walks away politely, basket in hand. Maybe he could have said goodbye, but instead he just nods at the other guy before he goes. Maybe he could’ve tried to continue the conversation in any way, but what more is there to say? Euijoo doesn’t typically find himself bragging about his physical attributes, and the guy seemed to say it more as an idle observation than a conversation starter. As Euijoo heads down the next aisle, he decides to stop overthinking and head out before the pink hair corners him again.

There isn’t much else Euijoo needs, as evidenced by his concise shopping list he’s crossing out one by one. He wraps his trip up quickly, heading to pay. As Euijoo waits in the checkout line, he sees him again out of his peripheral vision, a head of shaggy pink hair standing a few people behind. And then again after he’s left the store, Euijoo looks over his shoulder as he heads toward his apartment just to see the man heading in the opposite direction, shrinking into the horizon. It has Euijoo considering how many people he sees in a day. How many familiar faces exist in a crowd that he’s too busy keeping his head down to notice? He thinks he’d certainly recognize this guy if he saw him again. Will he see him again?

Euijoo unloads his groceries at home, restocking his previously sparse fridge and sorting all the non-perishables into his pantry. Then he allows himself his fair share of doom-scrolling, tapping through Instagram stories until he gets to Kei’s. It’s just a mirror selfie, a fit check of the lounge wear he looks unfairly model-esque in. It’s been a while since he’s seen Kei, and Euijoo is trying to keep the positive, uplifting vibe of his day around as long as possible, so he sends Kei a text on their private text thread.

Hey, he types out, are you free for lunch? Want to hang out?

The response comes rather quickly. Kei is unusually awake and alert. He’s typically slower to respond in the morning, especially on weekends. Euijoo could stand to take a page out of his book of relaxation. I have to help Taki move. Raincheck? Miss you!!

And Euijoo can’t even hold it against him, obviously. Taki is like a little brother to Kei, and Kei isn’t the type to make up excuses. Euijoo just busies himself with chores around the house and then picks up the book he swears he’s been reading until it’s time to take up his favorite company, the ones who will never turn him down, his parents. He shows up a bit early, but his dear parents certainly never complain.

Euijoo lets himself in when he arrives. It is quiet throughout their house, and neither of them acknowledge Euijoo’s arrival. His parents, he finds as he steps further into their home, are fully focused on the puzzle spread out across their dining table.

“Hi, Mom,” Euijoo says, gentle so as to not startle them. “Hi, Dad.”

The two of them look up just enough to smile warmly at him without tearing themselves away from their task too much. “Hi, son,” his mom replies. In between fitting pieces together, she spares him a hug. “Your sister will be here a little bit later. Are you hungry now? Do you need anything?”

“I’m okay, Mom,” Euijoo reassures her. He is more than content to pull up a seat between his parents and intently watch their puzzling until Eunji arrives. He reaches out to try a few pieces now and then, but ultimately decides to leave it to the professionals. He watches his parents’ wrinkled hands grab puzzle pieces with practiced precision, fitting them into the correct spots on the first try like they’ve done this one a million times.

They still get stumped on the last part of a cloud, trying piece after piece of bright blue and fluffy white, squinting their eyes to try and discern their differences until his dad finds the right fit with a triumphant hum.

“Can I help with dinner?” Euijoo asks. It’s nearly six now, and Eunji should be there any minute. Both her and Euijoo used to help their mom in the kitchen as kids. His parents always tell them they came into the world already asking to do chores. “You both stay here. Just tell me what I can do.”

His mother shrugs, pausing for a moment like she’s thinking of something to keep him busy. Like he’s still a little kid to her. He supposes he must be. “You can stir fry the noodles. Everything is ready to go, it just needs to be heated.”

Eunji arrives as Euijoo is checking the flame under the pan, careful not to burn the noodles or get them stuck to the pan. Cooking has never been his strong suit, no matter how many tries he gives it. Euijoo hears his sister greet their parents excitedly, and watches over his shoulder to catch their warm smiles. He doesn’t think he’ll grow tired of this any time soon. Sunday dinners are one of his lifelines. All of his favorite people in one place, catching up on their weeks over a delicious home cooked meal. His dad’s terrible jokes and his mom’s jingling laugh and his sister’s gentle voice asking him how he is really doing.

“I’m good,” he says, pulling her into his side for a hug, multitasking with his mother’s pair of long wooden chopsticks stirring the pan. “Things are good.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Eunji takes over for him, seamlessly grabbing the chopsticks from Euijoo’s hand and tossing the noodles like she was professionally trained to. Euijoo’s skill in chores always lay elsewhere, in meticulous cleaning and reorganizing their bathroom cabinets. “Is it too much to ask for my baby brother to be great for once? You’re always just good.”

Although Euijoo knows it’s coming purely from a place of love, he can’t help but feel upset at being called out. Flustered, caught off guard like he never expected anyone to see past his content smile and read anything deeper. Because Euijoo is good, but he just can’t lie and say he’s great. There is that edge that just won’t soften out, the nervous energy perpetually tensing up his muscles. Like something is missing, or there’s edges of a puzzle piece inside of Euijoo’s psyche that just can’t connect to anything. He doesn’t know what the problem even is, let alone how to find the solution. “I think I just don’t know what great is yet,” Euijoo says, and no matter how unnecessarily grand and soul-searching it sounds, he thinks he means it. “I’m still waiting for great.”

“I’ll be here if you need any help on your journey to greatness,” Eunji replies, equal parts dry and kind.

Everyone eats together, and then they sit and complete the rest of the puzzle. Euijoo takes great comfort in his family’s company. His mother packs a few portions of food for Euijoo to take with him, and sends him home with a kiss on the cheek and wishes for safe driving.

When Euijoo arrives home, he stows away the leftovers and takes a quick shower before heading to bed. He meticulously sets his alarms to wake him up for work in the morning, and he falls asleep as he sits with the reminder that he is okay without a schedule. He is okay with changing plans and meeting someone new and he could stand to enjoy his days off more.

𖦹

Soft sunlight streaming in through the window and a sufficiently rested body and mind wake Euijoo gently.

He blinks his eyes a few times, confused by the silence. Then he abruptly sits up and digs around in the sheets for his phone. It’s 9:30, and his alarms never woke him up. Didn’t he set them last night? He could’ve sworn he had, but he’s never slept through them before, and now he’s nearly two hours late for work. Euijoo stumbles out of bed and dresses himself quickly, rushing to the bathroom while stumbling into his socks.

Euijoo brushes his teeth in record time but is interrupted by a call from his mom.

“Hi, mom,” he answers, spitting the toothpaste down the drain.

“Hi, dear. Just calling to see if you’ll make it to dinner tonight.”

Euijoo pauses, looking at himself in the mirror. There’s toothpaste around the corners of his mouth. Did he agree to dinner again tonight? He must have slept really well last night with how dazed he’s feeling this morning. Or maybe his mother was just thinking of him. She is getting older, after all, and she’s been a bit more scatterbrained in recent years. “Sure, I’ll be there,” Euijoo quickly answers. He doesn’t have time to figure it out with how late he’s running. Either he’ll visit his parents again tonight or he’ll call his dad later to explain. Either way, he has to leave now. “I can’t talk now. I’m running late. I’ll call you back later, okay?”

Euijoo runs out of his apartment as fast as he can. He’s on his way by 9:40, which must be a speed record for how quickly he’s gotten ready, but he skipped breakfast in favor of not being ten more minutes late than he already is. The office is also within walking distance but Euijoo seriously considers getting a cab to speed up his commute. Deciding against it, Euijoo’s pace picks up into a jog as he makes his way to the office.

There is a light sweat heading across his forehead by the time he reaches the building. He reaches for his employee ID to scan himself in only to realize he’d left it at home in his haste. He grabs his phone instead, hesitantly, and cringes at himself when he figures the only course of action to get himself out of this situation is to call his senior coworker and embarrass himself further. Not only is he two hours late, he can’t even let himself into the building. The call rings a few times before his senior picks up.

“Euijoo-san?” He asks, voice hoarse. Euijoo wonders if he’s caught the office cold going around. He’ll buy medicine to bring in tomorrow as thanks.

“Fuma-kun, can you let me in the office? I woke up late and forgot my ID.”

There is a beat of silence and Euijoo waits in horror for Fuma's response. He isn't the type to scold, but neither is Euijoo the type to wake up so late. Fuma's voice sounds confused when he speaks again. "Euijoo…" he says. "It's Sunday. The office is closed."

“What?” Euijoo asks. He pulls his phone away from his ear and inspects the date underneath the more largely displayed time that had only told him he was late. Sunday, May 17th. It reads the same as it did yesterday. Euijoo rubs his eyes, locks and unlocks his phone, and checks again. Still Sunday. “Oh. I'm so sorry, Fuma-kun. I hope I didn't disturb you.”

“No worries,” Fuma replies. No wonder he'd sounded so groggy. Euijoo most likely woke him up. He'll make sure to apologize tomorrow. “See you tomorrow.”

Fuma hangs up without another word, and Euijoo is left staring dumbfoundedly at his phone screen. Maybe he'd dreamt the entire previous day. That could explain his mother calling about dinner—Sunday dinner hasn't happened yet. Euijoo heads back home, his pace set at a leisure walk rather than his hurried jog here. Everything had felt so real in the dream. His dreams usually aren't so vivid. He had real, visceral feelings, all of the food he ate had real flavors, he can recount the exact smell of his mother’s perfume, and he had actually made it through an entire day rather than the broken up fragments he typically has to piece together in the morning when waking up from a dream. It doesn't make any sense, he thinks, but neither does two Sundays in a row. A very realistic dream is the most plausible explanation, and it is the one Euijoo chooses to stick with.

Just as he is crossing the street toward his apartment, looking both ways carefully, a red sedan speeds past the crosswalk. The very same one that did yesterday. Or in his dream. Either Euijoo is becoming prophetic in his mid-20s, or there is someone in town with a bad speeding habit to kick.

Since he is already out, and very clearly dazed, Euijoo walks a few blocks past his apartment to the small park nearby. He follows the trail for a few minutes, basking in the quiet seclusion of the park early in the morning, until he finds a bench tucked under the shade of an oak tree and rests himself. If it was a dream, then Euijoo never got groceries. He gathers his bearings for a long moment, mentally preparing himself for the task of shopping all over again.

There is just no way it’s true. It was just yesterday. It was all so real. The weight of the basket in his hands, the beep of the card reader when he paid. The man he met in the ramen aisle. Can you dream of someone you’ve never even met? If Euijoo goes home right now, he can almost guarantee he’d have a fully stocked fridge. Maybe he did it late last night, exhausted out of his mind. Maybe it is just a glitch. But Euijoo knows it wasn’t a dream. How can a dream be a carbon copy of the day that is to follow?

To be absolutely certain, Euijoo calls Kei. He answers after the seventh ring, voice thick with sleep. “Euijoo?”

“Hey,” Euijoo replies, not missing a beat. He is singleminded in his goal. “Are you free today? Can you grab lunch with me?”

“No, I can’t,” Kei says apologetically, the words hitting Euijoo like deja vu. “I’m helping Taki move.”

Euijoo feels his heart drop with one single sentence. He doesn’t know what else this could possibly mean. He has exhausted his options—maybe he’s coming down with a fever? Anything to explain the hazy state he’s in. It couldn’t have all been a dream, but perhaps a hallucination. “That’s okay,” Euijoo says, his voice a hollow shell of itself. “Good luck with the move. Tell Taki I said hi.”

Not quite finding himself in the mood to make any more conversation than he has to, Euijoo hangs up. He sits back against the bench, legs stretched out, staring up into the sky as if he’ll find the answer he’s looking for in the clouds. The missing piece.

After a long moment of silence, filled with nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the wind rustling through the tree branches, Euijoo is halfway fallen asleep when someone trips over his foot. His eyes shoot open and he sits upright immediately. On the grassy ground in front of him sits the pink haired boy from the grocery store, flat on his butt, a dog leash wrapped around his wrist and a French bulldog looking back at him, deeply inconvenienced.

“Oh my,” Euijoo says, off the bench in an instant and kneeling on the ground beside the other man. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” he replies. He sits on the dirt and grass like he’s accepted it, too worn by the tumble to pick himself up just yet. All black sunglasses rest on top of his head, pushing his pink hair out of his face. “I’m sorry too, Haku is usually better on walks but I think he’s just excited to see you. He pulled the leash to one side and I just…”

“It’s okay. It happens,” Euijoo assures. Standing up, he offers his hand to pull the man up to his feet. He watches as the man’s eyes follow Euijoo’s body, from his feet all the way back up to his face.

“Oh, wow…” he says staggeredly. He grabs onto Euijoo’s hand like an anchor, pushing himself up with Euijoo’s help. He must notice Euijoo’s inquisitive expression upon his reaction, because next he explains, “You have such long legs.”

Euijoo laughs a little bit, surprised by the response. It seems as good a continuation of their last interaction as any though, so he just shrugs. “Well, you know. Yeah.”

If it was a test from the universe on meeting new friends, Euijoo would be failing. But to be fair, the other participant isn’t exactly acing it either. “Thanks,” says the pink haired guy, brushing off the back of his pants. He smiles, a little breathless from a whirlwind moment, and this close Euijoo can see the curl of his lips, the sharpness of his teeth.

Euijoo cannot tell if he recognizes him or not. It’s odd, Euijoo thinks, that he has never seen this man before but now he’s seen him twice in two days, or one day, or whatever indeterminable amount of time has truly passed between then and now. Of all the faces he passes by in a day, what are the odds? The moment feels too valuable to let it slip away.

“This is Haku?” Euijoo asks, pointing to the dog. “Is he friendly?”

“Extremely,” the man says, smiling again and nodding his head in permission. Euijoo squats down to the ground again to pet the dog, scratching behind his ears. “He’s not mine. I’m just dog-sitting for my neighbor.”

Haku tilts his head in favor of Euijoo’s fingers scratching at his fur, tongue hanging slightly out of his mouth, panting happily. “He’s very sweet,” Euijoo comments. Then he looks back at the dog, scratching his chin. “You’re very sweet, Haku-chan.”

“I’m Yuma,” the pink haired man says, as if the attention on Haku is taking far too much away from himself. Euijoo straightens up and takes Yuma's outstretched hand this time.

“It’s nice to meet you, Yuma,” Euijoo says. Their handshake is firm, Yuma’s big hand and long fingers warm against his own skin. When he lets go, Euijoo feels the loss immediately. “My name is Euijoo.”

“Euijoo?” Yuma asks like he’s testing out how it feels on his tongue. He analyzes Euijoo’s face closely too, like he’s trying to memorize it. Or perhaps trying to recall it. Euijoo still doesn’t know if Yuma recognizes him, but it doesn’t matter anymore. “Is that Korean?”

“It is. We moved when I was young because of my dad’s job.”

“Tell your dad I said thank you,” Yuma says. Euijoo tilts his head curiously. “It’s thanks to him that I tripped over a handsome stranger’s feet in the park.”

It’s terribly cheesy, but it unfortunately works on Euijoo, who hasn’t been flirted with in so long that he feels the blush coloring his cheeks already.

“I’m sorry,” Yuma nervously laughs, his own cheeks tinted pink, “that was terrible, wasn’t it?”

“No, it was good!” Euijoo insists. “Thank you to Haku for needing a walk through the park.”

“Right place at the right time, huh?”

Euijoo wholeheartedly agrees. It even feels like something as naive as fate bringing them both to that bench at that exact time, if fate is even present for such trivial moments. It seems like awfully coincidental timing to have met each other twice in such a short period.

“Sorry if this is totally crazy. Can I give you my number?” Yuma asks. Yuma is fun to watch, because one moment he is completely unabashed, shameless, and bold, and the very next moment he is overly aware of his own actions, even embarrassed by them.

Euijoo does not need any convincing before he passes his cellphone over. Yuma pulls his sunglasses down onto his nose bridge to save himself from the glare, sunlight filtering through the trees and reflecting off the phone screen. It isn’t everyday he’s tripped over by someone like Yuma. Euijoo watches intently as he types in his name and number. Although the sunglasses partially obscure his face, it doesn’t hide his astounding beauty. The furrow of his lightened eyebrows, the way his pink lips curl into every smile, the canines that poke out of his mouth.

“There,” Yuma says resolutely, handing Euijoo’s phone back to him. “Now text me and I’ll save your contact.”

Euijoo has always been the type of person to take things as they are. Things happen and he lets them, takes them in stride. Even facilitates it, and especially now, in the face of Yuma. He quickly follows his instruction and sends a short text.

“I have to get Haku home now. He gets tired so quickly…” Yuma’s voice sounds apologetic, not wanting to leave so soon. But Euijoo has to get himself home too and try to figure out what’s happening to him. Yuma was such a delightful distraction, but it is growing clearer and clearer that he has never seen Euijoo before in his life. He’d seemed, in Euijoo’s humble opinion, at least a little bit interested when they saw each other at the grocery store. Euijoo would like to imagine he’d be memorable to Yuma in the same way Yuma is to him. Had they not met? Had Euijoo dreamt up a man too perfect to be true? Is it real, even now?

“It’s been a pleasure,” Euijoo says honestly. “Get Haku back safely.”

“Thanks.” Yuma grins, lips closed, although that pointy canine persists. “I’ll see you around.”

Euijoo watches his head of pink hair retreat, Haku’s stocky body trotting alongside Yuma. The same way he’d watched him go just yesterday.

At home, Euijoo takes inventory of his once again empty fridge before opening his lap and taking to the worldwide web for help. He summarizes his situation in the search engine bar, re-words it any way he can come up with. What he’s met with is a lot of inspirational articles about people feeling stuck in a rut, such a cycled schedule that it’s as if they are repeating the same day over and over. There are a few other discussion posts that resonate with Euijoo a bit closer. People talk about strong senses of deja vu. Feeling as if it was a dream. They call it a glitch in the matrix, one repeat before everything returns to normal the next day. Euijoo can handle a glitch. The only thing he knows to do is spend the rest of his day like normal.

Euijoo forgoes a second shopping trip. He’ll meet his parents for dinner tonight and scrounge around tomorrow as needed before stopping for groceries after work. He feels better doing it after he returns to normalcy. For all he knows, the groceries will reappear in his kitchen by tomorrow morning.

Dinner is much like it was the night before. Euijoo arrives a little later, sucked into glitch forums for longer than he’d like to admit. He still beats Eunji there, still offers to help with dinner. There are stir fried noodles ready to heat up on the stove. His parents are doing the same landscape puzzle they’d finished together.

Eunji, again, asks Euijoo how he is doing. Euijoo, rehearsed, tells her he is good.

“Is it too much to ask for my baby brother to be great for once?” She says, taking the chopsticks from Euijoo’s hand. “You’re always just good.”

It is an eerie chill that finds its way down Euijoo’s spine. Whatever the glitch might be, Euijoo can’t wait for it to be over.

It keeps him up longer that night. Inexplicable feelings of anxiety. He sets his alarms, closes his eyes, and forces himself to sleep it off.

𖦹

Whatever it is, Euijoo does not sleep it off. His alarms do not ring. He checks his phone—it reads Sunday, May 17th, for the third time in a row. 9:35 AM. Euijoo pulls off his comforter like it’s a chore and gets out of bed.

He answers his mother’s call on the first ring. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, hi dear,” she says, startled, not expecting such a quick response. “Just calling to see if you’ll make it to dinner tonight.”

Euijoo is at a loss. He struggles to find his words. Though he isn’t quite sure the rejection would matter to her at all, Euijoo can’t bring himself not to go. “Yeah, Mom, I’ll be there.”

The conversation carries on similarly to how it did the first time Euijoo lived through this day, and then he gets ready for the day, and checks his pantry with bated breath. It isn’t surprise he feels when he finds it all empty—it is dread.

All the posts he’d read said they lived the same day twice. Is three times just a glitch too? Three times is a pattern. Three times would maybe happen to someone else, someone who has their thoughts gathered well enough to recount it on the internet. It couldn’t happen to Euijoo.

He decides to follow every step he took on the first day to the best of his ability. Maybe something had gone wrong there to set off the glitch. Euijoo makes himself the same breakfast, gets dressed in the same clothes, leaves his house for the grocery store at the same time. He sees the red sedan speed through the light. He sees the same greeter at the front of the shop. He tries to retrace his steps exactly, following the same order, but when he gets to the ramen aisle, Yuma is nowhere to be seen. He lingers a bit longer after grabbing what he needs in case he had gotten there early, but there is no head of light pink hair rounding the aisle. Euijoo doesn’t even catch as much as a glimpse of him.

Feeling despondent, Euijoo cuts his shopping trip short and heads to the register. He is beginning to think it doesn’t matter either way if he buys his groceries or not—everything will reset when he wakes up anyway. As he leaves, paper bag in hand, Euijoo searches for Yuma’s contact in his phone. His number is no longer saved, and there is no evidence of their short text thread. There isn’t an outgoing call to Kei, and only one incoming call from his mother despite him talking to her three times in a row.

Euijoo walks home with his head down. It is what it is, he desperately wants to tell himself, but it is hard to find the point in anything. The weather is just as perfect as it was yesterday, and the day before, but he can't even enjoy it today. He just watches his shoes scuff against the concrete, balancing his bag in one arm until it gets caught on somebody’s shoulder and is sent flying across the sidewalk.

“Watch where you’re going,” a familiar voice scolds over the dull humming in Euijoo’s ears. He quickly whips his head up, nerves standing on end when he’s reacquainted with the head of pink hair he'd been searching for. Euijoo forgets his groceries scattered along the ground for a moment, and scans Yuma’s face for any signs of memory. Recognition doesn't seem to click, but something else softens in Yuma’s face upon a closer look at Euijoo. “Sorry,” he says, kinder now, taking out his earbud. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Euijoo says, kneeling down to collect his groceries. Yuma joins him a second later, putting everything back into the now ripped paper bag. “I wasn’t paying any attention. I’m sorry.”

After three days, Euijoo still has a hard time figuring out Yuma and all his intentful looks. He's looking at him so closely, prying into him in a way that Euijoo swears he’s trying to figure out how they know each other, but he doesn’t say anything to give it away. It’s only been a day. Is Euijoo so forgettable? “Your ramen’s all crushed,” Yuma says distressedly.

“That’s okay,” Euijoo tells him. I probably won’t even eat it before this day resets, he thinks to himself. It’s no sweat off his back. “Thanks for your help.”

Yuma’s face shifting into something bold and courageous is beginning to look a bit familiar. “Can I buy you lunch to apologize? I was pretty rude to you.”

“That’s not necessary,” Euijoo tries to insist, but Yuma non-threateningly glares at him and Euijoo quickly gives up. It falls unconvincing even to his own ears, because Yuma will have not spent any time or money on Euijoo come morning. So much for reliving day one down to an exact replication. The chances of it were shot, however, from the moment his shopping trip went sideways. It all seems to come back to Yuma in the end. “Let me drop these off at my place first.”

“Give me your number,” Yuma demands. Euijoo wonders how it comes so easily to him. “I’ll text you the location. Wait, you’re not some kind of a stalker or a psychopath, are you?”

“What?” Asks Euijoo. He's already typing his number into Yuma’s phone, thinking he should probably be asking the same thing.

“Don’t stand me up, okay? It’s not everyday you meet such a handsome stranger on the street.”

Euijoo almost laughs at that, because it is, in fact, an everyday occurrence for him lately. But it feels like an unexplainable secret, so he saves his laughter and settles on an amused smile before quickly heading home to put away his groceries. He has half a mind to just leave them on the street, because perhaps someone else could use them more than he could, especially if he won't have them tomorrow anyway. But he doesn't want to come across too eager to Yuma, who has apparently just met him for the very first time again, so he stops home and freshens himself up while he awaits a text from Yuma.

It is fitting that it’s a ramen place Yuma invites him to. Yuma is funny, Euijoo learns shortly into their lunch, although he’d gotten clued in on that fact during their previous interactions. He’s fun to talk to, easy to connect with, and Euijoo wonders just how poor his timing of meeting someone new is. If he’s reading into it too far, or if it’s sustainable at all if he isn’t.

“I’ll see you around,” Yuma tells him when it’s time for them to go their separate ways. The words scratch the inside of Euijoo’s skull, sending him another shiver of deja vu.

“Yeah,” Euijoo agrees. “See you. Thanks for lunch.”

With a cheeky grin, canine poking out, Yuma heads in the opposite direction, his pink haired head bobbing with each step.

The rest of Euijoo’s night, unsurprising to him, goes exactly as the previous. His parents are puzzling, Eunji is twenty minutes late. Stir fried noodles. Driving home, setting alarms that will never go off.

𖦹

By the fourth loop, Euijoo has grown accustomed to it. By the fifth and sixth, he has come to expect it. He doesn't sigh when he sees the date. He doesn’t groan, or rub his eyes in disbelief, or shove his head under the pillow. He just gets out of bed, same as every other day, and brushes his teeth.

All of life’s tests happen for a reason. Who is Euijoo to argue? Time is a social construct anyway, and if it gives Euijoo some extra time off work, he should probably be grateful for it.

Loop after loop, Euijoo is able to predict every second of his day. The only thing he can’t seem to predict is Yuma.

Euijoo finds him at a cafe once, ordering at the counter and telling the barista he’d like to pay for the customer behind him. Euijoo watches as he turns, his mouth agape, only for Yuma to wink at him. Euijoo would normally think such a gesture is sleazy, but Yuma has proved his kindness to Euijoo even if he doesn’t know he has. He is always kind, always just unsettling enough that Euijoo is endlessly charmed.

A few loops later, Euijoo figures flirting first won’t kill him. He runs into Yuma on the street and tries to strike up a conversation, though there’s no meet-cute as there so often is, and he isn’t nearly as natural of a conversation starter as Yuma is. “Do I know you?” Yuma asks, footsteps quickening down the sidewalk.

“I’ve seen you around,” Euijoo replies. Hindsight is 20/20. He doesn’t realize it comes off stalkerish until it’s already left his mouth.

“Can you leave me alone?” Yuma says, voice raising. It garners the attention of some other pedestrians, and although Euijoo tries to resolve the situation, he finds a way to only make things worse.

He spends his afternoon in the police station having a background check run. When it comes back squeaky clean, he’s let off with a warning not to follow strangers on the street. Yuma has the courtesy to smile awkwardly at him from the desk he’s sitting at.

At some point Euijoo loses count. It must be at least two weeks worth of the same day over and over again when he starts to lose hope. Until this point, the time loop was something that was just happening to him. Something unavoidable, greater than himself, forced to be accepted. It isn’t until days, weeks into it that he feels he’s been forsaken. Failed. Abandoned.

Maybe, Euijoo wonders, it is a matter of something much bigger than himself. He has no one to confide in, not even a slight understanding of what is happening to him or why. Nothing to wrap his head around except for the fact that he is tired and the fact that he has met Yuma at least a dozen different ways now. Yuma is not an answer, but an aspect that only poses more questions. Yuma is not companionship, not really. Is two weeks even enough time to become friends within the context of a normal passage of time? Let alone when only one party is aware. Euijoo longs for a closeness he cannot explain. An acceptance he cannot comprehend.

Euijoo wanders that morning. His feet carry him mindlessly, walking with no real destination, until he’s standing in the doorway of the Presbyterian church just outside of downtown. The tall spires atop the towers looming over him, the stone and brick, the large pointed arch windows. It has been ages since he’s sat through a service. There is no time like the present, especially when he has endless attempts at this particular day. He slips inside quietly and finds a seat near the back.

The organ is like a childhood memory, long forgotten, scraped up from the back of his mind. The sermon is about finding the meaning in suffering, and Euijoo tries to listen intently. The pastor’s voice is steady and droning. The pink hair a few pews ahead is strikingly familiar.

The remainder of the service is a blur to Euijoo as he spends it wondering who exactly Yuma is. If he’s some sort of alien or angel or a messenger from the future to warn Euijoo of something. If it means anything at all that he’s the only thing Euijoo can’t count on being the same, and yet the only thing he knows will bring him joy. Service ends with a benediction and Yuma smiles at Euijoo as he walks out.

Euijoo sits frozen in the pew for another moment. He isn’t one to judge, but he never pegged Yuma as religious. He hadn’t really thought himself religious either though. He runs out of the church and down the sidewalk in Yuma’s direction.

“Hey,” he says, panting. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

“Just trying it out.” Yuma cocks his head, grinning. “You come here often?”

Euijoo fights back a smile. “Not really, no. Do you want to get lunch? Talk about the service, or something?”

“Or something,” Yuma laughs. “Yeah, I'm free.”

𖦹

Out of all the days that could have been looped—days where Euijoo had tickets to see his favorite band in concert, days he had beach trips planned with friends, even productively busy work days—time has decided to keep him trapped on the most uneventful day ever. At least the weather is nice, he supposes. It would only be more depressing if he was stuck in a gloomy day, nothing but grey skies and storm clouds to entertain him on the loops that he can’t bother to drag himself out of the house.

Euijoo shrugs. Maybe it is a test. Some kind of god or destiny calling him to the challenge, teaching him how to most thoroughly optimize his day. Euijoo will try another run through tomorrow. Today, he cannot seem to make himself get out of bed.

It has been days, weeks, months for all Euijoo knows. The hours he spends in bed are nothing in comparison. He naps, hoping to sleep through the rest of the day and maybe forever, until he finally wakes up on Monday. When that doesn’t work, he plays on his phone. He reads a few chapters of the book he’s been working on, and wonders if he’ll remember his progress if and when the world ever keeps turning. Euijoo’s stomach growls loudly hours into his bed-rotting, and he ignores it in favor of burying himself deeper under the covers.

What gets him up, finally, is a knock at the front door. It’s odd, because he swears he’s been at home at this hour before and no one has ever come to see him until now. The knocking continues restlessly, and then Euijoo is throwing his blankets off and walking in the direction of the endless pounding. It can only mean one thing if no one’s visited before, that if Euijoo doesn’t go out to find him, Yuma will still find a way to persist.

His suspicions are proven correct when he opens his front door to a shoulder level head of pink hair and a beautiful face wearing a suspicious grin. “Hi,” Yuma says shyly, a stark contrast to the insistence in which he knocked with. “I’m really sorry to bother you, sir.”

Euijoo resists the urge to tell him it didn’t sound like he was sorry. Instead, he barely holds back his glare. Euijoo just wanted to waste his day away undisturbed. He tries not to hold his own poor attitude against himself.

Instead of Yuma continuing to speak, there is a meow from just below his face. Euijoo looks down to the kitten cradled gently against Yuma’s chest, and then back up to his face. “Is this your cat?” Yuma asks, outstretching the cat toward Euijoo, as if he couldn’t see it well enough. “I found her wandering outside this building with a collar and tag.”

“No, it’s not mine,” Euijoo tells him, though Yuma wears an expression of genuine hope and compassion that makes Euijoo wish he could say yes, for no other reason than to help Yuma.

Yuma visibly deflates upon hearing it. “That’s a shame… I’ve stopped at nearly everyone’s door.”

Euijoo thinks this certainly has to be the first time since he’s met him that Yuma looks sad. He has looked irritated, or mad, or maybe even disappointed, but Euijoo can't take this sad look. It pulls at his heartstrings. Yuma looks as lost and pitiful as the kitten he holds, and Euijoo cracks. “Can I help you look?”

“Really?” Yuma asks, eyes widening. He clutches the kitten like a lifeline. “Wait a minute. Are you gonna turn out to be some kind of catnapper?”

Deadpan, Euijoo just blinks at him for a moment. “If I was, wouldn’t I have just told you it was my cat?”

Yuma’s shoulders slump in relief. “Good point,” he says. Then he side-eyes Euijoo again, apparently too skeptical to help himself. “You’re not a kidnapper either, right?”

Over the course of the countless times Euijoo has met Yuma, he still hasn’t found himself getting used to Yuma’s colorful sense of humor. Not that he can even tell Yuma is joking, because Euijoo has been very horrifyingly wrong about that in the past as well. “I wouldn’t tell you if I was, would I?”

“Another good point…” Yuma looks at the kitten as if to talk it over briefly with her before looking back at Euijoo. “Okay. You can join us.”

Euijoo excuses himself from the cat and cat whisperer for a moment, slipping his feet into the first pair of shoes he finds and throwing a zip-up on hoodie over his wrinkled t-shirt and making sure his hair isn’t sticking out too crazily. They continue the path down the hallway, stopping at everyone’s door, but to no luck. Everybody quickly turns them away, back into their thankless, self-assigned initiative.

“Maybe she’s wandered a long way,” Yuma sullenly says, holding the kitty up to his face and asking her, “Have you been out all night? Where did you wander off from?”

“Maybe the next building?” Euijoo suggests.

“Maybe,” Yuma agrees. They slow to a stop in front of Euijoo’s door where they began. “Thanks for tagging along. I'll let you go now if you’re ready to call it quits. Not sure how long this will take.”

Euijoo frowns. “Won’t that ruin your plan?”

“My plan?”

“It’s sort of genius,” Euijoo says, meeting Yuma at his level. They’re getting on quite well today. Yuma has quite the sense of humor despite the minor emergency he’s found himself in, and playing along is all Euijoo can do to keep going through his mindless looping. “Carrying around your own cat acting as if she’s lost. You’re the real kidnapper, aren’t you?”

The smile that grows on Yuma’s face is slow and more and more brilliant in every passing millisecond. “Busted,” he says, always down to play into a good bit. Except that one time, but Euijoo has written it off as a bad day. Everyone has bad days, he assumes—even Yuma.

“I’ve got nothing else going on today,” Euijoo tells him honestly. He’s done everything he could possibly do. He’s lived normally, booked trips he never planned to see through, gotten tattoos that vanish off his skin in the morning, blown his savings on designer clothes and high-end technology just to see if it made him feel a thing. Euijoo has never helped Yuma find a cat’s owner. It makes every nerve in his body light up, skin buzzing with something distinctively alive.

𖦹

Euijoo and Yuma are chatting over coffee for at least the tenth time since this has all began, clicking instantly and getting along perfectly, when Euijoo finds the courage to open up to Yuma in a way he has never been brave enough to before. He has nothing to lose.

“This might sound crazy, but I’m just going to say it,” Euijoo prefaces, bracing himself for a bad reaction. Yuma has been nothing short of unpredictable in all of their previous meetings, from setting to behavior, so Euijoo doesn't know how he’ll react to this. “I’m stuck in a time loop, and I think you have something to do with it.”

Yuma just looks at him for a moment, that deep, analytical look that Euijoo has gotten used to. He narrows his eyes, trying to mentally piece together Euijoo’s words. It doesn't make sense to a version of Yuma that has only met Euijoo once this morning. Euijoo has met Yuma countless times now. He’s lost track. He can recount too many things about Yuma to attribute it all to just one morning. This Yuma barely knows anything more than Euijoo’s name. “A time loop?” he asks, head tipped to the side consideringly.

“Yes,” Euijoo affirms, “a time loop.”

The corner of Yuma’s mouth quirks into a small, lopsided smile like he thinks it might be a joke, and Euijoo never fails to be amazed by him. “For how long?”

That freezes Euijoo in place. Nobody has ever asked him that question before. Who else would?

He had tried early on to keep a tally on his phone notes. Multiple days passed before Euijoo had to come to terms with the fact that he would not have any physical trace of his days repeating again and again. He then tried to keep a mental count of the loop, but he lost track once it hit double digits.

“I don’t know,” he answers quietly. Realistically, he knows he probably hasn’t lost any real days. They just haven’t happened yet. But surely this is doing irreparable damage to him, weeks worth of the same day with no end in sight, surely it must be shaving days off of his lifetime. Euijoo feels as though he’s cheating time by reliving the same day. Maybe he is unknowingly stretching out the end of his life, looped into eternity when he was meant to die. The feeling of it sits heavy on his shoulders, especially not knowing how many days he has been stuck. “A few weeks? Maybe a couple of months?”

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Yuma’s eyes widen at the reveal. “Is that the right thing to say? I’ve never met anyone stuck in a time loop.”

Euijoo can’t help but laugh out loud at the irony, and at Yuma’s innocence regarding the situation. “Technically you have. For a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.”

“I’ve met you that many times?” Yuma asks in disbelief, though he laughs too. Euijoo can’t imagine how absurd this all is for him. “I’m sorry. You’re not the type of person I’d usually forget about.”

No matter how unpredictable Yuma always is, Euijoo can almost always predict the bold flirting. It doesn’t mean he is used to it, but he thinks he’s gotten pretty decent at responding to it. “I can keep reintroducing myself until you remember.”

Yuma smiles, ducks his face to hide the blush on his cheeks, and Euijoo feels himself smiling. “Do you know why you’re stuck?” Yuma asks, leaning forward in his seat. He is fully invested now. Euijoo can even see the physical shift in his demeanor, the look on his face that says he isn’t playing around. A look Euijoo hasn’t gotten to see before in all his days of meeting Yuma over and over, learning and relearning all the little things about him.

“I have no idea,” Euijoo answers honestly. He has tried to scour the internet for possibilities. Decades old forums and blog posts and Reddit threads. Research novels. Fictional movies about time loops. Quantum physics that flies right over his head.

Euijoo can see the cogs turning in Yuma’s head, thorough thought spelled out all across his face, trying to form a response he can’t quite iron out. “What makes you think I have something to do with it?” He asks, quiet and determined. He doesn’t meet Euijoo’s eyes when he says it. Almost like he’s feeling guilty for something he can’t even understand. Almost defiant, like Euijoo is blaming him.

It is something Euijoo has asked himself. The thought creeps into the corners of his mind as he lies awake at night, wondering whether he’ll wake up the next day or remain in the loop. Why he meets Yuma everyday. Why his mother, his father, Kei, Fuma, and everyone else he crosses paths with is so statically the same, like Euijoo is living in a played back recording of the first loop with how he can predict their words before they even leave their mouths. But Yuma has never even been in the same place twice. He’s up early some days and on others, he sleeps in. He goes for coffee or brunch or to church. He walks sometimes, drives others, stays in until evening now and then. Aside from himself, Yuma is the only other variable. Why would Yuma have anything to do with it?

“I don’t know,” Euijoo answers honestly. “But you're there everyday. I don’t go a single day without seeing you.”

“Do we always meet here?”

“Never,” Euijoo says, and it sounds so absurd coming out of his own mouth, he doesn’t think he’d believe it if he heard it from anyone else. “This is the first time. You’re always in a different place.”

Yuma hums thoughtfully. “I have been told I’m hard to pin down…” He attempts a lighthearted smile.

“I want to pin you down,” Euijoo quickly replies. He feels his cheeks redden quickly though and he slaps a hand over his mouth. “I mean. I want to…”

“Figure me out?” Yuma supplies helpfully. He spares Euijoo from the verbal teasing, but the look on his face says otherwise, making Euijoo want to sink down into his seat. Yuma has always seemed to know Euijoo intrinsically, though it is Euijoo stuck in the loop. Yuma is usually the one to initiate their interactions, mostly shy and subtle in a way that resonates with Euijoo. It is always impactful, he is always memorable. Yuma leaves a lasting impression. Even if Euijoo didn’t meet him on loop for months on end, he doesn’t think he could ever forget Yuma. Maybe this is his way of holding on, his brain’s way of preserving the memory long after he was meant to. In reality, if Euijoo ever returns, maybe they will never meet again. Perhaps Euijoo replays images of Yuma with new personality traits he picks out and applies to him. The entire incident is nothing but Euijoo’s projection. This is who he is now. Stuck living in a fantasy world. Maybe it is time for Euijoo to accept it as his new normal.

Or maybe it’s fate. Euijoo tries not to entertain the idea, but is fate such a far-fetched subject to someone stuck in a time loop? Maybe it is fate, and Euijoo has found someone who understands him just as easily as his heart beats. There is some invisible string connecting them, keeping them close. Reintroducing them until they can fathom just how much this matters. Until Euijoo gets it. Until Yuma remembers.

“I’m gonna help you,” Yuma says sincerely. He’s resolutely made up his mind, determination set into his features.

“You don’t even know me,” replies Euijoo, though he isn’t in any kind of position to deny help. He’s seen many different sides of Yuma though, some more resistant than others. Today, Yuma is all in.

“But you know me, right?” Yuma asks. “How well do you know me, anyway?”

Euijoo takes a deep breath, swallowing down his hesitation. Will it scare Yuma to hear it all? He remembers a loop early on where Yuma asked if he was a stalker. The loop where Euijoo was taken into the police station for following Yuma. But somehow, today, Yuma just seems to get it. “You have an older sister who’s my age. Your birthday is in February. You wore braces for a year. You moved to this city during university and you want to stay. You work a retail job right now, but you want to quit. You say you’re shy, but you always warm up to me first.”

“Seems like you’ve figured me out pretty well,” Yuma hums consideringly. “I feel bad that I know nothing about you. I want to remember you, Euijoo. I really want to.”

“How can you help me?” Euijoo quietly asks, scared of even the idea of it. He has gotten so used to his routine, even if it makes him sad or hopeless sometimes. The comfort he takes in always knowing what comes next is the only thing keeping him sane. Euijoo does not know how to manage the disappointment of getting his hopes up and then having them crushed.

“I think I have an idea. Can we meet up later?” Yuma asks, a sense of urgency suddenly present. “I have something I need to do really quickly, can you come to my place after?”

His tone leaves little room for Euijoo to disagree. Yuma gives him his address and tells him to come over at six before he’s running out the door. Euijoo sits alone in the cafe for a moment, shock freezing him still. He tries to digest everything that just happened. He told Yuma, and it went well. Yuma wants to help him. Yuma invited him to his house.

Euijoo calls his mother and, not for the first time, tells her he won’t make it to dinner tonight. He doesn’t give himself the opportunity to carry the guilt around. He’s made it to dinner countless times, and canceled for far worse reasons.

Euijoo waits it out at his apartment. Time passes slowly, tauntingly. Teasing, like it knows in the end it’s only prolonging another loop. Euijoo’s nights feel like they stretch out hours longer than they used to. Time was so fleeting before, when it actually passed, and now every hour that passes is only a means to live it all over again.

His heart races embarrassingly when Yuma texts him his address, and he quickly responds that he’s on his way.

Yuma looks sort of endearingly wild when he arrives. Filled to the brim with passion and interest, long hair pushed back with a headband. Laptop in hand with a stack of paper on the keyboard.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says in lieu of greeting. “I researched time loops and tried to see why I might have something to do with it.”

He leads Euijoo to his dining table and sets his laptop down, spreading the pages out. They are printed out articles and blog posts, with certain words highlighted or circled. “Any luck?” Euijoo asks.

“Not much,” Yuma replies dejectedly. Euijoo knows the feeling. “I guess the trouble with time loops is you never hear from people directly in them. The posts just disappear because that iteration of the day has never happened in linear time.”

“Right,” Euijoo says. He skims over some of the pages. He’s already read most of them, but his heart warms at the thought of Yuma doing all this just for him. For a stranger.

“No one’s ever had your problem either,” Yuma tells him. “Your me problem. But I got to thinking, and there were a few moments this morning where I got this crazy déjà vu. Like we’ve met before, like I know you. That’s why I believed you right away. But when you told me about the time loop, I didn’t have any déjà vu.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever told you,” Euijoo truthfully responds, quiet and vulnerable.

Yuma shuts his laptop and scans the papers across the table before stacking them all up and setting them aside. He looks at Euijoo, long and hard, eyebrows deeply furrowing, like he’s trying to recall something. “Maybe I just need to remember you,” he says wistfully. “I really want to remember.”

“You think it’ll help?” Euijoo asks, raising his eyebrows, letting hope color his voice.

“It’s worth a try.” Yuma shrugs. He thinks for a moment before asking, “Have you ever been here before?”

“No,” Euijoo answers. Somehow, in all the ways their paths have crossed, all the places Yuma has invited him to, he has never made it to Yuma's apartment before. It’s small, just a tiny kitchen and a couch and two doors which Euijoo assumes lead to the bathroom and Yuma’s bedroom. “You’ve been to my place, though.”

Other than the lost kitten, Yuma has been to Euijoo’s apartment one other time to borrow a change of clothes that ended up back in Euijoo’s closet when he woke up. “Do we always meet in the morning?”

“Not always. We’ve met any time of day.”

The interrogation continues thoroughly as Yuma asks every question he can come up with. Euijoo has listed all their meeting places, the grocery store, the park, the sidewalk, every cafe downtown, church, outside Euijoo’s apartment, Yuma’s workplace, bus stops, the library, and countless restaurants. He tells Yuma about the run in with the police, and Yuma’s smile drops.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” he says.

“I think you were having a bad day,” Euijoo recounts. “I didn’t hold it against you.”

They’ve moved to the couch now, settling in as Yuma pieces more together. Little bits that triggered the déjà vu this morning, leading questions to work out what previous versions of himself had experienced. He’d grabbed them each a few beers when they left the table, and Euijoo has been politely sipping one as Yuma finishes one. The sun is setting, blanketing the apartment in a soft dimness. There’s a gentle light from the lamp by the couch that lights Yuma warmly. His cheeks are soft and pink, his hair falls across his forehead. He looks at Euijoo like he’s known him forever. It has only been a day. Euijoo has known him for an eternity.

“Have we ever kissed?” Yuma quietly asks.

“No,” Euijoo replies. Simple, as if he hasn’t thought about it. It’s been hard not to, with the beauty of Yuma’s features, the curve of his lips, the appeal of all his endless flirting.

“Are you sure?” Yuma asks again. He smiles, and Euijoo knows he’s bullshitting from a mile away, but he makes it feel so convincing. “I really feel like we have. I remember it.”

“Do you?” Euijoo laughs. He wants this Yuma. He wants to pick back up right here every time, skip the formalities, the awkwardness, the meetcutes. He wants Yuma to come onto him, to try and jog his memory again, to get more personal, more intimate while he remembers exactly who they are to each other. Who they should be.

“Maybe we should try,” he suggests, not bothering to tamp down his sneaky little smile. “See if it rings any bells.”

It may sting tomorrow. It won’t hurt Yuma, but the memory will burn into the edges of Euijoo’s mind when Yuma inevitably forgets who he is. When he looks at him like he’s a stranger again. Euijoo has played it safe for so many loops now. A little sting won’t kill him, but he’s certain not kissing Yuma will.

They both lean in, falling toward each other in the middle of the couch, and their lips meet. Yuma’s are soft and warm, slotted against his own. It’s gentle, and Euijoo feels Yuma smile before he leans in again and deepens the kiss. Euijoo twists his fingers in the back of Yuma’s hair and Yuma grabs onto Euijoo’s waist. Euijoo feels sharp teeth dig into his lip. Yuma’s mouth is warm and so inviting. Something cosmically realigns in Euijoo’s psyche, something he can feel in his soul, something that leaves chills up and down his arms. He hopes this is it. To be absolutely sure, he leans back in for more.

“We’ve met everyday, huh?” Yuma asks, lopsided smile, heavy breath. “And we’ve never done that before?”

“Never,” Euijoo confirms. And then something bold and uncaring, honest and vulnerable takes over him and he doesn’t care if it feels like Yuma is staring straight through his soul. He doesn’t care if Yuma feels the same or not. “I don’t know what I would have done without you up until now.”

There’s an unreadable spark behind Yuma's eyes as his expression shifts to something more serious. “I’ll remember you,” he says, emboldened and fiercely determined. “I swear I will.”

𖦹

Euijoo wakes up like a cold shock and takes in his surroundings. The sun doesn’t shine in through his curtains. He doesn’t feel well-rested, which he usually does no matter what time he goes to sleep. The last Saturday he’d lived through, Euijoo had slept early, and that's the sleep he wakes up from each and every loop. But today, the sky is grey and Euijoo is exhausted. Today, he feels different.

The events of last night flash through his mind like a movie montage. The first meeting with Yuma and their instant connection, Yuma’s oddly determined excitement in figuring out how to break the loop, hanging out at Yuma’s apartment until after midnight hoping that would break it. Yuma’s lips pressed against his. Yuma’s mouth, his hands, his everything.

He reaches under his pillow for his phone, trying and failing to tamp down the hope rising in his chest. Monday, he prays. Please let it be Monday.

Never in his life has Euijoo prayed for Monday morning to arrive faster. He even truly liked school growing up, but he still relished in his free time, free from the stress and the pressure and the expectations Monday brought. Now, it’s all Euijoo wants. He checks the date on the top of his phone screen.

Euijoo’s prayer is not answered. His phone reads Sunday, May 17th. It is, for all Euijoo knows, the twentieth or fiftieth or hundredth time he’s seen this date. But he feels different.

He pads over to pull open his curtains—the sun isn’t out yet. Euijoo is up earlier than usual. He watches as the sun rises, and then as it colors his room in the very same way it has every prior iteration.

The main difference, Euijoo thinks, is that he needs to see Yuma. The urgency of it crawls underneath his skin. This time, he moves with a purpose. Find Yuma.

The trouble is that Euijoo has never found Yuma on purpose. Yuma used to be everywhere, but now that he’s trying to find him, Yuma seems to be nowhere at all. Euijoo retraces their steps, revisiting as many meeting spots as he can. They’ve spanned so far across the city to find each other that it’s hard to do it all in just one day.

Yuma isn’t at the grocery store, or the cafe, or the church. He isn’t in any of the restaurants they’ve been in together. He doesn’t cross Euijoo’s path on the street. The loops have begun to all blend together and Euijoo can’t remember where he’s met Yuma and at what times. If Yuma is even real at all, if they’ve ever even met. If  it was all just one long, bad dream with a glittering silver lining.

As the sun sets and a panic/determination hybrid sets in, Euijoo finds himself at Yuma’s workplace asking if he’s there. “He was scheduled today,” a coworker tells him, “but he called out.”

The text thread where Yuma sent Euijoo his address no longer exists, so Euijoo tries to find the place from memory alone. When he gets to the door he swears is Yuma’s, Euijoo knocks and rehearses his reason for stopping by. His mental planning is all for nothing when he stands outside in silence, no answer to the door and no noise inside indicating that Yuma is even there at all.

It’s probably fine, right? Yuma has never done the same iteration twice. Maybe he’s out of town today. It has to be fine, because Euijoo cannot imagine a world—an infinite loop—without Yuma. He needs to meet him again. He needs to know him outside of the loop, if and when it’s all over. Yuma has to be there.

Euijoo ends up at his parents’ house. He apologizes for missing dinner and they fret over his lateness. Eunji is still there, helping with their puzzle, lost on piecing together the leaves of a tree. Euijoo leans over her shoulder and sorts it out quickly. He’s seen it enough times that it’s seared into his memory forever—he could finish this puzzle in his sleep.

“How are you?” Eunji asks him.

“I’m good,” he replies, envisioning her reply already but too numb to answer otherwise.

“Is it too much to ask for my baby brother to be great for once? You’re always just good.”

Eunji will never change. His parents remain the same. They don’t age, and they love him every single day, no matter what he’s done the day before. They’ll be here. Euijoo doesn’t know whether to find comfort in the fact or not.

“Can I spend the night here?” Euijoo asks his parents. Their eyebrows furrow immediately, concerned looks matched across their faces.

“What about work tomorrow, dear?” His mother wonders. “Isn’t the commute too long from here?”

“I quit work,” Euijoo responds, just to see how they will take it. Because he can, because it doesn’t matter if he lies or tells the truth. It doesn’t change a thing.

His father goes silent, wearing a look of deep thought. His mother looks sad. “Oh,” she says. And then she’s smiling, just slightly, warmth in her eyes as she goes on, “Of course you can stay.”

They will both love him tomorrow when they call him at his apartment. If he lies, if he quits his job, if he doesn’t show up at all. They will love him as surely as the day will begin again.

𖦹

Soft sunlight streaming in through the window and a sufficiently rested body and mind wake Euijoo gently. It’s Sunday morning; he slowly eases himself awake, no alarm needed on his day off. He is tucked into a cocoon of his own warmth, wrapped up in his duvet. He sheds it off, padding over to the window to pull open the curtains and let more light in. He checks the time on his phone—9:35 AM. The glory of sleeping in.

Euijoo eases himself into the day. Time seems to move slower, each minute passing in a gentle crawl, not fleeting like it so often is. A call from his mother rouses him out of bed.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. Just calling to see if you’ll make it to dinner tonight.”

The longstanding tradition of Sunday night dinner. Euijoo can’t imagine missing it for anything, and he tells his mom as much. “Of course. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

“How’s the office?” His mom asks. “Is work treating you well?”

Euijoo pulls open his window curtains and stares out into the wide expanse of the blue sky, imagining a life beyond getting up at 5:30 five days a week and two meager days of rest and the neverending cycle of adult life. “It’s great,” he says despite himself.

“Don’t forget to take care of yourself,” she reminds him. “And know that we’re very proud of you. You’ve always been one of the greatest joys of my life.”

It brings a wide smile to Euijoo’s face, but he knows if he doesn’t stop her now, she’ll wax on for hours. “I’ll talk to you more later on, okay? I love you, Mom.”

Euijoo scrounges up a breakfast of leftover food from his fridge. He knows he’ll have to grocery shop today to make the rest of his week go smoother. He tries to make a list but his words fail him. Nothing comes to mind, though he can feel them just on the edge of his brain, the tip of his tongue. Euijoo knows he is forgetting something. He knows that something important is missing.

When he brushes his teeth and fixes his hair and puts on his clothes, he feels out of place. He can hardly remember what he’s done right after he’s done it. His clothes fit oddly, as if they don’t belong to him, or he’s worn them out loose. Euijoo shrugs it off.

He debates internally for a moment whether to walk to the further grocery store and bask in the nice weather, but he feels like he must get this over with as soon as possible and return home. Something feels off, something feels missing. He heads toward the store and there, right past the crosswalk, is a head of light pink hair and something clicks within Euijoo, certainty settles through him as something greater than himself tells him this is it. That’s what he’s missing. Who he is missing. He quickens his pace to catch up, wondering what he’s even supposed to say or do when he gets there, when the pink haired head turns toward him. Euijoo’s world, frozen in the crosswalk, halts for a moment.

And then the world stops completely. Euijoo’s vision goes black—the pink haired man fades away behind his eyes. He knows he’s on the ground. He knows everything hurts. He knows the sun is beaming down on him.

Just as soon as Euijoo had found the missing piece, was it taken away from him? He can’t move his arms. He can barely feel his legs. Is he even alive anymore? It might just be the end. All he sees is darkness—dark blues and purples swimming behind his eyes.

“Oh god,” he hardly picks out through muffled hearing. “Someone help! We need help!”

Euijoo finds it in himself to open his eyes. Above him, like an angel wearing the sunlight around his hair like a halo, is the pink haired man.

“Are you okay?” He asks, eyebrows furrowed in concern. His hands hover just over Euijoo’s body, too scared to touch him. “Stay with me, okay?”

It’s Yuma. It all comes back to Euijoo at once. The countless repeats of this very day, all of them spent with Yuma. All the first times they met. All the memories flood back in, and Euijoo hardly feels his own face form a smile but he can’t help it. Yuma is staring down at him, asking Euijoo to stay with him. Watching him closely. Meeting him again. He feels himself nod in reply, and then Yuma disappears into darkness once more.

Euijoo doesn’t come to again until he wakes up in a sterile, LED lit room. The air feels dry and cool, exactly controlled by the running AC. The bed he lies in is stiff, the blankets are papery. The room smells of antiseptic spray and hand sanitizer.

There is a woman at his bedside, touching Euijoo’s arm and then moving something by the bed. An IV drip. It’s a nurse, setting up his IV drip. He’s laying in a hospital bed, on a thin hospital blanket, in an itchy hospital gown.

“You’re awake,” says a soft voice as sweet as honey.

Euijoo turns his head stiffly to the source of the sound. He gasps when he sees the familiar pink hair slumped into the seat against the wall. “You’re here.”

“I thought you two didn’t know each other,” the nurse comments, looking between the two of them.

Yuma snorts. “We don't.”

Euijoo doesn’t try to explain to him that they do. It doesn’t even make sense to himself, and his head is pounding, and he’s confused about everything. The only clarity he finds is in Yuma by his side. “What happened to me?” He asks.

“You were in an accident,” the nurse explains. She pulls the blanket back over Euijoo’s arms once he finds them too heavy to move. “A few fractured ribs, a broken femur. Some swelling in your ankle, possibly a sprain. Bruising and minor lacerations. Potential head trauma.”

The more she lists the more it makes Euijoo’s head spin. “An accident?”

“You were hit by a car,” Yuma says, "I saw the whole thing. Oh my god, it was terrible. It came out of nowhere.”

It starts coming back to Euijoo now. Walking to the store, stopping in his tracks upon seeing Yuma. The red sedan speeding through the intersection. The same one he had seen, loop after loop. The same one he had mentally scolded. How had he forgotten? He can hardly believe he wasn’t more careful, but then he remembers the way the world slowed down when he saw Yuma, the way everything started making sense again.

“Nothing is fatal,” Euijoo’s nurse assures him. “We’ve cleaned and stitched the worst of the lacs, and the doctor will get you fit for your casts later. How’s your pain, Euijoo?”

Euijoo closes his eyes again and tries to find an answer. His body mostly feels impossibly heavy, weighed down on the bed like there’s a boulder pressing him into it. His leg aches with a dull, terrible throb. It hurts to breathe in too deeply. His head is pounding.

“What would you rate it from one to ten?” She asks again. “One is a paper cut, ten is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced.”

“Seven?” Euijoo guesses like it’s a test he can pass or fail. The nurse writes something down on the computer. “I’m sorry, but did you tell my mom? She’s going to be so worried if I miss dinner tonight.”

“Don’t worry. She’s on her way now.”

It sends a small feeling of panic through Euijoo. Just the thought of worrying his mother. Yuma leans forward in his seat, just slightly more toward Euijoo’s bed.

The nurse smiles and sets a cord with a button on the end beside Euijoo’s hand. “I’ll be back later. Push this button if the pain gets worse, okay?” She says. Then, with a smile directed to Yuma, she adds, “Take care of him, alright Yuma-kun?”

Yuma smiles a crooked little grin and salutes her as she walks past and out the door. Then it is silent, except for the mechanical hum buzzing through the room. Yuma watches Euijoo intently from his chair, true to his word to the nurse. He remains vigilant in his duty, keeping a close eye out in case any reason to call the nurse should appear. Euijoo just watches him back.

He is still the same Yuma that Euijoo had met all those times. He has the same pink hair, the same sharp teeth, the same intense, stunning eyes that sort of stop Euijoo right in his tracks. He is still kind, charming, and funny even in the face of an emergency. Euijoo thinks he doesn’t really like being the cause of the last part. Doesn’t care for being watched over or coddled. He knows that will only get worse once his mom arrives. She used to take great pride in reminding him that he’d always be her little baby. A sick feeling sinks in when he thinks about it. She was probably so scared getting a call from the hospital. He’s already thinking of explanations to minimize the situation.

“Did you see me hit my head?” Euijoo asks, turning toward Yuma.

Yuma pouts his lips when he thinks. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

And then Euijoo is thinking about seeing a stranger get hit by a speeding car and falling to the ground and wondering if he’d follow someone he hasn’t even met all the way to the hospital just to be sure they’ll be okay. “What are you doing here?”

“They wanted to complete a physical exam on me too, just in case. And I’m waiting until the police arrive to give them my statement,” Yuma grimly explains. Euijoo didn’t know it was severe enough for the police to get involved. It is an odd feeling, piecing together that he might have been the victim of a hit and run that Yuma was the sole witness of. It feels like it is happening in front of Euijoo rather than directly to him. Outside of his own body. Played in a movie. “I can leave if you want.”

“No,” Euijoo replies quickly. “Please don’t go.”

Just as he’d comforted Euijoo during all those loops, Yuma is Euijoo’s only sense of familiarity here. Euijoo never had a near death experience before. All those loops, and he never even thought about doing it himself. It happened so fast. One Yuma free day and a blurry minded morning and he was taken out. Don’t leave me again.

“What’s up with you?” Yuma asks. He drags his chair across the linoleum floor and sits right at the side of Euijoo’s bed, eyes narrowed, closely examining him. “Maybe you did hit your head…”

“You really don’t know me at all?” It feels different. Yuma is the same Yuma that he’s always been, but it’s Euijoo that feels different this time. How could he be the same? He’s turned himself inside and out. There are parts of Euijoo that he’ll never get back. Days he’ll never live through. First meetings with Yuma that are confined into some fantasy world that Euijoo will have to convince even himself existed at all one day. As Euijoo lays in the stiff hospital bed, breathing in the stale air, wincing at the ache in his ribs, he feels he has lost an entire lifetime. In an instant, everything changed. His body is no longer the same. His soul is worn down. There is an insurmountable chill in his bones, one the thin sheet can’t come close to penetrating. But then there is Yuma, warmth and light and Euijoo is feeling just reckless enough to assume that Yuma is hope as well.

“Does it make me sound totally crazy if I tell you I felt like I was supposed to be there at that moment?” Yuma says. He levels Euijoo with an honest gaze. He’s not denying him, he’s not giving in, or grasping at straws to try and relate. Yuma meets Euijoo exactly where he is. Banged up and delirious and full of brimming hope. “I just had this feeling. Fate, or something. Right place at the right time. I don’t know.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

Yuma shrugs. “It doesn’t feel like the first time we’ve met,” he admits, voice quieter like the admission spoken too loud would short circuit the electricity of the entire building. “That means something, right?”

To anyone else they might look crazy. Two perfect strangers. It is, technically, sequentially speaking, the first time they’ve met. Nothing binds them together but an unfortunate accident. From the first time Euijoo saw Yuma, he’d given him a funny feeling underneath his skin. Buzzing, crawling, itching to break free. Craving something Euijoo couldn’t give himself. Wanting to know Yuma, to be close to Yuma. It is, Euijoo thinks, maybe why the ache in his chest subsides when Yuma places his hand on the bed next to Euijoo’s. The throbbing of his leg slows, the pounding of his head eases.

“It was awful to see you like that, Euijoo,” Yuma whispers. His fingers twitch against the bedsheet. Euijoo’s hand drifts toward Yuma’s like they are being stitched together, finger by finger. Yuma watches silently for a moment as Euijoo laces their hands together, pressing his fingertips into the back of Euijoo’s hand with a gentle firmness.“I don’t think I’d be able to move on if I didn’t know you were okay.”

“Can you move on now?” Euijoo wonders out loud. He is going to be okay. Yuma has heard confirmation from the hospital staff themselves.

“What?” Yuma asks, a breathy laugh wrapped softly around it. He looks at Euijoo, eyes shining, smile slowly growing. It is the very same thing that pulled him to stop and talk to Euijoo every time. No matter if Euijoo accidentally tripped him, or ran into him on the sidewalk, or simply existed in the same place as him. Maybe something in Yuma was waiting for Euijoo too.

Euijoo cannot try to fight his own smile. “I'm okay. Can you move on even knowing that?”

“I can’t,” Yuma tells him, hushed, private, excited. “I don’t know why, but I can’t.”

Some deep place inside of Euijoo’s mind he wonders if any of this will matter when he wakes up in the morning. His bones won’t be broken and his body will be healthy, but this moment will disappear into the space time continuum, trapped underneath every following iteration. Forgotten entirely by Yuma, and turned around in Euijoo’s palm like jade walnuts, polished until the memory is smoothed out by time.

“Special visitor.” The nurse’s head pops back into the room. Euijoo looks toward the door to see his mother worriedly trailing in behind her. She takes no notice of Yuma at first, rushing to Euijoo’s side the moment she sees his miserable state.

“My Euijoo,” she says. Yuma has let go of Euijoo’s hand now, and his mother scoops it up in both of hers. “I was so worried when I got the call. Are you really okay? Does it hurt?”

Euijoo puts up with his mother’s fussing easily. All she’s ever done is love him. “I’m okay, Mom. Thanks for coming.”

“You don’t need to be so stoic all the time,” she says, swatting lightly at his arm and clicking her tongue. “Just like your father. Of course I’d come! I’m so relieved you’re alright.” She turns to Yuma with a hand outstretched. “Thank you for helping my son.”

“Mrs. Byun?” Yuma says, facing Euijoo’s mother head on for the first time, letting her shake his hand anyway. Despite apparently knowing each other.

“Yuma?” She parrots. Then a wide smile spreads out across her face and Yuma stands up as she pulls him into a hug.

Euijoo watches their reunion from his motionless place in bed, bewildered as he looks between their two faces. “Do you two… know each other?” Euijoo questions, as if that much isn’t obvious.

“Yuma volunteers at the library on Thursdays when I meet with my book club,” his mother explains.

All this time. The meetcutes and the unknowns and the itching to know Yuma on a deeper level, a level that exceeds just one day. Longing for an interplanetary closeness, a connection beyond just glances and small talk. Uncontainable by time or space or glitches or dreams. All this time, and Yuma has met Euijoo’s mother.

“This is your son?” Yuma asks, looking at Euijoo. His eyes are just slightly widened in surprise. His ears are pink. “Who you’ve been telling me about?”

Euijoo’s mom seems unable to contain her excitement in telling Yuma that yes, Euijoo is her precious son who she boasts about all the time. “I’ve been trying to set you two up for ages!”

The words knock the wind straight out of Euijoo’s lungs. She had mentioned it in passing once, a few months prior to the loop beginning. Some nice young man she knows from book club. Euijoo had been way too busy then to even consider a possible interest in getting to know someone. It is impossible not to wonder what might have happened had they met then. If they’d have gotten along and kept seeing each other. If Euijoo would have gotten trapped in a time loop at all, or what it would look like if the first loop wasn’t also their first meeting. Euijoo feels the final puzzle piece sliding into place and for once he sees the full picture. Fate has nothing on a mother’s will, apparently.

“I’ve been telling Yuma all about you. He’s always busy working and then the ladies in the club tell me not to chat so much,” she says it like it’s a joke. Like Euijoo has been stuck in an infinite set up and this is the universe’s punchline. She looks at Yuma like it’s funny—maybe it is. “All that effort to get you to meet, then Euijoo gets hit by a car and does all the work for me.”

Yuma stares at Euijoo like he knows he’s in the puzzle too. His ears are still burning hot, blush rising on his cheeks, but his attention doesn’t waver. “He’s way more handsome than you described,” he tells Euijoo’s mother, his eyes not leaving Euijoo’s face once.

“I told you to see it for yourself!”

Their voices hold a certain affection toward each other. Yuma obviously has the ability to charm anyone he passes by, and Euijoo’s mother is a nurturer through and through. No wonder she’d seen a handsome, charming young man at the library and taken him in. The familiarity of his company brightens the room so much that Euijoo forgets he’s in the hospital at all until the nurse, who’d left to let them deal with all their revelation privately, comes back in after a quiet knock.

“The doctor will take you to surgery for your leg later this afternoon, then we’ll hold you for a few nights,” she tells Euijoo. Her eyes dart between all three of them acutely. “You both are more than welcome to stay with him until then. The police are here for your statements.”

Retelling the accident goes by quickly for Euijoo, who didn’t see any of it and hardly remembers the collision at all. Then he remembers all the times he’s seen that car speeding through the intersection before, and recalls the make and model, feeling vindicated in a way when Yuma confirms it. His retelling is a bit more gruesome. Euijoo’s mother winces at his words. Euijoo had walked with a single-minded type of focus, and though he didn’t look for cars, the sedan had made no attempt to stop or at least avoid hitting him head-on. Yuma had heard a sickening crunch, and then had seen Euijoo’s body fall lifelessly onto the road, and then had watched helplessly as the car drove off and left Yuma yelling for help. He squeezes his eyes shut and lists anything he remembers of the license plate number. Euijoo wonders how it affected Yuma. His face is solemn when he tells the police. He grimaces when he recounts what it had looked like when Euijoo’s body hit the ground. Euijoo hopes it won’t keep him up at night, that he won’t replay it in his mind again and again. That part, he can forget. Please keep the rest of it. Please remember me. Please forget what happened to me.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur once Yuma leaves after his statement. Euijoo gets his leg aligned and a metal rod placed to secure it. The nurse pushes something stronger through his IV then, and Euijoo gets a little drowsy. His eyes feel heavier. He feels the permanent smile etched onto his face. His mother tells him she’ll get him an ice cream from the cafeteria. Yuma appears again over the bed in what feels like his assigned post, watching over Euijoo.

“I thought you left,” Euijoo says. His throat is sore just from trying to talk. His body has crashed head first into exhaustion.

“I did,” Yuma replies. “I left and came back. Wanted to make they did a good job on your leg or else I’d have to step in.”

“You can do leg surgery?”

“Can I see your phone?” Yuma asks. Euijoo remembers that one. Bold, confident, assured. Yuma has rarely tended to beat around the bush. Euijoo can recount almost any loop better than he can recount the last few hours. He passes his phone toward Yuma’s open hand. “This is my number. I’ll text you tomorrow.”

Euijoo likes that Yuma remains the same. A little car accident doesn’t change what he wants. Yuma will go and get it. “Are you leaving again?”

Yuma gives Euijoo’s phone back and lays his hand over Euijoo’s wrist. His thumb rubs absentmindedly across Euijoo’s skin as he examines his face again. Euijoo wonders what he’s looking for. “You just need to rest. There’s nothing else to do than rest now.”

Euijoo wants to ask again. Make sure Yuma will text him. Make sure he’ll come back. But the look on Yuma’s face tells Euijoo that he doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. Euijoo nods, resigned to his fate of a night spent in the hospital bed. His father brought an extra blanket and pillows from home at least. Euijoo’s eyes slowly flutter shut. He tries to force them to stay open, to see Yuma in this way for as long as he can in case the worst happens tomorrow and they start from ground zero, but he feels the exhaustion sink into every bone in his body, weighing him down, laying him limp on the bed.

“Goodnight, Euijoo,” Yuma whispers. The lights are out in the room now. The sun is setting outside. Yuma speaks silently to not disturb the peace that is shrouding Euijoo at last despite his worries and reservations. Yuma leans down over Euijoo and presses his lips to the top of his head. “See you soon.”

𖦹

Dawn’s dim light streaming in and a stiff, aching body wake Euijoo uncomfortably. He tries to shift to a more agreeable position and groans at the intense pain in his leg.

It slowly registers in his foggy brain that this is not his bed. This is not the time he wakes up. He pats around for his phone. Monday, May 18th, 5:51 AM. He reads it five times to be sure, his eyes stuck on Monday. Finally, it is Monday.

Euijoo wakes up enough to remember the matter of the accident. He reminds himself of his aching body and the hospital room he woke up in. These are uncharted waters, he tells himself. He has stayed up past midnight before only to fall asleep and have his phone set back, once again, to Sunday. Is REM sleep required to reset the loop? And where was Euijoo in the cycle?

The fog overtakes Euijoo’s mind shortly, tucking him in again and pulling back down into a dreamless sleep.

𖦹

Euijoo wakes again to his mother’s voice. Not over the phone, but in person, sitting beside him and speaking hushedly to his father.

“Mom?” He says, voice groggy and quiet, barely breaking over the hum of the AC. “Dad?”

“Hi, dear. How did you sleep?” Her voice is so gentle it makes Euijoo feel like a child again. Safe and cared for.

“Better, I think, with the pillows.”

The mattress is still thin and feels like nothing more than thick cardboard, but his parents had brought enough from home to supplement it. Euijoo settles into them again, sighing. He takes notice of the acute pain in his ribs and tries not to move much after.

“How do you feel?” His father asks. Euijoo hasn’t seen his father worried in a long time.

“I’m okay, think,” he replies truthfully. His body hurts. His leg aches and his ribs burn and this is not the type of pain he can dream about. This is real. He is really in the hospital and his parents are right here with him and—he finds his phone in the blankets again—it is still Monday. He tries not to smile too wide in fear of his parents thinking he must be crazy, and he tries not to breathe too quickly in fear of the tightness in his ribcage. “I’m good.”

His parents talk about getting him breakfast and asking the nurse for medicine but it all fades out when Euijoo’s phone vibrates in his hand. He reads the preview immediately, eyes catching on the name. Good morning, Yuma says. Just making sure you lived through the night.

Euijoo can't help his smile then. His parents’ conversation trails off after something about soup from the cafeteria and his mom catches on quickly. “Euijoo,” she says slowly, too observant for Euijoo to even try and hide it.

If he could, Euijoo would probably be jumping up and down with joy right now. Yuma remembers him. It is their second day, finally, officially, of knowing one another. Yuma remembers him and for once they have a foundation to build off of. Euijoo will not need to introduce himself for the hundredth time, and he will not need to ease into Yuma the way one eases into petting a cat they’ve just met. No, Yuma will not need to be approached gently now, hand out in front of him to assess Euijoo. He will come to him as familiar as they’d ended the day yesterday.

Yuma stops by after his shift and Euijoo’s parents clear out at the urging of his mom. Yuma sits with the chair pulled up to the edge of the bed again. He plays idly with Euijoo’s fingers, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles.

“You’re looking much better today,” he says, scanning Euijoo’s face. “Very handsome. Feeling better?”

“Not really,” Euijoo replies, smiling despite his answer. Truthfully, his body aches nearly more than the day before with both the shock and pain medication wearing off. He’s sitting up now, the bed raised enough to leave him eye level with Yuma.

“Here–” Yuma leans forward suddenly to grab one of the free pillows, covered in a pillow case that smells like his childhood, and gently places it on Euijoo’s stomach. “I read if you hold a pillow to your ribs it helps you breathe deeper.”

Euijoo presses it against his abdomen, taking a deep breath. He smells the rigid sterility of the hospital room, his parents’ laundry detergent, and the fresh, sweet musk of Yuma's perfume.

“How does that feel?”

“A lot better,” Euijoo replies, feeling like he can breathe for the first time since the start of his stay at the hospital.

Euijoo knows that he cannot force Yuma to stay. He sees it in everything Yuma has done, every infinite version of him that Euijoo has met. Yuma does not act out of anything but his own volition. Yuma cannot be contained by one person's ideals, certainly not by Euijoo’s. Sitting up in his hospital bed and having Yuma dote on him, Euijoo still couldn’t ask him to. Not to stay, or to come back tomorrow, or to be Euijoo’s favorite version of him. Each successive loop could be expanded into their own universes. Euijoo knows that a shared future was possible in many of them, some burning slower than others. Some would leave them not quite strangers but rather at an awkward acquaintance level with their connection buried deep under bad first impressions. One would leave them as strangers, never having met before. Maybe they’d still stumble across each other on a less meaningful day in too much of a rush to even acknowledge each other. Would he keep his head down and not notice him? Would Euijoo be too busy to pick Yuma out at all? Euijoo could not force it if he tried.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Euijoo tells him quietly. The busy sounds of the hospital are muffled by the closed door and Yuma feels so much more than Euijoo in the thick silence of the room. For the first time, Euijoo feels unsure. The possibilities of tomorrow overwhelm him in a way they haven’t for what feels like an eternity.

“I know that,” Yuma replies back. He looks at Euijoo like he’s seeing straight through him, deep into his soul, watching all of their iterations together over again like memories recorded on camera, and Euijoo thinks he gets it now. None of it—not the pity, or the infatuation, or his mother’s matchmaking, or his own insecurity—is enough to hold Yuma back or push him forward. Yuma wants to. He has wanted to, again and again. Yuma comes back to him every time as if it has been woven into the very fabric of reality. “I like you,” he suddenly confesses, bold and brazen and decisive. “Isn’t that a shame? We won’t be able to go out properly for a while.”

A single day, Euijoo is convinced, is certainly too soon to tell. When Euijoo had told Yuma about the time loop, he had admitted to strong déjà vu in some instances. It is possible he still remembers now. Maybe he remembers the couch at his apartment, the low light, their closeness. Maybe he wants to kiss Euijoo for the first time all over again. Over the course of every loop, Euijoo’s imagination has been enriched by believing in the unbelievable.  

Someday, Euijoo will tell him again. Down the line if things work out, and Euijoo prays they will. He will fill Yuma in on all their first meetings. He’ll try to explain that feeling that draws them close, wrapped up together in a warm assuredness. Someday, Euijoo will tell his sister that he’s great. Maybe over dinner with their parents, maybe when Yuma joins them. They’ll sit down at his mother’s weekly puzzle and she will ask Euijoo how he’s doing and he will tell her that he’s great. Sometime after he finishes his own puzzle, frames it, and hangs it up on the wall to admire.

“We can start today,” Euijoo says definitively. The less Yuma changes, the more Euijoo wants to. He’ll be laid up in the hospital for at least another night, and then at home resting for a while until he’s ready to go back to work, and even longer before he is completely recovered. But he wants Yuma to know he isn’t leaving either. “Be patient, okay? Let’s start slow today.”

Yuma grins that same sharp kitten smile that Euijoo has memorized, burned into the folds of his brain. “What should we do for our first date?” He asks, tilting his head in thought, tapping his fingers along Euijoo’s wrist. “The convenience store outside has the best instant ramen. Are you hungry? I can sneak you in a cup.”

Euijoo smiles wide at the suggestion. The nurse might disapprove, but it sounds too tempting to pass on. He already knows what kind Yuma is going to pick. He doesn’t need to ask. Being with Yuma comes to him as simply as breathing. “I’m starving.”