Archive of Our Own

Sword strikes danced through the air, cutting down death knights one after another. Haein blazed a path through the horde of magic beasts and straight to the heart of the enemy legion, where the dungeon boss hovered above them all. The members of the Hunters Guild pushed back against the endless waves of enemies, systematically rotating the front lines of their raid party to be healed and then swapped back in again, but Haein knew that her allies wouldn’t last much longer that way. She needed to cull the enemy’s forces at their origin: the Arch Lich, summoning and resurrecting the death knights’ ranks in an infinite loop, while protected at the center of the boss chamber.

“Pardon me!” Haein shouted at Son Kihoon, charging towards the front line and gathering speed. Kihoon acknowledged her out of the side of his vision, before lifting his shield and allowing Haein to vault off of the makeshift platform like an olympic acrobat. Hurtling into the air, Haein gathered energy in the tip of her sword, aiming to slay the dungeon boss with one decisive blow.

The Arch Lich raised its skeletal hands, pausing its summoning spell to cast a defensive buff on itself, but it was too late. Haein’s sword of light descended from above like divine punishment meted out by a god, cleaving the undead spectre’s body into two with a burst of radiant energy. Below, death knights shuddered and collapsed in the midst of battle, reduced to lifeless husks without the Arch Lich’s magic.

Haein landed on the ground, as graceful as a dancer. A round of cheers erupted from the members of the guild behind her, bringing a meek smile to her face.

As the raid party celebrated and recollected their bearings in the aftermath, Haein quietly slipped away to explore the boss chamber on her own. While she was fighting the boss, a trace of foreign mana had tickled her senses. The mana signature felt strong, perhaps even more so than Arch Lich was, yet the scent was in no way unpleasant to her sensitive nose—if anything, it smelled nice. Curious, Haein followed the mana signature until she came to a marble pillar in the far corner of the room. An unfamiliar figure was hiding behind the column, stock-still but undoubtedly present.

“I can tell you’re there. Come out,” Haein called out sternly, gripping her sword. There was a chance that the Arch Lich hadn’t been the owner of the dungeon, instead acting as a decoy for the true dungeon boss hiding in the shadows.

But the person who revealed himself to her wasn’t a magic beast, like Haein thought. A man who seemed to be about her age stood across from her, with black hair and a wide-eyed look, frozen stiff like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Something about him felt familiar, almost painfully so—but Haein was certain she had never encountered this person before.

“Who are you?” Haein demanded, puzzled by the ache in her chest, as if her heart wanted her to cry and grin at meeting this unknown person.

The young man fidgeted with the sleeves of his jacket, shifting his weight from side to side and refusing to meet her cynical stare. “Um… I’m… Suho…” he introduced himself lamely. His eyes flickered to her face, as if reading her reaction, before darting away again.

Haein’s niggling sense that she should recognize this person hadn’t gone away, but his name didn’t bring any familiar faces to mind. “Do I… know you?” Haein asked, searching her memory for him. It felt awkward to ask that of someone she was sure she had never met; the young man would probably take it the wrong way and shut her down.

In spite of her worrying, Suho gave a half-baked response, neither confirming nor denying, “Er… kind of? But not really… I guess.” Suho’s lack of confidence in his own answer only served to amplify Haein’s confusion. Perhaps, Suho was also experiencing the inexplicable feeling of closeness that Haein was.

Given the circumstances, however, Haein couldn’t dwell on the strangely familiar young man any longer. They were inside a dungeon gate which had been purchased by the Hunters Guild. There shouldn’t have been any way for an outsider to trespass inside the gate. Haein’s voice became stern, as she mustered her best impression of a ‘teacher voice’ to admonish him, “What were you doing inside this dungeon? The rights to raid it were bought out by the Hunters Guild.”

Suho startled, looking unsettled by her shift in demeanor, but not surprised somehow. He waved his hands defensively. “You see, I just—uh, wandered in here—by accident.”

An obvious excuse, which Haein found impossible to believe, but given that Suho had not appeared to have stolen any of the loot from the dungeon, Haein was willing to let his terrible coverup slide for the time being. Rumbling quakes shook the room, becoming more insistent the longer time elapsed since the boss had been defeated. “It’s not safe inside the dungeon,” Haein reprimanded, “You need to leave immediately. I can walk you out.”

Suho’s shoulders slumped, and he conceded, “Yeah, I know. Sorry for the trouble.”

“As long as you understand,” Haein said gently.

She led Suho back to the main raid team, who had finished administering emergency treatment to their wounded, and were getting ready to leave the dungeon. The guildmaster Choi Jongin noticed the pair approaching together, and gained a peculiar expression at the sight.

“Who might this be?” Jongin pressed, after Haein had rejoined the group along with Suho. All of their other guild members had stopped what they were doing, curious about the newcomer.

Suho shifted his weight awkwardly, sticking close to Haein’s side, like a boy clutching his mother’s skirts. “I’m Suho. Sorry I trespassed in your guys’ gate.”

Jongin pushed his glasses up, and said carefully, “Hunter Cha, I didn’t know you had a brother who is a hunter. I thought you were an only child?”

Suho’s face instantly turned beet red, embarrassed for reasons Haein didn’t understand. She had way more cause to be abashed by that query, red-faced and spluttering, “I am an only child!”

Jongin blinked, and then tipped his head, somewhat sheepish. “Oh. My apologies, you two look so much alike, I was sure you were related in some way.”

Haein frowned, and turned to scrutinize Suho’s features. The young man was still blushing furiously, his mouth pressed shut as if he was desperately holding back something he wanted to say. Other than the flustered look on his face—which Haein found quite relatable—she couldn’t see the resemblance. He looked too much like someone else to be related to her, as far as appearances went.

“Really? I don’t see it,” Haein admitted, turning back to her guild members. Almost all of them responded with dubious glances, shaking their heads and muttering. Even Suho looked incredulous, but after a momentary pause, his expression settled into something more like nostalgia.

“Well, I suppose that’s not important, right now. It’s about time we left the dungeon, before we all get trapped inside it,” Jongin said, and began leading the raid team back the way they came in.

Suho trailed behind quietly, lingering over Haein’s shoulder like a shadow. His presence there made Haein’s instincts prickle, as she was used to always covering the rear when the raid party was leaving a dungeon. She turned around, and told him, “You should walk in front. There’s no need to hover so closely.”

“Oh.” Suho seemed to just now notice how clingy he was being. “Sorry, I guess I’m just used to that, I wasn’t thinking.”

The cryptic response stuck in Haein’s head, while Suho walked around her to match pace with the rest of the group, not paying any mind to what he had said. There was no reason to misinterpret Suho’s offhand remark, or look for hidden meanings that didn’t exist. Maybe Suho worked as the assistant or bodyguard of someone important, and he subconsciously followed after her while adopting that frame of mind. Still, it was hard to deny the intuitive feeling that Suho meant more to Haein than she chose to believe.

When the raid team returned from the dungeon and dispersed to pack up their belongings and head home, Suho was left loitering awkwardly beside the yellow tape. His head swiveled around, resembling a boy who had lost his guardian in a grocery store. Once again, Haein’s heart thumped in her chest, crying out that she had an obligation to help this mysterious young man, who she didn’t know, yet at the same time felt like she would traverse dimensions for.

But that was too dramatic for a veritable stranger. Haein justified that she was at least responsible for ascertaining his well-being, as the person who discovered him hiding in the dungeon.

Haein approached Suho after saying farewell to the rest of her guild members, a conflicted expression on her face. “Is something the matter?” she asked him. “The Hunters Guild won’t pursue legal action against you, as long as something like this doesn’t happen again. You’re free to go home.”

Suho’s mouth twisted, an inscrutable sheen in his eyes. “That’s… not it…” He trailed off, helpless to articulate what he needed to say.

“Then,” Haein ventured, still uneasy, “Was there something else you required help with?”

Suho met her eyes directly. For the first time since meeting him, Haein could see the flickers of a million different emotions tangled in his gaze, all of them impossible to comprehend. Grief and regret, hope and reminiscence, desperation and trust—Suho’s gaze on her was a punch to the gut, without any knowledge of why she might have deserved the blow. Finally, he spoke, thickly, “Yeah—I need help. You—” he swallowed, “You’re the only person I can think to rely on.”

Thrown off guard by the heavy sentiment, Haein inhaled, unable to fathom the weight that was being placed on her shoulders all of a sudden. “What…? What do you mean?”

Suho exhaled and shrugged his shoulders, some of the gravitas from before melting from his gaze. “Well, I’m lost,” he explained wryly, “So I don’t know how to get back home, and I don’t have any place to stay.”

Haein stared at Suho, gleaning his insinuation, but somewhat discomfited by the suggestion. Suho was a stranger of unknown origin—and a man around her age, at that—it was absurd to even consider inviting him to stay at her apartment. There was no way to verify his real intentions. Yet, Haein was more rattled by the trust she found within herself when it came to Suho, the implicit sense that she didn’t need to worry, if it was him.

“Suho,” Haein addressed him, eliciting a subtle reaction. “It’s hard not to be suspicious of you, right now.” In spite of that, she didn’t feel the least bit wary. No matter how Haein reasoned with herself, Suho only seemed comparable to a child left all alone, in her perspective. “But I get the feeling that I can’t just leave you on your own, so I’ll let you stay at my place, for the time being.”

Suho brightened, looking hopeful, and followed her back to her car.

“You live here?” Suho looked around the interior of the apartment with unabashed curiosity, making Haein feel self-conscious. “Hmm… I guess that makes sense.”

Again, Suho’s offhand remark registered as strange to Haein, but not in bad faith. She set her belongings down on the kitchen table, mulling over Suho’s mysterious familiarity. Was it possible that she had been inflicted with a brainwashing spell? It seemed unlikely; Haein still felt in control of her own mind and will. In her head dwelled the want to learn what her connection to Suho was. Although it might result in an awkward conversation, there was one good method to figure out what was going on. Direct confrontation was her strongest suit, anyway. If he laughed her off, and told her she was imagining things, then so be it. She just didn’t want to continue ignoring the weird tension between her and Suho.

Haein placed her hands on her hips and planted her feet, pinning Suho with a flinty stare. “Tell me: why does it feel like I should know who you are?”

Suho grew still, his face taking on a solemn countenance, as he pondered the best way to respond. Finally, he confessed, “Because… I’m your son.”

The revelation slammed into Haein with the force of a superpowered punch, her mouth falling open and her eyes nearly popping out of her skull. “What?!” she shrieked, thoughts racing faster than her sprint record, “That’s not—that’s just impossible! You—you look like you’re twenty—and I’m twenty one! I’ve never even had a boyfriend, nevermind a—”

“Wait, Mom, just hear me out!” Suho stepped forward and waved his palms, frantic.

Being called ‘mom’ at her age was destabilizing, the floor crumbling and falling out beneath her feet. There was no way she could believe such a ludicrous claim. But, coming from Suho, it sounded right to her ears. Still, the concept that she somehow had an adult son—without her knowing, at that—was not something she could accept so easily. Haein breathed in and out, recollecting the scattered pieces of her mind. “Explain yourself, now,” Haein demanded.

Suho exhaled, before beginning to narrate how he came to be here. “I’m from—well, the future, basically. The version of you that I know is… like… forty, or something. You look a bit different here, but you’re definitely my mother, Cha Haein.”

Haein narrowed her eyes. “And how did you get here, from the future? Don’t tell me they invented time travel already.” Unfortunately, with the appearance of gates and various magical phenomena on Earth, the idea of linear time travel was not as fantastical as it used to be.

“Well, no, humans don’t have time travel,” Suho assured. A shiver went through Haein’s spine at the subtle implication that there existed some other entity possessing the ability to traverse time. Gesturing with his hands, Suho explained, “I got sucked into a dimensional rift by accident. Normally, dimensional rifts only jump through space, and not time, but I guess falling through the fabric of reality can do both, if the coordinates are right—”

“A dimensional rift?” Haein parroted, trying to wrap her head around everything Suho was telling her. It felt like the fabric of her own reality was breaking, to be honest. “Is that… like a gate?”

Suho looked relieved, and he breathed out in affirmation, “Yeah, like a gate.”

The story was still difficult to believe—frankly, Haein wouldn’t have, if it weren’t for the peculiar hunch she had that Suho was indeed telling the truth about being her son. But coming to terms with that knowledge only gave rise to a thousand more questions swarming her thoughts, making her head reel.

Haein was only twenty-one; she could barely grasp the implication that she would eventually find love and get married, nevermind giving birth to and raising a child. Or, there was also the possibility that she had Suho out of wedlock—Haein wasn’t too particular about traditional values in regards to saving herself for marriage, so it wasn’t impossible. Either way, she couldn’t help but wonder, “Who’s your father?”

Suho winced, cringing from the indelicate question. “I don’t know if you’ve met him, yet,” he dodged around the answer, preventing Haein from rewriting the space-time continuum by accident.

But Haein was already on a warpath for clues. “Am I married to him?”

Suho yelped, “What?! Yes, of course you married dad!”

“Oh, okay.” A sigh of relief came from Haein’s chest. Even if she was fine with raising a child as a single mother, she was reassured to learn that she hadn’t—or rather, wouldn’t—be foolish enough to end up in such a circumstance in the first place. Plus, her taste in partners would eventually lead her to this precious boy standing here in front of her, over twenty years too soon. It made her curious about who the other half of Suho’s lineage would be, and how she’d encounter him. Warm, fluttery optimism bloomed in her chest. Haein’s future happiness was in safe hands, it seemed.

With that settled, Haein turned her attention to other matters. “Do you have any idea how you can get back to your original timeline?” As much as she was curious about her future son, and maybe already growing a little bit fond of him, Haein knew that Suho couldn’t stay with her in the past.

Suho considered her question, before launching into a complicated explanation, “The best way would be back through the same dimensional rift I came from. But it was connected to the inside of that dungeon from earlier today, which closed up. I don’t think I can reopen access to that rift anymore, unless… If I could summon Harmakan, then maybe—” Suho trailed off, muttering to himself.

“What’s Harmakan?” Haein asked, somewhat lost.

Suho was startled, and looked up. “Oh, he’s like—a guy who’s pretty good at magic that deals with the dimensional wall, and stuff.”

“A friend of yours?” Haein clarified, catching on a little bit.

“Something like that.”

“But he’s not with you here, in this timeline,” Haein reiterated, causing Suho to nod his head. “Is there any other way to open a gateway back?”

“Well…” Suho answered uneasily, “We could look for a dimensional rift that leads to the void in between dimensions, and then maybe I’d be able to find my way back from there…”

“You don’t sound very confident.”

“This would be easier if I could use my shadow skills…” Suho grumbled.

“Shadow skills? What does that mean?” Haein was getting tired of all these jargon terms she didn’t recognize. Apparently, roughly twenty or more years in the future, the world of hunters and gates will have advanced by leaps and bounds, to the point where her current self couldn’t understand most of what Suho was talking about.

“Um… it’s kinda like a unique skill tree, like in a video game.” At Haein’s further confusion, Suho shook his head, and said, “It’s not important, since right now I can’t use any of the shadow skills. Anyways, you’ll find out eventually—probably pretty soon, I think…” Suho trailed off again, before switching the topic back to the matter at hand, “If I can get out of this dimensional plane, somehow, I might be able to use one of my skills to teleport home.”

Haein hummed pensively, trying to make sense of what Suho was saying. A teleportation skill sounded quite useful. “So basically, you just need to find this so-called ‘void in between dimensions’, right? Do you think entering a dungeon might help?”

“I’m not sure. The best way to get there is through a dimensional rift that’s been made bigger by multiple gates opening in the same location, and then overlapping. Is there anywhere in the city that’s been a hotspot for dungeons popping up a lot lately?”

A moment passed while Haein tried to recall such a location. “There’s a neighborhood on the outskirts of the industrial district where there’s been several gates in the past few months.”

Suho perked up. “Can we go there and look around?”

“Tomorrow,” Haein promised. After raiding an upper-end A-rank gate that afternoon, she was tuckered out and eager to go to sleep. “In the meantime, you can use the guest room, and get some rest.”

Haein was too young to have the experience of waking up early to drive her son around the city. Maybe she should have given him some cash and told him to take the bus. But, as Suho’s mother, albeit twenty years too early, she felt responsible for his well being; another version of her in the future somewhere was missing her son, and Haein owed that woman the effort of trying to bring him home.

In addition, she was quite curious about her future son herself, and sitting in the car with Suho was a good opportunity to get to know him better.

“So you’re a hunter?” Haein prompted, breaking the silence.

“Yeah.”

“When did you awaken?”

“This year.”

“That’s… nice.” Haein tried not to be discouraged by Suho’s clipped responses. It was probably awkward for him to converse with his mother from decades in the past. The possibility that he was older than she currently was also dawned on her, making her fidget with the steering wheel. “Are you still in school?” If it had been (would be) up to her, she’d ensure Suho graduated from high school at least, before starting a career as a hunter.

“Yeah. I got into Korea University of Arts.” Suho offered up a precious hint of information about himself, for the first time. The knowledge that he was already in college—and an artist, at that—stunned Haein. It felt like she was reading the last chapter of a book before ever getting to know the title. There was so much about Suho that she didn’t know, in her present—or past—state.

Haein just hoped that her future self made up for her current inadequacy. “That’s amazing!” she congratulated, a grin pulling at the corners of her lips unbidden. “I’m so proud of you, Suho. Though, I’m sure I already told you that in the future.”

A bitter expression surfaced on Suho’s face, before disappearing beneath a neutral veneer. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, a little bit hoarse due to reasons which Haein couldn’t name.

Something desperate and grieving sprouted in Haein’s chest, crying out for her to reach over the center console and embrace her son, tell him how much she loved him, in this timeline and every other timeline as well. But she tamped down on the urge, not knowing where it had originated from.

They pulled down a sparsely populated street in the neighborhood where there had been frequent gate appearances, and Haein found a spot to park along the curb. “Do you have an idea of what kind of signs we should be looking for?” She wasn’t confident in her ability to sense invisible breaches in the so-called dimensional wall.

Suho looked grim. “Honestly? No. But I’ve got to start somewhere.”

Haein and Suho poked around the neighborhood together, walking down residential streets and peering into storefronts, as if they could divine the secrets to dimensional time-travel in the window panes. There was very little to examine, in regards to potential traces of reality-distorting magic. After gates were cleared, they simply closed up and left nothing behind, at least as far as Haein could tell.

“Have you found anything yet?” Haein asked Suho, who was crouching in the sandbox of a kids’ playground area, and prodding the dirt.

“Nope,” Suho muttered, frustrated. They had already spent most of the morning wandering around, to no avail. It wasn’t surprising that they were both reaching the ends of their patience.

“How about we go get something to eat for lunch, and then regroup?” Haein suggested, her stomach feeling rather empty.

Suho was about to reply, when he was interrupted by a pair of teenage girls squealing noisily and rushing over. “Is that Cha Haein?! Oh my god, it is!” one girl exclaimed, working herself up into a starstruck tizzy at meeting a celebrity S-rank hunter.

The second girl vibrated with barely restrained enthusiasm, her eyes sparkling. “Hunter Cha, I’m your biggest fan! You’re my favorite S-rank hunter in the whole world!”

Haein wanted to dash away and hide, her eyes widening and her face turning red from the attention. The fame part of being a hunter had never appealed to her, being far too anxious and shy to enjoy it. “U-um…” she stammered, paralyzed on the spot. Out of the corner of her vision, she could see Suho standing up and shooting her a weird look.

“Can I have your autograph?” the first girl asked.

“Wait, no, can we take a selfie with you? Pretty please!” the second girl begged, clasping her hands together and showing her best puppy dog eyes.

“Um, I don’t take photos, I-I’m—” Haein struggled to respond to her fans’ shower of admiration.

Both the girls whined, pouting at Haein’s refusal to take pictures with them.

Suho interrupted, stepping forward and shooing the fans away with his arms, “She said she doesn’t want to be photographed.”

The girls turned to him, a mixture of annoyance and confusion on their faces. “Who are you?” the first girl asked, giving him a once over.

Haein collected her composure, and cut back into the conversation then, not wanting Suho to get dragged into some kind of scandal with her overenthusiastic fans. “He’s a family member of mine. We’re actually spending some time together today, so we’d like to keep our outing on the down low, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh! We’re so sorry for bothering you, Hunter Cha!” The first girl quickly apologized.

“Yeah, sorry! We’ll leave you guys alone, now,” the second girl added, looking slightly disappointed, before being dragged away by her friend.

Haein sighed, glad to have made it through the fan interaction without causing too much fuss.

“I didn’t realize you were so famous, in your heyday,” Suho commented, tilting his head and staring at Haein as if in a new light.

Haein blinked, confused by the past tense. “I retired from being a hunter?” There were plenty of hunters who continued to raid dungeons well into their forties and even their fifties, especially among S-ranks, whose powers were sought after even after the hunters themselves had passed their prime. She couldn’t imagine herself quitting any time soon; from her current perspective, she had just started her career a little over a year ago.

A complicated expression appeared on Suho’s features, like he wasn’t sure how to justify the events of the future. “Well… for a period of time, I think,” he said, somewhat unsure, then added belatedly, “After you had me.”

“Oh.” That made sense to Haein. It makes sense that she waited until Suho was older to return to working as a hunter; she would have wanted to give her everything to ensure her son grew up loved and safe, until she was confident he wouldn’t miss her while she was gone inside the gates.

Opening her mouth to say something else, Haein was cut off by an ear-splitting scream coming from a few blocks down. Her senses immediately spiked and picked up the mana signatures of magic beasts pouring into the streets nearby, accompanied by the sound of civilians crying for help and fleeing. She made eye contact with Suho, both nodding in silent agreement, before they dashed to the scene of the dungeon break. A swarm of frost golems and ice bears were emerging from a gate—tucked away in an abandoned parking lot where no one noticed until it was too late—a frigid blizzard following behind at its heels.

Haein arrived just in time to block the attack of an ice bear aimed at a elderly man who had tripped and fallen on the pavement, her eyes flashing gold right before she punched the bear in its stomach. The bear roared, but did not falter, her bare fists unable to measure up to the power she could instill in a weapon. Haein wished she had the sense to bring her sword with her more often.

Looking around frantically for something to use, Haein yanked a stop sign out of the ground and wielded it like a blunt halberd. The makeshift weapon was good enough to pour her mana into, at least, so that she could spear the ice bear through its chest right as it was about to swipe at her with its claw. Immediately afterwards, the stop sign ruptured and broke, forcing Haein to swap it with another road sign.

Catching the attention of a fleeing salaryman, Haein insisted, “Please help this old man get to safety, I’ll fend off the magic beasts until more help arrives!” At her request, the salaryman looked panicked, before recognizing her as a S-rank hunter, and reluctantly stopping to assist the elderly man in running away.

The situation was dire; Haein only had improvised weapons to work with, and the magic beasts pouring out of the gate were largely of high rank—too much for her to handle on her own, while also protecting the civilians. Her only hope was that the Hunter’s Association would get there with reinforcements soon.

Except, a sudden wave of heat spread out along the ground and blistered the air, counteracting the blizzard coming out of the gate and causing sweat to gather on Haein’s forehead. She looked over to the source of the warmth, and did a double take at the sight. Suho was at the origin of the heat explosion, holding a pair of jagged shortswords that radiated a fiendish aura, a ball of condensed mana gathering in the base of his throat. All at once, Suho released the mana from his mouth in a straight line, rampaging red and black flames blasting out and reducing all of the magic beasts in its path to ashes. Haein had never seen any skill like it, at least, not one that hunters could possess. The sight conjured her memory of witnessing the dragon Kamish in a news broadcast when she was fourteen, blazing a trail of destruction with its fiery breath.

Suho was awe-inspiring, mastering such destructive force and using his power to fight and protect the civilians on the scene. Haein gripped her weapon, and turned to face the next ice bear with a steely glint in her eyes. She couldn’t be caught getting distracted, not with her son giving his all to suppress the dungeon break right beside her.

With Suho’s contribution, he and Haein managed to defeat all of the magic beasts before the Hunter’s Association arrived to support them.

The hunter at the head of the reinforcements squad gaped at the sheer devastation on the scene: magical beast corpses littering the melted concrete, embers and ash drifting down from above like snowflakes, and scorch-marks maring every building in the nearby vicinity. His wide-eyed stare roved over to notice Haein standing in the middle of the road, clutching a dented yield sign. The association hunter adjusted his glasses, astonished, “How could—Did you handle this dungeon break yourself, Hunter Cha?”

Haein shifted her weight from one foot to another, lowering her yield sign. “Errr—” Her gaze drifted over to make eye contact with Suho, who was hiding behind a building and making chopping gestures with his hands. “Yeah, I guess I did.” If her son tried to take credit for resolving this incident, the association might try to measure his mana, and inevitably end up naming him the tenth S-rank hunter to have appeared in the country. They couldn’t afford to leave behind a permanent record of Suho’s existence in this timeline.

“You ‘guess’? There’s no need to be so modest, Hunter Cha. Thanks to you, this incident was resolved without any casualties or serious collateral damage!”

A blush rose on Haein’s cheeks, and she stifled the urge to hide her face in her hands from shame. Accepting people’s gratitude—and all the idolatry that came with it—was difficult enough for her; receiving attention for a feat she wasn’t even fully responsible for was simply impossible, from her perspective. Haein’s eyes darted over to look at Suho guiltily, before returning to meet the association employee’s awestruck gaze. She balked, “I-I don’t really—”

“Based off of the magic beast corpses I see here, this must have been a B—no, an A-rank dungeon break. The entire district could have been turned into a major disaster zone, if it weren’t for your being here! S-ranks truly are on a different level!” the employee continued to gush, much to Haein’s consternation.

“Um, thank you…” Haein cringed. Her feet shuffled nervously, eager to flee, like a cornered animal. “May I be allowed to leave now, or do I need to file a report with the association?”

“Oh!” the association employee exclaimed, abashed. “Absolutely, Hunter Cha, I’m sure you’re tired after handling all of this on your own. You can go home, and we’ll forward the paperwork on this incident to the Hunters Guild for you.”

“Thank you,” Haein replied earnestly. The association hunters spread out to search for wounded and take stock of the magic beast corpses, leaving her alone.

Suho emerged from behind the building, fiddling with the faintly burnt hem of his t-shirt.

“Sorry for taking all the credit, Suho,” Haein apologized, even knowing it had been a necessary measure to preserve the timeline.

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m not supposed to be here in the first place,” Suho shrugged, patting the soot off of his shirt. “Besides, you did half of the work.” His eyes dropped to the metal street sign which Haein was still holding on to, and a humorous smile quirked his lips. “It was really impressive, seeing you do your usual thing with a traffic signal.”

Haein flustered, and set the yield sign down on the sidewalk. “I had to do something,” she protested.

“Yeah, I know,” Suho grinned, eyes sparkling.

An inexplicable sense of disappointment gripped Haein’s chest. This child—with his boyish smile and affectionate gaze—was not hers. Suho belonged to some distant version of Haein, in a future timeline far away from now. Still, she wouldn’t mind keeping him, just a little while longer.

It felt like she was making up for lost time, somehow.

Haein and Suho trudged back to the apartment in heavy spirits, after not finding any trace of a dimensional rift around the neighborhood. Even exploring the abandoned parking lot where the dungeon break had originated hadn’t provided any hints as to how Suho could return to his world. The sun outside was beginning its descent below the horizon, marking the end of the day without any apparent progress.

Comfortable in the (past) home of his mother, Suho slumped down on the living room couch, tipping his head back and shutting his eyes.

Haein frowned. “Take your shoes off, you’re tracking soot over the carpet,” she chided. Watching Suho groan and get up to kick his high-tops off, leaving a dark smudge behind on the furniture where he had sprawled out, Haein’s frown deepened. “Take a bath, too. I’ll find a change of clothes for you to wear.”

Suho shot a beleaguered look at Haein, the very image of the unruly son, but surrendered to her insistence, “Fine, Mom.” After plodding off and disappearing into the guest bathroom, he threw his singed clothes into a heap outside the door, for Haein to roll her eyes at and collect with a sigh. When she had Suho for real, she was going to teach him how to do his own laundry. But in their current situation, Suho was more of a guest in her house than a son, so in consideration, Haein conceded that he was allowed some leniency.

Finding clothes that would fit her grown son was a harder task than washing his laundry. Haein wondered what her future self had fed (would feed) that boy, for him to grow so big, especially compared to her own slight stature. In the end, she dug a baggy t-shirt and a pair of oversized sweatpants (which she had forgotten to return to the store) out of her closet, and left them in the hallway for Suho to change into after he finished his shower.

Haein wondered what she should cook for dinner. There was an additional mouth to feed that night, and she felt like she couldn’t make something random half-heartedly. In the back of her kitchen cabinets, she found a recipe book which her grandmother had gifted to her when she moved out. Dust clung to the front cover, making Haein sneeze. She never had much use for the recipes in the book before. Leafing through the pages, Haein found the ingredient list for seaweed soup.

“Soy sauce, sesame oil, dried seaweed… I think I can make this…” Haein riffled through her pantry, checking whether she had all the ingredients. The only item she was missing was the beef steak, but she pulled a package of tofu out of her fridge to substitute. Tofu was much healthier than red meat, full of plant-based protein and low on cholesterol, which was optimal for cardio. With all the running around she and Suho were doing, seaweed soup with tofu was a good recipe to make.

Tying her hair back, Haein got to work on dinner with newfound gusto. By the time she was about done cooking, the sound of the shower turning off reached her ears.

Suho wandered into the kitchen, wearing the change of clothes she lent him. The shirt—which was baggy on her—appeared uncomfortably small on his broad frame, and the medium-large sweatpants ended above his ankles. Hopefully, his laundry would be finished in the dryer soon. In the meantime, Haein set out two bowls of soup on the dining table, and greeted him, “I made seaweed soup for dinner.”

“Oh, nice,” Suho remarked, sitting down at the table. Haein joined him in the seat across from his. The soup was pretty tasty, in her opinion, which she made sure to judge for herself prior to serving it. Suho picked up his spoon and stirred the broth, while Haein watched for his reaction, enrapt and slightly anxious. After a few beats, Suho wrinkled his nose, and scooped a cube of tofu out of the soup using his spoon. “Uh… there’s tofu in this?” he noted, with a marked air of distaste.

Haein’s face fell. “You don’t like tofu?” she surmised, downcast. Even if Suho was trapped in a past timeline, she had hoped to at least give him the experience of having a delicious meal with her. But Haein seemed to have failed in her quest to leave Suho with just one positive memory of time traveling, with her lack of knowledge about his likes and dislikes.

Suho looked as if he had swallowed something unpleasant, even though he still hadn’t touched his soup. “You always replace the meat in recipes with tofu,” he recounted dryly, a misty sheen in his eyes.

“Oh… I do?” Haein echoed, registering new information about herself. Championing healthy food alternatives did sound like something she would do, even several decades after she retired as a track and field athlete, and as a hunter.

Suho nodded, and then promptly shoved the spoonful of tofu into his mouth, grimacing.

“Ah, wait—!” Haein waved her hands in protest, her face flushing self-consciously, as she attempted to discourage Suho from eating any more, “You don’t need to force yourself to eat it, if you don’t like it…”

“I’ll eat it,” Suho affirmed, chewing and swallowing in between words, “It’s okay. It’s been awhile since I had tofu.” A rueful expression appeared on his face, unreadable to Haein, who couldn’t understand why her son wanted to eat a food he claimed not to like.

There were many of these trivial notions about Suho, glimmers of something bigger which Haein was afraid of assembling the puzzle pieces to. But for the time being, Haein wanted to enjoy this meal with her son, without thinking about what might happen later down the line. “If you say so,” she conceded, and started to eat her own soup.

Around the time Haein finished all of her bowl, a bubbly ringtone played from the laundry room, signalling that Suho’s clothes were done in the machine dryer. Haein excused herself to retrieve the load.

When she came back, Suho had finished his seaweed soup, and was washing their bowls in the kitchen sink. “I have your clean clothes,” Haein informed him, setting them down on the counter. 

Suho hummed in acknowledgement, and placed a bowl on the drying rack. “Thanks,” he said, and grabbed his laundry to go change in the guest bedroom.

“Wait, Suho—” Haein called out before he could leave.

Suho turned around, raising his eyebrows. “What is it?”

Haein swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Are you going to bed for the evening?”

“Yeah, I’m tired.”

“Goodnight, and sleep well, Suho,” Haein recited, her voice full of fondness for a son she had yet to have. On behalf of her future self, Haein wanted to wish Suho ‘sweet dreams’, since her future self couldn’t be present to do so instead. In her heart, she already loved him as if he had always been hers. 

The corners of Suho’s lips quirked. “Goodnight, Mom,” he replied indulgently, before retiring to the guest bedroom to sleep.

Haein sighed. Everything felt too much and too soon, loving her son and regretting that she couldn’t know more about him. It wasn’t fair for her to feel guilty about not being present in Suho’s life up until now, since she hadn’t even given birth to him yet, but that didn’t stop a knot of remorse from curling up in her stomach regardless. It would be best for both of them, if they found a way to return Suho to his original world as soon as possible.

In spite of both Haein and Suho’s efforts otherwise, the next few days passed without any clues surfacing as to how they could send Suho back to his timeline proper. Scouring the city for dimensional rifts proved fruitless, and Suho was beginning to lose hope, looking more and more despondent the longer time went on. Haein’s heart ached for him, while also hurting for herself. The time they spent together was bound to run out eventually, and she both longed to bring him home, and mourned that he must leave her.

Mother and son had settled into a comfortable pattern of domesticity while living together. One morning, Suho left the apartment before dawn to shop for spare clothes, realizing that his stay in the present timeline had become extended. He promised to pay Haein back, roughly twenty years in the future, but she sorely doubted that she would remember to pester him about the money by then. Haein continued to test out new recipes from her hand-me-down cookbook, which Suho confessed to recognizing the taste of, “It’s exactly how Mom makes this recipe.” She’d tell him to put his shoes away in the closet, and he’d finish her sentence with a practiced eyeroll, “…so that no one trips, I know.” It was funny how household habits which she would develop in the future could be rediscovered in the past, allowing her and Suho to fall into a mundane routine, despite being strangers in practice.

Haein double-checked her schedule for work on her employee portal. There was an A-rank gate—nearly scraping the floor of being S-rank—that she was supposed to raid with her guild today. Duty called, and Haein got dressed in her raid attire and equipped her sword to her belt.

Suho noticed Haein emerge from her room wearing armor, and blinked, pressing pause on the television broadcast he was watching. He commented, “You didn’t say there was a raid today.”

“Sorry, Suho, I can’t look for dimensional rifts today,” Haein apologized, offering a small smile, “But you’re free to search for one on your own, while I’m at work. I can give you some money for the bus fare.”

“Wait a minute,” Suho stalled, rising to his feet and frowning, “You’re not taking me with you?”

A small wince came over Haein, before she crossed her arms and rebuked, “You’re not a member of the Hunters Guild, Suho. I can’t just bring you to work with me—and definitely not into the gate.”

Suho pulled a face, and stubbornly stood his ground, like a boy pouting in order to get his way. “But what if entering a gate again is how I make it back?” he argued, somewhat contrived in his reasoning.

Unfortunately, Haein was willing to consider the more far-fetched prospects in her bid to bring Suho home to his original timeline. It was true that Suho came here through a dungeon; there was a real possibility that the solution was lying somewhere beyond another gate. Haein exhaled, aggrieved to have been persuaded into relenting, “Fine, you can come with me.”

Suho beamed and pumped his fist in the air.

“But there’s no guarantee that the guildmaster will allow you to enter the gate with us, and you can’t cause a commotion if he doesn’t agree, am I clear?”

“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be on my best behavior,” Suho vowed.

The niggling feeling that all mothers experienced when their sons made such empty sounding promises tickled Haein’s better instincts, and she prayed that she made the correct choice in allowing Suho to accompany her.

When they arrived at the location of the gate, Guildmaster Choi Jongin noticed Haein with Suho in tow, and came over to ask about the additional face. “Aren’t you the hunter from before?” Jongin pushed his glasses up, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re here to try your hand at trespassing again,” he quipped in good humor.

Haein blanched, but didn’t interfere as Suho stepped forward and clarified, “I’d actually like to join your raid—with permission, this time.”

Jongin blinked, looking momentarily flabbergasted, before his humorous expression gained a flinty edge. “Hunter Cha, do you know anything about this?” he addressed Haein directly, making her wince and squirm in place.

“Well, Suho has been staying at my apartment for the past few days—err… it’s because he’s currently… lost…” Haein elaborated lamely, at Jongin’s perplexed look, and then defended, “I didn’t say he could join the raid, I only said I’d bring him to ask you. We’ll defer to your judgement, Guildmaster Choi.”

A courteous smile surfaced on Jongin’s face, before he pronounced tactfully, “Of course, Suho is not permitted to join the Hunters Guild on the raid. I’m sorry, but he will have to wait—outside.” Jongin emphasized the last word, shooting a warning glance at Suho, who had already trespassed once (albeit by accident, as Haein now understood to be the case).

Suho sulked, and Haein patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry, Suho. I did say that there weren’t any guarantees. How about you keep the mining team company, while you wait?”

Jongin’s eyes flickered while watching Haein interact with Suho, but he didn’t say anything until Suho had trudged away to the other side of the yellow tape. “Are you certain you’re not related to him? A long lost, distant cousin, perhaps?” Jongin inquired in jest. Little did he know, his assumption of family ties had been spot on from the start.

“If we were related to each other, I don’t think we’d be cousins,” Haein replied with a weary sigh, cracking an inside joke. Jongin’s eyes crinkled, curious.

Gina summoned their attention from nearby the gate, waving her arm and hollering, “Hey! Y’all ready to start, yet? Dungeon’s not closing by itself over here!” From beside the zealous mage hunter, Kihoon mumbled something and elbowed her, eliciting an indignant swat.

“Seems like they’re waiting for us to get going,” Haein observed, and headed over to join the rest of the raid team along with Jongin. The Guildmaster went over the statutory address and rallying cheer before they departed, the tanking members taking up the front of the charge.

Inside the dungeon was a gloomy stretch of coast, bordering a dark sea that disappeared into the equally grey horizon. The tattered remnants of a shipwreck loomed a ways out in the shallows, emanating a pulse of mana from somewhere within the old boat. It looked like the site for a haunted beach attraction, which was a telltale sign that the magical beasts in the dungeon would be of the undead variety.

“Gee, I should’ve packed my snorkel,” one of the tanks joked.

“You can swim?” someone ribbed from the backline.

“‘Love to—just not in whatever that stuff is,” the tank replied, pointing at the sea.

Indeed, upon closer inspection, the surface of the water looked noxious, putrid bits of organic matter washing up on the beach with the surf. Haein pinched her nose in revulsion. Rotten flesh always smelled foul, regardless of whether it contained mana or not. Luckily for the raid team members, they were saved from needing to wade across the murky sea when a mob of skeletons rose to meet them first, crawling out of the sand and surrounding them.

“Get into formation, they’re here!” Haein shouted, adjusting her positioning to cover one side of the group as a sub-tank, like rehearsed.

Everyone moved as if they were performers in a trope, taking up their assigned positions and herding the skeletons back, step by step. Choi Jongin called out to make way, before unleashing a blast of flame which spiraled around the shore and incinerated skeletons in a blazing arc. A whiff of powerful mana tickled Haein’s nose from somewhere nearby, but she dismissed the oddity, focused on the target before her. Darting behind enemy lines and driving her sword through bone, Haein noticed that the opposing forces hadn’t dwindled in the slightest, despite the offensive force of the raid team. The skeletons were rather fragile as well, the sheer quantity of their ranks proving more of a threat than their individual attacks.

If the enemy was undead, then perhaps they were being reanimated by a higher-class magical beast somewhere close by. Haein raised her head, and searched for the source of the skeleton hordes.

“Found you,” Haein said, glaring in the direction of the shipwreck. She might have to swim across the water, after all.

‘You “found me”? Don’t make me laugh, human,’ a disembodied voice whispered in Haein’s ear, making her whirl around, sword brandished. But there was no one behind her, as the sound was coming from every direction, invading her head. ‘You couldn’t even find the way back to your own son; what makes you think you can see through my mirage?’

“What?” Haein blurted out, not understanding what the voice was referring to.

‘Oh yes, I happen to have a special mirage, just for you,’ the voice purred, ‘Not of the tortured past, but the inevitable future. Now, despair, human, in your failure as a mother.’

Haein didn’t have the opportunity to be confused, as just then, the ground rippled and caved in beneath her feet. Reality warped around the members of her guild, dragging them all into a greedy illusion of their past horrors. However, as the voice had promised, Haein instead found herself in an unfamiliar mirage, standing outside a modern house on a street she didn’t recognize. The characters on the nameplate by the front entrance were blurry, but instinctively, Haein knew that this was her home, which she shared with Suho and his father.

The laws of reality bent again, and Haein was shown a peek past the walls of the house, despite standing outside in the street. Much like how it was within a dream, she didn’t pay any heed to the surreal quality of the phenomenon. Her mind was stuck in a foggy trance, while her body was forced to observe the scene playing out in front of her eyes.

A younger-looking version of Suho was sitting in the kitchen, holding his report card and running his fingers through his dark hair. Nigh perfect grades were displayed on the page, and the teacher’s comments at the bottom praised Suho’s ingenuity and work ethic, encouraging his mother to continue showing him her care and support. But Haein wasn’t inside the house with him.

Suho set the paper down and wiped his eyes with both hands, whimpering, “Mom… where did you go?”

Haein’s heart splintered, the broken edges cutting the inside of her chest and drawing blood from her wounds like tears. “Suho! I’m right here!” she shouted, but he didn’t hear her. Out of reflex, Haein felt her body lurching forward, before breaking into a dash. The soles of her boots pounded against concrete, her leg muscles pumping and breath hitching as Haein sprinted forward, desperate to reach her son. But no matter how fast she tried to run, the distance between her and Suho only grew longer, elongating unfathomably as the scenery around her shifted and changed.

The street transformed into an icy hell of continuous white and grey, a blizzard whipping Haein’s cheeks and nipping her fingers, snow flurries assailing her hair and clothes. Yet, she could still see and hear inside the house as if it was clear as day, driving her to run faster, harder, more frantic—through the frigid storm and towards her son, who was all alone.

“Mom, why won’t you come back? Why did you leave me?” A few years older now, Suho’s choked cries were arrows impaled through her chest, pain lancing her body with each word.

Haein persisted through the hurt, yelling to be heard over the howl of the blizzard, “Suho! Suho! I’m here, please, just wait for me!” her voice cracked, and was drowned out in the wind.

Grief filled her, as if she was merely a vessel for her sorrow. She didn’t know what was real anymore; she didn’t care. Her son—Suho—he was right there, in front of her eyes, and yet she abandoned him. Her feet refused to carry her to his side—what were they even good for—running? They failed her once, when she was forced into an early retirement from her athletic career, and now they were failing her again, when she needed their power the most. For the sake of her son, she’d race around the entire globe and back again, if only her feet would take her there.

“Mom, I don’t understand,” Suho whispered, fully grown, “How could you leave me all alone?”

“I couldn’t!” Haein objected, her throat hoarse from shouting, “I’d never! I could never abandon you, or any other child who needed me!” The adamant cry was torn from her soul, an unwitting knell of truth ringing out and piercing the illusion. Hairline fissures spread out, before the fabric of the spell itself cracked and shattered apart around Haein.

Cognizance flowed back into the crevices of her mind, pulling together the fractured pieces as Haein realized what was happening. Everything was only a mirage cast on her perceptions, designed to siphon mana unaware from its victims, while she was trapped in a futile despair. Due to her sudden awareness, Haein discerned that the Suho she saw in the house had not been an illusion.

Her troublemaker of a son must have snuck into the dungeon after the raid team went in, and got sucked into the mirage along with everyone else. Suho, too, had been forced to relive his past memories thanks to the spell cast on his perceptions. His recollection of her going missing from his life had been his own waking nightmare, overlapping with Haein’s omen of the future. Haein understood now why Suho had behaved so strangely towards her, overcome with resentment at her future self’s absence, while longing for his mother again in spite of his bitterness.

Freed from the spell, Haein rushed to cross the threshold of Suho’s illusion, racing up the street and bursting through the front door, her lungs heaving. Breathless, she found Suho standing in front of the mantelpiece, gazing at the photographs and child’s drawings framed there with glassy eyes.

“Suho!” Haein called out to her son, and he jolted and turned around, clarity seeping back into his wide-eyed stare as he faced her. On impulse, she tackled him in a hug, the force of her embrace making him stagger and steady himself by clutching onto her with his fingers. She tucked her chin over his shoulder and closed her eyes, releasing a peaceful sigh.

“Uh… Mom…?” Suho floundered, still recollecting his senses.

Drawing back to offer her son a watery smile, Haein murmured, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me most.” Then, she hugged him again, holding on even tighter.

Suho relaxed into her embrace, wrapping his arms around her back and burying his face where she couldn’t see his expression. Something damp touched her collar. Choking back his tears, he said thickly, “It’s okay Mom, you’re here now.”

The illusionary scene around Haein and Suho melted away, returning them to the beach where they started out. A mass of skeletons rose to swarm around them, preventing them from getting close to the shipwreck.

“Where is the rest of the raid team?” Haein searched the coastline for any sign of Jongin, Gina, Kihoon, or the other members of her guild, but found nothing. Drawing her sword, she cut down a skeleton before it limped closer to her, frowning.

Suho summoned his shortswords and stabbed a skeleton between the ribs. “I think I’ve met the boss of this dungeon before. It’s a demonic spirit; he uses illusion spells to trap you and drain your powers. This entire dungeon is probably cloaked in a bunch of illusions—” he broke off to slash another skeleton apart, “Including these guys. Your guild members are here, they’re just hidden from sight right now.”

Haein wondered where and how Suho might have encountered this dungeon in the future timeline. At the very least, if he was still here now, he must have found a way to defeat the boss at the time. Haein trusted her son’s judgement. “How do we find where the boss is hiding?” If the skeletons were only figments of perception altering magic, and her guild members were also trapped by magic, then the solution laid in defeating the spellcaster who was responsible.

“He’ll come out on his own, if we destroy the mirages which are supplying him with mana,” Suho said, swinging his swordswords at empty air. The fabric of reality ripped open, displaying a glimpse of someone’s personal illusion. “I’ll deal with the mirages, while you stay here and keep the boss busy when he appears. He might look like anything, because he’ll use an illusion to make himself stronger.”

“Huh? Suho, wait—” Haein stalled, still grasping the details.

A black mask with a crow beak shimmered into existence in Suho’s hand. “Hold on, I’ll be right back,” Suho disappeared into the illusionary fabric, like pulling a curtain back and stepping behind it. The curtain fell back into place, leaving behind no trace of her son.

Haein swore to herself, and refocused her attention on battling the skeleton horde. There was nothing left to do except have faith that Suho would be alright. As Haein slowly made progress down the beach and closer to the shipwreck, the power she sensed from within the skeletons began to wane.

‘No! Curse you, you abomination! Both of the primordial essences in the body of a human—!’ the disembodied voice from earlier rang out, sounding far away, before becoming clearer, ‘I’ll just have to deal with you humans myself!’

All of the skeletons on the beach trembled and shook, before being dragged by an invisible force towards the shipwreck, coalescing together into a singular concentration of mana. The shipwreck exploded, a massive skeletal figure with four arms emerging from the epicenter and crawling towards the shore. Haein steeled her gaze, pooling her energy in the tip of her blade.

“Come here and try it,” she challenged, ready to confront the boss head-on.

The boss struck first, aiming two punches at the spot where Haein was standing. Haein jumped out of the way, just as black sand flew everywhere from the impact. Landing in a crouch on the boss’ arm, Haein raced up the skeletal limb and towards the core of the giant skeleton. From the pulses of mana she could sense coming from within its body, the skull was merely an empty front for the demonic spirit to form facial expressions with, and the real soul was suspended within the rib cage, where the heart should be in a human.

Haein aimed her charged attack at the center of the boss’s sternum, and was about to plunge her sword into its soul, when Suho came darting out of a blip in the air, reaching out just in time to stop Haein from finishing the deed.

“Mom, wait!” Suho yelped, parrying her sword with his own weapon, “Don’t do it—”

“What, why not?” Haein halted her skill attack, confused.

“I have an idea,” Suho explained quickly, “Demonic spirits like this one specialize in summoning gates and manipulating dimensional rifts.” He turned to face the giant skeleton, “I was going to have Javier here open a gate back to the future where I’m from.”

The skeleton boss—Javier, apparently—growled, an eerie light flashing in its eye sockets, “How do you know my name? And—how is your soul the color that it is? Black… and white… Impossible! Simply impossible—and for a human, at that!”

“Like I said, I’m from the future,” Suho replied, seemingly understanding the reference to the colors of his soul, but not bothering to elucidate.

Haein hadn’t processed the fact earlier, when Javier had spoken directly into her mind, but she realized how unnatural it was to hear a magical beast converse in her language, and fluently at that. “You can speak Korean?” she probed, somewhat intrigued.

Javier harrumphed, and the light in his eye sockets flared. “All denizens of chaos have the capacity to learn your human tongues, it’s just because of this infernal—” Abruptly, the demonic spirit stopped speaking, the glow of his soul flickering like a broken lightbulb. As if nothing was amiss, Javier started ranting again, “Besides, a gate that can traverse time? That’s lunacy!”

Haein promptly forgot what she was wondering about, and blinked rapidly, refocusing her attention on the subject of time travel.

“Are you saying you can’t do it?” Suho baited the demonic spirit, and then shrugged with feigned indifference, “Okay, I guess I’ll just let my mom do her thing—” Haein understood what Suho wanted her to do, and moved to thrust the point of her sword into the giant skeleton’s sternum.

“Wait! Wait, I can do it!” Javier shrieked for mercy, and Haein paused her strike, waiting for elaboration. Javier huffed, and launched into a convoluted explanation, “Normally, linear time travel should be impossible, without the right kind of power, at least. But in your case…” The demonic spirit peered into Suho’s eyes, musing, “Mmm, yes, I can certainly work with this. There’s traces of the dimension you came from on your soul, which I can use to affix the gate’s destination to a place beyond where I would normally be able to reach with my abilities. It’s similar to knowing the coordinates of a ship’s last known location from the black box.” Javier sniffed arrogantly, “Of course, this is only possible because I’m—”

Suho, having grown bored of Javier’s rambles, rolled his eyes. “Okay yeah, whatever.” Eager to return home, he prompted, “So you’ll do it?”

Javier crossed his eye sockets to assess the sword being pointed at his soul. The demonic spirit surrendered, “I will, as soon as you allow me to move my body again.”

Satisfied, Haein slid down the skeletal limb and back onto the beach, before turning and giving Suho a hand down as well. Releasing a haggard sigh, Javier raised his four arms and began to draw insignias in the air, gathering power and forming a swirling black gate in the surf. Haein and Suho stood before the dimensional rift, which had the power to take Suho back to his original world.

Melancholy curled in Haein’s chest at the idea of bidding farewell to Suho. It felt like they had only just been reunited, meeting in the middle between their clashing timelines, and yet Suho already needed to leave. But she knew that this departure was inevitable. Her eyes felt damp with unshed tears, as she told her son, “Goodbye, Suho. I’m glad I got to meet you here.”

Suho took a step closer to the swirling gate, and offered her a placating grin. “Don’t look so sad, Mom. You’ll definitely see me again, you know.” He raised his eyebrows, cheekily insinuating the fateful encounter waiting in her near future.

Haein swallowed, and agreed, “Yes, you’re right.” Mother and son would surely be reunited one day, just not in the way one might expect. “Okay, Suho. You’d better take good care of yourself, while I’m not with you, and make sure to be on your best behavior.” A tender smile appeared on her features, and she promised her son, “I’ll come and find you soon.”

“I got it, Mom. I’ll be waiting.” With one last wave over his shoulder, Suho passed through the gate and traveled back to his own timeline. The swirling dimensional rift closed behind him, depleting the last of the magic Javier poured into it with the jump through space and time.

An indignant shriek pierced the air, as Javier cursed vehemently, “That little abomination—he tricked me!” Opening the gate drained all of the spirit’s mana, causing his soul to flicker and pulse, before dissolving within the massive skeleton like a candle burning out at last. Without a spirit to possess the vessel, the skeletal husk crumbled into the sea, and the layers of illusion cast on the beach dissipated.

The members of the Hunters Guild opened their eyes to the present scene: a giant pile of bones in the water, and Haein, standing alone in the surf. A quake shook the dungeon, signalling that the boss had been defeated and that the gate was closing.

“Hunter Cha… did you defeat the boss all by yourself?” Jongin blinked, his glasses askew.

“I had a little bit of help,” Haein replied enigmatically.

Jongin readjusted his glasses, and pressed, “From who?”

“From the wacko with the crow mask, of course!” Gina butted in, whipping her head around, as if she could catch a glimpse of the aforementioned wacko still lurking in the dungeon somewhere.

Kihoon nodded his head. “I also saw a person wearing a crow mask…”

The rest of the raid team chimed in with their own accounts of the mysterious helper wearing a crow mask. Haein hid a private smile, and told all of her guild members a mild distortion of the truth. After all, she didn’t want to spoil the eventual surprise for when she announced that she was having a son.