When he opened his eyes again, he saw a railing.
A railing? Joo-young shot up from the bench.
A bench? It was a bench in front of a cliff.
Joo-young had returned to the body of a man in his mid-fifties. His mind went blank. Had the whole thing been a dream? No, it hadn't. It definitely hadn't been a dream. Beyond the waves of jumbled thoughts, one small memory bobbed up awkwardly like a buoy.
“You can only go back for twelve hours. Don’t forget that.”
It was the strange man’s hoarse voice. He thought he vaguely remembered hearing something like that. His mistake had been dismissing the strange man’s explanations about the so-called “user manual” as nonsense and not listening carefully. Joo-young dropped heavily back onto the bench. The pendant was still clutched in his hand, but one of the five green gems had lost its glow. There was no doubt about it: he had spent twelve hours at one of the five time points registered in the pendant. After carefully slipping the pendant into his inner jacket pocket, Joo-young stood up and turned his back on the cliff in front of him. Because this time, he wasn’t leaving empty-handed.
In a tiny fifth-floor studio with no elevator—a three-million-won deposit and 300,000-won rent—where the lights stayed on late into the night, Joo-young agonized over how to use this opportunity. An opportunity, of course, to bring his ruined life back to life. Wasn’t the star-shaped pendant clutched in the hand that had been about to come and go with nothing proof that someone had clearly intended to give him such an opportunity?
In the middle of a desk that was spacious enough to be messy sat a glass of makgeolli, a bowl of kimchi stew, and a blank sheet of paper, surrounded by every manner of clutter as if being guarded by them.
Joo-young stared hard at the sheet, where he had written notes such as “Four time points remaining” and “Only twelve hours for a return to the past,” then added another: “Present-day time does not change.” After returning from more than thirty years in the past that afternoon, he had checked the date and time and discovered that there was no difference before and after going back.
Joo-young was reaching for his glass of makgeolli when a good idea seemed to occur to him. He added “stocks” to the note, then froze. He had considered it a great idea up until “If I buy stocks in the past that’ll skyrocket later…” But then his self-loathing stopped his pen with the thought, “The guy who lost everything he had in the stock market and even considered jumping to his death wants to try stocks again?” Besides, he had no idea when the four past time points he could return to were—presumably the points he had registered—and it was strangely impossible to remember them at all. No matter which point he went to, there was no way he would have a lump sum to invest in stocks. And he couldn’t get a bank loan within twelve hours, nor would borrowing money from anyone be easy. He was about to scratch out the two characters of “stocks” when another desperate cry stopped his pen.
“But stocks are the only path to a life-changing turnaround~!”
In the end, Joo-young finished the note by drawing two question marks next to “stocks,” then picked up his glass of makgeolli.
“Ahh~”
The taste of the bootleg makgeolli he had drunk that afternoon—or, strictly speaking, had gone back more than thirty years to drink that afternoon—came vividly back to him. Joo-young marveled anew as he looked at the star-shaped pendant sitting in the corner of the desk.
“It’s definitely an opportunity given to me! An opportunity to fix the things that went wrong and off course in the past and repair my ruined life… Wait, but if I change the past, can I really guarantee one hundred percent that this reality will change?”
Joo-young had picked up a fair amount of knowledge about things like that. He remembered there was also a theory that if the me living in this reality went back to the past and created some kind of change, it would only produce a new future altered by that change, while this original reality would remain unchanged.
If that were the case, and no matter what he did in the past he returned to through the pendant, this ruined reality—where he was living alone after practically being kicked out of his home—didn’t change, then the star-shaped pendant would be nothing at all, opportunity or no opportunity.
At the time of day when sunlight reached deepest through the window of the north-facing studio, Joo-young sat on the edge of the bed dressed in a suit. Naturally, his clothes in reality had absolutely nothing to do with what he wore when he returned to the past. Even so, he had gone out of his way to dress formally because he wanted to approach this with the right attitude. This was an opportunity that might change his life. He thought he needed the attitude of someone taking part in a ritual to seek blessings, devoting himself to it with the same sincerity as a blessing ritual or memorial rite.
For that reason, a plate of yakgwa and a plate of peanuts had been placed between two candles at the head of the bed. Since this was his first time performing such a ritual, he couldn’t think of any particular procedures that might be required. He abandoned the idea of bowing to the pendant, lay straight on the bed, and reverently placed the pendant he held in both hands over his navel.
“I don’t know the time points registered in the pendant, so I have no way of knowing which past I’ll return to. But during this ‘time rewind,’ I absolutely have to test one thing: whether changes made in the past can alter this reality.”
Thinking that, Joo-young pressed firmly on one of the pendant’s green gems. As expected, he squeezed his eyes shut just as firmly.
See the sky about to rain~ A Neil Young song.
In the room where Neil Young’s song played:
Broken clouds and rain~ Two middle-aged men sat in the room where Neil Young’s song played.
Whistle blowin’ through my brain~ Ah! It was that night, etched in his mind with razor-sharp clarity.