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tragicanimemomhairDecember already…
Jake shoved his keys in his pants pocket and pulled the apartment door shut with a satisfying click. That taken care of, he reached up to rearrange his fluffy warm scarf around his neck. It was chilly enough out that he was glad to have it on, even if he was only going down street a few blocks. Honestly? He didn’t feel much like finding out whether or not he could still get sick by pushing his luck too hard.
It’d already been ten months since he’d wound up in the past and they weren’t any closer to getting home. They weren’t even any closer to figuring out why they’d been sent back or how, so that wasn’t all that surprising. Jake didn’t expect it to be an easy answer. But things were already so different than they were at home, especially with his mom and … all of that moon business. Godhood. Demigodhood. Sheesh.
Well, whatever. He didn’t need to focus on that jumbled up mess today. All Jake needed was to run to the store and pick up a few things. Milk, tea, paper towels … It was nothing that couldn’t wait, but sitting around all day didn’t sit well with him. Going out for just a brief walk would help him feel less restless, so off he went.
Nothing remarkable happened on the way to the corner store. Picking out his few groceries and necessities took just a short time. Jake zoned out in line and didn’t think anything about spending a few minutes waiting for the cashier to get to his items. Absolutely everything was routine and normal until he gathered up his bag in hand and stepped out the door.
That was when he walked right into Yuna.
-
Yuna, for her part, had been trying hard to adjust to the future world she had been in for the last half year. Everything was so different and so much more technologically advanced that it still made her head spin sometimes, to see how much she had to catch up on in just a few short decades.
Her current situation wasn’t helping things along.
Finding out from Skoll over the summer that she was pregnant was nothing compared to the the months that followed. She’d passed out from the overloading shock then - and she had to imagine that, if she could run into her former boyfriend now, he’d do the same.
That was six months ago now. That should have meant that she would be big around now and halfway through things. Instead, nothing had changed. It was a worrying business and time and again Yuna wondered if something was going wrong. But she’d had half a year to get things figured out, and she’d latched onto something. No matter what she did or how many days passed, her body stayed the same like some sort of reverse Groundhog Day scenario. Paper cuts and small scrapes vanished overnight as if they had never happened. Just to try it out, Yuna tried cutting her hair. That stuck when nothing else did, but it was only an inch or so, and the trim wasn’t a bad change. Hair would grow.
The way she figured it, until she managed to get back to the 90s where she belonged, she wasn’t going to show. Which was just fine by her, honestly. Not ideal but not as terrible as it could have been. She had time to work out her plans and sort through her feelings.
She missed Skoll. Her heart ached so badly some nights thinking about what would happen if she woke back up at home. The Christmastime decor flooding every shop and street corner wasn’t doing much to appease the hurt. And she still hadn’t gone to seek out their son either. Maybe that would help the hollow feeling inside of her, but Yuna didn’t know if it would help him. It might. It might not.
Maybe she was just afraid to seek him out. Even if she weren’t, she didn’t know where to start. Put up a poster asking for anyone named Noah to contact her? Hope the right one saw it and called in to, what? A mother who from his perspective had already died?
Somehow that felt awfully cold.
Yuna kept her day to day as normal as she could. She might still find him. It was a nice, hopeful thought. One she thought of often, especially walking down a chilly winter street. She could almost imagine bumping into someone she recognized as being half Skoll who would recognize her in return. She liked to think he’d have Skoll’s eyes, at least. They really were soulful.
Her groceries were heavy in hand and weighed her down, slowing her pace to a trudge. She’d found an apartment at last, but it had only been a few days since she’d moved in. Yuna wasn’t used to the way home yet.
With her head down to avoid the chill wind from blinding her, Yuna didn’t even see the other store door open. She certainly didn’t have time to see the man who slipped through to the street before he was on top of her. Down she went, landing flat on her butt with her bags dropped and splitting everywhere, to the tune of the stranger’s “Shit! Oh shit, shit.”
-
“Shit! Oh shit, shit… “
Jake took a knee immediately. He tried to round up the fruits and other things that were still rolling away from the woman’s split bags with a wide sweep of his hand to keep them from being trampled to mush. The produce saved, he turned his attention to the poor wincing lady on the sidewalk in front of him.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he said. He offered her his arm to help her up. “Are you alright?”
“Ow,” she said. She looked familiar, but Jake couldn’t quite place her face. It nagged at the back of his mind, but he didn’t have time to try and figure it out. She must live around here or something. Maybe they’d passed by one another before, but now wasn’t the time to fret over that. Whether he’d knocked over a neighbor or a complete stranger, he still had to help set things right.
“Shit,” he repeated. It seemed like the only thing he was good at saying. “I’m so sorry, I’ll get it.”
He offered her his hand and she stood up shakily. As she turned to dusting herself off and checking herself out, Jake scurried to rebag her groceries. Only one bag was split too badly to reuse, but he figured that was still okay. If he unzipped his hoodie and tucked his groceries inside - which he did - he could use his bag to carry her things. And her other bag had broken a handle, but it could still be lugged on a hip.
“Here.” He offered the handled bag and she took it. “I’m really sorry.”
The lady laughed and shook her head. Her long side pony fluttered in the chilly air. “So you’ve said. I believe you. It was an accident, so don’t worry so much about it.”
Jake didn’t want to worry about it, but it had still been his fault. Taking a little responsibility wouldn’t hurt. And he’d been bothered about being a restless, useless lump at home anyway… He hefted the strapless bag to his side and readjusted his scarf so he could speak more easily. “I can help you get this back to your place, if you want.”
She hesitated. It took a second for Jake to figure out why.
“Oh, hey,” he added, raising a hand defensively. “Uh, I’m not tryin’ to … “ A strange guy asking to get into someone’s home? He hadn’t thought of that before, but maybe he looked suspicious.
That made her laugh outright. She shook her head again, but she looked much happier somehow.
“That’s not the problem,” she promised earnestly. “I can get turned around pretty easily if I’m not careful, this place is way confusing.”
“Oh… “ Jake shifted his weight. “Are you not from around here?”
“No, no, not like that. I am from here in a way, I guess,” she admitted. “It’s just that things have, mm, changed over the years.” Her choice of words was careful. Precise. He couldn’t have known that of course, but it didn’t hurt to keep the truth guarded at least a little.
“Yeah?” he asked. “How long’s it been since you were in the city?”
“Two decades?” She offered with a wry little grin. It could have been innocent, but for the mischievous glint in her eye. “Give or take.”
“Oh.”
Well, that made sense to Jake. A little too much sense. He could understand that feeling. He nodded with a surety brought on by finding another person in his same circumstance. Falling backward through time with no reason or logic could mess with your sense of direction.
“You too?” He asked it lightly. Kind of a rough conversation topic to get into, and the wind was coming straight at them. But the lady nodded and he thought he could see excitement in her face.
“That’s right!”
Her head bobbed and she gestured down the sidewalk. Jake took both the hint and his load and together the pair took their conversation on the road. The day was cold but clear, and the sidewalks were fine. No danger of further slippage or knockdowns, at least.
They hadn’t made it far before the lady turned to look up at Jake. “I’m Yuna, by the way.”
“Jake,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”
It wasn’t a bad introduction. He knew his grandmother’s name had been Yuna, but he couldn’t quite connect further. He had never met her. This was a young woman, not like the forty-something in the pictures his father had, and besides. Lots of people were named Yuna.
Yuna, on the other hand, couldn’t help staring just a little. It was nice of the guy to help her out. It had been an unfortunate accident, their crashing into each other, but she couldn’t really blame him for walking around with his head down when she’d done the same thing. She was a little peeved with herself for it, but no changing it now.
But the name Jake… She didn’t recognize it or anything, but she knew it was western. Like Noah.
It could be a coincidence. She knew that. Yuna couldn’t expect that they knew each other based on their both having western names. But the spark of recognition had already passed through her. And she’d noticed his immediate reaction to her brief non-explanation.
It wasn’t a stretch to think he’d have met maybe someone else from the future. Sangjoon had left quite the impression. Yuna knew there were others in that position. She also knew that there were grandchildren, which was not a thought she liked to dwell on. Knowing that, when she was still pregnant with her first (only?) child? That was just a little too disconcerting.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Yuna told the young man. She paused slightly to consider her options, then laughed. “Circumstance and all.”
He laughed nervously and dipped his head enough that Yuna could see his ears turn red. Yuna couldn’t help it. His worry was easing her out of her nervousness effortlessly.
“So sorry,” she apologized.
Jake shook his head. “Nah, ‘s okay. Guess I kinda had that coming.”
They rounded a corner and Yuna paused a few moments to look at the rows of shops and buildings in either direction. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember if her turn was two or three blocks from here. But it wasn’t this turn, so when the walk sign lit up, she stepped onto the crosswalk and Jake followed.
Yuna chewed the inside of her lip and looked ahead, carefully weighing out the words in her head before speaking them aloud. This had to be done right. But it still had to be done, so she took a breath and tried.
“So, Jake … “ She tried to keep her gaze level and voice light and calm. “You’re from the future as well, aren’t you?”
The way he ducked his head answered the question better than his words might have. He’d been called right out. Yuna was a little pleased that her suspicions were correct, but that was only half the battle.
“I’m sorry to be so forward with it,” Yuna continued. And she was, sort of. There was a lot more she wanted to know, too and perhaps it was a conversation that would have been better with more privacy. But they had time, and the streets weren’t crowded at all. “I’ve met some others like that over the summer. On Jeju,” she remembered to add.
Jake didn’t seem too bothered by her directness. He looked confused for a moment, but the mention of Jeju cleared the look from his face immediately. “... Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I’ve been stuck back here since spring. I’ve already caught up with my parents, way before they really got together. Kinda nuts.”
He shrugged and readjusted the bag on his hip. “Who’d you run into anyway?”
“Wellll… “
Careful wording. She glanced up at Jake and began slowly. “I found out that I have a son with my former boyfriend. But that was only after I met the son that he has… will have, with his new girlfriend.”
“Oh, shit.” The man’s eyes went wide. Yuna appreciated the show of shock, somewhere inside her mind it was vindication. Knowing that anyone else, someone completely unrelated to the events, would be just as blown away made her feel better about fainting from it.
“I had a similar line of thought then too,” she assured him. It wasn’t exactly the truth in the strictest sense, but certainly the sentiment had been close. Or at least close enough for this conversation. She didn’t really need to talk about freaking out on Skoll and Sangjoon. “But it’s really alright. Or at least, it will be. I’ve had a little time to get used to the idea now.”
Yuna felt a sudden compulsion to keep going. Dump all her feelings to a stranger. It might be cathartic, in a weird way. It might be sort of helpful, too…
“I should try to find our - my son, but maybe I’m still too scared to meet him in person. It isn’t that I don’t want to meet him, but … “
“But it’s way beyond weird?” Jake’s nose wrinkled but his grin still shone easily. He didn’t seem bothered by her hesitating. If anything, he looked as though he understood. “Nah, I get it. I was here for months before I saw my dad at all. He’s my age right now, it’s crazy.”
So he did get it! Yuna should have known. He was in such a similar position, after all. “That’s how it is with me. But I really don’t want to upset him. Is it … well, were you bothered by your dad having zero clue who you were as a person?”
Jake shrugged. “Honestly, I pretty much expected that, so it didn’t bother me? ‘Course he won’t know me yet. But, I mean, this friend of mine - “ He hesitated, and Yuna wondered how good a friend this person was. “She was an only child all her life, right? As long as I’ve known her. But after we’d been here awhile, suddenly these other kids appeared and they were from a future where she was the oldest of four. That was a shocker.”
Quite the difference. Yuna went silent, taking the news in and trying not to reel. “More children?”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. He adjusted his milk carton with his free hand and changed hips for her grocery bag. “Just, boom! There they were. They knew her, but she doesn’t really know them, right? She didn’t grow up with them. So even we’re gettin’ a taste of that.”
To think, something like that could happen! It made her head spin and her heart swell. It couldn’t happen to her. It wouldn’t. But the idea of a big family wasn’t so far away or out of reach. She knew her family was growing. So maybe... just maybe …
No, she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair. What she should do, and what she wanted to be doing instead were two very different things. Yuna thought about his words and tried to concentrate on a choice few. She chewed her lip again and studied the cracks in the sidewalk for a long moment before speaking again.
“Can I ask you something?” She shouldn’t be asking this of him or of anyone else, but her son must be a little bit like this. If he knew she were here, Noah might be having some of the same doubts and expectations as Jake. The thought that her own son might not even know she’s in the future comes to Yuna but she casts it aside. Too much of a downer to focus on and besides, she knew he was here somewhere. “No pressure!”
“Sure thing.” Jake didn’t have to think about it. Why should he? Being stuck in the wrong time sucked sometimes. He’d learned that real quick. Anything he could do to help out someone who was having a rough go of it with this time travel junk was the least he could do, now that he was actually (scarily) feeling settled. He’d really lucked out with his family being so … well, good about the whole ordeal. “What is it?”
Yuna could have changed the subject, asked anything else. There was a lot to ask, talking to someone from two lifetimes ahead of her. Wars. Lotteries. Big events, like another royal wedding or tragedy. Maybe she could learn how that new book series ended. It was getting sort of popular…
But as afraid as she was that this wouldn’t go well, she was far more afraid of losing the courage to ever try. Act now or lose the chance. Somehow, the idea of “make or break” hit Yuna hard and she blurted it out.
“Do you know a Noah?”
“Uh… “
Jake blinked, hard. “Noah?” That … definitely wasn’t the kind of question he was expecting. It took him a second to shake it off, but something - some cryptic unease remained, keeping the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Some small part of his brain was screaming for recognition and he couldn’t figure out why. Just because that was his dad’s name too? Lots of people were named Noah.
The connection still wasn’t there. He couldn’t make the jump, as he was still thinking that Yuna had moved back into the city after years away and found out about all this crazy time hopping nonsense. Jake couldn’t place her.
Yuna’s fingers squeezed into tight fists. She hadn’t realized her hands were so cold until now. She watched the confusion spread over Jake’s expression and tried not to let disappointment show on her face. “It’s fine! Don’t stress out over it or anything if you don’t know him. Like I said, it’s totally fine! Honest.” She hoped the defeat didn’t seep into her falsely bright words and her gaze fell downward.
“No, I mean… Yeah! Yeah, I know a Noah, but...“
Yuna looked up sharply. Her breath caught in her throat. “But?” She hardly dared to ask again, but Jake was already speaking even as he shook his head and shrugged.
“Buuut he’s from this time. Like, the present now. Not the future.” Jake frowned and scratched the back of his neck with his hand. As they had come to another crosswalk, he had time as well to thump his left foot against the sidewalk.
“So he’s - “ She swallowed hard. “He’s supposed to be here?” Yuna couldn’t believe how hard it was to bite back on anxiousness and keep her nerves in check. Her stomach was a thousand butterflies and her chest was tight. The tension almost had her shaking in her boots. “This Noah? Your Noah? In 2018?”
How could she stand this? The excitement level within her was so near to bursting. Keeping the edge out of her voice was impossible. Even she could hear how little restraint her questions had. Jake didn’t seem bothered by the intensity, which Yuna could not get behind. This was way too important to be that unphased!
“Well, yeah.” Jake frowned then as the wheels in his head turned. He could understand the want to meet your missing family member, but … “I haven’t heard about any others from my time… Sorry? I’d remember the name for sure.”
Yuna’s heart hammered in her throat. “Why’s that?”
With a cock of his head and a short laugh, Jake watched the traffic coming in their direction. “That’s easy! It’s my dad’s name.”
Just like that, Yuna felt the world around her go mute. It was like tunnel vision; she couldn’t hear or see anything but the easy grin on Jake’s face. Even her own heart had silenced and frozen in place.
Jake’s dad, Noah. Jake from the future, sometime. Noah from today, 2018.
Her body felt numb. She must have been spacing out, because next thing she knew Jake was repeating her name and looking concerned from halfway across the crosswalk. When had the light flipped to Walk? Yuna stared and blinked dully ahead, trying to catch up her thoughts to the outside world.
This could not be happening. This was insane. No more or less insane than waking up twenty years in the future, but what were the odds?
Yuna could not breathe.
Jake must have rushed back to her side of the street, because he was leaning down to look at her face and check her out. He was frowning and checking her - pupils, probably? She hadn’t hit her head, though. She couldn’t quite voice that, but he didn’t seem to know that.
“Hey,” he was saying. His voice seemed distant even if he was only inches away. “Hey! You okay? Shit, should I contact somebody for you?”
“Your dad?” Yuna’s voice was just as lost and faraway sounding. She was finally able to focus her vision again, blinking at the nearness of the man’s face and studying his eyes once she could hold his gaze. They didn’t seem very much like Skoll’s eyes, but at least he seemed like a good kid.
Her answer made him frown. "Okayyy... " Jake hesitated, then asked. “Whhhy would you want to see my dad though?”
“Because,” Yuna said slowly, licking her dry lips. “I think I’m your grandma.”
Jake shoved his keys in his pants pocket and pulled the apartment door shut with a satisfying click. That taken care of, he reached up to rearrange his fluffy warm scarf around his neck. It was chilly enough out that he was glad to have it on, even if he was only going down street a few blocks. Honestly? He didn’t feel much like finding out whether or not he could still get sick by pushing his luck too hard.
It’d already been ten months since he’d wound up in the past and they weren’t any closer to getting home. They weren’t even any closer to figuring out why they’d been sent back or how, so that wasn’t all that surprising. Jake didn’t expect it to be an easy answer. But things were already so different than they were at home, especially with his mom and … all of that moon business. Godhood. Demigodhood. Sheesh.
Well, whatever. He didn’t need to focus on that jumbled up mess today. All Jake needed was to run to the store and pick up a few things. Milk, tea, paper towels … It was nothing that couldn’t wait, but sitting around all day didn’t sit well with him. Going out for just a brief walk would help him feel less restless, so off he went.
Nothing remarkable happened on the way to the corner store. Picking out his few groceries and necessities took just a short time. Jake zoned out in line and didn’t think anything about spending a few minutes waiting for the cashier to get to his items. Absolutely everything was routine and normal until he gathered up his bag in hand and stepped out the door.
That was when he walked right into Yuna.
-
Yuna, for her part, had been trying hard to adjust to the future world she had been in for the last half year. Everything was so different and so much more technologically advanced that it still made her head spin sometimes, to see how much she had to catch up on in just a few short decades.
Her current situation wasn’t helping things along.
Finding out from Skoll over the summer that she was pregnant was nothing compared to the the months that followed. She’d passed out from the overloading shock then - and she had to imagine that, if she could run into her former boyfriend now, he’d do the same.
That was six months ago now. That should have meant that she would be big around now and halfway through things. Instead, nothing had changed. It was a worrying business and time and again Yuna wondered if something was going wrong. But she’d had half a year to get things figured out, and she’d latched onto something. No matter what she did or how many days passed, her body stayed the same like some sort of reverse Groundhog Day scenario. Paper cuts and small scrapes vanished overnight as if they had never happened. Just to try it out, Yuna tried cutting her hair. That stuck when nothing else did, but it was only an inch or so, and the trim wasn’t a bad change. Hair would grow.
The way she figured it, until she managed to get back to the 90s where she belonged, she wasn’t going to show. Which was just fine by her, honestly. Not ideal but not as terrible as it could have been. She had time to work out her plans and sort through her feelings.
She missed Skoll. Her heart ached so badly some nights thinking about what would happen if she woke back up at home. The Christmastime decor flooding every shop and street corner wasn’t doing much to appease the hurt. And she still hadn’t gone to seek out their son either. Maybe that would help the hollow feeling inside of her, but Yuna didn’t know if it would help him. It might. It might not.
Maybe she was just afraid to seek him out. Even if she weren’t, she didn’t know where to start. Put up a poster asking for anyone named Noah to contact her? Hope the right one saw it and called in to, what? A mother who from his perspective had already died?
Somehow that felt awfully cold.
Yuna kept her day to day as normal as she could. She might still find him. It was a nice, hopeful thought. One she thought of often, especially walking down a chilly winter street. She could almost imagine bumping into someone she recognized as being half Skoll who would recognize her in return. She liked to think he’d have Skoll’s eyes, at least. They really were soulful.
Her groceries were heavy in hand and weighed her down, slowing her pace to a trudge. She’d found an apartment at last, but it had only been a few days since she’d moved in. Yuna wasn’t used to the way home yet.
With her head down to avoid the chill wind from blinding her, Yuna didn’t even see the other store door open. She certainly didn’t have time to see the man who slipped through to the street before he was on top of her. Down she went, landing flat on her butt with her bags dropped and splitting everywhere, to the tune of the stranger’s “Shit! Oh shit, shit.”
-
“Shit! Oh shit, shit… “
Jake took a knee immediately. He tried to round up the fruits and other things that were still rolling away from the woman’s split bags with a wide sweep of his hand to keep them from being trampled to mush. The produce saved, he turned his attention to the poor wincing lady on the sidewalk in front of him.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he said. He offered her his arm to help her up. “Are you alright?”
“Ow,” she said. She looked familiar, but Jake couldn’t quite place her face. It nagged at the back of his mind, but he didn’t have time to try and figure it out. She must live around here or something. Maybe they’d passed by one another before, but now wasn’t the time to fret over that. Whether he’d knocked over a neighbor or a complete stranger, he still had to help set things right.
“Shit,” he repeated. It seemed like the only thing he was good at saying. “I’m so sorry, I’ll get it.”
He offered her his hand and she stood up shakily. As she turned to dusting herself off and checking herself out, Jake scurried to rebag her groceries. Only one bag was split too badly to reuse, but he figured that was still okay. If he unzipped his hoodie and tucked his groceries inside - which he did - he could use his bag to carry her things. And her other bag had broken a handle, but it could still be lugged on a hip.
“Here.” He offered the handled bag and she took it. “I’m really sorry.”
The lady laughed and shook her head. Her long side pony fluttered in the chilly air. “So you’ve said. I believe you. It was an accident, so don’t worry so much about it.”
Jake didn’t want to worry about it, but it had still been his fault. Taking a little responsibility wouldn’t hurt. And he’d been bothered about being a restless, useless lump at home anyway… He hefted the strapless bag to his side and readjusted his scarf so he could speak more easily. “I can help you get this back to your place, if you want.”
She hesitated. It took a second for Jake to figure out why.
“Oh, hey,” he added, raising a hand defensively. “Uh, I’m not tryin’ to … “ A strange guy asking to get into someone’s home? He hadn’t thought of that before, but maybe he looked suspicious.
That made her laugh outright. She shook her head again, but she looked much happier somehow.
“That’s not the problem,” she promised earnestly. “I can get turned around pretty easily if I’m not careful, this place is way confusing.”
“Oh… “ Jake shifted his weight. “Are you not from around here?”
“No, no, not like that. I am from here in a way, I guess,” she admitted. “It’s just that things have, mm, changed over the years.” Her choice of words was careful. Precise. He couldn’t have known that of course, but it didn’t hurt to keep the truth guarded at least a little.
“Yeah?” he asked. “How long’s it been since you were in the city?”
“Two decades?” She offered with a wry little grin. It could have been innocent, but for the mischievous glint in her eye. “Give or take.”
“Oh.”
Well, that made sense to Jake. A little too much sense. He could understand that feeling. He nodded with a surety brought on by finding another person in his same circumstance. Falling backward through time with no reason or logic could mess with your sense of direction.
“You too?” He asked it lightly. Kind of a rough conversation topic to get into, and the wind was coming straight at them. But the lady nodded and he thought he could see excitement in her face.
“That’s right!”
Her head bobbed and she gestured down the sidewalk. Jake took both the hint and his load and together the pair took their conversation on the road. The day was cold but clear, and the sidewalks were fine. No danger of further slippage or knockdowns, at least.
They hadn’t made it far before the lady turned to look up at Jake. “I’m Yuna, by the way.”
“Jake,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”
It wasn’t a bad introduction. He knew his grandmother’s name had been Yuna, but he couldn’t quite connect further. He had never met her. This was a young woman, not like the forty-something in the pictures his father had, and besides. Lots of people were named Yuna.
Yuna, on the other hand, couldn’t help staring just a little. It was nice of the guy to help her out. It had been an unfortunate accident, their crashing into each other, but she couldn’t really blame him for walking around with his head down when she’d done the same thing. She was a little peeved with herself for it, but no changing it now.
But the name Jake… She didn’t recognize it or anything, but she knew it was western. Like Noah.
It could be a coincidence. She knew that. Yuna couldn’t expect that they knew each other based on their both having western names. But the spark of recognition had already passed through her. And she’d noticed his immediate reaction to her brief non-explanation.
It wasn’t a stretch to think he’d have met maybe someone else from the future. Sangjoon had left quite the impression. Yuna knew there were others in that position. She also knew that there were grandchildren, which was not a thought she liked to dwell on. Knowing that, when she was still pregnant with her first (only?) child? That was just a little too disconcerting.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Yuna told the young man. She paused slightly to consider her options, then laughed. “Circumstance and all.”
He laughed nervously and dipped his head enough that Yuna could see his ears turn red. Yuna couldn’t help it. His worry was easing her out of her nervousness effortlessly.
“So sorry,” she apologized.
Jake shook his head. “Nah, ‘s okay. Guess I kinda had that coming.”
They rounded a corner and Yuna paused a few moments to look at the rows of shops and buildings in either direction. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember if her turn was two or three blocks from here. But it wasn’t this turn, so when the walk sign lit up, she stepped onto the crosswalk and Jake followed.
Yuna chewed the inside of her lip and looked ahead, carefully weighing out the words in her head before speaking them aloud. This had to be done right. But it still had to be done, so she took a breath and tried.
“So, Jake … “ She tried to keep her gaze level and voice light and calm. “You’re from the future as well, aren’t you?”
The way he ducked his head answered the question better than his words might have. He’d been called right out. Yuna was a little pleased that her suspicions were correct, but that was only half the battle.
“I’m sorry to be so forward with it,” Yuna continued. And she was, sort of. There was a lot more she wanted to know, too and perhaps it was a conversation that would have been better with more privacy. But they had time, and the streets weren’t crowded at all. “I’ve met some others like that over the summer. On Jeju,” she remembered to add.
Jake didn’t seem too bothered by her directness. He looked confused for a moment, but the mention of Jeju cleared the look from his face immediately. “... Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I’ve been stuck back here since spring. I’ve already caught up with my parents, way before they really got together. Kinda nuts.”
He shrugged and readjusted the bag on his hip. “Who’d you run into anyway?”
“Wellll… “
Careful wording. She glanced up at Jake and began slowly. “I found out that I have a son with my former boyfriend. But that was only after I met the son that he has… will have, with his new girlfriend.”
“Oh, shit.” The man’s eyes went wide. Yuna appreciated the show of shock, somewhere inside her mind it was vindication. Knowing that anyone else, someone completely unrelated to the events, would be just as blown away made her feel better about fainting from it.
“I had a similar line of thought then too,” she assured him. It wasn’t exactly the truth in the strictest sense, but certainly the sentiment had been close. Or at least close enough for this conversation. She didn’t really need to talk about freaking out on Skoll and Sangjoon. “But it’s really alright. Or at least, it will be. I’ve had a little time to get used to the idea now.”
Yuna felt a sudden compulsion to keep going. Dump all her feelings to a stranger. It might be cathartic, in a weird way. It might be sort of helpful, too…
“I should try to find our - my son, but maybe I’m still too scared to meet him in person. It isn’t that I don’t want to meet him, but … “
“But it’s way beyond weird?” Jake’s nose wrinkled but his grin still shone easily. He didn’t seem bothered by her hesitating. If anything, he looked as though he understood. “Nah, I get it. I was here for months before I saw my dad at all. He’s my age right now, it’s crazy.”
So he did get it! Yuna should have known. He was in such a similar position, after all. “That’s how it is with me. But I really don’t want to upset him. Is it … well, were you bothered by your dad having zero clue who you were as a person?”
Jake shrugged. “Honestly, I pretty much expected that, so it didn’t bother me? ‘Course he won’t know me yet. But, I mean, this friend of mine - “ He hesitated, and Yuna wondered how good a friend this person was. “She was an only child all her life, right? As long as I’ve known her. But after we’d been here awhile, suddenly these other kids appeared and they were from a future where she was the oldest of four. That was a shocker.”
Quite the difference. Yuna went silent, taking the news in and trying not to reel. “More children?”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. He adjusted his milk carton with his free hand and changed hips for her grocery bag. “Just, boom! There they were. They knew her, but she doesn’t really know them, right? She didn’t grow up with them. So even we’re gettin’ a taste of that.”
To think, something like that could happen! It made her head spin and her heart swell. It couldn’t happen to her. It wouldn’t. But the idea of a big family wasn’t so far away or out of reach. She knew her family was growing. So maybe... just maybe …
No, she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair. What she should do, and what she wanted to be doing instead were two very different things. Yuna thought about his words and tried to concentrate on a choice few. She chewed her lip again and studied the cracks in the sidewalk for a long moment before speaking again.
“Can I ask you something?” She shouldn’t be asking this of him or of anyone else, but her son must be a little bit like this. If he knew she were here, Noah might be having some of the same doubts and expectations as Jake. The thought that her own son might not even know she’s in the future comes to Yuna but she casts it aside. Too much of a downer to focus on and besides, she knew he was here somewhere. “No pressure!”
“Sure thing.” Jake didn’t have to think about it. Why should he? Being stuck in the wrong time sucked sometimes. He’d learned that real quick. Anything he could do to help out someone who was having a rough go of it with this time travel junk was the least he could do, now that he was actually (scarily) feeling settled. He’d really lucked out with his family being so … well, good about the whole ordeal. “What is it?”
Yuna could have changed the subject, asked anything else. There was a lot to ask, talking to someone from two lifetimes ahead of her. Wars. Lotteries. Big events, like another royal wedding or tragedy. Maybe she could learn how that new book series ended. It was getting sort of popular…
But as afraid as she was that this wouldn’t go well, she was far more afraid of losing the courage to ever try. Act now or lose the chance. Somehow, the idea of “make or break” hit Yuna hard and she blurted it out.
“Do you know a Noah?”
“Uh… “
Jake blinked, hard. “Noah?” That … definitely wasn’t the kind of question he was expecting. It took him a second to shake it off, but something - some cryptic unease remained, keeping the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Some small part of his brain was screaming for recognition and he couldn’t figure out why. Just because that was his dad’s name too? Lots of people were named Noah.
The connection still wasn’t there. He couldn’t make the jump, as he was still thinking that Yuna had moved back into the city after years away and found out about all this crazy time hopping nonsense. Jake couldn’t place her.
Yuna’s fingers squeezed into tight fists. She hadn’t realized her hands were so cold until now. She watched the confusion spread over Jake’s expression and tried not to let disappointment show on her face. “It’s fine! Don’t stress out over it or anything if you don’t know him. Like I said, it’s totally fine! Honest.” She hoped the defeat didn’t seep into her falsely bright words and her gaze fell downward.
“No, I mean… Yeah! Yeah, I know a Noah, but...“
Yuna looked up sharply. Her breath caught in her throat. “But?” She hardly dared to ask again, but Jake was already speaking even as he shook his head and shrugged.
“Buuut he’s from this time. Like, the present now. Not the future.” Jake frowned and scratched the back of his neck with his hand. As they had come to another crosswalk, he had time as well to thump his left foot against the sidewalk.
“So he’s - “ She swallowed hard. “He’s supposed to be here?” Yuna couldn’t believe how hard it was to bite back on anxiousness and keep her nerves in check. Her stomach was a thousand butterflies and her chest was tight. The tension almost had her shaking in her boots. “This Noah? Your Noah? In 2018?”
How could she stand this? The excitement level within her was so near to bursting. Keeping the edge out of her voice was impossible. Even she could hear how little restraint her questions had. Jake didn’t seem bothered by the intensity, which Yuna could not get behind. This was way too important to be that unphased!
“Well, yeah.” Jake frowned then as the wheels in his head turned. He could understand the want to meet your missing family member, but … “I haven’t heard about any others from my time… Sorry? I’d remember the name for sure.”
Yuna’s heart hammered in her throat. “Why’s that?”
With a cock of his head and a short laugh, Jake watched the traffic coming in their direction. “That’s easy! It’s my dad’s name.”
Just like that, Yuna felt the world around her go mute. It was like tunnel vision; she couldn’t hear or see anything but the easy grin on Jake’s face. Even her own heart had silenced and frozen in place.
Jake’s dad, Noah. Jake from the future, sometime. Noah from today, 2018.
Her body felt numb. She must have been spacing out, because next thing she knew Jake was repeating her name and looking concerned from halfway across the crosswalk. When had the light flipped to Walk? Yuna stared and blinked dully ahead, trying to catch up her thoughts to the outside world.
This could not be happening. This was insane. No more or less insane than waking up twenty years in the future, but what were the odds?
Yuna could not breathe.
Jake must have rushed back to her side of the street, because he was leaning down to look at her face and check her out. He was frowning and checking her - pupils, probably? She hadn’t hit her head, though. She couldn’t quite voice that, but he didn’t seem to know that.
“Hey,” he was saying. His voice seemed distant even if he was only inches away. “Hey! You okay? Shit, should I contact somebody for you?”
“Your dad?” Yuna’s voice was just as lost and faraway sounding. She was finally able to focus her vision again, blinking at the nearness of the man’s face and studying his eyes once she could hold his gaze. They didn’t seem very much like Skoll’s eyes, but at least he seemed like a good kid.
Her answer made him frown. "Okayyy... " Jake hesitated, then asked. “Whhhy would you want to see my dad though?”
“Because,” Yuna said slowly, licking her dry lips. “I think I’m your grandma.”
MEANWHILE, JAKE
Date: 2018-12-25 03:03 am (UTC)