time diplomat | kim taehyung ✔

| What Am I Doing? What Do I Want? |

Ear piercing sounds and strong winds hit the agents as Yeonjun screamed, causing Astra to laugh even at a situation like that. This was a weird experience—the time hole had never glitched that bad before.

Astra tried to push her legs in the direction of the blowing harsh wind so that it doesn't hit her face directly. She glanced over to her watch—embedded with all the emergency communication devices that counted down on the years they were passing through.

2031 . . . 

2030 . . .

2029 . . .

2028 . . .

2027 . . .

2026.

As the four digits flashed on her watch, she got it off her wrist, pressing hard on a button on her specialized belt, and waited until the tunnel opened up a black hole right under them. Falling through the long path of darkness, Yeonjun crossed his arms and legs, his bangs flying up and exposing his forehead. "How long are we gonna fall for?!"

Thud!

"Oh, shit!" Astra cursed as she directly fell into a dumpster, bouncing off the black garbage bags. She slowly crawled out, falling onto the hard ground, her nose tingling. "Yeonjun?"

"Yeah, here!" She looked around, trying to find out where his squeaky voice was resounding from. Finally, after a hot minute, she looked up to see the boy tangled up on a clothing line—perfect 50 feet off the ground. "Boy, what're you doing there?!"

"Enjoying the view. Now, do you have any plans on helping me out, miss?"

Astra stood up but she was a little too late to notice an old man on the streets pick her watch up and run off. "HEY!" The girl yelled leaving Yeonjun hanging (literally) and chased the man. After a few twists and turns, people started giving off a few weird looks seeing a young girl chase an elderly man but, being more experienced, fast, and younger, Astra caught up with the dude.

"Hey, old hag, you really thought . . . You could run off like that, huh?" She spoke, taking a deep breath in between, and snatched the device away, tightly wrapping it around her left wrist, and growled at the man, walking away.

"Yeonjun?!" She reached the street where her partner was enjoying the view to find no one. A few clothes that were once on the clothing line were on the ground but, he wasn't anywhere. Astra rushed into the building, climbing up the stairs, and reached the terrace but, Yeonjun wasn't there either.

Now, with fear and nervousness slowly climbing up her spine, she roughly pushed her hair back, another hand on her hip, and looked over to the huge city glimmering under the sunlight.

I don't know Seoul.

I don't belong here.

I have to find Taehyung.

Where am I gonna search for him?!

_ _ _ _ _

"Blocked," Taehyung whispered as he finally clicked off of the new profile he found on a friendship app. Her name was Mia and she was the one who sent requests at first but, it turned out to be spam—'funny snuff gone wrong'. He was utterly disappointed—he thought he actually had a decent friend.

Wasn't he planning to tour the city? Wasn't he planning to meet a friend at the hospital?

He ignored the messages and focused on the tenth level of A Dark Vanishing, that brutal Xbox Infinity game that had him wanting to look up cheat codes. His hero, Leo, a level seventeen sorcerer with fire for hair, couldn't advance through this poverty-stricken kingdom without an offering to the princess. So Taehyung walked (well, Leo walked) past all the hawkers trying to sell off their bronze pins and rusty locks and went straight for the pirates. He must've gotten lost in his head on the way to the harbor because Leo stepped on a land mine and he didn't have time to ghost phase through the explosion—Leo's arm flew through a hut's window, his head rocketed into the sky, and his legs burst completely.

His heart pounded all through the loading screen until Leo was suddenly back, good as new. Leo had got it good.

He won't be able to respawn later.

Taehyung was wasting his time . . .

There were two bookcases in his room. The blue bookcase on the bottom held his favorite books that he could never get himself to purge when he did his monthly book donations to the teen health clinic down the block. The white bookcase on top was stacked with books he always planned on reading.

. . . Taehyung grabbed the books as if he'll have time to read them all: he wanted to know how this boy deals with a life that had moved on without him after he was resurrected by a ritual. Most of his books were adorned with sad endings and character loss. He threw those books across the room and even kicked some of his favorites off their shelves because the line between favorites and books that will never be favorites didn't matter anymore.

Taehyung rushed over to his speakers and almost hurled them against the wall, stopping himself at the last second. Books didn't require electricity, but speakers did, and it could all end here. The speakers and piano taunted him, reminding him of all the times he rushed home from school to have as much private time as he could with his music before Dad returned from his managerial shifts at the crafts store. Taehyung would sing, but not too loudly so his neighbors couldn't overhear him.

But, he got lucky and was able to debut with one of the best bands in the world. He wouldn't call it the 'biggest', it was always the 'best'.

He tore down a map from the wall. He has traveled nearly the entire world but, he wanted to do it all again—with the new freedom he acquired—get on a plane to touch down in Egypt to see temples and pyramids, visit the rainforest. Taehyung ripped up the map, letting all the countries and cities and towns fall at his feet.

It was chaos in his heart. What am I doing? What do I want?

It was a lot like when the hero in some blockbuster fantasy film was standing in the rubble of his war-ravaged village, bombed because the villains couldn't find him. Except instead of demolished buildings and disintegrated bricks, there were books open face-first on the floor, their damaged spines poking up, while others were piled on one another. Taehyung couldn't put everything back together or he'll find himself alphabetizing all the books and taping the map back together. (I swear this isn't some excuse to not clean my room.)

He turned off the Xbox Infinity, where Leo has respawned, all limbs together as if he didn't just explode minutes ago. Leo was standing at the start point, idly dangling his staff.

Taehyung had to make a move—and fucked up friendship apps were not the solution. He had to go out by himself and make a new friend.