Continuum

스물 넷

 Taehyung felt a strange sense of déjà vu as he stood there with the others staring at him. Just the day previous, they had been in the same position: looking at him for answers. Answers he had not given them. Now, after all that had happened, he couldn't just brush it off anymore. They had to know. They had to know that Taehyung was not of this world, that they were just reflections of the people that he knew. But how would one explain that without sounding crazy? Their trust in him was hanging by an infinitesimally thin string built on a few words that Taehyung had screamed at Jeongguk the night before.

Well, time to use the best quote to ever grace humankind: Fuck it!

"You won't believe me," he said, biting his lip. "No matter what you've heard before, you probably won't believe me. Hell, I don't know if I can believe me and this is literally happening to me. But if you promise to listen, I'll try to tell you everything I know."

They glanced at each other, then looked back at him and nodded.

Taehyung sighed, wondering where to start. "I think I'm from another universe," he blurted out. Subtle. Surprisingly enough, they didn't stare at him like he was crazy; in fact, they seemed almost bored.

"What?" he asked, wondering why they were looking at him.

Yoongi shrugged. He, like the other four that had arrived, had the gold earring in that they all wore. "Not the weirdest thing we've heard this week. Besides, we're not dumb enough to think that you're a totally normal person, at least for this world. You look like us and speak without a foreign accent. Hell, you have my accent. But you don't understand any of our customs, you don't understand us, you seem to know stuff about us that a total stranger shouldn't... shall I continue?"

Taehyung stared at him. Well damn, this was going to be easier than expected.

"Um," he said, biting his lip. "'Kay. So, um, where I come from, a lot of things are really, really, really different."

"How's that?" Hoseok asked.

Oh, where to begin? "For one," Taehyung said. "There, are the men have short hair and the women have long hair."

The six boys listening already seemed confused about the notion of that.

"Why?" Jimin asked.

"Well," Taehyung replied, "why do you guys have long hair and why do the women shave their heads?"

They glanced at each other. "Because that's the way it has always been," Seokjin replied. "I get it. So you're saying there are fundamental differences between your world and ours?"

As Taehyung nodded, Namjoon spoke up.

"Wait, so if there's a difference like that, why do you even speak Japanese? Wouldn't the differences between the worlds be so different that we wouldn't be able to communicate?"

"Uhm," Taehyung started with, scratching at his arm. "Well, for starts, where I come from, the language that we're speaking isn't Japanese. It's Korean."

"But why would we-"

Taehyung cut Jimin off. "This is Korea, Jimin. Not Japan. At least that's the world as I know it. The city that we're in isn't Tokyo, it's Seoul. The people that you call Japanese are Korean." He watched as they began to look alarmed and started whispering to each other. He looked more directly at them. "You guys act weird whenever someone talks about Korea. Why?"

"Because," Seokjin said with dark eyes. "Korea is one of the reasons that we are all going to die soon."

Taehyung sputtered in disbelief, thinking of all the times the boys had talked about the apocalypse. "Wait, what?"