Jimin woke up on the ground.
Which wasn’t that bad, except he didn’t remember how he fell asleep. Neither could he recognize the room he was currently in.
The space was not lit, but he could make out a brick fireplace, a rickety table with two matching stools, blank walls with peeling paint, and a rusty desk with four drawers using the waning sunlight from the windows. A tweed jacket was slung over the back of a chair—not his. An oil canvas stood on the table—not his. A black kettle sat on the mantelpiece—he didn’t even know how to use one of those.
Not his. Not his. Not his. This room was not his and despite all the empty space that was in it, Jimin felt suffocated.
How did he get here? He sat down on of the stools and pursed his lips, thinking. He remembered getting up at Jin’s penthouse. Teasing Jungkook about something. Kissing Taehyung. Flying to the race venue with his team. Hugging them, patting their backs, whispering soft “good luck”s. Seeing their opponents, the gang belonging to that Raziel guy, the one that did unspeakable things to Jinnie and therefore Jimin’s sworn enemy. They arrived at the check-in point and—
Oh. This was it. This was the race.
The second it sank in, a booming voice rang out from… somewhere. There was no loudspeaker in the room as far as Jimin could see. Outside, perhaps?
He made his way dazedly to the window, pushing it open to reveal a sunny street underneath. His room was on the second floor, he gauged, but the building itself seemed to go much taller. Next door was a small, one-story cottage, and further along were what looked like a row of skyscrapers in faded pastel colors.
“All contestants have awakened. It is time for the race to begin,” the booming voice announced. “But before that, we must lay down the rules for this match. As some of you watching in front of the screens may be able to tell, our final race for the tournament shall have a special theme to celebrate our city’s history since the Rebirth eighty years ago.”
From somewhere, Jimin heard cheering. Was it the spectators? Where were the spectators and why could he hear them?
What was the Rebirth?
Jimin realized that he—and most of his team—had a huge disadvantage here. They had no idea how this city came to be. Not even Jin and Hoseok seemed to know much beyond the basics. What happened eighty years ago? Who knew?
Wait.
With a jolt, Jimin’s world snapped into focus.
They had traveled some seventy years into the future.
Jimin himself was living in this world, this city, eighty years ago. There was no Rebirth. With the way news traveled back then, with handheld devices and holographic screens and solar-powered blimps blasting headlines—there was simply no way Jimin could have not heard about the Rebirth (whatever that was).
The Rebirth did not happen. It couldn’t have.
Whoever wrote the history for this city was lying.
Not that Jimin was super surprised, all things considered. This world was a mess. If the whole city could fall under Raziel’s spell, who’s to say a fake historian couldn’t have somehow fabricated a story or two?
