Archive of Our Own

“I love. I have loved. I will love.”

― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

[10]

When he first meets Sung Hanbin, Zhang Hao is nineteen years old.

And Hanbin looks at him like he knows everything about him.

Zhang Hao doesn’t even notice him at first, he’s too focused on the water he needs for his ramen bubbling over in his electric kettle, debating whether it’s possible to die of sodium overdose before next week’s math exam. 

The soft popping sound that signals someone’s arrival barely registers over the hiss of boiling water. And if he does hear it, he thinks nothing of it at all. 

It isn’t until he turns to grab a bowl that he freezes, mid-motion, eyes locking on the figure standing by the window.

For a long moment, he just stares.

The kettle slips from his hands in surprise, he makes no move to stop it from clattering to the floor with a splash, his heart beating panicked in his chest at the sight of a stranger standing in the middle of his dorm room, just there, by the window, as if he belongs there.

Hot water soaks into his socks, but he barely feels it because he is too busy looking at him . 

He’s young, maybe in his twenties, dressed in what can only be described as a some sort of leather cowboy outfit, with tight black leather pants, an absurd number of belts with silver belt buckles, and a black jacket with fringe and rhinestones. 

The strange cowboy’s eyes go wide at the sight of Zhang Hao's hot water spreading across the floor. 

“Sorry!” he says, moving past Zhang Hao to where Zhang Hao keeps his towels, as if he already knows, as if he’s been here before, before crouching down to clean up the mess, “I didn’t mean to scare you! I thought you heard me arrive!”

Zhang Hao stays completely still as the strange cowboy carefully dries up his floor.  

Zhang Hao’s first thought is that this is clearly some strange kink thing.

That, or a ghost.

Or maybe a combination of the two… a kinky cowboy ghost? 

“What are you doing?” 

“Uhhh… cleaning up,” the cowboy says, his voice lilting up at the end with a questioning tone, as he straightens back up to look Zhang Hao in the eye. 

Well, yes, Zhang Hao supposes that was true, but that doesn’t answer any of his other questions, like what this man is doing here, how he got in, whether or not he is a ghost, and what he’s wearing. 

“Zhang Hao?” the cowboy says, waving a hand in front of his face. “Are you okay?”

Oh great, the ghost knows his name. 

There’s so many questions Zhang Hao wants to ask this stranger, but the first words that come out of his mouth are, “Why are you a cowboy?” 

“Ohhh! Yeah, about that… uh….” the stranger smiles, bright and casual, like they’ve met before. Like they’re old friends, and not just a poor, innocent college student currently being haunted by a ghost cowboy. The ghost cowboy’s Mandarin is awkward and heavily accented, and he speaks slowly, doing his best to pronounce each word as he says, “Sorry! You know I can’t tell you about things that haven’t happened yet.” 

Zhang Hao does not respond. 

He shifts his weight slightly, eyes flicking to the umbrella stand near his desk. 

There’s a foldable metal bat wedged in there somewhere, behind the rice cooker. 

If he can edge toward it—“Your hair shorter than last time I saw you, it’s cute,” the ghost cowboy keeps talking, undeterred by the silence, reaching out to brush his fingers against Zhang Hao’s forehead. 

Zhang Hao jerks back before the ghost cowboy can touch him.

For a second the ghost cowboy looks hurt, his big brown eyes looking soft and sad, “Is this—Are you still mad at me about what happened at the club?”

He hesitates, and in his silence, the cowboy rushes to continue. Zhang Hao watches as he takes a step back, running a hand through his hair. 

“Shit okay, but future me and you talked it out, and look, I’m sorry but I—” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Zhang Hao cuts him off before he can go any further.

The ghost cowboys pauses, a look of confusion on his face now as he says, “What?” 

“Look, I don’t know who you are, or if you are some sort of kinky ghost cowboy, or a stalker, or—

“Wait, shit,” the ghost cowboy mutters, “Is this the first time for you?” 

“The first time a man dressed like a leather clad ghost cowboy has broken into my dorm room?” Zhang Hao questions. “Yes, correct.”

“Ohh I—I’m not usually a cowboy, it’s just, I mean it was either this or a tennis player,” he rambles. “And I thought—look, never mind. Uh… hi?” 

The ghost cowboy bows his head a little in greeting, before moving to take a step closer to Zhang Hao, a warm and friendly smile on his face, but Zhang Hao’s had enough of this cryptic ghost nonsense for one day. 

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Shit, sorry, look, Zhang Hao, I swear, I’m not here to hurt you,” the ghost cowboy says quickly, raising both hands. “In the future, we’re friends.”

Zhang Hao scoffs, “That is exactly what someone who’s about to hurt me would say.”

“Okay fair, that sounds bad, but,” the guy says with a nervous laugh, “You don’t have to believe anything. Just can you keep this a secret? Please?”

“What is ‘ this ’?”

The man opens his mouth like he’s about to explain, maybe finally tell Zhang Hao, but instead, his body stutters, and then Zhang Hao watches as like a glitch in a bad video file, the edges of him blur, and he flickers a little, pulses.

And then with another small popping sound, he’s gone.

[5]

Zhang Hao had almost convinced himself the ghost wasn’t real.

It had been two weeks since the leather cowboy incident, and in that time, no other strange men had materialized in his dorm room, no one had shimmered in or out of existence anywhere near him, though he had taken to sleeping with his bat under his bed, just in case. 

Not that a baseball bat would really be able to do much damage to a ghost. 

So when he sees the man again, right there on the lawn behind the university library, Zhang Hao’s first thought is ‘ Ah. Shit. The ghost is back ’.

His second is that he didn’t realize the ghost had free range of the campus. After all, weren’t ghosts normally tied back to one building or location? 

His third thought is that at least he’s not a cowboy this time, in fact he’s dressed relatively normally. Zhang Hao could have almost mistaken him for another university student, were it not for the fact that he just watched the ghost appear out of thin air. 

It’s still the same man undoubtedly, Zhang Hao would recognize his face anywhere, even from that one brief meeting, it was as if the ghost's face was seared into his mind. 

And even if he hadn’t been able to recognize him, the way the ghost waves at him in a bright and cheery manner, calling out, “Ah! Zhang Hao!” would be a dead giveaway. 

Zhang Hao doesn’t panic this time. 

He just crosses his arms and dryly says, “Oh, it’s you again.”

“Of course it is,” the ghost says with a grin. “Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know,” Zhang Hao shrugs. “Maybe some other ghost had decided to haunt me while you were away?” 

“Oh, uhhh… I’m not a ghost,” the man says hesitantly. 

“Then what are you?”

“I’m Hanbin.” 

He says it so simply.

As if that should answer every one of Zhang Hao’s questions. 

Zhang Hao waits. “That’s your name?”

“Yes.”

“Just Hanbin?”

“Ahhhh,” he hesitates, clearly trying to find the right word. 

His Mandarin is somehow worse this time than last time, even just the way he pronounces Zhang Hao’s name is a little off , last time he’d enunciated things better. It’s choppy, and the tones are off, the grammar faltering. It’s like someone shook up his vocabulary and gave him only half the pieces back.

“I can’t tell, you know.” 

“I don’t actually know anything,” Zhang Hao mutters, “Because you won’t tell me anything.” 

“I’m not—” Hanbin starts, and then stops, and lets out a long, suffering sigh, before he says, “There are rules!”

“Rules of being a ghost?” Zhang Hao asks skeptically. 

“I’m not a ghost!” 

“Okay, then, if you’re not a ghost, what are you?”

“Time traveler!”

Zhang Hao laughs. Loudly. So loud that he’s sure other people coming out of the library have turned to look their way, but Zhang Hao hardly cares how insane he looks, he’s too caught off guard by the absurdity of it all. 

“So you’re a ghost that doesn’t even realize he’s a ghost!”

“I’m not a ghost!” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Zhang Hao replies, “You appear out of nowhere, speak in riddles, and vanish without warning, that sounds very ghost-like to me.”

“I have a medical condition,” Hanbin insists, his voice raising a little as he tries to defend himself, his face flushing a little pink. It’s cute, in a way. “That makes me time travel, I just can’t control when or where I go.”

“A medical condition called being dead?”

“No! I’m alive! Here!” Hanbin reaches out, grabbing onto Zhang Hao’s face and bringing it up to his chest. Zhang Hao feels a flutter beneath his palm, the beat of a very much alive heart. 

Now that he’s thinking about it, Hanbin doesn’t really look dead. He looks far too tangible and clearly can interact with the real world, after all he’d cleaned up the boiling water Zhang Hao had spilled last time. 

But… Maybe ghosts could mimic a beating heart.

Maybe it’s all a trick…

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Zhang Hao says, pulling his hand away from Hanbin’s chest. 

Hanbin groans, exasperated, “I don’t get it. You’ve never been this stubborn before.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for inconveniencing you in your haunting duties,” Zhang Hao snips at him. “Maybe you could go find someone more trusting to haunt.” 

“I’m not haunting you! I told you! I travel in time,” Hanbin says.

But Zhang Hao just waves him off. 

He’s had enough of this absurd ghost.

He has exams to worry about, he doesn’t have time to deal with being haunted by someone that may not even realize they’re dead. 

He turns, ready to continue his journey into the library.

Only to be stopped, as Hanbin reaches out to grab a hold of his sleeve, stopping him. 

“It’s—wait. Wait, I can explain more. I—” just like before, he glitches.

One second Hanbin is standing there, mid-sentence, holding onto Zhang Hao and earnestly trying to explain himself. 

And then in the next second, there’s nothing but air.

“Ah,” Zhang Hao sighs in annoyance as he looks at the space where Hanbin once was, “What an annoying ghost. He can’t even haunt people properly.”

[9]

Zhang Hao is pretty sure Hanbin is a ghost.

Like, at least eighty percent sure.

It’s the most logical explanation, not that any of this was particularly logical, but Hanbin had appeared twice now, seemingly out of nowhere, and speaking patchy Mandarin.

And yet…

The idea of being haunted by a Korean ghost in broad daylight, here of all places, on the grounds of Fujian Normal University, feels far-fetched, to say the least. 

So upon returning back to his dorm after their second meeting, Zhang Hao does what any good academic should do when faced with an absurd situation, he opens a new browser tab and types the words, "Can people really time travel?" , into his search bar. 

The answers he receives are inconclusive to say the least, and he should be focusing on studying for his midterms, but somehow, in no time at all, he finds himself deep in conspiracy forums and physics articles instead.

He spends hours reading up on wormholes, quantum loops, parallels universes, and conspiracy theories. There were some that believed that time travel was already possible and suppressed by governments, while others said it wasn’t possible yet, but would be soon. He found several conflicting reports about people who claimed to be from the year 3036, and one blog that insisted the Titanic didn’t sink from hitting an iceberg but from ‘the sheer weight of time travelers trying to witness it’.

The closest thing he’d come to anything sort of like Hanbin was some grainy and possibly fake security camera footage of people mysteriously ‘slipping through time’, and even that didn’t look quite like how he’d seen Hanbin disappear. 

In a way, it feels ridiculous.

Hanbin being a ghost feels like the far more logical option, and yet… Maybe Hanbin isn’t a ghost? 

And if he really is a time traveler, then what then? 

The question had stumped Zhang Hao, long enough that he’d filled a notebook with questions that he would ask Hanbin the next time he appeared. Some simple ones, some more complicated, some things that Hanbin would only be able to know if he really is a time traveler, and not an occasionally leather clad ghost. 

Which was why the next time Hanbin appeared in the middle of his dorm with a pop , instead of freaking out, Zhang Hao does what any logical person would do. He grabs the coil of nylon rope that he’d kept hidden from under his bed, and then ties Hanbin to his desk chair in under thirty seconds. 

The knot’s not perfect, he watched the tutorial at 1.25x speed and only sort of got the basics down, but it’s enough to hold.

Hanbin yelps, more startled than afraid, but remains mostly pliant as Zhang Hao ties him up, which is a relief, he hadn’t really made a plan of what to do if Hanbin decided to fight back, or use any sort of ghostly powers to attack him. 

“Wait—wait, what are you—what is this? Is this—Zhang Hao! Are you kidnapping me?”

Kidnapping isn’t quite the word, more like ghost- napping or time traveler -napping, depending on whether Hanbin is telling the truth or not. 

“Alright, Mr. Not-Ghost,” Zhang Hao says, settling down on his bed across from his hostage, “I’ve got questions. So sit down.”

“I... am sitting down,” Hanbin points out, doing his best to gesture to the chair that he’s tied to. 

“Ah… right… well… Stay sitting.” 

Hanbin smiles a little at that, his cheeks faintly flushed, and clearly trying not to laugh.

He’s annoyingly pretty for a ghost, or liar, or whatever he is. 

“First question: Are you really a time traveler?”

“Yes,” Hanbin answers easily.

“Then where’s your time machine?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Don’t have one?” Zhang Hao echoes. “You know most time travelers, have a time machine, or a some sort of tech that enable them to travel—”

“I think I told you before,” Hanbin cuts him off, “I have a medical condition.”

“A medical condition that makes you time travel ,” Zhang Hao replies skeptically. “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

Hanbin shrugs, tied to the chair and absurdly relaxed. “You’re the one who tied me up instead of calling a priest. I’d say you’re pretty open-minded.”

Hanbin shifts in the ropes, testing them a little, before he sighs and explains, “It’s called Chrono-Displacement Disorder , ” he says the word in English, “I can write it down, I don’t know how to say it in Mandarin, but it’s a real thing, you can look it up.” 

“Chrono…” he repeats slowly, trying to sound out the word in English. His English is not great, but it’s better than his non-existent knowledge of Korean, and since Hanbin doesn’t know the words in Mandarin, it’s the best chance he’s got. Once he’s finished writing down what he thinks is the correct combination of letters, he looks up at Hanbin and says, “You better not have just made that up.”  

“I didn’t! I swear!” Hanbin insists.

“Do you have proof?”

“I… There’s a doctor,” Hanbin says, a little quickly. “In Europe, in Austria, I think…”

“You think?”

“It might be Switzerland.”

“You don’t even know what country your made up medical condition is from? You know, Hanbin, for a ghost you’re not a very good liar,” Zhang Hao tells him. 

“There’s a doctor,” Hanbin continues in a rush. “She studies people like me, there’s a research paper, you can look it up, it’s not easy to find, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can find it.” 

Zhang Hao hums, still a little skeptical, but he notes down Austria or maybe Switzerland anyways. “A ghost doctor?” 

“I’m not a—” Hanbin starts, then cuts himself off with a sigh. “Look, just trust me, okay? I’m a time traveler, just with no time machine. I disappear from my present when things get—” he wiggles his fingers behind his back vaguely, “—intense, and then I reappear in the past. ”

“Define ‘intense.’”

“Stress, panic, sometimes joy or excitement. The doctors have said that it's all tied to my heart rate or something, I don’t know exactly, I’m not a doctor,” Hanbin tells him. “All I know is that when my heart rate gets too high, I go poof off somewhere back in time. I can’t control where I go, or when I go, or for how long I stay, but I… I usually don’t stay for too long. Once my heart rate goes back down, I get pulled back to my present.”  

“So what you’re telling me is your body throws tantrums every time you have too many feelings and sends you back in time?”

“I mean, if you wanna be rude about it,” Hanbin says, scrunching his nose, “Yeah?”

 “So what happened this time?”

“What do you mean?”

“What sent you here?” Zhang Hao asks, looking up. “You said it has to be some sort of big emotion. So what was it? Did someone break your heart?”

Hanbin looks away, suddenly flustered, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Fine,” Zhang Hao says, rolling his eyes, “Next question, then, why me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you always appear in front of me?” Zhang Hao says. “And don’t lie! The first time you showed up, you acted like we’d met before. So don’t say it’s random, clearly you know me.”

Hanbin is quiet for a second too long.

Long enough that Zhang Hao half believes he’ll give some sort of non-answer, blame the rules of time traveling or something for why he can’t answer the question, but eventually a sad sort of look settles across Hanbin’s face, and he mutters, “It’s not always you.”

Zhang Hao stills, caught off guard by the sincerity in Hanbin’s voice.

“Who else then?” 

“My mom, my little sister, my dance teacher, my best friend, anyone who really made an impact on present me. I don’t get to control where I go, or who I visit each time, but… it’s usually someone I trust,” Hanbin tells him. “Someone I feel safe with. My body just kind of… takes me to them for protection, until it feels safe to go back again.”

It’s absurd, the idea that this stranger would feel safe with him, when Zhang Hao doesn’t even know him, and yet, there’s something frightfully honest about Hanbin’s voice. Something that gives Zhang Hao pause. 

If he is to take Hanbin’s word at face value, that would mean that some time in the future he knows the ‘present’ Hanbin, and that they’re what? Friends? 

“I don’t know you,” Zhang Hao tells him. 

Hanbin’s smile softens, something almost fond behind his eyes, as he replies, “…Not yet.”

Zhang Hao looks away from him, unable to handle the eye contact, unable to handle the sincere way that Hanbin looks at him, so soft and fond, as if he really does know Zhang Hao.

Instead of saying any of that, he scans his notebook for another question to ask, “What year are you from?”

“I can’t answer that,” Hanbin tells him. “That’s the rules of time travel. I can’t let you know anything about the future.” 

“Well, can you at least tell me how old you are?” 

Hanbin seems to hesitate, as if trying to see if he can get away with answering that without breaking whatever made up rules he is adhering to, eventually he says, “Twenty-three.” 

“So you’re older than me?” 

“I guess so,” Hanbin smirks a little at that, as if pleased by that realization.

“Can I call you Hanbin-ge, then?” 

“Only if you untie me.”

“Are you going to disappear on me the second I do?”

“Maybe,” Hanbin replies with a sheepish smile, “But, to be fair, I could disappear while still tied up, and then you’d be without a chair.” 

“You’re going to steal my chair!?”

“It would be an involuntary theft!” Hanbin insists. “Anything physically attached to me goes with me. So technically, if I vanished right now, your chair and your rope would vanish too, and I’d reappear in my present, all tied up like this..”

Zhang Hao clicks his tongue in annoyance, he’s not sure whether Hanbin is telling the truth or not, but he’d rather not lose his chair to find out, so against his better judgement, he moves forward to untie the ropes holding Hanbin down.

Throughout it, Hanbin stays perfectly still, not making any sudden movements, and Zhang Hao watches him warily as once free, Hanbin just stands up rubbing at his wrists a little where the rope had been wrapped around them, possibly a bit too tight. 

But, he doesn't disappear. 

“So… if I held your hand, would I go with you to the future?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, “It only works on non-living things. Anything alive, like people, or plants, or animals, they all get left behind.”

“Huh,” Zhang Hao says, as he processes Hanbin’s words, trying to make sense of whether he does believe Hanbin or not. 

After a long moment of silence, Hanbin gently asks, “Any more questions?” 

“Just one.”

“What is it?” 

“How many times have we met?”

“Ahh… Hm…” Hanbin’s mouth opens, then closes. “A lot? Too many times to count.”

“If you had to guess a number?”

“Hundreds,” Hanbin says. “In my present, I see you almost every day.”

Zhang Hao considers that, considers the idea of a future version of himself, one who sees this boy, this time traveler, nearly every day, who must be used to him by now, and maybe even… is fond of him. Enough so that Hanbin feels safe with him. 

It seems unfathomable. 

Hanbin is a stranger to him.

A stranger that’s appeared out of thin air three times now.

A stranger that looks at him like he’d give Zhang Hao the world if he could.

But still, a stranger all the same. 

“How many more times are we going to meet like this before we meet properly?”

“I thought you only had one more question,” Hanbin teases, smiling softly. 

“That first one didn’t count,” Zhang Hao tells him, “Since you didn’t answer the last one properly.”

“Fair,” Hanbin says, giving in all too easily. He seems to be enjoying this whole being questioned thing. He glances at Zhang Hao for a long moment, rather thoughtfully, before he asks, “You said this is the third time, right?”

Zhang Hao nods.

Hanbin starts counting on his fingers, his expression a mix of concentration and amusement, as he seems to try and run the math right.  Finally, he says, “At least ten more times. Maybe more?”

“You don’t sound very confident.” 

“I could ask future you the next time I see him and then come back and tell you, but,” he adds, a little ruefully, “The next time you see me won’t necessarily be the next time I see you. Things don’t always happen in order for me.”

“That sounds incredibly inconvenient.”

Hanbin smiles at him, sweetly and a little knowingly, and says, “You get used to it.”

[2] 

He looks up Chrono-Displacement Disorder one night, days after Hanbin’s last visit, when he definitely should be sleeping.  

To his surprise, there is an article. 

An actual medical journal entry, densely clinical and a bit hard to get through, but real. 

The symptoms match what Hanbin told him: the sudden vanishing, the ties to stress and emotion, and most importantly, the lack of control. 

If he had come upon this article at random in his studies, he’s sure he never would have believed what this doctor was saying, the whole thing sounds so incredibly far-fetched, but he’s seen Hanbin disappear right in front of his own eyes. 

And while ghosts still felt more realistic than a time traveler , Zhang Hao bookmarks the article all the same. 

For a long time, Hanbin didn't return.

Life goes.

Exams come and go.

The seasons shift. 

There’s talk of internships, and next semester’s class placements. 

But nothing happens. 

No stressed stranger appears in his life needing safety . 

It goes on long enough that Zhang Hao half wonders if future Hanbin was mistaken about how many more times they would meet. 

And then, one afternoon in early spring, Hanbin shows up again.

He’s standing in the courtyard outside Zhang Hao’s new dorm building, blinking up at the trees as if confused by their shape. His clothes are strange, some kind of fitted gray school uniform with blue piping, a silver patch on the lapel that reads “BOYS PLANET.” He looks like some mix between a high school student and a celebrity, his face shining a little under the lamplights. 

He continues looking around, lost and unfocused, until his eyes land on Zhang Hao, though instead of lighting up like normal, his brow furrows a little, as if he’s trying to place who he is looking at. 

“Hanbin?” Zhang Hao prompts gently. 

At the sound of his name, Hanbin nods, over eagerly, before replying, “Zhang Hao?” in a slightly questioning tone. 

“Yes, that’s me,” Zhang Hao replies, slowly, “Do you not remember me? I suppose it’s been a while, but—” 

“모르겠어요,” Hanbin says, cutting him off. 

“Ahh…” 

He doesn’t speak Korean, doesn’t have the slightest clue what it is that Hanbin is saying to him, but there’s clear confusion in Hanbin’s expression. And… Now that Zhang Hao is really looking at him, there’s something different about this version of Hanbin. He looks younger, and less sure of himself, than any of the versions of Hanbin that Zhang Hao has met before. 

Hanbin seems to realize Zhang Hao doesn’t understand Korean, he frowns a little, clearly struggling, before settling on speaking heavily accented English, “ I… not… know… what you say? ” 

“I gathered,” Zhang Hao replies, though Hanbin still doesn’t understand him, and just continues looking at Zhang Hao in confusion. 

He pulls out his phone, opens a translation app, and types quickly, ‘we don’t speak the same language yet,’ then he presses the button to translate it into Korean, before turning the phone around to face Hanbin. 

He waits as Hanbin reads the phone, before nodding a little, then taking the phone from Zhang Hao to type the word ‘ sorry’ and send it through the translator. 

Zhang Hao types again, ‘I know that you come from the future. What year are you from now? ’ 

Hanbin reads the words this time, but just shakes his head. 

Right, of course not, time travel rules and all. 

Instead of answering his question, Hanbin just types, ‘ Where are we? ’

‘Fujian Normal University.’ Zhang Hao types in reply, before adding, ‘ You always show up here’ . 

Hanbin smiles faintly at that, before typing back, ‘I always show up where you are’ . 

There’s something too earnest about it, there’s no posturing, just plain truth. This version of Hanbin may not have as many words as other versions of him have had, but he’s no less honest, and he still looks at Zhang Hao with those same wide eyes, like he’s hung the moon and stars.

And Zhang Hao doesn’t know what to do with that. 

‘Do you remember the last time you were here?’ Zhang Hao types, before sliding the phone over to Hanbin. 

Hanbin tilts his head slightly. He seems to be thinking, then shrugs and answers in Korean. Zhang Hao quickly pulls his phone back out and taps the translation button to read Hanbin’s message, ‘The last time for me was not the last time for you. Times jump around. The order is unpredictable. Last time I met you, you spoke Korean, not very well but more than now’ .

Zhang Hao snorts at that.

He could say the same thing about Hanbin’s Mandarin. He does say as much, typing the words out for Hanbin to see.

  ‘My Mandarin teacher says I’m doing a good job’ Hanbin types back. 

Zhang Hao just shakes his head, ‘Your teacher is lying to you’ .

That makes Hanbin laugh a little, before he replies, ‘You’re my Mandarin teacher. ’ 

Zhang Hao frowns, looking over Hanbin once more, his eyes dwelling on the uniform Hanbin is wearing. Presumably, this version of Hanbin knows some version of him in the future, but Zhang Hao’s in University, he imagines he’ll be long out of high school by time he meets Hanbin. 

His brow furrows as he recalls what Hanbin had said before, the people he’d visited in the past, his mother and sister, his best friend and dance teacher… Zhang Hao had assumed they were close in age, assumed that Hanbin was older than him as all the other versions of Hanbin he’d met so far seemed older, but perhaps he and Hanbin were closer in age than he’d originally suspected.

Or, perhaps in Hanbin’s present he is much older than Hanbin. 

The idea strikes Zhang Hao so suddenly, he takes the phone typing the words quickly before he can think twice about them and types ‘I know you can’t tell me about the future, but can you answer one really important question for me? ’ 

Hanbin glances at the phone screen, taking a moment to read Zhang Hao’s message before he types back ‘Maybe’ . 

‘I’m not your dad or anything like that, right ?’

It takes Hanbin a second to read the message, but when he finishes reading it he nearly doubles over in laughter. The sound of his laughter is so loud that other students passing by turn and look in their direction. A part of Zhang Hao is dying from the embarrassment of it all, and another part of him is struck by how beautiful Hanbin looks laughing, happiness suits him. 

Zhang Hao watches Hanbin laugh with his whole face, eyes crinkled and cheeks full of puffed with amusement, and thinks how he can’t wait to earn more laughs like this from Hanbin in the future. 

This shouldn’t feel so easy, considering the fact that they can barely understand each other, and Hanbin’s from a different time, but somehow this Hanbin makes all of the tension and uncertainty that Zhang Hao was feeling about the time traveler ease from his chest.
And yet.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Zhang Hao mutters.

Hanbin tilts his head, not quite understanding him, but then his fingers move across the screen of Zhang Hao’s phone to type something else out. 

They’re mid-way through doing so when it happens. 

A small pop fills the air and Hanbin looks up to meet his eyes just for one second before he’s gone, disappearing just as he has so many times before, but for the first time, Zhang Hao’s chest aches in a strange way in his absence.

A sort of hopefulness, a longing for Hanbin to have been able to stay just a little longer. 

In his absence the air feels too cold, and his surroundings too quiet. 

Hanbin had gone, taking all the sound with him, all the life with him, but not just that, he’d also taken—”Ah! Shit! My phone!”

He searches the ground for a minute, hoping that maybe Hanbin would have dropped the phone in surprise as he started to disappear, and that Zhang Hao had just missed spotting it in the grass. But his search turns up empty, as he recalls what Hanbin had said before, anything non-living attached to him when he disappears goes with him.

Including, apparently, Zhang Hao’s phone. 

[12]

“You stole my phone!”

“I didn’t steal it!”

“So my phone just time traveled all on its own!”

Zhang Hao hadn’t even bothered looking up when he heard the pop of Hanbin’s arrival. He’s still a little mad at him about the phone thing even though he knows it wasn’t purposeful, but replacing his phone has been a pain. His family isn’t the most well off, a new phone is a big expense, and telling his mom that he’d lost his phone while out had just turned into her worrying that some had mugged him, and it wasn’t like he could tell her that a time traveler accidentally took his phone in the future.

Even if he could, he’s sure she wouldn’t believe him.

He hardly believed it himself. 

“I didn’t steal it,” Hanbin repeats, his voice dropping a bit quieter now, as if realizing that they are very much in public. Hanbin is already flustered, glancing around like someone’s about to call campus security. 

Honestly, Zhang Hao’s a little surprised that nobody other than him has ever seemed to notice Hanbin’s arrival. He knows other people can see Hanbin, the judgmental looks they’re getting now for raising their voices in public prove as much, but nobody ever seems to notice him appearing. 

Though they’re certainly looking now. Zhang Hao can’t blame them, Hanbin looks like quite the sight. He’s dressed in some sort of flashy outfit this time, a black suit with gems all around, and his hair is a frightful shade of pink. 

“It was an accident! If I’m holding something when I travel, it goes with me! Or—wait—have I told you that already?” He frowns, lips pursing as he thinks. “I think I did? I should have. It’s hard to keep track. Time is all—” he waves vaguely, “—blurry spaghetti.”

“You did,” Zhang Hao confirms with a sigh.

At that, Hanbin relaxes a little, but Zhang Hao doesn’t let up. 

“Now give it back.”

“Oh,” Hanbin says, looking a bit sheepish, “I don’t have it now though.”

“Of course you don’t,” Zhang Hao mutters. 

He supposed Hanbin’s current outfit doesn’t seem to have pockets, and he couldn’t have expected Hanbin to just carry his phone around with him everywhere just in case he disappeared back to Zhang Hao’s past again, but still, Zhang Hao can’t help but feel annoyed. 

“You know, keeping something you accidentally borrowed is basically stealing,” Zhang Hao tells him.

“No, I mean… I don’t have it now! That was, like, two years ago for me, but I did give it back!” Hanbin’s face brightens up as he insists. “The next time I saw you after that time, I gave it back, and you were very happy to get it back, but it wasn’t me-me. It was past-me, or future-me from your point of view.” He groans, dragging both hands down his face. “Sorry, things don’t go in order, it’s hard to explain, but I promise you I did give it back.” 

“Do you have any idea how long it is from now in my time to when I get my phone back?”

“No,” Hanbin says, shaking his head, “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, rules of time travel and all that.”

Zhang Hao sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Of course not…”

“Sorry,” Hanbin says.

Zhang Hao has half the mind to tell Hanbin to just go, to fuck off until he poofs back to his own timeline, because he is still annoyed about his stolen phone. But the last time Hanbin had visited, he’d seemed younger, and his guard had been down a lot more than the Hanbin that visits Zhang Hao most often. After he’d left, Zhang Hao had been able to put a few things together.

It was mostly a guess really, but an educated one, he is a scientist after all.

And while he’d originally thought Hanbin had been a high school student last time he’d visited, the name embroidered on his blazer hadn’t been the name of a school, but rather a tv show.

An idol survival show, specifically.

Technically, his search for Boys Planet had turned out to be a dead end, but Girls Planet had come up instead, and it wasn’t hard to connect the dots, especially when he considered the cowboy outfit Hanbin had shown up wearing before, and now the pink hair. 

“So,” Zhang Hao says ever so casually, like he’s asked about something he should already know, not probing Hanbin for more information, “Are you coming from a concert or a photoshoot this time?”

“Concert,” Hanbin answers without hesitation, clearly eager to accept the change in topic without question, “I actually need to go back and get on stage, but I—“ Hanbin cuts himself off, running a hand through his hair. “It’s almost funny, but I think I disappeared because you’re mad at me in my time, and then I came back here and you’re mad at me here too. There’s no escaping your wrath.” 

“Well, if I’m upset with you, then you probably deserve it.”

Hanbin cracks a nervous grin at that, “You’re probably right.”

Zhang Hao watches him for a long moment, and this time, he lets the silence stretch.

The thought hadn’t really occurred to him before. 

That he might be part of that world too.

He’d figured that Hanbin was an idol, that had been easy enough to put together, but that didn’t explain how he and Zhang Hao were connected. Hanbin had laughed last time when Zhang Hao had asked if they were related, so clearly what wasn’t the connection, but… What could he and some kpop idol have in common?

The last time Hanbin had come, he had mentioned Zhang Hao was his Mandarin teacher, but he wasn’t sure if that was meant to be in some sort of official context, like he had been hired by Hanbin’s company to teach him, or more likely that once future him realized Hanbin would be traveling to his past, he had decided to teach Hanbin enough for them to be able to communicate without any future phone theft. 

Zhang Hao was leaning towards the second.

Though that still left him uncertain how he and Hanbin were connected. 

His only thought is that somehow, it’s connected to music.

Zhang Hao loves music. Not just likes, loves , it’s where he feels most like himself. He busks with his violin on weekends, plays at weddings for extra money. Those hours, however few and far between, are the only ones that make him feel real.

But he’d always told himself it wasn’t realistic.

He couldn’t make a living playing the violin. 

Which is why he’d decided to study geology, it’s why he spent the last year memorizing mineral compositions, making careful notes in dull lectures, going through the motions of a path he never chose for himself. It’s practical. It’s for his parents.

But he looks at Hanbin, flushed from the cold, or maybe the post-stage adrenaline, jittery and smiling, and he can’t help but wonder.

“How do we meet?” he asks Hanbin, ever so casually. 

“You know, I can’t tell you that, Zhang Hao.”

There’s something about Hanbin’s eyes as he says it, all soft and sad, like he knows so much more than Zhang Hao does, and like the weight of all that knowledge is bearing down on him. 

“Tell me one thing about our first meeting,” Zhang Hao urges him, “Just a little thing, and I’ll forgive you for stealing my phone.” 

Hanbin laughs at that, his face crinkling up happily, making whisker dimples on his cheek, but he knows from the way that Hanbin smiles that he’s going to give in, even before he says, “Okay, okay, you win!”

“Make it something good, your forgiveness depends on this,” Zhang Hao reminds him.

Hanbin nods, taking a moment to pause and think deeply, as if trying to remember what their first proper meeting is like, when they meet as two people in the same timeline. 

“When we first meet,” Hanbin says slowly, carefully choosing his words, “We’re surrounded by people and cameras, but I only have eyes for you.” 

People and cameras…

Did that mean Zhang Hao was an idol too? Or someone on staff? Were they collaborating for a performance, him with his violin and Hanbin singing along? 

Or is Zhang Hao just another fan in the crowd, hoping to catch the eye of a shining star? 

“When you say cameras—”

“Ah ah ah! You said just one thing!”

“Yes, but I—”

“No cheating!”

“I’m just asking a clarifying question!”

“No clarifying!” 

“But if you don’t tell me how am I supposed to find you?!”

He doesn’t mean to shout. 

The words just come out too loud, and too fast, and maybe there’s a part of him that aches, not just with curiosity, but with a longing to know everything about the future. It’s not fair that Hanbin gets to know so much about him, so much about their future together, and Zhang Hao knows next to nothing.

That he just has to trust that somehow in the future, he and Hanbin will cross paths, and that somehow, that will mean something. 

That Hanbin will mean something to him, and him to Hanbin. 

“You’ll find me,” Hanbin reassures him.

“But how will—” the rest of his sentence dies in his throat, because before he can finish it, Hanbin disappears again, popping out of existence, like he was never there at all.

[7] 

He tells himself that it’s not because of Hanbin that he’s drinking, but he’s felt tense and on edge since the last time Hanbin appeared, and well… There's always been one tried and true solution for getting the tension out of his body, hooking up with some guy from a bar, who he’ll forget about the next morning and never call again. 

Zhang Hao is already three drinks in by the time he finds him, not drunk enough to be sloppy, but loose enough to flirt. 

And he had been flirting.

All night long.

There’s a guy at the bar, he’s older than Zhang Hao, and bold in a way that makes Zhang Hao’s smile linger longer than usual. He’s cocky about it, knows he looks good, and Zhang Hao really wants to see if all of the talk about his ability to satisfy his partners is true or not. 

Zhang Hao has been thinking about going home with him, about how easy it would be to kiss some stranger he’s met in a bar, some stranger that he’ll never talk to again, that’ll never just appear in his life and speak in riddles and unfinished sentences.

That is, until Zhang Hao sees him . 

At first, he thinks it’s a figment of his half-drunk mind, but out of the corner of his eye, standing near the edge of the dance floor, barely moving, his eyes locked onto where Zhang Hao is, Hanbin is there.

He’s not dressed for a night out, not like the others around them. He’s far more casually dressed down, in sneakers and a hoodie, looking instead like he stepped straight out of a dance studio. 

The guys from the bar touches Zhang Hao’s wrist, asking something, but Zhang Hao barely hears it.

“Sorry,” he says, already pulling away. “Something just came up.”

He moves, weaving through the bodies around him, until he’s in front of Hanbin.

“How long have you been here?”

Hanbin’s eyes flick away from him, toward the bar, muttering, “Long enough.”

Zhang Hao follows the glance. 

The guy from before is still there, watching him, waiting for him to come back, but Zhang Hao turns away from him.

Hanbin’s expression is hard to read, it’s flat and a little too still, like he’s upset with Zhang Hao, upset to have found Zhang Hao here. A part of him wonders if it’s because of where they are. Can Hanbin tell that they’re at a gay bar? That Zhang Hao had been about to go home with some stranger, that he’d wanted to spend the night with them, or at least he had until he’d seen Hanbin there. 

Zhang Hao wets his lips a little nervously.

He wonders what the future version of him has told Hanbin. 

If Hanbin knows that part of him. 

If it matters.

If Hanbin’s a part of this too. 

“Why are you here?” Zhang Hao asks.

“I don’t know,” Hanbin tells him, “I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”

Zhang Hao purses his lips together. He’s sure that Hanbin knows that’s not what he’s meant. Hanbin’s told him before that he only time travels when he’s consumed by a big emotion, so clearly something had to have been going on in the future to lead Hanbin to here. 

Maybe something related to them . 

After all, it’s Zhang Hao that Hanbin’s come to visit, not any of the others that he travels to see. 

“How am I supposed to help you feel good enough to leave if you don’t tell me what’s wrong?” 

Hanbin’s expression twists at that, hurt, clearly. 

He wonders if they’re fighting in the future. 

Last time he was here they fought, or nearly did, Hanbin disappeared before they could really get into it, and Zhang Hao had been the one left feeling miserable for weeks. Some of that bubbles back up now, as he shoves his hands into his pockets and lets out an annoyed sigh.

“Hanbin—”

“It’s not important,” Hanbin mutters, bitterly, his eyes cutting back towards the bar. “You should go back to your friend, don’t let me ruin your night.” 

Zhang Hao doesn’t even give whoever may or may not be waiting for him at the bar a second glance.

He just stares at Hanbin for a long moment, before he asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were busy,” Hanbin says, his tone clipped. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your little… thing.”

“My thing ?”

“I don’t know the word,” Hanbin says, waving his hand dismissively, “I’m just saying, it looked like you were having fun, so why don’t you go back there and do whatever, or whoever —”

“Are you serious,” Zhang Hao snaps, angry now that it’s clear why Hanbin is being so snippy. “So I shouldn’t hook up with someone just because you time-zapped into the middle of my night out?”

“You’re free to—”

“Is it because he’s a guy?” Zhang Hao cuts in before Hanbin can finish his sentence.

Hanbin doesn’t say anything, his jaw’s tight, as he pointedly looks away from Zhang Hao, back over his shoulder to where the bar is. 

“Unbelievable,” Zhang Hao scoffs. “You know, maybe future me made a mistake, I don’t need friends who think badly of me just because I prefer the company of men.” 

“That’s not—” Hanbin starts, then stops himself, looking more upset by the second. 

Something stirs in Zhang Hao, anger too. He’s spent so long hiding this part of himself, locking it away, that he doesn’t feel ashamed now when Hanbin looks at him like he’s done something wrong. Just angry.

How dare Hanbin appear in his life, tell him nothing , and still think he has any right to judge Zhang Hao’s choices. 

“I’m not homophobic.”

“Could have fooled me,” Zhang Hao mutters. “Then what is it then? Why are you looking at me like I’ve ruined your day?” 

“I…” Hanbin sighs, “I can’t tell you.” 

Zhang Hao laughs, sharp edge and bitter, it’s always the same excuse with him, “Oh, right. Of course not! Because you’re from the future !”

“Zhang Hao—”

“You get to know everything,” he barrels on. “You get to show up whenever you like, say cryptic things, act like we’re—what? Friends? More than friends? But I don’t get to know anything ! I don’t get to know who you are, or why you’re here, or how any of this works, I just have a stranger showing up in my bedroom, or on the sidewalk, or in the middle of my night out like it’s normal!

“I never said it was normal!” 

“No, you just act like it is! Like I’m supposed to be fine with it! Like I’m supposed to trust you when you won’t tell me anything!”

“I can’t tell you anything!”

“Oh right! Because of the timeline?!” Zhang Hao says, practically shouting now, and probably causing a scene, but he doesn’t even care. Everything that he’s been keeping in is spilling out at once and he can’t stop it, “Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?”

“You think this is easy for me? You think I want this? I don’t choose when I go. I don’t choose where. I just—” Hanbin lets out a shaky breath, his hands trembling at his side, “I just disappear! One second I’m home, or on stage, or in class, and the next I’m here or somewhere else. I don’t even know what year it is, or who I’m going to be with!” 

“I’m not your therapist, Hanbin!” Zhang Hao snaps, “Maybe instead of just appearing in people’s lives, you can learn to control your emotions and—”

“Do you think I haven’t tried that!?” 

“Maybe you should try harder!” 

Hanbin draws back like Zhang Hao had slapped him at that, his face screwing up painfully, but he doesn’t say anything, he just clenches his hands into fists by his sides. 

The noise of the club is loud around them, bass pulsing through the soles of Zhang Hao’s shoes, but the beating of his heart, hurt and loud in his chest, seems to carry over the sound of the music, and his attention is narrowed to the time traveler in front of him.

 “You just keep acting like this is all happening to you and you’re the only one who gets to be confused or overwhelmed,” Zhang Hao tells him, the words continuing to spill out of him, louder and louder as he goes, “Meanwhile, I’m the one whose life keeps getting interrupted, I’m the one getting lied to and stolen from!”

“Are you really still going on about the phone?” 

“You stole it!”

“I didn’t steal it! I accidentally borrowed it!” Hanbin shouts back, “And I returned it to you the next time I saw you!” 

“I’m so glad future me got his phone back, but present me didn’t,” Zhang Hao tells him. “I had to cancel everything, beg for a used one from a cousin, scramble to reinstall apps just to finish my assignments. You know how much you stealing my phone cost me?”

“It’s just a phone!”

“Just a phone !?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Zhang Hao!” Hanbin snaps, suddenly raw. “I can’t control it! I can’t just go get your phone back from the future and give it to this you because who knows when the next version of me will even see the next version of you! Do you get that? Do you even understand what it’s like, not knowing when your body is going to betray you and rip you out of your life and throw you into someone else’s?”

The music blares but Zhang Hao barely hears it. He barely notices the crowd dancing and drinking around them. His eyes are only for Hanbin.

 Hanbin’s breathing hard, eyes glassy, and Zhang Hao isn’t sure if it’s sweat or tears on his cheeks, but Hanbin scrubs it away too quickly and says, “I hate this. I hate not being in control, and I hate fighting with you, and I hate that I can’t tell you everything, but I—”

“If you hate this so much,” Zhang Hao says, voice low and trembling, “if it’s so painful for you, then why not stop showing up?”

“I can’t, ” Hanbin says again, and this time it sounds like a whisper. 

Like a plea. 

Zhang Hao stares at him, his chest heaving.

“You think I don’t want to stay? I do,” Hanbin insists. “Every single time I see you, I wish I could stay longer, but I can’t.”

Zhang Hao’s hands are clenched at his sides, as he says, “Then maybe you shouldn’t come at all.”

“What?” Hanbin blinks, caught off guard. 

“You can’t stay, you can’t control it, you can’t tell me anything—do you hear how insane that sounds? You waltz into my life again and again, you won’t tell me anything, you take things from me—”

“I didn’t mean to take your phone—”

“That’s not the point!” Zhang Hao’s voice cracks on the last word, too loud even for the club. A few people glance over. He lowers it quickly, breathing hard. “You show up and you change things, and then you leave me to deal with the fallout like none of it matters!”

“It matters to me! You matter to me!” 

“You don’t even know me,” Zhang Hao replies, “Not this version of me. You think you do, but I’m not whoever you know in the future. So stop looking at me like you know me better than I know myself.”

Hanbin opens his mouth like he wants to argue. Zhang Hao can feel it on the tip of his own tongue too, a sharp, hot retort, something biting that might make Hanbin ache the way Zhang Hao’s been aching for weeks now, but Hanbin never gets the words out.

His breath hitches, his eyes go a bit wide.

And all he manages to say is, “No—” before he’s gone again. 

The music swells around him, dizzyingly loud, as he stares at the empty space where Hanbin was just a moment before. 

He presses a hand to his face to hide himself away. 

He doesn’t know if it’s angry or sad tears falling down his face.

All he knows is that he can’t stop them now.

Can’t stop himself from crying in the middle of the club, over someone who's gone again. 

[14] 

The next time Hanbin appears, it’s nearly a month later, on a gray Sunday afternoon, and Zhang Hao is hunched over his laptop, half-asleep over notes from his lecture, trying to prepare for an exam that he’s already certain he’s going to ace, but he wants to be extra certain.

He can feel the moment the air shifts, the little faint pop, and the sense of a quiet wrongness in the space behind him, he knows that Hanbin is there.

And yet, he doesn’t turn. 

He doesn’t turn around.

He doesn’t greet him.

The silence drags for nearly a minute before Hanbin says, “Ahhh… the silent treatment.”

“I’m mad at you,” Zhang Hao says, not looking away from his computer. 

“Yeah, I figured,” Hanbin says, letting out a low, humorless chuckle.  “It’s not the last time you’ll be mad at me, either. Remind me again, what are we fighting about this time?”

Zhang Hao turns then, ready to snap at Hanbin, but the words die in his throat as he takes a good look at Hanbin. 

Hanbin looks... older, worn down.

His hair is dyed black again, stark against his skin, falling messily over his brow. His eyes are rimmed with fatigue, the kind of wear that doesn’t come from one bad night of sleep, but many bad nights back to back to back. His clothes are neat, but something about him is rumpled around the edges, like life’s been folding in on him.

He looks like someone who’s been carrying a lot.

Zhang Hao softens, just slightly.

“The last time you came to visit… we had a disagreement about,” Zhang Hao pauses, trying to think of the right words to say. What was the reason they were fighting? It wasn’t really about his stolen phone, nor was it really about who he was seeing at the club? But rather a combination of that and so much more? He’d had a long time to think about it, about why it hurt so much that Hanbin kept secrets from him, that Hanbin came in and out of his life without warning and just expected him to roll with it. In the end… He’d felt more guilty than anything when he’d woken up the next morning. Angry still, but not just at Hanbin, at himself too. In the end he settles on, “Something unimportant.” 

“Sounds about right.” 

“You disappeared in the middle of it.”

“Also sounds about right,” Hanbin says with an amused huff. 

“You think this is funny?” Zhang Hao asks, crossing his arms. 

“No,” Hanbin says, but there’s a crooked twitch to his mouth. “Just familiar. We fight a lot, you and I.”

“Why?”

“I think because we both care too much,” Hanbin says, “But neither of us are particularly good at being cared for.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Zhang Hao tells him. “You told me before your body takes you to me because you feel safe here, why would you feel safe with someone that you constantly fight with?”

“Just because we fight doesn’t mean I don’t lo—” Hanbin pauses, cutting himself off, before correcting himself. “ Care about you.” 

Zhang Hao makes a disbelieving noise. 

“Okay, okay. There was one time,” Hanbin says. He leans against the edge of the desk, nudging Zhang Hao’s pen aside, so that he can sit on top of the desk. “In the future, where we get into this fight—I don’t even remember what it was about, something stupid probably—but it was the day I was supposed to meet your mom.”

“My mom?”

Hanbin nods, before continuing, “She’d come to visit you while you were living in…” Hanbin trails off, clearly not wanting to finish that sentence.

But, Zhang Hao has a good enough idea to guess what that answer is, “Seoul?”

“Yeah,” he confirms, his lips twitching a little, “I guess you already know… Well… Anyway, you were supposed to meet her for dinner, and you were going to bring me with you to meet her, but we argued that morning and I thought for sure you weren’t going to want me to come anymore. But you insisted, like, really insisted, that I still come. You said that even if you were mad at me, you’d regret not having the chance to introduce me to your mom, and by the time we made it to dinner, I couldn’t even remember what we were fighting about. You probably still do, you’re better at holding onto things than I am.” 

Zhang Hao’s brows pull together, suspicious. 

Normally Hanbin does whatever he can to avoid telling Zhang Hao anything about the future, but maybe it’s because this Hanbin is old enough that he no longer cares about the rules.

“We even took a selca in the car, like on the way there to send to your mom,” Hanbin continues, a fond smile on his face, “You looked so cute. Still angry at me, but trying to smile for your mom. I like the photo so much that I printed it out on canvas. A forever memento of one of our fights.”

Zhang Hao can’t help it, he laughs. A short, startled sound spilling out of him “You did not.”

“I did,” Hanbin says, eyes bright with mischief. “You secretly like it. It’s hanging in your room now.”

Zhang Hao shakes his head, still half-laughing. 

The idea is absurd. 

The whole thing is absurd. But…

Something about it sticks.

The future Hanbin describes sounds real, lived-in, and warm in a way that feels far away from now, but not impossible.

And suddenly, that quiet ache opens back up in Zhang Hao’s chest, the laughter fading, as he looks at Hanbin, really looks at him.

At his limp hair, and his tired eyes, and the way he’s watching Zhang Hao, like he’s trying to memorize this version of him, like he misses him already.

“Are we together? In the future?”

Hanbin’s smile falters, he glances down at the ground. 

“Well… not right now, since I’m here in the past,” Hanbin says quietly. 

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Hanbin’s expression flickers, something raw flashing through. He opens his mouth, closes it again, for a moment he looks uncertain. 

“Just tell me the truth.”

Hanbin hesitates, then quietly sighs, before explaining, “It’s complicated.”

“What do you mean complicated?” 

“Right now, we’re together, but…” Hanbin pauses. “We might not be together soon.”

“You’re going to break up with me?”

“No!” Hanbin rushes to reply quickly, though when he speaks again, it’s softer. “We just might not be able to physically be together anymore, and it’s… It’s not something we really have a choice or say in, there’s people bigger than us that make these choices, but… I want to stay with you for as long as I possibly can.” 

There’s a lot Hanbin isn’t telling him, Zhang Hao knows that much.

A lot that Hanbin refuses to tell him. 

But when he looks at this Hanbin, worn down, and saddened at the prospect of not being able to see him as much in the future, he doesn’t feel mad like he had felt the last time he saw Hanbin. Instead, he feels an overwhelming feeling of sadness, and longing for some future he’s yet to even experience. 

“And I suppose you can’t tell me what is pulling us apart,” Zhang Hao asks, “Because of the ‘rules of time travel’ or whatever.” 

Hanbin nods his head, though he looks a little sad to do so. 

“Technically, there’s no official rules,” Hanbin exhales hard, like he’s already had this argument in his head a hundred times. “But I try to be careful with what I say, because of the butterfly effect.”

“What?”

“I… I think the term is from a movie Matthew showed me actually,” Hanbin tells him. “But the idea is that, if I say something wrong here, if I change your mind about something too early, or make you feel something you’re not supposed to feel yet, or—or even if I just give you too much information before you’re ready, I might reappear in a version of the future where everything’s different. Where you hate me, or where we never meet, or where you don’t exist at all.”

Zhang Hao stares at him.

He doesn’t laugh, or scoff, or tell Hanbin he’s being dramatic.

Because Hanbin looks genuinely upset at the idea of it.

And… “You think telling me if we’re together in the future might erase me?” 

“I don’t know for sure,” Hanbin says. “There’s no guidebook for people with my condition, Zhang Hao. I just… appear up in the past sometimes, and have to hope I don’t ruin everything.” 

“Or maybe,” he says, challenging him, “That’s not how it works.”

Hanbin blinks at him, caught off guard. 

“Maybe since all of this has already happened for you—since you’ve already met my future me, however many times, and I’ve apparently let you keep showing up—it doesn’t matter what you say or do now. Maybe there’s nothing you can mess up, because the future’s already been written. Maybe it’s already set. Maybe every action I make from here on out has already been predetermined.”

The idea of it is terrifying, when he says it outloud. 

The idea that nothing he does now matters, that in a way everything he’s done or will do, has already been done by some preexisting version of him. 

That this version of him that’s known this version of Hanbin has always existed, in some version of this universe.

That one day he’ll move to a whole new city, in a whole new country, to follow his passions and not his parents expectations, and that some day there, he will meet a man who can’t control where or when his body takes him. 

Maybe he doesn’t know everything about the future, and maybe that’s a bit terrifying, but… When he looks at Hanbin, really looks at him, he can’t help but think that the future version of him must love this man, even if the present him doesn’t feel the same just yet. 

“I mean,” Zhang Hao adds, “Future me’s already let you meet my mom. And I haven’t kicked you to the curb yet, apparently. That’s got to count for something, right? I must like you a little, right?”

[1] 

Nanping is quieter than he remembers. 

In a way it’s familiar, his mother still keeps the heat too high and cooks too much, his father pretends not to be listening whenever Zhang Hao says anything remotely emotional, they both ask politely when he’s going to bring a nice girl home to meet them and Zhang Hao carefully side steps the question, again.

But at the same time, coming home is like rewinding into a version of himself that no longer fits.

He sits on the back step, jacket zipped to the neck, a mug of hot tea going cold between his palms. 

That morning, over breakfast, he’d told his parents that he wanted to change majors. His father had barely acknowledged his words at all, but his mother had paused mid-bite and said, “If that’s what you want, then okay.” 

Not quite supportive, but not a rejection either.

He knows there’s more that she wants to say, more that she’s not ready to say, and he wants to tell her too, about how he knows that this is the right path. That one day in the future, he’ll be living far away from home, and she’ll come to visit him, and meet the boy that future him probably loves. He wonders if in the future, she knows the secret that he’s spent so many years of his life hiding from her, worried that he might see disappointment in her eyes. 

Zhang Hao exhales, as he watches the steam curl from the mug, like it might carry his thoughts with it.

He wonders if his parents could tell that this was more than just about changing majors. 

That there’s more things he wants than just studying music education.

He wants to leave China and move to South Korea.

He wants to find Hanbin. 

He wants to know what it’s like to be loved by someone, truly and fully, even if that love might not be meant to last forever. 

There’s an audition coming up in Shanghai, a real one, with one of the big companies. He hasn’t told anyone yet, not even his closest friends, and the thought makes his chest tight, but it feels right.

It feels like this is where he’s meant to be. 

He just wishes there was a way he could know for sure.

As if sensing his thoughts, the universe aims to give him an answer, the air ripples around him with a familiar pop, and then something shifts. 

Zhang Hao looks up just in time to meet Hanbin's eyes. 

He’s barefoot, dressed in black sweatpants and a loose white sweatshirt, his hair is longer than usual, dark brown and mussed, he looks a lot younger than last time Zhang Hao had met him. 

But more than that—his eyes are red rimmed like swollen with tears, and his face is blotchy, flushed. He looks wrecked. 

Nothing about him says idol, or adult. 

He looks like a scared kid who ran away from home.

“Hanbin?” Zhang Hao says instinctively, rising to his feet.

Hanbin flinches. 

Makes a small, startled sound, more breath than word, and stares at him like he’s never seen him before, scuttling backwards, away from Zhang Hao, and saying something very fast and Korean, too fast for Zhang Hao to pick up.

“It’s okay,” Zhang Hao says, taking a small step closer, holding both hands up in peace. “You’re okay. You—”

“I don’t understand,” Hanbin cuts in, voice hoarse and broken. He’s speaking in English, hesitant, uncertain English. “Sorry. I don’t—understand…”

Zhang Hao blinks, right, of course, o f course , if this version of Hanbin didn’t recognize him, then surely future Zhang Hao wouldn’t have started teaching him Mandarin yet. 

“I—uh—” Zhang Hao flounders for a second. He’s been studying Korean for months now, memorizing lyrics, grammar drills, and listening to voice notes left by his instructor late at night to fall asleep, but his vocabulary is nowhere near enough for this .

“Jigeum… yeogi… China,” he says haltingly, tapping his chest. “Nanping. Jib. My home.”

Hanbin sways a little on his feet. He doesn’t look reassured in the slightest by anything Zhang Hao had said. If anything, he somehow looks more confused, and tired, and scared, blinking fast, like he's trying not to cry again. 

“Why am I here?” he asks, still in English. “Where is—why—what happened?”

Zhang Hao pulls out his phone, thumbs quickly into the translation app, his hands are shaking a little, as he types ‘ You time travel. You do this often. I think this might be your first time for you. I’m sorry I can’t explain it better.’ 

Then he presses play. 

The application speaks in awkwardly formal Korean, but Hanbin listens, shoulders slowly drawing up toward his ears, eyes going wider.

“No, no,” Hanbin says, shaking his head, hair flopping. “I—I know I time travel. I know that. But why here? Why you?”

Zhang Hao doesn’t know what to say to that.

It’s a question he’s asked himself quite a lot for the last year, since Hanbin started appearing in his life. 

He doesn't know how to explain that he’s been thinking about Hanbin for weeks , that he’s planning to audition in Shanghai just in case he can find a path toward wherever Hanbin is. He doesn’t know how to say that the moment Hanbin appeared, looking like this, something in his chest split open.

It strikes him as he looks at Hanbin that this must be the first time Hanbin has ever come to visit him. He wonders how well they know each other now in Hanbin’s present. If they’re still mostly strangers. If they’ve only just met. 

He types again, fingers moving quickly, typing out what Hanbin told him before, ‘In the future, we are close. Future you said that you feel safe with me.’ 

Hanbin lifts his head slowly when the application finishes reading Zhang Hao’s message out loud. His eyes are glossy, but he looks right at Zhang Hao, searching his face, searching for something, and then finally, he sees it click. A little flicker of something like recognition, “…Zhang Hao?” 

“Yes,” Zhang Hao breathes out, “That’s me.”

[15]

He doesn’t know if he did well. 

He doesn’t know if he made it.

The email could come tomorrow, or not at all.

All he knows is that when he closed his eyes earlier and felt the swell of music beneath his skin, when he imagined a stage that was wider than the one he stood on, lights hotter, the crowd a sea of unknowable faces, something had felt right . 

And afterward, he didn’t think about university or disappointing his parents.

He thought about Hanbin.

About whatever invisible thread is pulling their lives toward and away from each other, again and again.

He wonders if this is how it’s supposed to start. 

If that’s even a thing that exists, with someone who lives backwards, whose future has already been written and experienced by some other version of him.

If this audition doesn’t work out, he’ll find another one. 

And another. 

He’ll keep moving forward, keep making the same decisions some future self has already made. 

Until he meets Hanbin properly.

Until they’re from the same time, standing in the same moment, the way things are meant to go.

“Where are we this time?” Hanbin asks from his spot on Zhang Hao’s hotel bed. 

“Shanghai,” Zhang Hao replies.

He watches Hanbin’s expression shift instead, like he’s a little more cautious now, as he glances out the window at the city lights glittering out there, before he asks, “What are you doing here?” 

How is he supposed to explain this? 

That he's following a breadcrumb trail left behind by versions of Hanbin who haven’t met him yet.

He thinks of the Hanbin who cried in his backyard, who didn’t speak Mandarin, who didn’t even recognize him until the last second. Who looked at him like he was a lifeline just before he vanished.

He thinks about all the things Hanbin won’t say, and all the things Zhang Hao has figured out anyway, by paying attention, by collecting every fleeting moment and trying to stitch them into something whole.

He doesn’t know what happens next. 

But he knows that he wants to find out, and that he’s tired of waiting.

“I’m coming to find you.”

[8]

Zhang Hao doesn’t think about Hanbin every day anymore.

Not because he’s forgotten, he couldn’t, even if he tried, but because life has finally, finally gotten loud enough to drown him out.

He got into the program. He trained in China until they moved him to the Korean branch, and now his days are packed from dawn until deep into the night with vocal lessons, choreo drills, Korean classes, and monthly evaluations. 

It’s exhausting, brutal, and nearly endless, but he loves it.

Sometimes he even feels like he's catching up to the version of himself Hanbin already knew.

And still, there’s a part of him, tucked into the corner of his chest, that keeps waiting for one of the other trainees to be Hanbin. That expects it, that hopes that one day he’ll turn around in practice and there Hanbin will be, grinning and breathless, and it’ll all start to make sense.

But that never happens.

Weeks pass, and then months. 

Long enough that Zhang Hao tells himself to stop looking.

That Hanbin will come to him when the time is right. 

He’s just gotten back to the dorms when it happens.

He’s walking down the hall, rubbing the back of his neck with his towel, mind already on the leftover kimbap he stashed in the fridge, when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone through the frosted glass of the practice room. 

It’s just a glimpse, but Zhang Hao would know the shape of him anywhere.

For a beat, he thinks that maybe this is it.

 Maybe this is the day he finally meets Hanbin properly. The two of them, here and now, in the same timeline at last.

But as he steps into the practice room, he knows that he’s wrong. Hanbin is dressed in something too polished for a trainee, glittering stagewear, makeup smudged under his eyes like he’s just come off a performance, not a hair out of place, and yet he looks like he’s barely holding it together.

Hanbin is standing stock-still by the mirror, looking into his reflection with tired eyes, but he turns at the sound of the practice room door opening. Hanbin turns at the sound, and for a second his expression flickers, like maybe he didn’t expect to see him.

Then he jerks his head away, an upset tilt to his mouth that is familiar to Zhang Hao. It strikes him at once that he knows when the last time that this Hanbin saw him was. It was over a year ago for Zhang Hao, but for Hanbin… The memory is probably still fresh.

“How long were you planning to ignore me?” 

Hanbin lets out a small humorless laugh, “You’re the one that told me not to come around anymore.” 

Zhang Hao’s heart drops into his stomach as he looks at Hanbin, at the clear pain in his expression, reflected back in the mirror, even as Hanbin still refuses to look at him. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Zhang Hao says quietly. “What I said that night.”

Hanbin doesn’t turn, he doesn’t speak. 

“I was upset, and tired, and scared,” Zhang Hao continues, stepping closer to Hanbin. “I know you can’t control it, I do. I get that we’re not perfect, but clearly we care about each other or else none of this would be happening, right?”

Still no reply, but he watches as Hanbin presses his lips together, clearly choosing not to speak. 

“I just… I don’t want to be angry at you, I’m not angry at you, I haven’t been for months, and I don’t blame you for still being upset with me, but…” Zhang Hao sighs softly, “Clearly there’s a reason you’re here this time, something big enough to pull you back to me, even when you’re upset with me.” 

He takes another breath, shaky, but still he doesn’t speak.

“I’m sorry,” Zhang Hao pushes on in response to Hanbin’s silence, “I know I’m not the easiest person to love, but—”

“Loving you is as easy as breathing,” Hanbin says, his voice hoarse, cracking through the quiet, as he cuts Zhang Hao off. 

Zhang Hao’s heart stutters.It’s the first time Hanbin’s said anything like that. The first time he’s acknowledged the thing Zhang Hao’s been circling around for what feels like forever. All those lingering looks, all that soft familiarity Hanbin carries in every version of himself. Zhang Hao suspected it, sure. He’s not blind, and Hanbin is so clearly his type it’s laughable. But hearing it, finally hearing it , is different than just guessing. 

For a moment, all he can do is look at him.

“I was jealous,” Hanbin admits reluctantly. 

“Jealous of what?” Zhang Hao asks. 

“Of the guy you were flirting with at that bar,” he answers. 

“ Oh .”

He’d thought so many things that night.

Angry, hurtful things about Hanbin. 

He’d spoken harshly, and Hanbin had spoken harshly in return. 

Zhang Hao spent months aching afterwards, and judging by the look on Hanbin’s face, he’d felt the same. 

“You’ve got nothing to be jealous of,” Zhang Hao tells him. “You know I’m yours.” 

Hanbin’s smiles, just a little. 

The kind of smile that hasn’t caught up to his eyes yet.

He still looks so painfully tired. 

Zhang Hao steps towards him, pulling Hanbin into a hug, and Hanbin gives in easily, slumping his full weight onto Zhang Hao, as if he had been barely holding himself together before Zhang Hao got here. 

“What happened? Why are you here this time?” Zhang Hao asks gently. 

 “Ah…. We… We won something,” Hanbin says, carefully choosing his words. “A big award.”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah. It is. Everyone was crying. Screaming. I was too, a little. And then…” He trails off, letting out a shaky noise, “I don’t know. I guess I got overwhelmed. Not sad, just—”

“Too full?” 

“Yeah, Hanbin agrees, “Too full.”

He pulls back from Zhang Hao a little and drags a hand through his hair, still mussed from whatever stage he’s just come from. 

“It’s just... Now that we’ve done it, it’s like we’ve set the bar. And we have to keep living up to it. Every comeback. Every stage. Every year.”

He doesn’t say more. 

Doesn’t say who we is. 

Doesn’t name the group, or the award. He’s careful like that, he always is.

Zhang Hao watches him, the flash of worry behind his excitement, like he wants to be happy, but is so scared about what this means for his future.

“If you’ve just won something that big, shouldn’t you be out celebrating?” Zhang Hao tells him, gently. “With the people you love?”

“Well,” he says quietly, “I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

“Then go celebrate with future me,” he tells Hanbin. “I’m sure I’m waiting for you to come back.”

Hanbin doesn’t answer. 

He just looks at Zhang Hao like he wants to memorize him all over again.

And then, without a sound, he disappears.

[4] 

“I’m supposed to be in Japan right now.”

Hanbin says it casually, like he’s talking about missing a bus instead of slipping through time.

They’re sitting cross-legged on Zhang Hao’s dorm bed, there’s music playing low from Zhang Hao’s phone, something instrumental and soothing. 

They’re splitting a tangerine, passing segments back and forth between them. 

“Tour?”

“Not exactly,” Hanbin replies, as he peels a tangerine, passing one of the segments over to Zhang Hao. “More like a festival… Our very first one.” 

Zhang Hao doesn’t question it. He just leans back a little further, stretching his legs out to brush against Hanbin’s, “That’s exciting.” 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Hanbin murmurs back. 

A quiet beat passes between them, warm and easy, before Zhang Hao breaks the silence, “Hanbin-ge.”

Hanbin’s lips quirk up immediately, and there’s a glint of amusement in his eyes, as he says, “Shouldn’t it be hyung , since you’re here now?”

Zhang Hao considers this, tilting his head as he looks at this Hanbin. They seem closer in age now than usual, this Hanbin on the younger side of the versions of him that Zhang Hao has met over the years. They must be close to meeting in real life. 

 “No,” he says eventually, with mock seriousness. “In fact, I think we should work on your Mandarin.”

“ My You is already teaching me, isn’t that enough?” 

“You’re lucky to have such dedicated teachers.” 

 Hanbin groans, flopping back dramatically on the bed, “Fine. What do you want me to say?”

“Repeat after me: nǐ hǎo .”

“ Nǐ hǎo ,” Hanbin repeats dutifully, though even as he protests, there is a smile on his face. 

“ Wǒ jiào Hánbīn .”

“ Wǒ jiào Hánbīn. ”

They go on like this, Zhang Hao feeding him simple phrases and Hanbin parroting them back with faux-annoyance at first, but then getting into it more as they go on and on, a dutiful student as always with a fond little smile on his face, as he repeats whatever it is Zhang Hao says without question. 

“ Nǐ shì wǒ yīshēng de zhìài. ”

“Wait, what does that mean?” Hanbin asks, seeming to catch something in Zhang Hao’s tone. 

Zhang Hao just smiles, and replies, “Say it.” 

Hanbin pouts a little, but when Zhang Hao doesn’t give in, he lets out a little huff and says, “Fine, but can you tell me it again, slower this time.”

“ Nǐ shì wǒ yīshēng de zhìài .”

“That’s long.”

“You’ll live.”

Hanbin repeats it, syllables slow and sweet on his tongue. He doesn’t say it perfectly, the characters still clumsy on his tongue, but it’s close enough, once he’s finished that he once again asks, “What did I just say?”

“You’ll find out when your Mandarin is better.”

“Zhang Hao! That’s not fair!”

“It’s payback! For all the times you won’t tell me about our future,” Zhang Hao teases. 

Hanbin groans again, overdramatic, but he’s smiling, and when he flops against Zhang Hao to teasingly beg to know what Zhang Hao has taught him to say, Zhang Hao’s heart flutters happily in his chest. 

It's not a revelation, not really. 

It’s more like remembering something he’s always known.

He loves Hanbin.

Of course he does. 

He thinks he probably always has, since that very first time Hanbin showed up in his dorm room dressed like a cowboy, and confused and beautiful in a way he didn’t know how to name back then.

But this moment is different.

He wants so much from Hanbin, to cross the little space between them and kiss him, to know what it means to be truly loved by Hanbin, but for now he just repeats, “ Nǐ shì wǒ yīshēng de zhìài .”

[6]

Zhang Hao wakes in the middle of the night to the soft pop of air and the unmistakable tug in his chest that he knows means Hanbin’s arrival.

The dorm room is dark, the only light is the hint of moonlight slicing faintly through the window. For a moment, everything is still, there’s no footsteps from the hall, no shifting of his roommate from the other bed, and then there’s Hanbin, trembling and crying in the middle of the room, silently trying his best to muffle his tears.

Zhang Hao doesn’t know what happened.

He doesn’t need to know what happened. 

He just throws back his blanket and whispers, “Come here.”

Hanbin crumples into the space beside him without hesitation. Zhang Hao pulls him in, wraps arms around him, curls their bodies close beneath the blanket. Zhang Hao can feel the tension in his shoulders, the short, hiccupping breaths he can’t quite control, that sobs that he’s doing his best to keep quiet so that he doesn’t wake Zhang Hao’s roommate. 

They stay like that for a while. 

Curled together in the dark with Hanbin falling apart in his arms. 

Finally, Zhang Hao murmurs, voice close and gentle, “Where were you?”

“Paris,” he whispers, then after a beat, adds, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Zhang Hao nods, presses a kiss softly to the top of Hanbin’s head. 

“You don’t have to,” he tells Hanbin. “I’m here.”

And for now, that’s enough.

He keeps holding him, hands warm and steady, until Hanbin’s breathing evens out and the weight in his arms grows heavier.

It’s only then that Zhang Hao closes his eyes, and lets sleep consume him once more. 

When he wakes in the morning, the bed is empty.

[13]

Hanbin is dancing.

The speakers are turned low, out of courtesy for anyone in the hallway, but Zhang Hao can still hear the ghost of a beat that hasn’t been released yet, a song that doesn’t exist in this timeline, but that one day in the future Zhang Hao is sure will be familiar to him. 

For now he watches from the mirror-lined wall, legs curled beneath him, chin propped on his hand.

Hanbin’s hair is a soft, cotton-candy pink again. It glows under the fluorescent lights, sweat-dampened strands clinging to his forehead as he moves. The color doesn’t feel real, like something Zhang Hao dreamed up years ago.

Like some version of the past and future bleeding into the present.

And it kind of is.

Because it’s almost time.

His company had held a meeting earlier this morning. They’re preparing to send trainees to a survival show— Boys Planet , they’d said. 

Zhang Hao had nodded along like he was hearing it for the first time. 

It’s so close.

He’s so close.

Zhang Hao’s chest swells with the sheer weight of anticipation. 

He knows now that he’s close, that he’s probably just months away from meeting Hanbin properly. 

Hanbin finishes the dance, breathing hard, and notices the way Zhang Hao’s watching him. He tilts his head curiously before dropping into a seated sprawl on the floor across from Zhang Hao. 

“Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“You just… look like a proper idol now.”

“Because of the hair?”

“The hair, the dancing, the tragic amount of lip tint,” Zhang Hao tells him, as he leans forward, brushing Hanbin’s sweaty bangs aside gently. “The pink suits you.”

“I don’t usually color it,” Hanbin shrugs, trying not to look pleased, “Not my style.”

“Well, I hope you do it again in the future,” Zhang Hao says. Then adds, as lightly as he can manage, “Maybe I’ll try it, too. Do you think it’d suit me?”

Hanbin doesn’t smile right away. 

He just looks at him for a really long time and then says, “I think everything would suit you.”

Zhang Hao’s breath catches, just a little.

“I wonder if the future me is with you right now?” 

He thinks about the road ahead, the songs he hasn’t sung yet and the stages he hasn’t touched. The photoshoots, the cameras, the expectations that will shape him. Someday he’ll dye his hair too—pink, maybe, or blond, or something even more outrageous. 

He’ll smile into the lens and mean it. 

He’ll belong to the world.

But more than any of that, he wants to belong to Hanbin.

He wants a future where they’re not chasing each other through time like shadows. 

Where they don’t have to steal moments in secret rooms and whispered nights. 

Where he knows, without question, that Hanbin is his, and he is Hanbin’s.

His voice is steady when he speaks again, but it carries every bit of that hope:

“I better be.”

[3]

Zhang Hao moves through the last steps of the routine for the eighth, or maybe ninth, time that night. If he has to hear another NCT song again it might be too soon. The other trainees that are going to be doing the first stage with him have already gone to bed, too exhausted to keep practicing, but Zhang Hao had remained in the practice room.

He needs this to be perfect. 

He needs everything to go perfectly when—Then there’s a sound behind him. 

A familiar pop . 

He turns.

Hanbin is standing there, dressed in his Boy’s Planet uniform again, his eyes red and cheeks flushed like he’s just stopped crying, but he’s smiling.

Smiling at him like he’s whole. 

Like seeing Zhang Hao is enough to make anything else fade away.

Hanbin’s gaze flickers downward, suddenly nervous. His fingers dig into the inner pocket of his coat, and then he’s pulling something out.

It’s a phone.

Battered, familiar.

And about three years too late. 

“I hope it didn’t take too long for me to return it,” Hanbin holds it out, sheepish.

Zhang Hao reaches for it, his fingers trembling as he takes it from Hanbin. The phone is cold from being carried through time, but it fits perfectly in his palm, like it never should have left. 

He doesn’t look down at it. 

He doesn’t need to.

He’s looking at Hanbin. 

At the way Hanbin is standing there, so soft and open, and his eyes still red rimmed and teary, and it breaks something within Zhang Hao. 

The phone falls from his hand clattering to the floor, but he doesn’t even care, he just steps forward bridging the space between him and Hanbin. 

“Zhang Hao—?”

Zhang Hao doesn’t say anything, he just reaches up, cups Hanbin’s cheek with one hand, and kisses him.

It’s slow. 

Not rushed or not questioning.

A choice, he’s waited far too long to finally make. 

Hanbin melts into it with a quiet, relieved sound, and Zhang Hao thinks, yes . 

Finally .

Hanbin tastes like something sweet and familiar. Like something that belongs to him.

When they finally pull apart, Hanbin’s lips are pink and kiss-bitten, they’re both breathless. Hanbin laughs, a little teary, a little dazed. 

“I love you,” he says, voice trembling as he says the words.

Zhang Hao looks at him, heart clattering against his ribs, and says softly, “I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“Why you always come back to me.”

“Oh?” he murmurs. “Why’s that?”

“Because I love you too.” 

And then he kisses him again, slow and deep, just because he can. 

[11] 

“I think we’re meeting soon.” 

“Is that right?” Zhang Hao says the words ever so casually, as if he doesn’t already know, as if he hasn’t spent the last few years planning for this moment to come. 

Hanbin nods, though he looks out Zhang Hao’s dorm window, at the rain out there, with a sort of hesitant expression. 

“I feel like I should warn you, though. When we meet—when it’s the same time for both of us—I won’t remember you. We’ll be strangers again.”

Zhang Hao’s chest tightens. The idea of Hanbin looking at him with unfamiliar eyes, not knowing the history they’ve already built, feels almost unbearable. 

But still, he smiles, reaching out to take Hanbin’s hand gently on his own.

“Don’t worry,” he tells Hanbin, “I’ll make sure you fall in love with me all over again.”

Hanbin turns to look at him then, eyes wide and shining, “I never doubted you for a second.”

[0] 

When he first meets Sung Hanbin, Zhang Hao is twenty-two years old.

And Hanbin looks at him like he is a stranger.

Zhang Hao knew this would happen, he’d been warned already.

Still, nothing could’ve prepared him for the actual moment. 

For standing here, under the cold studio lights of a survival show, wearing the same uniform as ninety-eight other trainees, and seeing the boy he’s loved for years smile at him like he’s never seen him before.

It’s disorienting. 

It’s surreal. 

It’s unfair.

Because Zhang Hao knows everything about him.

He knows Hanbin’s favorite color, how he takes his coffee,  and how Hanbin looks when he cries—not the camera-ready sniffles, but the real, broken kind, when his shoulders shake and he presses his face into Zhang Hao’s shoulder like he’s trying to disappear. 

He knows what Hanbin’s laughter sounds like when he forgets to hold back. 

He knows what it feels like to kiss him, to be kissed by him, to fall asleep with his fingers curled loosely in Hanbin’s shirt, trying to hold him close for just a little longer.

And Hanbin knows none of it. 

Not yet.

So this is what it felt like for you, Zhang Hao thinks, with a strange ache in his chest. 

Back then, when Hanbin first appeared in his life, traveling through time and space, Zhang Hao had stared at him like he was a ghost. 

But Hanbin had already known. 

Had already loved him. 

Had looked at him like he was everything.

For the first time in his life, Zhang Hao is older than Hanbin.

It’s a strange thing to realize. 

In all the years they’ve known each other, Hanbin has always felt older, somehow. 

Not just by age, but by experience, by the weary kind of knowing that comes from skipping through time and arriving in someone else’s life like a ghost. Zhang Hao had called him Hanbin-ge , even hyung , once or twice, and Hanbin had never corrected him.

Even when he could have. 

Even when he already knew the truth.

This Hanbin looks at him with wide eyes, voice shy and careful as he says, “Zhang Hao-hyung.” He tells Zhang Hao he voted for him for center, too, and that he was really touched by his performance.

And Zhang Hao just stares at him, heart clenching with the weight of it all, from this version of Hanbin not realizing all the things he has already set into motion. 

He says, “Thank you,” as gently as he can manage. 

They’re both voted center in the end—Hanbin for the Korean trainees, Zhang Hao for the global line. 

Two halves of a whole, standing side by side in matching uniforms on the show’s stage, practicing the signal song as cameras roll and producers whisper behind clipboards, carefully watching them. 

None of them know the irony of it.

How could they?

But Zhang Hao does. 

Zhang Hao smiles, soft and a little dazed, as he stands next to Hanbin and thinks that this is where they’re supposed to be. 

He wonders how long it will take.

How many weeks or months before this version of Hanbin disappears for the first time. 

Before he stumbles into the past, shaking and breathless, and finds Zhang Hao right where he’s always been, waiting for Hanbin to appear.

The idea makes something flicker warm in Zhang Hao’s chest.

Anticipation, maybe. 

Or hope. 

They keep practicing. 

They get closer, in that strange way trainees do, when they’re competing for spots in the same group, but can’t help but want to share that final stage together. Zhang Hao is gifted with foresight in a way that none of these other trainees are, a certainty that he will succeed, that makes playing the game of playing nice for the cameras a little bit more bearable.  

The show wants to frame them as rivals.

Center vs. center. 

Korea vs. global. 

Two frontmen with mirrored charisma and matching smiles, each poised to eclipse the other. 

It’s all there in the editing, the cutaways, the carefully timed reactions, the interviews stitched together to make tension spark like static between them.

But Zhang Hao knows better.

He’s known better for a long time now.

He doesn’t want to compete with Hanbin. 

He never has. 

He just wants to be near him. 

He wants to watch the way he lights up when he dances, the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs. 

Zhang Hao loves him, even if this Hanbin doesn’t yet know how to love him back.

Hanbin looks at him like he’s trying to solve a mystery. 

Like something about Zhang Hao pulls him in without explanation. There’s a magnetism to it, a gravity that Zhang Hao can’t explain away. 

Like a moth to a flame. 

Like tide to moon. 

One day, Zhang Hao sneaks Hanbin’s favorite snacks out of Gyuvin’s bag before he can hoard them for himself. He slips them into Hanbin’s hands with an entirely innocent expression.

Hanbin looks up at him, surprised but thankful, and then breaks into a grin. “It’s like you read my mind.”

The moment they’re told to pick teams for the second group battle, Zhang Hao doesn’t even pretend not to watch him.

He sees Hanbin scan the list of songs, songs that suit his voice and his style better, and he watches as Hanbin passes them over. Sees the subtle twitch of his fingers, the moment of decision that leads him straight to Zhang Hao. 

Like it’s the only real option.

As Hanbin stands beside him, having made his choices, Zhang Hao can’t help but think of the inevitability of it all.

There’s something unbearably beautiful in it. 

In how the universe keeps steering them toward each other, no matter the timeline. 

Hanbin might not remember any of the times before, might not yet understand why he feels drawn to Zhang Hao, but it doesn’t matter. 

The pull is still there.

Maybe it always will be.

It’s one of the trainees who finds him the night it finally happens. 

“Zhang Hao-hyung,” the trainee whispers, glancing around like the walls might have ears. “Hanbin is… he’s in the laundry room. He’s crying.”

That’s all it takes.

Zhang Hao’s on his feet before his brain fully catches up, as if his body already knows the path. 

As if it’s already been written.

The laundry room’s tucked in the back corner of the building, out of reach of the cameras and producers, and all the carefully crafted narratives that have been spun around them. 

The only place they can truly be alone here.

He finds Hanbin curled into himself on the bench near the dryers, face blotchy, eyes red, shoulders trembling. His practice uniform is wrinkled, jacket tugged over his head like it might protect him from something. Zhang Hao kneels in front of him without a word, slipping his hands gently over Hanbin’s wrists and coaxing him to look up.

Hanbin does. 

And oh, he’s always been a pretty crier, Zhang Hao thinks it in the same breath he chastises himself for thinking it now, in a moment like this, when Hanbin’s breaking apart in his hands.

But he can’t help it.

“Zhang Hao-hyung?” Hanbin sniffles, eyes glassy. 

“Yes,” Zhang Hao says softly, brushing his hair back from his face the same way he always does, the way that always calms him. “You’re okay. I’m here now. Tell hyung what’s wrong?” 

Hanbin makes a soft broken noise, the words spilling out of him in a rush, “I just… I feel like I’m pretending all the time. Like I have to be perfect or they’ll see through me. And I’m not perfect, I never was, that’s why I was cut before, and I—”

“Shh,” Zhang Hao hushes him, pulling him close. Letting him cry into the crook of his neck, letting himself hold Hanbin like he’s done so many times before, his arms already know the shape of him. “You are good enough. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”

Hanbin clutches at the front of his shirt, like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he lets go.

And then—

He does.

One moment, Hanbin is trembling in his arms, damp cheek pressed to Zhang Hao’s collarbone.

And then the next, he’s gone.

Just like that.

The echo of his sob still lingers in the quiet laundry room, but Zhang Hao’s arms are empty.

And oh—he’s familiar with this. 

He’s lived this too many times to count. 

But not like this. 

Not from this end of things. 

He sits back against the cold metal of the dryers, letting the quiet rush in.

And then, slowly, he lets the memory rise, pulls it forward from the back of his mind where it’s always lived, a boy outside his childhood home, eyes red, lost and shaking, crying out in confusion. 

Hanbin.

The visit had only lasted minutes. 

Just a blink. 

And now… now he knows what version of himself Hanbin has just met.

Zhang Hao stays in the laundry room.

He doesn’t move. 

He doesn’t even breathe too deeply. 

He just sits, his back against the humming dryer, and he counts the seconds in his head.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

And then, all at once, he’s back.

The air shifts. 

A subtle little pop that’s become familiar to him by now, and then Hanbin is standing in front of him again, his hand halfway lifted like he hadn’t meant to leave at all.

He looks at Zhang Hao like he’s different . 

Like he’s a puzzle that’s suddenly solved itself.

And Zhang Hao knows exactly what Hanbin must be realizing, why Zhang Hao has always seemed to know him so well, why they fit together so easily, and why everything always felt like it was meant to be.

The weight of every moment they’ve shared, and haven’t shared yet, settles into Hanbin’s chest all at once. 

A timeline snapping into place.

His cheeks are pink and his lashes wet and he looks so young . But he also looks at Zhang Hao with a kind of awe that stretches through every version of him that’s ever existed.

This is the moment.

The first time Hanbin time-traveled back into his life.

The first time his Hanbin took that first step into the loop that Zhang Hao has already lived.

And for all the time they’ve spent together, all the kisses and smiles and promises shared between different versions of them—This is their beginning.

So Zhang Hao crosses the distance between them, and kisses Hanbin for the very first time all over again.

Hanbin melts into his kiss, like his body already knows this, even if his mind is still catching up. Zhang Hao holds his jaw gently, grounding him, anchoring him to this now.

When they part, Hanbin stares at him like he’s in a dream. 

He looks at Hanbin—who he’s loved before, loves now, and will love again—and says, “Found you.”