Jhe Family Apartment, Cheonsa Dome, Takumi, Gongen


2384


As the hours passed by, it became clear to Sang Mi that nobody was going to come. She’d sent out dozens of invites, but the only person here was her twin brother, and not only had they shared a womb, he lived here. The bowls of snacks she’d asked her mom to get ready for them sat nearly untouched, aside from the candy-covered chocolates she'd been depressively shoveling into her mouth, and the extra-spicy tteokbokki Sang Eun had been picking at.


“The flu is going around, I’m sure a lot of people are sick,” her brother lied kindly.


“Yeah,” she replied.


“And there’s that big baseball game between the Hongtu Cannonballs and the Takumi Tengu?”


“Sure, I guess,” she said, defeated. She put on the next movie. It was one of the Lubin Studios Films she had the files for. She wanted to enjoy it, it was a movie she loved. To be swept away in it. But she just felt alone knowing no one but her twin wanted to share it with her.


As the action played on, both of their phones pinged. They picked them up in tandem, and checked.


“We’re in!” Sang Eun said. “Mom’s going to be so proud. And Min Jun can stop hounding us.”


She looked at the message. She’d been accepted to Academy 27, the second best High School in Takumi.


“It’ll be different in High school,” she said finally. “I’ll be different.
 
* * *

​The Pennsylvania Wilderness


May 2025


By the time they reached the tunnel, it was nearly midnight, and the world seemed to be on the edge of itself. Usually, they’d have stopped to sleep by now. Their journey could have been over already if they’d wanted it to be that way—sure they’d have gotten to the lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains ahead of time, but they’d have been guaranteed warm beds and maybe could have investigated this whole strangeness.


Instead, they hadn’t encountered any hotels, well any that were operating, and there hadn’t been a place they’d felt comfortable or capable of pulling over to sleep at either. Chris and Sang Mi had pulled over to have a spirited debate about whether or not to drink an energy drink.


They’d eventually agreed to each down half of it, and now each had a strange feeling of being slightly too awake.


It was the kind of dark where all you could see was what the car’s headlights illuminated. The sky was overcast, and there were no lights on this stretch of woodland road. Sang Mi looked at her phone. “It says we’re out of service range?”


“That’s pretty normal, there’s not a lot out here.”


“What if we’re lost?”


“We’re not lost—”


“CAT!”


Sang Mi sprung forward, caught by her seatbelt as she pointed at the road, and Cwej hit the brakes hard—the car skidding to a halt. The headlights shone that they were about to enter into a tunnel carved into the side of a mountain. There were a lot of those out here, but there also wasn’t one shown on the map on their phones.


But that wasn’t the really interesting thing.


There was a cat there, illuminated against the shadows, its body flickering, pockmarked with flecks and lines like it was made of film. They’d seen a cat like this before, back on Gongen at Sang Mi’s school, and it had led them to the dangerous film-projector in Violethill. Sang Mi swung her car door open, and Chris followed. They left the lights on the Odyssey on, the orange Honda Element sputtering in park as they approached the cat together slowly.


“It’s a cat made of film!” Sang Mi said.


 “Yeah,” Chris replied.


“Like in—”


“YEAH,” Chris replied more.


Reaching into his pocket, and crouching down, Chris pulled out a piece of jerky. The cat sniffed the air, and tail high crept towards him as he cooed at it.


Then a sound came from the tunnel, like gears turning, and the cat did a turning leap—bolting back towards the tunnel, disappearing into it and the darkness beyond.


“Should we follow—” Sang Mi began asking, but Chris was already going after it. Wasn’t he the grown up here? She sighed, and tailed after him, pulling out her flashlight and turning it on as she ran.


The tunnel was dark. She could feel something though—feel something turning and spinning around her, like gears and cogs that made the clouds move were pulsing in her ears. Like the lack of anything she could see was spinning in a black vortex.


She stumbled out finally, into the light, and looked behind her to see that she’d come out the door of what looked like a small white shed with a shingle roof. Cwej shut the door behind her.


“But—” he put a finger over his mouth, and she could see in his eyes he was giddy to watch her see what he’d already seen.


She obliged, and turned around with him. And she knew very quickly he’d been right to be excited for her reaction.


Chris and Sang Mi looked out to the horizon, deep and dark and blue, and at the collection of buildings silhouetted against it. A row of large shapes, lit by moonlight and surrounded by trees. The distinctive shape of a water tower stood over them all.


Sang Mi knew where they were. She's seen enough photos - probably most of the photos of it that had ever existed - to know its shape even in the dark. “That's Betzwood. The Lubin movie studios.”


“Yes it is.”


“The real one? Are there any other ones, like theme park versions or something?”


Chris paused. “I don’t think Betzwood is as iconic as you think it is.”


She ignored him and took a step towards it. She moved her head, as though to check it was 3D and not just a flat image. “You can go to Betzwood. We, together, can go to Betzwood. The Lubin Manufacturing Company made so many silent movies. So many great shorts! They could've been as big as Hollywood, you know. They were a real competitor. Then a fire destroyed the Lubin film vault...”


Chris looked down at Sang Mi.


“We get to be here,” she said. “Moments and places…I guess they can last forever.”


When she’d sat with Sang Eun and watched movies together, so long ago and so far in the future, she used to think about what it was like for the actors being on set.


That way of thinking always confused her mom. “Doesn’t that ruin the magic?” she used to say. Even though she was a grown up, her mom never liked to be reminded it wasn’t real.


But Sang Mi loved it. Not only did movies let her escape into a story, they let her escape into the past. Each shot was a moment in time, captured on film. But even those captured moments were fragile. The fire in the Lubin film vault destroyed so many movies that will never be seen again.


Sang Mi turned to meet Chris’ eyes. “Can we stop the fire from happening?”


He took in her expression. This meant something to her. Then he shook his head. “You can’t. It’s a hard thing to learn but you can’t. Be content looking at history like a pretty picture in a gallery. You don’t get to do your own finger painting over the top.”


Sang Mi paused. “I read a book about painting restoration once.”


“You can’t change history,” Chris said flatly.


She screwed up her face. “Is that ‘you’ as in ‘we’ or ‘you’ as in ‘me’?”


“Nobody can change history - not on purpose anyway. Anyone can change history without meaning to. You could make an amazing discovery in your native time. Cure a disease, write a hit song, invent a com unit that never loses signal. But going back in time to change things on purpose doesn’t work. If you knew a fire was going to break out so you went back in time to install a state of the art sprinkler system, the fire wouldn’t happen, so you'll never have known about it, so why did you go back and install the sprinklers? Paradox loop. The timeline disintegrates.”


Sang Mi turned back to the view. “It’s not fair.”


“I’m afraid it is fair,” said Chris. “It’s the same for everyone. Nobody’s...superior.”


She nodded, but it was a hollow gesture meant only to end the conversation. “Can we look around?”


“We have to," said Chris. “It’s where the cat went. Whatever’s going on is going on in there. Come on.”


There was a chill in the air. A bird called out somewhere, hoping for a reply in the wind.


Sang Mi led the way. She drifted forward as though in a dream, finally walking through a place she'd known for years.


Chris moved more cautiously, looking down the dark paths between each building, imagining where the best vantage points to watch them from would be. At this point in his life, these checks were purely instinctual. He'd do exactly the same if he was heading out for a bite to eat after his shift on Spaceport 5.


The pair reached the biggest of the buildings and shared a silent look of acknowledgement that, yes, the biggest one was probably the place to start.


Sang Mi started towards the front entrance. Chris tapped her shoulder to stop her and gestured instead towards a side door.


It opened with a rusty sound louder than Chris would’ve liked. Accepting that they had now announced themselves, he stepped in, Sang Mi following behind.


The moonlight shining through the door was their only source of light.


Chris squinted to see. “Make sure the door doesn’t-”


The door blew shut.


“Sorry,” said Sang Mi.


A beam of light illuminated Chris Cwej’s smile. “Have a torch.” He passed her the other one from his belt and the pair set off.


Their torches cast sharp shadows across uneven walls, creating an aggressive expressionist world.


Sang Mi turned and her light fell on a fireplace. It wasn’t lit, save for the light of her torch. Slowly, she raised her beam up across stone walls with old, unrefined brickwork.


She took a step closer, and closer, then she put her hand on the wall. The cold, dark stone looked cold to the touch, but it wasn’t. It was warm. She pushed against it - it was slightly soft. Spongey bricks?


“Ah ha!” Chris’ voice came from somewhere off in the darkness. “That’s what we need.”


A buzz, and one by one the lights sparked on overhead.


Sang Mi looked around at the medieval castle she was standing in.


At the end of the room was a long table, with a shining throne in the middle and several smaller, only slightly-less impressive chairs on either side. Banners hung on the walls above with stark black and white designs, and several empty suits of silver armour stood on guard by the entrance.


A man in a blue suit of armour walked through that entrance. “Not sure about the historical accuracy,” said Chris. “Black and white banners, I suppose so the designs show up well on a black and white camera. Also…”


He pointed downward at the dirty studio floor that this old castle sat upon.


“It’s so detailed,” said Sang Mi. “I’ve never seen this film. What’s through there?”


She ran across the throne room with no regard at all for royal protocol and stepped across the threshold into a dressing room.


Two chairs sat in front of mirrors on either side of the room, and the most colourful array of suits and dresses were arranged on rails against one wall, feathers and sequins everywhere.


Sang Mi sat down and swivelled towards the nearest mirror to admire herself, but saw nothing. Instead of a reflection, she only saw a frame filled in with solid white.


Chris stood by her shoulder and looked. “Mmm. An early attempt to avoid the camera accidentally showing up on film?”


“You mean…” Sang Mi looked around. “This is a set too?”


“Looks like it.”


She examined one of the costumes. “It’s like something they used to wear on stage at musical revues. The Broadway Melody of 190-something.”


Chris opened the door of the dressing room and stepped outside into a wide open space, a dark studio filled with slices of different environments, like windows into different times and spaces, all frozen.


A shape moved through the frozen places.


“CAT!” Sang Mi ran off, Chris following close behind.


The shape disappeared into a rocky tunnel. As Sang Mi and Chris wandered through it, it became harder and harder to see without the light. At the end, Sang Mi pressed her hand against the cave wall and found it was soft again - even softer than the wall of the castle. Hesitantly, she pushed, and a giant hollow boulder rolled out of the way.


The pair stepped out of the tomb.


They turned and looked back at what they had just emerged from.


“This is…”


Chris nodded. “I think it is.”


They were standing on the set of a film Sang Mi knew very well. Chris had seen it too, briefly, but crucially neither of them had seen its ending.


The film was Battle on the Easter Front. This whole wild journey had started when a girl named Petra had moved Heaven and Earth to try to see that ending; it had been her mother’s favorite film. She’d gone so far as to kidnap her fellow students to try to recreate that ending. And crucially, they’d followed the trail of a flickering cat, and found a projector that made the movie… well, real.[a]


“This is the second time we’ve been inside this movie,” said Sang Mi.


“We’ve had the immersive 4D experience,” said Chris. “Now we’re seeing behind the scenes. Battle on the Easter Front was made here. But that means—”


A low grumble distracted him.


Sang Mi heard it too. They looked at each other and silently questioned whether the noise was something they should be worried about.


They heard it again. A heavy droning sound from somewhere nearby. It came and went, every six or seven seconds.


Whatever was making the noise was clearly big, probably dangerous, and the two of them couldn't help but start moving towards it.


They listened as they walked. The low grumble got louder and louder as they got closer and closer.


They found the source more suddenly than they expected. Around a corner, sitting in the middle of the studio floor, was a giant something. At first it looked like a formless pile, but as they got closer they realised it very much had form - a deliberate, sculpted form. It was hard to tell what it was made of. Clay? It seemed to move, rising and falling slightly as the grumble came and went, but the movement was jagged and uneven.


The shape was also flickering. Just like the cat, it juddered as though the image was a projection.


Sang Mi reached out to touch it, but stopped when she saw Chris raise a hand to stop her. He shook his head and gestured to stay quiet.


He led the way as the two walked around the mound. His mind was reeling, trying to connect dots. It looked like a lump of sentient something. Is this what the flickering cat was made out of? Could he take a scoop of this stuff and shape it into whatever he wanted to bring it to some form of life?


He stopped when he saw a strange circle on the mass.


Sang Mi held her breath as Chris leaned in to examine it.


It opened. A reflectionless eye stared back at them.


"Back!" Chris pulled Sang Mi away as the mass started to rise. Part of it lifted off the ground, and as it did its form became clear. Two mighty hind legs, two small front arms, and one massive tail, all moving with not quite enough frames of animation.


They'd woken up a stop-motion dinosaur.


Chris grabbed Sang Mi and they ran. Despite how much she wanted to, Sang Mi didn't look back at the impressive spectacle of the tyrannosaurus rex rearing back, roaring, then charging after them, knocking down sets and lights and rigging as it went. She could at least appreciate the foley that emphasised its footsteps. It chased after them in a flickering rage, each step sounding like a deep drum being struck.


It chased the two of them back through the old dressing room set and the royal throne room. The table crashed over as the t-rex's mighty tail swung. Whatever that flickering material was, it was solid enough, Chris thought.


They ducked through the swinging doors of an old timey saloon - there's no way the dinosaur would fit through after them. Then they turned and saw the set only had two walls.


“Budget cuts,” Chris growled, and they got back to running.


They ran out the side of the saloon and kept barrelling forwards, away from the ever-approaching footsteps. They flew together through different times and places, always with danger hot on their trail.


“Over there!” Sang Mi pointed.


In front of them was a section of the studio that was boxed off from the rest. From this angle, they could see it had at least two walls.


They ran around those two walls, the t-rex not far behind them, until a third wall came into sight. Then, a wave of relief washed over Chris as he saw the vital, intact fourth wall.


He led Sang Mi through a door into the box, entering a pretty swanky-looking hotel room. It was bigger than any hotel Sang Mi had been in - with twin beds, a seating area with a sofa, a sideboard with drinks, the works.


They waited in silence.


Outside, the t-rex had stopped. It slowly crept around outside the four walls, looking for a way in.


They were so quiet, they could hear not only its footsteps, but a sound of whirring coming from the creature - the flickering of the film that made its greyscaled skin.


They heard the sound of something approaching, much closer than the dinosaur. The door to the hotel's restroom opened and a thin flickering man stepped out. “Say, what goes on here?”


Chris grabbed him and covered his mouth.


The sensation of directly touching the man's flickering face felt like static on Chris' hand. He fought the urge to let go.


Regardless, the man quickly fell silent of his own free will. The dinosaur's silhouette passed across the drawn curtains, its shape projected onto the screen.


All three were silent, watching, waiting.


The projected image faded.


They listened as the heavy drum footsteps got quieter and quieter until finally, they were alone.


Chris removed his hand from the man’s mouth. “Sorry.”


He was smartly-dressed, with a sharp suit and perfect hair. “Now do you mind telling me who you two are? And who was that man out there?”


“‘Man’?” Sang Mi repeated. “It was a dinosaur! Didn’t you see the shape?”


The man blinked. “Dinosaur? Now what does that mean?”


Chris circled him, taking in every detail of his flickering form. “A dinosaur. Do you know what a dinosaur is?”


“Can’t say I do. Listen, I tell you what…” He turned towards the table and picked up a teapot. “How about a nice relaxing drink, huh?”


Sang Mi whispered to Chris, not wanting to be rude. “How does he not know what a dinosaur is?”


Chris paused. “Outside of his frame of reference. Maybe the movie he’s from doesn’t have any dinosaurs in it.”


“Is that how this works?”


“Depends. Did I sound convincing?”


The man turned back to them holding two cups of tea. “I suppose I should make an attempt at a proper introduction. I’m Peter.”


Sang Mi smiled and took the cup offered to her. “I’m Sang Mi, this is Chris.”


Chris nodded to confirm that this intel was accurate and took his cup. “Where do you come from?”


“Oh, all over really.” Peter turned and sat down as Chris and Sang Mi sipped their tea. “I’ve been staying here in New York a while, trying to get the big scoop on a new Broadway show.”


Sang Mi tried to read the man’s face. Was he acting? Did he wear the face of some actor from this era of film she just didn’t recognise? Or was he a character personified? Pure unrestrained fiction. “We’re not in New York,” she said finally. “We’re in Pennsylvania.”


“Not to him,” said Chris. “Cats and dinosaurs and even people from movies. What’s bringing them to life? What's giving them mass? How does it work?” He paused as he muddled through it in his head. “There’s one more important question though. The most pressing question of all.” He turned to look Sang Mi in the eyes. “Why would a prop tea pot sitting in a film studio set at night have real hot tea in it?”


Slowly, the two of them looked down at their cups and saw that the liquid they’d been drinking was grey and flickering.


As Chris lost consciousness, he could feel the end of the reel.


* * *


Sang Mi’s first thought was that Chris had just said something. Unfortunately, the thought came to her too late to actually listen.


She looked around at the rows and rows of shelves around her, all covered in film cans.


“Are you okay?” Chris repeated.


Sang Mi’s first instinct was the turn to face Chris, then she realised she couldn’t. The two of them were tied on chairs, back to back, in the middle of some sort of film collection.


“I’m fine,” Sang Mi finally responded, although she realised after she said it that she hadn’t actually checked if she was. She stopped trying to turn and focused her gaze forward, on the film can sitting on the shelf in front of her. “Outwitting Dad.”


Chris tried to see behind himself. “Excuse me?”


“This film canister. It’s called Outwitting Dad. It’s a 1914 movie, I think the first movie Oliver Hardy was ever in. It doesn’t exist any more - it’s lost media. It burned…we’re in Lubin’s film vault.”


“Well, you certainly know your stuff,” said a new voice.


Sang Mi and Chris both turned their heads.


For a brief moment, Chris thought the voice belonged to the flickering cat, which wandered out from the shelves and passed by his feet. Then he watched it slink off towards a woman standing in the darkness. She wasn’t flickering. She looked entirely real.


She reached down, and picked up the kitty as it started to rub against her skirts,  stepping out of the shadows as it flickered in her arms and she stroked its shifting fur. She’d blended into the shadows because she was wearing all black, from her head to her toes. Her face was covered by a black veil. They knew her. They’d seen her before.


“How long has it been now, twenty-one years since the Chicago World’s Fair? Though for you… days, weeks? Being a time traveller must be so convenient, while the rest of us slog through every day between two points, you just touch the highlights and disappear.”


“Something like that,” Chris answered. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Salome Herodian.”


She sighed. “Just Sal. I’ve been funding films here. I am hoping Battle on the Easter Front will allow me to fund other period pieces… including a better representation of my life.”


They gave each other a glance, which hurt both of their necks in the attempt, and tried not to give too much of the future away.


“Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing okay!” Sang Mi said optimistically.


Sal turned her blank veil to face her. “Yes, after you kicked me out of the top of the Ferris wheel and I broke my body in three dozen places and crawled away in agony, I did make a full recovery.”


Sang Mi tried to shimmy so she was more hidden behind Chris. It almost was a good attempt. Chris tried to straighten his back to assist, and calm Salome down. “We’re not here to pick a fight. We’re just…”


“Poking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”


“Investigating,” he said evenly. “That cat is unusual. And it’s not the only thing that is.”


Sal raised her veil just enough they could see her grinning. “Oh, you’re curious about them, are you?” She lifted the cat to look into its eyes. “Inside all of them is a projector. An omni-directional 3D projector. Using AI, it extrapolates a person or an animal or a thing from a movie and sort of…fills in the blanks. Completes them in a way. It imagines what the back of an actor’s head would look like during their close-ups, if you get my meaning.”


“Giving them physical form,” finished Chris.


Sal nodded and placed the cat down at her feet. “Ultimately, corporations turned against theme park mascots. They’d break character sometimes when park visitors misbehaved, and would demand things like ‘pay’ and ‘rights’. With these projectors, you can rip a character straight off of the screen. I’ve been experimenting with them for a while. The cat was simple. Relatively speaking,” she quickly added, for fear of offending the cat. “Then I started to think bigger.”


“Love the dinosaur,” said Chris. “A stop motion dinosaur made of clay. So these projectors can give life to even inanimate material.”


“Of course,” said Sal. “They don’t give life to the clay, they give life to the story. The fiction. The belief that the clay is alive. That’s what’s being animated.”


Sang Mi was starting to get a twinge in her neck from turning to face Sal while being tied to a chair. “Why did you move us here? And why are we tied up?”


“Well, I thought I might just leave you both here,” said Sal. “Locked up in the archive, left to gather dust. A pair of lost stories nobody will be able to reconstruct. Tell you what…while I’ve got you here, let’s see how well you know your film history.”


From one of the shelves she pulled out a projector screen and set it up against the wall.


“Tell me if you recognise this.” She pushed a button and on screen was a still image of a train station.


“The Arrival of a Train, from 1896,” said Sang Mi, almost instantly. “Thought to be one of the earliest films ever made. Just a simple shot of a train pulling into a station. You know,” she said over her shoulder to Chris. “There’s this legend that the first audience it was shown to thought the train was going to burst through the screen and hit them.”


That statement sat there for a heavy moment.


Chris raised an eyebrow at Sal.


Sal just stood there and beamed.


“You realise,” Chris started, slowly, “that this is a very small room. If a train came in here, you’d be crushed too.”


“Would I?” Sal took a step close to the tied-up pair, letting them get a good look at her.


She waved her hand in front of Chris’ face, which at first he found annoying and obnoxious, but it suddenly became very interesting when he noticed her hand moving just a little bit too quickly. Or too slowly? It was hard to put his finger on what was wrong with her fingers, except that sometimes, for a split frame, it looks like there were more of them than there were.


“Wow,” said Chris at last. “Well done. You really have been experimenting, haven’t you?”


Sang Mi tried again to turn. “What’s happening?”


“She’s not really here,” said Chris. “She’s just a recording, like the others. A 4k, high definition recording, running at a higher frame rate and in full dazzling colour, but a recording nonetheless.”


“Well,” said Sal, lowering her veil. “The show's nearly over.”


She pushed a button on the protector and the still image of The Arrival of a Train started to move, a grain now playing across the screen.


“Goodbye!” Sal waved, then the image of her fizzled. For a brief moment, she was entirely blue, then the image retracted, and all that was left was a floating silver ball with several black lenses. The omni-directional 3D projector that had been sitting where her heart was fell gently to the ground and rolled.


Chris and Sang Mi struggled to free themselves as the train on the screen came into view.


“What do we do?” asked Sang Mi. The rope was so thick and rough, it dug into her wrists as she pulled against it.


Chris’ mind reeled. Were they really about to be killed by something so simple? A nefarious villain tying them in front of an oncoming train? “Don’t panic. Panic isn’t helpful. Just pull.”


The pair pulled against the rope as hard as they could, and all the while they couldn’t take their eyes off the screen.


The train got closer.


Chris and Sang Mi were on the edge of their seats.


Closer and closer.


And then.


It stopped.


The train settled into the station.


The film ended.


Chris and Sang Mi sat in the darkness for a moment.


Sang Mi spoke up first. “I suppose those people who thought they were going to get hit by the train were a bit silly, weren’t they?”


Chris gave a nod she wasn’t in a position to see. “Very silly, yes.”


“I suppose it makes sense really,” Sang Mi said, relaxing back in her chair. “If she was making movies here, she wouldn’t do anything to destroy the archive.”


They both took a moment to breathe deeply.


Then the breath was ripped from their lungs.


A deafening blast like a canon and the sound of something heavy shattering echoed through the room and shook their hearts. Cans fell from the shelves and the shelves fell from the walls.


“What now?” Chris shouted, a little too loudly while his ears still rang.


Sang Mi knew immediately. “An explosion in the Lubin film vault. The….um…the gases, I can’t remember. From the celluloid. It heated up and caused an explosion. The fire’s started. We have to stop it!”


“We have to get free - one thing at a time.”


Chris and Sang Mi struggled against the ropes once more, and the pain in their wrists returned as if they hadn’t had a break.


“There has to be something to cut it with,” said Sang Mi.


They became aware of the air around them, somehow thicker, heavier, dragging against their throats as they drew breath.


A confused meow caught them off guard.


The flickering cat climbed over the fallen shelves and film cans. Sang Mi wondered whether an AI-fuelled 3D extrapolation of a character from a movie could feel heat.


Then she noticed the particular film can that the cat had its paw on. It had a label on the side that said ‘A Little Hero’.


Another explosion shook Sang Mi, but somehow she didn’t notice it as much this time. Because something was very wrong, and it sent her brain into a frantic rush.


A Little Hero was a silent movie from 1913. Granted, they were currently in 1914 - the time checked out. What didn’t check out was the fact that she’d seen it. Sang Mi had seen A Little Hero.
If it burned here, in Lubin’s archive, how is that possible?


She’d watched it with Sang Eun. It was a charming little film, barely 5 minutes, about a bird, a dog, and…a cat.




The flickering cat turned to look at Sang Mi, and in that moment, she got it.


She’d seen that movie because it wasn’t a Lubin movie. It was made by Keystone. Which means it being here was wrong - it must be a copy. It must have been brought here by Salome.


And finally, she recognised the cat.


“Is that the movie you’re from?” Sang Mi asked.


The cat just stared at her. It tilted its head slightly, judging her reaction.


Chris looked over his shoulder at her. “Making any progress?”


The air was thick and dark now. The fire was getting closer.


In A Little Hero, a dog saves a bird from a cat. If that’s the movie this cat is from…


Sang Mi started whistling the best bird song she could conjure.


The cat’s ears perked up immediately. The film it came from may have been silent, but the projector in its heart brought the story of the movies to life - it could hear the bird song.


It jumped towards Sang Mi and started attacking the rope, clawing at it and meowing. In moments, it was slack enough for Sang Mi to pull herself free. She turned and untied Chris.


A third explosion rocked the building.


Without saying a word, Chris took Sang Mi’s hand and they ran. They burst out of the archive and escaped.


* * *


Sang Mi and Chris sat on a bench in the middle of Philadelphia. The fire brigade had arrived, but Sang Mi already knew how much they were able to save and how much was lost.


"There were only around 20 injuries, and no confirmed deaths, which is lucky," said Sang Mi eventually. "A lot of people worked there, in Lubinville - that's what they called it. There was one boy called Ray who was badly hurt. An actor called Harry C. Myers saved him. I saw him in a movie once..."


Chris could feel Sang Mi trying to work through it, speaking more to herself than to him. "That's history. It's the way it always was. But, for a moment, we got to be there, didn't we?"


Sang Mi nodded. “Now that moment’s gone.”


They both sat and listened to the noise of the sirens. Then a noise under the bench made them both jump.


They looked down and saw the flickering cat, curled up asleep. A little hero.


“Come on,” said Chris. “Let’s go watch a movie.”

​​Deep in the trees, where the branches crowd out the light like intertwined fingers, there was a madman. He needed subjects for his experiments, subjects who wouldn’t be missed. He found them in children—abandoned and forgotten. Orphans who had been shunted off to the local asylum.

The madman was named Doctor Crow, and he had been working on a secret serum, which he injected into the children’s heads—causing them to swell up like melons.

The children turned feral—their teeth grew sharp, and they ate anything they could.

Nurses.

Each other.

And finally Doctor Crow himself.

Now they roam the forests, feasting on flesh, wandering in the darkness—”

“With their melon-heads?” Sang Mi cut in, her voice as dreary as her disposition. The black suits and ties she and Chris were wearing certainly didn’t help that.
 
Carol looked to Cwej hoping desperately he’d back her up. “It’s a real local legend!” She held up the bobblehead of the melon-headed child. “And that’s why we’re naming the baseball team after them.”

Chris looked over at Sang Mi, trying to keep his composure better than her. Unfortunately, he was well aware Sang Mi was a better liar than him, and he also knew she was doing a bad job that was better than his own bad job right now. “…It’s certainly an interesting proposition but, uh, you don’t hear people saying to name their team after say, the Jersey Devil.”

Carol crossed her arms, still holding the bobblehead. “You mean like the New Jersey Devils? The hockey team?”

“Oh shit, really?” Chris gave Sang Mi a look of pleasant surprise. She shrugged. “Well I still don’t think it’s a very catchy name.”

“With all due respect, you’re just consultants, and this is my team. Starting a minor league team isn’t easy, and I’ve invested everything I have into buying this baseball field, renovating it, and scouting out players. And we have a backer who’s going to make this place a real success… even if they keep saying we should name the team the Corvids.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Like that Doctor Crow?”

“I guess. I think we should stick with the simpler reference. Regardless, I appreciate that a generous donor paid for you to come here to assist us, Mr. Rodonanté and Ms. Kim, but I really think the Melonheads name is what suits our community.”

Sang Mi, aka Ms. Kim, scooted her chair back and got up. “Okay, well, I think we should go then, Mr. Rodonanté.”

Cwej nodded. “Sure. Not sure how much good we’ll be here at this point. Hopefully some of our suggestions were helpful.”

“Yes, I mean you did realize we were getting double billed by a few of our vendors, which is going to reduce our overhead tremendously, so I do thank you for coming.”

They each shook Carol’s hand, and filtered out. Chris made his way from the office to look out over the small stadium. Sang Mi scampered to follow him. “Did we really have to wear the suits? And why did we use our mothers’ maiden names?”

Chris stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I really wanted to feel like we were undercover.”

“You didn’t change your name at the school, and we were undercover there for like, a while.”

That was a good point, and he didn’t have a good answer, so he changed the subject. “So, what do you think, about the Melonheads?”

“I think that she's going to need to rebrand as fast as she can once it sinks in that It’s a terrible name for a sports team.”
 
He twitched and looked over at her. “No, the cryptids! The legends!” He threw his hands out, trying to gesture in a way that captured the mystery of it, but instead made him look like an insecure bird trying to take off.

“Oh. Well, I mean, they’re in our book, aren’t they? They don’t sound real, but nothing has sounded real. It’s not like I expected to meet vampires, or shadow people, or giant turtles.”

“There’s a lot of strange things in the world. And this trip has been filled with coincidences. I knew a Dr. Crow a long time ago, well, nearly the same name. So, I was curious.”

“I’m guessing you’ve concluded it’s nothing?”

He nodded. Then he shrugged. Then, as if hoping it would make him look more confident, he gave a second firmer nod. “Well, whatever. Let’s hit the road. Not every town is going to have a real mystery.”

* * *

And so, they abandoned the search for the Melonheads. Sang Mi already had their hardcover copy of Roadside Oddities of America out on her lap, flipping through the pages for something interesting. Chris shifted into his seat, turning out onto a country road. “Sorry that was a waste of time.”

Sang Mi screwed her lips to the side, holding a page of the book in the air as it bounced on her lap. “Isn’t that the whole point of what we’re doing, wasting time?”

“I wouldn’t call it a waste, we’re on an important mission.” The page stayed held in stasis between her fingertips.

He glanced over, flicking the turn signal as he did so. “Are you getting homesick?” “No, no, it’s not that. I don’t want to go home. It’s just…”

Trees flicked past the window. A stray dog perked its head up from some roadkill as they zipped by. “I can’t know unless you tell me.”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” “It’s really okay—”

“I said don’t worry about it!”

He held his gaze on her—probably too long for someone who was trying to pretend they were a safe driver—but as she leaned over and let her head bang at the window, he couldn’t help but go through an incredible list of improbable possibilities about what was bothering her. He started with fairly reasonable thoughts:

“Hey, Sang Mi, you’re not… in a love triangle with a dog-person and a pirate, are you?”
 
She tilted her head up from the window. “Stop kidding arou —” She saw the look in his eyes. “Oh, you’re serious. Are uh, dog-people real? And why was that example so specific?”

“Never mind, happened to a friend of mine,” he mumbled. “I’m just worried about you.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just the storm clouds in my head. Just ignore me,” she said as she went back to flipping through the book, examining an illustration of not a cryptid, but what looked like a very large ball of twine.

He tried to think of what to say, but it wasn’t long before the first roar of thunder—and that thunder was far from metaphorical.

“I don’t remember rain in the forecast?” Sang Mi said, looking up from a page on the Flatwoods Monster. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes to check if she was seeing things right. “Hey, Chris, the sky went dark? It was blue just a second ago.”

Of course the sky had gone dark. He really should have been expecting more things like this when they were looking for monsters. It almost made him want to call it quits and just drive to the lodge early and hope they didn’t get bored in the mountains playing board games. “Yeah, that’s bad.”

She pulled her shoulders in. She was probably thinking of their car wreck by Elkhart that had put her in the hospital when the same thing had happened there. “It’s not just like, when they turn the lights off in the dome instead of dimming them?”

Chris glanced at her. “Shouldn’t that all be automated?”

She shrugged, and he realized her eyes were filled with draining hope. “No, it’s not like that. But we’re going to be okay I—”

Chris looked back to the road, and with a curse hit the brakes hard. But not fast enough—the sound of their front tires popping caused both of them to groan.

Then it started raining.

“…Was that a strip of spikes in the road?” Sang Mi asked. “Sure looked like it.”

“That’s not normal either, right?” He could feel the spiking anxiety in her voice.

Chris shook his head, and looked out his side window. The forest on that slide sloped up onto a hill, and at its peak was a large and aged brick building, either a boxy manor or a fancy sanitarium. “I’ll call for roadside assistance. But it might be a little, considering the sudden and unnatural night.”

“We should just wait this out. Take turns napping and being on watch til the lights come back?”

Cwej bit his lip, pulling it back over his teeth till it snapped back into place. “…Yeah. Yeah, let’s do—”

Something rammed into the car.
 
Not with the force of another car, it had come from the side facing the forest after all, causing the Honda Element they’d dubbed ‘Odyssey’ to rock, just like Ulysses’ boat buffeted on Neptune’s waves.

Chris and Sang Mi looked at each other, and Sang Mi gestured for Chris to look behind him. He turned in his seat, only to see a being with a bulbous head, light purple skin, yellow eyes, sharp teeth, and claws, dressed in hospital clothes—and balancing on the shoulders of another small bulbous- headed being.

“It’s a freaking Melonhead!” Sang Mi said.

“It’s kinda cute, in a weird way,” Chris said.

"Seriously?”

As they bantered, more of the Melonheads started to make their way through the treeline, poking their heads out from behind trunks at first, and shuffling their way forward curiously. Some were holding hands delicately, comforting their friends as they approached the car.

Sang Mi softened. “I guess they are kinda cute, now that you say it—”

The Melonhead by the window let out an ear-piercing shriek, its mouth wide showing all its razor teeth in full gleam, and started pushing the car again. The car rocked harder.

Sang Mi un-softened. “They're going to turn us over, we have to get out—”

The assembled Melonheads charged the car, and Chris’s eyes turned serious and cold. He reached over, and opened Sang Mi's door, unbuckling her, and shoving her out the door as he leapt after her. She stumbled out into the rain, gaining her footing, and Chris grabbed her wrist. “Run!”

As the Melonheads screeched, she complied wholeheartedly. They ran across the road, and up the muddy hill towards the old brick building on the hill, the lights in the windows a guiding light. The sound of a swarm of feet splashing through the damp earth followed them. Sang Mi’s time as a runner was clearly paying off for her as she kept her footing in the muck better than Chris had expected.

Behind them, the Melonheads scrambled and screamed. Sang Mi had gotten ahead of Chris, and he could tell she was slowing her pace to not lose him. “Just go!”

She nodded, and bolted.

Looking along the path, Chris saw a fallen log, a bit rotted, but it met what he needed. Hefting it up, the Melonheads closing in, he dropped it, and pushed it with his foot down the hill. Most of the Melonheads scrambled out of the way, but the closest pair were knocked over like bowling pins as the rotting log broke apart upon impact. The pair thrashed their limbs and rolled around crying while the others went to try and help them.

Good, they’d be fine. He hadn't wanted to hurt them at all, but he also didn’t feel like getting chomped on today.
 
He charged up the hill after Sang Mi, finding her banging on the door. “It won’t open—uh—should we break it d—?”

Before she could even finish her question, Chris took in a deep breath and bellowed: “OPEN THIS DAMN DOOR!”

Sang Mi blinked, and the door creaked open. A Melonhead wearing a miniature orderly’s outfit with a suit jacket lazily placed over it opened the door.

“Mrah?” the Melonhead asked.

“Could we come inside?” Sang Mi asked, with a surreal politeness.

“Mrah,” they replied with a nod, and gestured that they follow them in. After they slipped in the door, Chris and Sang Mi scrambled to shut the door, turn every lock, slide the deadbolts, and then shove a nearby chair under the knob. Only then did they allow themselves to catch their breath and examine their surroundings.

The building was something between an old-timey hospital and a manor house. Clean white tile, interrupted by a grand wooden staircase in the center. A purple carpet rolled down it all the way to the doorway. The walls were decorated with framed baseball jerseys and cards. Slightly obscured by a great chandelier, were a set of five pictures of various people, two in black robes, three in medical gear. And above that, a great sign:

‘DR. CROW'S ORPHANAGE, SANATARIUM, AND HOTEL’.

Sang Mi looked at the sign, looked back at Chris, and then repeated the motion three more times.

“That is not a serious sign,” she said.

“No, no, it is,” Chris said with an exhausted acceptance. “You said you knew a Dr. Crow, this is them, isn’t it?” Chris pursed his lips.

“What are they like?” He scratched his nose. She squinted.

He glanced away.

“Oh no,” Sang Mi said, realization hitting her.

“I didn’t say anything!” Chris said, way too defensively. “You and this Dr. Crow… you guys were like… an item?”
 
Chris sighed again, performatively louder. “Yeah. Guess there's no fooling you there. He and I uh… my Superiors trained me in Japan for a while.”

Sang Mi blinked. “Wait, you said your ‘superiors’ run the Universe—so why, like, Japan?”

There was a certain lack of respect in the way she said "Superiors" that he felt like he should correct, but he couldn't find the words, and now wasn't the time anyway. “It’s a long story. Dr. Crow, or the Corvid as I knew him then, was sort of a… trainer? Physical therapist? He monitored how I was doing for my Superiors. We may have uh, gotten a bit closer while he was helping me stretch my hamstrings—"

“Chris, I mean this with all the love in the world, please do not tell me more, ever.” “Sorry—anyway, he got reassigned before I finished there, due to some, uh, unauthorized experiments.”

“Please no more euphemisms.”

“No, like, he did experiments on people without their consent. Which… lines up with the Melonheads legend. I assumed he went home, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just wandering the Earth for centuries.”

“Hundreds of years of medical malpractice,” Sang Mi mumbled.

“But apparently he got eaten. That’s… well, if the legend is true, he might not come back from that one.”

“…Being cannibalized would do that, yes?”

There was banging on the door, he looked over at the friendly melonhead who had let them in. “This guy seems okay. Maybe the others are trying to get him?”

That didn’t seem quite right, they were holding hands with a sweet compassion. But maybe they were in factions? Sang Mi turned this over in her head like a pancake: quickly and without the desire to flip it again. “Yeah, that tracks. If they ate their creator like you said, they might eat each other?”

The kind melonhead tugged at Chris’s sleeve with a “Mrah!’ and pointed at the doorway to the right. “Want us to go in there?”

“I’ll watch for traps!” Sang Mi volunteered as he went and opened the door.

Beyond it was a grand dining hall. A long table extended out, with a huge golden chair at the far end, and beautiful and expensive but less grand chairs lining the table on either side. On the table was a blue tablecloth, a noticeably empty spot for plates, cups and silverware, and an elaborate centerpiece depicting a star.

Two places already had glasses filled with water, and one with wine and the other with milk, to the left and right of the golden chair which had a stuffed toy of a crow sitting on it.

“Mrah!” the kind melonhead said.
 
“Are you serving us dinner? Mr…. Uh…”

The melonhead pointed to a pin on his jacket with the number ‘Five’ on it. “Five? That’s your name?”

He nodded.

“You look more like a Ji Ho.”

He shrugged, and gestured again to the table. They sat, scooting in the rather heavy wooden chairs. In just a moment, Five came back with a large cart containing several plates under covers, which he pulled off with a flourish and set down before each of them. The plates were fine china with gold-leaf filigree, and on them was food that was rather unlike anything Sang Mi was familiar with. But as Chris saw it, his face drooped. Sang Mi looked up at him, eyes bright with excitement, which dimmed just like the light in the domes was supposed to at twilight.

“Something wrong with the food?” When they were alone in the car, Chris and her talked almost exclusively in Korean. When they were around others, they usually spoke English. But Sang Mi asked this question in Korean, even with Five right there.

“Yeah,” Chris replied in turn. “It’s made from local ingredients, but this is trying to emulate food from the Base of Operations. The home-world of my Superiors.”

The food was a fried chicken cutlet, the breading thick with herbs, with several parallel cuts down it, and a dark blue seasoned sauce made primarily from berries laid into each of the trenches. To the side was a set of what looked like kebabs on wooden skewers, but made of peppers and Brussel spouts, slightly charred and smoked. Finally there were small pieces of bread, each the size of a golf-ball, soft and drizzled in butter and honey with nutmeg.

Sang Mi picked up her knife and fork, and cut into the chicken, taking a bite. The roller coaster of the light in her eyes continued, as they lit up again. “It’s good! It’s sweet and savory, and it’s got the crunchy coating, juicy meat, and the texture from the berry goop.” She immediately went to the bread. “That’s yummy too!” She rushed into a bite of the veggie kebab. “…A bit of a weirder taste, but I could get used to it?”

Reluctantly, Chris tasted it too. They probably should have been more cautious about eating it, but well, Sang Mi seemed fine. She was right—it was good.

“It’s been a long time since I had this.”

“Is it like, a delicacy?”

He shook his head. “No, honestly it’s probably the closest thing to home cooking they have up there. Food isn’t common among them.”

She perked up, strangely. “Food scarcity? Like three years ago when the hydroponics failed back home?”
 
“Er, no, nothing like that. They have enough to eat,” he clarified. “They just sort of mostly… don’t? Not proper meals, I mean. Fun ones. Mostly, they just eat these, I don’t know, nutrition pills.”

Sang Mi chewed and swallowed. “That has to be boring.”

“They love being boring. It’s one of Their biggest talents.”

“Huh. Then when did you try this before?”

“Oh, with friends…” he said vaguely. “Leaving home isn’t the only way you can rebel.”

She picked up the last of the mini-breads, turning it around in her fingers. “I can understand that. Even getting a good grade can be rebellion sometimes. My mom always said so.”

“Speaking of home… earlier, you were saying something about going back?”
​
She stopped spinning the bread in her hands, and shoved it in her mouth, looking away from him as she chewed. “Hey, Chris, why are they serving Superior food here?”

He was trying to figure out if he should call her out for dodging the question when the music kicked in, and the doors to the dining room swung out. Five stood there, in a half-bow, holding his hand out gesturing for them to return to the grand entryway.

“I don’t know this song.”

“It’s called Science Fiction Double Feature,” Chris said, suddenly looking dreary. “Well, we’d better go see the Show.”

“The Show?”

He got up, and she scampered up as he gestured for her to follow.

The lights in the entry hall dimmed, as they approached the center, where they stood together, tense.

From the great stairwell came a spotlight, then awkwardly timed in the wrong order, the lights then went off. Framed there was a woman in a long white lab coat with long raven hair, posed with her arms out, staring them down like she was trying to mimic a bird in flight.

“Chris Cwej,” a musical cue followed, and she changed her pose dramatically with the beat. “It’s been a while.”

Chris and Sang Mi were of one mind. They immediately turned around and ran for the door. However, that door shot open, and the Melonheads that had been chasing them from the car up the hill waddled in, looking unhappy, dirty, and tired, but no longer like they were going to take a bite of them. They were, however, glaring at them with malice. Naturally, the duo took a few steps towards the staircase. One of the Melonheads hissed at them, supporting one of the pair Chris had hit with the log, who was sucking their thumb.

“Oh, uh, hey Corvid… How’s it been? I see you’ve, uh…” Chris gestured at the Melonheads. “…been keeping busy?”
 
She effortlessly leapt onto the banister, landing side-saddle, and sliding down to hop off with a perfect gymnast’s landing. The Melonheads all clapped.

“Thank you, thank you.” She tossed her raven-black hair back. “I see you’ve been busy as well. Who’s this child?” She gestured at Sang Mi with feigned disinterest. “I heard you’d been travelling with some Grigori, but she doesn’t have four arms.”

“This is…” he trailed off, so she cut in.

“Jhe Sang Mi, I’m from Gongen.”

She tapped her cheek. “Gongen? Never heard of it. At least you look human.” Sang Mi furrowed her brow. “I am human!”

Dr. Crow laughed, covering her mouth with one hand and flapping her other hand in the air. “I’m sure you’d like to think so. How much genetic modification did they have to do so you could survive on this Gongen? Look at you, your DNA is a mess.”

“You can’t just see my DNA,” she said dryly.

“Actually, she can,” Chris said. “She’s a Superior. She’s messed with her own bodies so she can do that. Those aren’t the eyes of a normal person, or even a normal Superior.”

Dr. Crow grinned.

Sang Mi nodded slowly. “I’ve met people who modify themselves like that, I get—wait, what do you mean, bodies? Like, plural?”

“This little hatchling really doesn’t even know that? Tsk tsk, you never were much of an educator, were you…”

Drained, Chris looked back to Sang Mi, as if explaining this was taking a year off his life. “Her People can reform themselves after death. Take on a whole new body. She’s less a person and more a forest fire that’s been bottled in skin. She didn’t have a medical procedure to change herself from the man I knew before—he was a man then, and in this body she’s a woman. She’ll change bodies again in the future, and she could be any gender or sex in any combination. Her features could be anything. But she’ll always be a Superior. An inferno kept in check with manners and smiles. That’s who she is.”

“Very poetic,” Dr. Crow said. “You could have just said I’m like a god and be done with it.”

​“I have strong feelings on that word,” Sang Mi said.

Crow’s face hardened. “I bet you do. A little girl with insignificant superstitions.”

Chris moved protectively in front of Sang Mi, and Dr. Crow took that opportunity to stroke his face, which caused him to back up, bumping Sang Mi on the nose, who promptly yelped.
 
Dr. Crow smiled. “Did you enjoy the meal? You used to love that. I cooked it for you. I couldn’t get the turoon but I made do.”

“Substituting the chicken for a vegetable worked better than it should have.”

Her hand crept up to stroke his face again. “Why don’t you stay the night here? I promise you’ll be safe, and it’s so wet outside. Plus what a tragic accident that happened to your car—”

“The strip of nails literally right in front of your house with your minions waiting to flush us to the front door?”

She smiled wide. “Whatever could give you that impression?”

“Every single thing that happened gives us that impression,” Sang Mi said, still rubbing her nose. “We thought poor Five here was under siege, but it looks like this was all choreographed.”

“Well, what can you do?” Crow said, throwing her hands up and shifting them side to side in the air with her palms up a few times while bobbing her head. “Guess you caught me. But more accurate to say, I caught you.”

“Okay, well, I think that’s our cue to.…” At that, Sang Mi bolted again for the door, causing the surprised Melonheads in the way to scatter. She rattled the handle, and then rammed her shoulder into it.

“It won’t budge,” Crow called coolly. “But you’re welcome to leave anytime.”

Chris knew that way she was talking. That was the way the Corvid talked when he had already won. “What’s your game?” He clenched his fists and stomped towards her. “You experimented on these children—”

“They would have died anyway, I saved their lives, give me a little credit.” “I bet you didn’t ask them if they wanted to get turned into melonheads.”

She shrugged. “Well, no, but look, I already paid for that—how do you think I lost my last body?” She leaned in. “They did eat me, you know. That was hard to come back from. And look at me, I’m still caring for the little carnivores!”

“You always think things are okay if you just do things and ask forgiveness afterwards. That’s why we broke up.”

She grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, drawing him closer. “We broke up ‘cause I got fired.”

“It was a two-for-one,” he said, trying to brush her hands off his chest, but she grabbed his instead, intertwining their fingers. He glowered at her. “You’re not as slick as you think.”

“But you haven’t let go,” she said, then pushed up on her toes. He dodged her lips.

“Sang Mi, now.”

Crow raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look away from him as Sang Mi sucker-punched her in the jaw.

“OW! What the heck!?”

It was Sang Mi's turn to grab his hand and pull him away—why was it hard to be pulled away?
 
Was there something in the food? They ran down the hall to the left of the staircase—the rooms were labeled with big numbers, one through nine, with child-sized beds in each one, the floor checkerboard tiles, the rest all white and fluorescent lights. He didn’t know where this hallway led, but at the very least it was leading somewhere away.

He let himself feel a moment of relief, before Sang Mi stopped. He didn’t quite halt his momentum, and rammed into her. But she just stayed staring, her body swaying along with her tie like a pendulum.

“We have to keep—”

“I get it now. I get it. Why we came here.”

He stared into the room. It had a larger bed than the others, but otherwise looked the same. A signed picture of some baseball player on the wall. Hospital monitoring equipment there. She stepped into the room, and took her suit jacket off, then her tie, sitting down on the bed, eyes somewhat vacant. He rushed over, shaking her by the shoulders.

“Sang Mi, we have to go. Now. NOW!”

She looked up, glassy eyed. “This is my room, though. It’s okay. I understand.” She placed a hand gently on his own, and patted it. “This is where I get left behind. I knew it would happen. The road trip ends. And you forget about me. Everyone forgets about me. This is where it ends.”

He shook her harder. “No—no, stop talking like that. I came back for you, remember? That’s why we’re here.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to keep it going. Force this to never end. I’m just a fool. Everyone should stay away from me.” She seemed to realize he was there. “Stay away from me!” She shoved him back, and ran over to the wall, she pulled her head back, ready to smash it into the plaster, but he put her into a bear-hug, and tore her back as she thrashed.

“Sang Mi, listen to me, you’re not yourself! Something—AGH!” She whacked him in the face. She’d gotten better at that, all due to him, and it was a bad way to learn she’d picked things up. “Let me go!”

“Not if you’re going to smash your head into the wall, stars above!” A voice called from the doorway. “Number Five, sedate her.”
​
Before he could let go and try to stop it, the little Melonhead slipped over and jabbed something into Sang Mi’s leg. It wasn’t an ideal spot to inject a person, but it still worked pretty effectively. He held her as she slowly grew limp, and lay her down gently on the bed. Looking over her, his heart ached at her heavy breathing, the pained look on her face, the way her closed eyes seemed to clench, and her hands ended in curled fingers that neither clenched or straightened.

He closed his own eyes, and turned to face Dr. Crow in the doorway. “What did you do to her?” “Do to her?” she scoffed. “I didn’t ‘do’ anything.”

“Bullshit.”

“This place, this building, this is a place where your desires are let loose,” she said as she posed in the doorway, in an attempt at sexiness that would have worked a lot better if she was still in her last body. Still, there was a certain appeal… She approached him again, and he didn’t step back.

“It was the food,” he spat.

“The food is a part of the experience.”

“Sang Mi has fought harder to grow to where she is now with her mental health than you’ve fought for anything in your immortal life.”

She tilted her head, and after all her smarmy cockiness she finally sounded serious. “You took a mentally unstable girl off her home-world, and brought her on a road trip? You’re not being kind by taking her on this trip; she’s going to break because she’s already broken. Chris, she’s not the kind of girl you take on an adventure. Do you think your mentor would have?”

“I’m not him,” he shot back without thinking. He would have stopped to sit down and think about it, but things kept going too fast for self-reflection.

She stroked his chest. “Oh, I know you’re not. Trust me.”

“This girl—Sang Mi—she deserves this. She deserves to… travel, and see amazing things. She deserves someone to believe in her.”

“There’s a difference between believing in someone and ignoring that their deepest desires are to be abandoned and harm themselves.” She snaked a hand under his shirt. It felt good. It… No. He pulled away. He had to pull away. He pinched his own cheek.

“She was holding herself together until she came here!”

“Oh? She never broke down and curled up in the corner? She never started having a panic attack and had to convince you to keep going?”

He stomped his foot. “That doesn’t mean she’s broken! She’s kept going. She’s kept fighting.”

“This is what she wants, Chris. You strip away all the coping, all the filigree, all the ways she’s taped herself together, she wants to be here. Wants to stop being a burden. Just like you want to be comforted right now.” What was this place?
 
She was a Superior, and this place was her forest that she could burn at her leisure. Her eyes cut into him like torches, and the world was warm and dangerous. He needed to focus. Needed to stay in control.

But she was right.

She wasn’t a good person. But he did want her. He’d wanted him back then, and he wanted her now. And he shouldn’t. And something was wrong about this place, the laws of reality were wrong here.

He should be able to control what he wanted.

But…

“You said I never asked permission Chris,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. “So I’m asking.”

Oh, to Hell with it. He kissed her.

And they left the room, and shut the door behind them.

* * *

4th August, 1869, Future Site of Kobe, Japan
It wasn’t so long ago that no one could walk the shores of the city from the training center. And even now they weren’t supposed to be, but that made it all the more exciting. It didn’t smell great up here, but that was how it often went with the past. The great ships that had come into port belched smoke and steam, and the foreigners and locals mingled about the docks.

“It wasn’t too long ago we wouldn’t fit in at all here,” the Corvid said.

“We still don’t,” Chris replied, tipping his hat to a woman carrying a huge basket on her back as they passed.

“You know what I mean. This whole country was closed off. Now we can get some fresh air.” “You shouldn’t let your friends down there hear you, next they'll be whispering you’re touching plants, or some other heinous deed.”

He laughed, and nudged Cwej in the arm, then shifted to feeling his bicep. “That’s pretty nice. You’ve gotten more muscle mass.”

Chis pulled his arm away. “Don’t make it sound so clinical.”

“I’m not trying to, I was trying to sound sexy. Was I not sexy?” He leaned in and whispered. “Can I prove to you that I’m sexy?”

Raising a hand to cover the blush on his face, Chris gave a small nod. “…Later though,” he added aloud. “Hey, what’s going on over there?”
 
On a rough patch of dirt, four chalk squares forming a diamond had been drawn, with two groups of men—one made up of sailors, the other of locals—gathered together. A local, a Japanese man with a well-trimmed beard, was holding a ball in the center of the diamond. He pulled his arm back, and hurled the ball at one of the sailors, an American man with a thick moustache. The sailor was holding a wooden bat, which he struck the ball with, an action which caused all the locals on the pitch to go running for the ball to catch it. The sailors cheered as their batter started running for the next chalk square.
“What in the Architect’s schematics are they playing?” the Corvid leaned in, using the excuse to press into Chris’s side as he performatively stroked his beard in curiosity.
“Its one of those old-timey sports, I don’t really know which one…”

The Corvid noted this, and called out to a well-dressed Japanese man holding a notepad. “You sir, what game are they playing?”

He looked up. “Baseball, I take it’s not played in your outsider country?” “Not so much,” Chris answered curtly. “Its interesting though.”

“Quite! I’m covering it for the Hiogo News. I humbly ask you buy a copy if you see one,” the reporter said brazenly, giving a bow of his head to offset it.

“Sure,” The Corvid replied, fixated on the game. “Baseball. I like it. Let’s get some food, and watch it together. It can be our first date.”

“Our first…” Cwej folded. “You really are forward, you know. You can’t just decide we’re dating.”

“But I kinda just did, and you’re kind of into it, aren’t you?” Cwej looked away.

“You’re blushing.”

“I am not.”

“If you turned around your face would be as red as a cardinal.”

Cwej knew he was right on every count. But if he turned around he’d have to admit that. The Corvid put an arm around his shoulder, like a sheltering wing.

“Come on then, let’s watch some baseball. If the sport survives, we can go on another date and be all wistful. What do you say?”

Cwej just nodded.

He probably should have paid more attention to the game they were supposed to be watching, but his attention wasn’t focused on the pitch, the ships, or the great bustle of history all around him. Instead, he looked at a face, and let his cheeks get red again.

* * *

The Present, 2025
One Week Since Cwej and Sang Mi arrived at the Mansion

Sang Mi stretched as she woke up to the sunlight stroking her face through the window. She slipped her feet into the bunny slippers she’d been provided, threw on her robe, and stumbled her way down the hall.

“Morning, Eight,” she said.

“Mrah!” Eight replied, carrying a basket of laundry to the chute.

She made her way down the staircase, and over to the dining hall where Chris and Crow were already eating together. She went over to the buffet and grabbed a plate of more food than she was going to eat—waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, copious syrup and hot sauce, a banana, and three beverages (orange juice, milk, and coffee). Balancing it all precariously, she slipped back out before they could notice her. They’d probably be sucking face before she made it back to her room.

She set her tray down on the bed, and turned the TV on, then the Super Nintendo. They didn’t let her have many games, and right now the only one was Super Baseball Simulator 1.000. She pulled the controller over to the bed—it wasn’t wireless, which was, frankly, silly, and the wire hung awkwardly between the TV stand and the bed. She shoveled some eggs into her mouth, and got started. The game was kind of weird—she was an RPG and open world girlie, not a sports game gal—and it had taken her a bit to figure out the mechanics. At first she’d just button-mashed and hoped she could hit the ball or throw it, struggling to pass the ball around to the right places as the game shifted what player she was every time she did. But she was getting the hang of it now. She wasn’t good at it, hell no, but getting better.

“Mrah?” Five said, poking his head in the door.

“Yeah, sure, take a seat. You can take controller two on the next round.” “Mrah!” Five said, sitting down in excitement, rocking back and forth.

She tapped the button right, and her batter whacked the ball far into the outfield! She ran her little guys around the bases, and pumped her fist. “Yes! I am the queen of Baseball. Or at least of Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 on the SNES.”

“Mrah,” Five agreed.

She was glad Chris didn’t have to worry about her.

She knew her mom, dad, and brothers had to be relieved to be done with her now. They’d feign sadness, but she knew they’d be happier without her.

She was content here. Hidden away.

Something about that was wrong. But she couldn’t hold onto it, and went up to bat again.

 
* * *

Chris shot up in bed, just like he had every night. The Corvid rolled over and moaned. “Oh, stop having nightmares,” she mumbled.

Not like he could help it.

He slid out of bed, and washed his face off. The dreams weren’t the same. They were more like a collage of bad memories. A blade in his hand red with blood, and the sky cracking open in response. A fierce hunger in the desert, and only his own flesh to sate it as he grew more ravenous. His friend Kwol becoming more erratic, threatening his life, and only violence could stop it. His friend Roz charging off across a battlefield into death. Sang Mi, doing the same back on Gongen, suited up in yellow armor, charging across a field of invading soldiers. No, no, that last one hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t happen.

She’d be okay, wouldn’t she? Or…

He looked into the mirror, and hated who he saw. He couldn’t be like Charles Zoltan, and solve a problem with peace and dignity. He couldn’t even save his friends. He couldn’t even make the right choices. Sang Mi looked at him like he was someone, like he was a hero. Like she wanted to grow up to be him. He couldn’t think of a worse prospect than that.

When he was with Corvid, he didn’t have to think about that. Did he like her, or did he like that she made him forget, just for a little, what he saw in the mirror? There was something wrong with all of this--

Whenever he tried to think past that though, he came back to the mirror, to the dreams, and to that boiling pit of self-hatred that he’d kept capped off.

He put on a robe, and went out to the living room of the suite, turning on a radio. Chris Cwej froze in place.

Always Something There to Remind Me.

He knew that song.

That song was… part of something.

It came back to him; he’d been there with Sang Mi. They’d gone back for the deer statue.

Sang Mi, a scared little girl, looking down from her lonely hospital bed, seeing him standing by the deer statue in the Cheonsa West General Hospital courtyard. Waving at him. And he waved back.

Seeing him again, and bravely coming down to help him with the strange cat. He’d bought her a baseball bat in Louisville.

She called him her deer, guiding her through the dark forest.
 
And it was dark.

And The Corvid had lit the trees on fire.

Always Something There to Remind Me.

The Deer. The Forest. The Song. The Bat.

The Crow.

She was here. Sang Mi was still here. It didn’t matter how much he hated himself, and right now that was quite a bit, but he couldn’t keep drowning himself in bed with his ex and keep forgetting this.

Her family had smiled, and left her at the hospital. They were good people, really. She loved them. But they hadn’t visited her. He knew they’d have refused to let her go on this adventure. They treated her like a fragile cup that could shatter at any time. But she was a living person, damn it, she was his friend. He was the only person who could tell her she wasn’t crazy and mean it.

He looked down from the mirror, into the sink. This place amplified your desires till you couldn’t control them. Good ones and bad ones, it made no difference.
But he’d woken up now. And one desire rose in his heart above all others: he was going to save his friend.

He didn’t wait, he didn’t plan. He ran.

Chris flew out the door, down the stairs, past Melonheads Six and Three, and skidded a turn on his bare feet towards the ward where the Melonheads and Sang Mi’s rooms were. He charged in, flung open her door, and she blinked and looked over from where she was playing video games with Melonhead Five.

“Hi?” she said.

Chris knew what he had to do, and it wouldn’t be dignified, but dignity be damned. He took a deep breath, and started belting out Always Something There To Remind Me. He even did his best vocal approximation of the solo synth riffs.

She and the Melonhead stared at him.

“Chris, I gotta be real with you, you should not join a band.”

“That’s too bad, cause I was thinking of playing bass, now come on,” he held a hand out. “We’ve been trapped here like Lotus Eaters, but I’m the deer that leads you out of the darkness, remember?”

Her eyes focused. “You… wait a second, why have I spent the last week playing Super Baseball Simulator 1.000? I don’t even like sports games?!”

He tilted his head a little. “Not the weirdest thing, but I’ll take it—let’s go!” She began to get up. She froze. “No… No, I…”

He held his hand out. “Sang Mi. I want you to take my hand. So—please.”

She took his hand, and as the Melonhead scrambled up behind them, they rushed out back to the lobby.

“How are we going to escape? Won’t we just… go back into whatever loop we were in?”

“This place amplifies our desires. And I’m betting that includes hers too.”

They skidded to a halt together in front of the grand staircase as Dr. Crow marched down it, stopping in the center of the staircase, for what seemed to be no reason other than to dramatically frame herself in her kimono and nightie.

“I didn’t think listening to The Naked Eyes would have such a strong effect. Oh well. You still can’t escape.”

Chris pointed at her. “If you want us to stay, then let’s make it permanent one way or the other.

Stop this cat and mouse game. I challenge you to a contest of skill.” Sang Mi raised an eyebrow. “Not a duel?”

“It has to be something she’d actually accept,” he mumbled.

The Corvid tapped her cheek. “…Perhaps. Perhaps. It… you’d really stay here, if I won?” “If you win. And if we win, you let us go.”

Sang Mi jumped between them. “She could just, you know, not do what she’s saying! Lying is real, Chris!”

He shook his head. “No, for all her faults, she’ll hold to this.”

“But I’ll hold you to it too. No running away. If you try to escape, you’ll be here forever.”

“Fine,” he said, lightly stomping his foot.

“And what contest did you have in mind?”

Chris had not thought that far. He stood awkwardly, finger in the air, his brain feeling like mush, until he looked at Sang Mi, hoping she had an idea.

“Of course we have our challenge,” she said. “Doctor Crow, we challenge you to a game of Super Baseball—”

“I ACCEPT!”

“…Simulator 1.000.”

“No, I accepted baseball.”

“You accepted Super Baseball, which isn’t a thing.”

“Baseball is super, just because I am playing it.”

Chris scoffed. “Baseball. I guess it’s full circle. Works for me.”

“Very well, we will play against each other tomorrow. Assemble your team, and meet me at the Melonhead baseball diamond I helped fund. Thankfully, there are eight Melonheads and myself. Good luck finding your own team. It would be a pity if you had to forfeit.”

Chris and Sang Mi looked at each other, nodded, and gave her each a different rude hand gesture before turning for the door, which opened without a hitch.

“And don’t you dare think of running. I’ll be watching you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They shut the door. It was a warm morning, and the forest was alive with noises and life. “You’re still wearing just a bathrobe,” Sang Mi noted.

“So I am,” Chris replied, stretching his arms up. “That’s the least of our problems, but I think I know the first person to recruit for our team.”

She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t mean the French lady, right?”

“She’s a short drive away, and she’s still studying Oscar!”

Sang Mi sighed. “I don’t think she knows anything about baseball.”

Chris put his hands on his hips to mirror hers. “And you do?”

“Uh, baseball is one of the most popular sports on Gongen, I’ll have you know.” “Have you ever played it?”

She looked down at her slippers. “…In gym class? And I played Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for like, a full week.”

His arms moved from his hips to crossing his chest, and she knew she’d lost this round. “Find, we call Odette Caron. Who next?”

He grinned. “Some friendly faces.”

* * *

When Sang Mi and her twin brother Sang Eun were six years old, their father took them to a baseball game for the first time. It was the Takumi Tengu versus the Hongtu Cannonballs, and both of them were more interested in the scripted antics of the two animatronic mascots for the teams that were doing live-action cartoon comedy on the sidelines.

They got a big thing of ttekbokki, and of popcorn, and shoveled their faces while the match progressed. Moreso than the game, the twins enjoyed the chants and cheers, the songs and pageantry. All these years later, Sang Mi couldn’t remember who won that game. She knew she’d be able to look it up easily, but she didn’t want to. What had been important was her father reaching over and tousling her hair, and her brother stealing “her" popcorn (that had been expressly bought to share) and them squabbling over it til their dad got them both ice cream to shut them up.

He held their hands on the way back to the train station, one on each side of him, mouths ringed a little in strawberry ice cream he’d only mostly been able to wipe off.
They went again years later, and she’d regretted it because she and Sang Eun had been messaging their friends their whole time and didn’t pay attention to the game. At the time she hadn't cared, but now she looked back on her father’s blank face and knew it was masking a hurt as he wanted to share that precious time he had off from the factories with them.

What a selfish thing I am, she thought.

But she would still look back at that memory when she was six with a deep fondness.

Now, she stood in a parking lot doing practice swings of the baseball her friend Chris had bought her. She’d had her nickname, Kalingkata, engraved on it along with a little reference. She pulled the bat back, and swung at the air.

“You’re pretty good.”

It was Chris, walking up with most of their team. A few of them were familiar faces. Back during the big storm on Gongen, when she and Chris filmed that TV show together, Lady Aesculapius and her girlfriend Blanche had helped solve that whole affair with them. Aesc had curly black hair and brown skin, and looked incredibly confident in her baseball uniform, but also gave off the vibe she didn’t know why she was here. Blanche, on the other hand, had tied her white hair back in a tight bun, and looked prepared but like she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Blanche, look, it’s Sang Mi!” Aesc exclaimed while pointing at her, a few feet away.

“Yeah, I see her. Hi.”

Sang Mi waved. “Good to see you both and—COLOTH!”

She dropped the bat and ran over to Coloth. The two high fived, which turned into a spin and then a handshake. Coloth had also been a part of that whole debacle, only he’d been in the cast of the TV show with her, so they’d spent a lot of time backstage hanging out.

“Oh, okay, didn’t expect such a warm welcome!” he said, a little bashfully.

“Hey so, before I thought you were a guy in prosthetics, but you’re actually an alien who looks like a cactus-person right?”
 
“More like you’re an alien who looks like a shaved monkey, and my species aren’t supposed to look like cacti, but uh, yes, something like that.”

She squealed a little. “Chris, Coloth is an alien!”

“So is Lady Aesc, honestly,” Chris deadpanned.

She looked over at her. “Well, she isn’t green.”

Aesc sulked. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, everyone with good taste likes Coloth. I get it.”

She picked her bat up. “Baseball teams have nine people, right? So that puts us at five.”

A car pulled into the parking lot, and Chris nudged her. “A little more than that.” Odette Caron of C.R.U.X exited the car, followed by another familiar face--

“Is… is that Bill Murray?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the actor?”

“In the flesh.”

“Does he know how to play baseball?”

Chris considered this. “Well it’s cool that he’s here, right?”

Sang Mi stared him down til he looked away.

“Okay, but I do have a surprise you might actually like. Maybe not better than Coloth but,” he gestured with both hands, waggling his fingers in a way which was trying to be both magician- and cheerleader-like, and was hitting neither. From Odette’s car, the back doors opened, and out stepped the pair of Megan Grabowski and Martha Sandalwood.

Well, she’d give this one to Chris—she bolted for her friends from Hughes High. She’d spent weeks there with Chris under cover, and Megan had been her closest friend there. Martha was Megan’s friend, and Sang Mi and Chris had saved her from being kidnapped and trapped inside a movie projector, and it’s hard not to be friends after that.

“SARAH!” they yelled, which was her undercover name, but whatever. “MEGAN! MARTHA!” she yelled back.

The three girls promptly hugged, and then jumped up and down together while cheering.

“Thank you so much for coming!”

“Of course, like we’d leave you in the lurch!” Megan said. “When Mr. Cwej called, we got packed right away! What are you doing anyway, is like, part the secret agent stuff you guys were doing when you saved us? Are there more people trapped in movie projectors?”

Sang Mi blinked. “Well uh, right now we’re playing baseball against monsters from urban legends and an immortal mad scientist, so… kinda?”

Megan and Martha were very excited by this turn of events. After they’d caught up, Chris clapped and got everyone to order. “Alright everyone, today is the first ever game of our team, the Starmen, against the Corvids. It’ll also be our only game.”

Aesc’s hand shot up. Reluctantly, Chris called on her. “Hello, yes, what game are we playing again?”

He stared at her, the mirth gone from his face. “Baseball.”

“Right, right,” she noted this down on a clay tablet she had with her for some reason.

Bill Murray’s hand went up, so Chris called on him too. “Sorry, uh, so is this for a documentary? Or a movie? Is there a script or am I just improv-ing? My agent said this would pay off that bad trip to Monaco, and so I’m all in, just uh. Why is he a cactus?”

“Why were you in Garfield?” Coloth shot back.

“You know what, that’s fair,” he replied.

“Don’t worry about anything. Just do your best, and have fun. No script, just… make sure to treat the Melonheads with respect and kindness, they’re just little guys.”

“Melonheads?” Martha asked.

Odette chimed in. “You’ll know them when you see them. The name explains it.”

“What about—”

The questions continued, and as they did Sang Mi watched as Chris fielded them expertly. Megan and Martha were right on things. Coloth was cool as always. Aesc and Blanche were fun. Odette Caron was clever and analytical. Bill Murray was, well, Bill Murray.

She wondered if she walked away now if anyone would even notice. Eventually, she did.

* * *

When the team meeting was over, Chris realized that Sang Mi was gone. There had been a lot of questions, and he may have gotten a little too long winded and passionate answering a few of them, but he still felt awkward he’d missed when she slipped out. Had she just gone to the bathroom? He poked around, only to find her right outside the locker room entrance from the parking lot, whacking a set of cardboard boxes by the trashbin with her bat. It was a halfhearted effort though. Like she wanted to look angrier than she was.

“Hey, I was looking for you,” he waved. She looked up at him, and then kicked one of the boxes.

Finally catching up, he tried to be cheerful. “Ready for the big game?”

“You’ve got everyone else, you don’t need me.”

“Where’s that coming from? Most of these people are here because I thought it would be fun for them to be here with you. Megan and Martha especially.”

She nodded, then Sang Mi turned to face the wall, putting a hand against the concrete bricks and digging her nails in with a clawed scraping sound. “Hey Chris… You know that… you know you can stop this whenever you want, right? I want this to go on forever but… you don’t have to force yourself. Really.”

He didn’t know where she was going with this. And he quickly decided he didn’t want to. “…Well, I don’t want to stop this,” he said, “so let’s just forget about whatever is bothering you and get to the game. Everyone is waiting for us.”

She pressed her forehead into the wall, and for a moment a spark of fear ran through him, and he felt bad about that as her shoulders pulsed and she let out a pained laugh. “You were worried, right? That I was going to smash my head into the wall? I did that when I was a kid, you know.”

“You’re still a kid,” he countered.

“A little kid. I rammed my head into the wall. Split my head right open. When we got there the E.R. was full—I don’t know why, maybe there was a big accident or something—and they had to put a curtain around me and my mom while they waited for a bed to open up for me. I think they just thought it was one of those wacky little childhood accidents, you know, you think you can fly if you flap your wings so you jump off the table and break your arm.”

“I did that,” Chris said.

“I bet you did. But that’s the thing, Chris…” She moved her hands from digging into the wall. “I wanted to hurt myself. I knew I deserved it. But I didn’t tell anyone, maybe I just didn’t realize everyone didn’t feel like that. Maybe I didn’t want to worry my mom. I don’t know… There was something wrong with me then, and there is something wrong with me now.” He could hear the tears between her words. He hesitated, not sure what the right move was.

Sweep her up in a hug?

Give her a speech about how she was special? Nothing felt right. And so he just stood there.

“I know what the Corvid said. I heard her. The Defector, that superior who took you across the stars on all those adventures… They wouldn’t have taken me. They wouldn’t have. Because I’m broken. I’m broken and everyone can see it.”

“You’re not broken,” he said, maybe too simply.
 
She spun around, the tears she’s kept imprisoned flying out in a splatter as she did so. “Of course I am! I’ve… I’ve had how many breakdowns while we’ve been travelling together? I broke down when you came to pick me up for the World’s Fair. I broke down the night you took me to Violethill. I broke down on the Point of Know Return trying to help you. I broke down at Dr. Crow’s… and… and I guess I’m breaking down now! Why not!”

“You’re just feeling things. That doesn’t mean you’re breaking down.”

“Does it? Does it, Chris!? I was so moody in Louisville we barely got what we needed done.” She covered her face again. “I did it. I got out of the hospital. I learned to control all these feelings inside me, all these urges to hurt myself, to hate myself. And I have medicine that lets me do it. But they don’t go away. They won’t go away. I tried to get better but I can’t. I keep trying but I can’t make these feelings disappear. I can’t win.”

Chris untensed, and strode up to her. He put his hands gently on her forearms, and tugged a little. She relented, and showed her puffy face. In return, he gave her a warm and gentle smile.

“Getting better isn’t one victory. That’s not why it’s good. Getting better is having another day. Cause no matter how bad that day is, it’s yours. And it can always be yours. Right now, right here, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. It matters that I want you here, I chose you to come with me.”

“But Dr. Crow, she said your old friend—"

“I’m not him.” The words came out fast, and when he said them, he had to stop, because he knew he meant them. The honesty of that confession churned his stomach, he could feel a muscle in the side of his neck tensing and pulling at his collar. But Sang Mi's face softened too.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re not.”

“And I’m sorry, I wish I could be—"

“I don’t want him. I don’t give a shit about him, you believed in me, you came back for me, don’t you get it!” She shoved him lightly. “Don’t you?”

They stood together, Sang Mi catching her breath.

“Yeah, I think I do.” He didn’t, but it was the right thing to say. And even though it wasn’t quite true, he meant it with all his heart. He’d work through that contradiction later. He slowly and gently wrapped her in a hug, watching for any sign she was uncomfortable with it—but part way through she rushed him and buried her face in his chest, sobbing.

He held her there, for however long it took her to cry it out. He didn’t keep track. Just waited.

When she finished, she pulled back, wiping her face on her sleeve. “…I really am a mess, you know. I’m not stable. I’m not… pretty, or—or as clever as I think I am.”

“You’re exactly who I want you to be.” And that, he meant all the way. He could see himself in that moment. Not at her age, he was a lot less world-weary than she was then. No, at his failures. At the points where everyone had turned their backs on him. He could hear their voices, churlish and harsh: he was a little kid in a man’s body, he always tried to do the right thing but failed at it, he was one card short of a deck.

He’d come back for her. And the way she tried to mimic him terrified him.

He’d tried to bring people along on his adventures before. Larles and Kwol, two friends he’d tried to reform from their misdeeds, and one of them had spat in his face by working for the very people who hurt him.

A girl turned away from him in 1970s London and never looked back, and he couldn’t blame her.

And despite everything, Sang Mi’d come back for him. She’d packed a bag and ran after him, begging and bargaining to join him.

She stood in front of him, 17 and a little kid, hands balled up at her sides. She still believed in heroes.

She believed they could be as screwed up as she was.

“You’re the kind of girl who goes on an adventure with me. Everyone else, all the other space swashbucklers and time-travelers, they can go to Hell.” He held a hand out to her. “Now let’s go play some baseball, defeat my ex, and save the day. And it will be your day. No, our day.”

She put her hand out, it shook, hovering over his. “…And you’re sure? You can’t go backsies on this. You can’t… tell me you accept me and turn around later. You just can’t.”

“That’s never been on the table to begin with.”

She took his hand. Slowly, the edge of her lip turned up a little. “Hey Chris, I have a confession.”

“Yeah? You’ve already had some doozies.”

“I can bat really well, but I can’t throw a ball to save my life.”

He pulled his head back as he took that in, and when it finally sunk in, he laughed hard. “You'll do just what we need you to. Let’s go, your cola is getting warm, and somewhere down the road there's creatures made of starlight, and doors that lead to dreams. Come on, Sang Mi, we’ve got a game to play.”

She smiled, and gave him a big nod. It was time to play ball.

* * *

“Hello and welcome to the opening exhibition game here at Melonhead Field—and it’s opening early, which has been a real surprise, isn’t that right, Greg?”

“Yeah.”

“Fans are filling up the seats, and it looks like those commemorative Melonhead bobbleheads sure are popular. I got one myself, how about you, Greg?”

“Yep.”

“Oh! And it looks like our home team is taking the pitch. It’s the Corvids! Now I’ve never seen anything like this team before, these little guys are purply—why I think they're costumed as the fictitious Melonheads themselves! What a treat. I wonder how they did that.”

“Eh.”

“And their team captain—wow she’s a looker, and for some reason is wearing a labcoat with her number on it on the back! She’s waving to the crowd and—it looks like our visiting team is here! The Starmen, that’s a musical reference if I’m not wrong?”

“Bowie.”

“Oh you’re so right, Greg, referencing the classic album by David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. What a hoot. This team has a lot more variety to it— including a boy in cactus makeup! And… wait, is that Bill Murray?”

* * *

Chris was first up to bat. He stared down Melonhead number Six who was winding her pitch up. The two team mascots—he was very surprised they had been pulled together in 24 hours—a crow boy and a star man, were pulling hijinks on each other on the sidelines. He and Six stared each other down.

Come on Melonhead. Give me your best shot. He was ready for this.

Six’s arm moved forward. The ball was loosed from her hand. And dropped to the grass two feet away.

“Ball? I think?” the Umpire called. The crowd, which was much larger than Chris had expected, laughed.

Dr. Crow stomped her feet and flapped her arms. “SIX, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?! THROW THE BALL!!!”

Six started bawling, rubbing her eyes with her fists.

“There’s no crying in super baseball!”

Cwej picked up the ball, and carried it to the mound, putting a hand on Six’s shoulder. “Hey kid, cheer up. It’s just your first throw. You can try again. Don’t listen to those idiots laughing up there. Here, watch me.” He straightened up, and mimed throwing the ball. “See how I moved. Try doing that. And let the ball go when your arm is--here.” He demonstrated as much. “Don’t worry if you don’t get it at first. So are you willing to try again?”

Six sniffled. “Mrah.”

“That’s a brave girl.”

“CHRIS CWEJ, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING TO MY MELONHEADS!?”

He put the ball gently into her hand, and walked back to the batter’s box.

Six tossed the ball in the air, catching it, and took a calming breath through her fangs. She pulled her body back into position, trying to mirror Cwej, and threw!

It dropped three quarters of the way to the batter. The crowd laughed again.

Chris was about to start saying some choice words to the audience, when he heard Sang Mi call out from the dugout. “Come on Six, you can do it!” He looked over to see her nudging each of her teammates.

“Yeah, you can do it, Six!” Megan yelled. Martha joined her.

Coloth joined in too, and then the whole team did. Bill Murray looked somewhat confused, and made sure he was in view of the stadium cameras the whole time.

Six threw it again. It was low and slow, but it worked. Chris swung, and the ball went awkwardly to the left. The Melonheads struggled to scramble for it, as he ran for first base. Two of the melonheads were struggling over the ball, and a third decided to mediate the situation by eating it.

“Mrah!” he said, proud of himself for solving the dispute.

Chris probably could have gone further than first base, but this was good enough. The umpire got another ball.

Lady Aesc was up next. She picked the bat up, went up to bat, and… “Aesc, that’s not how you hold the bat!” Blanche yelled from the sidelines.

“No no, I’ve played this before!”

“Cricket! You’re holding it like it’s a cricket bat!” Aesc was, as a matter of fact, holding the bat upside down.

“I got this!” she waved.

Six hurled the ball. Aesc swung. “STRIKE!” called the umpire.

She swung twice more, and was quickly out. Blanche held her head in her hands.

Odette went up, and did hold the bat correctly. She got one strike and then a hit, and made it to first—Chris, to second.

Next up was Megan who bunted and very sloppily got to first, pushing everyone one base ahead.

Bases were loaded, which meant everyone was very excited when Coloth got to bat, waved to the crowd, and missed every single swing.

“Good try, Coloth!” Sang Mi yelled, as he went back to the dugout embarrassed.

Chris gritted his teeth. They had two outs, one more and they would rotate so that the other team would have the chance to go to bat at score runs.

Sang Mi was up to bat.

* * *

When Chris Cwej asked her what she wanted engraved on her baseball bat, Jhe Sang Mi wasn’t sure. She paced around in the lobby for a while, and pulled up all sorts of quotes and sayings on her phone. She nearly settled on a few of them. Ironic or funny quotes—gag sayings like having the bat say ‘Sorry’ on it, like it was saying that before whacking someone in the face. But in the end, she’d chosen something personal.

Kalingkata
The Wandering Star

Kalingkata was her screen name, and her nickname. It was what most of her close friends called her. Her brother had been nicknamed Talinata, after the video game console, and she’d made up her own name to fit in. It was a nonsense word meant to sound like it naturally paired with her brother's nickname. So they’d always be together. Even then, a part of her knew she was forcing it.

And that led to part two. The wandering star. It was a bible reference to the book of Jude. Wandering stars had the gloom of darkness reserved for them forever, or so it was said. And so she felt. Life was the shadow of a cloud over her head. A terrifying journey where loneliness was always at the other end. The goatman at Pope’s Lick had been lonely. Rodney too. How long had Simone waited for the closure they’d given her? To stave off that loneliness, she and Chris had played pretend in a warehouse together. This journey would end too. And she’d watch more people leave.

But as she walked up to bat, Chris giving her a thumbs up from third base, the sun warming her shoulders, Sang Mi felt something she hadn't allowed herself to feel in some time.

She allowed herself to feel wanted.

She raised the bat—blue-barreled and black-handled—stretching it up like a salute, or a flag. She’d survived today, and it was their day. Everyone who had come here for them. For Chris. For herself.

She’d been told she was good at kendo.

Six wound her pitch up, staring her down. She threw the ball. And Sang Mi swung.

With a crack, it struck the ball. She put her hand up to block the sun and watch its course. She should have started running, but she was just amazed she’d hit the damn thing.

It flew up into the air, and somewhere into the back of the stands where a little kid scrambled to pick it up.

She grinned, and she ran.

Chris, Odette, and Megan all scored runs, and then so did she, crossing home plate as the crowd clapped and cheered.

Everyone clapped her on the back as she got into the dugout. Chris was smug. “I knew you’d do great.”

She smiled back. “Guess I can’t argue with excellence.”

“Psh, keep your head on, we’re not done yet. But great work.”

“Yeah, she did good,” Bill Murray said. “Guess it’s my go.” He wandered up to bat as Megan and Martha hugged her.

“Does uh, Bill Murray know how to play this game?” she asked Chris. “Oh,” Chris laughed. “Yeah so, he actually owns some minor league teams.”

They weren’t watching when he hit the ball, but they all cheered as he ran the bases. A pretty good start.

* * *

When the teams swapped places, Dr. Crow went up to bat first. Blanche volunteered to pitch, which turned out to be a great choice because, unlike everyone else (except perhaps Bill Murray), it turned out she was good at it. Even so, her first pitch didn’t give that impression because Dr. Crow immediately hit the ball out of the stadium, and off into the horizon.

“Ha! See that Chris, I’ve been practicing!” she called out to him as she started circling the bases.

Sang Mi looked over at Chris from second base. “Shouldn’t she have batted later, so that like, other people could score too?”

“Yep. But she couldn’t resist showing off…”

Five went next, and got to first. Two was next, and Blanche pitched three strikes, putting her out.

One got a bad hit, and it should have been an out, but Sang Mi failed to catch it, and then failed to throw it. Martha picked up the slack (and the ball) and stopped Five and One from making it to home base and scoring.

Things progressed from there.

Bill Murray and Sang Mi proved to be killer at bat, and so did Five and Seven.

Blanche and Six both improved their pitching inning after inning.

In the 7th inning stretch, everyone rose for a rousing chorus of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’, a song which was seemingly only known by Megan, Martha, and Dr. Crow between both teams. But everyone did their best.

​It was unclear if the Melonheads knew it or not, though they definitely sang along with their most passionate “Mrah!”s.

All in all, the game bounced back and forth, the Starmen took an early lead, but lost it in the 5th inning, before catching up, and in the final 9th inning, both teams were tied up.
Chris gathered the team together for one last pep talk. “Alright, so we all remember why we’re here today right?”

Aesc’s hand shot up; Chris pointed at her. “Because if we lose the game you and Sang Mi will be trapped inside Dr. Crow’s mansion for all eternity!”

There was a long pause.

“What!?” Martha, Megan, Odette, and Bill Murray all said in near unison, with Bill Murray being the most off.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Blanche said blandly. “What a surprise, Chris Cwej left important details out,” she deadpanned.

“…If you didn’t know, why did you come?” Coloth asked.

“Cause she’s our friend!” Megan and Martha said in actual and impressive unison.

“Sang Mi is a friend to animals, and science,” Odette said

“I thought this was like, a direct to streaming movie set or something?” Bill Murray said. “What exactly are we doing? And am I getting paid?”

“You’re getting paid,” Chris answered partially.

“Good enough for me,” Murray concluded.

Sang Mi tapped her bat against a metal support pole. “Hey hey, back to the important thing! We actually have to win this game.”

Chris cut in. “And on that note, I do have a plan. I just need everyone's help here. Just trust me on this.”

He explained his plan.

Blanche sighed. “I don’t really know what I expected. But sure.”

* * *

The Corvids went to bat first. Dr. Crow chewed on a shiny coin she kept in her pocket just for these scenarios when she was nervous. She was so close. The game was tied. She just needed to get ahead and shut Cwej's team out. Her melonheads could do it.

“Alright, all of you! We’re winning this. No crying—” she snatched a juicebox from Four's hands. “And no snacks! Not until we win.”

“…Mrah,” Four opined.

“And no complaining. I know Cwej has to have something up his sleeve, but your goal is to score as many runs as you can! For every run you get, I’ll get you a new video game. And… a cupcake?”

“Mrah!” The Melonheads cheered.

“But if we lose, you’ll all suffer in ways you haven’t even imagined!”

“Mrah…” the Melonheads moaned.

“Now get out there, and WIN.”

First up to bat was Five. Reliable hitter, and reliable he was. He got to second base. Nice.

Next up was Eight. She wasn’t quite as reliable, but she hit the ball, and started scampering for first base.

She got halfway there before she lost balance with her big head, and fell face first into the pitch. “Eight, get your ass up! Eight you better not get out or I swear—”

“You can do it, Eight!”

Dr. Crow blinked, she looked around to see who had said it. It was one of that Sang Mi girl’s friends? She couldn’t tell the difference between them. It didn’t matter, because the other one chimed in too.

“Yeah, it’s okay Eight, don’t give up!” Sang Mi yelled. Eight slowly pushed herself up, teary eyed.

“You’re okay, Eight,” Chris called.

“Uh, yeah, small… melon-headed child who is purple,” Bill Murray added. “You can absolutely do whatever you set your mind to. As long as it only involves saying the word ‘Mrah’, I guess.”

“You can make it to first!” Aesc, Blanche, and Coloth said in a sing-song voice together. Eight dusted herself off, and started jogging to first base.

The whole Starmen team clapped and cheered as she reached it. “What,” Dr. Crow said, “the Hell is going on?”

This same pattern was repeated, over and over. Batter after batter. The melonheads got lots of runs, and lots of cheers, and when it finally turned over, they had a sizable lead.
This would have brought Dr. Crow joy, except that as soon as the Starmen went to bat, they were blazing through just as fast, if not faster.

Five let Coloth get to second, and Dr. Crow was stomping and cawing at him, but while five cringed, he didn’t relent.

Soon enough, with a great set of runs propelled by Sang Mi and Bill Murray, they had caught up.

As Chris Cwej himself went up to bat, she put the coin back in her mouth. Everything was falling apart.

Chris looked her in the eyes, and winked.

And as Six threw a pitch at him, he didn’t swing. “Strike!” the umpire called.

And again. “Strike two!”

And… Six wound up, and threw her pitch. Chris readied his bat.

Of course. He was just being dramatic. Showing off. She should have known. And then he lowered the bat, and stuck his tongue out at her.

“STRIKE THREE, you’re out!”

With that, Sang Mi tossed him a megaphone from the dugout. Well, mostly, he had to move to actually catch it from her poor throw, but he did get it, and lifting it to his mouth, spoke to the field. “Wow, who would have guessed the game would end in a tie!”

“We go into extra-innings—” Dr. Crow tried to yell over him.

“And since it’s a tie… I guess that can only mean I have to take all you Melonheads out for ICE CREAM!”

The Melonheads leapt up into the air, cheering—“Mrah! Mraaah!!!”—and rushed over to Chris excitedly, where he started congratulating each of them on a good game.

Dr. Crow stood stunned. She didn’t really understand.

She knew she had just lost control, but she wasn’t sure how it happened. There were rules to this game. It had had two set outcomes. But now a third thing had happened.
Chris directed the Melonheads over to the rest of the team, who took over the congratulation duties, and he started his way across the field to her.

She straightened her shoulders, and raised her chin. So be it.

“You win, Chris Cwej.”

He shrugged. “This never needed to be a competition.”

She kicked up the dirt. “You could have stayed with me! We would have been happy. I put all this together for you, you know. Like our first date!”

He thought back. “Oh yeah, in Kobe. You know, I barely remember the game cause I was watching you the whole time. You were handsome, clever, confident. I didn’t know that you were vain, conceited and controlling.”

“Oh haha, laugh it up. I bet you’re enjoying this, humiliating me.”

Chris puffed his cheeks out like a chipmunk, and blew the air out. “No—no. That’s not what I’m feeling. Corvid, I’m sad. Cause the truth is, if you’d just welcomed us in, and given us normal food you hadn’t drugged, and hadn't driven my friend to a breakdown, I might have stayed. I can’t say what I would have done for sure. Maybe I’d have invited you along. But… you’re just mean. Controlling.”

“You didn’t mind when we were screwing each other's brains out.”

He sighed. “Yeah. I didn’t. And I can’t say I didn’t want that. I did. I wanted that a lot. And that’s the thing Corvid, I would have been with you even without all your plotting. If you had just treated me with respect, we’d have made love and not screwed.”

“There’s not really a difference.”

“I’ve not found it to be so.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re through. You had your second chance. And you tried to force me and Sang Mi into a situation outside our control. We’re going to find a new home for your Melonheads. And I’m… going to let you walk away.”

She blinked. “Sorry? You’re not going to kill me?”

He shook his head. “You really don’t get it, do you? I’m going to tell you something Sang Mi told someone recently. Go get some therapy, and get a damn cat.”

She clicked her teeth. “Don’t condescend—”

“I’m not. I really mean it, cat and all. I’m giving you a third chance. You don’t deserve it… but I know what you went through. How lonely you were back on the Base of Operations. Those secret dinner parties you'd throw, hoping you could make friends, even though it risked exile. Remember how they'd teased and mock you, just because you were interested in the biology of life? Because you liked dissecting flowers and fruits. You used to be… soft. And the world broke you.”

She felt something churning in her chest. It was too many feelings. Anger. Love. Fear.
Acceptance. Being seen. She felt her head spin. “I don’t need your pity.”

“And you’re not getting it. Sang Mi is an insignificant human from a universe without any beings like you Superiors. Far as we know, the hands of the clock move themselves, back there.”

“Sounds barbaric.”

“Kind of is. And yet. She’s been abandoned. She’s been cracked, she’s taken hit after hit. And you hurt her, and I don’t forgive you for that. But I want you to know—she didn’t let the cruelty of the world break her. She still tries to do good.”

“So you’re shaming me now?”

“I’m saying if you really are as powerful as you think, then do better than she is! I’m saying that you failed today, but… healing isn’t one big victory. It’s… winning one day at a time. And today isn’t your day. But maybe tomorrow can be. You don’t deserve a third chance. I probably should kill you. My Superiors and your kin wouldn’t even blink if I did. But I can see how conflicted you are. You’re a force of nature inside.”

“I know, I’m a wildfire. I burn the forest down.”

“No, I was wrong. You’re a wildfire today. But tomorrow, maybe you could plant a tree.”

She was struck dumb, and as what he said sunk in, she felt something she had never felt before in her centuries of life: she was fairly certain it was called ‘shame’.

Chris gave her a smile, and started to turn around. “Wait!”

He stopped.

She ran over to the dugout, pulled something out of a bag, and ran back, holding it out to him.

It was a great purple amethyst. Huge, the size of a baseball. “Take it.”

He didn’t touch it. “What… is it?”

“It’s a gem, a powerful one. It has certain powers. I used it to create the Melonheads. You can use it to create serums, liquids, medicines…”

Chris picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. It resembled the ruby they’d found in 1893 Chicago that had allowed the Yssgaroth to break into reality. “You’re sure you’re okay giving this up?”

She nodded. “Think of it as… a sign of goodwill, that I… will think about what you said.”

She didn’t say another word. She took two steps back, activated a device on her wrist, and vanished.

Superiors. Always doing that.

He tossed the gem in the air, walking back over to the team and the Melonheads.

“Good news!” Sang Mi said running over. “Bill Murray is going to help fund a new home for the Melonheads. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on, but whatever!”
 
He smiled. “That is good news. Here, take a look at this.”

She took the amethyst from him, and raised an eyebrow. “Like the ruby…?”

“Yep.” “Did it…”

“Help make the Melonheads? Absolutely.”

“…Huh. That’s… concerning?”

He nodded. “We’ll just keep a lookout going forward.”

“What happened with Dr. Crow?”

“I let her go. With a stern warning. I told her to get therapy and a cat.”

She gave a small ‘hah’. After a while, she added, a touch more seriously: “Think that'll work?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t forgive her. But… I want to be the kind of person who gives people a chance.”

Sang Mi nodded. “Yeah, I think I want to be that too.” “You’re just saying that cause I said it.”

“Maybe I am!”

He laughed, and put an arm around her. “Come on kid, we’ve got an ice cream parlor to devour.”

She looked over at the Melonheads, at their friends and guest. “Maybe today, I’m not the worst.”

“I think that about you every day. Cause I want to be not the worst too. Now what do you want, chocolate or vanilla?”

“Strawberry.”

He laughed. She laughed. Today was their day.□

Copyright © 2025 Arcbeatle Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental or has been done firmly within the bounds of parody and fair use. Edited by James Wylder, James Hornby & Aristide Twain Formatting and design by James Wylder & Aristide Twain Cover by Leela Ross Logo design by Lucas Kovacs Concepts Used with Permission: Academy 27 © Arcbeatle Press Coloth © Simon Bucher-Jones WARSONG, WARS TCG, Gongen, Takumi, and associated concepts © Decipher, Inc. SIGNET and Charles Zoltan © James Hornby Chris Cwej and associated concepts © Andy Lane Yssgaroth © Neil Penswick C.R.U.X © Aristide Twain Lady Aesculapius, Blanche Combine, Jhe Sang Mi © James Wylder ​

“Hold on… hold on!” Edward interrupted. “We have those tapes too! We can see what they saw!”

He hurriedly removed the tape that was playing and replaced it with another. By now, Stan was at the very least intrigued. Edward pressed play on the second tape, labeled ‘Security office’. The VCR whirred as it began playing…
​

ASCN WRH oFF——2:32 05/02/2025

FoR INTERNAL USE oNLY——Do NoT CoPY

The following tape contains the second of three accounts of a break in dated 2nd May 2025 at the Chicago Ascendancy Warehouse. For more detailed information see the first account.

The recording has been subtitled from Korean.

Sang Mi swung the office door open and came inside, turning on the lights to reveal the room. The place was abandoned, filled with cobwebs. It clearly hadn’t been used since the warehouse transferred ownership.

“Well this is creepy,” said Sang Mi. She walked over to a set of drawers and idly opened them. Inside were a few pages of documentation. She leafed through them, decently uninterested, until she stopped on a newspaper clipping and read out, “Teenagers fake ghost sighting? Gah, a hoax! We’ve been tricked…”

She sat back on the chair. “Back to the car I guess…” She sighed. “But we just got here, and Chris was so excited by their story…”

She paused for a moment, before walking over to the closet and opening it. Inside were old military uniforms.
 

“Well, when there’s no ghost…” Sang Mi pushed the closet over, the contents spilling out across the floor. She called out, “Chris! Something here!”

Chris kicked the door down as he entered. “What happened?”

“I saw something moving, it went through the closet. I tried to see what it was but…”

Chris walked over to the wall, pulling out some sort of device. He ran it over the wall. “Not detecting anything,” he announced. “Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination?”

“No.” Sang Mi turned away.

Chris sighed. “Well, there’s nothing here now…” Still holding the device aloft, he left through the door, Sang Mi in tow.

The camera recorded an empty room for a few minutes before Sang Mi reappeared, shut the door and hung her head. “That was stupid. Why did I do that?”

She sat down against the wall, holding her head in her hands. “I just… I don’t want it to end… The longer it takes…”

Chris called out, “Sang Mi! Got something!”

Copyright © 2025 Arcbeatle Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental or has been done firmly within the bounds of parody and fair use. Edited by James Wylder, James Hornby & Aristide Twain Formatting and design by James Wylder & Aristide Twain Cover by Leela Ross Logo design by Lucas Kovacs Concepts Used with Permission: Academy 27 © Arcbeatle Press Coloth © Simon Bucher-Jones WARSONG, WARS TCG, Gongen, Takumi, and associated concepts © Decipher, Inc. SIGNET and Charles Zoltan © James Hornby Chris Cwej and associated concepts © Andy Lane Yssgaroth © Neil Penswick C.R.U.X © Aristide Twain Lady Aesculapius, Blanche Combine, Jhe Sang Mi © James Wylder ​

The gentle omnipresent rhythm of the road beneath the tires seemed of a piece with the night itself. Low and dark; as oddly comforting as it was vast and lonely; and nearly eternal—broken only by the occasional lane change or brief collision with a rumble strip in the case of the former, and by the illuminated signs and roadside lights which cut through the latter, seeming to hang at odd angles halfway to the pitch-dark sky.

There had been no roads like this on Gongen. The highways of America, on this parallel Earth in a distant past, were a much vaster and stranger network than any streets Jhe Sang Mi had ever travelled back home. Liminal. Liminal and lonely, especially after nightfall. There was a sense of total isolation out here, traversing the endless miles between destinations, one which was only intensified by the occasional reminders of human existence—the brief flicker of headlights from a passing car, the burning orange-on-black notice signs looming from the roadside, the occasional oasis of light stretched around a gas station or convenience store. Reminders which only served to bring the emptiness into starker relief. It was somehow hard to imagine the architects of any of these signs and signals as fellow people. They were simply a distant and unnerving presence, casting messages out into the eerie silence—like strange shapes passing beneath dark waters, or a fisherman’s lure dropping in from somewhere distant.

Sang Mi sighed, leaning her head up against the closed passenger-side window and letting the gentle vibrations and the meaningless smear of roadside lights draw her mind from such gloomy thoughts. A dark highway past midnight was no time or place for deep thinking, especially not for someone who’d spent the evening reading all the best and scariest of this Earth’s urban legends and creepypastas on the ancient mini-tablet device which Cwej had purchased. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. They had been encountering a lot of that sort of thing lately. It was good to be prepared.

​She glanced at Cwej, who was staring straight ahead through the front window, making occasional adjustments to the wheel. She wanted to speak to him to relieve some of the loneliness of the dark highway—but it was strangely difficult, at night, in a place like this. The easy chatter which filled their daylight adventures seemed to dissipate at this hour, replaced with a soft and vaguely stifling veil which was nearly impossible to penetrate. It felt wrong to try to talk, this late at night. Their mutual state of awakeness was merely a practical necessity brought about by the strange realm that was the highway, one which it seemed somehow rude to acknowledge.

It was odd, she supposed, that the night should seem so lonely with her friend by her side. But the melancholy feeling was there nonetheless. A road, after all, was nothing more than an extension of its inevitable end. Every further mile that they travelled, the pressing awareness that their travels would soon be over weighed ever more heavily on Sang Mi’s mind.

There was something comforting about travelling with Cwej. They understood each other, in a way that was unique among her friendships. There were parts of herself, and of her life, that Sang Mi didn’t like, and she suspected that the same was true of Cwej. But when they were with each other— things seemed more balanced, somehow. More manageable. More able to be overcome. But the fundamental truth of their time together was that it couldn’t last forever.

They were from different worlds, she and Cwej—different universes and times altogether, but also different lives. At the end of the day, she still had school, and friends, and things which she simply couldn’t put on hold forever to travel the multiverse. Not to mention an uncertain future to face after that, the same which faced all of Gongen. And Cwej—Cwej had responsibilities which she still didn’t fully understand, to Superiors whose identities she still couldn’t quite grasp. Massive responsibilities, cosmic responsibilities - responsibilities which this final road trip could only delay for so long. Soon, very soon, their time together would end. And while that was a truth which Sang Mi had assured herself she could face, it wasn’t a truth which she could face at two in the morning on the loneliest highway in the world. Not without letting that eerie melancholy feeling creep in.

The car jolted lightly as Cwej changed lanes, snapping Sang Mi once more from her silent ruminations. It was getting hot in the rubberized interior of this awful orange cube, she realized. She cracked the window, letting a fast-rushing burst of cool air hit her face, bringing with it the smell of gasoline and distant fried food and, somewhere beneath it all, the fresh scent of a summer night. She sighed. It reminded her of nostalgic nights on Gongen, time spent with dear friends. But just now, the thought of being back on Gongen was a sad one. It was an odd feeling, to think of her life and her friends that way. But it was difficult to avoid.

The glowing orange sign ahead read ‘Slow Down. Sharp Turn Approaching.’ Cwej leaned smoothly into the curve, then reached to turn on the radio. In the few seconds before the sign vanished from view, Sang Mi glanced back at it and read the words ‘Fueling Up Ahead. Don’t Want to Show Up at Simone’s on Empty. I’m Not Staying.’ Then it was lost in the darkness behind them.

But those signs didn’t change. And what kind of message was that, anyway?

Static flared on the radio for a moment, snatches of random stations coming through. Cwej cursed lightly. The primitive device was never able to pick up a signal this far out—Sang Mi had realized that by now. They’d picked up a few CDs at a second-hand store called Sullivan’s Curios, but those were still wrapped up in a bag in the back, alongside the projector which they still had yet to deliver. Sang Mi sat back in her seat, intending to let the rumble of the tires lull her to sleep.

The radio static suddenly pared into sharpness, the notes of a twentieth-century synth-pop song dancing forth into the night. She glanced at Cwej, hoping that the familiarity of their now-usual routine would break the awkward silence. He hesitated for a moment, listening, then shook his head.

“Nope,” he said in Korean, his voice husky with tiredness. “Too old. Space Age music all sounds the same to me.”

Sang Mi nodded, biting her lip as she listened to the song herself, trying to remember. She’d taken a class on twentieth-century popular media at Academy 27, and several of her friends were, as she’d have happily teased them, notorious nerds who had assailed her with music of approximately this vintage countless times. But in her case, their little contest had the added complication that any given song which might play on the radio station of this past era might simply not ever have existed at all in her universe.
After a few more seconds, she had it. They’d definitely covered this one during the Anglo- American unit, and it helped that the English title was right there in the lyrics.

“‘Always Something There to Remind Me’,” she proudly announced. “By…” She faltered. “I don’t know,” she admitted, scrambling for vaguely-remembered names. “…Duran Duran? Måneskin? Punchdown Krone?”

“The Naked Eyes!” Cwej exclaimed, snapping his fingers triumphantly. “I remember that one now!”

Sang Mi crossed her arms playfully. Cwej might have hailed from even further ahead of this era than she did, but he had the advantage of regular time travel under his belt, and she didn’t.

She didn’t.

She wasn’t part of that world. And it was going to have to carry on without her, soon enough.

Feeling the melancholy tendrils creeping around her again, Sang Mi leaned back in her seat. The chorus of the song blared on as she finally let the rumble of the road carry her off to sleep.

* * *

Careful to keep glancing back at the road ahead, Cara lifted the worn old cassette from the centre console compartment and popped it into the tape deck, pressing play. She needed music right now. And ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’ seemed fitting. Happy that she’d rewound after the last time she’d listened to it—it was easy to remember when she only ever wanted to listen to the first song on the tape anyway—she let the music wash through the car as she turned onto a sudden dirt pathway and began the bumpy crawl towards the second-hand store which she’d discovered the day before. Simone had always made fun of her for her intensely mainstream taste in music—she was more of the Bikini Kill and Team Dresch persuasion of cutting-edge punk rock, while Cara couldn’t stand the stuff—but honestly, she’d never minded. It was hard for her to mind anything that Simone did.

But there was no point in thinking about that. That was in the past. Almost. It would be, soon enough. After she’d taken care of this one last thing.

Pulling the car to a stop by the side of the path as the clanging synths of the song chimed, she pushed the door open and hopped down onto the gravel which lined the drive. The tiny shop— Sullivan’s Curios—was almost a mile from her parents’ town, and she wanted to be on the highway before sundown—but she hadn’t had her wallet with her when she’d taken a nostalgic last look around yesterday afternoon, and there was something in the shop that she needed. She only hoped it hadn’t sold. But given how empty the place had been both times she’d seen it, that didn’t seem like much of a possibility.

The ring of the bell as she pushed the door open alerted the shopkeeper, a cranky man in his mid-forties who’d refused to set anything aside for her, even when she’d promised to be back the next day. He frowned irritatedly, then returned to his paper. Cara nodded briskly back, then made directly for the shelves in the far corner.

It was still there. Relieved, Cara hefted the heavy wooden deer from its place near the top, leaving its matching double behind. She ran a finger along the dust-encrusted details; the careful lines of its muzzle and hooves. The adhesive sticker on the underside declared a price of thirty dollars, which was steep—but worth it, she thought. Fastening her grip around the middle of the sculpture, she lugged it back to the counter and placed it in front of the shopkeeper, wincing slightly at the fortunately-unwarranted thought that it might shatter the glass surface, then fished the money out of her wallet.

“This is a real classic piece,” the man said as he counted the money, as if vaguely suspicious that Cara was not the right buyer for such an item. “There’s a matching one, you know. I’d really have preferred to sell them as a set…”

“I can’t afford both,” Cara replied. “Is that a problem?” The man hesitated for a moment.

“I suppose not…” the man replied, frowning as he wrapped the deer in newspaper. “But take care of it, will ya?”

She nodded, looking out through the transom window. The light was waning. It was time to go.

Back outside, she set the deer gingerly on the gravel, then popped the trunk. There was still a little space left next to all of her earthly possessions. She slid the deer in, newspaper and all, and pushed the lid shut. Back in the front seat, she started the tape playing again, and put the car into drive, turning back onto the dirt path and starting for the main road. The highway beckoned. She shuffled her hand around in the cup holder—enough change there to handle the upcoming toll booths. With any luck, she’d be at her new apartment by Thursday. Just one small detour to make first…

* * *

Sang Mi woke up, feeling an ache all down her back. That was the problem with sleeping while on the road, she thought—it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as a motel, not that those were the height of luxury either. But they’d planned to drive this night through and only stop for a rest come the next afternoon, a plan which had seemed entirely sensible in the cheerful light of morning.

She peered through the front window. Cwej had slowed the car to turn into a gas station, which was probably what had jolted her from her uneasy slumber. The lot was eerily empty. They pulled up between two pumps, and Chris leaned out the window, squinting at the prices. Rubbing her eyes, Sang Mi turned up the radio, hoping that they were now close enough to inhabited civilisation to have a choice of channels. There was a brief burst of static, and then it resolved into the distinctive opening notes of ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’.

“This again?” she asked. Cwej glanced over.

“Yeah, still static,” he answered. “Sorry.”

He pushed open the driver’s-side door, then stepped out.

“I won’t be long,” he continued, before pushing the door shut again.

Sang Mi frowned—what had he meant by ‘still static’? Still mildly unnerved by her earlier reading, she turned the radio off again, then glanced out the window. Cwej waved to her from the pump as he began filling up the tank. She waved back, then sat back in her seat, gazing out into the darkness. It was eerily black beyond the great overhead lights of the gas station—a silent wilderness, in which anything at all might lurk. One keenly felt the sense that this was an outpost in the wasteland; a fragile oasis surrounded by vast and unknowable things.

Sang Mi shook her head, resolving not to read any more scary stories for the duration of the trip. Probably best to try to sleep again, she thought, uncomfortable as it was. She settled in her seat and stretched her legs into the space beneath the dashboard, gazing vaguely through the window towards the starless ink of the sky above and listening to the soft clunk of the fuel nozzle in the gas tank. She let her eyes flicker from the lightly-glowing dials behind the wheel to the blinking radio clock to the rearview mirror above the window, in which she could see the row of gas pumps stretching out into the darkness behind the car.

Something tingled oddly in her peripheral vision as she stared through the reflected back-window. She sat up again. Her heart beating faster, though she didn’t yet know why, Sang Mi shifted her gaze to the reflected forms of the backseat headrests which loomed behind her. There was something else in front of the one directly at her back, another form, partially obscuring her view.

Someone.

“Cwej!” she called, whipping fearfully around to look in the backseat. “There’s—”

There was no one there. She turned back to look in the rearview mirror again, and saw only empty seats.

Cwej pulled open the door, looking concerned. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

Sang Mi looked in the backseat again, still seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

“There was someone in the car,” she said. “In the mirror, anyway. Behind me, in the back seat.”

“Damn it,” Cwej replied. “Was it another… thing? Another one of these things?”

“Creepypastas,” Sang Mi put in, nodding. “I’m not calling them that,” Cwej said.

Stepping out, he took the fuel pump out of the car and got back in, then glanced in the mirror himself.

“After your time?” Sang Mi asked.

“Before,” he groaned. “You sound like a period novel.” Sang Mi crossed her arms.

“It had a comeback,” she said. “Part of my gen’s slang.”

“And my grandma’s gen’s,” Cwej replied. “So… are we haunted, then?” Sang Mi watched the mirror for a moment more.

“No, maybe not,” she replied. “I’m really tired. I think I might have just imagined it. But I’ll let you know if there’s anything else.”

Cwej nodded.

“Well, get some rest,” he said. “We still have a ways to go.”

That was good, Sang Mi thought, as she settled back in her seat. That was very good.

When next she awoke, there was a line of unmanned toll booths stretching across several lanes ahead, lights flashing and gates down. A white-on-green sign proclaimed that the cost was $1.90, and also instructed passengers to have their money ready, an instruction which Cwej was rapidly attempting to obey as he fumbled in his wallet for the required change.

“They really charge people to use the roads?” Sang Mi asked drowsily. “I knew Earth was capitalist, but this is ridiculous.”

“I just can’t believe it isn’t all electronic yet,” Cwej mumbled back. “These must be the last vestiges.”

The car approached the toll booth, and Cwej rolled his window down to put the money into the tray. A few moments passed in silence, the gate not raising—then the booth speaker crackled on.

“Sorry for the delay,” came a pre-recorded voice in overly-cheerful tones. “Please wait.” Then there was silence again.

“Now what?” Sang Mi asked. Cwej shrugged.

“Hope it opens, I suppose?” he said, with a touch of weariness in his voice. He patted the wheel. “That or I’ll drive on through the gate and see what happens.”

Sang Mi laughed.

Outside the window, the toll booth speaker crackled on again, and Sang Mi strained to listen. But it wasn’t the pre-recorded voice this time. It was a woman’s voice, faded and fragmented—hard to make out.

“Can’t stay too long,” Sang Mi heard the voice mutter. “But I need to deliver it.” “What?” she said aloud, unsure whether she was speaking to the voice or to Cwej.

“It’s important,” the static-choked voice murmured. “We won’t see each other again. I can’t let her forget me.”

The speaker fell silent.

“Did you say something?” Cwej asked, looking up from the awful book of jokes which he’d bought at Sullivan’s Curios. He had been reading to pass the time whenever they had nothing to do.

“I was just wondering what the heck the speaker was saying.” She frowned. “…You did hear it, right?”

“After the first time, you mean?” Cwej asked, looking mildly concerned. “No, I didn’t hear anything else. Did you?”

The speaker crackled again.

“Going to turn off at the convenience store a few miles from here,” came the voice. “Then straight on till morning. Can’t let her forget.”

There was a pause.

“Please help me,” said the voice. “Our time is ending. Don’t let her forget.”

“Sang Mi?” Cwej repeated, concerned.

Sang Mi was silent for a moment, thinking. Something in the strange voice’s plea had struck a chord for her. Whatever it was, it sounded like it really did need help.

“Yeah, I did,” Sang Mi finally replied. “There was a voice. Talking to me, asking for help.” “Uh oh,” Cwej said wearily. “That doesn’t sound like the best of news.”

“No, I know,” Sang Mi said. “But it sounded… genuine. Is there a convenience store up ahead?” Cwej unfolded his map.

“Yes,” he replied. “A few miles on. Why?”

Sang Mi hesitated for a moment. “I think we should stop there. That’s what the voice was saying, and I kind of want to check it out.”

“Are you sure?” Cwej asked. “We could have an anglerfish situation on our hands.”

Sang Mi nodded. “I know,” she said. “But we can handle that, right?”

Cwej grinned. “Oh, yes,” he laughed. “Together, I’m sure we could.”

Outside, the speaker crackled on again. Sang Mi listened for the voice—but it was the automated message, instead.

“All set!” it chimed. “Please move up.”

The gate lifted, and Cwej put the car into drive, picking up speed as he left the toll booth behind.

Yes, Sang Mi thought, staring ahead—together, they probably could. Together, they could probably do anything.

But their time was ending. She sighed, then turned up the radio to hear the sounds of ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’.

* * *

Cara stepped through the automatic doors of the convenience store, nodding to the tired-looking young woman at the counter. She needed the bathroom, and a map.

The first of her tasks completed, she crumpled up the paper seat cover (you couldn’t be too careful) and began to wash her hands at the only sink in the tiny convenience store restroom. Staring blankly at her own reflection in the mirror beneath the harsh unnatural lighting, Cara felt her thoughts drifting inexorably back towards Simone. Both a longing for the past, and a mild dread of the future. Those days weren’t behind her yet—she was still going to see Simone, one more time. And the thought that the end of the most important relationship of her life was still approaching even as it was long over made her feel mildly nauseated. Maybe it would be better if that end never arrived, she thought. Maybe it would be better to travel the final road forever, and never quite reach its finish. Delay the journey’s end into eternity, and always remain in the moment before the close.

She splashed water in her face, then stepped back into the convenience store proper. She put a quarter into an arcade machine called Blox Stacker and quickly lost, then took a map from the rack and brought it to the counter. The clerk took her money with one hand, sipping boredly at a cherry cola held in the other. Cara glanced down at the row of newspapers beneath the counter. At Fifth Avenue Parade, Thousands Celebrate Gay Pride, proclaimed the New York Times, halfway down the page beneath a headline announcing the death of Warren Burger. She looked away, busying herself with the map.

A shelf of tacky souvenirs caught her eye, and she sidled aimlessly over to it. Cheap keychains and bumper stickers. Items meant to be introduced into a journey solely for the purpose of serving as eventual mementoes of it. Premature earthly remnants of something which was not yet quite over. To buy a souvenir was to declare the present moment past before you could even see the end of it.

But then, you could always see the end of a road. It was all around you, down the whole length of it. Souvenirs made sense, Cara supposed. Things always ended, no matter how great they were, and then they faded away. And when they ceased to be present, they were inevitably forgotten. Unless you preserved the remnants—encased them in a little plastic trinket, a totem of the past, which could spark the last little flecks of memory.
Of course, it didn’t have to be plastic. And, she thought ruefully, it didn’t have to be cheap. Tucking the map into her pocket, she headed back towards the doors. She had a deer to deliver.

* * *

“Don’t mix all of those flavors,” Cwej said.

“Why not?” Sang Mi asked, as she ran her hand along the row of dispensing levers on the convenience store slushie machine, depositing a pump of each into her plastic cup.
“It won’t taste good,” Cwej replied, shaking his head, as Sang Mi popped the cap on and put in the straw. “So… this toll booth voice. What was it saying?”

“She said she needed help delivering something,” she said. “Because… because she was afraid that she was going to be forgotten. And she said she was going to this convenience store.”

She took a sip of her slushie, then cringed at the taste.

“It just sounded like she really needed help,” she continued. “Even if she was a demon or something. So… I don’t know. I’m going to take a look around.”

Cwej nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “Be careful. And don’t wander off. I need the toilet.”

Now alone but for the clerk, Sang Mi cast her gaze around the store. The speakers were playing ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’, faintly. Nothing much out of the ordinary—except for one thing which caught her eye: a battered old arcade machine with the words ‘Blox Stacker’ painted at the top. The screen was flashing and flickering strangely. She drew closer. The falling blocks of pixels had formed themselves into rows, and were gnashing like teeth. Sang Mi fished a quarter from her pocket and put it into the machine, and the blocks vanished—replaced by words.

HELP ME, they read. I NEED HELP.

“Who are you?” Sang Mi asked, leaning closer.

I NEED HELP, the pixels spelled. OUR TIME IS ENDING. BUT I WANT HER TO REMEMBER ME.

“I understand,” Sang Mi said. “But you have to tell me more.” SIMONE, read the screen. SHE NEEDS TO HAVE THIS.

The words split apart, and the pixels reformed themselves into the image of a deer. Sang Mi’s eyes widened.

I’m CHECKING INTO THREADS BUDGET MOTEL, said the pixels. AND THEN ON TO HER HOUSE. BUT I NEED H E L P…

An address flashed on the screen. Then the screen flashed, and went out.

“Everything alright?” Cwej asked, appearing behind Sang Mi. She jumped, then nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so. But we need to go to the Threads Budget Motel.”

Cwej frowned.

“But we have a reservation at-”

“I know,” she interrupted. “But I think it’s important.”

She strode towards the doors, then paused and turned to the clerk. “Do you know where Threads Budget Motel is?” she asked.

The clerk frowned.

“Just a few exits from here, I think,” she replied. “I haven’t heard anyone mention that place in ages.”

Sang Mi thanked her, put her unappealing brown slushie into the trash, then turned to walk through the doors. As she did, she caught a strange sight reflected in the glass—a woman whom she didn’t recognize, blurred and distant.

Sang Mi nodded to her, then stepped through the doors, Cwej following closely behind.

* * *

Walking through the fog of chlorine which clung to the carpeting outside the room housing the shabby motel pool, Cara approached the front desk of the Threads Budget Motel. The desk clerk was typing on a bulky beige IBM, working beneath the crackling flicker of a sparking ceiling light on a cheap countertop which had seen better days.

“Check in?” she asked.

“Yes,” Cara replied, handing over her ID. “I have a reservation.” The clerk glanced at the ID, then nodded and handed it back. “Second floor,” she said. “Room 220.”

Upstairs, sitting on her bed, Cara found that the TV flickered on and off just as much as all of the lights did. Sighing, she turned it off, then lay silently in the darkness.

It shouldn’t have been like this. She was moving into a new city in just a day. A new apartment, a new job, a new life. It should have been good. Except, of course, that it couldn’t possibly have been.

She couldn’t be with Simone. Not in this life. Not if she wanted to have a life. But a life without Simone was no life anyway.

Things were changing, Simone had said. Things wouldn’t be the way they were now forever. But Cara couldn’t quite believe that. Maybe things would be different someday, but she couldn’t see the end from where she stood now.

Her time with Simone was coming to an end, and it hurt terribly. But she couldn’t bear the thought of it all fading away. She patted the wooden deer from Sullivan’s Curios, which was sitting on the bedside table. A deer, just as they’d seen on their first hike together. A memento. A remnant. A souvenir. One last stop.

Cara turned off the flickering lights and went to sleep.

* * *

Sang Mi stared in shock at the burnt-out wreck which stood before her.

“Yeah, this was it,” the jogger they’d stopped was saying. “Threads. Big deal when I was a kid, I remember. Thirty years ago this month, actually. Some kind of electrical problem.”

Sang Mi shared a concerned glance with Cwej, then turned back to the jogger. “And… everyone died?” she asked.

The jogger frowned awkwardly, rubbing at her head. “Well, yeah, I’m afraid so,” she replied. “Awful.” Cwej nodded.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” the jogger replied, heading up the road again. They stood in silence for a moment.

“Well… I guess it was a ghost,” Cwej said.

“Yeah, but—she needed help,” Sang Mi replied. “She needed to deliver something. A deer.” Cwej nodded.

“I know, but—I doubt anything she needed to deliver survived this,” he said sadly.

Sang Mi mirrored his nod.

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “I guess Simone will have forgotten her, whoever she was.” “Why do you say that?” Cwej asked.

Sang Mi felt tears welling in her eyes.

“Because… because their time came to an end,” she replied. “That’s what she was saying. It ended, because it had to end. And now it can never begin again. I don’t know.”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Sang Mi—” Cwej began, concerned.

Something caught Sang Mi’s eyes among the rubble, and she ran to it, then pulled it from the wreckage. It was a board—a board with words burned into it. She patted the wooden deer from Sullivan’s Curios, which was sitting on the bedside table, the ashes spelled. Cara hefted the heavy wooden deer from its place near the top, leaving its matching double behind, they said in another place.

She looked at it for a moment. Then her eyes widened.

“Cwej!” she said, determination setting in again. “We need to go back to Sullivan’s Curios!” “What?” Cwej asked. “But that was half a day back!”

She ran to the car.

“We have to,” she said. “And then… we’re going to Simone’s house.”

* * *

As the chiming tones of ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’ faded out for the hundredth time, Cwej stopped the car by the house bearing the address which Sang Mi had glimpsed on an arcade machine’s screen. Sang Mi popped open the door, hauling the heavy wooden deer—marked up to $70 after three decades on a shelf—along with her.

“Are you sure about this?” Cwej called.

“Always,” Sang Mi replied, marching up to the door. She rang the bell.
​
A woman in her 60s opened the door, then looked confusedly at Sang Mi. “Are you Simone?” Sang Mi asked in English.
​
“Yes?” the woman replied. “Do I know you?” Sang Mi took a breath.

“Don’t ask me how,” she said, lifting the deer as high as she could manage, “But this is supposed to be a gift from—”

“Cara,” the woman breathed, tears shining in her eyes. Sang Mi nodded, setting the deer down on the doorstep. “You remember,” she said. “I… wasn’t sure you would.”

“Always,” Simone replied. “It’s been thirty years. But she’ll always be a part of me.” She lifted the sculpture.

“We loved deer,” she said wistfully. “So do I,” Sang Mi said, nodding. Simone smiled.

“Then you should have it,” she said, putting the deer back into Sang Mi’s arms. “Wh—but what about—?”

“You drove all this way,” Simone said, nodding to Cwej, who waved back. “Damned if I know how or why. But you deserve it. I’ve got something better: all the memories.”

* * *

Back in the car, Sang Mi sat quietly for a while as Cwej drove away, on towards their next destination.

“Cwej,” she said at last, holding up the deer. “I want you to have this.” Cwej chuckled.

“Nope,” he replied. “You’re stuck with that thing now.” He paused, then Copyright © 2025 Arcbeatle Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental or has been done firmly within the bounds of parody and fair use. Edited by James Wylder, James Hornby & Aristide Twain Formatting and design by James Wylder & Aristide Twain Cover by Leela Ross Logo design by Lucas Kovacs Concepts Used with Permission: Academy 27 © Arcbeatle Press Coloth © Simon Bucher-Jones WARSONG, WARS TCG, Gongen, Takumi, and associated concepts © Decipher, Inc. SIGNET and Charles Zoltan © James Hornby Chris Cwej and associated concepts © Andy Lane Yssgaroth © Neil Penswick C.R.U.X © Aristide Twain Lady Aesculapius, Blanche Combine, Jhe Sang Mi © James Wylder sighed.

“Look, Sang Mi,” he said. “Everything has to end eventually. But—that woman was right. We’ll always have the memories.”

Sang Mi nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

Cwej smiled. “I’ve been around a bit. So take it from me: you don’t need souvenirs,” he said. “Because the journey never really ends. There’ll always be a little piece of us left travelling these roads forever.”

Sang Mi smiled back.

“Then let’s make sure it’s a really good one,” she said.

“You know, I’ll bet we could get some actual radio stations out here,” Cwej said. He turned on the radio.

They roared down the highways of America beneath the rays of the shining sun, ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’ playing at full blast.