I'll Take Room 201
On the day I decided to sell the boarding house, South Korea's strongest Sword Saint came looking for a room to rent.
It was eight-forty in the evening.
I had the sales contract and the structural safety estimate spread across the long table in the shared kitchen. There were three stacks of documents I needed to review by tomorrow morning alone.
Outstanding mortgage balance: two hundred eighty million won.
Remaining installment on the inheritance tax: roughly one hundred ten million won.
Projected cost of structural reinforcement: eighty million won.
The more I added the numbers on the page, the more honestly, thoroughly hopeless they became.
Haewoljang was a three-story boarding house left over in Seoul's old downtown. The red brick exterior had faded in patches, and the wooden stairs reported the weight of every person who climbed them with perfect fidelity. On rainy days water leaked from the window frame of the end room on the second floor, and in winter the boiler on the first floor ran according to its own moods.
By land value alone, it was a fairly expensive building. The problem was that you couldn't peel the land off and sell it separately. Keeping the building standing required money, and I didn't have that money.
So I chose to sell.
Tomorrow at eleven in the morning. Once I signed the main contract with the buyer, Haewoljang would belong to someone else. It was the house my grandmother had protected her whole life, and the house that had raised me. Even so, if I didn't sell, I'd collapse under the loan interest first.
I turned to the last page of the contract.
That was when the doorbell rang.
Ding-dong.
Haewoljang's doorbell had a sound that made the person hearing it more uneasy than the person pressing it. No one should have been coming at this hour. The realtor was scheduled for tomorrow morning, and there were no prospective tenants coming to view empty rooms. Ever since I'd decided to sell, I hadn't taken any new occupancy inquiries.
The doorbell rang once more.
Ding-dong.
It didn't feel like impatience. The interval was exactly the same.
I flipped the contract face-down and headed for the front door. Passing through the hallway, my eyes caught on the old wooden sign hanging on the wall.
Haewoljang.
My grandmother's own handwriting. Even after deciding to sell, I hadn't been able to throw that sign away.
"Who is it?"
A woman's voice came from the other side of the door.
"I've come to look at a room."
"I'm not taking occupancy inquiries."
"I understand that Room 201 is vacant."
My feet stopped.
Haewoljang had three empty rooms. Of those, Room 201 had been vacant for two months. But the listing I'd posted online hadn't included room numbers.
"Where did you hear that?"
"If you open the door, I'll explain."
A textbook answer from a suspicious person. I switched on the small screen beside the front door.
A woman stood there with a hat pulled low over her face. Beneath a black coat, her clothes were neat, and a small travel bag sat at her feet. If not for the long sword scabbard standing beside it, she would have looked like an ordinary prospective tenant.
I couldn't see her face properly, but it was familiar. A face I'd seen dozens of times on the news.
I cracked the door open with the security chain still fastened.
"Would you take off the hat, please?"
The woman removed it without protest. Black hair tied back. Eyes that barely showed emotion. The same face that had severed the last monster's neck on live gate-raid broadcasts.
Baek Sion.
An S-class hunter from the Baekya Guild. Widely regarded as the strongest swordsman in the Republic of Korea. And that person was standing in front of a run-down boarding house, dragging a travel bag.
"You're Hunter Baek Sion, correct?"
"Yes."
"How did you find this place?"
Instead of answering, Baek Sion looked at me. More precisely, she checked my face, my neck, my shoulders, and my arms in turn — like someone examining whether I was injured.
"Seo Doyun."
A chill ran down my spine. I had never given her my name.
"How do you know my name?"
"I already knew it."
"From where?"
"It's difficult to explain."
"Then it will also be difficult for me to open this door."
When I moved to close it, Baek Sion extended her hand. She didn't block the door. She simply opened her palm.
An old brass key rested there. Three digits were engraved on the head.
201.
Half of it had melted black, as if subjected to extreme heat. The body, which should have been smooth, was warped and uneven, as though it had been bent and straightened many times.
"Where did you get that?"
"You returned it to me."
"I did?"
"Yes."
I held up the key ring at my waist. An intact Room 201 key swung among the others.
"The current key to Room 201 is right here."
"I know."
"Then is that a copy?"
"No."
"You said I returned it to you. When?"
Baek Sion's lips tightened for a moment. Instead of answering, her gaze settled on my face again — the eyes of someone confirming for herself that I was alive. It wasn't the face of someone glad to see me. It wasn't the face of someone reuniting with a long-sought person, either. It was the face of someone who had watched that person die.
"Baek Sion."
When I dropped the honorific, her eyebrows shifted by a fraction.
"Please explain before I contact the police or the Baekya Guild. Why you know my name, why you know the vacant room number, and why you're holding something that looks like a key to my house."
"If I explain, will you believe me?"
"I can't decide that before I've heard it."
"You didn't believe me."
Past tense.
"When did I?"
Baek Sion's fingers closed around the old key.
"Not yet."
Aftermath of a psychic-type gate. Memory disruption. Foresight of the future. Or an elaborately prepared scam aimed at me. There were several possibilities. Either way, leaving her standing at the front door wasn't a workable situation. If she really was Baek Sion, the moment I contacted the guild, reporters and security personnel could descend. If she was a fake, I needed to confirm why someone would go so far as to match the face exactly.
"Leave the weapon at the entrance."
Baek Sion looked down at the scabbard.
"This sword is the same as my body."
"You may bring your body inside. Not the sword."
"It's dangerous."
"To whom?"
"To you."
"When the person saying that is holding a sword, the persuasiveness drops considerably."
A short silence passed. Baek Sion eventually leaned the scabbard against the wall. I unfastened the security chain.
"You may bring the bag."
"Thank you."
When the door opened, she didn't come in right away. She stopped at the threshold. Her breathing frayed, just slightly. For the first time, emotion showed on a face that had been seamless until now.
Fear.
South Korea's strongest Sword Saint was afraid of a run-down boarding house's doorstep.
"What's wrong?"
"It's nothing."
Baek Sion drew a short breath and stepped inside. The moment she crossed the threshold, the tension left her shoulders. Standing still with her eyes closed, she spoke in a low voice.
"You've returned."
"Where?"
"To Haewoljang."
"You said you came to look at a room. Is this not your first time here?"
Baek Sion opened her eyes.
"It is the first time."
"Just now you said I'd returned."
"For me, both are true."
The more I listened, the worse the explanation got. I guided her to the shared kitchen. The long table was covered with contracts and estimates. Baek Sion scanned the papers once, then her gaze stopped on the sales contract.
"Are you selling the house?"
"Main contract is tomorrow."
"You can't."
"That isn't a decision for a prospective tenant to make."
"You must not sell this house."
"I'd like to hear the reason."
Baek Sion didn't answer immediately. Instead she pulled out the chair across the table and sat down. She set the travel bag snug against her leg — the natural behavior of someone prepared to stay for several days right then and there.
I took the barley tea from the refrigerator.
"Would you like some?"
"I'm fine."
"I'll be having some."
When I poured into only one cup, Baek Sion looked at it.
"Please give me some as well."
"You said you were fine."
"I've changed my mind."
I took out another cup. Baek Sion received the barley tea I handed her with both hands. Her fingers were trembling faintly. It wasn't the tremor of someone unsettled because she couldn't hold a sword. She wasn't cold, either. The way she was tensing just to keep from dropping the cup looked more precarious than anything.
I sat across from her.
"Let's sort out the occupancy inquiry first. Haewoljang is scheduled for sale, so I'm not taking new contracts."
"I'll take Room 201."
"I already told you no."
"I'll pay the deposit and monthly rent at market rate."
"Being an S-class hunter doesn't earn special acceptance, and it doesn't earn special refusal either." I cut her off. "What I mean is that I'm not contracting with anyone right now."
"You don't have to contract."
"Then you don't get to stay, either."
"I'll sleep in front of the door."
I set my cup down.
"That is the fastest way to get a home-invasion report filed."
"Outside the house isn't an invasion."
"Blocking the entrance can constitute obstruction of business."
Baek Sion's eyes narrowed. Had she worn that expression even when fighting monsters?
"You know the law well."
"When you become a building owner, you learn whether you want to or not."
"You were like that before, too."
"Past tense again."
Baek Sion closed her mouth. I set my phone on the table.
"Please show me your ID."
She took out her wallet. The photo on the hunter registration card matched the face in front of me. The rank field was stamped clearly with an S, and the affiliation was the Baekya Guild. If it was a forgery, it meant they'd compromised a national agency system.
I returned the card.
"Did you come here from the Baekya Guild today?"
"Yes."
"Did you report the purpose of your outing to the guild?"
"I said it was a personal matter."
"From whom did you hear my name?"
"I didn't hear it from anyone."
"And Room 201?"
"I remembered it."
"Since when?"
Baek Sion set the blackened key on the table.
"Since six-twelve this evening."
A specific time.
"What happened then?"
"My memories returned."
"What memories?"
"Memories up through the year 2044."
I lost my words for a moment. The psychic-aftermath possibility climbed sharply.
"Do you know what year it is now?"
"2036."
"And today's date?"
"April seventeenth."
"How old are you?"
Baek Sion gave an answer that matched her current age. Her grip on reality was intact.
"So you're saying you have your present memories, and also memories of living through 2044?"
"Yes."
"You're claiming you regressed?"
"I don't know the exact mechanism."
"And in that future, you and I knew each other?"
Baek Sion's hands stopped.
"You were my commander."
I looked down at my own clothes. A stretched-out gray T-shirt. Black sweatpants with holes at the knees. Stains still on them from unclogging a drain that afternoon.
"I think you have the wrong person."
"I don't."
"I'm E-class."
"I know."
"I've never been a commander. I even quit the rescue field coordinator job last year."
"I know that, too."
"Did you investigate my past?"
"I remember it."
A firm answer. None of the hesitation characteristic of someone lying. That didn't mean it was true, of course. People trapped in delusions also believe their own words as truth.
I pointed at the scorched key.
"So this is something you brought from the future?"
"Yes."
"May I examine it?"
Baek Sion pushed the key toward me. I turned on my phone's flashlight and set it beside the current Room 201 key.
The shape of the head and the length. The grooves along the side. The depth of the teeth. Setting aside the parts melted and warped by fire, the two keys were astonishingly alike. Making a copy wouldn't have been difficult.
But there was one strange detail.
On the back of the current key's head was a very shallow scratch — a mark I'd carved with a knife tip in middle school so I wouldn't lose the key. The scorched key had a scratch in the same place. Even the angle was identical.
"Why go so far as to copy this mark?"
"I didn't copy it."
"Then you're saying it's the same key?"
"Yes."
"That the current key ends up looking like that later?"
"That's right."
"And the future me returned this to you, Baek Sion."
"Yes."
"Why did he return it?"
For the first time, the answer came late. Baek Sion's gaze dropped.
"He told me to go back alive."
The hands around the cup trembled again. I changed the question.
"What happens in the future?"
"The gates collapse."
"Which gate?"
"At first, it was one."
"And later?"
"There are so many that naming them stops meaning anything."
Baek Sion's voice was flat. That made it sound more real. Not the voice of someone screaming — the voice of someone who had already said it countless times.
"In that future, do I die?"
The tremor in her fingers stopped. Silence became the answer.
I took a sip of barley tea. My own future death felt strangely unreal. It hadn't happened yet, and the present me was sitting at this table perfectly fine. Baek Sion's expression was more real than that. She didn't look like someone lying. She looked like someone who believed something far more troublesome than a lie.
"So that's why you want to move into Room 201?"
"Yes."
"To protect me?"
"This time."
One short phrase snagged.
"This time, I will protect you."
For the first time, she looked me straight in the eye.
"I will not obey any order you give."
"I have no intention of giving orders."
"I knew you would say that."
"Did the future me say that too?"
"At first."
Baek Sion clenched the old key.
"So please don't sell the house."
"Is this house important in the future?"
"It is."
"How?"
"I can't tell you that right now."
"Why not?"
"If I give you a mass of unverified future information all at once, you'll try to solve everything alone."
"You speak as if you know me well, but the present me met you for the first time today."
"I know."
"Then let's talk on present terms."
I pulled the contract toward me.
"First: Haewoljang is scheduled for sale tomorrow." I raised one finger. "Second: your claims, Baek Sion, have not been verified." I raised a second finger. "Third: whatever relationship we may have had in the future has no force over my decisions in the present."
Baek Sion's face hardened.
"Even so, I'm staying."
"I haven't given permission."
"I'll obtain it."
"How?"
"I'll prove that I'm necessary."
"That sounds like you're waiting for something to happen."
The moment Baek Sion opened her mouth to answer—
Crash!
The window on the right exploded. Glass shards poured into the shared kitchen. I ducked on reflex. The contracts on the table scattered in the wind, and the barley tea cup toppled over.
A black silhouette came over the window frame.
Baek Sion shoved her chair back and stood. Before she could even reach toward the sword left at the entrance, a cold arm locked around my throat. Immediately after, something thin and sharp touched my skin.
A blade.
Close enough that the slightest movement would cut my neck. The woman behind me regulated her breathing in a low voice.
"Don't move."
Night wind pushed in through the broken window. Every trace of the earlier unsteadiness vanished from Baek Sion's eyes. Killing intent crushed down on the shared kitchen.
The woman with the knife at my throat glared at Baek Sion. Then she called my name.
"Seo Doyun."
The blade pressed shallowly into my skin.
"Nine years from now, you kill Seoul."