4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

- 0 3 : 0 1

  

– 0 3 : 0 1

UNLIKE THE OTHERS, Hoseok knows exactly when the wards come down.

He's calculated it down to the very second, and he's already prepared to leave a full hour beforehand. The beat-up Honda that Hoseok had driven here in is parked behind the house, and Taehyung doesn't realize that he can drive until he gets into the driver's seat. Driving a manual car comes naturally to him—like swimming and shooting, it's yet another thing that he discovers he's retained even after losing his memory.

"It's not far—just across the highway to the next town," Hoseok says, when Taehyung asks where he's headed. "The rest of my team is there setting up wards for one of the safe-houses. I'd invite you to join us, but you have a mission," he adds. "And, going by the numbers she'd set for you, it's unlikely that you'll return to this time again. But if you do, you know where to find me."

Taehyung simply nods, unable to quell the sting of disappointment from losing yet another comrade, of sorts. He knows that he has to leave, of course, but it's been such a lonely journey. It seems that the only person he has constantly with him is her, and he hasn't even met her yet—not properly, anyway. He clenches his jaw and focuses on Hoseok's directions, trying to memorize the route to the next town on the off-chance that he might need it again in the future.

Eventually, they pull up along another dusty street by a large building. Where his own town had been silent as a grave, Taehyung's surprised to see this one rife with people. There's an atmosphere of overall doom and gloom, but the crowd waits in an orderly fashion outside the building for security to admit them in.

Hoseok grabs his bag from the backseat, then holds out a scrap of paper to him. "I've written this down for you," he says. "You'll need it. Actually, since she's the one sending you back, she'll need it more than you."

Taehyung grabs the paper and flicks a glance down. Scrawled in a haphazard hand are the numbers that have been etched into his watch, chronicling every jump down to the exact second. Disregarding the other details, he focuses on the years that each jump has taken him.

Zero. Minus thirty. Minus one. Minus twenty-five. Minus two. Minus twenty. Minus three.

Hoseok has outlined them in a manner that makes perfect sense. Zero is his present. Then he'd jumped—thirty years ago to save a drowning woman, one year ago to meet Jungkook, twenty-five years ago to save the girl of his dreams from falling off a tree, two years ago to meet Yoongi, twenty years ago to save the girl from an oncoming car, and three year ago to meet Hoseok.

"Be careful in the jumps through the Dark Ages," Hoseok adds. "This year is chaotic enough, but the second is the worst. It's when everyone goes mad because they've figured out that the world is ending."

Taehyung nods again. Apart from the prospect of meeting her, he's no longer enthused about time-traveling, but he can't return to his present unless he's completed the rest of the jumps in that order.

He moves to get out of the car, but Hoseok stops him. "Take the car."

"What?"

"You should have it. You're going to be jumping soon, and you don't know where you'll land. Might be in the middle of traffic and it's safer to be in a car."

He mulls over Hoseok's words and decides that the man's right. It's not the next jump that he's concerned about, but the one after that. If he'd landed among zombies in this jump, who knows where he'll land in that one?