DYSPHORIA: AN UNWELL FEELING

I scratched on the back of my head. The afternoon sun was bathing us in mellow light, the kind of light that appeared an hour before the sunset. What was there to ask about time travel? What could I possibly ask?

"I don't know why you're asking me though." Jooheon let out a boisterous fit of laughter after staring down at my hesitant face for a good while.

"Why, we did have a fantastic discussion on this topic last day!" Minhyuk beamed. I corrected him in my mind, it was a lecture, not a discussion. Chankgyun and I only gulped down his words without putting our two cents in it, cause we didn't have any.

"Dude, you're from the physics department! I'm a history and philosophy major!" Jooheon exclaimed dramatically, his words oozing with amusement.

Minhyuk looked confused for a second. "Ah..," he stammered, "I thought you and I had talked about this before."

Jooheon frowned turning his lips upside down. "We did? I don't remember."

"Why are you so stuck on this idea of time travel?" Chankgyun commented from my side, his tone said he was slightly annoyed.

Hanbyul peaked her head from his side. "Are you writing a story of some sorts?" After a brief pause, she spoke again, "Do you plan to write a fictional blog, or did a guy suddenly showed up at your door and told you he was a time traveler?"

I blinked at her, my throat going dry all of a sudden. "How did you know?"

She was still smiling playfully as if to tease me but seeing my deadly serious expression her smile faded away. "I was joking? Why? You-" She just gave me a very puzzled look and I quickly shook my head to the sides.

"Yeah, I was joking too."

I didn't want them to think I had gone completely bonkers. Hanbyul didn't look convinced. She was still staring at me, confused at my unironic way of claiming the joke.

Chankgyun was fingering a tall grass that somehow had escaped the wrath of the lawnmower. "I don't get why this conversation is happening. You two should've been fanfiction writers instead." Chankgyun eyed us both turning his head to the sides.

"It is indeed very interesting. When I was a kid I was obsessed with this novel called the time machine." Shownu leaned his head a bit forward as he said.

"By H.G Wells?" Jooheon said, "that's said to be the very first fiction book based on time traveling."

"Really?" Shownu beamed with a surprised look on his face. "Yeah, it was old and hard to read! A scientist traveling to the future then back to the present and the past really amused me!" The tan male had nostalgia on his dark eyes. He was smiling to himself.

"It's kind of crazy how the idea of time travel has been around for hundreds of years. In Mahabharata, an ancient epic poem written in Sanskrit, there was a king who met the Brahma and came back a day later to see that hundreds of years had passed. There had been similar stories in Japanese and Jewish folklore," Jooheon said with a knowing look on his face, everyone listened with great intent, even Kihyun who acted like he was detached from the group.

"But if you ask me, it is kind of a stretch to really believe a person can travel through time," Jooheon finished with that.

Minhyuk groaned from his side. "Well, science says it is possible. Maybe not the way we imagine it." He let out a small sigh and faced me. "I remembered today that I had forgotten to tell you about a book. It's called parallel worlds, by Michio Kaku. If you remember the many world interpretation we talked about last night."

He said as if it was a big secret between him and me that wasn't sharable to anyone else. Though Changkyun knew too, and he was staring at us with a mixture of distaste and disbelief.

Kihyun piped in, "I think I've heard about parallel worlds."

"Yeah, the book basically focuses on M theory and string theory. It's like, there isn't only one universe but multiple, all floating like bubbles in a string. How fascinating is that!" Minhyuk explained with vigorous hand gestures and excitement all over his face.

No one seemed to mirror that, half looked confused. Chankgyun muttered what in the god's name was m theory and string theory but Minhyuk didn't hear it.

"If you ever meet a person from the future what will you do?" I threw a question to the small crowd now that everyone looked somehow piqued by the topic.

Hanbyul answered first from the side. "I think I'll ask them about the future of the world. What's it like."

"You're taking quite a democratic approach," Changkyun said to her. "What's it to you how's the future like. I think what's more important is out of everyone why did the future person showed up to you? What importance do you hold?" He looked around to everyone's face with a dramatic pause for effect. "There must be a reason why they came to you."

"I'd like to tell him, or her—," Kihyun spoke then corrected himself, "To show me something that solidifies he or she really came from the future."

"I'd like to know their secrets, crack the code and become a famous scientist myself," Minhyuk remarked with a playful smirk on his face.

"I'd ask for details. How do I really know they're from the future?" Jooheon said next.

"That's my idea though," Kihyun said with a look of grimace and Jooheon shrugged with his shoulders at him. Shownu stayed quiet.

"Actually this is creeping me out, I don't know why," Changkyun said, pulling his knees up to his chest. "Why are we talking about this? Where is Wonho hyung anyway?"

I retreated my hand back from the front of my bag but the outline of the bracelet was still vaguely visible, pressing on the clothing from the inside. Taking a deep breath to myself I closed my eyes for a second. My eyes were burning. I really needed a good sleep before I further investigated and plunged into this maddening and endless abyss.

"Isn't she the one who asked him out?"

I opened my eyes to see everyone directly staring at me and Kihyun was pointing his forefinger right at me that he quickly took back to himself. Oh, he was the one who was there with Wonho when I asked him out on a date. Under the staircase.

I suddenly remembered and visibly recoiled.

"Yeah." Changkyun nodded his head, letting out a cackle.

"Oh my god, you're the one?" Jooheon almost shouted. Shownu looked nonchalant but he wouldn't avert his eyes from me. I felt like an alien who got kicked out of the spaceship and landed right in the middle of this odd group of human specimens.

"Okay, I like you more now," Minhyuk said matter-of-factly. "You've got them balls of steel."

"She ain't got no balls but a vagina that's stronger than a penis," Hanbyul said with a prideful look on her face.

"Correct. My bad, sorry," Minhyuk immediately apologized, then he turned to me. "How is it going with him?"

I didn't know if it was just me or all of a sudden these people had crowded more around me. Kihyun too wasn't secluded anymore but almost grazing his folded leg on Jooheon's back.

I also didn't know how I was to tell them that I had no idea of Wonho's whereabouts. That after I kissed him on the cheek he had ghosted me.

"His phone number is out of reach actually," Shownu spoke before me, saving me out of the catastrophe.

"Yeah, I haven't seen him in two days," I confessed. The westering sun was spreading tangarine hues now, painting everyone's faces with an orange gloom. Gloom, I didn't know why it looked sad to me. Everything seemed forlorn.

There was something heartbreaking about sunsets.

"I guess problem in his family again," Minhyuk commented. No one asked anything, nor did I. I felt like everyone was aware of something that I wasn't.

If Wonho deemed me important maybe he would let me know what it was, hence I refrained from questioning Minhyuk.

"Are all of you friends with him?" I asked instead.

"I am from his major," Kihyun said first. I knew that already. "You know that," he added as if he could sense my thought.

"I'm in the kendo club which he joined this year. But we've been friends since high school," Shownu informed me.

"Yeah. Shownu has known him for the longest time. I came to know him from Changkyun. I guess you can say that I'm a really friendly guy. We all came to know each other like that," Minhyuk said next. I guessed that out of everyone here he liked talking the most.

Jooheon nodded to himself. He didn't say anything, his gaze was distant, fixed somewhere in the meadow that was slowly getting empty as the evening was nearing.

"I hope he's okay," Chankgyun mumbled to himself. Hanbyul and I glanced at each other, unaware of what the boys were thinking to themselves. All of them looked pretty worried.

I could feel a weight sinking in me too, maybe it wasn't only the exhaustion of two sleepless nights and having two hectic days despite.

Darkness was falling quickly, enveloping us in a blue coat but none of us really moved. It felt empty all of a sudden, eerily lonesome. As if something was out of place. Something real was missing.