𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐫 | 𝐉𝐉𝐊

02: My client

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I dust my shirt and trousers and arms and basically my whole body as I stand up from the pile of laundry I've landed it. It isn't the worst place ever to land, but it's easy to tell from the smell that this is a bunch of dirty laundry and not clean...

I rub my hands in my shirt, hoping the bacterias will go off so I won't get them elsewhere. As I already know, 2046 is dirty and I do not want to catch any sickness they haven't found the cure to yet.

I finish somewhat cleaning my hands in my clothes and pull out my wrist in front of me to check my watch. The faster I complete my mission, the better the pay will be. That way, the company is sure that travelers will keep themselves from getting distracted and messing up the future in any other way than what's intended.

As my watch turn on, I look at the date in the corner. I always do, just to make sure that I am in the right time and to know what time it is exactly.

However, this time my eyes widen and I gulp down a big lump which comes back only to grow bigger.

"2027?" I mumble and look up from my watch.

I look around the alley I had landed in. I see a few people walking by the exit of the alley, but nothing out of the ordinary that will reveal the year. I look up and see strings going across the buildings with clothes hung on it with pegs.

I remember what I learned from my rookie days at TravelTen, when I studied all time periods I was going to master in. In 2046 they don't dry clothes outside or even at home. By then there's supposed to be companies that would come and pick up your laundry two days a week and bring it back when it was clean. It's like a laundromat—but less old fashioned. You don't have to do anything other than put your clothes out like you do with trash.

Am I really not in 2046?

I look down at my wrist again and bring it closer to my face. I squint my eyes and blink a few times to make sure I wasn't envisioning something.

Did I really land in 2027?

This is not supposed to happen. This is not where I was told I was going. My mission is in another decade, not here.

TravelTen has since their opening never made any mistakes, at least that's what I have heard. The Time Machine located in the traveler watch is not supposed to send you to another time than your mission—it's not meant to be able to do that.

It worries me and the lump in my throat won't go away yet.

Maybe Dohyun had found the wrong document?

Maybe that is the reason, but if he did find the wrong document, shouldn't I still have been sent to the year written in it?

Whatever the reason is, there is nothing I can do.

Whether the problem is with the machine or the instructions I got, there is nothing I can do about it—nothing else than to pray that it has nothing to do with my traveler watch.

There's no contact between different time zones. It's impossible, some claim. Nonetheless, our technology has just not found a way to do it yet. The only way to get back to the time zone I come from, is to complete my mission. It will send a signal to the TravelTen Center, a green light, and another signal will be sent back to the traveler's watch and after that the traveler will have a maximum of 24 hours left before going back home. That depends on when your team leader is at work.