The secondary terminal had a specific quality at four in the morning. Six days since the hospital. Three days since the last call with Ibu Wulan.
Not quiet. Airports were never quiet. But stripped. Cleaning crews. Early shift workers. Travelers who had opted for the cheapest flight and were paying for it in hours rather than money. You were among the latter. Your notebook, your recorder, the artifact wrapped in cloth in the bottom of your bag.
You bought coffee from a machine that dispensed something approximately coffee-shaped and sat near your gate. Forty minutes.
You took out your phone.
At the airport. Early flight. Don't reply if you're still sleeping
You put the phone away. You opened the notebook.
It buzzed before you'd finished the first page.
Ryujin: I know you have an early flight. I was there when you booked it.
You looked at it for a moment. Something almost like a smile. Then you went back to the notes.
Twelve pages of notes from Ibu Wulan's calls. The mechanism, the traditions, the specific conditions of the reversal. The three things that could go wrong. The quality of attention required. Not focus, but something adjacent. Going still in a way that was different from stillness. She had described it as listening with your whole body for something that wasn't sound.
You'd asked her, on the fourth call, whether she thought you could do it.
A long pause. "I think you are the kind of person who does things he is not certain he can do. That is different from being certain you can do them. But for this, it may be enough."
You'd written that down too.
The gate was posted. You gathered your things and went through and found your seat. Window, which you'd paid extra for without examining why.
You took out your phone one more time before they asked you to switch it off.
Boarding. See you on the other side.
Her reply came before the doors closed.
Take care of the artifact.
A pause. Then:
Take care of yourself too.
You put the phone away. You watched Seoul become distance. And then darkness. And then sea.
You tried to sleep. You couldn't sleep. You read the notes again.
The apartment in Bangsar was small and clean and smelled of someone else's fabric softener. A window overlooking the street. A desk that faced the wall.
You set the bag down. Unwrapped the artifact and set it on the desk. It looked different here. Not larger or smaller, but somehow more present. As though it had always known it was going somewhere and Seoul had been a waiting room.
You ordered food. Ate it at the desk. Went through the notes one more time. You were not the kind of person who checked his phone repeatedly, but you checked your phone repeatedly.
You took out your phone.
Landed. Apartment's ready.
No reply. She was still in the air.
You made tea. Sat at the edge of the bed. Outside, the street was quiet. An hour later the tracker updated. Landed. On Time. Then your phone buzzed.
Ryujin: Two hours
You were halfway through the tea when you heard the knock.
She came in the way she came into most spaces. Taking up exactly the right amount of room, not performing ease, just in it. She looked at the apartment and then at the artifact on the desk.
"That's it," she said.
"Yes."
She set her bag down. Didn't go to it immediately. Just acknowledged it and moved to the kitchen and filled the kettle and turned it on.
"How was your flight?" you asked.
"Long. Fine. The man next to me was watching a drama I've been in. I spent three hours hoping he wouldn't look up."
"Did he?"
"No." She found the tea things. "Your flight?"
"I didn't sleep."
"Neither did I." She looked at you. "Are you ready?"
You considered the question. Not the version she was technically asking. The other version.
"I think so," you said. "Are you?"
"I think so too." The same register. "That's probably the most honest either of us can be right now."
"Probably," you agreed.
She brought her mug to the desk. You sat on the edge of the bed. You went through the plan one more time.
Afterward you ate. She'd brought food from a market near the airport. Sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf, rambutan, something fried she wouldn’t name. You talked about things that weren't the plan. She asked about the conservation piece in Sarawak, four years ago. You told her.
Three days on the river. A researcher named Hakim who'd spent fifteen years documenting a specific species of river turtle and spoke about it with a reverence most people reserved for things more obviously significant. The way the forest sounded at night. What it felt like to be somewhere that hadn't decided you were important.
"You went alone," she said.
"I usually go alone."
"Is that a preference or a habit?"
"Both. They stopped being distinguishable a while ago."
She looked at her mug. "I'm always with someone. For work. There's always a manager or a handler or a coordinator. And then when I'm not working there's… still usually someone. Someone the company has designated to be there." A pause. "I haven't been alone somewhere in a long time."
"Is that difficult?"
"It's just the way it is." She said it without complaint. "What I mean is… I think I'd forgotten what it felt like to decide where to be. Without it going through someone else first."
You looked at her. "And this?"