Chapter 2: The Weight of Empty Hours (2)
Seo-yeon passed three familiar dealers, exchanging bows but not stopping. She was looking for something specific, though she couldn't have said what. Something that would make her article stand out. Something that would prove she hadn't wasted seven years of her life chasing ghosts.
The alley dead-ended at a shop she'd never noticed before.
Time's Rift Antiques.
The sign was carved wood, weathered but elegant, showing an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail—twisted into a figure-eight. The infinity symbol, or something older. The windows were dark despite the morning hour, but the door stood ajar.
Seo-yeon's hand moved to the strap of her laptop bag, suddenly hesitant. Something about the shop felt wrong. Or not wrong—sideways. Like standing too close to a speaker and feeling the bass vibrate in your bones before the sound reached your ears.
She pushed the door open.
A bell chimed, the sound lingering longer than it should. The shop interior was dim and cluttered, every surface covered with artifacts from a dozen different eras. Ming vases next to Silla pottery. Medieval European swords beside Joseon-era scrolls. The air smelled of aged wood and something else—ozone, maybe, or the strange metallic scent before a thunderstorm.
"Seo-yeon Kang," said a voice from the shadows. "I've been expecting you."
An elderly woman materialized between the shelves like she'd been part of the darkness itself. She was striking—sharp cheekbones, silver hair bound in an elegant chignon, eyes that held strange amber depths. She wore a traditional hanbok in deep burgundy, but something about her presence suggested she was far older than her appearance.
"I... how do you know my name?" Seo-yeon managed.
"I know many things." The woman smiled, and it was gentle but knowing. "I am Madame Chronos, the proprietor here. And you are looking for something specific, though you don't yet know what it is."
Madame Chronos moved through the shop with fluid grace, her fingers trailing over objects as she passed. She stopped at a locked glass case in the back corner and drew out a key on a chain around her neck.
"This," she said softly, "has been waiting for you."
Inside the case, nestled on black velvet, lay an ornate pocket watch. Gold casing engraved with intricate patterns—celestial maps, hourglasses, symbols Seo-yeon recognized as ancient Astrean script. At the center of the watch face, stamped in silver, was the unmistakable seal of the Astra royal family: a sun with a crown of seven rays.
Seo-yeon's hands trembled as she reached for it. "This can't be real. The Kingdom of Astra—there are almost no surviving artifacts—"
"Yet here it is." Madame Chronos placed the watch in Seo-yeon's palm. The metal was warm, impossibly so, like it had been resting against living skin. "The owner has finally returned."
"I'm not the owner. I'm just a historian. I study—"
"You study what was lost." The old woman's eyes held infinite kindness and infinite sadness. "And now you have the chance to find it again. The watch is yours. No payment necessary."
"I can't just take—"
"You already have." Madame Chronos closed Seo-yeon's fingers around the watch. "Time has a way of calling us back to where we're needed most. Trust it. Trust yourself."
Seo-yeon tried to protest, to ask questions, but Madame Chronos was already ushering her toward the door with gentle insistence. The bell chimed again as Seo-yeon stumbled back into the alley, the pocket watch clutched in her hand.
She looked back at the shop, but the door had closed. The windows were dark. For a moment, she could have sworn the entire building shimmered like heat haze.
Then a bus rumbled past on the main street, and when she looked again, the shop was just a shop. Old. Mysterious. But solid.
The watch ticked steadily in her palm, and when she raised it to her ear, she heard something impossible—the mechanism was running backward.
That night, Seo-yeon spread her research across the floor of her apartment, creating a timeline of Theodore VII's reign. The pocket watch sat in the center of it all, reflecting the glow of her desk lamp.
She'd photographed it from every angle, documented the engravings, traced the Astrean script with trembling fingers. The words were a blessing for safe passage: May the bearer walk between moments unharmed.
"Between moments," Seo-yeon murmured, cross-referencing her notes. "Dr. Ryan's notes mentioned temporal displacement as metaphorical transition between historical periods, but what if—"
She picked up the watch, examining the case more closely. There—a hairline seam she'd missed before. A hidden mechanism.
Her thumb found the catch and pressed.
The watch face sprang open, revealing not clock internals but something else entirely—layers of concentric circles covered in minute engravings, rotating slowly in opposite directions. The symbols glowed with...