Oliver lugged his backpack across the dimly lit corridors of Neo-Seoul, a city that glittered less with starlight and more with the glow of holographic adverts. He was aware of prying eyes from the passersby, not because of any fame or notoriety, but due to the sheer presence of Matthew, his unvarnished companion in cybernetic crime.
Matthew was a 笨拙的paper, the clumsy paper. A teetering monument of humanity amidst synthetic perfection, his skin not quite flesh, not quite circuit. It was hard paper etched with feeble tattoos, depicting moments that once were but now forgotten. “You always seem lost,” Oliver mused, as they navigated the winding back alleys.
Matthew sidestepped a flickering billboard extolling eternal youth. “Lost? Maybe,” he replied, his voice a mechanical wheeze yet tinged with shades of nostalgia. “Or maybe I’m just waiting to be found.”
Their destination lay beyond a vending machine that offered fortunes at the cost of your soul’s slivers—The Hub, a dingy haven of time travel aficionados and cybernetic nostalgics. Dee, a woman of delicate grace but steely edge, met them with a wry smile. Her eyes were augmented, designed to perceive the layers of potential realities. “You boys playing with time again?”
Oliver shrugged but could not help the smirk creeping up on him. “More like dancing on its edges.”
Dee rolled her eyes, a coquettish gesture that belied her ancient wisdom. “You know it’s not the leap you fear, Oliver, but the landings.”
In the smoky curling haze of that den, time was not linear; it unfolded like a New Year’s ribbon cascade—vibrant and unpredictable. Matthew, eternally optimistic despite his crude appearances, asked, “Do you think there’s a timeline where I’m not trapped in this skin?”
Dee nodded, “There’s a version where you’re a star athlete, and another where you’re a barista with no aptitude for art—a spectrum vast yet finite.”
The conversation spun like a dancing monolith straddling logic’s wane. As they bantered, the reality frequencies tuned into their wavelength, jostling each being towards moments yet to transpire. In a reality not far, Oliver found himself again addressing Matthew, the air thick with remnants of futurity.
“Déjà vu or destiny? We’ve been at this crossroads before,” remarked Oliver, apprehension at the pupils’ edges.
Dee, ever the specter in this theater of universes, was at their side in an instant. “Embrace it or abandon it, the circle ever turns.”
Matthew’s eyes lit up momentarily—an LED flicker of hope lodged within his creased folds. “Why can’t we escape the loop?”
“It’s a loop if you believe it,” Dee’s counsel was like a theorem wrapping around fallible intentions.
The dilapidated machine purred, a sibilant transmission humming like a lullaby. Once the air recalibrated, they were back to their neon-clad streets, having traversed passages marked by time yet held onto their whispers.
As Oliver and Matthew tread the pavement anew, Oliver pondered aloud, “Are we just echoes, a shadow play?”
Matthew laughed, a noise not bound by their predicament; if anything, it was liberating. “It’s the landings, Oliver; it’s all in how you land.”
And so, beneath the expanse of circuitous starlight, they walked—their destinies entwined, clumsy hopes papered yet perpetual.
The loop, the journey, the essence of all indistinguishable from threads of time. Echoes and reflections, a repeat always in motion; Matthew rolled the paper—clumsy, yet resilient—into another semblance of possibility. The closing act, yet never quite the end.