Chapter Text
It had rained yesterday, today and tomorrow. Wooyoung loved the thrumming of the drops on the glass as they raced each other to reach the bottom first. Nothing soothed Wooyoung's sleep more than the pitter-patter of nature's tears against his window, but he hadn't slept at home to relish in it. He had spent the past and future nights in a cosy inn of Edo, 1765, where he had attended a contemporary tea ceremony for Sencha tea. The heady aroma of the green leaves still lingered in his nose and cleared his foggy mind.
Wooyoung got to leave Europe only rarely. The institute he worked at focused on European history, so he wasn't required to explore anywhere beyond those borders. When the director of the department, Bang Yongguk, had offered the journey to Wooyoung, he had agreed immediately. The cultural exchange was a welcome rarity in his field of work.
With one hand in his pocket, the other one clutching his briefcase, Wooyoung scaled the stairs taking two at a time. The building he worked at could have been a museum with its grand noble halls and pillars made of white marble. In some areas, it was just that. Whenever the voyagers got tasked with bringing an item back from their trips for research, it got displayed in expensive glass displays for the public to marvel at.
On his way through the grand foyer, Wooyoung glanced at his wristwatch as he rounded the frolicking fountain in the middle of the hall. Its never-ending stream of water stubbornly tried to reach for the glass dome high above that cast the entire foyer in the bright light of day.
Still enough time to go. Yongguk had asked Wooyoung to join him in his bureau first thing in the morning. When Wooyoung passed his own office, he slipped his jacket off so he wouldn't get too warm. Yongguk froze easily.
With his jacket tucked under his arm, Wooyoung knocked on the door leading to Yongguk's office. Only after a grumbled response, he allowed himself in.
Yongguk sat hunched over his desk surrounded by books and mountains of papers that had no apparent order to Wooyoung but were strictly sorted to suit Yongguk's work process. He had a mug of coffee by his side that left a dark circle on the expensive wood of his working table. When Wooyoung stepped in, the man took his hands out of his messy hair to fix Wooyoung with his stare from eyes that hadn't slept thoroughly in years.
"Morning, Wooyoung," he greeted as he beckoned Wooyoung to sit opposite his mess. As Wooyoung put his bag and jacket down on the ground neatly, he smiled at the scratch in Yongguk's voice. It had been three days or three hundred years since they had last talked to each other. No wonder he sounded gruff.
"Good morning." Wooyoung tried his brightest smile to light the room shrouded in twilight since Yongguk hated light and always shut the blinds halfway. It took some adjusting after the bright halls outside, but Wooyoung was used to it.
"How was Edo?"
Yongguk himself rarely travelled. Despite adoring his job and being fascinated with the concept of travelling through time ever since he had been a child, his body didn't take kindly to the different climates and health efforts it had to adjust to. Most often when he went on missions, he came home exhausted and with a fever. Still, he had far more experience than Wooyoung, who had worked in the field only for two years. As a mentor and supervisor, Wooyoung couldn't ask for a better person.
"Fascinating. Sitting with a shogun is an entirely novel experience compared to meeting a king. Both exude a power we don't see anymore today, but their values and beliefs lie on the opposite spectrum. Aside from power and money, of course."
Yongguk nodded. His chair creaked under his weight as he leaned back. It was old and wobbly, but Yongguk swore on its comfort.
"Even among power and money, they display it differently. It's less about showing off what you have rather than investing it. Our kings lived lavishly; most of their power was for show," Yongguk agreed wisely as he tugged a file from a dangerously wobbling tower. He opened it to check if it was the right one before he handed it over to Wooyoung. Inked skin slipped out from under his pullover when he stretched to reach.
With a mumbled thanks, Wooyoung accepted the item. The letters on the first page bounced at him like a cheap jump scare in a haunted house at a fair. Both had Wooyoung's heart surge with exhilaration and nervosity.
"You found it?" His eyes shone as he glanced back up at Yongguk. The satisfied smirk on the other man's lips barely hid his attempt to play it off.
"What I believe to be the beginnings, yes. If we find these secrets, the last step separating humanity from eternal life can finally be closed."
Wooyoung's eyes skimmed the file. The first time that humans had tried to find the research behind immortality. The year 582 before Christ in the golden age of Babylon. According to Yongguk's efforts, the royal scientists had experimented with the human lifetime and means to prolong it. There had to be records even in a mythical place like this.
Yongguk continued through Wooyoung's amazement. With each word he read, his fingers trembled more and awe poured from them in the pages he turned with great care.
"I already found out that their work travelled through Europe in the following centuries. The next traces are in Rome, but I believe we should collect them separately like pieces of a puzzle. And once we have them translated and gathered in their entirety, I will bring them to the medical institute so we can hopefully fulfil humanity's dream." Pride swung in his voice, after all. Wooyoung couldn't condemn it. They stood in front of the largest discovery that interested people for many thousand years aside from time travel. It was an enormous honour for Wooyoung to be working on this, even if it could be worth many years of exploration. Finding and gathering records wasn't easy, especially not so far in the past.
"I want you to brush up on your Akkadian these next few days. I will take you off all your other missions. Seungyoun already knows to help you with your outfit and is working on it. Whenever you're ready, you can go."
Still speechless, Wooyoung set the papers down. When Yongguk giggled at his dumbfounded expression, he snapped his mouth shut.
"But- This is so immense!"
Wooyoung had worked on such cases before. Had stumbled through the streets of ancient Greece and shady alleys where people of all genders had their nightly fun with each other to search for the trail of famous philosophers and their notes. So far, he had found nothing but crumbs of information, nothing they could work with. He had already given up finding the truth about eternal life during his lifetime.
But this, this changed everything. This was a trail, a beacon of light on the horizon. The first station on a long trek through history. Something that their institute had failed to detect in recent years compared to their larger contender in China. Nobody could assure that Wooyoung's work would be successful. And yet, he looked forward to the treasure hunt of his lifetime.
Yongguk grinned at him reassuringly.
"It is. I could barely hold my horses while you were in Edo; I was so giddy to tell you. Seungyoun might complain about my insanity later."
Wooyoung chuckled disbelievingly. The name of his informant was Song Mingi. He couldn't wait to meet him in the gorgeous gardens of Babylon.
With a nod at the papers, Wooyoung cradled his bag close. He would spend days and nights up studying and getting ready for his best behaviour so far in the past. His pronunciation and manners had to be impeccable, or else he wouldn't be satisfied.
"Can I take those or shall I make a copy?"
Yongguk waved him off with a lazy hand.
"Take them; I got it all safely filed away. Tell me once you are ready to go. I doubt it will be long with how your eyes gleam," Yongguk joked. Satisfied with Wooyoung's glee, he leaned back in his chair.
"Of course! You bet I will bother you as soon as possible. Do me a favour and get some sleep in between. You wouldn't want to pass out during the time of my return and miss the first genuine lead we have."
Yongguk scoffed.
"As if. I will be so awake when that time comes, no matter how. Have fun preparing."
Wooyoung bid him his goodbyes before he left the dark office. Outside, he blinked against the sudden light once more as he stood frozen in the corridor for a long moment.
His guts were uneasy with the weight of this mission, but they were just as excited to go to work as his brain.
Wooyoung would give himself two days. Two days until he would have brushed up on all the knowledge of Babylon that existed out there.
On his way to his office, Wooyoung slipped his phone out of the pocket of his grey chequered suit. As his thumb swiftly typed in the name of the ancient city in the search bar, his heart skipped with excitement once more.
He would really go to Babylon. Wooyoung had never been there, not before its destruction. He knew that the glory of the gardens under King Nebuchadnezzar II was beyond their current imagination. While researched by other time-travelling historians just like Wooyoung, so humanity had accurate data and drawings to admire, Babylon was still a major mystery to Wooyoung himself. He couldn't wait to explore its nooks and crannies and interview the people that had lived at the same time as the city's golden age.
Up in his cosy office, Wooyoung dropped his bag on a seat in the corner and pulled out his books on Akkadian, Babylon's language. He spent all day relearning the cuneiform writing that he had excelled in during university. His love for it shone through as he wrote a lengthy letter to Yongguk just explaining his excitement for practise. Lunch ended up as a pitiful side project that had Wooyoung wolfing down his sandwich and leaving crumbs all over the precious letters under his feather.
Wooyoung read and studied until the sun set outside and threw golden rays on his working space and room. The idle bustling of Prague was quiet from his tall windows, but the sound of traffic got loud around the usual rush hour.
Wooyoung slapped his books shut an hour after he would usually leave work. He left them out to continue the next morning and took his jacket to go home. Not as if he had any plan besides watching a documentary on Babylon by himself during dinner. He lived alone, and his field of work didn't allow him to have many friends that didn't count as rivals. Yongguk and Seungyoun, his coworkers, were probably closest to that.
On his way down, Wooyoung passed the massive marble slab hung over the staircase. Prettily lined by a golden frame, it showcased the three major rules of time travel engraved deep into the stone for everyone to remember.
1. Time travel cannot influence the future. What has happened is inevitable and cannot be stopped.
2. You cannot go into the future. As of law 4 of World Law, exploration on how to accomplish future travel is strictly prohibited as to not influence the natural flow of time.
3. We seek the secrets of the world to understand and learn from the past. Be true to yourselves and your work when you walk among those who shaped the world into what it is today.
The slab was mostly for show. They recited it for curious children when they visited the institute for school trips. Yongguk usually underlined the rules with unnecessary grandeur just to advertise their work to young people that might be interested in the field. His speeches left kids with shining eyes and a snickering Wooyoung in a corner most of the time.
And yet, Wooyoung couldn't doubt their impact. Whenever he travelled back, respect that chased shivers down his spine overcame him. The older the epoch he visited, the more intimidating he found them.
They had no impact in the past, they could only pursuit things lost in the many years of history taking its toll on humans. And yet, Wooyoung felt as if their impact back in the present was massive. Especially when instead of knowledge and historical points of interest, they would discover a formula for immortality hidden deep in the past of Europe.
Wooyoung would be the one to find it, and he would do an absolutely excellent job at it.