100 Yellow Doors

february 29th, 1996, 5:02 a.m.

"You're very lucky I don't sleep much," said Julien. He was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, a half-disassembled, blocky white PlayStation in his lap. "Because if I did, I would be very pissed at you right now."

Iman sat on the couch in front of him, self-conscious in the glittery cocktail dress she wore. She hadn't wanted to wear this one—it was a particularly bright shade of baby blue that made her feel like a tropical bird—but Hana had insisted. "Like I've said," Iman said. "I don't have any say in this."

"That wouldn't stop me from being pissed at you."

"Julien—"

"You're dressed up," he said, glimpsing up at her from the floor. The room was dark—the sun yet to have risen in the San Diego sky—and so were Julien's eyes, like obsidian as he traced the dress's many sequins. "Are you missing something important right now?"

"Yes," Iman said, after a beat of hesitation. She supposed it was a little important, even if Hana and Beck truly cared more about it than she did. "And you're probably covering for me right now, so thank you."

Julien frowned, and for a minute Iman was unsure whether he was frowning at the mess of wires in front of him or frowning at something she'd said. "We're still friends in the present?" he asked then, his voice low, charged with a strange poignance that gave Iman an eerie feeling.

Iman decided not to mention the three months or so that they'd been...estranged. She said, "Of course. Why?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe I just thought I would have screwed something up by now."

"You should trust yourself more, Jules," Iman said then, coming to a seat on the floor beside him. Silently, Julien shucked off the sweatshirt he was wearing and handed it to her; she laid it over her lap, relaxing. "You're not as bad of a person as you think you are."

Julien gave her a rueful grin, then leaned forward, stretching to plug a gray wire into the back of the television. Iman watched him, her head cocked, trying to remember if she'd known before that Julien was into video games. If he was, anyway—it was highly likely that this was just another temporary endeavor to pass the endless time that accompanied being immortal. "Don't think I didn't notice the ring on your finger, too," he said, and Iman froze in realization. "Who's the lucky guy?"

She considered telling him, but as she almost always did, she decided it was more fun to keep him guessing. "You'll meet him one day."

"Will I like him?"

"I don't really know yet."

"I really can't get anything out of you, can I?" said Julien. Done hooking up wires, he sat back again, handing Iman a controller. It was clunky and awkward in her hands, decades away from the sleek game consoles she knew Beck and Ronnie to obsess over back in 2020. "Smart woman. I wouldn't trust me either."

"It's not that," said Iman with a shake of her head. "It's just better if we let things play out as they come, Jules. Imagine how meaningless your life would be if you already knew everything that would ever happen to you."

"Hm," Julien mused, clicking the TV set on. Static buzzed in Iman's ears; they both watched as the screen flickered to the console's home menu. "Could be exciting, too. You know. Trying to figure out when and how everything's going to happen—or even trying to stop it."

"That's exciting to you?" Iman gasped, half a laugh on her breath. "That sounds exhausting to me."

"Well," said Julien. "You certainly know more about that than I do, don't you?"

A loud boom came from the speakers as the words Mortal Kombat 3 appeared in a shower of flame and testosterone. A smile spread across Julien's face as he sorted through the characters, examining the specs of each, his fingers moving briskly across the controls.

As Iman looked at him, his head dipped with determination, a few locks of black hair curling above his brow, she realized with a sudden and jarring clarity that she missed him. Even with Current Julien waiting for her back at Hana's house down in Richmond, she missed him, this Julien, this easier, calmer version of the other, untouched yet by the whims of the years to come. It left a bittersweet taste in her mouth: missing this moment, even as it played out before her.

"Have you ever questioned it?"

Iman looked up, realizing that one, Julien was talking to her, and that two, it was her turn to select her fighter. "Questioned what?" she asked, clicking through the characters with considerably less care than Julien.

"Why you always end up here, I mean," he said, with a thoughtful tilt to his head. "You could go anywhere, any time, but somehow you always end up attached to me. You don't ask why?"

"It wasn't always you," said Iman. She had clicked through enough of the characters that her eyes were starting to glaze over; most of them were buff men wearing the least amount of clothes possible, striking a ridiculous pose every few seconds before returning to idle standing. "When I was younger, I went everywhere. Random meadows, nineteenth century city alleys, even a rice farm in Vietnam once. Then that one day...I came here."

"Yeah. And you're telling me it doesn't bother you that you don't know why?"

Iman sighed, the weightless feeling starting at her stomach and spreading soon through all of her limbs, as if she were floating. She set the controller aside, brushing Julien's arm. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, black swallowing black. "I'm not sure, Jules," she said. "Maybe the universe—or God, whoever, whatever it is that runs this place—couldn't bear to keep us apart, you know?"

She watched something switch in his face—a microscopic jump of his brow—before she slipped away.