"So, since you aren't from here, I thought you might want to know more about... well everything," Jimin said. We were walking through different rooms as he showed me around the castle.

"Thank you," I replied, touched by his thoughtfulness. "And thank you for the clothes too. I only had what I was wearing yesterday. The rest were either left behind or ruined."

"You're welcome. I couldn't have my brothers ogling my assigned female over breakfast, could I?" The flirtatious smirk I received was the exact same one BTS' Jimin sent ARMY, but the usual feelings of unease I usually got never came.

This morning's breakfast had been so much better than the horrendous meal last night. The Park family's treatment towards me had done a complete 180. I assumed that Jimin had told them about how I had come to be here, and it touched my heart how apologetic they all were. Sure, it didn't change my opinions of them completely, but it was a start.

During breakfast, I had been given a run-down on the whole 'Seed Bearer and assigned female' thing. I was told the ceremony I had been part of yesterday, the Allocation Ceremony, happened four times a year. The ceremony would take place in each of the Kingdom's major cities, and yesterday had been the mid-year one for Seoul. Jong-Soo, Jimin's youngest brother, told me that only females aged 23 and above could participate. The number of females assigned in each ceremony depended on how many Seed Bearers would be participating.

Jimin answered my question about the pseudonym names. He said that whenever they had to do anything official, they would use their pseudonym names to help conceal their identities. He added that when Seed Bearers decided to take one of their assigned females as their wife, the fake name would be dropped. As I learned yesterday, his pseudonym was The Glamorous One.

The Seoul Seed Bearer group was a fairly large group. But the group out of Gwangju was bigger as it had 11 Seed Bearers in it. I thought that surely they couldn't be the idol group from my universe, Seventeen, because there were 13 active members, not 11. I figured I would wait and see. After all, he said that on the 100th day of our pairing, we would meet some of the other groups that were participating in the mid-year Allocation Rotation. That day was apparently a big celebration day.

While touring his house, we discussed what the exact parameters of the whole Seed Bearer thing were. As I had gauged from the ceremony yesterday, combined with what I learned last night at dinner, assigned females had 365 days to fall pregnant—or in this year's case, 366 since it was a leap year. It did not matter whether the baby that came from the pregnancy was female, a male with black hair or a boy with coloured hair. To this kingdom, any baby signalled the assignment completed. However, I was shocked and repulsed to find out that if the baby does not have coloured hair, it is immediately removed from the biological parents. It is then given to a couple living in the city to raise as their own.

"And what happens if by day 365 there is no pregnancy?" An empty feeling formed in the pit of my stomach as I waited to hear Jimin's reply. I wanted to know but I also liked this ignorant state I was in by not knowing.

"Then the woman is killed because of the shame she has brought on her family and the entire kingdom,." My blood turned to ice as I listened to him say those words with such ease. For the first time since I had met him, I wanted to be as far away from Jimin as I could.

"That is barbaric and inhumane. Not to mention how archaic that thinking is!" A bitter tang filled my mouth, which made my stomach swirl with nausea. I couldn't believe the steps brought me here to this universe, only to find that I would face my death a year later. I knew the universe hated me; I didn't realise it despised me this much, though.

"It's the way it's always been, Nell." Hearing Jimin try to justify that reasoning made my feet itch with the need to run away.

'Wasn't that the excuse for so many atrocities in my universe?'

I couldn't help but scoff. "Just because it's always been like this, doesn't mean it's right." Instead of running away like I wanted to when my eyes began to well up, my feet brought me closer to the man. I was so close that I could have poked him in the chest. I didn't do that, but I really wanted to. "What happens if one of the women assigned can't have children? Does that mean she's spending the year waiting to die like an animal at a slaughterhouse?"

"The women here all know this is a possibility," he replied. I could hear the frustration lacing his words, but it came nowhere close to matching the burning anger that was coursing through my body. "They wouldn't be at the Allocation Ceremony if they knew there was something wrong with them."

I recoiled. I felt like I'd been slapped in the face by a steel glove. There were so many things I wanted to say, but to voice those words would mean the truth would come out. I didn't know any of the people around me... and I didn't trust them as far as I could throw them. Instead, I stood there struggling to breathe from the anxiety and anger that swirled in me.

I could see Jimin looking at me with concern as I tried to use my breathing exercises to settle everything I was feeling. After several attempts, I couldn't calm down the storm that was brewing, so I allowed my emotions to take over. I listened to my body and did what I always did in times like this. My feet carried me out of the room we'd been in and down a hallway. Like other times in the past when things got too overwhelming, I ran away from my problems. Or in this case, a handsome platinum-blonde problem.

I didn't care where I was going, all I wanted was some solitude. I felt like I was suffocating. As my angry tears brewed, it felt like the walls were closing in on me. I needed to think. I had to find somewhere private so I could plan how I was going to get out of this mess the universe had put me into.

I rushed through the house, looking frantically for a door that would lead me out of the opulent prison. Hallways morphed into large living spaces and finally, I found a set of double doors. I grasped the golden handle and twisted. I expected to be met with fresh, sweet-smelling air as I opened the door; however, the scent of books greeted me. Stumbling on my own feet, I crashed into the plush green carpet and sobbed.

I cried for the future that had been stolen from me.

I cried for being taken away from my universe without a choice.

I cried for the pain and guilt that I knew my sister would be going through right now.

I cried for my parents, Nana Betty, my brother and his family.

I cried for my friends.

But most of all, I cried because once again, I was reminded that I could never fulfil the one dream I always wanted. I would never feel the joy of carrying my baby inside me.

꧁♥💜♥꧂

When I calmed down, I took stock of where I was. Bookshelves spanned across all the walls, each lined with books. If I couldn't find a garden or the kitchen, I was relieved to see I had located the palace's library.

I peeled myself up from the ground, groaning from the pain of being stuck in one position for too long. To ease my muscles, I staggered over to one of the mahogany bookshelves. My fingers trailed across the spines as I read the titles of the books. I noticed that these were all works of fiction, and while I would definitely be back here at some stage to lose myself in a good story, it wasn't what I was looking for. I moved over to the next wall and by chance, I found the section housing biographies. Encyclopaedias and other informational books occupied the third wall, while the fourth one was partially filled with children's books.

In the middle of the room was a sturdy wooden table with curved, ornate legs. Four Windsor scoop-back chairs in a beige suede decorated each side and I hoped they were as comfy as they looked. Two maroon Chesterfield armchairs sat to the side of the room as a small and welcoming sitting area. On another day, I'd love to chill out here and read some of the hundreds of books the room held.

Since I now knew the section I needed to go to first for the information I sought, I began earnestly looking at the non-fiction and informative books. I pulled different books out and placed them on one of the tables. I had no rhyme or reason, I grabbed whichever ones I thought would be the most useful. Soon, the table was filled with different hardcover books on a range of topics. I sighed in contentment as I eased into one of the beige chairs; it was even more comfortable and plush than I'd expected. I grabbed one of the encyclopaedias and opened it to the section of entries starting with 'I'. I was hoping to see if I could find anything about the internal combustion engine. I found as I reached the end of that letter's entries that it was exactly as I thought; there was nothing written about this topic.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember some of the times when my dad used to talk about the history of cars. It was his main hobby, so there were many times in my childhood when he had talked to us on the subject. I smiled as a name came to me, and I flipped to find Étienne Lenoir. I had remembered that he was the Belgian-French engineer who, in my universe, developed the internal combustion engine in 1858. I did find an entry for the man, although it wasn't what I wanted to read. The man was an engineer in this universe too. Instead of building the internal combustion engine, he focused on improving the primitive telegraph cables available at the time. Thanks to Lenoir, an advancement occurred when the modern telephone was invented. However, people here could only use phones to make local calls. Although, as I read further, I learned that not many people made phone calls because the lines were very unreliable. It seemed very redundant to me.

I also found out that the steam engine had been invented by Thomas Newcomen like it had in my universe. One difference was there had been a big fire in Newcomen's workshop. It completely destroyed all his design drawings and working prototypes and also took the inventor's life. At the time, no one had thought it was necessary at the time to try and recreate the steam engine. Over the years, it had been lost in obscurity.

I could see that since the internal combustion engine was never invented, there had been a ripple effect for future inventions. Motorbikes, cars, buses, and trucks were never invented as personal forms of transport. But neither were planes, large ships, and rockets. Man has never been to space in this universe, which also meant there were no satellites sent into orbit. As such, there was no financial stock exchange, no international phone conversations, and no GPS.

For the next couple of hours, I had my nose in books. This universe was like the perfect mix of the old and the new. It was like people here were living how they did centuries ago in my universe—except with some modern improvements.

By the end of my research, I learned that the two universes I've been in were full of contradictions. This one seemed so backwards compared to mine; the advancement of travel had never happened and as such, each country seemed isolated and separate. However, because there was not the burning of fossil fuels, climate change had never been an issue the people here had needed to worry about. This universe also had electricity but it came from alternative fuel sources, with solar and hydro being the most prevalent.

I tried to think back to those times when my father taught Esther, Aiden and me about computers and the Internet. For the life of me, I couldn't remember who the key players in creating these were, but from a quick look, I could see they weren't here either. There were also no mentions of Philo Farnsworth, the father of the television, in any of the books. This would explain why I had not seen any TV's in Jimin's home; in my childhood home when I was growing up, each of us had a television in our bedrooms, along with two communal ones in the family and lounge rooms.

It felt like this universe was lightyears behind mine. It was as if the one I called home was the advanced alien civilisation, while this one was the primitive Earth that we saw in so many movies of alien invasions. The more I read, the more I realised how much people from my universe took technology for granted.

The books in this library became my Google. As I had found the answers to my most burning questions, I began to read for fun. In one book, I learned that Seoul was still the capital city of the Greater Kingdom of Korea. The Korean War had never happened, so there was no divide between the North and South. I almost cracked up laughing when I saw who the President of the Kingdom was. In my wildest dreams, I would never picture Park Jae-sang—aka Psy—as the leader of an entire country. I read in another book that Samsung did not enter the electronics industry in the 1960s. Instead, they expanded their dried fish and noodles company into the fast-food sphere.

But the thing that entertained me most of all was the book that talked about other countries. Similar to my universe, Australia had been colonised by another country. Like every child in Aussie schools, I had learned all about how England had started to send its convicts to our country in the late 1770s. It seemed though, that instead of England being the one to colonise my home country, in this universe it was France. I was shocked to learn that the Australia here was called 'Le Australie'. It sounded more like what French Canada in my universe was like, rather than the Australia I'd grown up in.

I had to laugh at the comical way the author described Aussie animals. According to the author, kangaroos were called 'pouch-hoppers' and they were used to pull vehicles instead of horses. Koalas were 'tree bears' and he called our brush-tail possums 'giant noisy rats'. Page after page, I was met with a mixture of amusement, bewilderment and horror over the facts about my home country. I couldn't stop myself from bursting into laughter many times.

"Looks like you found my favourite room," I heard a soft voice proclaim from the doorway.

Nervously, I looked up to see Jimin leaning against the wall. My heart was thundering so loud in my chest I thought the entire city of Seoul would think there was a dangerous storm approaching. I hoped that my outburst didn't make him angry or offend him when I ran away from him earlier.

"I'm sorry," we both said at the same time. We both giggled softly and I had to restrain myself from saying 'jinx' as I knew he wouldn't understand.

I watched him walk over and take the seat opposite me. There were so many things I wanted to say, but the words wouldn't form in my mouth. Instead, I sat there and took in the man before me. His shoulders looked broader than BTS's Jimin, and from the way his t-shirt hugged his chest, I could tell his torso was more muscular too.

"I'm sorry, Nell," he started again. His soft, low voice had me looking up into his eyes. I could see a range of emotions there, but it was mostly regret and sadness that were painting his ebony irises. "This must be such a shock to you, and I haven't made things any easier. It must be difficult to come from your home the way you did and find yourself thrust upon me. On top of that, you have to find out about our... how do I put it... fertility challenges?"

"It's definitely not easy. It sometimes feels like I'm in a completely different world." I agreed, thinking of all the differences between the two universes that I'd found out today. I willed my brain to remember everything I had learned because I couldn't allow anything to out me as someone who wasn't from this universe. "I have to apologise to you too, Jimin. I have a habit of running from things when they get too difficult. I didn't mean to offend or upset you with my disrespect. I'm sincerely sorry."

Jimin and I stayed talking in the library. Neither of us noticed how the sunlight crept across the walls until it faded completely. I didn't know how long we'd been in the library, but I felt like he and I had begun to understand each other a bit better. We had stuck to light topics, neither of us feeling comfortable to open up around the other just yet.

Jimin learned about some of my quirks. I told him how I liked time to myself to think, hence why I often ran away, as well as how I was creative and liked baking. He told me how he spent his free time honing his already impressive taekwondo and ssireum skills, as well as playing sports with some of the other Seed Bearers in this current Allocation Rotation. There were a lot of similarities between this Jimin and the one from my universe, but I couldn't help thinking that I much preferred the one sitting in front of me.