CHAPTER 2

Dimension 81-35'/

Jina's residence, Eunpyeong-gu district. Seoul

May 27th, 2023

It was quiet. Extremely quiet. And this was unusual behavior for Jina. Usually, when she came back from her interdimensional tours to her room at the outdated four-story apartments (the local term "Villa" didn't stick with Dipper when he considered the small Korean apartment) located in the alley of Seoul, there was laughter and excitement to fill the whole atmosphere of the room. This time, however, her room was so silent that even Dipper and Mabel could hear occasional engine noise from the quick delivery motorcycles, small diesel-powered trucks, and yellow minibusses for private institutes (Dipper noted that he needed to learn the local term "Hagwon'' he heard from one of the earliest conversations without the translator) running through the street.

It was even more uncomfortable for Dipper as her home dimension was full of excessive details that horrified Dipper, reminding him of when he accidentally collided with one of Weirdness Bubbles, briefly giving him an appearance of an adult wearing his usual outfit.

Unaware of the heavy atmosphere, Jina was thinking back to past events. She had acquired the dimensional translator and a couple of interdimensional mobile phones that let her teleport to other dimensions from the vacation house owned by her uncle, Dr. Song Myung-seok. She had seen him trying to dispose of them last Christmas, at dawn when everyone was sleeping. Curious, she went to investigate and didn't understand why he was being so secretive about discarding what looked like a set of outdated smartphones manufactured in the early 2010s and such.

Little did she know at the time that she'd stumbled on devices capable of transporting her to and allowing her to connect with those who lived in other dimensions. Perhaps most importantly, with a simple scan of written text, they could seek dimensions where the written events happened, allowing her to witness them directly.

However, these devices also gave strict warnings about traveling to dimensions with time travel, anomalies, or dangerous environments. She now suspected that was the reason why her uncle was trying to abandon them in the night, putting them with a bunch of waste loaded on his truck.

But right now she was finding it hard to accept that the quick tour of the Mystery Shack from Dimension 46-42'/ might be the last dimensional tour she and her favorite pair of twins would ever have. Yes, Dipper and Ford were right about how dangerous it is to travel multiverse for fun, and Ford was kind enough to finally let her tour the place she hadn't been able to but desperately desired to visit, even if it had come with various (yet reasonable) conditions.

But months of jumping through dimensions to places and events she had always wanted to visit had become the best experience of her life. Encountering fans who shared interests with her on Twitter was great, but meeting her favorite characters for real was on a different level. It was no wonder she wished she could do it forever.

To be honest, however, the whole process of making contact with a version of Dipper and Mabel had been pure chance. As had getting multiple devices, figuring out their capability, and learning how to use them. At first, she only tried to figure out how a couple of old phones without a charging port could stay on for so long, unaware at the time their special power supply would probably allow them to outlive her.

On the last weekend of the last year, she managed to contact the twins when she was testing rather unfamiliar features from one of her newfound devices. It was only by luck she managed to send the message, not to mention somehow finding the right dimension; there was a universe where Dipper had an interdimensional telecommunication device (a Christmas present from Ford, Dipper explained later), and her message was the first from outside of his universe. Yet another incredible amount of dumb luck for her was the universe she found not only held Gravity Falls and the Mystery Twins resembling one of the closest conditions to "canon" counterparts, but to also find a right 'timeline' where their earth was created about ten years ago from her own, which technically prevented creating time paradoxes.

Getting all of them right was a miracle for an ordinary twenty-something like her. Thinking about all of the above made her train of thought expand and spread to resemble something closer to a complex and convoluted railway network.

Lampposts installed on utility poles were lit suddenly, allowing the light from outside the apartment to pervade into her room. She was too busy recalling the past to notice. She only snapped out of it when she eventually heard Dipper's whisper, filtered and translated through the speakers of the dimensional translator attached to her ears.

"Jina," Dipper asked carefully, adjusting his tone. "Are you okay?"

Jina pulled out its source – one of her mobile phones, serving its role as a main communicator – from the pocket. "Dunno. It's just...complicated. I know he's right, but-"

"You mean Grunkle Ford?"

"Yeah. I just, um...it's a shame he doesn't want us traveling the multiverse anymore. He's nice, though, and even cooler than I thought."

"I guess so," Dipper replied. "To be honest, we should have expected that response. Except we didn't think about it 'till now. I mean, he had traveled the whole multiverse for thirty years. That means he knows how confusing and dangerous traveling across universes would be. But, for some reason, we didn't expect we would see Ford, or that he'd prevent us from adventuring for those reasons."

"Yeah. There are just, so many things I really wanted to see. Like, I'm never gonna see another universe where you guys aren't just cartoon characters."

"That still sounds weird," Dipper replied, still feeling uneasy to think of how they were known in her dimension. "But...yeah. And who would ever have expected someone from my universe to see a dimension with uncomfortably excessive details and overstretched proportions like yours? Especially to see someone who has a similar background story to us? Your uncle created a portable teleportation device in the woods? What the heck happened in your dimension? No wonder I tried stopping you from jumping through dimensions before."

Then he realized there was something else he missed, and saw an opportunity to discover an important detail thanks to his previous remark.

"...speaking of the 'solo tour' you took, can you tell me where you've been for the last two weeks?"

Jina was hesitant at first, surprised by his question and growing uncomfortable as she considered whether to answer or not. "Are you sure you wanna hear that? You were totally P.O'd when you found out that I traveled on my own."

Dipper groaned in annoyance, recalling how stupid some of her previous decisions were. "Yeah. It still makes me upset to think about what you used to get up to. Like, it was even more dangerous than when Mabel and I used the Time Tape for the first time. You could have killed yourself and destroyed someone's reality at the same time!" Moments later, his face somewhat softened and subtly flashed to some degree. "But, right now, it makes me realize I'm still not sure how to face the future if I can't look ahead. Maybe, it would be better to cope with it when I got to know some of our possible futures?"

While Jina first began her expeditions, Dipper and Mabel were overwhelmed by events from multiple numbers of dimensions she'd visited before. They had previously heard of some alternative dimensions with more substantial differences in an abstracted form during their discussions with Ford and the universes he'd visited. But now they were hearing of events that they hadn't realized were happening because Dipper was busy figuring out what detrimental effects Jina had made to other dimensions when he and Mabel were spending weeks dealing with team projects at their middle school after only a month passed since the first encounter.

When they'd finally managed to contact the person who'd been touring the multiverse, Dipper spent a long time pointing out how dangerous it was to travel through time and space, especially when it was aligned with jumping through dimensions. He was about to ban her from jumping between dimensions forever when Mabel suggested he pass on their experiences by reminding him of the many, many mistakes they made back in their summer vacation. It was followed by the creation of the ground rules for interdimensional tours, to prevent reckless actions and detrimental consequences.

It turned out there were lots of dimensions Jina visited without the twins' involvement. Once she found one of her mobile phones was capable of transporting users to other realities, she decided to visit and observe events featured in various fanfictions if she could find a reality where those events took place somewhere in the multiverse (Dimension 45'/ and Dimension 46-41'/ were part of her bucket lists).

This included dimensions where Dipper and Mabel had to be separated during the summer vacation because of various factors, where they were separated at birth but reunited later for a variety of reasons, and there were even some versions of possible futures in the twins' current perspective (May 27th, 2013, exactly ten years behind Jina's timeline since their earth was created several years later according to their own Grunkle Ford's theory).

Amongst them, there was a single dimension that grabbed Dipper and Mabel's attention; An alternative future where they had a big fight in their fourth summer at Gravity Falls. Jina was well aware of the story enough to know how its author explored both twins' flaws, eventually leading to a big fight between them when they were fifteen. She considered mentioning that the fight was aligned with Dipper's resentment towards Dippy Fresh, but she remembered how hesitant they were to even mention Mabeland and couldn't find a way to bring it up without reopening the potential scar that remained deep inside.

"I heard that you keep bottling it up when you have problems, especially when you're afraid of hurting Mabel. I think you should be more open with your sister, even when you feel you're going to hurt her by doing so. I once visited a dimension where...you fought with Mabel because you couldn't hold it in anymore. I don't want you to make the same mistake that Dipper made." She finished her advice for Dipper, still uncertain if she was offering enough or if it was right or not.

Dipper was hesitant to answer for a moment, feeling like he was stung deeply inside. He remembered how he fought with Mabel over Ford's room and how long it took him to confess that he felt neglected after she brought Candy and Grenda as her friends. Then memories of how he screwed things up by not properly confessing his thoughts; He couldn't confess he was in love with Wendy until things seemed to be too late, and he didn't fully discuss his own complaints about Mabel making fun of his favorite board game Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons with her. Moments later, he slowly noticed the pattern of these painful experiences.

"Yeah..." He began to respond slowly, uncomfortably rubbing his brow with his hand. "I just don't want to hurt her. She's been my only friend for most of my life. I still don't know how to live without her, not when I'm still struggling with lots of things in school."

Her eyes were gearing towards Mabel on the small screen of the mobile phone, placed on the desk with a stand.

She also wanted to tell Mabel about her flaws but struggled to come up with a proper way to point them out. As much as she knew this was necessary, Mabel was even more fragile than her brother after all! She couldn't tell Mabel what her problems were as directly as she could to Dipper. After pumping her brain for a solution as hard as she could for a minute, she eventually forced herself to deliver what she felt ultimately needed to be said.

"Y-You can make things better!" She began her own advice to Mabel nearly like an outburst, vaguely imitating Mabel-like delivery with forced optimism. Then she desperately added, with no idea if what she was doing was the right approach, "Just stop teasing Dipper and don't force positivity! And just tell him right away when you have problems with him!" As soon as she finished her speeches, Jina was busy hyperventilating for several seconds until she whispered an additional part of her advice. "...and give each other enough time to process it."

Jina couldn't tell if her advice for Mabel to keep them from making the same mistake as an alternate future version of her favorite twins worked, but hoped it would. But as she was considering her friend's advice, Mabel noticed that she may be able to solve Jina's own problem. Sure, it was painful to have their flaws pointed out by a friend, but it was also important and Jina was doing this to help them avoid a similar fate.

Even better, it didn't mean Mabel couldn't still be a Master of Positivity! That had helped her solve lots of problems in her life (even though those efforts couldn't always be described as flawless), by making it easier to look for bright sides and utilize them as breakthroughs. In fact, it may just be useful for returning the favor after Jina's rather desperate attempt at advising her.

Inside a small screen of Dipper's mobile phone, Mabel thought there was someone who also needed some advice from a friend. She decided to use the same concept to help Jina's own concern about the future.

"Jina? Did you say you're worried too?" Mabel asked carefully.

"Um, yes?"

"You said you're worried that you may not be able to travel to other dimensions?" Mabel asked, reminding Jina of the early subject of the conversation she and Dipper had.

"Yeah...but, why?"

"I think I can help you. With my Healing Magic."

"Mabel, are you serious?" Dipper interrupted, instantly alarmed by the 'Healing Magic' part of her suggestion. "Haven't you heard of Jina and her advice? I think she needs space! Not forced optimism!"

"I don't mean it like that, not this time," Mabel insisted in a calmer and more collected manner than Dipper may have expected. " Trust me."

Then, moments later, she began demonstrating a therapy of her own.

"In Gravity Falls, I learned that I can't keep hiding in Sweater Town all day. In fact, I was there for days. I did it when the world was ending..." Jina and Dipper were agape at her mention of Mabeland, a topic neither of them would dare bring into the discussion. "...I was scared of growing up. I still am. And Dipper is too..." She pressed on, even when her voice faltered a bit and her face fell as she felt a pang of guilt and began fighting her urge to cry and sob all day. She managed to swallow that after struggling for what felt like a long - but short in reality – while. "But Dipper told me there was a better way to handle it. He even promised me that we will do it together. That's how we saved our world. And that's what we are doing in school."

Moments later, Mabel continued. "Maybe... I can do that for you. Find a better way together."

Jina was just quiet, wordlessly watching one of her colleagues from another universe in a puzzled manner.

"Remember before you used that nerdy phone thing to travel the multiverse? I mean, when you only got this one, and I dunno, that super smart watch slash translator thing? The one you wear all the time when you're talking to us." Mabel suggested, trying to give her friend a more concrete image of the early days before the 'solo tour' incident.

As a response (kinda?), Jina considered the main unit of the universal translator on her wrist. She seemed to be confused when Mabel brought her collection of interdimensional gears for multiverse travelers.

"How about the first call with us?" Mabel suggested. "It was a total blast! Dipper was so amazed to see someone from another dimension by himself! Yeah, he was freaked out at first, you know, but his big brain didn't lose that chance! I remember he spent all night writing about it in his journal."

Jina got a picture of the first encounter with Mystery Twins from Dimension 46-99'\, who had stayed in contact with her since the last day of the last year. After he dispelled the memory of those awful Weirdness Bubbles, Dipper couldn't stop asking her all about where she lived. He learned not only her versions of BABBA's Disco Girl and The Actual Ghost Harassers were present but also enjoyed them to a certain degree even though he still preferred his own.

Knowing that there was a dimension where their adventurous summer was widely known as a popular TV show with the perfect replica of how they look as an art style was an eye-opening experience for Dipper and Mabel as well. Discussing several events and the fanbase has been a popular subject for conversations. Even though that may constantly stimulate her desire to see all those adventures by herself from a certain point...

"And what about your watch stuff? You said that's a translator too, right? I remember you said we sounded exactly like we were talking in your language with it. And watching Dipper minus the crack or yelling in a standard preteen voice? That was scrap-a-tunity! I bet Dipper was jeal-I mean, fascinated so much."

The dimensional translator! She thought it was an outdated digital watch curiously packaged with a pair of hearing aids (she couldn't see her uncle wearing hearing aids at all). It, however, turned out to be a complete set of near-perfect translators when she was testing it while a fan theory review was playing on her phone. Since talking face-to-face was so different from reading fanfics or composing comments, as she learned from the first conversation with the twins, she began using them for the conversation.

Their filtered and reproduced voices were notably different from a couple of local dubs she watched before, as they sounded like Jason and Kristen were voicing them in her language. So, that became the topic of that weekend. She even showed them clips of both Korean dubs she recorded, letting her interdimensional aids with speaker mode translate them to American English so the twins can understand. Dipper's reactions from hearing himself in either a deep, adult voice without crack from the first Korean dub or a higher, more youthful voice with a young boy standard fashion from the second version amused both Jina and Mabel for a while.

"Plus, you know what? We don't have to literally go on adventures! Your super-smart doohickey can show everything before going, right?"

The Preview Mode! Every time Jina scanned texts, images, and even videos to find out equivalent dimensions to visit, the teleporting device streamed the preview of the whole event with a fair share of warnings. At times, she found the system blocked the physical access of some timelines and places (particularly Weirdmaggedon and Mindscapes) and Preview Modes became the second-best option about them.

Even when things weren't as serious as events featuring Bill Cipher (neither Dipper nor Mabel were willing to discuss that), she learned that there were more events she couldn't directly observe than expected. That meant the feature was quite handy; planning dimensional tours with twins, having endless discussions about previous events, revisiting events that mainly occurred in the Shack rather than outside, and the list goes on. Those days were still among the best experiences in her life, even when no physical adventures took place.

"We don't need adventures," Mabel added. "What we need is...to be together. Enjoy ourselves. Have a good time together when you can."

"Actually, she got a point," Dipper interrupted helpfully. "You can't go back and stay in the past. Things change. It's a part of growing up. I said that before and...it didn't end well. It only worked well when I promised we were going to face it together." He looked grim as he mentioned his failed attempt at convincing Mabel with the same topic.

Jina recalled her previous life before meeting Dipper and Mabel. While not many, she used to have some friends who shared a part of her interests. There was Nayeon, one of the few friends she made in middle school because both binged mobile phones in general. Then she had Myung-ji before, one of the rare classmates in high school who enjoyed watching American cartoons as much as she did. If she could count acquaintances on Twitter, there were even more people she used to enjoy chatting with all day.

But she didn't keep connections with either Nayeon or Myung-ji after graduating from school, and she saw lots of people drift apart quietly and out of the blue, both online and offline. She was worried, concerned, and even felt anxious when it happened, but she managed to find the will to live and even got a job that kept her living afloat. And ultimately, she made it to one of the best moments in her life, which lasted somewhat less than half the year.

Maybe, she should do her best with what she currently has. She still had Dipper and Mabel on her side. And they were willing to help her move on from the past.

Then, she found her head was slowly filling with a flow of nostalgia. It's going to be tough to move on from the past when it was extraordinary and engaging at the same time. She remembered how exciting the discovery of the 'Dimensional art style' by chance was, for example. It served the role of the best concealment for her as a dimensional tourist and encouraged her to take lots of selfies in other dimensions (also, Dipper seemed to be more comfortable with her in a stylized look). Even worse, it wasn't the only thing that thrilled everyone during the whole journey. She would struggle a lot to move on and go back to normal, ordinary, and even potentially boring days. Dipper would understand her in the same way, though…

"Jina!"

It was Mabel.

"Don't be a grumpy grump now. I have something. In fact…" She featured a colorful note full of future activities that didn't involve dimension jumpings. "I got this. Just like Dipper does every day. Maybe we can come up with something tomorrow!"

"Hmm, resurrecting Love Patrol Alpha?" Jina noticed some candidates from the list, slightly surprised by its part.

"Also, the summer vacation is coming soon," Dipper added helpfully. "Our Grunkle Ford is building a more stable portal with Stan, McGucket, and his son. We'll show you once he allowed us to do so. He seems to be interested in you and your uncle too."

Having two great, lifelong friends incorporated into her daily life gave her a better opportunity to find a silver lining in the murky, invisible future. Jina just learned that after finishing possibly the last dimensional tour of her life. Apparently, as her uncle and a feasible inventor of interdimensional mobile phones, Dr. Song was aware of that enough to let his family spend a day or two with him in his vacation house. Just like what the Pines family realized from the eventful summer that fascinated her as always.

That way, she made a mental note to appreciate her daily routines better than ever before. A repeating scenery of an alley with small apartments made from either red bricks or grey granites, monochrome cars parked here and there, utility poles made of cement, and occasional small hills was easier to cope with when she had Dipper and Mabel. She considered the latest offers they suggested, eventually deciding that a part of the future could still be as bright as some of the best moments in her life.

As she made a decision, she realized that they would go to bed in minutes. Dipper and Mabel's goodnight hit her ears right on cue.

"Good night, Jina."

"Good night, Dip'n Mabes."

Author's Note.

Dimension 45'/(officially known as Dimension 4-6'/) and Dimension 46-41'/ are the respective names of each alternative dimension covered in One Day Reunited and Crater of Fallen Star, both written by Theory of Weirdness. That's the way to appreciate him for giving initial inspiration for this work. Also, Milky Boy Blue allowed me to use a part of the future plans for his take on the Gravity Falls sequel, where Dipper and Mabel had a big fight when they were fifteen.

In this second chapter, I saw that I could maximize my own experience by offering characters a background story to a certain point. Because of that, I decided to make references related to local materials from my country. This means the explanation is necessary for some.

One thing I think I should explain is the name of Jina's uncle; When I was coming up with the name for her uncle, I realized that her family turned out to be more similar to the Pines family, especially Dipper and Ford. Because of this, I thought I could give him a name that implies this similarity, making her more aware of the potential hazard of touching parallels.

Korean name system combines multiple Chinese letters, meaning each letter within the first name has meaning of its own. I decided to include the letter 石, which means "stone" and Koreans read it as "Seok(석)." The name "Mason" is originated from the person who carves rock as a job, so I thought it suits well. When I mentioned Mason, some of you may have realized that Dipper's real name was revealed in Journal 3.

To think about the first name that includes the letter/pronounce "Seok," I found some common names for males with this condition. One example, "명석(Myung-seok)," grabbed my attention because it reminds me of the adjective "명석(明晳)하다," one of the local adjectives that means "smart" in Korean. That connects to Dipper's personality being smart and intelligent for his age. "명석" was also one kind of common yet kinda outdated name for males in Korea, like Stanley and Stanford seemingly did in America.

So here's the result: Myung-seok(明石, 명석) as the first name, then I added the last name "Song(송)" as a reference of the Korean dub. In the second version of the Korean dub, it was Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Ford's family name as Disney Channel Korea tried to change characters' nationalities to native Koreans by giving them Korean full names.

Meanwhile, "Jina(지나)" was one of the local names mainly used for women and girls. When I was coming up with her name, I wanted to accomplish two things: 1) A name that sounds fitting for her age, and 2) A name that's comparably easy to pronounce for those who are unfamiliar with Korean names. And I saw it fits well with both.

If you have anything to ask, feel free to do so!