Taehyung was running yet again, his feet submerged in the midnight sands of oblivion. He was running—yet he was getting nowhere. He was in the same spot that he had always been in, his heart an empty hole, his eyes a shallow pit for his tears. A distant—yet too close at the same time—ringing flooded into his ears, causing him to shut his eyes tight and come to a terse stop. His chest heaved up and down in a ragged manner, his muscles tense and aching with excruciating pain. Yet he was in the same place. The ringing slowly became coherent, and he realized that they were the words spoken from the lips of an angel. An angel that had disappeared off the face of the earth, like rain droplets evaporating at the sight of the morning sun.

Taehyung’s eyes stung with hot tears as he wiped away at them rashly, before weakly lifting his head to observe the desert that stretched for miles before him. Everything at that moment seemed surreal—except for one fact. The fact that she was gone. No, that was a fact that was far too real.

If only I had been there to hold your hand.

If only I had been there to stop you from hurting.

If only I hadn’t left your side for a single moment.

If only….

The “if onlys” swarmed inside his mind, stacking on top of each other mercilessly, suffocating his mind with every passing second. Then he woke with a gasp, instinctively grasping onto the clammy hand that rested on his.  

“Hyung… You were crying,” Jungkook stated numbly, unsure of what to say or what to do.

The two of them had been through hell and heaven together, yet it was a first for Jungkook to see Taehyung so sick. It was a sickness that plagued his mind, not his body.

Taehyung forged a lopsided grin and sat up, pressing his sweaty back against the cool bed frame. A wave of pain drifted through his body, yet he welcomed it. The pain was almost relaxing, in a way. He deserved tenfold—no, a thousand times the pain he was experiencing. It was nothing, he swore, compared to the pain she had experienced.

“I was?” he replied half-heartedly, making an effort to give him another smile. “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

“Hyung…”

The silence that hung in the air was as thin as a thread yet as heavy as a blackened, burdened heart.

“I’m going to go,” Taehyung voiced emptily, tossing the covers onto the floor. He stumbled for a brief moment before regaining his balance and briefly glanced at Jungkook, who sat glued in his spot. His eyes voiced a silent, desperate plea.

“Where are you going?” Jungkook asked in a hollow manner, despite already knowing the answer.

“To relive my memories.”

--

The thin, hooded figure stood on the edge of the pier, lost in thought. The calm, murky waters surrounded him, almost as if they were enclosing him in a comforting embrace. He didn’t know why—he didn’t know a lot of things at this very moment. He just knew that the girl he loved dearly had disappeared. Forever.

--

The first time she had appeared in his dreams, it had been nothing but strange. She had the most enchanting smile in the world, yet the saddest eyes in the universe. Her eyes whispered stories of a storm in the middle of an endless ocean. Her laugh could paint the gray skies a vivid shade of blue, yet when she spoke, every word was drenched with a hidden melancholy. Her voice was the saddest tragedy of them all. Yet it was insanely addicting—every time she called his name, he felt like the happiest being to ever roam the desolate lands of the earth.

He had sworn she had been a figment of his imagination, a result of his exhaustion and his undeniable thirst for a chance at innocent love. Yet it kept on happening—he would see her each night, in his dreams, more beautiful than the previous. And then one day the realization had finally hit him—that she existed in the same vast world as he did.  

Each meeting was a memory, one more valuable and precious than gold itself. Every day Taehyung woke from his dream, whether it was only minutes after he had drifted into a slumber, or whether it was hours, he would write. His pen would scribble away furiously, ink dripping from its tip like heavy sheets of rain.

Then one day she stopped appearing. And he waited for hours on end.

Then one day he stopped writing. And his life fell back into its pitch black chasm of loneliness once again.

--

He felt a heavy hand grip his shoulder, harshly forcing him back into reality.

“Taehyung, I have something to tell you.”

Yoongi stood in front of him, nothing but grave solemnity engraved in his features. It almost scared him, how different he looked with that expression.

“What is it?”

Yoongi slowly sat down on the wooden floor of the pier, motioning Taehyung to sit beside him.

“You said you recognized the place you first met her. But you said you weren’t sure—that everything seemed like a distant memory.”

The memories—their first meeting—came rushing back at him.

“Y-yeah, I did.”

“And do you never wonder why you can’t seem to remember the past that everyone else remembers? Why you can’t remember the day we all debuted as Bangtan?”

He fell silent. The only sound was that of the calm waters.

“Yoongi did I…”

“You did,” Yoongi muttered, averting his gaze to look at the ocean. “You lost your memories.”

The words hit him like a bullet. And before he could get a grip on himself, he was crying again, this time tears of rage and frustration.

Nothing seemed to make sense to him.

“You were riding your bike to the practice room,” Yoongi paused, bit his lips as if it hurt to speak, and slowly continued. “And then got hit by a reckless drunk.”

Yoongi inhaled sharply, gauging Taehyung’s expression. His body was completely stiff, his eyes boring into the texture-less wooden board beneath his feet.

“We canceled our activities for an entire year. Everyone thought we had disbanded. We weren’t even well-known back then, but we were all we had. You made a slow recovery, and every night we prayed. Every day we visited. It was difficult, but you pulled through. And the day you were discharged, you were the Kim Taehyung everyone knew. You smiled brightly, even though you struggled with panic attacks almost every day. I saw you questioning yourself— you had no idea what had happened to you. But… not everything was lost. You remembered you were a part of Bangtan, even though that was about it. A part of you itched to dance, to perform, even though… the rest of you never remembered.”

Yoongi inhaled again, this time wiping away at the tears that stung his eyes. His heart had always been heavy since the accident, regardless of how long ago it had happened. He had never seemed to heal completely, and he doubted he ever would. They had almost lost Taehyung, who was like a brother to them all.

He tapped him softly on the shoulder.

“Taehyung, are you listening?”

Taehyung gave a small, numb nod that was accompanied by a broken whimper. His tears were flowing relentlessly now, regardless of how hard he tried to hide them. And when Yoongi turned to face him, Taehyung gave him the brightest smile he could conjure. And it absolutely shattered Yoongi.

“… And that girl… that girl who you kept seeing in your dreams. You’ve met her before.”

A pause. His heart had, for a brief moment, completely ceased to beat.

“She’s your first love.”

Taehyung’s head was spinning. He was sure that he would’ve recognized her— how could he not have? But he hadn’t.

No wonder she had been so sad. He had forgotten her.

“This was at our hometown, Taehyung. Before you moved here, before you were a part of Bangtan. No one knew about her— no one knew the reason you never smiled when you first came here. But after a while, after adjusting, you opened up and told us everything. Until the accident happened and you forgot everything. Apparently, it was only the deepest fragments of your soul that remembered.”

“I have to go see her.”

Yoongi pursed his lips together and looked down at his feet. He had expected this. “Do what’s best for you. I’m not stopping you. Nobody is. Just don’t forget.”

“Forget what?”

“What’s real and what’s a dream.”

Taehyung gave Yoongi one last, final look before walking off the pier, armed with nothing but a wallet and a half full backpack.

The ride to Daegu was a short one, yet it seemed to last days for Taehyung. The cool air of the plane sent shivers down his sickly body. His eyes were tired from all the broken hearted tears that had obliterated his soul. He glanced at his watch every five minutes, anxiety gnawing away at him, starting with his heart. He was acting impulsively, he knew it, but he didn’t know what else he would do.

He couldn’t relive the past, the past that he had forgotten. But perhaps he could live in the present. Perhaps she was still there. Waiting for him to return, waiting by the worn down cherry blossom tree that grew outside her small house. Perhaps.

A part of him knew. A part of him denied the truth.

--

He moved sluggishly as if a ton of stone bricks had been tied to his legs. Each heavy step caused his heart to weigh down even more, his throat to tighten further. Taehyung was exhausted beyond repair, yet he kept on walking. The ground around him seemed to fall through, and it was as if he was walking on a transparent glass surface, below him nothing but darkness. And when he finally lifted his head to look at the small house that stood before him, his tears began to fall without hesitation. The house looked crestfallen: splintered wood lined the obsolete windows, a dead string of leaves hung down from the top of the color drained door, and envelopes lay scattered across the doorstep.

He held back a sob as he knocked against the door, the sound of his plea easily piercing the hollow sad piece of wood. He waited, his legs barely supporting him, wiping his tears away with the worn out sleeve of his oversized sweater. And then the door opened, only to reveal an elderly woman, whose face was lined with an unspoken sorrow. And when her eyes met Taehyung’s, she managed to say a few words that Taehyung would never forget.

“You’re too late.”

--

He stood in the small room that was full yet empty at the same time. The room hadn’t been touched since the day she had departed— pills lay scattered across the floor, a vase filled with dead flowers sat silently on her desk, a glass of untouched water. The wall was decorated with framed pictures— and he was in one of them. In fact, he was in quite a few of them. Holding hands, smiling brightly, hugging wholeheartedly.

Then his eyes fell upon the thing that snatched his breath away. In the middle, next to an uncapped black pen, lay a diary. With trembling fingers, he began to flip the pages, all the way to the very beginning.

“I saw him today. For the first time in years. He didn’t seem to remember me, but that’s alright. People forget. But I don’t want to ever forget… It’s the first time I’ve truly smiled in forever.”

And then after hours, he had reached the last page.

“I can’t see him anymore—” Her writing was a series of scribbles—panic. “I have to see him—”

He shut the diary and leaned back in the chair, a final tear running down his cheek.

--

The color of the sky was breathtaking— far from any color that could be materialized from a palette. The sky was an ethereal shade of a wisteria purple, embellished with wisps of rose colored clouds. The sky seemed to stretch perpetually as if it attempted to cover all of the sadness that it harbored underneath its wing.

She gave him a small smile, one etched with sympathy and love, as she outstretched her hand to him. He took it without hesitation, intertwining their fingers as he smiled warmly at her.

“I’m sorry for making you wait.”

She shook her head lightly.

“We’ll be young forever now.”

/fin