Despite the teacher's well-intentioned little speech the previous day, everyone and everything overwhelmed Taehyung.

He’d spent the better part of the last twelve months holed up in the hospital, painstakingly re-learning everything he possibly could. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost his entire vocabulary, but sometimes words just escaped him, it was frustrating, knowing exactly just what he needed to say, but being unable to express it. It was also difficult for him to move with co-ordination, fluidly, as if his joints no longer sent direct signals to his brain. 

When he woke up at the hospital, he'd been thrown an excessive amount of information. It was weird to wake up and know nothing, your entire life condensed down into a series of summaries from parents, friends, doctors.

He wondered about what they didn't tell him, what they didn't know, he silently wished he could meet his old self, have a chat over some tea perhaps. He began thinking that way, of himself in two parts, old self and new. He'd picked up a habit of wordlessly asking the other Taehyung questions. "Do we like him?" he'd think, or, "did you like this movie too?"

He knew his name was Kim Taehyung, beloved only son and owner of the best dog in the universe, Soonshim. According to the entire photo album dedicated to his dog, he deduced (without anyone's help!) that Soonshim was important, and he fervently agreed with old Taehyung on this. Soonshim didn't ask him a million questions, or check up on him every two minutes, he was happy to run with him at the park, or snuggle up to him on the bed simple things. Dogs were good like that. Taehyung concluded that every possible version of himself would love Soonshim.

He knew he was seventeen years old, and this was his final year of High School, (although he’d missed the first few months). The last month could be summarised as 'resounding headache' as he'd struggled to catch up on his entire schooling. Some things had come back easily, but not maths, ugh, his brain couldn't figure that one out.

He was told that he loved music, and that he readily accepted. It was strange hearing songs that people claimed to be his favourite, they resonated with him somehow, despite the sounds and lyrics being unfamiliar.

His closest friend was Park Jimin, a short, bubbly and sometimes bossy individual, who’d apparently been his friend since Kindergarten. Luckily the Taehyung without memories instantly liked Jimin, falling back into some of their former patterns with relative ease.

It was weird to scroll through his various social media pages, glancing at statuses and tweets he'd penned and selca's he'd snapped. All moments of his life that he'd forgotten. He'd taken to stalking himself, trying to re-learn the memories.

His bedroom declared that he loved anime and manga, the shelves stacked to the brim. Taehyung spent a lot of his free time (at hospital there was a lot), reading and watching the latter.

Beyond basic facts of life and supposed personality traits, Taehyung struggled to flesh out his personality, himself. It was funny being haunted by himself, the memories, the likes and dislikes plaguing him. Sometimes it felt like he was being forced to enjoy something because “Taehyung, you like this” or “you don’t like to do that”. That’s perhaps why Taehyung found himself so drawn to the mysterious Jeon Jeongguk, the only person on the planet that had expressed envy at his plight.

Sometimes Taehyung wanted to erase all the former parts of himself, start from scratch, blank canvas. That was what made Jeon Jeongguk so appealing, he didn’t appear to expect anything of Taehyung, it was the fresh start he craved, needed.

----

The bell cut into their History lesson, signaling the lunch hour. Chairs scraped the floor in haste as eager footsteps made their way to the door, banging it shut, freedom, for a beautiful fifty minutes.

Taehyung glanced over at Jeongguk, he’d practically clung to the boy since their first period, despite Jimin’s clearly strange behaviour over the matter.

Taehyung had tried to ask him about it “why was I not friends with Jeongguk?” Jimin had just shrugged, but Taehyung noted that he couldn’t look him in the eye.

He got that look often, mainly pity or sympathy, occasionally when he asked a question about his past that people didn’t want to answer. It angered him knowing that people could rewrite his history, tell him about the things they wanted him to know, try and shield him from the bad memories. He felt a little guilty sometimes, knowing that many people would love to be able to wipe a lot of from their memory, but he wanted the bad and the good, the pain and the happiness. He needed to know everything, so he could feel whole again. The only other alternative he saw was to forget it all, blank canvas.

“Eat lunch w