0-o-o-o-0

I am yours, both in this life and the next…if I remember nothing else in this life, it will be that.

0-o-o-o-0

He was nursing his second drink of the night when he caught a glimpse of her.

It was darkened in the club, the tawdry interior disguised by shadow and its inhabitants caught up in music, drink and each other. It might seem strange for one who wanted to be alone to bury himself in a sea of humanity, but it was the best way to distract himself from his own thoughts. It really was possible to be alone in a crowd. It was humid from the summer heat outside and the pack of people inside, but nobody seemed to care. Sweat glistened on various shades of skin as the dancers moved to the rhythm.

Something about the way she moved caught his attention, and from then on he couldn’t look away. Setting his drink down on the table, he stood to get a closer look at the girl on the dance floor. One amongst a crowd of girls, her movements were joyous and carefree, and something in the back of his memory stirred. Her face tilted up, the flashing lights caught her smile and he almost knocked the table over in his effort to get it out of his way.

He’d never met her in this life, but her face haunted his dreams.

He didn’t know her name, but the taste of it on his lips brought memories of his greatest pleasure and deepest heartache.

She was a stranger to him, but he was her love in the past and bound to her in every life hereafter.

He tried to make his way into the crowd on the dance floor, to get to her side, to…to what? Tell her a tale that would surely make her laugh at him if it didn’t send her running in the direction of the nearest bouncer? No, he couldn’t do that. But still, he had to be near her, to see if what he saw was just a trick of the light or if she really was what he thought, his second chance, gift from the heavens...

But the song ended and the girls moved off the dance floor and back to a table. As he made his way past drunk, giggling men and women, they took a swallow from the drinks at their table and started for the exit, apparently done for the night.

No…

He caught up with them as they reached the door, and in his hurry he bumped into her. She stumbled a little and looked back at him, and it was like he’d been taken back a thousand years. Her face…it was the same, so like her. He didn’t believe in coincidences; it had to be her. It took every bit of willpower he had not to reach out and take her into his arms. He gave a sheepish smile instead, one that had always drawn out a smile of her own in the past.

“So sorry. Are you okay?”

Look at me. Tell me you remember. Let me see you smile at me again with love in your eyes. Please.

And she did smile back, but it was faint, polite.

“Yes. It’s okay. It’s crowded in here.”

Surely when she saw his face, surely she would remember.

“Goodnight.”

But there wasn’t a trace of recognition in those beautiful eyes before she nodded and turned away.

She didn’t remember him.

0-o-o-o-0

If only this was a dream....if only I could wake up without remembering any of this

0-o-o-o-0

“Yah! Go Ha Jin! We’re going to leave you here if you don’t catch up. Stop making eyes at the handsome man and come on.” Min Ji called, and Ha Jin turned to catch up with her friends.

He definitely was handsome, Min Ji was right about that. Something about his eyes, his face carved like some creature out of a fairy tale, it was dark and beautiful. Something made her want to look again but at the same time she felt herself wanting to run. There was something about the look in his eyes that seemed like he would invite her to stay if he was given the chance but she chose the latter, forced to move slowly due to the crowd but still managing to feel like she was fleeing.

In the shared cab later, she justified her decision to herself. She was only a month out of the hospital after having spent a year in a coma, the result of nearly drowning to death while saving a young boy in a lake. She’d had to spend weeks in physical therapy, retraining muscles that had atrophied from being unused for so long. She’d lost her previous job, but thankfully the family of the boy she saved used some connections to help her find a new one, and her friends took her out tonight to celebrate.

Ha Jin had too much to do. Her new job to start, relationships to rebuild with both her family and friends, a life to pick up again. The doctors at the hospital had recommended she go through counseling as well as the physical therapy, and while the therapist was very kind, she was very interested in the brain activity of coma patients and when asked about what dreams she might have had while she was in the coma, Ha Jin didn’t know what to say. There was the sense that she had dreamed, there was something in the back of her mind, but when she tried to grab on to examine it, it slipped away. The therapist told her that was normal and that she should keep a journal if she started remembering anything. Ha Jin nodded and promised that she would, but really all she wanted to forget about what she’d gone through and just get on with her life.

And the last thing she needed right now was a man.

0-o-o-o-0

“Go Ha Jin…” he said to himself as the girl was dragged away by her friends. It wasn’t the name he remembered, the name that woke him up out of nightmares as a cry on his lips, but this was a new world, a new time, and they were new people.

Well, not completely new people.

If we are not from the same world…

It started out as the wish of a dying, lonely man, but centuries later, now he understood.  The face he wore in this life was as familiar as hers, as familiar as too many other things that a man of this age should not be used to. The universe was giving him a second chance, and this time he would not let it, or her, slip away.

Kim So left the club and headed out into the night. He only had a face and a name, but it was a start.