‘The breeze that the two of us felt in the quiet café
was a sketchbook for god’s work of art’

-City of Angels-

It was still early in that spring when they met for the very first time. Sung Gyu couldn’t remember much, except for the cold wind that occasionally blew across the city and scent of cherry blossoms that it carried along with it. The streets were littered with pinkish white petals, thousands and millions of them; and when he looked up at the greyish evening sky and let out a long sigh, a cloud of white smoke escaped his lips. He remembered that much, and perhaps also how the street lights came to life, brightening up the gradually darkening sky. The image of her, still, was a vague, blurry silhouette in his mind. She was crossing the street, her hair dancing aesthetically in the chilly spring breeze, feet so light as feathers as she moved. He remembered, vaguely, the way she took his breath away, the way she met his eyes, the way they sparkled upon seeing him and the way his heart picked up. That emotion, however, was still vivid in his mind. One would have thought that it was love at first sight. But it was strange, really. The moment he saw her for the first time, he had felt he’d known her for even longer than he remembered. She had approached him, then, smiled warmly, given him a small apologetic bow and told him that she was sorry she kept him waiting. Although the wait had felt like million years, right at that moment, he remembered how he felt that he didn’t really mind. Their encounter that evening, though over an insignificant work-related matter, was not so insignificant for him. It was the beginning of something beautiful. That would remain etched there, deep in his heart for a lifetime.

Sometimes he felt that certain first times, indeed weren’t first times at all. Certain things he did, at times, felt so strangely familiar as if he’d lived through that very same moment somewhere in the span of his life. Déjà vu; that’s what they called it. Literal translation would be ‘already seen’. But that evening, as he sat before her in the warm confines of a café in a secluded corner of the town, watching her smile, watching her speak, trying to tune into every word she said, Sung Gyu realized with a pang that he’d gone through this all, somewhere in his life. He had experienced it, he had sat in this very same place, facing her, listening to her words flow like water down a stream and gazing at the way her eyes sparkled; he’d done it all. But how? And when? Why were these emotions so…vivid? Why, if in reality, he was meeting her for the very first time, did he feel as if she’d been a part of his world for longer than he had known?

Sung Gyu couldn’t shake them off, the strange emotions that he felt, even as he wrapped up the work for that night and picked up his cup of coffee that had run lukewarm after being forgotten. He had searched in her eyes as she gave him her farewells with the promise to meet him again. He had tried to find a clue in the sound of her words. But nothing. Two strangers meeting for the first time for a business meeting; what could he possibly expect? Their evening ended at that point, at the point where she gathered her things and fled out the café, leaving him behind to deal with his own whirlwind of thoughts.

Since that night, for an extended period of time, that’s what he’d been doing. Thinking. Thinking of so many things that his hazy mind could grasp and things that it couldn’t. All the complexities and simplest details.

Later, after a week and three days had passed, he’d woken up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, gasping for air and grasping for the last strings of his rationale mind to hold on to, as he realized with a pang that, quite strangely; a large part of his lifetime had disappeared.

‘Even if the sky collapses and falls
always be by my side’

-Stay by my side-

Sung Gyu knew two things and exactly two things. One was that he had died once. Second was that he had come back to life. He’d been only in his early twenties when that happened. He didn’t know much, simply because he didn’t remember much; but he’d been told, his sister had told him as she sat on her messy bed with her eight months old son in her arms, how difficult days had been for them, how much they held onto the thinnest fibre of hope they had left, how much that they had prayed to god that he lived, and then he did. It was a road accident; a pretty bad one at that. He’d been speeding way over the limit, taking the highway straight from Seoul to Jeonju; for what reason, for what purpose, nobody really knew. When the police had found him among the wrecked remains of his car, crashed against the railing, deep into the night in that cold, cold autumn, he’d been barely taking a breath. They’d thought they’d lost him. And they did, she said, for two months. He’d laughed about it that time, saying that it couldn’t be that long. But then his sister got so angry to the point that the rushed words escaping her lips had woken the baby up, and it took them good forty-five minutes to send him back to sleep.

His sister wouldn’t reveal any further than that. She wouldn’t tell him what happened before that, or afterwards. He knew that there were things that he definitely did not know. But it was difficult when he didn’t know which parts he didn’t know. How significant they were and to which extent they changed his life. His parents were no better. His mother would be reduced to tears every time he’d bring it up, and she took every chance she could get to thump a fist, albeit gently, against his chest and beg him not to do that again. His father, as always, wouldn’t say a word. It didn’t help that he’d pretend to not hear him every time Sung Gyu even tried.

Sometime later, however, Sung Gyu had given up on trying altogether. After he’d gotten his life back on track, ridding himself of the crutches and reminding himself constantly that he still had a wrecked skull and a fairly injured brain, he had so much to catch up on his life. His college education had been halted for the time being, but it was heart warming that everyone welcomed him, still, with open hands. He felt it, still, that there were so many things he was missing out on. There were faces he didn’t recognize and course units he didn’t remember he had taken. He didn’t even like certain of them and had no idea why he had even taken them. But the whole mess he’d been tossed into had captured him completely and months, he spent trying to put back the pieces of his life together. By the time he had actually managed to fall back into its rightful course, college had already ended, and he was graduating.

He joined a local consultant firm. It wasn’t a big one, nor was it unknown. The job was convenient, and the pay was good. He liked what he was doing, and he hadn’t any plans to be engaged in an occupation that would wear out his already broken body. At it happened, though he hadn’t exactly realized it before, coming to life after having died once wasn’t exactly something he had mastered. He was still weak, and he still had that intense pain and a slight buzz in his mind. The doctors have told him that it was only natural and that it was a part of the healing process. He wasn’t quite sure how long he was taking to properly heal, and he sure did hope that a chunk of his brain hadn’t gone missing.

As days passed, however, he kept growing anxious; a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach was giving him the impression that he was missing out on something…significant. He wasn’t sure what, or what even made him feel that way. Perhaps it was the way that his family acted around him every time he went back to Jeonju during the briefest days of break that he got. Perhaps it was the way they questioned him of particular aspects of his life. It was his sister, mostly, because his parents naturally didn’t speak much. She’d constantly ask him if he had met someone, if he was seeing someone, if he was ever going to plan on see someone. By seeing someone, he knew, since he knew his sister better than anyone, she meant something a little more than meeting someone over a cup of coffee. But his answer to her had been ‘no’ for quite some time now. It wasn’t that he hadn’t the interest to. There were plenty of attractive women where he worked at and at places that he consulted for. But the thing was that, as strange as it may sound, there was something deep within his heart which was holding him back. He wasn’t quite sure what it was or what it truly meant. However, what he learned out of this was that between the things that he did and didn’t know, something huge and momentous was floating unanswered and slipping away from his grasp. Something that his family refused to reveal but something his heart, which wasn’t injured in the accident like his brain was, knew but was unable to understand without the much-needed cooperation. And he was pretty sure that particular ‘something’ was greatly related to that particular aspect of his life.

A couple of weeks later, then, Sung Gyu met her for the very first time in his life.

‘We are definitely living
under the same sky, right?’

-Attraction-

Retrograde Amnesia; the form of amnesia where one forgot a particular span of memory preceding to the event of trauma or onset of an illness. That’s what the doctors had told him he had developed after he woke up from being dead to the world for two months. He didn’t remember that moment at all, not even a vaguest blurry image of it as if everything from that time had been completely wiped off his mind along with the ones prior to that. The severe injury to his head had laid him in a coma for two months and his family was almost losing him, grasping onto the threadbare of hope of his life. He could, remember, however, how his sister sat down on the bed beside him some time later, and fed to his brain everything that he needed to remember; that he was still in college, that he had one whole year to attend to, that his baby nephew had just turned six months, that he had a pretty name that Sung Gyu himself had given him. The bits of his life he had lost, she gave it all back to him. What he didn’t think, at that time, was that there was a great possibility of her having made him recall the occasions that only she deemed were important, that she could have deliberately left out certain pieces of them.

That sometimes, just sometimes, there were things better left forgotten.

What’s worse than forgetting, he realised, was not knowing what exactly he could have forgotten. He was pretty adamant on getting his memory back, in the beginning. The doctors, after questioning him, happened to diagnose that he had forgotten the events dating back to six months prior to the accident. That was relatively…okay, they’d told him. They told him that there were worse cases, that people forgot years of their lives and important people like their spouses and children. At that point, Sung Gyu had turned to his sister, wide eyes, his irises glistening and chapped lips trembling the slightest; he asked her the first thing which came to his mind. ‘Did he have a spouse?’

He was twenty-four, back then and so he obviously didn’t have a spouse; nor children, which was a relief. But there was one subtle thing he happened to not notice at that point. And that was that, just because he didn’t have a spouse or children he had forgotten, that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t forgotten someone…did it?

Sung Gyu never did get his memory back and some of it was still left forgotten, except for the ones he knew rather than remembered. Yet, the fact that he could have, somehow had things and people lost still in that hazy mist of an ocean of his mind; he only realized on that night in his sleep, in the spring, a couple of springs later. And the root of that sudden spasm of a memory, was her.

She wasn’t someone who had the ability to jog a piece of his lost memory, she wasn’t in that place in his life to have acquired the possibility to. She was just a client working under a well-known company in the department of human resources, and him, he was their newly appointed consultant. After a brief, unofficial meeting at a café close to their company premises, Sung Gyu attended a couple of their official meetings, advised on human resource related advancements, did recommendations and assessed their solutions; the typical job of someone working in his field. Outside of work, however, they met only once, for a second time, and that was to celebrate their success on bringing the human resources department back on its feet. They went out drinking, the department head treated them, and he had slid into the seat next to her since she was the only person he was truly familiar with. But then, something happened. She glanced at him, and he could swear something about the look in her eyes gave a pain so intense and indescribable in his heart that the urge to reach over and take her hand was so strong and hard to resist. It was that feeling again; longing, desperation, familiarity. That, even though, in his consciousness, it was the first time that they sat in this place and time, it certainly wasn’t, to his heart. Then she stood up and moved two seats away from him.

He tried not to mind, although he most definitely did. There was an intense pain in his heart, one that he couldn’t quite put into words. It was as if his heart was trying to tell him something, that the glisten in her eyes meant so much more than he had imagined. The entire evening, as everybody else drank away as they pleased, Sung Gyu sat by himself, trying to put his emotions into words, trying to find an inkling, just what they led him to and where he stood now in that blurry path to the truth. At the end of that evening, he learned nothing, he grasped nothing except for the fact that she made him incredibly happy and indescribably unhappy at he same time. Had he seen her in his dreams? Or was she his love from a past life? Or rather…rather…he knew her. He did. He’d been here, been with her, somewhere in his life and that memory, somehow still existent in his heart, despite having been wiped off his mind, kept connecting their strings together and form a story that had never been told.

And she was just about to leave, trying to hail a taxi before it could start raining again. But it was the rainy season. Taxies barely stopped at this time of the day with an impending rain. He took that chance to approach her. With his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jacket, he stood beside her; a quiet but significant presence. He felt her move, her eyes raising to gaze into his and he saw thousand, million untold stories swirling inside them. A moment, he felt that pain in his heart again, the way it picked pace and the way it sent a sense of warmth and belongingness right to the core of his heart. The tips of his fingers trembled, even as they were buried in his pockets against the cold; and suddenly, he was speechless. Something snapped in his mind, and his eyes were beginning to lose their focus. Yet he couldn’t help the smile forming on his lips before he said the first thing which came to his mind.

“Have I known you before?”

Since the day I first saw you’
My thoughts have become complicated’

-Sentimental-

The sky was sombre that evening; hues of red and orange lights flittered across shades of grey and lavender and the trees which hung low, weighed by the dew of the preceding rain were merely looming shadows in the dark. Sung Gyu, as decided, sat in a table for two on his own, glancing at his watch every now and then, and his heart, so heavy with the possibility of her not abiding by his invitation at all. Being stood up for a date, he really didn’t mind. He’d gone through that a couple of times now. But tonight, it wasn’t just a mere date. He was here to make a few clarifications, to find out for himself what these emotions he felt truly meant and if, by any chance yet god forbid, she was the biggest missing piece of the puzzle of his broken life. He wanted the truth, the clues to his story that had never been told.

Now that he was thinking back to that moment, he realized, there were still way too many things that he didn’t know of, some of them being things only the him before the accident could have known. Asking his parents took him nowhere and his sister, as always, was adamant to reveal, insisting that there was nothing else that he should know of and that its all in the past now. She was right, in a way. It’s been six years since it happened, and he had pretty much moved on with his life.

But ever since she happened, ever since the day his heart began to make palpable responses to only and only her presence, he couldn’t help but notice that there was definitely something amiss.

That there was so much more to his story than he already knew, and also that, by some strange coincident, she was the connecting string to it all.

It was as if she indeed knew the truth. Even after hours had passed, she never arrived. The sky turned from grey and lavender to a deeper shade of dark blue, the city lights illuminated the streets and he watched as the night unfolded before him with not even a sign of her. His heart was heavy. Of course, he could have scared her off. He hadn’t taken the right manner to approach her, and asking if he knew her before, even after having worked together for a couple of weeks simply wasn’t the way around it. She’d probably thought he was hitting on her, and when he had asked if they could meet again the next evening at the same café as they first met, she must have assumed he was asking her out on a date, and this probably was her way of rejecting him. But then, as he thought back to that moment even longer, and prodding deeper into his most recent memories with her, he could quite easily recall the look in her eyes. They weren’t of someone who had met him for the very first time. There was surprise in them, but he knew fairly well how a girl acted upon being romantically approached by a man with his fair share of experience of advancements, and that emotion which flickered through her eyes, that just wasn’t it.

And he truly hated to believe what his heart was telling him; that she was, somehow, the only and the biggest inkling to the lost part of his life. That perhaps, she was the lost part in his life.

As the night became longer, Sung Gyu finally gave up on trying. He had waited long enough, and the other patrons were beginning to take notice of him sitting alone, appearing lonelier than he had ever been. The sky was so heavy with clouds at that time, there was an impending rain. He exited the café, the bell of its door jingling cheerfully behind him as if another one of its patrons being stood up in a date was an occasion to be happy about. He stood outside under a parasol for a moment too long, trying to get his whirl wind of thoughts straightened out, his head hung low in mild embarrassment. Perhaps, he shouldn’t even be trying. Perhaps, what his mind knew was the truth while his heart reacted in a way that it wasn’t supposed to. Perhaps, everything that he felt so deeply inside him were nothing but blatant lies, and he shouldn’t even bother.

But then, he saw it, he saw her, rather. She was standing idly in the path still littered with spring blossoms, her small silhouette so beautiful under the dim street lights. Her hair was gently dancing in the breeze, an umbrella was in one hand, prodding at the ground as she was deeply engrossed in her thoughts. His heart picked up; the reaction came even before he could register it was her. He felt that warmth coursing through him, through every single inch of his body, through his veins and to every nerve ending until all he could see was her. She had come, a voice mused in his mind. She had come, but why hadn’t she met him inside? Why didn’t she want to see him in such circumstances?

Or was he just being delusional, since her workplace was simply across the road from there?

Nevertheless, Sung Gyu took his chance. He wasn’t going to let things go so easily. His mind didn’t remember, it only knew things that he should have remembered. But what if there were things his mind couldn’t recall but still his heart was able to? He wouldn’t know, he would never know, unless he put the effort to find out.

Sung Gyu could barely think straight by the time he approached her. If she looked breath-taking from there, she looked even more beautiful up-close, and he realised, a subtlest spasm of his mind, that it was an emotion he was deeply familiar with. His throat was dry even as he called her name, and he held his breath.

She turned around, her eyes scanned the length of him, and albeit subtly, he saw the way her eyes changed. Surprise, at first, and then slowly, gradually, it morphed into that look of longing, desperation and sadness they held from the time he had asked her if he knew her the night before. Somehow, he could feel the same emotions in the depth of his heart, and they connected them in a way that he had never imagined. Sung Gyu took one step towards her, and then another. She stood still, her eyes watching him intently, all until he was right before her, almost touching. And he said;

“You came”

A moment of quietness and the spring breeze, as always carried the scent of the blossoms.

“You waited” She responded a while later, in a voice so small that he could barely hear her.

But it was fine, because his heart knew that he had been there before.

“I always did” he said then, almost too naturally, even before his mind could register what he was saying.

The moment her eyes welled up with tears, he thought she was beautiful, and he knew that his heart loved even when his mind couldn’t remember.

‘The splendid city lights
seemed like starlight that existed just for the two of us’

-City of Angels-

Cherry blossoms descended from the branches above them, floated gently in the wind, like soft feathers, and landed by their feet. There were some in her hair, and as he watched, one landed on the curve of her shoulder. Sung Gyu refrained himself from reaching out and brushing it off from her. What was even harder to hold himself back from was wiping the tears staining her cheeks. It was impossible, and he felt his hands reacting almost naturally even before his mind could register what they were doing. Her cheeks were cold against the warmth of his hand. Her tears were warm still. And fell incessantly even as he wiped them off.

And he could have told her not to cry. The words were just on the edge of his lips, struggling to break through, just like his heart was, encased in his rib cages like a confined little animal. It answered so many questions, so many of them. He needn’t any words to slowly connect the strings of his lost past; his heart knew everything when his mind couldn’t remember. Those were the tears he had wiped million times before, those were the cheeks he had touched. His heart remembered.

His hand was on her cheek, the warmth of the tips of his fingers brushing tenderly the falling tears, when her own reached out and threaded through them. Sung Gyu let out a long sigh and the smoke of his breath collided with hers. Even through her tears, she smiled, lowered their hands together, and took a tentative step towards him.

“You…remembered?”

The words stung in a way that he never realised they could. He felt a lump form in his throat, and in response, his hand held onto hers even tighter, and in a way that he believed wouldn’t hurt her any more than she possibly was, now, he slowly shook his head. “I…don’t remember”

It was painful, seeing how her face perceptibly changed. That small smile of relief and joy were soon clouded by a thick membrane of uncertainty. She gazed into his eyes as if in the depth of them there was even a slightest inkling as to what was going on at that point of time. If he were to be honest, that’s what he wanted to find out himself. What were these feelings? How did he know so much even though, truly, he didn’t? Why did his heart react in such a manner that implied his story rooted deeper than he believed it had? Sung Gyu wanted to learn the truth, everything. He wanted his story to complete and close that gaping hole in his mind and his heart.

“You…don’t’?” She voiced out to him, slowly threading through the waters she had suddenly realised was unfamiliar.

Sung Gyu shook his head, and when he tried to smile, it was the saddest one his lips had ever formed.

“N-nothing…at all?”

He took a deep breath, then, reached out and grasped onto her other hand.

“I don’t remember…nothing at all…but ever since the day I met you, my heart….” He swallowed and gazed into her eyes. “My heart…it kept running to you…”

She stared back at him, biting her lower lip so hard that he was afraid it would bleed.

“And I…I believe that…the missing piece of my life right now, is you…”

A moment of quietness passed between them, and a particularly rushed spring breeze rolled by, bringing her hair into her face. Yet again, his hand naturally reacted. He reached out and tucked the stray strands of hair behind her ear, and he smiled.

“B-but…how?” She went on in a trembling voice, searching in his eyes, still. It was hurtful to know that, not a single piece of her memory left behind in that hollowness of his mind, there was nothing for her to grasp onto. His thoughts were swimming around, that gap still remained, dark, and growing larger and larger as the seconds passed. In the end, his hand around her tightened, albeit warmly, and tried to smile brighter.

“Even if my mind has forgotten…my heart still remembers…”

She appeared to be confused. He wouldn’t blame her, since it was a known fact that every occasion of him appearing to be poetic had led people into confusion.

“You said you couldn’t remember” She pointed out to him, and he returned to her a soft, sad smile.

“I don’t remember. Six months of my life is completely blank to me” He shook is head, as if in disbelief although that’s been his life for the past six years. “I know things that belong to that forgotten time. I know them. But there’s only so much that my brain knew, my mind could recognize…” He trailed off, then, and his sad eyes fell into the tear-glazed ones of hers. “But you…even if my mind had no recollection of you….my heart recognized you. It knew whom to beat so hard for, for whom to feel that pain, and I think…I think it’s beautiful…”

She took a step towards him then, and then another. Her hand raised; yet hovered above him as if he was a distant dream in her eyes. She stared at him, it was as if she was making a mental image of him, etching it deep in her mind like a painting. And then she muttered in a voice so small; “What…what should I do…then?”

Sung Gyu smiled at her, and this time, he brushed away the fallen petals off her hair.

“Make me remember” He replied.

‘Come back to me like before
Look at me and smile brightly’
-Mirror-

It was in a softest featherlight touch that her lips engulfed his own. Tentative at first, Sung Gyu was too surprised to respond, taking longer than he imagined to place his hands around her and bring her close to his heart. The rest of the moment was blurry in his mind. His hands almost moved by their own, knowing where to touch, feel and linger on, as if they’ve been there, in that very moment, millions of times before. His eyes fluttered close in response, and with a deep breath, he drank her in; every nerve ending responding to a sensation so familiar to his entire being but completely foreign to his mind. Yet, the erratic beating of his heart was speaking volume; the way his lips moved, uncertainly in the beginning but then soon in gratifying, fierce passion, appeared to prove everything that he failed to grasp before. Every time they parted, it was him who pulled her in again. Every time their breath collided, mouths pressing into yet another delightfully mesmerizing kiss, a single string of his lost memories would attach, gradually forming that one story which been tucked away in the depth of his heart for the longest time. His mind couldn’t recall. It knew only the things he’d been given the knowledge of, but his heart…

…oh, his heart.

His heart knew the warmth of her hands, the rhythm of her beating heart, the taste of her lips; it knew the way she let out a tiniest whimper whenever they parted for a breath, the way her fingers grasped onto the lapels of his coat, bringing him closer and closer as if he would disappear would she once let him off her grasp. It knew just exactly how everything felt; how she felt like upon his skin, on his lips and in his eyes. Though his mind hadn’t a single recollection of her, his body, his heart still remembered. And that was enough to make up to all the memories he hadn’t regained, to make them once all over again.

It felt like forever, by the time they finally pulled away from each other. There were soft, pinkish petals scattered all over them, and with a warm smile still playing on his lips, Sung Gyu reached out and picked them out, one after the other and allowed them to float down by his feet. The look in her eyes, at that moment, though moist with tears, was breath taking. He thought he remembered that emotion, even if that was only a snippet of something his mind recalled as already been seen for a reason and in a moment he had forgotten. That was alright, still, for he believed now that he had an entire future together, despite having forgotten their past, to make up for all the memories he had lost.

She reached out to him, then, got hold of his hand warmly, and he watched how her small fingers threaded through his own; another moment he could only recall as something which had already happened, without an inkling of an occasion or a reason. He looked up at her and smiled.

“So…do you remember now?” She asked him, then, slowly and unsurely. The cloud of uncertainty in her eyes made his smile falter for a moment. But he picked up from there and went with the truth, the truth they had to accept no matter what. He shook his head.

“I don’t…I don’t remember…” He told her gently, and the way her eyes filled up seemed to speak volumes. He glanced down at there intervened hands and took a deep breath. “There’s…no chance that my memories will ever return. But what I believe is that…” He raised his eyes. “We have a past, a beautiful past. And although I had no recollection of it, I know that we do….” He let out a sigh and picked out another stray petal off her hair. Her eyes, albeit tearful, never left his gaze. “There’s nothing that I remember from that time. I only know the things that I’ve been told. I don’t understand why I haven’t been told of you…nor will I ever know. But, quite miraculously, a large part of me could recognize you…and for that reason, I wish…I wish you would fill me up on everything I’ve forgotten, make these memories again, together, and….” He smiled, cupped her face and she tilted her head to a side, revelling in that warmth. Her smile in that very moment, Sung Gyu realized, was going to be etched in his heart for a life time. A moment, which one day when he’d grown older and when he’d forgotten his name he’d still be able to recall with the tiniest strand of memories he had left. He leaned down, she fluttered her eyes close in response and he smiled onto her lips.

“…You’d make me remember everything that we were” muttered, closed his eyes, and engulfed her into a long, featherlight promise of forever.

‘Ever since the day I met you,
Ever since that moment to this moment now,
I haven’t stopped loving you, for a single minute, a single second’

-True love-

Sung gyu was only twenty-one when he first met her. He had come to the big city of Seoul, so many innocent hopes and wishes fisted in his trembling hands. The world appeared so vast in his eyes when he first arrived. His sheltered life as a small-town boy in Jeonju suddenly seemed so far away. Back then, he was a big, powerful presence; he knew what he wanted to do and where his life would take him; but the change of scenery had made him realize that life was not as easy as he thought it would be. In the new surroundings, he was as tiny and insignificant as a snowflake floating in the wind. He was so scared and uncertain of life; the crossroads only seemed to grow complex every passing day. College was difficult; handling part time jobs at the same time was difficult, living by himself was difficult. He felt suffocated in his own little place which he had to call his home. It was during this time he met her; saw right through her and fell in love.

She was a couple of years older than him. Two years? Maybe three? He didn’t think much of it at that time. At least she understood him, she knew how to comfort him in the best way she could, hold him strong when the entire world fell apart around him. They were friends still. That’s where she wanted their acquaintanceship to be. Just friends. He didn’t want to push anything more than that onto her; besides, he wasn’t sure he could yet deliver to her all the love she deserved, and he was willing to give. She was the only daughter of his landlord, and he was the youngest tenant in the building. Their friendship was easy. All they had to do was talk over a mug of coffee at the café they frequented, and their conversations never ran out of things to talk about. More often than not, however, Sung Gyu found himself lost in her eyes and the worlds she built around them with her words, he frequently found himself drowning in the depths of her eyes where her soul lied, lingering and hovering around her, afraid, if he’d push too far, he would break her. She might have appeared strong, and perhaps even matured for her age owing to their significant age difference. But Sung Gyu knew for a fact that she was as fragile as a petal, and had seen her crack and fall so hard, numerous times. He’d been there for her, being the strength to grasp her and hold her close when times got hard. They were friends, still. Best of friends. He was her little ‘Dongsaeng’, she was his favourite ‘Noona’, and life was good.

Yet he never stopped loving her.

Years passed, times changed. Despite still being friends, their atmosphere did significantly change. Sung Gyu grew into a remarkably charming young man as he aged, and it must have been the reason why the look in her eyes and lingering touches on him slowly changed directions. Or maybe, there was even more. Maybe it was the reassurance his very existence promised her. Maybe it was how she always found comfort in his words. Her long-time boyfriend (Whom he always hated with passion) hurt her more often than not, and she always, always came running for his warmth, which he willingly offered her with a quietly breaking heart. Every time he saw her cry, he could swear a little part of him died. Every tear he wiped off her face, he wished it was the last. She was someone with so many fears and insecurities, lived as if she knew her life was barely hanging from a thread, and that made him feel anxious in a way he had never imagined. What if he lost her in all the complexities of their lives? What then? His own life was getting more and more unbearable. Final semesters of college were just around the corner and his salary from all the menial part time jobs combined, barely covered his expenses. The only asset he had, at that time, was his father’s old blue Honda, the car which Sung Gyu had naturally inherited since his father could no longer drive and remained outside the complex since the day he arrived in Seoul. The only reason he climbed out of bed every morning, Sung Gyu knew, was her. And he tried everything within his capacity to keep her happy, to keep her alive. It was selfish in a way, he knew that. But he also knew that, for her to remain happy and going on living, she needed him by her side, and that their presence, in some weird, twisted way, made them coexistent.

Perhaps, that was the reason why, on that one cold, autumn night, he let her have her ways with him, didn’t say a word in protest and merely gave in to her pleas. They’d tested their boundaries before; all of which, come the next day, they would sum down to momentary mistakes and decide to forget, only to test a little further the very next moment they had the chance to. They weren’t lovers. They weren’t best friends either. They were in-between-the-sentiments, the insecure, the maybes that they both refused to admit. The tentative touches and kisses they never intended to share were memories they only wanted to forget, and every date they’ve had in the coffee shops and every moment they had, staring into each other’s eyes secretly building a little bubble of their own were merely friendly encounters in their minds.

That night, however, she came home, mildly drunk but completely irrational, and the first thing she did was crashing into his dingy little apartment and announcing that she wanted to kill herself. It was by instinct that he had shot up on his feet, gathered her in his trembling arms and held her close because, no, god forbid; he didn’t want to lose her. He loved her, he didn’t care whatever they were now as long as she was there and as they had each other. Her boyfriend of that time had left her, which Sung Gyu had seen coming all along. As much as he hated to admit, right then, he was quite happy that he did, even though what’s left of his doing was a broken, crying woman in his arms. He didn’t mind, in a way, still; simply because he was there, holding her close, his breath in her hair and softly muttering in her ears that he was always there for her. It was then that he felt it. As always, she searched for refuge in him. She ran her hands up the length of his arms and stared right into the depth of his soul. He felt her in his heart, as always, lingering about like a ghost of everything that they were and should have been. The moment he leaned in and kissed her, the qualms and questions didn’t matter anymore. They were no longer maybes, they were forevers. He felt her with the tips of his fingers; soft, warm and beautiful. She took him in with every ragged breath, felt him in every tingling touch and promised him of days, times and moments he had never imagined would come on his way. And then, he found himself laying across the carpet, her above him, kissing him unsurely down his neck. He was holding his breath. It was a new feeling, and they haven’t ever stepped over that boundary before. With his eyes still closed, he ran a hand down her back and allowed it to rest on the curve of her waist. She pulled away then, hovering above him, her tear stained cheeks glowing slightly in the dimmed light. He cupped her face, and as always, she tilted her head and smiled.

“Make me forget…everything” She said to him, that night. And as the rain pattered incessantly against the windows and as the dim light above them flickered away, to not hurt her even further, to not to make it another memory they’d purposefully make forget, Sung Gyu delivered to her that single promise of forever in the best way he possibly could.

‘At times, I wonder
“How about trying to forget you?”’

-Stay by my side-

What Sung Gyu never truly realized at that time, was that the one who would really forget, at the end of everything, was him.

Years later as they sat in the warm confines of a café, the rain pattering outside in the street, him listening to every she said, trying to make him remember; Sung Gyu was trying to put two and two together, as to the reason why he ran away from her. What made him take the car which he hardly ever used and drive all the way to Jeonju? where did the mystery lie?

Probably because she got pregnant, she said when he voiced out his predicament. And slowly, he turned to her and met her eyes. She was crying.

A week later after they’ve made love for the first time, Sung Gyu had gone to her apartment with a bag from a convenience store in his hand. As always, though, the next morning after that happened, she’d pleaded him to forget it ever did, and Sung Gyu readily gave in, although all he wanted to do at that time was bring her close and tell her to, god, just love him instead. She wanted to try again with the man who left her, she had told him, and it was with much perseverance that he had refrained himself from hurting her badly with just his words. As long as she was happy, he’d reminded himself countless times, as long as she was happy; and a week has passed since then.

The moment he stepped into her house, he could only hear the distant sobs coming from the direction of the bathroom. Panicked, Sung Gyu had dropped whatever in his hand and hurried across the apartment, only to find her crouched down on the tiled wet floor, and clutched in her hands was a small equipment which he could only recognize as a pregnancy test. He of course, hadn’t known much about them before. He did, simply because he was the one who bought one for his sister when she found out she was having a baby just months before her wedding day, and then she had called him her little hero. Yet, the fact that now she was holding one in her hand…and crying…

Sung Gyu felt his heart skip a beat; another, then another. He wasn’t sure what he felt at that moment, yet he thought of the possibilities. One, it could be her boyfriend whom she’d gotten back together with. And two, he gulped hard as the thought occurred to him like a slap on his face, it could be him.

He stooped down on the floor beside her and didn’t think much as he reached over and held her from behind her. Her sobs halted, she froze in his embrace. Sung Gyu closed his eyes and breathed her in; she, as always, smelled of strawberries and detergent and a little bit of cigarette. He loved that scant, still. He loved her. And so, he held her even longer, and tried to not to think at all.

Then she asked him “You know what’s going on, right?”

He nodded, the words weren’t coming out,

And then silence for the longest time. From a far, they could hear the bustling of the streets outside. Time passed, and the world moved on as they lagged behind, pitifully, sorrowfully. Sung Gyu took a deep breath and pulled away. Then, as bravely as he could, he asked her the inevitable.

“Is it me?”

‘Until when was it considered love?
Since when was it considered farewell?’

-Vanishing Days-

Years later, she sat in the seat before him and they were still lagging behind as the world move on. It was way deep into the night; the café was almost empty but Sung Gyu and her were in their own little world as if they had all the time they needed.

“You simply took off then” She told him. There wasn’t much emotion inflicted in her voice, and if he wasn’t able to read right through her, he’d have imagined that she had no soul.

“Simply? Just like that?” He asked, and she nodded after each questioning word.

“Just like that”

He thought for a moment, allowing the quietness to linger between them. His hands were trembling even as he held them clasped together, his chin resting upon them. His eyes were on her, scanning her, but the thoughts of his past were scaring him. He was…deterred to an extent by the fact that he had gotten her pregnant involuntarily, but not to the point of getting infuriated by it and taking off in a haste.

Perhaps, though, his younger self must have had different perspectives.

“Maybe…” He said thoughtfully and met her eyes. “Maybe I was just…surprised”

“Or scared” She added slowly, glance over at him. “You were young and had an ample of worries…It was probably the last thing you wanted on your plate”

Sung Gyu watched her for a moment, feeling as if he was listening to a story of someone else’s life rather than his own. It was strange, trying to figure out his own reasoning, what drove him, what made him take a rash decision and what put him to this place. What he did know, however, was that if not for whatever the reason which had made him take off in the manner that he had, he wouldn’t be here, nor would be her, and their story, as two people, would have taken a turn completely different from now.

“What happened afterwards?” He asked the next inevitable question. Sung Gyu was vary at first. There were thousand many possibilities, and one surely would put him into a position so difficult and unimaginable, a whirlwind which would change the direction of his life forever.

She was quiet again, and it lasted for longer than he’d have preferred; a familiar feeling, yet uncalled for, seeped in, and he grasped onto his hands even tighter. The look in her eyes, however, gave him the exact answer he needed. It was as if she’d already understood him.

“Well” she started, took a deep breath and arranged herself in her seat before briefly meeting his eyes. “As…as soon as I heard of the accident, and about your condition…I guess I went into a state of shock? I don’t remember much. Somehow, I had a miscarriage…” A sorrowful smile, and in a cruel, twisted way, Sung Gyu felt himself relax, as if a burden’s been just taken off his shoulders. “I lost all that I had left of you…just like you did of me, Sung Gyu…”

He gulped hard at her words, and even though it vaguely felt as if it was a story belonging to someone he had never known, he still could feel that pain, that longing, that desperation. Just like he had felt it all when they’ve first met; as if his heart had always remembered. “Is that why I never knew you…?”

She shook her head, slowly, and the moisture in her eyes returned, a clear insinuation that it might have not been the case. “You simply didn’t remember…” She muttered, and gasped slightly, holding in her tears. “When I visited you, I was only the landlady’s daughter…and everything that we were…” She trailed off and Sung Gyu watched her as the warm tears descended incessantly down her pinked cheeks. “I thought then…that it was for the best. There was never going back to being us. We weren’t…anything to begin with. We weren’t nothing either…it was too complex, and I didn’t think there was a chance that things would change….and so I gave up…. I vowed to never see you again…”

Vowed to never see him again. As much as it didn’t exactly explain why he hadn’t not even a single threadbare of an inkling of her existence, Sung Gyu felt as if he understood her. If they never really weren’t anything significant, if they were two people simply unsure of their places in each other’s lives, certainly she wouldn’t know where she belonged in the life of someone who hadn’t a single reminiscence of them. Would it have been fair, then? The only way which made sense, even in his mind, was forgetting him too, in response. Although the very thought, somehow, pained his heart.

But now that they’ve met again by a strange twist of fate, Sung Gyu found himself contemplating the possibilities; possibilities all which stood where things should have been and will be, had things taken a different course, had things taken the same but with different consequences and so many more. He thought of the reason, still unknown to him, still a mystery to everyone who knew and had known him, and he wondered of the possibilities that that particular decision would have brought him. Would the things have changed if that was the case? Would he be the same person he was now? Would she? And where would they be as two people?

Would they have loved?

That’s what he wondered as he gazed deep into her eyes, relishing in the prolonged silence between them. She was beautiful, there was no wonder he had loved her. He still felt that tingling sensation, that excitement underneath his skin, the resonance of his heart and the warmth spreading right through him. Whatever they’ve been back then, he realised, wouldn’t be the same as what they will be, from this point onwards. He could say as much.

And so he asked her, the one question that’s been lingering in his mind through the preceding silence;

“Would things have been different, If I had stayed?”

The silence continued, and he tried to read the emotions inflicted in her eyes. They were like mirrors, thousands of stars encrusted together forming a brilliant uniformity of it all. They were like mirrors, that all he could see in them, all of a sudden, was himself staring right back at him. She tilted her head to a side then, not once taking her eyes off him, and just as she always, always, did; she gave him one heart-stopping smile.