“Dara?” He can feel the girl standing in front of him flinched at the sound of his voice. He waited for her respond, waiting for her to turn around.

 

“Sandara? Is that really you?” He asked again. The girl turned around to face him. He took a close look over her face. Search for the similarities.

 

“Excuse me? Do i know u?” The girl forehead creased. Jiyong heart beats fast. She’s really look like her.

 

Dara. She disappeared after that fateful day. He woke up to find her nowhere. He searches for her everywhere, to find nothing about her whereabouts. She’s like vaporizing, without any sign of existence.

 

He missed her every second and woke up once in a while having nightmare about her. The girl waved her hand in front of Jiyong.

 

The girl smiles, making Jiyong's heart flutter. So warm. Just like when he's with Dara. Jiyong smiles back at her.

 

But there’s something off beat, she’s not Dara, he will know it for sure if it was Dara. Is it? Something is different about her.

 

“..Or should i ask, do you know me?” Jiyong's forehead creased. He looks at the girl. The girl still smile at him, like an angel.

 

“Next, please,” he heard the cashier urging for the next customer to pay. The girl put up her basket for the cashier to count her items.

 

“128 500 won please.” The girl eyes went wide.

 

“But, but i only bring 100 000 won.” The cashier shrugged. The girl look at her items, wanted to return something.

 

She picks up a bottle of soy bean, put it aside, frowning and then put it back again.

 

“I need all of this.” she mumbled. Her forehead creased. The cashier waited with a scowl on his face.

 

Seeing the girl in trouble, Jiyong pulled out 3o ooo won and hand it to the cashier who gladly took it.

 

The girl didn’t realize this and still battling over thing that she should return. She unconsciously pouted. Jiyong saw that the customer around unconsciously admiring the girl beauty.

 

“Miss? It’s okay now, this man here, already paid the rest for you,” the cashier trying to get her attention. She gaped before she turns to face Jiyong, with glistened eyes.

 

“Really? Thank you, thank you so much.” She’s at the verge of crying, feeling grateful she didn’t have to return anything. Jiyong chuckled.

 

“It’s okay. It’s not a big deal.” he paid for his items and walked out. The girl quickly picked her grocery bag and trails behind Jiyong.

 

“I will pay it back to you.” he heard her say.

 

“No biggie, it’s okay.” they reach the front door and Jiyong heading to his parking lot. A hand grabs his arms.

 

He turns to see the girl looking at him with pleading eyes, puppy eyes, to be exact, struggling to carry the plastic bag containing her groceries. A sight that he hates and do not wish to see, especially the girl with the face of Dara.

 

He never forgives himself, after Dara disappearance. He felt so wrong and guilty toward Sohee, but every time he saw a picture of the same face, he can only refer it to Dara.

 

“Please, i insist,” he feels the girl’s small hand dragging him to her direction. He stops to see that it was an old truck, a very old truck. The green paint is fading, and rusty on each side of the doors.

 

The girl opened the door for him and waited for him to come and sit. Even though he wanted to be polite, but doubt won over manner.

 

“Is it safe?” he asked. She nodded and hit and kicks the truck body to convince Jiyong the sturdiness of her ride.

 

Jiyong sigh and jumped in the truck, seems like there is no way he can escape the girl determination. She closed the door and quickly goes for the driver seat. She starts the engine. The truck made some rambling sound before finally started.

 

“Is this really safe?” Jiyong ask again, can’t erased his doubt, the hell with politeness, he need to be assure that he still breathing after the ride. His hand is griping tight to the seat and truck's door like his life depending on it.

 

“Buckle up,” she grinned at him before drove away.

 

They arrived at the girl’s house, or Jae Young, that he knew along their ride to her house of 40 minutes’ drive. He lost focus of detecting the direction after they went through different passage way, from paved to gravel road. The girl is incredibly bubbly and optimistic that is very different from Dara, who kept everything to herself.

 

They seem to arrive at the destination when she turns off the engine and park on a terrain.

 

“Unni,” Jae young shouted as soon as she land her feet on ground, not minding Jiyong who still sit in the truck. Awkward, he opened the door and look around.

 

Her home is not that big but beautiful. More like a cabin, with white picket fence. He saw a sign indicting that they open the house for travellers.

 

The front door was opened abruptly and a woman about the same age as Jae Young come out, follow by Jae Young whose face shrunken while her hand grabbing the woman arms.

 

“Unni, just give me the money and i will hand it to him.” the woman came close to him, hands on the hips, and the scowl on her face remind Jiyong of his mother whenever she found out that he skipped classes or pulling pranks, which also the reason she succeeded in making Jiyong taking one step backward, feeling intimidated by the woman.

 

“This is the ahjushi? Jae young-ah, this is not ahjushi. This is a fine handsome young man, an oppa,” Jiyong cringed at her last remarks.

 

Especially when she said it she her clasped hand and her eyes shining so bright. For a moment, he thinks he saw a glint of evil on her eyes, smirking is an added point. He blinked his eyes, so yeah, this woman creeps him out.

 

“Come on in.,” Jiyong obediently follow her in where she made him sit and observe him.

 

He call her as Jae Young sister, at least that is what he can refer to the creepy woman in front of him, since she haven’t introduce herself. She still staring making Jiyong feel uncomfortable, he gulped, wishing that it’s not a bad decision to follow Jae Young back here. Jae Young, he suddenly remembers, he looks around to find the girl, hoping that she can save him.

 

“What do you think about our Jae Young?” Jiyong startled.

 

“W-what?.” He stammered, caught off guard.

 

“She's pretty right?” Jiyong nodded. Eager to finish this intervie-, no, interrogation over with.

 

“She's polite right?” Jiyong nodded again.

 

“Did u like her?” Jiyong quickly nodded before realizing the question. Great, now Creepy Woman might ask him to marry her sister.

 

“D-deh?” Creepy Woman laughs hard. Jiyong grimaced, she sound like a witch on run.

 

“Jae Young-ah. Serve tea to oppa. He’s going to sleep here tonight.” She said while her eyes still looking intensively at him. Jiyong abruptly stands up.

 

“Noona, i can’t sleep he-..” he stop talking when he saw her glare. He feels suffocated. He feels like his throat is burning. The force is too strong, that he nodded, weakly. Defeated.

 

 

:::

 

 

Jae Young looks at Jiyong apologetically.

 

“I’m sorry I put you into this trouble.” she feels guilty to put trouble into his cup.

 

“Bommie unni never reacted like this before.” Jiyong shrugged. They were together, cutting cabbage and soak it into salt water, cutting radish and leak, all because the order from Creepy Woman, aka Manager Bom, Jae Young older sister.

 

His short visit of collecting 30 000 won will turns week in two more days.

 

“I guess Cree-, I mean, Bommie noona just hate me.” he saw Jae Young shook her head.

 

“No, unni never hate people.” She looks straight into Jiyong’s eyes. Her eyes caught Jiyong’s attention. Hazel on left, brown on right. Jiyong frowned; try to remember if Dara had the same unique eye color. Jae Young turns pink, realizing Jiyong is looking at her intensely.

 

“Yeah? Then maybe she fell for my charmed,” he smiles and continue cutting radishes, thinking maybe his visit still worth something, after all.

 

 

:::

 

 

He’s massaging his sore arms when he heard a soft knock on his door. He opened it to see Bom standing there.

 

“Come out, take your jacket.” he grabs his wallet and jacket thinking what Bom want to do to him.

 

“Noona, where are we going?” Jiyong grinned, hoping that maybe Bom will send him home. He’s a year older than Bom, but he still calls her noona, using Jae Young respectful title towards Bom, or maybe, maybe the facts that Bom’s aura is enough to make him cringed in fear that he thinks of her as his superior.

 

During his stay, knowing Bom’s real age from Jae Young, he decided to pay respect to her. So, she ends up as a noona. Jiyong is afraid of what will happen if he dares to disobey her.

 

“Somewhere,” she said with no emotion. He already got bad feeling about this trip, thinking that maybe Bom is not going to kill him and feed it to the sharks.

 

He glances at her. Her hand rest on the window and her hair flows freely in the air. She looks stunningly beautiful, if Jiyong meet her just now.

 

I’m going to ditch you.” her face look stern. Jiyong stomach churned. He doesn’t have any idea of their current location. The day he met Jae Young is the first day he set foot in this town, before being dragged to the village, a village in rural area. And the distance of every house is quite far. He might have died before reaching one, Jiyong now sweating in cold.

 

Bom turn her head to have a look at him and start to laugh. He doesn’t even care if Bom’s laughing like a witch, but he’s joining her.

 

“I’m kidding. We are going to have some drink. There’s something I want to tell you, without Jae Young around.” then her face is back to being serious.

 

Jiyong kept himself in silent. Not wanting to cross over Bom.

 

:::

 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Bom asked him as soon as she finishes her first glass of soju. Jiyong nodded before gulped down his drink.

 

“Where is she now?” Jiyong took the bottle and pour it to the empty glass. He shook his head.

 

“Disappeared. I never saw her since a two year and a half.” he look lost in thought before continue.

 

“I’ve been looking for her since.”

 

“So, for now, you don’t have a girlfriend eh?” Jiyong doesn’t answer. It’s painful for him to say it out loud. He searched for her everywhere around Korea. He checked the possibility of her starting fresh overseas but records tell him that she never cross the border.

 

“What’s her name?”

 

“Dara.” He closed his eyes.

 

“Dara?” Bom frowned.

 

“Her name is beautiful. How’s her family deal with her lost?”

 

“Her parents still crying their heart out since she went missing, her twin sister died few months before.”

 

“She had a twin?” Bom sound so excited that making Jiyong look at her weirdly. Realizing her own weirdness, Bom wiped .

 

“Well, i had a thing for twin, you know. Ha ha ha,” she laugh awkwardly and hit Jiyong's shoulder. She clears .

“Did u love her?”

 

:::

 

FLASHBACK

Hot. He feels hot. He opened his eyes slowly, trying to make sense of everything around him. Sniffing the hint of lemony in the air he breathes, his lips twitch, half smiling. Must be in Dara’s room again, he thought. Dara.

 

She always comes to rescue, whenever he feel and need to meet Sohee. He’s in shocked, knowing that his girlfriend is not going back from the trip she went. Losing someone so dearly traumatized him.

 

He doesn’t know how to react to people’s sympathy. He feels like they were mocking him for the loss. At the burial ceremony, that is only as symbolic and sign to Sohee’s death, he then saw Dara, again, in black. He realizes that she does exist, after some time of forgotten friendship. She’s not weeping, slightly touching the gravestone. And he saw a part of Sohee live in her.

 

He doesn’t mean it, but it happened. Before he knew it, she’s becoming the substitute of Sohee, in physical appearance. Whenever he slipped tongue calling her as Sohee, he saw her flinched, and he feels sorry for her, guilty even.

 

He needs time to fully erased Sohee from his mind, and it’s not easy, not when Dara is the exact replica of her. But slowly he realizes that she’s not Sohee. She’s Dara. And he knows that they are very different inside. And being with her, he realizes that not only inside, but on the outside to. They don’t dress the same; they don’t do the same thing. And he thought that all twin do and act the same.

 

And slowly he learns that he needs to make it clear to her. He stands up and looks around.

 

And that’s when he saw the mirror, written in red,

I’m not Sohee

He walked to look closer, hoping that the dark stains that he saw on the vanity table is not blood.

 

:::

 

“More than anything.”

 

He said after gulping down two glasses of soju. Bom smile listening to his answer. Jiyong look at Bom suspiciously.

 

“You're not going to confessed to me right?” he blurt out. He’s been thinking of the possibility for quite some time, only soju help him boosting his courage to ask that.

 

“What if i say i am?” Jiyong's jaw drop, she couldn’t be serious about this. Is it?

 

Bom sudden laugh making him chuckled; of course, she’s Bom, the trolling guru. Then Bom expression turns sad.

 

“Jiyong-ah, Jae Young is not my blood sister.”

 

Jiyong look at her, a little bit shock from Bom's secret truth. They look sweet together, as sibling that he didn’t suspect anything.

 

“She was found critically injured at mountain by villagers. They are not sure whether it was a pure accident or suicide attempt. She was in comatose stage for a few months.” Bom drink another glass of soju.

 

“I met her when she regained consciousness from her coma. She doesn’t remember anything. Lost. No information that we can use to track her family. I help her to get back into society, taught her to walk, and live. But she learns fast and within a year, she’s what you see now.”

 

Jiyong is too absorbed listening to Bom's story bout Jae Young.

 

 “I named her Jae Young.” Jiyong nodded.

 

“Because the moment she woke up, she's calling for Jiyong.”

 

Jiyong's eyes met Bom. She too, is looking at him. His heart beating fast now, his hands went cold.

 

“Do you think-, erm.. -is she, Dara?...my Dara?” His voice shaky and sound so desperate now.

 

“That is what i want to ask you. I want you to confirm whether she is Dara or not.”

 

But Jiyong's mind is too disturbed to listen to Bom's word.

 

“The doctor said that she had a scar on her cheek. But she’s badly injured so when they performed her surgery, they smooth the skin too.”

 

Scar?. He thought for a moment. Dara doesn’t have a scar. But then he remembers about the bloody scissor on the floor the day she went missing. Could it be? He shook his head, doesn’t want to think that Dara cut her cheek. That is too painful to think of.

 

 

:::

 

 

“Unni, where did you go?” Dara quickly run towards Bom as soon as they enter the front door.

 

“Yah, Jae Young ah, i told you to lock the door at night, why don’t you listen?”

 

“I’m worried thinking about you, unni.”

 

“Aigoo, why would you worry over me? Worry for yourself first, you are one attractive young woman. Man will swarm to you once they saw the opportunity.”

 

Dara is obviously blushing at her word.

 

Jiyong is looking attentively at Dara. He is sure that she is indeed his Dara.

 

He missed her so much that he unconsciously went close to Dara and hugged her, inhaling her smell, brushing her hair. The world engulfed in silent for a few second before Dara push him, breaking the hug.

 

“YAH! KWON JIYONG! What are you doing?,” Bom shouted her lung out. Dara runs to her room leaving a dumbfounded Jiyong and a mad Bom, alone. He heard Bom sighed.

 

“Jiyong-ah. I know that you are too excited knowing that she is Dara. But she lost her memory. Please control your hormones before you freaked her out.” Then she walked to her room.

 

“Lock the door.” he heard she said before he’s alone, really alone.

 

:::

 

Morning comes and he didn’t even close his eyes for a minutes. He lost count of how many times he shifted in his bed.

 

He is thinking hard of ways to make Dara remember him, until the realization hit him, the reason for her disappearance. Her past is a painful memory for her.

 

To make her remember is like to make her taste suffer, again. Isn’t it better to leave some things unsaid? She looks extremely happy now.

 

Not being the shadow for her sister. He knew it, by now, he knew it all along. The hardship she went through just to prove herself worthy. But he doesn’t acknowledge it.

 

He is too ego to admit that it is Dara that he loved all along. That he fall under the glamorous sweet innocent Sohee that he chooses just to make himself look better in society.

 

He was her friend before Sohee. She was another part of Dara that he wanted her to be. Call him greedy. Call him jerk. He deserved it.

 

And choosing over two different sweet candies, he goes for the biggest, sweetest of it. But his action is making Dara suffer. He saw Dara grew colder than before; she’s not even talking to him anymore. Until the day they meet at the graveyard, that he comeback to her, or that is what he thinks. To detox himself from Sohee's drug, he needs time. What he regret the most is not saying anything about it to Dara that lead to her disappearance.

 

He gets up and went to the kitchen to saw Bom is already sitting there, sipping her morning coffee. He joins her after pouring one for her.

 

“You look horrible.” was her morning greeting.

 

“Where’s Dara.?”

 

“Went to town to buy groceries.” he groaned.

 

“Why doesn’t u tell me?”

 

“Early bird catches the worm. After all, she’s a little bit uncomfortable around u after last night.” Jiyong rubs his neck in frustration.

 

“So, what’s your plan now?” she added, munching some hot creamy corn.

 

“I want to get married to her.” Bom dropped her corn on the floor.

 

“M-aried? But,…are you sure she is Dara?”

 

“I’m 12o% confident.”

 

Jiyong look at Bom whose picking and blowing at the corn before continues munch on it. No doubt, she’s surely a corn mania.

 

“You don’t want to wait until she regained her memories?.”

 

“I’ve been thinking. I hurt her a lot in the past, but i want to make it up to her. She’s happier now than before. And i prefer she stays in her condition now.” Bom still look at him unconvinced by his word.

 

“Trust me noona. I love her and i wanted the best for her.” Bom sigh.

 

“I don’t know Jiyong. She met you only few weeks ago.”

 

“But we knew each other for years before.”

 

“Yeah, the years that she don’t remember!”

 

“Just help me this time noona. She listen well to you.”.

 

:::

 

They get married in the small church at the village, without informing anyone. Not even Jiyong's family or best friend. Just between them and the villagers.

 

He feels content and happy that he can finally being together with dara. He drove them back home after the ceremony.

 

He intertwined his hand with Dara's and couldn’t stop smiling, grinning like a puppy in love to be exact.

 

“Ji..” he glance a while before looking back at the road.

 

“Yes?.”

 

“I lied.”

 

Jiyong slows down the car.

 

“About what?” he can feels Dara’s hand hold tight to his arms.

 

“The truth, I regained my memory a year ago. I remember everything. I asked unni to lie to u for me.”

 

Jiyong finally too nervous to drive that he decided to stops. She’s picking a bad time to confess the truth. Swerving the car to the left of the road, he let the engine still running. He turned to look at Dara who's looking pale, waiting for his respond.

 

“Then why don’t u tell?.”

 

“Promise me you won’t get angry.” Jiyong exhales but still don’t respond, and she continues.

 

“I don’t want you to love me because of my sister, because of Sohee. I want u to love me as myself.”

 

Tears stroll down her cheek. Jiyong pulled her for a hug.

 

“Don’t cry baby. I’m not angry. I love u with all my heart. I want us to forget the past and live as what we are now. Arraso?” he felt dara nodded and eased off. This will be their new beginning.

 

:::

 

Months after their married, they lived happily, trying to adjust their life, clearing up all the misunderstanding and putting past behind, Jiyong never felt so much lighter than before. He looks good and healthy.

 

He enters their bedroom when he saw Dara sitting on the chair looking at her reflection. He went to her and hugged her from behind.

 

“Admiring your own beauty?” He said. Dara smiles back at her. He loosens his hug and kisses her forehead before jumped to their bed.

 

He lie there waiting for Dara who still combing her hair, slowly. Jiyong almost asleep when he heard she call him.

 

“Ji?.”

 

“Ehm?.”

 

“Do you know why Dara disappeared?.” He heard Dara giggles.

 

Dara?

 

“...because she hates you.”

 

His mind and eyes snapped opened only to found Dara asleep in his arms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me.note: Unedited. The grammar is evewhere, i know. But too lazy to recheck, but itching to post something. @.@ Yep. the story is a bit light from what i expected it to be, but at least i finish it in one go. (pat myself-heee) Thank for reading, anyway.