Two months later…

            “Taemin! What are you getting me for my birthday? Tell me!”

            My boyfriend Taemin smiled and wrapped his arm around my waist. “It’s a secret. I can’t tell you until the day of, duh.”

            I pouted. “But I really want to know.”

            It’s been two months since what is now referred to ambiguously as “the accident”. Your life seemed normal: you went to school, had a boyfriend named Lee Taemin, a best friend named Jackson Wang, and your parents were rich people.

            You seemed to remember everything. Everything before that rainy September day. Everything except that one person.

            It was April now, and your birthday was coming up.

            “Have you planned out the party?” Taemin was asking me as we walked to class together. He sat in the seat by the window.

            “Yup!” I said, excited. “The theme will be: pretty in pink. So, even guys will have to even wear pink. I will not except salmon, coral, or any other variation.”

            Taemin laughed. “Guess I’ll have to bring out my hot pink tux,” he said.

            “Yes! Can you please? Oh and also, we’re having it at the lake house. The lights are so pretty there at night.” I nudged him. “And it also reminds me of that one other magical night.”

            Taemin laughs. “How could I forget?”

            At lunch, Taemin and I sat with Jackson and the usual crew. As usual, Jackson greeted Taemin with hostility. I wondered why my best friend would act so rude towards my boyfriend, but refrained from prying about it.

            “It’s been almost two months.”

            “Yeah, and?”

            “She still doesn’t know,” Jackson argued. “I’ve been keeping my mouth shut under your command but that can change any time.”

            “No one can tell her about the incident,” Taemin said. “It could ruin her mentality.”

            “No one can tell Hyemi about the incident?” Jackson asked. “Or about the boy?”

            “Shut up.”

            “Don’t tell me what to do,” Jackson snapped. “The only reason I’ve been going along with your command and keeping everything a secret is because I thought it was best for her, that maybe it was better for things to go back to the way they were.

            “But that’s not the case. I hate keeping her out of the loop, I hate treating her like some clueless little kid.”

            “You better not say anything,” Taemin threatened. “It may do more harm than good.”

            “Oh yeah? And look where that’s gotten her. Nowhere. She may be back to the happy bubbly Moon Hyemi that she’d been before you left but...keep in mind that when she was with him, she did have her happy moments. He wasn’t bad to her at all. Not one bit.”

            “Don’t you ever mention him again,” Taemin snarled. “We kicked him out of her life months ago. There’s no use in bringing up people who are dead to us.”

            Jackson scoffed. “Sure. Keep me from saying things to her. But just so you know: whatever ‘love’ she has for you, is nowhere near the amount of love that she had for him. Whether you like it or not, sooner or later, she will find her way back to him.”

            “Hyemi, so there’s this ramen place downtown that I keep hearing people talk about even though it’s not gourmet, and I really want to try it out can you come with me, pleeasssee?” Jiyeon begged on the other end of the phonecall. “Daehyun hates ramen, but you’d be up for it right?”

            “Sure!” I said as I flipped through the channels on my TV. “I wouldn’t mind trying something new.”

            “Great! So I’ll pick you up in about ten minutes? Try not to wear Gucci, we’re going downtown after all.”

            I smiled. “I’m sure I can find something to wear. See you in ten!”

            I dashed upstairs to change out of my sweats. I picked out a sweater and a pair of jeans, then sat on my bed as I waited for Jiyeon to come. Bored, I decided to clean out my phone and went to my text message threads, scrolling down and deleting the ones that didn’t really contain any real importance. Like the ones with my mom texting me to help her decide between Chanel and Louis Vuitton…

            My eyes then came across a thread that I was not familiar with. The person’s name on my phone was an odd one, perhaps even a nickname: Kai.

            My conversations with him were so intimate. Who was this guy? I had never heard of a guy named Kai in my entire life until now. We’d gone on dates? I rode on his motorcycle? I went to my…to my debutante with him? Taemin had never told me any of that stuff. He said that I’ve been with him since I could last remember and that I’d missed my debutante because I was too sick to participate.

            I then looked at the dates of those text messages, and realized that they were all in the interval between September of last year and the end of January.

            Which was when my accident happened.

            All along I thought that I’d remembered everything that I needed to know: my best friend, my boyfriend, my parents, the ability to read and write, my favorite food.

            But it occurred to me now that there are things that I haven’t remembered, people that are still forgotten in my mind.

            Based on how I talked to this “Kai” guy, I seemed pretty close to him.

            Not only that, but if I didn’t know any better…I would say that he and I had been lovers. What were people not telling me?

            What was Taemin not telling me?

            HONK HONK!

            I snapped out of it. I grabbed my bag and sprinted downstairs and out the front door to where Jiyeon was waiting in her car.

            “Hey girl!” Jiyeon greeted brightly. “Are you ready?”

            “Yup!” I said enthusiastically, trying to hide the fact that I was still shaken from my previous realization. I was tempted to ask Jiyeon about this person named “Kai”, but was kind of afraid of what I might hear. Hadn’t everyone been keeping him a secret from me for a reason? Did he have something to do with that “accident” of mine? I tried to push him out of my mind as much as possible.

            The drive to downtown was not as bad as I expected. It was actually interesting to see the other side of the fence, and I found a strange comfort in the night streets and quaint restaurants.

            The two of us found the ramen place that Jiyeon wanted to try immediately, and it was indeed packed. We were lucky enough to get seats before the dinner rush came through.

            “Oooooo these all look so good!” Jiyeon squealed as she flipped through the menu. She looked up. “Oh. Isn’t that…never mind.”

            “What?” I asked.

            “Never mind,” Jiyeon said quickly. “Forget I said anything.”

            I was still puzzled was to what or who she saw, so I looked around. My eyes landed on a waiter who was wiping down a table on the other side of the room. I was surprised to find that he looked a lot like Taemin, except with darker skin. He also looked taller, leaner, his shoulders more broad.

            He must’ve felt someone staring at him because when he looked up, we met eyes. I flinched and immediately looked away.

            I was half-hoping that the Taemin look-alike would even be our waiter, but to my dismay I didn’t see him for the rest of the time I was there. Jiyeon could tell I was distracted, but didn’t say anything as she ate her ramen and babbled on about how Daehyun can’t just seem to eat with his mouth closed.

            “Awh damn,” Jiyeon said as she checked her phone. “He’s stuck at a club and doesn’t have a ride home. Idiot. Hyemi do you want to come with me or catch a taxi?”

            “It is getting a bit late,” I noted as I checked the time on my phone. “I can get home by myself. You go get Daehyun.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Alright,” Jiyeon said as she placed some bills on the table for tip. “That was some good ramen though! We should do this again.”

            I glanced back at the corner where I’d seen the Taemin look-alike earlier. “Yeah. We should.”

            So Jiyeon left to fetch her boyfriend while I stayed behind and lingered around the place a bit longer. There was a sense of comfort here that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

            Then deciding that I should be heading home, I left the place and walked out to fetch a taxi. I spotted a couple of big guys hanging outside but tried to ignore them as I walked by.

            “Damn do you see her purse?”

            “That’s worth more than annual salary!”

            I turned around and before I knew it I was being surrounded. Oh no, I thought as I tried digging out my phone from my pocket.

            “D-Don’t do anything to me!” I stammered.

            One of the guys smirked. “Awh look at her? She’s scared.” He reached out to touch my face until we heard an engine rumble behind us.

            It was him. The Taemin look-alike from the ramen restaurant. He was on his motorcycle, helmet in hand. “Get on,” he barked as he tossed me the helmet.

            I hesitated, simply because I didn’t know the guy. But it was either him or the big guys behind me. So I put on the helmet and climbed on, holding on tight as he sped away. I could hear the big guys shouting furiously in the back.

            The wind flew through my hair as he and I sped across the night streets. It was ridiculous because this guy was a complete stranger. I didn’t even know his name. And yet I felt so safe with him.

            He stopped the motorcycle a good couple of blocks away from where we’d been. I took off my helmet and he took off his. Under the moonlight I could see that he actually didn’t resemble Taemin that much after all, but even so I found him alluring. It was unexplainable.

            “T-Thank you, for that,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “You saved my life.”

            He nodded. “No problem.”   

“I’ve never been on a motorcycle before,” I said to him. “It was actually kind of thrilling.”

            I expected him to leave, but he waited with me as I struggled to hail a taxi. The two of us didn’t say anything to each other, but without words I could still feel it in the air around us: a sense of comfort.

            I finally managed to hail a taxi and opened the door. “Well,” I said, turning back to the boy. “Thanks again. Oh by the way, what’s your name?”

            The boy’s eyes gazed at me, warm and brown, as he replied, “Jongin. I go by Jongin.”