I couldn’t figure out what to wear. I was also a complete mess.

            Jongin invaded my mind day and night. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him, the way he made me feel and the way he made me laugh and smile. It was hard to believe that he and I had never met before previously, because with him I would always feel such a sense of familiarity.

            Not only that, but it was strange how whenever with him, my heart would want to literally jump out of my chest. With Taemin...nothing.

            But he’d accused Taemin of keeping things away from me, and that was something that I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my head around. He’d told me that he and I had once loved and for an odd reason, I couldn’t even deny it. The feelings were too real to have any doubt.

            I sighed and put on one of my favorite royal blue dresses, then began digging in my shoe closet to find my favorite nudge heels. I then spotted an envelope hidden at the bottom of my shoe box. It looked like batch of pictures.

            Puzzled, I took it out and flipped through them. I was surprised to see that they were pictures of me in what looked like...my debutante…

            A cold chill ran down my spine. Taemin had told me that I never got a chance to participate in my debutante because I was “sick”. But flipping through the pictures, it was clear that I had participated in it. The question was, with who as my ? Taemin?

            Then I saw it. The picture of me and my date. It wasn’t Taemin, no.

            It was Jongin.

            I flipped the photo over and saw a name written on the very back in my own handwriting: Kai.

“Kai, WATCH OUT!”

“You’re someone who only comes once in a lifetime, and I’m glad you came to me. Alright?”

Birthdate: Junary 14^th, 1994

“Because I love you. And if you think that’s a lie too, then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that it isn’t. Hyemi, I love you.”

“You have that picture of me in your wallet.”

“A picture that I will never take out.”

“This is Kim Jongin.”

“Actually, I go by Kai. Just Kai.”

            My bedroom door opened. “Hey Hyemi are you…” Taemin stopped. He saw the pictures that I had in my hands.

            “You lied to me,” I said through clenched teeth. “You ing lied to me.”

            “Hyemi, I--”

            “I remember. I remember everything.” I bit my lip. “You’d betrayed me. You made me suffer alone because of your own selfish wants. You’re the one who’s been keeping Kai away from me this entire time.”

            For once, Lee Taemin seemed at a loss for words. “I only did it to protect you,” was all he said, as if everything he did always came back to me.

            But it didn’t. Everything that he did always came back to him. Selfish, manipulative him.

            “No,” I said, shaking my head. “You only did it to protect yourself.”

            “Hyemi,” Taemin said, grabbing onto my arm.

            I backed away from him. “Don’t touch me. I was hurting Kai and you knew it.”

            “Hyemi,” Taemin said now in what I recognized was his scolding manner. “You didn’t actually fall for the guy, did you?”

            “He was there for me when you weren’t,” I growled. “You cheated on me.”

          “Yeah and if you’ve forgotten, Kai also had cheated on you. But even worse. You almost died because of it.”

            “No, he wouldn’t—“

            “Hyemi,” Taemin said, his thumb brushing against my hand. “Naeun wasn’t…she wasn’t anything. It was an accident, I was under the influence. All I ever think about is you. Have you ever considered the possibility that perhaps you’d just used Kai as my replacement? I know we bear a resemblance.”

            “I…I have thought of that,” I said. “But he…”

            “He doesn’t belong in our world,” Taemin finished. “Do you really think your parents would even approve of him? How could you ever even like a guy like him in the first place? So dirty and poor, doesn’t even know his manners.”

            “He knew enough to make a good impression at my debutante,” I spat. “The one you weren’t there for.”

            “I know and I’m sorry,” Taemin said, his brown eyes gazing at me. “Suho tricked me, he tricked all of us. But don’t worry, he’s going to be locked away for a long time. Now get dressed and freshen up. Our parents are waiting downstairs. We’re going out to eat pasta, your favorite.”

            I bit my lip, still feeling uneasy. “Just one question.”

            “Sure.”

            “Was the…was the 5 million really at the lake house?” I asked.

            Taemin nodded. “Under the bed, there’s a small wooden compartment hidden beneath the flooring. It’s all there.” He took a step towards me. “You were always on my mind, Hyemi,” Taemin said now, holding onto my hands. “You never left, not even for a second.”

            “Hyemi, are you done?” my mother called from below.

            Taemin looked at me once more with pleading eyes before leaving my bedroom and closing the door behind him. I stared back at the picture in my hand, into Kai’s beautiful chocolate brown eyes. I spent months not remembering who you were...and now I finally know.

            My mother was going on about wedding dresses or some , cooing over how I would look so beautiful in them. Meanwhile, I was unable to pay attention to anything at all, other than Kai.

            I thought back to everything that had happened between us, because now I finally remembered. I put a hand against my heart, hearing who it was beating for. I used to be so scared of only having feelings for Kai because he reminded me with Taemin.

            But now I realized that Taemin had nothing to do with my feelings for Kai. Despite Taemin’s return, despite losing all of my memory of who Kim Jongin was, we still found our way back to each other. I had managed to fall in love with him all over again a second time around. Taemin wasn’t who I thought of every second of the day, no. Even with Kai as a stranger, it was him that I cared about. Kai had given me feelings that Taemin was now unable to replace, because they were two completely different people.

            I wasn’t in love with Kai because he was Taemin. I was in love with Kai because he’s him, Kim Jongin and all.

            “Excuse me,” I said, putting my napkin on the table. “I have to go.”

            “Do you have another appointment?” Mrs. Lee asked.

            “Hyemi, what are you doing?” Taemin hissed beside me.

            “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I have no interest in marrying your son. I have somewhere else I need to be.”

            “Wait,” Taemin said, chasing after me. “Hyemi I don’t understand. What is going on?”

            “I’m leaving you,” I said. “Just like how you left me for months. We’re done.”

            He held onto my wrist. “You know that once you leave…” he swallowed. “You can never come back.”

            “I know,” I said now, yanking my hand away from him. “And that’s precisely why I’m doing it.”

            When I got to the ramen restaurant, I could see him clearly through the glass window. He was wiping down his last table, probably almost closing the place for the night.

            “Jongin!” I said, barging right in.

            He turned around. His eyes widened. “Hyemi?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

I took light steps towards him, closing the distance between us. “I was looking through my messages the other day,” I said, taking out my phone. “And I came across this strange person. I wondered who he was, because he and I had such great conversations with each other.” I held my phone out to him. At the very top, the name read: Kai. “Now I realize it was you, Kai. My Kai. My Jongin.”

            “Hyemi.”

            “I remember everything,” I continued, tears welling up in my eyes. “I remember Suho, sitting next to you in English class, the karaoke night, the debutante…everything. I also remember seeing you for the first time, thinking that you were just a duplicate of Taemin. But now I know that Taemin doesn’t apply to anything anymore. I love you for who you are. And despite everything that had happened and despite everything that we’ve been through, I know that I will always come back to you.”

            Tears were welling up in his eyes too, I could see it. “Out of all the guys in the world,” he finally said. “And you choose me?”

            “Yes,” I said, taking a step closer to him.

            “I have no money,” he said softly.

            “I know.”

            “You could be making the biggest mistake of your life.”

            I aughed, then said, “It’s a risk I’ll be willing to take.” And by then, we were already face to face. I grabbed onto the fabric of his shirt and pulled him to kiss me. And in that instant, everything finally felt like it made sense. All along, it’d been him. It will always be him. Because he is someone who only comes once in a lifetime.

The End

A/N: I was going to do this super long, terribly cheesy ending, but I decided against it and chose to end this story in simpler terms: that You, as Hyemi, do end up with Kai and not Taemin, despite the money, the social status issues, and that you would’ve fallen for Jongin in the end anyways, even with a short case of memory loss. Thanks for reading, everyone :)