Ryeowook's pov and memories

My annoying headache is killing me so bad tonight...I cannot even lay properly in my bed! This is so frustrating! I had managed not to get any sort of increasing pain to my right ear for quite many years now, but I obviously crash down when panicking. I don't even know why I panicked, back at Eunhyuk's house...

I let out a quite deep sigh, that eventually caused me a new stinging pain sensation above the ear, as it was now spreading around my temple. I tried to slowly change position and lay on my hip, so I could rest my head on the soft white pillow and use the fabric as a pad to relieve that burdensome banging feeling. In the meanwhile I snuggled under covers and lifted both my knees, trying to bring my legs closer to my upper body and brace myself as I always did when I couldn't sleep properly.

...that was all Kyuhyun's fault! I panicked because of him! Because he was there! Well, not exactly because of his physical presence there, it was more of a spontaneous reaction I had already foreseen in the case I mistakingly bumped into Kyuhyun again. I wasn't scared that he might have been angry at me, I already knew the opinions he had of me for that...I was more concerned to feel my own heart suddenly awakening again from its long deep sleep lasted ten years...and indeed it happened. Thanks so much!

My heart, which had been severely wounded in the past, had uncontrollably responded again after keeping silent for too long. I didn't want any of it! I had already been trying to bear with my annoying ear pain for the same amount of time, I didn't want any other part of my body aching because of that idiot! I was living perfectly fine without all this absurd situation! Why on earth did I decide to come back to Korea? Someone had to explain that to me... Okay, fine. I'll be calling my manager on the morrow and ask him to arrange something in Paris, so I can have a good excuse to finally leave this country forever! 

But that doesn't help me at this very moment! The more I want to get Kyuhyun out of my head, the more I end up thinking about him...even leaving for Paris right now wouldn't help me to quit thinking about him! And my poor heart...it recognized Kyuhyun! It recognized the only one who meant a lot for me, the one who gave me a little of himself...the one I liked...

Why do I need to suffer this pain? Why? It was enough for me knowing that Kyuhyun didn't trust me on the very moment I needed him the most! Kyuhyun is only the personification of this world's selfishness! I don't need him around me! I don't need someone who cannot love me back, and accuse me of something I didn't even do! Because Kyuhyun actually dared to eat back his words...he said he would have unconditionally believed me, unless I told him otherwise...then why he didn't believe me when it was the right time to do so? Why?! 

I remember that day: the day when Kyuhyun and I broke up. It was vividly impressed in my mind...and I often re-lived it as it were yesterday.

It all started the day before the concert, when Kyuhyun, after sleeping with me at my place, brought me back to his house, because Ahra wanted to see me. I ignored the reason of that sudden meeting, even if I really hoped that she could help me with the last-minute preparations before the concert, however something told me that she didn't want to. I actually feared that she might have discovered the newly born relationship I had with her brother, and the thought of her deeply disappointed in us, in me especially, made me worried sick. I didn't want to choose between her and Kyuhyun, and too many times I ended up confirming my doubts: in front of a choice, I would have simply decided to be with Kyuhyun. I knew it already. The answer was carved in my heart...

What I remember next was Kyuhyun's kiss in front of his house door. I can still remember his touch on my waist and how his hands on my back pushed my body towards him, so I could get closer to his own body and enjoy the slow movements of his lips on mine. He seemed to be wanting that naughty kiss so bad, and I was more than happy to be his complice. It was a kiss, just a kiss, before entering the house, before pretending that we were just friends and nothing more, before we couldn't touch each other anymore...because we both knew there was Ahra isinde...

...how, instead, Ahra showed up at the door, with jaw dropped and hands to as to cover it and hide herself from the shameful view she was now unconsciously taking a look to, was a mystery at first. She later explained that she saw us approaching from the street while leaning against her bedroom's window and she decided to welcome us in. But her timing was wrong...really wrong... She caught us in the act of kissing there and I clearly remember her face getting red out of pure anger, her eyes narrowing at once and her lips trembling, trying to hold back the impulse of cursing us both. She looked quite disgusted...and who could blame her? I was her secret crush...and I had happened to reject her in name of defending a friendship I was more than glad to screw up, if that meant being together with Kyuhyun and getting intimate with her brother...

It was so wrong, and I knew I was walking on the edge of a thread suspended into void. One step taken in the wrong direction might have cost me so dear...and I wasn't used to danger...I was slowly changing for Kyuhyun...and look what it brought me up to!

Ahra blamed us both for secretly scheming this behind her. She didn't even listen to Kyuhyun trying to explain her that our relationship just naturally happened. Our love, or well...whatever that was to us, just happened and crashed into our lives faster than a lightning bolt and we couldn't help but accept it and work it out...

She simply wanted me out of her life. And when Kyuhyun reminded her that she couldn't do as she pleased, because she was forced to tutor me or that might have cost her the future she was about to pursue in Vienna, she shrugged, and said that she never applied to be my babysitter! Really?! My babysitter! Thinking about it again extremely pisses me off! Ahra pointed out at Kyuhyun and told him that I already had him as my babysitter now, so I didn't need her around anymore. She had her place in Vienna confirmed and with the occasion, she wanted to congratulate me for winning a scholarship. She gave me a folder that looked kind of official and contained the procedure documents for my enrollment into one of the most prestigious conservatories of Paris...That was the two-year-long scholarship I had always dreamed of! What a way to ruin the mood though...I couldn't feel happy at all...I stood there, in the corridor of the two sibilings' house, while Kyuhyun firmly held my hand in his, trying his best to support me, and Ahra crossed arms, trying to avoid our gazes, too much hurt and annoyed by the fact that she had busted us together. 

Kyuhyud had then started arguing with her. I had never seen him losing his temper before. He was getting terribly angry at her because she seemed not to accept the truth. "You cannot have it all from life, miss perfection!" I remember he said to her, stressing that nickname with which he used to , until she lost her patience as well. "He rejected me for you: my younger brother! Don't you think that being rejected is already a hard thing to cope with on itself, moreover, on top of that my own brother, blood of my blood, engages a relationship with a person of his same gender! This hurts double!" she was now yelling at him, gesturing disquietly in air.

I kept silent, feeling guilty. It was my fault for ruining their bond...I felt that way...

And none of us could ever have imagined that, that very same hurtful argument burst between Kyuhyun and Ahra, would have been their last ever spoken words...

It's still there...in my mind...the accident that happened on the following day.

The concert had just finished, but I still couldn't wake myself up from the bad dream in which I seemed to be living right after Ahra's discovery about me and Kyuhyun. I had spent the whole day with Kyuhyun and he even came to my place again to sleep there for a second night, profiting of the fact that my parents weren't around.

I cannot say that our second night together was as enjoyable as the first one, because Kyuhyun was still visibly too shaken from his argument and I was internally freaking out for the concert. I happened not to have touched a keyboard for almost a whole day, something unconceivable for one like me, who was practically glued to the piano from day to night, either at school or at home. I felt my fingers so stiff and needed to stretch them on the keys, it didn't matter if it was 3am, I just heard my piano downstairs desperately shouting out my name...it broke my heart not complying to that sudden request. And in the middle of the night I played whatever tune came up in my mind, fully distressed because I seemed not to catch the right beat or timing, stumbling while reaching for the furthest keys. I violently shut the keyboard case and stared into the void, completely dragged in that absurd situation...I even ended up thinking exactly about what kind of bad deed I had done in my previous lives for dealing with such a confusing state of mind. Even my heart wasn't at ease...and it shouldn't have been any of my concern...but still, I was made that way...taking responsabilities for things that didn't involve me at all! I was made that way...I was Kim Ryeowook...a different one...before the accident.

Anyway, even if dealing with such a confusion in my heart, I managed to calm down and show off my best condition in front of the crowd the day of the concert. There was Kyuhyun as well as Ahra...she couldn't have lost the chance to watch me for all the gold exisiting on this world, I knew...or well, I believed to know until half a day earlier.

I was walking on my own from the backstage door, ready to meet Kyuhyun again after the performance, when I suddenly felt the hand of a stranger firmly grabbing my wrist and brusquely taking me out on the soccer field which was deserted by then, since people had all gathered into the concert hall.

I saw his back only during the rush. He seemed rather hurrying and disquiet. I tried to wriggle with all my strength and back off, not recognizing him, but I guess I was still pretty tired for having slept only a few hours during the night, and therefore I didn't manage to fully pull away.

The boy let me go in the middle of the soccer field. I looked at him, wondering who he was, and when he turned to face me, he revealed himself to be no other than my rival: Choi Jihoon. He didn't look as usual though. He had something wild and rather beastly in his look. He kept eyecontact with me from behind his glasses, and breathed quite heavily, as if he had some problems actually. That bothered me...it bothered me quite a lot...because he looked as if he was ready to jump on me, after targeting me as his prey for no clear reason. I heard him growl, fuming angry, and I saw how his evil eyes were narrowing into two little and almost invisible round dark cracks. He showed his gritting teeth and then I started questioning his behavior. I was scared, but I couldn't move at all from my spot and I ignored the reason. It was as if I were glued with my two feet on the ground and, despite sensing that strange tensed atmosphere between us, I didn't do anything for stopping his subsequent crazy actions.

Because then, I saw Jihoon suddenly acting rather than speaking...and it was the most fearful reaction I could have witnessed in my whole life. Jihoon drew a gun from around his belt and pointed it at me with no hesitation. After laughing out loud, looking pretty overexcited and way too much crazy from the look in his eyes, the only justification he came up with was that I screwed up his life for taking away a scolarship that was supposed to be his from the beginning.

It didn't make any sense. His envy was now pushing him too far! That would have only probably been a joke...a very bad joke...and his gun was fake, I knew it: Jihoon wanted to scare me and maybe he wanted me to act childishly, telling him that he was right, that I stole his only opportunity for pursuing a bright career abroad. Well, I wanted to believe it, but the self-confidence with which he held that gun out, stretched towards me, taking slow steps in my direction, made me uncontrollably shiver. 

He was there babbling a stupid nonsense about how life was unfair, about how he wanted to graduate so bad and that he deserved to go abroad much more than me, because, in his eyes, I was the typical spoilt child with a quite solid background family that supported me no matter what. I didn't deserve my place. I didn't deserve those prizes I collected throughout years of hard work and sweat...what nonsense! How could he speak without even knowing me at all! Nevertheless, the more he said that, the more I was ending up being actually convinced by his words. Still, I didn't do anything. I froze and didn't move, not even when I heard someone shouting out my name from further behind me. I slightly turned my head and saw Ahra desperately running towards me, towards us. She stopped a couple of meters behind me and kept on saying my name, her tone of voice sounded much worried. She was stretching arms and kept an alert position, her wide eyes firmly placed on the gun barrel.

"I'm not joking...I want you to die Kim Ryeowook and you'll do it today, I swear!"

Those words...those words are still nowadays printed in flames in my heart. Someone had to die back then, and I had to be that one, but...

...if only I didn't jumped on Jihoon and tried to get hold of his arm, if only I didn't act so foolishly, pretending to be a hero, maybe...maybe Ahra would have still lived...she would have enjoyed her life in Vienna and maybe I might have enjoyed Kyuhyun's affection up to now...

I jumped on him then. I reacted. And I ended up targeting Ahra while struggling to push down Jihoon, but the boy had already pulled the trigger in one snap. His arm was right above my head, as I put my own around him and pushed him with my whole weight on the ground. I only worsened things, because during the fall Jihoon deadly shot Ahra and I fell on him, completely numb due to the explosion being shot near my right ear.

It was a second then. I got dizzier and stiffened as I lost all at once my hearing, plunging in a soundproof bubble.

I widened my eyes, not understanding anything of what was happening. I only saw Jihoon trembling and hurriedly getting up, literally pushing me with too much violence on the side, where I stayed, kneeling, pressing my fingers on the ground, sinking them in the fresh grass and muddy earth. Jihoon rushed away, his eyes failed his huge fear depicted all over his face and, as I saw him running faster as he could, I decided to take a look behind me. How I wish I didn't instead! Ahra was lying in a pool of blood, her hands on her stomach wound glistening because of the thick ruby substance. I called out her name, as I crawled beside her with much difficulty, but I couldn't hear any sound. It was so strange! It was the same effect people get to have while diving into water, so that it enters the ears and create that muffled wet sensation, and no sounds are audible. However, I was perfectly aware of the fact that I was moving my lips and that my throat vibrated due to the issued air that was supposed to turn into words, but I couldn't really hear any sound from myself.

I took that body, whose life was quickly fading away, in my arms and I stained my always so neat uniform in her blood, as I tried to reassure her. Eventually failing at it, I remember that my tears, then, were the most hurtful I could have let out my eyes. And not only because Ahra was taking her last breath, and as she spoke a last sentence, I read "take care of Kyuhyun" on her lips, but also, and especially, because Kyuhyun suddenly appeared and was towering over us, before kneeling next to his sister. I cried because of the fear I could see in his eyes and the guilt he was throwing at me with a stare I wished I would have never witnessed...as if I shot her...as if I were the reason she was dying...

He took Ahra in his arms and rocked her while people around us gathered and hurried to call for help. I lingered on Kyuhyun, grabbing his arm with my dirty hands, begging him to listen to me, and the more I begged, the more I knew I looked a fool, because I myself couldn't listen to a word I was pronouncing.

He pushed me away, crying over Ahra's now lifeless body and my heart broke, shattered into million pieces...the same heart that had discovered how to cry out of joy only not too long before, was now sorely yelling for help. I needed someone to help me mend my heart as I got aware of how I broke the two sibilings apart with my selfishness. And my bubble burst. It let me out of my temporary handicap. While I gradually took my hearing from the left ear back, I listen to Kyuhyun's fool accusations. His words were rushing out like the most impetuous of the streams, letting me not chance of reply.

"...you said you'd have believed me no matter what!" I took the courage to say then, not holding back my thoughts. His promise of always protecting me was now vanishing into thin air.

"...well, I was wrong!" yes, he was...and because of him, my world collapsed, as I fell on the ground, senseless.

I still remember it. And I remember it too well! Now, more than that day, Kyuhyun has no right to tell me what I should or I shouldn't do. He doesn't know what I had to fight against after Ahra's death. The hatred, the guilt and the sorrow I suddenly felt as a burden on my shoulders...I have been carrying that weight up to this very day, and his loss of trust towards me was the worst I could have ever born. I was innocent but Kyuhyun thought it otherwise and I have never had the chance to ask him why. He didn't know anything about what had truly happened, after all! And it was pure luck that I was supposed to leave for Paris on the following week. I could exploit the scholarship to completely forget about Kyuhyun and everything linked to him...even if that meant denying my heart. Fine. I was ready. I had to be...because I was dying inside and no one would have given me another chance to love someone like I did with Kyuhyun...I'm not denying him or the fact that he was truly important for me, I've just put him as a new starting point in my life, when I would have learned not to lean on others, not to trust people, not to open myself to anyone in order to protect my fragility, well...I would have lived wearing a glass mask, which was to be my shield against life's unfairness, blame and uneasiness.

Luckily for me, at that time, my parents accompanied me to France, and my mom took a leave from work to stay with me in Paris for the first two months as I attended classes at the conservatory. I needed help with adjusting to my new life in a foreign country, but more than anything, I needed someone who could guide me through the most painful moments of my existence. My mom had me thouroughly checked up and doctors discovered that I had partially lost my hearing from the right ear up to around the 70%. It can happen when a quite bothering strong, violent sound, noise or burst occured right next to it, and since I had Jihoon's gun shooting from right above my hear, the shot resulted damaging.

I had firmly believed that my life as a musician was on its verge of being destoryed then, even before blossoming to its fullest.

How many nights I silently cried myself to sleep away from my mom...it was half because of the ear I couldn't use anymore, half because my heart was suffocating due to the forced distance between me and Kyuhyun. I had always been aware of the fact that we had eventually to part ways...but I was convinced that we could have still meant something one to the other in a certain way, even if I had to live in a foreign country far away from him...I knew I would have considered him my special one...forever...and nothing would have made me think otherwise...how wrong I was!

Because of Kyuhyun all my opinions and convictions somehow pathetically failed one after the other. I pathetically failed, before bravely getting up again, in order to stand up to life and to the new unexpected challenge it was giving me.

Kyuhyun doesn't know about the truth; he was blinded by his feelings and never looked for it.

I won't be the one telling him it now...that wouldn't change my ten years of sufferings and solitude.

That wouldn't change the silent love I had always nurtured in my dreams...that wouldn't change anything...not now...

Usually, whenever I remember Ahra's accident, I find it very difficult to sleep, but that night, as I pressed my head against the pillow and still had Kyuhyun in my mind, I almost immediately fell into dream-world...it was a pretty strong sensation, because I felt my breath getting slow and heavier...I closed my eyes and lied there, closing myself once again to the living world...enjoying the fake imaginations that wanted me and Kyuhyun reunited...once again...happier than ever...