"How am I ever supposed to forget you?"

[-]

  So much has changed.

  Yet nothing's changed.

  Dal is rebuilding. The prosperity that was once non-existent or concentrated in the city walls the few larger cities now flooded into every town that exists. Seungri walked on with quick steps, half of his face covered by a black mask. He didn't want his guards to tail him for this one. He navigated his way through the bustling market that is alive with activities again, silently, and thankfully noting the apparent decrease in the starving people that used to hunch at the corner begging for scraps from the vendors. The Fire City is still not the wealthiest city in the kingdom, but it feel more homely to him than any other luxurious palace.

  Seungri stepped into his brother's residence which he has been sneaking in quite frequently recently. It was quiet, unlike the recovering town outside. He could barely remember when there was laughter and talking in this house. It was huge but it had never felt emptier.

  "Where is he?" Seungri asked, pulling his disguise off as Jisoo emerged from the kitchen with a pile of firewood.

  "Your majesty." Jisoo bowed, before hesitatingly pointing towards the room on the far left, closest to the walls the surround the front yard.

  A small crease appeared on Seungri's forehead.

  "Drunk?" He asked quietly. He already knew the answer even before the servant nodded grimly.

  It's barely even noon.

   Carefully, he pushed open the doors of what used to be Dara's room. He too, wanted to avoid thinking about her. It hurts even for him too, and he would never believe how impossible it will be to mend this giant hole that her absence left behind.  He didn't even want to remember the fit the Soo Hyuk, the Crown Prince of Taeyang threw when he heard news about Dara's death. He wanted to kill Jiyong himself, until Seungri explained how Jiyong had tried to send Dara to him but she wouldn't go, and that it wouldn't make a difference because his brother is living a life worse than death now. Only then did the Taeyang heir drop his sword and sunk to his knees, sobbing.

  The room was shaded but it was kept neat. The curtains were drawn and his eyes went straight for the bottles of half-empty liquor that's scattered on the small coffee table before catching sight of his brother, whom, slumped on the floor with his head in his arms that were on her old bed, had drank himself out.

  Seungri sighed softly, retreating before shutting the doors close behind him. 

  He's going to kill himself like this.

.

    Am I still functioning?

    Everything was dark, but I could start to pick up something.

    How long have I been dead for?

    I wanted to reach down and touch my arrow wound, except that I didn't know how to move my hands. The pain was long gone. I don't know if I'm dead or hallucinating. It feels like I'm just trapped in my own mind, hearing nothing but my own voice. 

    Reality begins to blur with imagination. In fact, memories, feelings, emotions, all of that; they're now blurred into one thing, like a palette of dirty colors, confusing me. Let's start with sorting out whatever concrete facts I know first.

    My name is Park Dara. My best friend is Park Bom. I fell into a river and travelled to the world 300 years later.

    Wait, no, that's not right. My best friend is Bom...? I am pretty sure of that one, but what about Soo Hyuk? Is it real that I have time-travelled? Or am I simply hallucinating? Am I a person living in Dal or Seoul? Do I still remember how Seoul looks like? Or was I never really from Seoul, but I imagined this whole thing up when I was born and had lived in Dal in the 2300s all along..?

    Or was Dal a fragment of my imagination?

    This is frustrating. There's basically nothing I can be sure of except for my own name. Let's do this again.

    My name is Park Dara,

    I paused, thinking really, really hard about anything that I can be sure of. Anything at all that I can yank out as a unwavering fact admist all these chaos and tangled strings.

    My name is Park Dara.

    I am in love with Kwon Jiyong.

   Jiyong... Jiyong! Yes, that's it! But before I could continue any further, a new sound had penetrated into my head, mixing itself along with my voice of thoughts.

  A distant, regular beep.

  On the other side of my head, I could pick something else up. Another of my senses had opened up.

  The smell of something foreign. Something that I thought I would never be able to smell again.

  Antiseptic.

  Slowly, I tried lifting my eyelids. I failed. But instead, another part of my body twitched. My fingers.

  I focused, cutting off my voices in my head, and tried again.

  Light bursted into the darkness, spreading to every single corner of my body. It was overbearing, even painful, and I shut them quickly before trying again. This time, the light was a little gentler before blurry shapes started to form. 

  The beeps got clearer and the whitewashed walls told me where I am.

  "Bom." I croaked, my voice sounding awfully nasally and broken.

   The blurry shadow beside me slowly shifted into focus. Now I can add in another confirmed fact.

   My name is Park Dara. Park Bom is my best friend.

   "Oh Dara." Bom burst into tears. I was speechless as feelings and sensation started flooding back into my body. I stared at her. Nothing much changed about her appearance. Her chubby cheeks and her coating of long eyelashes that were stained with tears and her plump lips. I haven't seen her since that day I fell off the bridge.

   "But I died." I said plainly, confused as I strained to catch a glimpse of my chest. There was no blood, no arrows, no wounds. 

   "You weren't breathing when they pulled you up from the Han river. You were under for almost 5 minutes. We all thought you were dead." Bom whispered, her fingers pressed shakily against before she pulled me into a tight embrace. "I'm so sorry rabbit, I should have listened to you. It's all because I was so thick and rash that I land you in this state."

    Her old nickname for me and the embrace was so familiar. Memories of our highschool days started flooding back. Yes, I belong here in Seoul. I existed here. But what explains the days I spent in Dal? Those vivid experiences. The people I met... Jiyong, Seungri, Jisoo... even Doodoong.

    "How long was I out for?" I asked, placing my hand on Bom's back. She was sobbing away with relief.

    "Almost 2 months now. They said you might not wake up." 

    2 months? Hold on, that doesn't match! I was in Dal for almost 3 years.

    I glanced around, more confused than ever. The machine linking to my heartbeat beeped steadily.

    "You almost died again yesterday." Bom sniffled. "Your heartbeat stopped in the middle of the night. I was so afriad."

     I pulled away, gaping at her words.

    "That's because I was shot..." I whispered, trying to let things make sense. I was shot and I died in Dal. Was that why my heartbeat here stopped?

    Bom stared at me, her huge eyes perplexed.

     "You're not going to believe me, Bom." I began quickly. "I time travelled."

     "What?"

      "I know its crazy, but when someone pulled me out of a river, I was in a world that's 300 years away from us now. I swear, Bom, you have to believe me, I was there for 3 years." 

     "That can't be, you were here this whole time. I was right here with you." Bom said slowly, her eyes filled with a new kind of fear.

     "It's true." I struggled to explain. "I did things there, I met people there. I really existed there, Bom."

     "You must be dreaming." Bom laughed hoarsely, hastily tucking me back into the white sheets. 

      "No- listen to me Bom-"

      "You need to rest now, but we'll talk when you wake up." Bom said uncertainly, with nothing but worry scribbled over her face. 

       I fell into a fitful sleep, haunted by visions of a wasted Jiyong. When I woke up, Bom was nowhere to be seen. 

       Instead, there was a phyciatrist beside my bed.

[-]

      The girl outside the glass window observed her best friend. She was in the room, her knees pulled to her chest, her head leaned against the window, her eyes trained on the distant Han River that can be seen outside the hospital.

      "I don't think this is doing her any good, doctor. May I take her home?" The worried girl dressed in a pullover and a pair of shorts asked, her fingers gripping on the strap of her sling bag. It's been 2 weeks. Whatever help the doctors promised for Dara's mental wellbeing isn't working out.

      "She needs to be observed. It's common for patients that are in a coma for a prolonged period to suffer some extend of brain damage which caused the coma in the first place." The doctor answered, jotting down a few notes on his clipboard before leaving the patient's visitor alone.

      Bom sighed heavily. This is all because of her. Pulling herself together, she pushed opened the door to her ward, where a small tag labelled 'Schizophrenia' was stuck on.

      The girl in the room heard the door open but she didn't turn around. Bom went to the spot beside her and sat down, drawing her knees to herself like her friend as well. 

      "Cheondong came, didn't he?" Bom asked quietly.

      Dara nodded. 2 weeks had past. Initially, Dara would still feverishly defend herself to the doctors, insisting on the same tale that she had told her when she first woke up. Then she started to resist treatment. But now she seems like a shell of her former self. She's restless and resigned.

      "I'm not crazy, Bom." Dara muttered after a moment of silence.

      Bom felt the choke in . She misses that bubbly, timid Dara that she was used to. 

      "The people in Dal thought I was crazy too when I first arrived and told them I was from the past." She whispered.

      Bom remained silent. She knows Dara doesn't lie, but what if she doesn't even know what she's saying? 

      "I don't know anymore, Bom. I don't know what's real anymore. Maybe you guys are right. I have never been to anywhere called Dal. Maybe I'm really insane. I'm not even sure anymore."

      "Don't say that." Bom said hastily, wrapping her arms around Dara.

      "My head is confused, but my heart hurts when I think of that person. You said the heart doesn't lie." Dara uttered, closing her eyes, drawing comfort from Bom's embrace. A single tear rolled down her pale face.

       She misses Jiyong so bad that the doctors had to give her anti-depressants.

       Everyone says that Jiyong doesn't exists. There was no Jiyong all along. 

       But that can't be. She remembers his fingers on hers, his chin resting on her shoulders as he taught her the correct way to pull the string of an arrow. She remembers the feeling of his lips grazing past her neck as he told her, again and again, that he loves her. 

       She remember the flame in his eyes flicker out as she was pulled backwards into the darkness that was supposed to be death.

       Dara remembers every single thing. More and more as time passes by. Yet the only thing the doctors are doing to try and mend that terrible pain of knowing that she'll never see him again was those small cups of pills that were served three times a day.

       Nobody believes her.

[Dara]

     Finally they agreed to let me go on a walk by myself.

     I strolled around the hospital ground and eventually wandered my way out. Night has fallen completely and the street lights were lit up. 

     The hospital was suffocating. The medicines are driving me insane, blurring my mind or knocking the senses out of me. I walked past the people cycling and the people using their iphones. Do I still know how to use them? I remember myself hesitating before I clicked the lights shut in my ward. Seoul, my home, has became such a stranger to me.

     My legs brought me back to the river which I have been staring and thinking about a lot these days. In the darkness of the night, the river seems to be so deep. How did I survive it? I sat down tentatively, with my legs dangling on the banks. 

     I know they think I'm mad. I saw the doctor's face and how the trainee nurse was trying not to giggle from what I said. It hurts to eventually accept the fact that no one can help me. No one will listen to what I have to say. Even Bom, even Cheondong, my brother. The look of worry on their faces when I tried to tell them the truth hurts more than anything else. Eventually, I learnt the painful way that keeping my mouth shut is the only way to make them feel better and to feel less guilty.

    All the brainwashing the doctors had tried. All the medication. I really don't know what's real and what's not. Sometimes, I'm fully convinced that yes, I am indeed ill. I should just listen to the docs and help myself recover. Then I can start a new life, find a new job. I would then swallow my pills without protest, make my own bed, tidy myself up before the crushing pain threatens to drown me again. 

    I know I'll never get over Jiyong. Whether he existed or not is not my concern now. Somehow I am the living proof to anyone that it is possible to love someone that may be only a fragment of their mind.

    It is that knowledge, along with the resignation that I'll never be able to recover fully, that I'll never be able to adapt back to Seoul again on my own, that I'll never be able to put the past behind and start a new life that is slowly eating away whatever hopes I have. It makes everything seems so bleak and meaningless, almost like I am living like a walking dead.

   I swung my legs a little, realising that tears had again washed down my face. I turned to look back at the hospital not that far away. They would want me back by now. I turned back to the black river. I don't want to go back again. 

   I'm pretty sure that jumping back in wouldn't bring me back to Dal. My mortal shell is already dead there. But what else is there to lose from trying? How can I die again if I'm not even living?

   I prepared myself to slide quietly into the river without anyone noticing. But just as I braced myself, a small commotion some distance away caught my attention. I paused, my hands gripping on the sides of the bank as I watched how  a small crowd had gathered some 20 yards away. 

  Why? Did they find a body?

  Curious to see which poor soul had decided to escape this place like me, I decided that it doesn't hurt to wait a little longer. I struggled and stood up to approach the crowd.

   I was held up right at the back. The people were whispering. I doubt the person is dead, I could hear soft coughing. If that's so why isn't anyone calling an ambulance? Just then, I heard a voice.

   "Where is this place?"

   It's the voice that's ringing again and again in my head, torturing me, threatening to drive me insane. It's awfully similar to the voice that made me curl myself up in a ball in the wee hours of the morning on the hospital bed as I cried my heart out.

   Numbly, I find myself pushing past the crowd to reach to the core.

   "Are you sure you're already, mister?" A man asked, trying to help a guy that was soaking wet to his feet. The guy glanced around wildly, taking in whatever that is around him, before he eventually turned around and locked eyes with an already stunned frozen me.

   Chocolate brown eyes.

   Jiyong is real.

   Time has frozen still. My mind screamed in triumph. It has won against the doctors, that whatever that's held in there is the truth. But my heart slowed and quietly, quietly started to throb in pain.

   Jiyong is real.

   His eyes were partially covered by his fringe that has draped itself over them, dripping with water. His lips were parted and he stared wordlessly at me, clad in only my hospital gown, breathing laboriously as he tried to take in the fact. 

  I wonder if he is as surprised to see me as I am to see him again.

  Maybe surprise is an understatement.

  It was only when he choked out my name that sent me breaking down as I leaped straight into his chest, crying his name over and over again.

  "You're alive." Jiyong breathed, crushing me in his arms. His warm tears were mingled with the cold river water that dripped onto my clothes. "You're really from the past." 

  "How did you get here?" I sobbed, clutching onto him tightly. He is my reality. He is the reality. They were wrong. They were all wrong. I wasn't dreaming, nor was I hallucinating, nor was my brain damaged from being without oxygen for too long.

   I travelled to Dal, met and fell in love with Kwon Jiyong.

   It's real.

   Jiyong pulled me away. The crowd around us hesistatingly started to disperse, feeling intrusive. A wild look of happiness starting to appear on his face. "I don't know- I was trying to die and-"

   He jumped into the river.

   "You're so stupid." I started to cry again, hitting his chest. What if it went wrong and he died? "How could you do that, idiot?"

   Jiyong grabbed my hands.

   "I thought I lost you forever, Park Dara." He rested his chin on the crown of my head. That's when I realised the people were gawking and whispering because Jiyong was dressed differently from us. 

   This is not a dream, is it?

   "Stay with me." I begged. 

   "Always."

[-]

    "You look a lot better, Miss Park. The treatment must have worked."

    Dara smiled at the doctor. The color had re her face and the doctors had credited it towards her improved state of mind from her timely intake of medicines. 

     "I'm ready to start a new life now." Dara said, and the old doctor smiled in approval. 

     "Remember to take your pills timely and come back for your appointments." He reminded her, who nodded obediently.

     "Isn't your best friend here to pick you up today?" He asked again.

     Dara looked back towards the door behind them before smiling. "Oh, no, my boyfriend is here today." 

     The doctor frowned. He didn't know she had a boyfriend prior to the accident. 

     "Just one last thing." He said, "You have stopped mentioning about your time travelling since a week ago. Have you-"

     "Figured it out? Yeah, I did. I gave myself some time and I realised that it was all just in my head. I should have accepted help sooner." Dara said.

     There was a knock on the door and it opened to revealed a well dressed young man who went up to Dara and planted a small kiss on her cheek. The only odd thing about this stranger that has never visited Dara was his striking red hair.

     "Ready to go?" He asked, smirking at the girl.  

      Dara bowed to the doctor, who nodded back. As the door closes behind the couple, the old doctor faintly remembers Dara mentioning something about someone with bright crimson hair from the world she had conjured.

      The air outside the hospital was fresh. Dara took it in deeply, feeling safe knowing that Jiyong was there right beside her with his arm on her waist. She dropped the small bag of pills that were prescribed to her into the metal trash bin beside them.

      "Ready to start a new life?" Dara asked.

      "I don't know." Jiyong squinted at the sunlight. "This place is so strange, but it doesn't seem that bad."

      "Welcome to my world, Jiyong." Dara beamed at her lover, who smiled back at her.

END

Finally its completed.

I have so many things to say to you guys, but I

can only shorten it into two worlds which are non other than

Thank You.

thankyou for the love you have showered for my first Daragon story. Thankyou for sticking through despite my bad grammar and

typos. thankyou for always leaving comments which are the things I look the most foward to reading.

thank you for being my invisible strength.

And to the older readers that had been here through every other stories that I have written (you know who you are)

you guys are really people I consider friends.

I would write an epilogue for this but there's no guranteed when, and I'll be

doing "Gangs of Itaewon" next

and yes it will be daragon so you guys can subscribe to it first.

For now, I'll take a break, along with the beautiful memories

of Jiyong and Dara that I've gained from this journey.

Love you guys!

http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/1100089/gangs-of-itaewon-bigbang-dara-daragon-darahae-donghae-gdragon-mafia