Chapter Nine: Jimong

1 year ago

Awake. He was awake. It was something completely disorientating to wake up as a flood of memories of lives he wasn’t sure he had lived, both impossible to live at the same time, came rushing at the front of his brain. Who was he? Was he the king’s adviser or the drunkard that was a failure as a husband and father?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

At the same time his heart jumps in his chest, the machine attached to his body beeps together. He can hear frantic words and a small hand grip his at the same time a round face appears in front of his eyes. His wife was looking at him.

Big fat tears were running down her cheeks as she spoke to him, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. His eyes felt heavy again, he couldn’t hold them open anymore.

It was black once again.

The second time he woke up he was alone in the white room of the hospital, still confused he frowned as a headache blasted through his head, forcing him to shut his eyes. Images danced behind his eyelids, a mixture of a past and present he was still so confused about.

He tried to lift his arm to reach for his hurting head, but it was as if his arm weigh tons, a groan escaped his dry lips, and his throat burned. He wasn’t supposed to be alive. In neither of the lives that tormented his brain. So why was he alive? What was left for him to do?

He groaned once again as the pain increased, and he blindly tried to move, setting some alarm off, because as he notices, he was surrounded by nurses poking him and holding him against the bed. He felt as if something cold entered his veins, and without him wanting, he felt his body relax, and the pain was finally gone.

Jimong embraced the nothingness again.

The third time he woke up his mind was way clearer compared to the other times he did. As his eyes look around the room stopping at the slumped figure of his wife sitting on a chair by his bedside, her face showing all the exhaustion and worry, even though she was still sleeping. He frowned. The last time they saw each other she said she didn’t want to see him anymore and kicked him out the house, he totally understood for all the things he made her suffer.

His career as an expert in Goryeo never launched, and he ended up drowning all his resentment in bottles of soju, ruining his marriage completely in the process. So, he really couldn’t understand why she was even there.

Something should have beeped louder when he was musing over that incoherence because he barely had returned his attention to the world around him, his wife was by his side hugging him while crying.

“Thank God, thank God you are alive Jimong.” A hiccup followed her words as she tightened her arms around him.

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, so he raised an arm, although it was more complicated than he expected, and wrapped around her. As he did it another explosion of pain came crashing into his brain. Another set of memories assaulted his senses with ferocity, and he left out a cry of pain. What were those? They were conflicting with all he knew about his modern life. Since when he was the curator of a museum?

The pain blinded him, and he barely heard his wife calling his name desperately at the same time doctors and nurses swarmed into his room once again. This time he didn’t battle anyone when they poked him and once again ice spread through his veins.

Darkness came as a sweet relief.

The fourth and last time he woke up he felt as if everything was finally in order inside his head. Sort of. He still couldn’t understand why he had this new assortment of memories inside his head, but he wouldn’t be an ungrateful person and discard the blessing he received. He wouldn’t worry about it, not now. Not when he saw the brilliant face of his children when they entered his room that day to kiss him and tell him how much they missed him.

He wouldn’t lose his opportunity to be with them anymore. He couldn’t. He missed them more than his alcohol stupor would let him feel back at that first present, and his life as the Astronomer that half-remembered his life in the 21st century allowed him to. Why would he shun his wife again now that he had her back?

No, he wouldn’t. Because he spent the next few months dedicating himself to heal his body and receiving visits from all his colleagues, and other family members. Every time he entered into contact with those, more he learned about this new life, nothing changed that drastically, just what happened to him after his graduation and marriage. He got his dream job, and never had problems with alcohol. He wondered why all of those changed, it wasn’t as if anything major had changed in the rest of the world, nor in Korean history.

He checked. He made sure to check as soon he could put his hands on a computer, he researched Gwangjong’s life. No mentions of Hae Soo could be seen or abrupt changes at all. He realized that she was supposed to be there all along. She was the Kingmaker after all.

He relaxed even more after that, delegating his life as Choi Jimong, the Astronomer, to a peripheric part of his brain. The only thing that was bothering him was that he couldn’t remember what happened to him before he ended up in that hospital bed. It was all fuzzy the day he met Hae Soo in that lagoon.

And no one bothered to enlighten him on the subject because they were afraid he would have one of his losses of consciousness once again.

It wasn’t until he came back to his work that a memory of the Astronomer, as he referred to his self in Goryeo, came back to his mind. He remembered the last time he met Baek Ah and remembered well what was the last thing Gwangjong sent him.

If he wasn’t mistaken, no one had ever come across to those. No, they hadn’t. Because it was him and Baek Ah that sent it to protection, to be hidden. And he remembered well where. It would be tricky to convince the museum to give funds for what he was thinking, however, he had ways to prove a faint existence of what he was looking for.

The Astronomer left some clever clues for the future researchers to find that treasure that would set aflame all the knowledge about Gwangjong private life. And he thought that would be the best way to honor the woman that was much more than the country ever knew. She was the Kingmaker, she was Hae Soo, the true Queen of Goryeo.

It was his duty to try at least salvage what he could, he was one of the motives they never got to be together after all. But he also couldn’t have had risked all the history of the world for a selfish act. At least it was what he told himself during all those days looking for the clues his past-self left behind, and that he knew where to find. Because it was the only way he could placate his conscience as the memories of Goryeo flashed brightly into his brain at each day he was closer to his objective.

When his colleagues asked him from where the inspiration for that subject of the study came from, he would tell it came from a dream, and all of them would laugh, he would smile and nod. Ah if they knew, they wouldn’t laugh.

Maybe… Maybe they would cry.

Why hasn’t he come across to that before? How could that have escaped him?

When he saw the news that afternoon he never expected to see Taejo on the screen of his television. Of course, he heard about Wang Go Enterprise, but he never thought it had anything to do with the Wangs he once knew. He caught himself going through the internet and looking for everything about Wang Geon, or in reality Kim Jae Geon, and to his surprise, he could see all of them, all the princes. A cold came down his spine as he saw them all in the same family again, despite the pleasant surprise that was to see Oh Seo Yeon (Lee Soo Yeon in the modern days), married and mother of all his sons. But still, he couldn’t help feeling the dread in thinking the history would repeat itself, again.

However, more he researched the family, more his fear got small. They all appeared to have met the positions they deserved in the modern world, no family dispute, as what it looked like, had broken for this new throne that was the Presidency of Wang Go Enterprise.

And there it was him. Gwangjong. Exuding the same strong aura and power he had when he was the Emperor. More even than his father. Wang So, or Kim Joon So as he was known in this life, had the same distant and cold demeanor the young prince had, but without all that darkness in his brilliant brown eyes. He wasn’t spooked by the memories of abuse as Wang So was once. But sadness and solitude were there, the same one Gwangjong had when he lost his true Queen.

An idea came to his mind suddenly, and soon he was researching for that girl. For Hae Soo. He didn’t know her name in the modern world. But her accident… Her accident could help him. It was on the same day as his. Or at least it should be.

He didn’t need to fear the interference on the temporal line anymore. Maybe, he shouldn’t have at that time either.

Jimong looked inside the hidden bunker-like construction made by his past-self. A simple under-earth storage room where important things were sent by the Astronomer to be preserved for the future. Or secrets that should be well hidden for a long period, things an Emperor sent him to be safe and forever remembered.

His colleagues swarmed around him fascinated by what his quest led them to discover. Not that he didn’t know the localization of it, oh he did. He was just smart enough to follow the trail the Astronomer left. When his past-self left those clue it wasn’t for himself, no, he thought one day someone would follow the trail and discover his secret vault. But millennia later it was himself discovering what he had hidden at that time. And it felt fitting in some way.

“I can’t believe it! You are right. This is such a treasure! I never thought we would ever find such a treasure of the Goryeo era out of North Korea. This will put those northern crawling up the walls of jealousy.” One of his co-workers laughed.

“Don’t be so rude.” He answered. “They are still the bigger authority over the period, whether you like or not.” It was an automatic response, but he couldn’t care less for what his companions were talking, not when he was walking in direction of one of the few small containers in that vault.

It was a delicate carved wooden box, with peonies and butterflies beautifully painted on the cherry wood.  He lifts the lid and inside was all Hae Soo’s possessions, Wang So’s poems to her. The paper was yellow, and frail-looking, but surprisingly intact. He moved to a simple black wooden box that was seated beside the cheery one, a box he didn’t remember it was there, opening it to find all the letters Hae Soo sent to Wang So placed neatly inside the box, and on top of it, it was the hairpin. How that ended up here?

The last time he saw that it was with…

“Oh My God!” He was distracted by the surprised scream of one of his colleagues. “I can’t believe it! The lost paints of Wang Baek Ah.” Jimong looked in direction of the voice. “We saw so many references to these paintings in registers of the past, but none was ever found. And they were all here… Jimong-ssi, you found an incredible treasure indeed.”

He left himself smile a bit. “Apparently I did.” His eyes came back to the boxes. “Maybe I did.” His eyes never leaving the hairpin.

It was a bit strange to talk to Hae Soo, Ha Jin as he discovered, without her recognizing him. He had to hold his tongue to not saying anything, even when she lost her balance and looked at him for a fraction of a minute with a spark of recognition. That vanished as quickly as it surged, leaving him confused.

So, after she left with the insistence of her friend, he observed her. He watched her walking through the corridors until the gallery, he saw her looking at the little pieces of her life told through Baek Ah sensible brushes, he watched as her memory came back, and she fell on her knees in front of the painting Gwangjong get done just for her. A painting he sent away because it was for her eyes alone. At her heartbreaking sobs, he understood his role. He finally saw it.

Because it did had occurred a great change in the fabric of the world when Ha Jin went back in time. It was something subtle, but it was there. Wang So reincarnated, as it did all the princes, and they were having a better life, because of her. And he knew, deep down, that So came back to her, he came looking at her like he promised then.

And him? Choi Jimong was the link between present and past. He was the paradox. Because his reality changed, changed so drastically that he had three sets of memories into his mind. And that could only be explained by only one thing. Which was that the universe had corrected itself and for that, it changed his life, so the web of time wouldn’t collapse.

He retreated when an elderly met Ha Jin in that state and offered her a head kerchief. The life would follow its course from now on.

 And it did.

They met, and his smile couldn’t be hidden as he watched the reunion of the souls that were yearning one for the other. And all were there, all those lives that were damaged by a cruel fate. His princes were alive and well. And all were in their rightful places.

“This is so sweet, it's like one of those fairy tales.” The sweet and gentle voice of his wife spoke beside him. “Don’t you think yeobo?”

“Yes, it does.” He looked at his wife with fondness in his eyes. Oh if she knew… She would think she was in one of those dramas she loved so much. “It looks like they found each other after years of not seeing each other.” His arm wrapped around his wife's shoulder, gently pulling her close by. “Souls that cannot be separated, not by time nor death.” His wife turned to look at him with amusement in her eyes.

“Are you making fun of me, husband?”

“No, not in my wildest dreams wife.” He smiles sincerely because he was telling the truth in the end.

And before his wife could respond, he silenced her with a gentle peck on her lips. Indeed, everything was in their rightful place.

A/N: Hello, hello, has someone here? I’m back! Yay! I know is not the update most of you wanted or expected. I’m sorry for that. But is because I need to re-acquaint myself with my characters once again after all this time not writing.

About my impromptu hiatus, I have an explanation to give. This year it was the year I decided to do my exchange program, which I did and I’m still doing. And back at the beginning of the year, I was solving all my problems to finalize all the process to come from Brazil to New Zealand. It was stressful, full of documents, preparing my luggage, and then: I got here. Yay! It took me a little while to get used to it, to get used to my English school, and I even decided to make an important Cambridge Exam, so I was pretty busy. Aside, of course, of making new friends and doing fun stuff. I started writing this chapter back in September, and I just finished it now! Writing got at the back of my priorities until I finished my Exam, and now, I hope, I’m all ready to keep up this project.

So, what you guys thought of this chapter and the revelation in this chapter? Just know that this isn’t the last time you will see Jimong ;)

See you next chapter my lovelies~  Nath TE :*