♪ I wake up, this strange moment
Where am I? Who am I?
Awaken, tears are falling
Who was I for all this time? ♪

--

Jaebum opened his eyes, blinking once, twice, squeezing warm liquid down his temple. He brushed it with his finger and stared at the wetted skin, confused. Why would he cry when he had such a happy dream? The memory was playing over in his head again, and he smiled as he remembered their promise. Summer break will be over in a week, and he could see Jinyoung again. Of course he felt happy, but somehow a dull ache that twisted his heart clouded the feeling grey.

He almost jumped as a blaring noise broke the silence. He cursed, reaching for his phone to turn it off. However, a huge text in caps on the flashing screen stopped him.

READ THE NOTEBOOK BESIDE YOUR BED RIGHT AWAY!

His brows knitted in confusion. He didn’t remember any notebook beside the ones he used for school, although there was more doodles than writings there. Why would he read them right after he woke up, and he even put on a reminder for that? The alarm got louder and louder he quickly turned it off. He sat up and looked around his room, frowning as he saw many things he didn’t recognize, like hundreds of polaroid photos almost covering a whole wall facing the side of his bed. His head spun, wondering who put them there. Was that some new kind of prank?

A weird book on the nightstand caught his eyes. Only after he examined it closer he realized that it was a few notebooks bound together, each more worn out than the one under. He never saw the book before, yet it felt so vaguely familiar. He took it and started reading from the first page, unfolding the truth of his life his brain couldn’t keep.

It was a journal, recording everything that had happened in his life. Apparently, he wasn’t a high school junior anymore, he was twenty five years old. In that summer break, the car he was in was hit by a truck and it damaged his brain. Since then his new memories would only stay until he sleep, but all his past memories still stayed intact, as clear as the day. Tears pouring down his face as he learnt that his parents passed away in the accident. His heart was crushed that he couldn’t even remember their final moment, or if he was there at their funeral. He cried and cried, clutching the frozen smile of his parents in the photo he found inside the book over his chest.

After he calmed down, not that the pain had vanished but because he had conceded to the cruel fate that befell him instead, he braved himself to continue reading.  Turned out his parents left him quite a big sum of insurance money. His grandmother took care of him after the incident, but she too had passed away not too long ago, pulverizing the shattered piece of his heart into dust. The adult him was a painter under the alias JB. It said his older cousin became his manager and took care of all his painting. Seemed like his cousin did a pretty good at it, from the many results that popped up when he entered his alias in the search bar of his phone. Turned out he had won some big competitions. All the articles that popped up called him the ghost of painting world, since he never showed up in public and no one knew who he was.

He read the journal until the end, storing his lost life inside his brain with a pang in his heart, knowing it would all disappear again when the day ended. And the next morning when he woke up, he would repeat all this agony again. He closed the book and put it back to where he took it. He glanced around his room once again until his eyes stopped at the photos that, according to the book, he took. They might be things he saw and wanted to keep even though he would end up forgetting. He imagined what he felt when he captured each of those beautiful photos, and somehow he felt better. At least his heart was lighter than before.

He got off of bed and the room, walked across the hallway and entered the bathroom. He found a face staring back at him, so familiar yet foreign for him. It had his eyes, his nose, his lips, his moles, but with sharper features than the one in his memories. The tail of that person’s hair almost reached his shoulder, his fringe nearly covered the pair of bloodshot eyes. Piercings lined along the edge of each ears. That person opened his mouth when he did, showing a gap formed by a missing tooth that should have been there. The journal didn’t mention anything about it, so he assumed it was a fragment of what the car crash had cost him. He closed his eyes, burning the imagery inside his brain, telling himself that the face he owned was no longer the one in his memories, but the one pictured in the mirror over the sink. He opened his eyes again and smiled at his reflection.

“Hi, Jaebum,” he greeted his new self. There was no use dwelling over his misfortune. His life only had one day, shorter than twenty four hours. He should use his time to his utmost, so he wouldn’t feel regret when he closed his eyes and the life he had at the moment ended. He turned his head away from the mirror and got himself ready to start the day.

--

Jaebum bent down, using his knees to support himself as he caught his breath. Who thought tailing the first cat he found was a great idea just because he was bored? The white cat just made him climbed up and down the slopes, squeezed himself through narrow passages, went under bushes, and jumping fences. Glad he lived in rural area so there was no witness of his stupidness or else he might be sued for trespassing. And the cat was even nowhere in sight when he straightened up again.

He lifted the baseball cap he was wearing, wiping the sweat that had dampened the fabric before putting it back. His long-sleeved tee was sticking to his skin. He looked up at the seemingly never ending hills and sighed. Maybe he should rest for a while before coming down. He was hungry, and he had already lost the cat anyway. So he sat on a big stone with flat surface on the side of the road, sipping a few gulps of water from the bottle he brought in his backpack. He took a deep breath and released it to the air, feeling his heartbeat slowed down.

A sheet of white petal landed on his shoes, and he looked up. Branches filled with cherry blossoms criss-crossed above him, with clear blue sky as the background. He never came to this place before, at least as long as he could remember. Well, he went to school in the capital since middle school, staying at his uncle’s house. That was why he only went home on long breaks and rarely wandered far. He was quite surprised at how the area wasn’t that different from his memories. Then again, maybe that was why his grandmother and his uncle decided to turn him back to that rural area instead of taking care of him in the capital where everything changed so fast. His eyes followed as more petals descended riding the wind, and more, and more. It looked like snow, drawing back the winter when he first met Jinyoung.

He closed his eyes as he reminisced the memory and chuckled. Funny how he could clearly remember something from many years ago when he couldn’t even recall what he ate for dinner yesterday. His heart ached at how strong his feeling still was toward the boy. Like his mind, his heart was also stuck in one place. His time stopped that day, and no matter how many years had passed or how much the world change, he would still be the eighteen year-old Jaebum. He would only be able to love one person until he died, and that person was Park Jinyoung.

A meowing sound made his eyes flew open. He looked at the source, finding the cat he was following sitting beside him, staring at him with her big sapphire eyes. His mouth curled up in a grin..

“Hey, I was looking for you. Where did you disappear to?”

The cat meowed an answer. He reached out his hand to pat her, and she leaned into his palm. He smiled fondly at the cat. He took out his camera and captured her inside the squared white frame. Just like him, the fact that cats were adorable would never change.

“Jaebum?”

A voice called out from behind him, and he froze. It was a voice etched in both his memory and heart deeply. A voice that sounded like a tune when pronouncing his name. A voice he longed to hear so much it hurt. He turned his head to its owner, and looking back at him was the same face he saw in his dream, but more refined and matured. The first and last love of his life, standing before him, and he felt like crying.

Jinyoung.

________________________________

Song: Stray Kids - Awaken

Gonna use songs for chapter titles in this fic from now on. Also I've just read the summary of a drama called "Devilish Joy", and the backstory is surprisingly similar to this fic. I love the casts too, so it's gonna be in my must watch list when it's completed. And for anyone who didn't know, this condition is called anterograde amnesia, which is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact (bless you, wiki). I made it based on the thought of what if you can only love one person in your life because you're literally unable to, not those 'well I tried to move on but I can't'. Anyway, hope you like this chapter :))

Oh and I'm sorry this chapter is short. Gonna write longer next time :D