TW: Major Character Death

When the vehicle halted spinning after the impact, Hae Rin was still a bit disoriented and when she came to, she saw how the whole road was a complete wreck. “Noona, noona?” a voice called out from the back and she turned to look at the passengers of the car.

Kyungil was in a semiconscious state with eyes slightly closed and blood dripping down the side of his face. Right behind him was Hae Jin, now unconscious but little to no visible bleeding. To her right, Jun groaned in pain, while trying to reach out to her.

“Oppa?” she called out to Kyungil, carefully touching the hand that was holding her just a while ago, now lay limply between them. An almost inaudible hum reached her ears, despite all the chaos around them, “Stay with me, Oppa!” she ordered, trying to keep him awake.

“Are you alright, Jun?” she looked at him in between, while he nodded, holding one of his arms and clearly trying to hide the pain. “Hae Jin?”

“She’s not answering, noona!” his voice was oozing with worry.

“Hang in there, Jun! Help will be here anytime now.” then she turned to Kyungil and called out his name to keep his eyes open, “Yah Song Kyungil! Don’t you dare close your eyes!” she barked.

A few minutes later, there were multiple sirens around them, indicating the arrival of various ambulances. First responders were running around, assessing the conditions of the people in the wreck and quickly evacuating them in the order of their conditions, giving the most importance to the critical cases.

As these ambulances left the scene, a few others arrived. Kyungil and Hae Jin were loaded into the ambulance and was transported earlier, since Hae Rin and Jun seemed to be faring better than the rest.

One of the paramedics, checked up on the people who seemed to be conscious enough and not displaying any serious trauma. Jun’s arm was hung in a sling, after the medic popped his shoulder back in its socket. They informed them that they would be transporting them to the hospital with the next set of ambulances.

While they waited, out of nowhere, Hae Rin lost her consciousness and dropped down but before she hit the ground, another person standing close by caught hold of her while a few others let out yelps and cries of help, taken aback.

Someone even fetched one of the medics who were there. Even they weren’t sure of what had happened with her. They immediately loaded her in the next available ambulance when Jun informed them of her pregnancy. They even let him accompany her as they drove them to the nearest possible hospital.

Upon reaching the hospital’s emergency ward, Jun rushed in and updated the medical staffs there with her medical history. They rushed her in and ran some tests and scans. The ER doctor announced to him that the baby was doing fine, looking through the ultrasound scan.

He even told Jun that the rest of the scans came back pretty normal as well and that her unconscious state could be the result of the trauma stress and that they would keep her in observation until she regained consciousness. Just when he was about to walk away, he noticed an unusual scarring and discoloration in her left arm.

He was little angry at the staffs for missing this and yelled out at them to do some more tests. After looking at the result, he contacted a few more specialists and a moment later, he informed Jun that she needed an emergency surgery to repair the damage in her hand and that he had to contact her guardian to take care of necessary formalities.

Jun contacted the twin’s mother who grumbled and mumbled stuffs about having to leave her favorite daughter while she’s fighting for her life and to meet the one who had caused it. An hour or two later, she arrived at the hospital, and took care of all the formalities.

But she didn’t stop at that though. She ended up creating a huge scene of how Hae Rin was unscathed from the accident, the out-of-wedlock pregnancy and how the astrologer’s prediction of her birth bringing bad luck to the entire family and so on.

She even went to the extent of demanding an abortion in the name of being her guardian. However, Kyungil’s parents and Jun were very stubborn in letting her make her own decisions later when she wakes up, as long as the two were being healthy and luckily, even the doctors felt it was safer that way.

And when things didn’t go as she expected, she huffed and groaned and simply left. Initially, people thought she will be back once she has cooled down but even after a few days, Jun couldn’t contact her. It was as if she has fallen off the face of the earth. He even tried to find out the hospital Hae Jin was taken to but that wasn’t easy either.

After a while, they heard that the twins’ mother had even vacated the house overnight. Since then, Kyungil’s parents stepped up and took up the role of Hae Rin’s guardianship.

A week or two passed and Hae Rin was yet to regain consciousness. During the day, Kyungil’s and Jun’s parents took turns in taking care of her while Jun attended University. In the evening, he used to spend some time in the hospital room, mostly playing songs sung by Kyungil, at times even read some storybooks for the unborn child and a few times, spoke to Hae Rin, asking her to wake up soon.

The doctors weren’t exactly sure of the reasons behind her unconscious state. However, since the baby and she seemed to be fairing healthy otherwise, they decided to wait and observe some more while providing them with all the nutrients necessary, intravenously.

Just when the doctors were starting to worry about her unconscious state for nearly a month, Hae Rin finally regained her consciousness one fine day. Kyungil’s mother was the first person to take notice and she immediately called out the medical staff for help.

The doctors checked her vitals and once again ran a multitude of tests and scans before they explained to her, who seemed confused, about the accident and her medical conditions and her baby and so on. The first thing she did the moment they brought her back to her room was ask about Kyungil.

His mother told her to concentrate on her health first and that she would take her to him once she got better. Hae Rin bought it for the first week as she did her best with the rehab therapy. Her dominant hand was still in recovery from the surgery and so, she was still dependent on others to do most of the work.

A while later, she was able to walk on her own but still had trouble using her hand. The doctors were unsure of how much of normality she would regain in her hand even after the rehab.

One day, she was alone in the room since Kyungil’s mother had to leave early and Jun wouldn’t be back until an hour or two later to get her discharged later that day.

She was bored being by herself and so, decided to take a walk and maybe try to sneak in to whichever room Kyungil was admitted in. she slowly dragged herself out of the room and roamed around trying to find the room, however, none of the rooms had his name on it. So she approached the staff and enquired about it.

Unaware of the situation, the nurse informed her of everything, having felt sorry for her. Hae Rin couldn’t believe what she had just heard and nearly stumbled. Her eyes filled with tears as she requested to make a phone call. After speaking with a friend of Kyungil’s, she excused herself to go back to her room.

However, instead of her room, she simply walked out of the hospital and hailed a taxi and rode to the local family park where Kyungil was supposedly buried. Upon reaching the place, it took her a while to locate the exact location of the tree under which his ashes were buried.

The small nametag on the still medium sized tree was her final blow. All the emotions that she was so badly holding back, finally crashed down. Her hand reached out to the trunk, shakily and when the tree was still there upon contact, she flopped to the ground and tears flowed down her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around the tree and let it all sink in.

Everything finally made sense to her, the reasons behind why Kyungil hasn’t visited her in hospital yet, why the dog tag with her name that was supposed to be with him was now in her possession, and everything else.

She kept uttering apologies for being responsible for his death and how she should have been the one laid there instead. A while later, she rested her back against the tree and continued speaking to it as if she was speaking to Kyungil himself.

She kept wiping her tears away, as she continued to speak out all the things that she had left to tell him. “I still have so many things to tell you. What about our baby? I couldn’t even tell you about it.” Fresh set of tears fell down her cheeks, as she rubbed her hand against the baby bump she has got. A while later it started raining but she continued to sit still against the tree, still continuing to speak to it from time to time.

Meanwhile, when Jun got to the hospital, he was confused upon finding the room void of Hae Rin. When he asked the staff about it, none of them seemed to have any knowledge of her whereabouts. He tried calling the new phone they had bought for her and it rang right there in the room.

He then tried calling everyone he could think of, from Kyungil’s parents to his own parents and he even tried contacting Da Yeong and Benji but no one knew where she might be.

Just when he was running out of options to check, he received a call from Kyungil’s mother who informed him about the call she had received from one of Kyungil’s friends. The same guy who had given the park’s address earlier to Hae Rin had decided to check with Kyungil’s mother since he felt something was amiss.

Jun thanked her for the information and decided to head over, right after relaying the same news over to Da Yeong and Benji who too were searching around for her and the latter two also told him that they would be heading there.

Nearly an hour later, Jun arrived at the park. It was still pouring as he quickly parked the car and rushed in towards the place where Kyungil rested. Upon reaching there, he found Hae Rin seated, leaning against the tree and completely drenched in the rain.

“Noona?” He crouched down beside her, to see that her eyes were closed and her hand held the dog tag tightly that was now hanging around her neck. She was trembling severely while mumbling something under her breath.

He sensed she was burning like hot coal as he loosened her hand and wrapped it around his neck to help her stand up. Benji and Da Yeong arrived at that time and Benji immediately rushed to his aid and supported her by wrapping her other arm around his shoulder.

“Kyungil oppa, I’m sorry,” she kept mumbling again and again, as they helped her in the car and drove her back to the hospital where she received treatment for two more days before she got discharged again.

The first thing they did when they took her home was, explain her what exactly happened to him after the accident and why they had kept it a secret from her and then gave her Kyungil’s personal items that he had on him during the accident. It included items like his watch, wallet, sunglasses, some accessories, and the dog tags on the ball chain.

She removed the chain from the bag and ran her fingers on the dog tags with Kyungil’s names and details engraved on it. Kyungil and she had matching chains that had details of each other engraved on it. She removed the chain that had her details from around her neck and exchanged one of the dog tags from both chains with each other, so that both of the chains contained a tag of both of their details.

Jun told her that Kyungil was aware of her pregnancy and then handed her a small box, inside which she found two rings of different sizes. “Hyung was planning to propose to you during our stay there. He wanted me to keep it safe for him until then.” He told her, patting her back as she sobbed uncontrollably. “And he knew about the little one,” he whispered, meaning the unborn child in her belly.

Days passed by and since her hand’s condition was still bad en