Chapter 1. The Start of a New Beginning

"Some people say 'How can you live without knowing?'

I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing.

That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know."

– Richard Feynman
 

The start of a new beginning…

She read somewhere some long eons ago. The pun made sense somehow.

A lot happened three months ago— a lot of old things that have been added to her memory bucket. Every day for the past months seemed to be too eventful for her. To list: their father and his family migrated to Australia; their mother re-married; she graduated from high school and just a few weeks ago, she moved in with her older sister. And right this moment, she has started living anew. It was really the start of her new beginning or beginnings, for that matter. With all the things that happened, she couldn’t be happier to be just strolling around, worry-free in her new “home,” as her sister would call it.

Her Yuri Unnie is a doctor—an intern neurosurgeon to be precise, she’s pretty much just about that word and more like: intelligent, great sense of humor, generous to a fault and distractingly beautiful. Joohyun looked up to her sister more than anyone else in the world, after all she is all she got. Although their parents have always been there for them, but they understood it the moment they got divorced that it would be just the two of them at the end of the day. She loves her parents very much but their divorce almost broke her to pieces; she was too young to understand then, but now she did see the whole point and was thankful that some things didn’t change at all. She and Yuri stayed with their mom until the latter got into med school and after that she was basically on her own.

Joohyun has always been their appa’s apple of the eye and she loves her dad very much. She would visit him very often and play with her younger half-siblings, so when she learned that they were finally moving, it made her very sad. When her mother remarried, her dad told her to go with them to Australia but Yuri convinced their parents that it would be better if Joohyun would stay with her. So that was the set-up, she moved to this little town outside Seoul to live with her sister. Everything felt new, all of them felt wonderful. Her hopeful eyes glistened with the afternoon sun.

Joohyun smiled to herself while she shielded her face with the back of her hand to avoid the sudden burst of sunshine. She was just thankful that the wind blew mildly now and her light pink sundress just stayed in place. It was the third day she was able to walk along the city square by herself; usually her sister would take her to places just to have herself familiarized with her new surroundings. This time she was tracing the way to her new university.

It was rather a sunny afternoon, except for some scattered showers now and then, that she was tempted to drop by an ice cream parlor on the way and walked back to the park with a sweet potato ice cream cup in hand. Joohyun found a shady corner just in front of the open fountain where some kids were wading on the splashing waters. Just then, a screaming toddler caught her attention as this guy started chasing her around. He too got almost drenched by the splashes of waters until he finally grabbed the child by the waist and spun her around that it triggered fits of laughter from the little girl. Jooohyun couldn’t help but giggle on her own as she watched that beautiful scene in front of her. Moments like that always capture her heart because she was a daddy’s girl.

The man was almost the same age as she was or probably some years older and by mental calculation, the little girl might be three. He must have married earlier. She thought to herself and smiled at the idea that he reminds her of her father. If she would get married in the future, she would see to it that her husband would be much like her father. After a few struggles with the squirming child on his arm, the man walked towards the drier end of the park where a middle aged woman took the girl, smiled at the man and walked away while the toddler waved at him.

So it wasn’t his kid, Joohyun found herself smiling with the thought but hurriedly chastised herself. Why does she care if the baby wasn’t his? Then, again, she continued to watch him. His hair was wet, his light blue dress shirt was somehow drenched but his khaki pants obviously caught most of the water. Just then he started ing his shirt that she just sighed and looked away as if he would actually notice her staring at him. It was a sign for her to take her leave so she started to gather her bag beside her and stood, watching a guy undress in public wasn’t really her thing. All of a sudden, just as she started walking and minding her own way, Joohyun inadvertently locked glances with the man who was still standing a few good meters away from her, with his uhhh half-ed shirt. The distance itself could not hide the slight flicker of smile forming on the man’s lips as he tipped his head ever so slightly towards her. She could almost see those eyes partly hidden by his wet hair curtaining his face.

Wonderful.

Taken aback by the attention, she smiled awkwardly but turned behind her hoping she wasn’t making a fool of herself. He could be smiling at someone else, but there was nobody, and nothing else, but some overgrown grass weeds behind her. When she looked back again, the man started walking away, leaving her in awe; leaving her to wonder how he managed to set her heart aflutter.

Wonderful eyes. Great smile.

She walked on for some unknown reasons that she only stopped on the spot where he stood. Joohyun felt lightheaded but she smiled secretly. It never happened to her before, that secret pleasure of that feeling which suddenly rushed through her. She must be crazy but the randomness of it made her feel a little dizzy. Finally shaking her head, she heaved a deep sigh and decided to just forget about it. Anyway, it wasn’t like the whole world turned differently for her. It was all the same and she might not see that stranger again. A shiny red object a few feet from her took her away from her reverie; she reached for it and realized it must be his.

It was a red guitar pick. A smile curved on her lips. She must have gone crazy.

~~~

“So how did it go?” Yuri slipped her stilettos off as she walked into the house and noticed her sister busying herself in their kitchen. “Did you happen to make friends today?”

“Naaahhh...” Joohyun muttered rolling the kimbap carefully, “How was your day?” She glanced at her sister across the room who sprawled herself on the white couch. Because of her hefty pay at the hospital, Yuri managed to get herself a two-bedroom unit in one of the upscale apartment buildings in the area. Although, it wasn’t as big as the old one they had when they were still young back at Seoul, it was comfortable enough for both of them. Aside from the bedrooms, it has an enormous (too enormous for the fact that neither of them could cook properly) all-white walled kitchen with a marble island counter in the center and a bay window seating that served as the dining area.

“As usual, Ms. Han’s emergency surgery was over an hour late but it was a success,” she massaged her temple and sighed, “Apparently, we are going to have a new head doctor next week.”

“I hope he’s somewhere your age, drop-dead gorgeous—”

“And with eyes to die for,” Yuri sing-sang with her sister and laughed.

Joohyun shook her head leaving her task for a while to pour a half-glass of wine for her sister and sat beside her, gently massaging her sister’s leg, “Unnie, you need to have a life sometimes. You have been burying yourself to this hospital and all. I hardly see you.”

“Huh? I took one week leave, Joohyun,” she scolded her sister then took a little sip, “I don’t know... my life is here and now, after this internship I’m sure to get the residency by the end of this year and by then—”

“You’d be busier...” she stood and went back to the kitchen, “Before you know it, your life just passed you by...”

“And who are you to say? Have you started making friends? I hope you’d find a good guy in school,” she winked.

“Uhm... Unnie...” she giggled especially when Yuri’s eyes narrowed so she bit her lips and continued rolling another kimbap as if what she was about to recount wasn’t all that important, “I saw this guy at the park this afternoon...”

“Is he handsome?” Yuri hung her arms on the backrest of the sofa. It was kind of like a bonding time for them, when they talk about boys.

“Hmmm... he is...????” Joohyun muttered to herself then chuckled as Yuri did her flirty ‘yahh’, “I can’t remember clearly because he was standing a bit far from me, but he has wonderful eyes...”

“Wow, you can’t remember if he’s handsome because he was far but you happened to see his eyes... and wonderful eyes? How does one ever get to have wonderful eyes?” She laughed to which her younger sister rolled her eyes, “Did you get his number?”

“Unnie! Like no? We just looked at each other and that’s all. He left and I couldn’t find him anymore...”

“You silly! You mean, you followed him!” Yuri stood and gave her sister a little slap on the shoulder, “Whoa! This is new, our Joohyun just followed some random guy with wonderful eyes!”

“Unnie, I did not!!!” She complained louder, “I only followed him because he dropped something.”

“Heyyy... it should be us, girls to drop something and for guys to ran after, not the other way around!”

“Unnie, he dropped his guitar pick... and what am I to drop just in case?”

“Oh yeah...” a spark of humor played on Yuri’s eyes but she brushed it off when her sister pouted. She draped her arm on Joohyun’s shoulder, “Dear dongsaeng, I hope your path and this guitar man with pretty eyes will intersect again in the very near future.”

“Yeah, funny but he reminded me of daddy... that short moment of seeing him.” She smiled to herself as the scene seemed to unfold before her again, especially the way he laughed while he was turning the toddler around.

Yuri patted her sister’s head gently, “there... there...”

That night Joohyun decided to keep the pick inside her jewelry box. She hoped that one day, she would find him again.

~~~

Jung Shinwoo cussed at the phenomenal vexation the day was turning out. It wasn’t the perfect day for the start of the school year, the start of his second attempt to ‘straighten up his acts’ like what his umma always told him. Last year, he had this episode where he just decided that he had enough of college so he just left his classes and didn’t continue. This went on until his mother literally cried in front of him and it made him realize that he couldn’t just disappoint his parents and his family. Thus, he went back to school by the second half of the year and managed to complete some of his major subjects, but there were still some that he needed to work on. He promised them and himself that he would, at least, make it till the end of his major.

It seemed that his entire dilemma was happening all at once. It was like some kind of a trial, like something was testing him. That morning there was a problem with one of his subjects, they waited for the professor in the room listed on their schedule but the professor was waiting for them in a different room and he was mad at them for not attending his classes on the first day of classes.  The rest of the day was really, really bad. He sighed as he entered the lecture room to his last class of the day— Logic and Debate under Professor Kim, too much for a good luck to him. The room was starting to get filled up with students, all of them were strangers to him since it was a class he didn’t finish last year so all of them are freshmen. He gave a tight-lipped smile to one nerd looking guy with thick glasses and motioned him to take the seat beside him. He looked smart enough for future reference. Shinwoo laughed to himself and stretched out his arm to him, “Jung Shinwoo.”

“Anyeonghaseyo, I’m Lee Jonghyun,” he timidly accepted the handshake.

“Lee Jonghyun, you are one hell lucky guy sitting beside a sunbae. Don’t you know?” Shinwoo remained serious while the other guy gave him a confused look. “I’m an irregular sophomore, it’s my second time to take this class so I know how to go about with it,” he winked confidently trying to earn this poor guy’s trust.

“Ohh, sunbae!” Jonghyun bowed and smiled widely, “please look after me.”

He laughed to himself and eyes wandered around the room. These kids all look fresh, Shinwoo thought to himself. All of them don’t know the kind of boredom the subject is about to offer them except for the professor. He knew Professor Kim Taewoo is one tough person to please, but could not do anything because he couldn’t choose his classes. All the thoughts running in his head were suddenly silenced by a ghostly apparition—a girl stood just by the doorway and looked around. The light from behind her seemed to make her glow some more, like she has grown a pair of angel’s wings. Ah, finally, a pretty face, he smiled secretly hoping for her to look his way so he could offer the other empty seat beside him. She has a long hair adorned with a white headband, her skin looked so fair that he could probably see the veins on her arms if he happened to looked closely at them. Her eyes were round and pretty like hiding a smile with those cute aegyosal.

Shinwoo suddenly felt nervous when she finally looked his way and a cold breeze rushed by his neck when she smiled at him. Shinwoo must not lose his cool just because of this pretty apparition so he winked slightly at her and expected her to walk to him. However, she looked straight ahead like it was a mistake to smile at him and walked towards the other end of the room and sat two rows away from him.

“You like her?”

Jonghyun inquired as he pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose that made Shinwoo snicker, “Naaah, I don’t like girls who are too full of themselves.”

“Actually, she is a nice girl,” Jonghyun said matter of factly.

“How did you know?”

“I sat beside her at Algebra this morning,” he said looking at her direction, “She is really smart too.”

“Oh, you like her,” Shinwoo elbowed playfully him but the other guy waved his hand as if he said something sinful.

“I… I—“ he stuttered then smiled shyly, “I like someone already, sunbaenim.”

Shinwoo suddenly laughed and shook his head patting the younger guy’s shoulder, “I’m sorry, Jonghyun. And please call me hyung instead.”

A few minutes later, Professor Kim arrived and started terrorizing the class. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Logic and Debate. I am your professor for this semester, whether you like it or not. Inside my class I don’t want to catch anybody sleeping, cheating, eating, dating, whispering and all the other verbs related to everything that I mentioned. This class is all about Logic and Debate, of course. Here you will think, argue and reason logically and critically. Recognize a good argument from a bad argument. Analyze theories, thoughts and learnings. Apply principles to your daily and ordinary language and use logic and argumentation properly to solve problems reasonably.”

The professor went on while Shinwoo continued staring at the girl’s back. He should have asked Jonghyun (who was at the moment, for reasons only known to him, taking down notes) of her name. He knew he was physically attracted to that girl but learning she was ‘nice and smart’ somewhat blew his imagination off. He doesn’t like girls who would outsmart him; he only likes those who just swoon all over him.

“This will be your seating arrangement for the rest of the semester,” Professional Kim tapped the paper he gave the students minutes ago, and handed another set of documents, “Pass this around, the syllabus for this subject, any question and violent reaction will be welcomed at the end of the class.” Almost half an hour passed as he continued discussing the overview of the subject then cleared his throat when he noticed that most of them were hardly paying attention. “For now, we are going to have some mental exercise. This is a simple test for me to see what kind of people I’m dealing with for the whole semester. But…”

Shinwoo suddenly thought about Maejen, the one he dated last school year, he should message her later after this class. Then there was this other girl on his English class, Subin or Sumin? He entirely forgot, he promised to call her too. Tsk, it’s really hard being too cool.

“Let’s all put a little twist to it, or I must say a big credit for those who want to just skip this class instead of daydreaming this early, right Mr. Jung?”

“Wha— ohh yes, Professor!” Shinwoo managed to say despite the giggles inside the room when he just realized that the man who seemed to have been swallowed by facial hair was standing beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen Mr. Jung, I might be doing you a favor here,” Professor Kim tapped his shoulder with a sarcastic grin, “Whoever can give me a good argument about the topic I’m going to give will earn credits equivalent to a 4.3 or A+ for the midterm. That means you have the choice to either attend this class or not for that duration. Okay… okay…” he signaled for the class to be quiet, “Settle down, let’s start.”

There was like a bell that rang inside his ears, a full credit for midterm left the class shuffling on their seats excitedly, especially Shinwoo. Whatever the topic was he was ready to take on the challenge. He watched as Jonghyun seemed to smile to himself too, the other guy beside the latter scratched his head, the girl in front of him whispered and giggled with her seatmate. The rest seemed too excited, except for Ms. Ghostly Apparition, she remained unmoved, with her fingers lightly tapping her pen on top of her notepad and looking straight ahead. Too bad for Shinwoo that she sat in front of him where he can’t see his beautiful face.

“Does time exist? Is it a mere physical factor or a concept? I will give you ten minutes to organize your thoughts,” with that, the middle aged man sat and smiled with satisfaction as he looked at his students’ faces.

Concept, physical factor… time… Shinwoo racked his brain for whatever answer he can come up to. He had read this somewhere, the existence of time. But—

“Okay, time’s up!” Professor Kim broke the silence as the students grumbled and complained, most of them insisted that it wasn’t even two minutes, “Not yet ten minutes? If you can prove to me right now how your two minutes is not my ten minutes, or the two minutes is in itself the real time if we are to assume the existence of time, then I would gladly give you the credits I was talking about.” It silenced the class again with only the creaking of seats here and there and some of them cleared their throats. One of them is Shinwoo and it caught the older man’s attention, “Let’s start with you, Mr. Jung.”

Shinwoo looked around hoping and praying there was another Mr. Jung in the room but his professor puckered his lips in front of him so he unconsciously coughed and gripper his pen harder. “Uhm, well… time in itself is a concept.” There were murmurs; most eyes were on him; the professor gave him a tight-lipped smile and nodded telling him to go on and that gave him a little confidence to continue, “And if we talk about a concept, we are talking about an idea, something that only in the mind exist. Like what Professor Kim said awhile ago, we can never say if the time we are using now is an actuality.”

“How can time only exist in the mind? Can you prove that?”

One student asked so he nodded and thought for awhile, “For example, we only accept something that exists if we can perceive them, using our senses.”

“Therefore dinosaurs aren’t real because they don’t exist anymore?” Another asked quite seriously that it brought laughter in the room.

Shinwoo chuckled and when it was almost quiet he went on, “Even if dinosaurs don’t exist now, historically, they are proven to be real because of physical evidences like bones and stuff. Going back, anything—“ He was stopped by the professor when one student raised her hand and it was no other than Ms. GA.

“I have a question for Mr. Jung, Professor.”

“Yes, go ahead, Agassi.”

She slowly shifted to look at him. “Time is a mere concept existing in the mind?”

“Yes,” Shinwoo replied.

“And you also said that we only accept something if we can perceive them.”

“I believe I said that,” he was starting to get a little jittery seeing this tiny glint of smile on the sides of her lips.

“Therefore, time is just a concept because we cannot perceive it?”

Shinwoo opened his mouth then closed it again.

“And so time is a mere concept?”

“Y-yes…”

“Time is not a physical factor at all?” She finally stood and faced him directly.

“Hmmm…”

“If time is not a physical factor, then are we discounting the existence of history, of the passing of seasons, of changes all around us?”

“So time is a physical factor?” Shinwoo thought out loud and realized it only when she smiled gently and some of the students chuckled.

“Are you changing your answer now, Mr. Jung?”

He heard students snickered some more while some coughed as if to hide their amusement. “I…”

“Eherm…” Professional Kim cleared his throat, checked the seat plan and looked at the girl, “Ms. Seo, tell us your opinion, does time exist? Is it a physical factor or a concept?”

She looked at Shinwoo for a moment before focusing on the professor, “A concept, sir…” There was a shushed noise around, some students smiled and nod, some looked even more confused. Shinwoo slowly and quietly took his seat, sweat beading at the corners of his face. Then the girl continued, “I guess, physical change or physical factor is not analogous to time. Time, like what Mr. Jung said, does exist in the mind. Time is more likely an idea with regards to an event.”

“Meaning?” the professor asked.

“In my opinion, we are predisposed to look at the universe in terms of time and space because we look at it in terms of cause and effect or the relationship between two things. An effect is caused by another effect. To put it simply, time is the distance between two effects.”

There was another wave of silence in the room. Professional Kim nodded approvingly with a satisfied smile on his face. He just realized he was going to have a good time in that class as he motioned for her to take her seat and addressed the class, “That was a very good point. Now, we need more ideas… anybody?”

The discussion went on for another minutes until it was time to end the class. Professional Kim decided to put off the bargain because he knew he needed this girl in his class. Mind like hers should be heard, not be put on a rest. With conviction, he told the class nobody made a satisfying answer and, as expected, there were murmurs and grumbled from the class.

~~~

Joohyun decided that she didn’t like Mr. Jung, at all. The moment her eyes fell into his, she had this instant that almost brought her to that afternoon in the park. Her heart skipped and couldn’t stop herself from smiling hoping he would recognize her. But, her imagination shattered the moment he winked and smirked at her like a total jerk. She was disappointed because she never expected him to be another .hole who shamelessly flirts with just about anybody.

Wiping the smile off her face, she found an empty seat ahead and settled in making up her mind that she would just ignore him, like he doesn’t exist. When the discussion started, she actually didn’t mean to embarrass him. She’s not that type to embarrass people but there was just this deeply rooted urge for her to say something. She raised her hand and started asking him. When his face started to get pale, she wanted to end it right there and thankfully, the Professor cut in. Joohyun was just trying to make him go directly to his point because she felt that he would just end up going around in circles.

Her tone probably hid that aim and she wasn’t able to justify her line of questioning. Thus, she couldn’t do anything about the frustrated look he just gave her when she passed him by to leave the room after the class.

Oh well, it was another day, at least she made an impression with the professor. She convinced herself that it was the only important thing that moment.

~~~

Shinwoo wiped the edges of his guitar after his little brother, Kyuhyun, smudged it with his chocolate-filled fingers. Psh, that brat! He muttered to himself. That kid had been terrorizing him after he stepped onto his fire truck that was lying on the floor the other night. Because of that accident, too, he was forced not to play Christina (a.k.a. his guitar) for his right wrist got twisted and it was on bandage for a week. Christina-the-guitar was to him the fire-truck-less-one-wheel of Kyuhun so the latter was serious on his vow to make an ultimate damage to Shinwoo’s beloved instrument.

After keeping Christina under the farthest and darkest (Kyu was afraid of the dark) corner of his bed. He sat still focusing his view on the calendar. That day was the start of his second year in college. He couldn’t be too hopeful since he was not really the perfect son, scholastic wise, that any parent could be proud of (he gave that role to one of his brothers years ago). For him, he was an average student, B mostly, C sometimes and D during his high school years— but he’d rather leave that topic alone. But he was a good kid, he believed, so far, after everything he had done and made his mother put through, he was still labeled as “her son”. This actually made him believe that he was the favorite son except, of course, when Kyu was born. From his mother to their sisters and even his brother, the kid took every ounce of attention away from him.

Their grandmother (Appa’s mom) came to his defense during those times that he decided he had enough of life and just wanted to play his guitar somewhere. This angered their mom even more, she said that the old woman was (once again) dictating her how to run her own household and that she was educating her on how to raise her children (again) and she was trying to steal one of her children (again). Shinwoo just can’t understand why his mother and grandmother couldn’t seem to like each other.

Women. This word is something he can’t really fathom. Most women adore him, they want to be close to him, to be his friend (more than, most of the time), to give his attention to them. He likes that side of ‘women’ but the other side, the side which directly points to blood-related women, he couldn’t seem to tell how he must feel about them. Firstly, his mother is a nutcase, not really crazy crazy but almost-going-there crazy crazy. She’s loud, she’s intimidating, she’s presumptuous, she’s everything he would want to run away from just in case he could meet a woman exactly like her. Then, there were his sisters; Hyoyeon, the eldest, she is like this (shows pinkie) close to becoming like their mother, and Sunkyu, the youngest daughter who is like a brat wrapped around a pink ribbon when she was born. And, of course, Grandmother Jung who has too much love for her grandchildren that it was getting annoying already.

But then again, there was this ghostly apparition in his class that afternoon that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about. She must be a distant cousin, Shinwoo laughed at the thought. He was getting confident of his answer that time but then she started blabbing and showing off what her brain was made of. It was annoying because she reminded him of his mother, and sisters and grandmother— of all people! But then again, he smiled remembering how her nose flared while she was talking, as if she was just trying to control herself but he could tell that she was really close to losing her temper.

But she’s pretty despite being all that frustrating, if only she could be a normal girl who would just fall for his charms. Shinwoo concluded that he won’t like this girl so he must just stay away from her. It was saddening—his day. Because of her, he missed the chance of skipping that class and that would mean he would be seeing her three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Only three days.

What a relief, he sighed to himself.

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This is probably one of the most mind-boggling chap we did… we almost got ‘braindrained’ researching and debating some stuff lol… so we hope you like it…

A big thanks to Ate Raine for editing and looking over everything~

And thanks again to Von for the fic trailer which everybody loved(?) thanks for the likes and the comments! Hmmm speaking of the trailer, we got a couple of reactions and some guessed the major turn of event of this story. It’s fun reading them and knowing your ideas this early… so… just to spice things up a bit, can you please please put on your comment what you think is/are the twist of this story???

As for us, we can probably say that the vid really captured every bit of this fics ‘secrets’ so if you look, just look closely, you’ll see ;)

Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting~!!!!

We’ll be back soon!!!

~Lyra&Ysa