Warning: Un-beta'd. Anything else I put here would just be excuses, to be honest, so I'll just stop.




“Back to the basics, huh?” Zhoumi laughs.

Victoria rolls her eyes and pulls Sunhwa with her into the office library. “What exactly are you looking for anyways?” Sunhwa asks.

“There’s a portfolio that Himchan has that I really need to see.” Victoria confesses. “That and I really need to look up more facts about amnesia.”

“What do you need from Himchan?” Sunhwa says with her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Are you Researchers turning on us Nurses now?”

Victoria pinches Sunhwa’s waist, causing the younger girl to squeal. “Stop talking nonsense and help me find some books on Amnesia. Brain studies might help, too; or, more specifically, brain damage caused by lack of oxygen.”

“Why don’t you just ask Zhoumi or Luhan or Sunyoung?” Sunhwa frowns. “It would be so much faster than flipping through hundreds of pages of a medical textbook. You know how much bull they like to pull in their scripts; they go on for chapters without really saying anything.”

“I don’t want to be too obvious,” Victoria clicks her tongue.

Sunhwa raises an eyebrow at her. “About what?”

“About Yo—“ Victoria says, almost spilling the beans. “Never mind. If you don’t want to help, just go back to lunch.”

“I’ll help,” Sunhwa laughs. “Geez, sensitive much?”

Victoria sticks her tongue out at the younger girl and scans the aisles until she reaches amnesia. She needed to know how fast the amnesia would catch up with Yongguk so that she could deduce how much longer she had to find out more about him.

Who was he, and why was he here? Someone has the answers and Victoria will find them, no matter what it takes. Even if she had to break a few rules along the way.





She’s in the middle of furniture shopping when her ringer goes off.

“Do you have to go?”

Victoria files her phone away into her bag, trying to hold a solid expression as she stares at the ground. “You know how much my job means to me.”

“How am I supposed to fall in love with you if we can’t spend a single date together without any interruptions whatsoever?” Nichkhun asks. “Our relationship is supposed to be a commitment, Victoria.”

“Our only commitments are the ones we’ve made to our parents.” Victoria replies. “No strings attached, remember? That’s the promise we made each other when all of this started.”

Nichkhun stares down at her. “What if I said we needed to take this more seriously?”

“My answer will remain the same. Work will always be my first priority; everything else will have to sit aside until I’ve got time.”

Victoria’s ringer sounds again and by this gesture alone she knows that Yongguk must be in severe pain. She picks up her phone and dials in the numbers to her lab. Just as a person on the other line picks up, Nichkhun takes the phone from her.

“If we don’t get married by the start of next year, our parents are going to reconsider our inheritances and correlations to one another. Do you know how serious this is?” Nichkhun asks her. “I understand that your job is extremely critical to you, but have you considered me and what will happen to us if we don’t follow through with the plan?”

“Give the phone back to me.”

He stubbornly holds it further away from her. “We have to work things out, Victoria. It can’t wait.”

“Then set up the marriage. Pick a date to sign the papers. Call the lawyers. I don’t give a damn. Just give the phone back to me.” Victoria grits through her teeth. “This is just as serious as the value on our joined hands.”

“You’ve never been this about your job before.” Nichkhun comments, slowly handing her phone back to her.

Victoria takes the phone and curses under her breath when she realizes the call has been connected this whole time. She holds it up to her ear and breathes a weak, “Hello?”

“Is it the importance of the cure that’s piqued your interest, or is it that man?”

“Yes, this is Researcher Victoria Song. I’ve received multiple call signals from my experiment volunteer but I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it there in time. Could you get a hold of Doctor Zhoumi and his team?”

Nichkhun steps closer. “I have all the files you’ve been waiting for.”

She glances at him with wide eyes, lips frozen in place. “…Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You were so curious about him that you hired someone to look up his background?” Nichkhun scoffs. “Mark received an envelope for you this morning while you were at work. Since you weren’t at home and I was passing by your study, he handed it over to me.”

“And you opened it?” Victoria raises a single brow.

Nichkhun smirks. “Am I the bad guy here?”

Releasing a frustrated breath, Victoria tosses her phone into her bag and angrily stares up at him. “Where is it?”

“Sitting perfectly still on your desk.” Nichkhun replies. “You’ll be amused by what you see.”





By the time Victoria reaches the lab, everyone is pretty much already gone. Kris is the only one sitting in the control room. “Anything exciting?”

“Aside from the fact that he insisted he was only willing to see you, not really.”

Taken off guard, Victoria settles down beside Kris and scrolls through the updated data entered into the systems. Coagulations in his blood flow and stiffening of his livers; that’s a first. “How awake was he?”

“Considerably,” Kris shrugs, “but he’s your experiment, I wouldn’t be able to know for sure.”

She nods in response and stares into the monitor with a close-up of Yongguk’s sleeping face.

Kris glances back and forth between them, thinning his lip and standing from his position. “I think I’m going to head to our office for the night. Soojung had to leave to take care of something, so you’re the only one left in this lab. I’ll be around if you need me. Be careful.”

On his way out, Kris switches off the main lighting system in the room.

Victoria switches on the intercom but before she can say anything, Yongguk’s eyes blink open and he intercepts her words.

“Victoria Song. Twenty six years old. Chinese female. One younger sister, name was Liyin, died of cancer. Engaged to Nichkhun Horvejkul, son of a multibillionaire hotel architectural CEO. You were recently reunited with your parents, who abandoned you and your sister at a young age; your father now owns his own architectural contracting firm that’s spread over a good amount of geographical land in Asia. Your mother is too busy helping him to actually spend time to get to know you. Bottom line is you are Victoria Song—wealthy and powerful by association to your parents, showered with all the riches in the world, yet you still feel so alone.”

“Is this what you called me back for?” Victoria asks.

Yonguk slowly sits up and stares directly into the camera. His gaze is full of power, but Victoria has never felt so at ease in his presence. “I wanted to have this talk with you before I start forgetting. Himchan told me there’s a high chance that I’ll lose most of my memories.”

“How did he know?”

He can sense the anxiety in Victoria’s tone. “There are a lot of eyes and ears around you,” is what he tells her.

Suddenly, it all makes a lot more sense to her.

“Himchan has told me a lot about you.” Yongguk continues. “We have a lot in common, it seems.”

Victoria breathes in a slow breath. “In what ways?”

In his white-washed room, Yongguk smiles an easy smile. He reaches up with a shaky hand and rubs the back of his neck; his skin is dry and rough, his fingers and weak and crummy. Nothing feels right, yet, with Victoria there, nothing feels wrong, either.

“In light of being honest, I just wanted to tell you that I’ve had someone do some research on you. Your information is sitting on my desk back at home,” Victoria tells him, “even if you didn’t want to tell me, I have my ways of discovering the truth.”

“What will you do then? Kick me out? Discharge me? Leave me to die?” Yongguk mocks.

She bites down on her lips. “If you entered our facility through the wrong portals, I can’t allow you to stay.”

“Even if I have all the right reasons?” He asks.

It’s hard not to read an expression at facial value when Victoria can only see him through a screen, but she can tell that there is definitely frustration and pain in his eyes. “I play by the rules,” she says, “We’ve got regulations for a reason. Neglecting them will only disrupt our work.”

“We really are alike,” Yongguk laughs. “You sound just like me when I’m at work.”

“So you did have a job,” she exclaims. “Who are you?”

Yongguk leans back in his bed, arms under the back of his head. He crosses one leg over the other and everything just looks like one big, bright blur to Victoria. Then his voice speaks, and they are all the words Victoria never expected to hear from someone with a relationship as such with her.

“I’ve only seen your face once, and the room was dark and everything moved too fast for me to even recall much, but I remember exactly what you look like.” Yongguk says. “You speak with a slight accent, words slurred together in the oddest places, but you’ve got beautiful eyes that overflow with passion for your work.”

Victoria can feel warmth budding in her cheeks.

“Professionalism spooled from you and your protective stance; you spoke with large words, smiled kindly, but your demeanor was cold and I was a little put off by it. Despite it all, after getting to know you and getting over the awkward beginning phases of letting you ‘get to know me, I really felt as though we could be friends.”

“You honestly didn’t seem too interested in me when we first met,” Victoria helpfully supplies. “You seemed more nervous and eager about this experiment.”

Yongguk chuckles. “This is important to me. Not to say that you weren’t attractive enough to steer my attention away, but the results to this process remain a higher priority.”

“After all you’ve said I still have no idea who you are and why you’re here.”

She watches as his eyes slowly shut, his breathing calm and even. In moments like these, Victoria feels her pulse beating in her veins; every loss here is hard, every sacrifice takes a part of her with them to their grave, but this man—this man is just a little different from the rest.

“Are you… still there?” She dares herself to ask.

There is silence, so long and so numbing that she forgets to breathe. Yet, when she was beginning to lose hope, he brings her back from her fears.

“My name is Bang Yongguk. Twenty three years old. South Korean, Male. I used to be a detective, but I quit after one of the biggest blessings of my life left me because of my job. I am about to lose the second most meaningful person in my life and I want to save them. Will you help me, Victoria?” He asks, and he sounds like he’s pleading.

Something in her chest cracks and she can feel the icy chill of her own blood deep inside.

“Will you help me save a life that was never meant to be taken in the first place?”





As Victoria lies in bed, Yongguk’s deep and firm voice echoes in her mind.

Many people are losing their loved ones day and night; Victoria had been one of the many, and the numbers will only continue growing. She can see the efforts that Yongguk is putting into finding a new cure—foregoing all selfishness and giving his all to their experiments—but she also knows that a true cure will not be found through these means.

Researchers have long come to the conclusion that, with the limited resources and knowledge they’ve attained throughout decades of studies, the gathered data is still much too insufficient to even come close to a legit restoration from cancers of any kind.

If she followed her heart, what would be the right thing to do in her situation?

Victoria wants to find a cure; she wants to save people in a way that her sister was never able to be saved. In this case, a large fraction of her desires yearns to help Yongguk save this person that is so dear to him, but a corner of her self-conscience tells her that she can’t.

Survival rates of the study victims never surpass the rate of which they find true progress in their work. One decimal point of positive results gained from any given prospect usually amounts to a total of seven to a dozen deaths of one given prototype in the process.

In such a comparison, the only conclusion for Yongguk—for good or for bad—would be death.

“Arrggh!” Victoria hisses, flipping around so that she is lying on her stomach and burying her head into her pillow.

Why does any of this matter so much to her? Hasn’t all of this always just been part of the procedures?

She reaches to the top of her night stand and retrieves her cellular device. Clicking on a random button, Victoria activates the electronic and turns it on. She goes to her dialing history and scrolls down the pages until she hits the end.

Her first prospect, Kim Minseok, would always be the one most memorable to her. Minseok was just a young kid who broke away from his orphanage once he hit eighteen; he spent two years on the streets until he was violated so horribly from street mobs that half of his body was paralyzed.

The first day Victoria met him, Minseok was wheeled into the conference room by an old nurse.

“Hi, I’m Victoria.” She introduces herself.

Minseok sat still, staring into her eyes. Victoria could see life in them; weak, withered, but still apparent in his young, zealous gaze. The boy hadn’t spoken since he lost the ability to use his limbs, he could barely lift the pointer finger of his right hand, but he managed to smile faintly at her.

“Why are you here?” Victoria later asks him, after observing him for a few weeks.

Although he has refused to speak all along, Minseok stares into the space above him. Finally, he parts his lips.

“You’ve told me a lot of stories about the life of you and your sister,” Minseok mutters. “We’re both from orphanages, Victoria, but I never had anyone else to rely on.”

I want to be a big brother to someone out there, too. I want to have a family, someone to rely on me, believe in me; I want someone to love me. Victoria remembers Minseok telling her.

By then, tears were streaming down her face. Even the simple reminiscence of the beautiful boy brought the sour sensation to her nose again.

When I could still move, I lived my life to the fullest that I could have. After losing the ability to freely do the things I want, I feel like I’ve lost purpose in life. All my childhood I wanted to be free, but now I want nothing more than to be strapped down to the floor. If there’s nothing more I can do for myself, then why not use the rest of what I’m worth for someone else?

After all, who else could love a useless person like me?

It was hard hearing words like those from a twenty year old boy. Victoria stared at him through the lens of the camera intently; she wanted to hold the boy, to tell him that it was alright, to free him from the binds he’s wrapped around himself.

Were Minseok any more confident in himself, he could have been so much more than just a paralyzed experiment lying on a cold, white deathbed.

And then she remembers Yongguk. In some ways, Minseok and Yongguk are alike.

Victoria continues to scroll through the list of contacts—remembering instances, remembering faces, remembering lives that she watched slip away. When she reached Yongguk’s name again at the very top, she stops and stares at the name for a very, very long time.

This isn’t a name that belongs in her list. Bang Yongguk is not a name that she should add to her grieving.

Her finger hovers over the delete button, thought after thought invading her mind.

What should she do?

Gradually, she falls asleep. This night, Victoria dreams. It is a dream that she does not remember when she wakes, but the after affects cling to her like bee to honey.

Once she reaches the office, the first thing she does is approach Kris.

“Where is Himchan?”

Kris is unsure of how to react. “I don’t know?”

“Kris.”

Seeing her serious and unwavering expression, Kris sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair. “He probably just got out of the lab mechanics stock room. Your best bet would be at the decontamination storage room?”

“Thanks.” With that, she rushes off to find Himchan.

Krystal stares at Kris with a quizzical and suspicious expression, to which the young man just shrugs and returns to his work. The ones in the game are always the lost ones—Krystal watched this trial play out scene by scene; she sees with eyes as clear as water.

“Looks like the game’s over.” Krystal comments.

Pretending as though he hadn’t heard, Kris carries on with his work. Nothing is more promising than stepping into a trap that’s known to explode on friendly grounds—this would be the prime example to such a theory.
 

A/N: Posting this before I go to bed and forget this even exists. >_>;;; I haven't had time to proof or edit this so I'm terribly sorry for any/many mistakes! T____T

First off, I have nothing against Nichkhun, I swear. I just needed someone to fill in the role and couldn't come up with anyone else. Second, I know it's been forever... I'm so sorry!!! ;___; But I'm almost done with writing this story so yay? Life has just horribly gotten in the way of my writing. Got to see B.A.P's concert in S.F. early May and that was nice ^__^. Hopefully I haven't lost the few readers I have for this? >_<

Thank yooooooooooooooooooou too all my awesome commentators~ you guys fuel my writing desires!