I almost ran up to her, knocking people over as I pushed them out of my way. She hadn’t notice me as she was cleaning up a table, piling the plates and glasses into the tray on her hand with her head down. I pulled her to face me and the tray she was holding fell to the floor with a clatter, the sound of breaking china silencing the room. All eyes were on us, now.

“What the crap are you doing?” she yelled at me as she struggled to break my grip over her fragile wrist.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that, Key?” I hissed. “What do you think you’re doing wearing a wig just to cover your disguise and escape me?”

Her eyes widened in shock and confusion at my words. “What are you talking- ouch! Are you freaking crazy?”

I had pulled at the wig she had on but it did not come off the way I expected it to. I stared at her in shock, my mouth hanging open as realisation hit me and I stood there, feeling embarrassed and stupid at my actions but above all, I was disappointed in myself. I thought I had finally found you. I thought I could have you back in my arms again. Well, I thought wrong.

“Aren’t you gonna let go, you freak!” my hand was still gripping a handful of her hair.

“Hyung, that’s enough. As much as I don’t like her, you can’t go around pulling a girl’s hair.” Minho put his hand on my shoulder to calm me down and added force on it to gently remove me away from the girl.

“Jonghyun. Let her go,” came Onew’s voice out of nowhere.

“Hyung, back off, now.”

The power of Minho’s words washed over me and I slowly released my hand over her hair and wrist using Minho’s pressure on my shoulder to guide me away from the girl. I was still in a daze. I could only faintly hear Onew apologising to the crowd for the commotion I had made.

It wasn’t like I was a psycho or something. I don’t usually do this kind of thing but when I saw this girl, my head immediately made me think of Kibum. It couldn’t be a co-incidence right? I mean, her eyes are exactly like Kibum’s except that Kibum’s eyes were a darker shade of brown and her face…it’s the same sharp pixie-like face. Even the skin texture and tone colour was the exact replica of Kibum’s pale porcelain skin. How is it possible that she has so many features that match those of Kibum’s and yet, not be him? Why does god have to play with my feelings this way? Was it not enough that I was already hurting all these years?

“Hyung, I think you should say something to her.”

“I- I’m sorry. I thought-,” I muttered unintelligibly.

“Sorry? Do you know how long it took to get my hair done? And to think that I especially hate it when someone touches my hair and here you are, pulling a handful of it off my head!”

Wait a minute…hating someone touching her hair? Isn’t that what Kibum used to say, too? Yet another similarity. Could she perhaps be Kibum’s long lost twin?  But I don’t remember Kibum telling me anything about it so that’s impossible.

“Se Kyung, put this damage under my account. I’ll explain it to boss, later. I’ll get someone else to take care of this mess so go get yourself cleaned up, Key.” Minho gave orders.

My head snapped up at the name. “Key?” I asked, looking at her. So she was confused that I knew her name when she didn't know me at all.

“Yeah, that’s my name. What’s it to you?” she glared.

“But you have to be-”

“Hyung, I think that’s enough for one day. Go home, first and I’ll talk to you about this, later,” Minho said and when I did not respond, he continued. “Onew, take him outside.”

“Come on, Jonghyun,” Onew was suddenly at my side and was pulling me away towards the door. I let him guide me outside and into his car, my brain going a hundred miles per second as I tried to process what I had gone through earlier.

It’s not possible for two people to be so very alike, right? I mean, how can two person of complete different gender have the exact same physical features and personality? They even have the same nickname, for Christ’s sake! It’s just not right. But as I said, even if Kibum was trying to evade me, he wouldn’t come to work in a place so close to our school. He wouldn’t be using his nickname, either. Besides, I don’t think he would grow his hair out so long although he did like having blonde hair. It’s not like him to do that. He isn’t exactly as smart as Minho but he’s smarter than me to know how best to avoid someone. Man, this is driving me crazy. Just when I thought that I should finally move on with Minho and Onew’s help, that girl has to appear and break all the logic I had ever known in my life into illogical pieces.

“Hey, we’re here.”

I felt Onew pull over in front of my apartment. I sat there for a few more seconds before sighing and looking up at him with a weak smile. “Sorry for the trouble, Onew. And thank you for being there for me.”

“What? You aren’t apologising for the school’s incident?” he asked with a smirk.

“You know you deserve that,” I smirked back and lightly punched his arm.

“Whatever. Do you need me to follow you up?”

“Nah. I’ll be fine.” I waved him off but when I saw the look he was giving me, I added “I’m not weak, okay?” before getting out of his car.

I stood at the entrance and waited until Onew’s car had disappeared down the corner. I sighed again as I made my way inside, dropping all pretences. The receptionist greeted me as I walked across the grand lobby towards the elevators. I inserted my cardkey and typed in a password causing the elevator to jump to life and immediately shot up to the highest floor. When the doors clanged open, I scanned the cardkey over the one and only door in front of the elevator in this entire floor, placing my hand on the monitor for identification.

A computerized female voice sounded, “Welcome home, Mr.Kim,” as the heavy wooden doors opened automatically for me. The moment I stepped over the threshold of my foyer, the lights around me switched on by themselves and once I left the area, they dimmed again. I made my way a across a hallway lined with doors on both sides towards the largest and grandest doors at the end of the hallway. I opened the door with my own hands this time, stumbling into my bedroom through my own personal living room and study room. I dropped onto my canopy bed and let the comfort soothe my soul.

Today has just been a very long day…

Kibum’s POV

I can’t believe what that guy had just done! Was he some kind of a mad man? Honestly, which person would just walk up to a complete stranger and pull at his hair? It was a lucky thing I secured an entire row of pins through the wig or my disguise would have failed and to think that today was the first day I had dressed this way. I wonder what Taemin would have said if I had failed. After all, it was his idea that made me do such a crazy thing. I could still remember his pleading face when he told me his idea. He had suggested it when I told him that it was time for me to get out of the safety of this house and experience the world again. I wanted to go back to school but I wasn’t sure if I could understand the syllabus since I don’t even know if I had learned anything in school so instead, I wanted to work.

“Hyung, you have to! Please?” he was practically begging me.

“Taemin! Stop being ridiculous! Why would a guy like me dress up as a girl?” I asked incredulously.

“Because - because he -,” he stammered.

“He? Who’s this he?” I asked with a frown.

It was clear to see that Taemin was hiding something from me. He was sweating bullets as his eyes darted everywhere around the room but always managed to skip past my eyes and his feet were drawing repetitive circles on the floor.

It had been this way for two years already. Although two years might feel like nothing to you but to me, these two years had been my life. Literally. I say this because I had woken up two years ago on a hospital bed feeling my head splitting down the middle. Everything was unfamiliar to me. New. I have no recollection of my past at all when the doctor asked me for my background information. I don’t even have an idea as to how I ended up in the hospital. I only nodded numbly when the doctor told me that I had brain tumour and the surgery I went through only had 5% chance of survival so I was very lucky to be alive. Then, he said something that seized up my body like I had been a statue for centuries. He said that I had lost about 80% of my memory and I might never get them back. I went completely numb, then. The way the doctors and nurses looked at me with a mixture of pity and nervousness made me feel like a freak. It made me feel unwelcome and unwanted.

I was in the hospital for a month although I was told that I could leave two weeks from the day of my surgery. It wasn’t like I have anywhere else to go seeing that I had forgotten my house, my friends, my parents…everything except for the basic stuff like my name, how old I am and the ability to talk, walk, eat and cry so that was what I did for a month. I only walk when I needed the bathroom. I talked when I needed the nurses’ help. I eat to keep myself alive and I cried…I cried every night thinking if my parents were out there looking for me. I cried wondering if my friends had moved on thinking that I had abandoned them and I cried pondering if I had a girlfriend who was waiting for me to return. After all, I had looked at myself in the mirror and I have to say that I quite have the look that would make any girl swoon over me. However, I did not dare ask anyone about myself. I isolated away from everyone. I was afraid they would see me as a freak like all the doctors and nurses here so throughout my time lying lifelessly on the white sheets, I tried fruitlessly to revive my memories. At times, I could see flashes of blurry images darting past my mind but when I tried to concentrate on those images, I would get a splitting headache so painful I fainted a few times. Even the nurses had gotten used to me collapsing all over the hospital. I did not give up, though because my heart was telling me that I need to remember. It kept telling me that there was something very important in my forgotten memories that I have to retrieve. I wonder if it was the boy in those flashing glimpses although I couldn’t quite see the face.

Anyway, I was having a fit again after another splitting headache in one of the corridors and that was when I found Taemin. He saw me screaming and writhing in pain with my nails scratching at my face to divert my attention away from the headache and he rushed to my aid shouting over my voice asking me what was wrong and calling for a nurse. Then, everything went black but not before I heard a small gasp from him and a whispered “Key?”

The next time I woke up, I wasn’t surrounded by four white walls anymore. The room I was in was well decorated with oil pastel paintings. The ceiling-to-floor windows allow optimum light to be reflected on the sparkling chandelier and spread it evenly around the room. The bed I was sleeping on was also very comfortable. All in all, the room was beautiful but not in the extravagant way.

I had just finished admiring the room when the door opened and a girl with long brown hair covering half her vision range poked her head in. She looked in my direction and when our eyes met, she gasped aloud, her eyes went as round as orbs. She stumbled into the room and awkwardly pushed back her overly long fringe. I noticed that she couldn’t be older than seventeen years old.

“I-ah…I’m sorry for not knocking before entering. I hope you don’t mind,” her timid voice somehow had a boyish tone to it.

“It’s okay. I’m used to it.” I looked away from her. It’s true because the doctors and nurses have always come and go as they pleased.

“Um…do you know who I am or where you are right now?”

I turned back to look at her, not even attempting to hide the pained expression across my face. “I...I’m not sure…I honestly don’t know if I ever knew you before. But I’m sure this isn’t the hospital.”

The girl smiled sadly at me as she took a few steps closer. “It’s alright. I heard about it from the doctor so you don’t have to force yourself to remember. Anyway, my name is Taemin. Lee Taemin and you’re in my house. I’ve signed the leaving documents for you and paid the hospital bills so you can rest be assured.”

I frowned, my mind only focusing on one detail in his long sentences. “Lee Taemin. Isn’t that a guy’s name?”

At first, she was silent and then, she broke into a laughter so hard she had to hold her stomach. When she had stopped laughing, I asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Well, it’s not exactly funny but I was just glad that you still have your old personality. And sorry to disappoint you but I’m a guy,” he smiled sweetly like an innocent child.

“My old personality? What do you mean by that? Which part of what I said reminded you of my old self? How did you know me? Were we close? Have I been here before?” I asked in rush, hope flooding my insides as I came to realise that this girlish looking guy might be the answer to my past.

“Whoa! One question at a time,” he held up his hand as if to hold off the attacking questions but took a few more steps closer to me. “Which question do you want answered first?”

I thought about it for a second. “What was I like?”

“Exactly the way you are right now,” he smiled. “Impulsive. Nonchalant. Confident. Fearless. And straight forward.” Each quality he named went down with each finger.

“Really? That was how I was before?” I was listening to him as if he was talking about someone else but I felt a rush of unexplainable emotions when I heard what he said. I felt as if I finally have a relation to my past. I felt like I was really alive the past seventeen years and not just for the one month that I had been in the hospital. There was the happiness there and then I felt sad because I can’t remember myself showing any of the qualities before. There was also the sense of doubt. Could what he said be true or was he just creating stories to lie to me? But he wouldn’t have any reasons to do that if he didn’t know me right? I decided to put that last question away and try to find out more about myself first.

“Tell me everything!” I demanded.

I had no idea how long I sat there facing Taemin on the bed as he recounted every silly thing I did or every detail of how I was such a diva and a total fashionista or how we were best friends sharing secrets and lies. I did not interrupt him as he spoke, trying to absorb everything he said and tallying with what little I had for memories of myself in this one month that I could remember. It was when the sun had gone down that we both remembered that we hadn’t eaten anything all day long so we were forced to put away the hundreds more of questions I have queued up in the back of my head aside for later. I had all the time to bombard him with them these past two years as I have lived with ever since that day. Just the two of us in the three-storey bungalow. It seemed his parents were always busy with work travelling around the world and leaving him by himself. It was that reason that I decided to stay with him. Well, we were both lonely. We were both unwanted so it was obvious to see that we were compatible. Besides, I found out that he was really the cutest thing on earth; all puppy-like and adorable. He would go around calling me Umma and asking me to cook for him. Oh, yeah. That’s one of the biggest mysteries of all. I had no recollection of cooking in my entire life but the moment I entered Taemin’s kitchen, my body reflexively knew what to do and how to do it. The second biggest mystery was that my attitude was exactly the way I had been before I lost my memories. Anyway, I was very glad that he and I were friends before this and above all else, I was glad he had found me.

BACK IN THE EARLIER FLASHBACK

“Taeminnie?” I called to his attention. “You’ve told me everything there is to know about myself but why wouldn’t you tell me about this one guy that I know you’ve been hiding from me?”

He fidgeted harder at my direct question. “Um…I…he…Umma!” he whined.

“Taemin, I’ve seen the pictures, alright? Stop treating me like a fool,” I pressed on and I knew I had hit a sore spot with the way Taemin was acting even more agitated. Although I felt bad for doing this to him but I had to know. I just had to know in case this has anything to do with the guy my heart needs me to remember. I had seen the pictures. I had seen how faces had been cut out except for the two of us smiling at the camera. I had discovered them in his study table’s drawer when I was cleaning to occupy my time.

“Hyung, don’t say that,” when Taemin calls me hyung, it means he was being serious. “You know how much I respect you, right?”

“Then, out of this respect for me, tell me the truth.”

Taemin sighed, looking away from me and speaking to the floor. “This person is the very reason you lost all your memories.”

Oh my gosh! I think this chapter is too long!!! I hope it’s not too confusing! I’m so sorry…TT

P.S. I hope you guys can leave a comment after reading so that I would know what to improve on ^^