01/24/15

Estimated Time Period: Ming Dynasty (1640AD)

            “There was a time when I lost you. There was a misunderstanding, and I hurt you so badly, that you left me for three centuries.”

                                                            :::::

            Yoona had been waiting patiently for Taecyeon at their rendezvous point, but she knew he wasn’t going to come. Tears floated up to her eyes, but no matter how disappointed she was, Yoona couldn’t be angry at him. It was only a matter of time.

            “Hey lady!” a voice shouted out.

            Yoona turned to see a young boy around the age of six. “Yes?”

            “Mama told me to ask you why you’re still outside on the streets,” the boy reiterated. “She said to tell you to go back to your house. The rebels are coming soon, and they’re not going to make exceptions.”

            Yoona inwardly smiled. The boy reminded her so much of when Taecyeon was a child. “Tell your mother that I said ‘thank you.’ I will be going back home now.”

            As she started walking back home, she reminisced about the first time that she and Taecyeon first met.

                        ::::

            Yoona was only five years old, and Taecyeon was six. He was the son of a government official, and she was the daughter of a merchant. But that didn’t matter. They were young, and they were both playing at the same pond during the same sunny day.

            Taecyeon was the one who approached Yoona. He walked up to her and blurted out the weirdest thing she ever heard in her five-year lifetime. “Hey Yoona, we used to be married in our past lives.”

            First of all, Yoona never told Taecyeon her name, so the fact the he knew her name was the first weird thing. The second, of course, was the fact that he claimed they knew each other from not only one, but multiple past lives. But being the little girl that she was, Yoona never questioned the abnormality of the conversation. “We were?”

             He nodded proudly. “Yup! You know why I know that?”

            “No,” she shook her head. “Why?”

            “Because I’m the reincarnated sage,” Taecyeon told Yoona. “I can remember my past lives.”

            “Ooohh, that’s really cool,” Yoona’s eyes widened. “Come play with me.”

            “Okay!”

                        ::::

            After their first meeting, Yoona and Taecyeon stuck to each other like two peas in a pod. They grew even closer when Taecyeon started struggling to deal with all the knowledge he had in his mind. Being only a twelve-year old boy, Taecyeon was overwhelmed with all the knowledge that was presented to him. That was the time when Yoona learned how his mind worked.

            “For me, I see time as a large book,” Taecyeon explained to her. “I can reread pages from the past, and I can look one to two pages into the future. But if I look more than three pages into the future, I wouldn’t be able to understand the meaning of the words because I wouldn’t understand the context. Sometimes, I find loose-leaf pages lying around, and I need to put them back into their place.”

            However, putting loose-leaf pages back into their place caused enormous mental power, and Taecyeon was finding more and more loose-leafed pages by the day. The worst were his visions, the loose-leaf pages from the future. His visions caused him pain, and he usually out for a full day after getting one. Taecyeon’s family just thought that he was physically weak, but Yoona knew the truth. Only Yoona knew about his ability to remember the past and see the future. She knew Taecyeon was far from weak. He was the strongest person she knew.

            Yoona was angry at herself for not being able to help Taecyeon sort out the mess in his head. The only thing she could do to help him was to stay by his side while he struggled. She did that a lot. She stayed by his side so much that Taecyeon’s parents started getting suspicious of her. They thought that Yoona was a bad influence on Taecyeon, and that she was the cause for his growing weakness.

                        ::::

            No matter what his parents thought, Yoona was Taecyeon’s guardian angel, and Taecyeon did whatever he could to keep her in his life. He promised his parents that he would get better, and gradually, he did. By the time he was fifteen, Taecyeon was able to control when he got his visions, and he was living the normal life of a teenager.

            However, during one fateful day, Taecyeon received a vision that caused him to black out for a week. Taecyeon’s family couldn’t take it anymore, and they shut Yoona out of Taecyeon’s life. They refused to open the door when she came over to visit, and when Taecyeon regained consciousness, he was forbidden to step out of the house.

            That didn’t stop the two of them from meeting. One day, Taecyeon managed to sneak out of his house at night, and Yoona was waiting for him at the pond. When Yoona saw Taecyeon, she ran over and hugged him.

            “Taecyeon! I was so worried about you,” her voice was muffled as she buried her face into his chest. Taecyeon tightened his embrace and breathed in her scent. It was the scent of daisies.

            “Yoona,” Taecyeon looked deeply into her eyes after they separated from their hug. “I have to tell you what I saw last week.”

            “It must be bad,” Yoona frowned as she reached up to brush a stray hair away from his face. “You were unconscious for a whole week. That never happened before.”

            “Yeah,” Taecyeon agreed. He guided her to sit on a nearby bench. “You know how I told you that I would have to start looking for the reincarnations of the king and queen soon?”

            Yoona nodded.

            “That’s not going to happen anymore.”

            There was silence as Yoona processed the news. “But that’s what you’ve been doing in all of your past lives.”

            “I’ll have to find something else to do now,” Taecyeon looked down at his hands. “A rebellion is coming soon, and there’s no way the current king can stop it. He’s going to commit suicide, and the rebels will start a new era ruled by the common man.”

            Yoona remained quiet as she reached for Taecyeon’s hand. He turned his palm upwards and welcomed her touch. “What’s going to happen to us, Taecyeon?”

            Taecyeon smiled bitterly. These were one of the moments when he realized how much he loved Yoona. Without needing him to say a word, Yoona understood the circumstances. They’ve been with each other for centuries now, after all.

            But Taecyeon was also sad that she had to understand the situation so well. Because of the rebellion and the end of the era of dynasties, Taecyeon will no longer have a purpose as the reincarnated sage. He will no longer need his ability to remember his past lives and see into the future. There is no guarantee that he will retain his powers in his next reincarnated life. And since Taecyeon might not remember his past lives, there is no guarantee that Yoona and Taecyeon will meet again in their next life.

            Not only that, but Yoona and Taecyeon also might not be together anymore in this life. Unlike Yoona, Taecyeon was born into royal blood. His family came from a long generation of governors that were closely connected with the king. There is no doubt that his family will have to flee when the rebellion happens. If Taecyeon flees with his family, he and Yoona may be separated forever.

            He turned and grabbed Yoona’s shoulders, looking into her chocolate brown eyes. “No matter what, we will be together. We have to be.”

            It was Yoona’s turn to smile bitterly. Her eyes became glassy. “But your family… Your family won’t be here anymore after the rebellion.”

            “I won’t be going with my family,” Taecyeon proclaimed. “Yoona, let’s elope.”

            Her eyes widened with shock. “Elope?”

            “Let’s escape here before the rebellion starts,” he explains, his voice growing animated as he describes the situation. “Let’s escape and go on an adventure! We’ll be nobodies, travelling the world, helping others for a place to sleep and something to eat. We can travel and see all the different provinces of the country. It’ll be grand!”

            Yoona shakes her head. “But what happens when we run out of food, or when no one wants to give us a place to stay? What will happen if someone recognizes you as a royal?”

            “I’ll use my abilities as the reincarnated sage,” Taecyeon smiled confidently. His smile faltered a little as Yoona remained unimpressed. “Yoona, I know this seems unrealistic, but it’s our only chance. In a few days, we’ll be separated. And I’m not sure how long it will take us to be together again.”

            She looked into his eyes and studied him quietly. Finally, she answered, “Okay.”

            Taecyeon pulled her into his embrace. “We’ll be fine, Yoona. As long as we’re together, we’ll be fine.”

            “I love you, Taecyeon,” Yoona mumbled into his shoulder. “I just want to say this before anything else happens. I love you.”

            Pulling away and looking into her eyes, Taecyeon smiled. “I love you too, Yoona. I loved you before we met, and I’ll continue loving you even after we die.

            He placed his hands on both sides of her cheeks, and they shared their first kiss in this lifetime.

                        ::::

            Sadly, their first kiss was also their last. On the morning of the rebellion, as Taecyeon was preparing to meet with Yoona, he suffered from another vision and out. By the time he came into consciousness, he was with his family in a secret underground tunnel, miles away from the capital city. When Taecyeon realized this, he cried out in agony.

Next up, the Qing dynasty. I will be going all the way to the modern times!

If you guys have any ideas on other stories for Taecyeon and Yoona's different incarnations, feel free to comment down below~