A/N: Hello derr~ New chapter of the most postponed story on AFF! yay! I had time and worked on this so, here it is~ RIP those two days off work... Since I will be working again tomorrow on, I decided to post this today. However, this is NOT EDITED so it's bound to have more mistakes than usual. Sorry. I'll come back to this tomorrow. ^^

The light sound of a jingling bell rang through the otherwise silent shop. A pair of brown eyes drifted towards the door, the gaze a bit unfocused and hazy due to the late hour. A man in his mid-forties walked in wearing a mechanic’s uniform, sporting all kinds of spots and stains on it. As soon as his eyes fell on the girl behind the cashier, a smile stretched on his face and numerous wrinkles appeared around his eyes and mouth.

“Hello Chaerin,” The man greeted, closing the door behind him and the bell hanging over it only jingled again. “Sorry for being late.”

“It’s not a problem, mr. Byung” The girl waved him off with a gentle smile and despite how tired she felt, she knew that it was nothing compared to what the elder man in front of her was feeling. “Did everything get fixed?”

The man, mr. Byung, nodded. “Everything works just fine now!” He beamed before eyeing the girl. “I’ll give you a day off for spending extra hours at the shop.” When the blonde girl shook her head and tried to object such a thing, the man only raised a hand for her to stop. “It’s better to get some rest. You barely get out of here the past month.”

“I try my best to help y—“

“I don’t say that I don’t appreciate your help,” The man felt offended at the possibility the girl thought of that. “I just want to thank you for that with a day off… Two or three, if you want. These days, the shop has been pretty busy.”

“Mr. Byung, I don’t really want those days off…” She mumbled, refusing to say that she actually had nothing to do during those days. She didn’t have anyone to spend them with. She was alone, just her now. There was no one else in her life that she felt close except mr. Byung himself. And that was because the lack of a fatherly image was missing and she’d been working far too long in this Junk Shop not to feel close to the man.

“It’ll be best if you catch up on some sleep somewhere that is actually comfortable for that.” The man eyed the hard chair she’d sit in day to night before sighing. It wasn’t just a couple times he had caught her dozing off in it the past days. “Just, accept the offer, Chaerin. Nothing will change if you keep pushing yourself.”

“There’s no one waiting for me home anyway,” Chaerin mumbled and bit on her lip, feeling the numbness in her spread. It had been only a month since…

“You know your grandmother would not want to know you push yourself,” The man said quietly, the event still too fresh and painful for him as well. He and Chaerin’s grandmother had known each other for years, even before Chaerin had woken up from her coma. They were something people defined as ‘best friends’ and the sudden parting of their ways had taken a huge toll on the man as well. The fact that they were in two different worlds didn’t help the least.

Chaerin was no better.

The year had met her at the hospital, in the small white room her grandmother had been admitted in just a week before. That morning, Chaerin had woken up in the uncomfortable, hard chair she had placed by the hospital bed her grandmother lay, warmly tucked in, with a terrible ache in her nape from the awkward position her head had rolled in when she was asleep. The day was also so cold that Chaerin could not take the elderly woman out for a stroll with her wheelchair outside in the garden in the middle of the hospital building. The occasional nightmares had also paid a visit that night and she’d felt as if a group of elephants had decided to walk over her through the night. Not to mention that she was in great need of her pills as soon as she opened her eyes because her head felt like her brain was parting into two in her skull.

But despite everything bad the new year already seemed to dish out to her, she managed to keep her grandmother smiling until the very day she fell asleep and never woke up again. The reality was harsh, on that very cold day, to wake up next to an equally cold body only to yell for help when it was already too late. Chaerin knew it was something that would happen—her grandmother was old, the cancer far too progressed and the therapies far too expensive for them to afford—as much as she hated it. But knowing it didn’t make it any less harder to accept that her only relative was gone from Earth’s face. Of course, she still had her parents. But she hadn’t seen them since even before she woke up, and her grandmother had said something about them being adventurous and wanting to travel around the world—some kind of modern hippies who were much in love and for some reason forgot they even had a child back home.

It was her grandmother who had always been by her side, scolding and praising when she should, teaching her all kinds of skills that would be useful to her in the future and surely shower her with so much love that there was a very, very big hole in her when she realized that spot would not be satisfied ever again now. That pit would only grow to the point it would break her inside out, till the day she’d be so pathetic and lonely that the thought of joining her grandmother for the sake of seeing someone she loved so much occurred to her. Which scared her much, shall that day come and that thought pass her mind, she feared of what she would actually decide.

But then again, there was also mr. Byung, who cared for her and had promised her late grandmother at her funeral that he’d look after her granddaughter like she was his. And Chaerin knew that she could not let down the man when he had taken up such a task, being responsible for a twenty-three year old young woman who was still too childish and constantly acted depressed due to her lack of experience in life. Because, frankly, she had little of it.

The gap of eighteen years was undeniably huge, far too big not to affect her everyday life. Yet, she had learned to live without knowing, despite wanting to know, for the sake of not going through intense headaches that would only make tears form in her eyes and hands shake and, later on, after she had downed at least four pills of some sort of pain-killers, sleep till the next morning. Mr. Byung always did his best to keep the shop as quiet as possible—no music playing through the speakers on the walls, no people entering unless they meant business when she worked, no more stuff being built in the back room because the materials creaked and were too loud—but Chaerin never actually got to tell him that the reason for her headaches had nothing to do with sounds. She was pretty sure they weren’t even usual headaches. She didn’t have the heart to tell him all he did was practically useless either, since he always tried his best not to frustrate her in any way. She always blamed the nightmares instead.

The truth, though, was that she would always feel this stirring pain through her head whenever she tried to think, tried to remember, of before. Before she woke up from the coma, before she was met with her grandmother after months, before every single memory she could remember at the moment. Every single time she would try to bring back her life before her already built memories, a pain would rise and it would be so strong that would make her desperate for pain-killers and the comfort of her bed, her warm blankets, some alone time. Every time she tried to remember, it felt as if something was pushing her away from what she wanted to know, as if there was something keeping her away from knowing—or maybe even protecting her.

Like a supernatural force that kept those eighteen years blank because, for one reason or another, they were supposed to stay blank.

Sometimes, Chaerin was just thankful that she actually remembered how to do simple thing; talk, walk, think. Those times, having that hole in her memory line was something she could cope with, something that didn’t bother her much. However, other times, she would find the gap as annoying as ever and would curse and swear and get angry at whatever was stopping her from remembering. Even how she had fallen in coma was unknown to her. Maybe the shock, maybe it was just a horrible accident, but whatever it was, it had locked away so many years’ worth of memories and it annoyed her how everyone around her kept their memories of their childhood when she couldn’t even remember her teen years.

Unfair, she’d often call it. But there was nothing she could do about it anyways.

But why did she leave me alone now? When I still have so many things to learn, to discover. When I still need guidance and someone to teach me and to help me? I can’t figure everything by my own yet… I’m still too weak.

Chaerin’s eyes fell on the counter, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Everything was so messed up even if it was a month already since she started living on her own. The pain was fresh, the gap far too large. She’d found solace in working day and night just for her mind to be busy, to avoid thinking, overthinking everything. A way to cope with being alone, lonely, left with only one person she knew of. After all, mr. Byung was the only person other than her grandmother who she knew the name of.

She wasn’t even sure if she had friends before the accident. And even if she did, she doubted she would remember them or feel them being familiar in any way. Also, judging how her only visitor when she was in the hospital was her grandmother, she didn’t think there was actually anyone else out there who knew her. Unless there was, and they had gone far away in those months she was asleep, and didn’t know she had woken up. But that was a possibility so small which probably was at the same level with her getting her memories back. Most likely a non-existent possibility.

“Chaerin, dear,” mr. Byung sat in the chair in front of the counter the girl was behind, looking at her with an expression of understanding. “You know you can’t go on like this. You can’t lock yourself from the world, not now, not ever. There are so many things to see and to do for someone so young like you. You can’t step away from your future by drowning yourself in the past. Not remembering can also be good; it means you can build many more memories.” The man offered a gentle smile.

“It hurts me to see you like this. Go outside and meet people, it’ll do good to know someone new. Don’t just stick to safe grounds, go out there and face the world, new people, new situations.” He made a pause, letting the words sink. Chaerin was staring at him with slightly wide eyes, a bit scared of the whole idea. “Don’t beat yourself over what happened. I don’t want to see such a young person waste their life away. And surely, your grandmother wouldn’t like to see that either.”

The theory sounded easy enough to her ears; go outside, meet people, be-friend them, forget, build new situations to remember later. But how could she go outside when she was afraid? How could she meet people without coming off as inexperienced and strange? She didn’t even have anything to talk about other than her unending work at the Junk Shop and the moments she’d spent with her grandmother. She couldn’t even forget the so few memories she held on so tightly to replace them. But, building new memories sounded so appealing.

“I’m not kicking you out per se, Chaerin,” The man said quickly when he saw the slight hurt in the girl’s eyes—even if he wasn’t sure if she was really offended in any way or too immersed in her own thoughts. “I just want you to be happy. So get these couple days off and see how that works and shall you come again here, I want you to be smiling and to tell me just how many people have found you adorable.” He stretched his hand out and pinched the blonde girl’s cheek with a fatherly grin on his face. Chaerin only squirmed but smiled back, grabbing on his hand and trying to escape his gentle fingers.

“I’m not adorable,” She objected but the man shook his head in disagreement.

“You are just as adorable as your grandmother was back in the day.”

That was enough to make Chaerin grin widely, feeling so fluttered and knowing that such a compliment was the best she could ever get—to look even the least like her good, kind and loving grandmother.

Somehow like that Chaerin was given three days off work to “me