[CONTENTID1]CHAPTER TWENTY THREE - SACRIFICES II [/CONTENTID1]
[CONTENTID2]

"Oh. My. God." His jaw is practically sweeping the floor. "Hyerim...Hyerim, is that..." He doesn't finish his question and I wiggle my fingers in impatience and anticipation.

"Jongin, I'm gonna need a little more words from you," I hiss but he merely gulps audibly. I roll my eyes. "Jongin!"

"Jay, you recognise these people?" Bora questions her partner. "Jay!"

I continue to stare expectantly at Jongin. "Jongin? Do you know Jay?" He nods slowly and walks a few steps forward, stopping just a bit in front of me. His Adam's apple bobs as he gulps and his eyes take in the figure that is Jay.

"Oh my ing god. Jeon Jungkook, you motherer." My legs suddenly die and I drop to the floor of the aircraft. Jungkook? I'm about to faint but someone rushes over and scoops me into their arms, sitting me upright on their lap. I tilt my head and find that Jay's face is inches from mine. Jay? Jungkook? I reach up and touch his face, running my fingers over his eyes, cheeks, nose and lips. I pull his ears and focus my eyes on him, burning his details into my memory. He looks so different. He's older, bulkier. He has piercings.

"Jungkook?" I squeak and his brows furrow. I see it now. The dark brown eyes that hold so much pain and sorrow behind them. The broad shoulders that seem to carry the world on them and the lips that have spoken words that I have never been able and never will be able to forget. "O-O-Oh my god. Oh my god!" I burst into tears and throw my arms around him, crushing our bodies together. I'm overwhelmed with mixed emotions, so much so that no sound escapes my mouth as I weep into his shoulder. 

"Jay, what the ..." Bora mumbles but I pay no attention to her. My fingers dig into the material of Jungkook's hooded cape and I cling to him like a lifeline. He hugs me back and although it should feel foreign, it doesn't. It feels like home. "Jay, stop this. There's no way it's really her. Jay. Jay! Ja-"

"His name is Jungkook, not Jay!" I snap, pulling away from the embrace. I get off his lap and sit on my knees, grabbing his face. "It's you. It's really you. It's really you, oh my god." I hug him again, even tighter this time. "I thought you died."

"I watched you die. I watched you die in my arms," Jongin croaks. He comes over and falls to his knees, pulling us into a group hug. I can hardly breathe but it's the best feeling I've had all day. My heart aches: it seems the universe takes one thing away to give another. I lost BamBam but I just regained Jungkook. It doesn't change the fact that someone I love died, Jungkook will never replace BamBam - no one will. His shoes will forever be impossible to fill and my heart will forever have a missing piece. But that doesn't mean a different part cannot be stitched up. 

"Can somebody explain to me what's happening? Because I'm totally confused," Daehyun blurts out. "No idea what's going on right now." We break away from the hug and stare at one another. I continue to cling onto Jungkook. I don't think I'll ever be able to let him go. My mind is currently a mangled mess - what am I even supposed to think right now? How am I supposed to feel? A ghost from my past has just been resurrected. It's all too much.

Jongin speaks first. "What the happened to you? I watched you die, Jungkook! You got shot in front of us!" The older male keeps his arm around me and looks down, staring at his free hand. "How are you here right now?"

"It's...hard to remember," he replies, frowning. "They brainwash us, make us forget."

"Who?" I ask and he lifts his eyes to meet mine. "Who brainwashed you, Jungkook?"

He his lips to apply moisture to them. "The Africans. They take us and train us. They torture us and make us forget who we were. They turn us into mindless soldiers." I slip my hand into his and squeeze it.

"You recognised me," I say.

He shakes his head. "I recognised your name. It never leaves me. Then I heard the name Jongin and...I don't know. It made something click but I still don't remember anything." His voice is suddenly small and he doesn't look like the badass assassin I witnessed at the aerodrome. He looks like the scared boy I spoke to on the ground of a survival camp when he was seventeen and I was fourteen. "I don't know who you are. I don't even know who I am." 

"What's the last thing you remember about your old life? How did you recognise Hyerim's name?" Jongin asks and he furrows his brows in thought. His eyes light up and he retracts the arm he has around me to remove his hooded cape. He s his jacket and pulls the neck of his black t-shirt down, revealing lines upon lines of colourful ink. I'm tempted to pull his T-shirt further down to get a complete look of the artwork but I refrain from doing so. Surrounded by detailed tattooing of helicopters, scouting maps, helmets and other war-time related objects, is a name written in curvature.

"Min-Hee," I say out loud and my chest constricts. He pulls his shirt lower down, revealing more names: Hyerim, Jongin, Taemin, Hyomi...there are more but they're cut off by his clothing. I can tell that his entire - or most of - his chest is tattooed and I wonder if any other parts of his body are. I would've never pegged Jeon Jungkook as a tattoo junky but I guess he's not Jeon Jungkook anymore. Or rather, he is (deep down) but he just can't remember it. I will help him remember. "Why did you get those?"

"I didn't want to forget," he murmurs, covering his ink back up. "I got them before they started...changing us. Most, actually all of us get tattoos so they thought nothing of it. It helps that my other ones are heavy to the eye and distracting, so you can't see the names unless you look very closely."

"Jesus, I can't believe this is actually happening," Jongin breathes, hugging Jungkook for a second time, unexpectedly. The older male hugs him back despite the fact that he can't remember him. It implies on some level he knows we were important to him and he, to us. "What did they do to you?"

"Still waiting for an explanation over here," Hyoyeon sings.

"So am I," Bora agrees then flashes her a distasteful look. Her cheek is beginning to swell where Hyoyeon punched her. Apparently, Youngjae notices because he walks over to her and reaches for her face. She grabs him by the wrist and twists his arm around. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Helping you! A-pa, let go!" Youngjae yelps and she eyes him intently before releasing him. He rubs his arm and flashes her a glare, then moves his hands up to her face again. This time, she lets him do his work to help relieve some of the pressure from her cheek muscles. "It looks like Hyoyeon did a number on you." He gives Hyoyeon a pointed look.

"What? She chopped Kyu oppa's hand off," she mutters, folding her arms sulkily. "Doesn't matter if it was to save him or not. She could've given him or us a warning." 

"You're lucky I even decided to help," Bora snaps.

"Yeah, lucky us. Lucky Kyuhyun who's now gonna be handicapped," Hyoyeon scoffs. 

"At least he's alive," she bites back. I roll my eyes at t