They hurt…my eyes.

There was this foggy, confused feeling to them and it became worse when I tried to open them. When I was finally able to, the first thing that greeted them was a piercing light. For a mere second, I thought I’d died all the while feeling a steady soreness in my throat. Gradually, my ears cleared up from hearing dense, muffled sounds to actually picking up the beeping of machines and the conversations between people. My eyes, they were finally letting up and getting used to wherever I was in.

Images swirled in front of me trying to become solid again and eventually, they did. I saw that I was laid out in a hospital bed, layered in the blankets and covers. My hands slept calmly on my abdomens and piercing the skin of one of them was a transparent tube, transporting liquid from a machine into my body.

My head was killing me. It felt as though I’d been hit a thousand times or beat by a thousand people. I never felt anything like this before. I wanted to scream, wanted to yell out to whoever was in the room, because I could hear someone. But seconds passed by and eventually, the pain subsided, fading away thought by thought. It was then that I was able to get a clear vision of the room. Cream colored walls surrounded me, with two figures standing at the doorway, their attentions turned to one another.

They didn’t see me. In fact, it looked like they were in the middle of a conversation. I observed some more and caught sight of a window straight ahead of me but the blinds on the side of it were closed down. The room seemed to be medium sized, nothing too big and nothing too fancy. I couldn’t see the floor but it probably matched the rest of the room. Everything was a neutral color from the walls to the crowned ceilings, even the chairs that were to the left of me looked like a bright brown color. There was a television in the corner as well, high up towards the ceiling and the smell that surrounded me could best be described as some sort of sweetness the invaded my nose and made my stomach turn.

I tried to move my hand with the tube stuck in it, but it hurt too much, so I did my best to move the arm of it and slide it off of my other hand. That one hurt less than the one with the tube in it and when I tried to move it, my fingers began wiggling. I could suddenly feel my throat clearing up, so I grunted, gaining the attention of the two figures at the door. They became less blurry the closer they walked to me. A reassuring feeling.

 “Omo! Taemin, you’re awake.”

It was Minho. His tall frame shadowed over my body when he ran up to my side and next to him stood Jonghyun, their eyebrows furrowing towards one another as if the two of them were thinking on something…hard.

Minho clasped his hand over his chest so hard, I could hear the deep thud against his skin when he did, a mirror of thunder hitting the sky.

“We thought you were dead!” He exclaimed, their images were completely clear to me now, from the clothes they wore down to their worried expressions.

“We?” I questioned, looking towards Jonghyun.

He pursed his lips as if forcing himself not to say anything but nodded his head in agreement.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” Minho replied, automatically changing his demeanor from worried to sad. “I was mad at the situation and the last thing I thought was that this was going to happen.”

Jonghyun turned towards him, mimicking his features.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He replied in a calm voice, placing his hand on Minho’s shoulder then taking it off.

Minho turned to him as well and re-sent the small smile that was received.

There was something different about the two. What had happened while I was knocked out? Why did I faint to begin with? I tried to push myself up but after grunting, the two of them grabbed hold of each side of me and aided me in the movement.

“Thanks,” I grumbled, ignoring the fact that their grasps just made it hurt worse.

“Why am I here?” I muttered.

“Like Minho said, you fainted,” Jonghyun stated. “But a couple of the doctors here seem to know you. One of them who’s taking care of you now said that he took care of you when you were here last time.”

“Last time? But I don’t remember-“

“Being here before.” Minho finished. “Yeah, he said that you’d probably say something like that. All he could tell us though was that he told you a while back to be careful. He was waiting for you to wake up to talk to you.”

“I’ll go get him,” Jonghyun replied.

I nodded.

Minho stayed by my side as Jonghyun left the room, but I could see his eyes follow the man as he walked away. There was no anger in his eyes or sadness. In fact, he looked a little happy?

“What happened?” I asked.

His attention turned back on me. His eyebrows arched up with question as he tried to decipher what I meant.

“I told you-“

“Not me. You and Jonghyun. You two don’t seem angry at each other anymore.”

I could see a faint blush began to form on the man’s cheek. It was the second time next to seeing him deep in his artwork that I saw a bit of vulnerability in the man. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess you can say, we made up. After all, I was being a little difficult to handle. After I saw what happened to you and the ambulance came, we were going to follow. But I guess seeing you liked that freaked me out more than I thought and my condition,” he spoke the last part with caution, “started acting up and in the end, I was the one who had to go see my doctor here.”

I nodded.

“Jonghyun got worried about you and then on top of that, there was me. In the end, we started talking while I was in the hospital room and we made up. Like I said, I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just a little difficult when it feels like people are telling you you’re weak.” His voice grew darker, a mere whisper was the last part as if just saying the word ‘weak’ made him such.

“But I wasn’t-“

“Yeah, I know.” He chuckled. “I just always felt like that when people said I needed to talk about it or in Jonghyun’s case that I needed to stop working on my art because of my condition.”

A heavy sighed moved from his lips.

“But after talking, he apologized for always telling me to give up on my art. He stopped telling me to let it go.”

“TAEMIN STOP IT! LET IT GO!” The words screamed in my ear and immediately I grabbed my head and squinted my eyes together in pain.

“Taemin! Are you alright?” I felt Minho’s hand touch my shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” I heard an unfamiliar voice call out.

I looked over and saw a tall man in a doctor’s coat run over with Jonghyun on his side. He wore glasses and sported a short haircut that swerved to the left side of his head. He pulled his stethoscope from beneath his doctor’s coat as the two of them rushed up to me, but the pain was beginning to subside, so I shook my hands away and placed them to my sides.  

“It’s nothing,” I responded. “Just a slight headache.”

The doctor turned to look at the two of them and gently asked for the both of them to leave the room and close the door as they did.

“I need some alone time with my patient.” He stated.

They nodded their heads and in less than a minute, they were gone.

****

The doctor had pulled up a chair next to my bed and sat down with his chart in hand and his pen in his coat pocket. A faint smile hit his lips when he looked at me.

“Entertaining to see you back here.” He started.

But by the look of things, he already knew that I didn’t know what in the world he was talking about. He simply nodded his head and chuckled.

“You were quite an entertaining patient I had in this hospital. It’s why so many nurses and doctors know you now.” He smiled.

“Entertaining?” I questioned.

“Mhm.”

I scooted myself up some more.

“I always told you to be careful with your condition but you didn’t want to believe there was anything wrong with you. On top of that, you didn’t even worry about yourself. Your boyfriend was the one always worried about you. Where is he anyway? The two of you never go somewhere without the other.”

“My boyfriend?” I questioned, adjusting my attention even more.

“Ah right. The memory thing.” He said, using his finger to tap on his temple.

“Kai?” I asked.

The doctor seemed surprised.

“You remember him?” He asked.

“Mm…only little things. The other day I remembered what he looked like. Or at least I hope I got it right.”

“Well did he have dark hair in your memory?” He asked and I nodded. “Then it was most likely the right memory. Do you remember anything else?”

“I think…” My eyebrows scrunched together, “I think we got into an argument a while back and I ran away...or something along those lines. Um…Only like a week or so ago I woke up in the countryside laying under a tree after thinking I was awake but I wasn’t. There was this girl in my dream and she keeps popping up surprisingly in certain parts when I remember something. But I mostly remember Kai. I don’t know why but I do.”

“Well, you two were quite inseparable. The fight must have been intense for the two of you to not be together now, especially under your condition.”

My lip scrunched up, there was that word again, condition.

“You keep saying condition, condition. Even Kai wrote it in the letter he left me. What condition?” I asked angrily.

“Answer me this first,” the doctor began, “who’s this girl that you mention? Do you remember her name?”

I sighed and thought about it, realizing I hadn’t really thought about her name in a while. But I remembered my dreams, or nightmares more like it, about her. They were still clear and vivid to me.

“R-Rani,” I answered and immediately the doctor’s eyebrows lifted up.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

He smiled again.

“Nothing we need to worry about right now.”

There was an eerie and off vibe to his voice when he spoke. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It seemed lately there were not straight answers left to me, even in the damn letter I felt it was nothing but a riddle.

“Why don’t we take a walk Taemin. There’s a lot you need to know without trying to make you worse.”

****

Before we were outside, the doctor informed me there was no reason to keep the medicine attached so he took me off.

The air out here was fresh and fulfilling. There were many bushes and other greenery where we sat and across the way I could see other patients walking about with their family members or doctors and casually talking to one another. And even before my own doctor began to speak, from the corner of a bush where a bench sat underneath it, sat a little girl with black hair. I furrowed my eyebrows and inspected closer but her head was down and as a result, her long black hair covered parts of her face. She was in hospital clothes, appearing sad and alone.

“Taemin?” Came the doctor’s voice. “Taemin, are you alright?”

I fluttered my eyelashes and turned my eyes away from the girl to look at my doctor.

“I was just looking at-“ I pointed my finger toward the direction of the girl but when I looked, she wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. No girl, no bench, not even the bush.

“Taemin?” He asked.

I shook my head and smiled.

“It’s nothing. You can start.”

He didn’t smile back. Instead, he pursed his lips and crossed his arms, looking me up and down almost as if suspecting my mental state. I couldn’t get angry at his actions. I too suspected my own mental condition from time to time.

“You must tell me the truth if something is wrong.” He replied, but seemed to let it go.

“On your condition. You’ve been coming to this hospital for a couple of years now.”

“Years!” I exclaimed in a disbelief.

“Yes,” he nodded. “A long time ago you were in a train accident, surprisingly enough. Not a lot of those happen around here. It was in the subway around this area somewhere. You and many other people were seriously injured and though you got better...there was a problem.”

He tapped his temple again, pointing to his head.

“Your mental condition was unstable and it only made your dyslexia worse.”

“So I had dyslexia before I was injured?” I didn’t know why that seemed to concern me more but I did still wonder.

“Yes. After a while, your boyfriend Kai explained that you were having blackouts during the day. Not so much that you were fainting but he said the two of you could be together the whole day and at night you ask him what happened in the morning or in the afternoon. He mentioned that it was starting to become a pattern. I was the one who did the surgery on you when you were hurt so Kai asked me to offer my services with your condition. I found out that you had a case of repeated memory loss. It can happen to many people. But unfortunately, yours progressed. It went from little blackouts during the day or evening, to it becoming days or weeks were you wouldn’t remember. Then, suddenly, a new condition popped up to where you would get hallucinations of the past. You were going back and forth. Unfortunately, we were unable to tell you when your memory loss would stop progressing. Physically, your brain was okay but mentally, it was turning into its own jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes the memories would come back to you but the last time you were here, you had a ten-month gap in memory.”

“Ten months!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, and when we informed you that there was no way to stop it you got angry and left. This is my first time seeing you since.”

“And how long has it been. The hotel owner told me that me and Kai had gotten into an argument at the hotel a short while ago.”

The doctor sighed as if in deep thought.

“Well, the last time you were here,” he looked down at the chart he’d brought in the room and kept as we walked. “Was one month ago. However, that won’t explain how short of a while it was when the two of you had that argument. Could have been two weeks ago, could have been three. Either way, your memory gaps are spreading and there’s no way for us to stop it. For all we know, you could forget yesterday suddenly. I hate to put that in your head but-“

“It’s just the truth,” I replied.

I stood up from where I sat and looked over and around at the beautiful greenery that the hospital held.

“Unfortunately, Kai didn’t leave contact information with us. The last time the two of you were here, he said that you two were moving and he doesn’t carry a cell phone.”

“Moving?” The word came out of my mouth almost at a whisper but for some odd reason, I nodded my head then turned back to him.

“I thought you said I was entertaining.”

He smiled.

“You were the loudest and deniable person we had at our hospital. You refused to believe that anything was wrong with you and occasionally you would make jokes about it. Then you stopped…It started getting harder for you to remember but I told you not to try, that it should come naturally to you because it would only make you worse if you tried to remember too much at once. You were still stubborn and even though you’ve forgotten now, I can still see it.”

“The girl-“ I started but when I looked down I could already see the doctor about to speak.

“I knew you would ask about her.” He replied, but as he was about to tell me, I shook my head.

“For some reason,” I started, “I think Kai should tell me about her. I feel like it’s something important he should say.”

The doctor nodded his head.

“I can only give you information that you want.”

“There is two things that I would like to know,” I replied.

“Yes?”  

I pointed over where I saw the girl.

“Did there used to be a bench and bush over there?”

The doctor turned his head where my finger lead and looked at me surprised.

“I didn’t think anyone would remember. There are so many more bushes and stuff added out here than before.”

“Second question, I went on...The girl…who was she to me?”

He paused for so long that I turned to look at him to make sure he’d heard me. His expression was solemn but he answered anyway.

“She was your sister.”