Chapter One: To Feel

I stood there. The wind blew.  In front of me, the tree peered down, casting a shadow over my body. I gazed at its bark. The trunk was wide and uneven with knots randomly sitting on its sides. Rips of torn flesh were its outer shell; a mix of white thin paper and burnt coffee. Birch wood is what the Onew man had called it. Birch. The word swam through my mind like a foreign entity, but why then, did it seem so familiar to me? It was quite the strangest tree I’d ever seen…I think. I don’t remember. My head tilted the more my thoughts weighed down on my mind. Onew said it was the thickest and most unique birch wood tree around. The reason why its beauty was centered as the focal point of the town. Onew. I almost forgot he was next to me, watching me as I craned my neck.  

People began to stare. I could tell, of course, no matter where my true focus was stationed. Onew didn’t say anything. There was silence between us. He was right. It hadn’t looked as though it had rained in a while. The tree and the land were dry. There were no muddy areas or pale dead leaves. There wasn’t a hint of despair in the air, in the buildings, or in the sky. And this place…this place was populated with people.

“See, I told you it didn’t rain.” He chuckled a bit, closing in our distance.

“Sorry, I was just sure it did…”

I was so sure…

“Oh, here!” Onew exclaimed.

He dug into his pocket and turned to me with a reassuring smile. As he opened his palm towards me, I was greeted with a silver chained necklace. He hung it from his finger. There was no special trinket at the end of it, just a plain silver chain that glinted in the sunlight. The glint, bounced off my eye and for second…if only for a second, it had a familiarity to me. But that was quickly washed away.

“It fell out of your hands when we were picking you up to take you to the hospital.”

He shoved it towards me with gentle hands and kept that goofy smile on his face, scratching the back of his head. I grabbed it, but of course, it had no meaning to me. I didn’t even know why I was here in the first place.

“I guess you don’t know why I had it?” I asked.

He shook his head and added a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Not a clue I’m afraid. But you were holding it pretty damn tight so I thought it might be in some way important to you. Even if you can’t remember now, maybe you’ll remember later. Maybe it’ll trigger something, you know.”

I nodded my head, but I didn’t know.

I wasn’t sure about anything right now.

“When…” I paused for a moment, trying to get my thoughts together. “When you found me and took me to the hospital, did the doctors tell you why I might be like this?”

Onew looked to the side as if to thoroughly think for a moment, but then as before, he shrugged his shoulders, giving a little lean to his body.

“Before we left today, I told them that you couldn’t remember anything and they looked just as puzzled as you. They said you didn’t have any kind of damage on you. Not one scrape on your body. They did say that you should stay another night for observation though, but you didn’t want to.”

“No…I didn’t.”

I looked around the area, the sun beaming down on my skin. I felt its rays pore into my pores. Where they, the rays, like me? Forcing themselves to connect?

More people began to gather around; one person whispering in another’s ear and so on. I didn’t like being the center of attention anymore. It made me nervous and uneasy. And then…the whisper came, like a touch over the shoulder or a slight breeze of the wind.

“Taemin, wake up.”

“Kai.” I responded.

Onew raised his brows and looked at me in question.

“What’d ya say?” He asked.

My eyelids fluttered and again, I looked around at all these people coming closer whether they realized it or not.

It was the same question I was asking myself. Whose name did I call? Why?

A truck rushed onto the scene, its engine announced itself before the visual of the vehicle itself. It made me jump, even made Onew jump for a second until he looked at the driver and saw who it was. That awkward smile made its way on his face again. The crowd backed up a bit and the whispers became louder. The driver put the truck in park and came out, slamming the door as loudly as possible. That was when I got a good look at his face.

He had a simple yet subtle demeanor about him, but he walked with sass. His hips moved with vigor, the curve of his body acted out more feminine than masculine. His face was slim, but skin looked soft. His eyes, small, yet attentive, squinted in the sunlight. His golden copper hair was parted to the side and almost, but not completely, slicked back. His mouth curved like a cat’s when he first glanced at me.

“Alright! Alright!” He yelled, waving his arms.  “Break it up! Stop being so damn nosy!”

The people who were crowded around, started to make these snarky faces at him, but like he commanded, they slowly broke up. He continued waving his arms throughout the air while coming closer to me and Onew. When everyone seemed to leave, he approached us. More Onew than myself.

“Onew, why didn’t you call me and tell me that he woke up!” The man demanded.

Onew began scratching the back of his head again.

“Sorry. He just really wanted to come out here and see this tree. I didn’t think anything of it-“

“It was my fault. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause a fuss.” I interrupted.

After all, it was my fault that all these people gathered; probably wondered what I was doing back after seeing what they thought to be, a dead corpse, lying against the tree. The man turned to look at me and it was as if his whole attitude shifted around just by seeing my face. His lips curved into a smile.

“Oh it’s not your fault. Shoot, you had me worried with the condition you were in the other night. Never seen anything like that in my life.” He nodded.

“What’d you mean?” I asked.

“Onew didn’t tell you?” He glared at the man for a second before giving me attention again, “Well you were as cold as ice when we found you. I ran up to you first when we did. When I touched your skin, it was as cold as a dead person’s. That’s what I thought you were at first. Almost made me pass out.” He chuckled.

But the quiver that left the small increments of his laughter said otherwise.

“But Onew here found your pulse and heart beat so we dragged you to the hospital. I’m Key by the way, Onew’s boyfriend.” He placed his hand out towards me and with a bit of hesitation, I grabbed it and shook it.

“I didn’t tell him that because I didn’t want to scare the life back out of him.” Onew snapped.

“Well, he’s alright now. That’s what’s important. Come on, you two get in the truck. I made some breakfast at home. You need to eat it before it gets too cold.” He stood in the middle of both me and Onew and clasped his arms around the both of us.

****

Throughout the entire drive, I couldn’t help but continuously become distracted with my own questionable thoughts. They talked to me for a minute, but whatever they said, went in one ear and out the other. Eventually, they started nagging back and forth at one another about the issue. I felt awful. This whole thing was my fault anyway. If only I could remember something important, something about my life and how to get back home, if I had one. My name and another man’s name seemed to be the only thing I could recall. That, and the girl in my dreams. More of a nightmare though.

When we were at the house, Key set and made up some plates at the dinner table, a small wooden thing that could only possible fit four people. It almost looked to be hand carved along with the thick framed chairs that circled it. The place definitely had a country feel to it but with a modern flare with the wondrous decorations, from little shell trinkets to abstract gold accents that were quite hard to describe from the eye. The exterior was surrounded by patches of grass and sand with large ceramic bowls on the side of the house. The front was peculiar. The frame was shaped as an upside ‘L’ with dark mahogany wood and random windows that didn’t seem to align very well. The door was mahogany wood as well but the bottom exterior was more of a cream cement with large windows that could see out onto the ocean.

Such a peculiar setting this home was. Almost reminded me of their hospital. Seashells hung about the place with pictures of the ocean beautifully photographed. It made sense, seeing how their house was so close to the sea. I looked out the window and saw it for myself; how the sun’s rays hit the water with such a glow. A reflection both pleasing to the eye and relaxing. When they called me in to eat, it was hard to look away.

Key had made a wonderful plate for the lot of us. Kimchi, bacon, eggs, and some bean sprout on the side.

“I love Kimchi in the morning, don’t you?” He asked me.

With my free hand, I dug into my pocket where I had stuffed the chain into and stared at it.

“I’m not sure.” I honestly answered.

Key coughed a little as though he had made a mistake in speaking, probably realizing that I had no memory of what I loved or hated.

“Sorry, Onew told me how you couldn’t remember anything.”

“No need to apologize.” I slowly responded, fiddling with the chain.

“I-Is the chain helping?” Onew asked, peeping over to see me messing with it.

“Kai.” I said aloud.

I looked up to find the two of them looking back at me.

“It’s the guy’s name that you yelled when you woke up right?” Onew asked.

I nodded my head.

“I don’t know who he is, but apparently I remember his name. Do either of you know anyone by that name? Maybe?”

They turned to look at one another in unison and slowly shook their heads.

“Sorry.” Key answered.

“But you yourself,” Onew began, wiggling his finger towards me as if trying to summon a faded memory, “look familiar. Like I’ve seen you before over here.”

“Please,” Key responded, “you probably barely remembered that you had that chain in your pocket before you gave it to him.”

Onew glared at him and rolled his eyes and Key did the same back.

“We did find a wallet on you that I knew Onew would forget to give to you so I brought it home. Hold on.”

Key got up and left.

Onew scowled his lip up a bit before rolling his eyes.

“He’s a nice person.” I said to him, trying to lift up the mood.

“Yeah, he was…” His voice seemed to fade a bit as he said the second part. “Later on, he’ll probably be a sad person too.”

I opened my mouth to question him but Key walked back into the room with a small brown wallet.

“There’s not much in there but your ID and a picture of you and a girl. There was another picture that almost fell out that I caught. I think it’s of you and someone else but it’s half torn off so I couldn’t see the faces.” He handed it to me.

At first glance I took out the picture of me and a girl sitting side by side. She was young, maybe four or five but her smile was adorable. Her pitch black hair bounced off of the sunlight in the photo and I too, looked younger. It must have been a really old picture. I placed it on the table and grabbed out my ID Key was talking about. My first name Taemin of course, like the man called out in my nightmare, but when I tried to read the rest of it, the words started to move about on the card. I squinted my eyes trying to arrange them with some mental power I didn’t possess but to no success.

“What’s wrong?” Onew asked.

I shot my arm across the table, making the card face the both of them.

“Can either of you read this?!” I shouted.

“Of course we can read it.” Key replied.

“No like, make sense of it. The words are everywhere!”

Onew gently grabbed the card from my hands and looked at it.

“It says Lee Taemin with other information on it.” He turned it back to me but when he did all I saw was letters switched around in places that made no sense at all.

I shook my head.

“All the letters are wrong.”

“The letters?” Onew asked.

“It doesn’t make sense and it’s making my head hurt.” I rubbed the side of my left temple.

“Honey,” Key spoke, grabbing my attention. “I think you might be dyslexic. Here, read that sign that I made about the sea.”

He pointed his finger to the right-hand corner of myself and I turned and looked up.

“What does it say?” He asked me.

Just like my ID, the letters made no sense in the position they were in. I shook my head in frustration.

“I don’t know.”