forget-me-not || lee dohwa

𝐈𝐟 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐌𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐈 𝐀𝐦, 𝐈 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐂𝐫𝐲

In another time, Gyeoul would've given anything to sit next to Lee Dohwa and talk to him. However, the moment his tone implied that she had wronged him, her stomach sank painfully due to the panic and worry of the unknown. She couldn't tolerate someone so dear to her being upset or angry with her. She screwed her eyes shut and prayed.

Please, please, please, take me away—

When she opened her eyes, she was in the library.

☄

For a long time, Gyeoul sat still as a statue, replaying how she had met him. She sank into a chair, in the back of the library, groaning at the way she had stuttered and stammered in front of Lee Dohwa.

You—Gyeoul—sorry. No, wait. I meant...I meant you're Gyeoul—no. You're Lee Dohwa and I'm Baek Gyeoul and I'm also sorry.

Just shoot me, she had thought.

But it was so...so thrilling and wild and surreal. Her Dohwa. Hers. Real. She had felt him, skin on skin when she had touched his face. He was real.

Gyeoul replayed the memory, etching it deep into her consciousness. It was okay if Lee Dohwa forgot her. He had no idea how much he meant to her. But Gyeoul...this was one of the things she had wanted the most and there was no way she'd let a word of it fade away.

☄

The students in the library forgot her the moment they walked away from her. If she tried to sit across someone, they'd look up, again and again, every ten minutes, and get surprised to see her in front of them. A girl with twintails had approached her thrice, asking if she went to this school and that outsiders weren't allowed. A boy had asked her twice if she had an extra pen, wondering out loud about why she was out of uniform. Somebody else had asked her if she was the Library Assistant.

Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

Finally, when the same boy with close-cropped hair had tried to flirt with her multiple times, using the same pick-up line ('Good thing I brought my library card because I'm checking you out'), Gyeoul took refuge behind the bookshelves. She could've left but the second she stepped outside the library doors, she found herself back at one of the tables.

She wondered if she stayed here, maybe Kyung would come to find her again.

No, she thought dejectedly, running her fingers over the spines of books on the shelves, he doesn't seem too fond of me—wait, he was reading that comic here. He was reading Secret.

Gyeoul rummaged through the columns, trying to recall where she had seen him stand. She found the damned comic, the word Secret shining on its cover, wedged between two encyclopedias.

Oh Namju's caricature was the first to stare back at her, on the introduction page. He looked very different from who he actually was. Instead of the haughty expression he wore here, the Namju from her world—Jeong Namju—was aloof and indifferent towards anyone who didn't interest him. And the only reason Gyeoul had been of interest to him was that one, they had grown up together; two, he was her brother's best friend; and three, she had spent nights listening to him talk about what and who he wanted to be. She had kept his secrets and he had liked her for that.

Nevertheless, his feelings had faded as quickly as they had appeared and Gyeoul, ashamed of how fast she had let herself love him, locked herself away in her room.

The next drawing was of the female lead, Yeo Juda.

Then, Gyeoul's Lee Dohwa. Kyung. Someone called Shin Saemi. Iljin, Samjin, Yijin, Yangil, Yangsam, Yangyi, Aeil...