celestial strings | h.js

one.

You peeked your head down the hall and frowned when you saw nobody familiar, but you doubted he could be far if he were merely talking to someone. Picking a random direction with a mumbled nursery rhyme, you spun on your heels and jogged to the right side of the hallway. Shuffling through nurses and patients, it took you more than just down the hall to find Seungmin sitting on a bench outside a random room. Next to him was a boy you've never met before.

"Seungmin!"

Jisung froze when he realized he had responded instinctively to your voice. As you jogged closer to where he sat, he wanted to shrink into the air and evaporate. He wanted to find an escape and leave as quickly as possible so he wouldn't have to confront you. It was great to know that you were up and running, but that was to the extent he wanted to know about. You could forget him on paper and in theory. He didn't have to hear about you asking him for his name and who he was. But he couldn't move. There was an affectionate weight on his legs that refused his decision to walk away from you, and it would stay there forever.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," you huffed after coming to a stop. Glancing off to Jisung, you briefly noticed his bloodshot eyes, then you panicked and turned back to Seungmin. The grimace on your face was almost hilarious to him, and your whispers were even funnier. You pointed at the room window subtly. "Oh my god, I'm sorry. Did something happen to his family?"

Seungmin stared at you, both in disbelief and in shock. He couldn't believe it, but magic truly managed to surprise him more and more with how outrageous its audacity to interfere with human lives was. Jisung filled him in on everything that happened. Some parts of it he already knew, such as the rules of the soulmate string, but he never thought it was possible until now, when neither you nor Jisung acknowledged each other. But how could that be possible? How could Jisung get wholly erased from your memory when so many things about you have come to be directly led back to him? The cognitive conflict must be immeasurable.

"No, this–uhm." Seungmin cleared his throat and gestured at Jisung. He stopped to look at his friend for permission, but Jisung gave him none, so he scrapped the notion of introducing you to each other. Instead, he rubbed his thighs and smiled faintly at you. "You were looking for me?"

You hummed with a nod. "Yeah. We need to talk."

"Oh, but I–"

"Go," Jisung whispered with a shove of his elbow. "Take care of them."

"Jisung..."

"Please?"

Seungmin sighed defeatedly. Jisung was right. Sitting around and talking about what to do about you losing your memories of him would bring them nowhere far and fast. If anything, the person they should consult regarding this issue should be you. He could figure out a way to discreetly ask you about it, but from the little information they have regarding breaking a soulmate string, it seemed that amnesia would be permanent. More importantly, Jisung needed time to deal with this loss—the loss of you and, by extension, the loss of himself.

You watched intensely as the two exchanged a farewell embrace, and you had to shake yourself out of paying so much attention to a stranger's face. Jisung looked lovely, but more than that, there was a magnetic tug at your muscles whenever you looked at him. It was an unexplainable pull, a gravitational pull seemingly moving your body toward him. Something akin to what you believed seeing your soulmate would feel like. You laughed to yourself. If you were going to find your soulmate, it wouldn't be in random places like a hospital or a pedestrian road before a high school.

Seungmin watched Jisung leave before he turned to you. You teared up When you met eyes in a quiet corner of your own world. You fanned your face in hopes of stopping yourself from crying, but the more you thought about why you were feeling the urge to do so in the first place, the more your eyes urged you to open the floodgates. Seungmin picked under his nails, a lingering pain in his chest from knowing what happened after you sent him away, and he took a step forward to trap you in a tight embrace.

"Seungmin, I killed someone," you said, your voice muffled by his shoulder.

"Okay," he replied, holding a warm hand to your neck. "Don't think about it if you don't want to. We can always talk about it later."

You sniffed, nodding into his shoulder. You didn't think you could delay talking about what happened for however long you wanted, but there should be a grace period between now and when the council found that one of their members had been killed. Although, you did want to ask about your state when you were admitted into the hospital. It still didn't make sense to you that you were left unscathed. But, between now and then, you wanted to heed Seungmin's advice and not think about anything. Drowning in the safety net of your best friend's arms was all you wanted to do.

"[Name]! [Name]!"

Seungmin glared off at the other end of the hallway as he pulled away from you. Felix was running toward you both, his sneakers creating an even louder commotion than his voice. He was forced to a begrudging stop when a nurse stopped him with a scold. When you squinted, you could see him gripping your phone in his hand.

"Oh my god! I'm so sorry. I didn't–I didn't mean to take the call for you, but your phone was buzzing nonstop!" Felix said between huffs of breaths as he handed you the phone. It was still on call. "But you've got great news! Your uncle is awake!"

You pressed the phone to your ear.

"Your friend already broke the news to you, so I'm kind of useless here."

"Good to hear from you too, Minho," you said with a soft smile.

"Oh, you'll be even happier to hear from this guy." There was shuffling on the other end of the phone. A static noise traveled when someone picked it up again, and the voice that sounded was one that surprisingly hadn't changed much.

"Hey, kiddo," Chan greeted quietly as if testing the waters.

"Uncle Chan..." you muttered, surprised and relieved, but then a sudden dread fell over you. It has taken ages to break the curse that kept Chan in a coma. The only known way to wake him up was by breaking the soulmate string, which Minho once said he would do. But Minho sounded cheery just then, meaning he hasn't done anything as drastic as that, which would mean the curse broke through other means. You thought you knew how. "Oh, I think I know why you woke up."

"You do? I just thought it was a miracle."

"It's not–it's... umm." You pressed a hand to the speaker and looked urgently at your friends, who looked equally as clueless as you. "Uncle, there's a lot we need to catch up on."

As you unconsciously moved away to continue the conversation, hashing out plans to return to meet him, Felix elbowed Seungmin to get his attention.

"Hey," Felix started, "I don't mean to alarm you, but I think [Name] doesn't remember Jisung."

Seungmin puffed out his cheeks and sighed. "Yeah... we've got a lot to talk about."