nostalgia, fifty-five.
❛ the truth untold ❜
FOUR WEEKS EARLIER.
A long dream. That was what Han Yebin felt like she'd woken up from as her eyes fluttered open, squinting at the blinding lights of the hospital room.
Her body ached. She didn't know why. She didn't even know why she was in here. Looking down at herself, she saw the arm cast she'd been put in, and became aware of the bandage wrapped around her head.
Other things in the room slowly came into sight. The flowers and greeting cards on her bedside table, the clock on the wall, and the calendar right next to it. February 23, 2022. That didn't seem right.
She sat up to stare at it in disbelief, but the small action seemed to alert her doctor, who came barging in through her door. Ah, my dad. Yebin smiled.
He did the obvious, coddling her with love and questions as he thanked God for 'giving her back.' He asked her if she was okay, and to rate her current pain from one to ten. But Yebin barely heard him. Everything still felt hazy, somehow. Her ears were ringing, and nothing seemed real just yet.
Then, her dad walked out to make a phone call. A boy entered the room shortly after that, startling Hajoon. "Jungwon? But, I just called you-?"
"I was already here, sir." The boy— Jungwon, she now learned— awkwardly closed the door behind him as he walked in. She couldn't get a good look at him from afar, but there was a vague familiarity about his voice. It sounded like one she'd heard before, in a comforting bedtime story or something of the sort.
"Oh." Her dad composed himself. "Well then, what are you waiting for?"
The boy flickered his eyes towards the hospital bed, and Yebin couldn't help but stare straight back at him, her eyes widening slightly. He might have been a stranger, yet she recognized him with the slightest certainty, but a certainty nonetheless. To put it into words, he had the kind of face you'd see at a bus stop, distinguishable not by name but by habit alone. She didn't really realize she was staring, or that she'd zoned out once again.
"These are uh- for you." The boy held up a bouquet of forget-me-nots. A strange choice, she thought. Those were the type of flowers you'd give someone you love. It was a promise to remember them, yet she remembered nothing of him.
"I usually just put these on your table, but it looks like these old ones are dying anyway, I'll just throw them-"
"Oh, give me that. I'll leave you two alone." Her father snatched the old flowers away, whispering something to the boy, inaudible to her ears. He left the room after that. Yebin wished he hadn't. There was nothing more awkward than being left alone with a stranger.
Thinking he probably felt the same way, she decided to give him a small smile. A broad grin immediately stretched across the boy's face, and before she knew it, he was walking towards her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders in a tight but gentle embrace. She blinked from behind his back. Strangers didn't hug like that, either.
Her arms instinctively hugged him back, and he sighed in relief. She could feel the smile on his face at that point, but what she really felt was this foreign warmth of comfort. His presence felt like home after a long trip, if her house was a place she hadn't called home yet. A peculiar thing, it was.
"I-I'm sorry." The boy pulled away, visibly panicked. "I just- missed you, a lot."
With that, he handed her the bouquet of forget-me-nots. Yebin couldn't help but stare at the flowers intently, wondering who on earth this boy was, and why he missed her the way he did. Surely, this stranger knew her somehow. In another life, perhaps. The thought seemed silly to her, and she let out a small laugh.
Yebin looked up, really taking in his appearance for the first time. He was tall, with a lean figure that an athlete would have. His tousled dark hair looked like he'd ran a hand through it a dozen times, and there was a ghost of a smile on his face that revealed the dimple on his left cheek. From the way her dad said his name, to the respect he treated her with, that said a lot about his character. She smiled at him. "Thank you, Jungwon."
The boy looked up, shocked. "What did you say?"
"Thank you-?"
"No, you- called me Jungwon."
"Isn't that your name?" Yebin tilted her head at him, sure that she got it right from what her dad called him earlier. She glanced down at the name tag on his Sanheoli uniform to check. "Yang Jungwon?"
"You-you remember me?"
Yebin moved to shake her head, but stopped after seeing the look on his face. His eyes were brimming with a light that made anything else pale in comparison, while a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. His words were laced with undying hope, as if he was already expecting the answer and was just waiting for her to say it. Her answer wasn't the one he wanted, but looking at him now, she'd never seen anyone more happy in her life. She couldn't hurt him. Surely, one lie could prevent that.
And so, she nodded instead.
The boy let out a laugh of disbelief, running a hand through his hair. "Ah, you idiot! You fucking scared me!"
"Why?" Yebin asked. He seemed to have previously assumed that she wouldn't remember him. How someone could be sure of that, she didn't know.
"I told you about that wish I made before. You were supposed to forget about me. But I guess you were right. Maybe the universe thought my wish was stupid and decided not to grant it."
Wishes and ways of the universe? Those were two things straight out of her grandmother's fairytales of soulmates, things she'd blindly believe anyway. But wishes were made at seventeen, and she hadn't turned- ah, she remembered. That explains the calendar date. But, that would mean that for a whole year, she'd been in a coma. That didn't make sense. Then again, she had no recollection of- she paused, realizing there was a boy still waiting for a response. Yebin looked back up at him, trying to look calm amidst her frenzied thoughts. "Sounds like something I'd say."
The boy groaned, thinking she was joking. "Yebin, I almost killed you."
"No, you didn't. This is just me and my bad luck all over again."
"I really thought my girlfriend forgot about me."
Yebin paused. Girlfriend? Now, that was another addition to the list of things that didn't make sense, a list that was scarily getting longer.
"But, how are you feeling?" the boy asked.
"Never been better." Lie.
"Very funny. Wait, we should probably tell your dad that you don't have amnesia."
"Oh, yeah." Lie.
The boy rushed out of the room, and all she heard was his cheerful shout, "Sir, she remembers me!"
Outside, he and her dad exchanged a few words, while Yebin stared at the wall. Slowly, the pieces were coming together, but she was still distraught in her current state. Maybe, this is just a dream.
"Someone out there's happy." Her dad walked in, laughing.
"Yeah."
"How are you feeling, sweetheart? Any pain or discomfort?"
"Just a mild headache. How long was I out?"
"Fourteen days. Do you know what date it is today?"
So, she hadn't been in a coma for a year. But that didn't change the fact that she couldn't remember anything from that time frame. Yebin briefly glanced at the calendar again, doing the simple math to answer her dad's question. "Two weeks, right? So it should be around- end February."
"Correct. Do you remember why you're here?"
Her eyes shifted to the cards on the table, and the numerous injuries on her body. It was a long shot, but her best guess. "I hit my head pretty hard during the accident."
"You did. And you're not feeling any particular confusion? Any unfamiliarities with things?"
Yebin had heard that one lie was enough to question all truths, but she never did anything to experience that before. Now, she could see why. The lies had to keep going, all to cover up the first. "No, not really."
"Okay, we'll just run you through a couple more tests soon, a simple MRI and CT scan, no rush. Your boyfriend out there was fully convinced you'd get amnesia and forget all about him."
His tone scared her. That was the tone of skepticism. She laughed nervously. "That's crazy. What are we, in a sad romance movie?"
"I know, right?" her dad replied, putting away his clipboard. "We're not in a movie sweetheart, so what's with this act you're trying to keep up with?"
Of course, he'd see right through her. He'd raised her all his life, but he knew he didn't raise a liar. Yebin looked down in shame, trying to find the right words to say, but there were none. She glanced outside the hospital room instead.
"Dad, why is that boy here?"
"That boy has one of the worst cases of lovesickness I've seen in a long time," her father said with a dry laugh. "And you're just as sick as he is."
"I don't remember him." Yebin shook her head. She then noticed he was the only one in the waiting room. "Where's mom?"
"She's in Seoul, Yebin. Has been, for a while."
The girl hopelessly listened as her dad did his best to answer all her questions, her heart growing heavier as he drew her a rough draft of her alleged life, through a whirl of incomprehensible sentences. And with a few questions of his own, they'd come to the conclusion that she'd indeed lost all memory of the last twelve months.
"But, I recognize him," Yebin referred to the boy outside once again. "I've seen him before."
"Yebin, you don't even remember turning seventeen, and now you're eighteen. You meeting him doesn't really fit in the time frame."
"I know it doesn't make sense but-" she stopped herself. He wouldn't understand. "Dad, I lied to him."
Yebin sighed out in frustration, closing her eyes in defeat. "How do you tell someone who loves you, that you don't know who they are?"
"Well- he'll be devastated, I'm sure." Hajoon broke at his daughter's expression.
"I'll remember, right?" Yebin asked eagerly. "There's always a chance I'll start to remember, later on?"
Hajoon's breath hitched. "Some patients do, but-"
"But if they- never come back," Yebin finished for him with a sad smile, knowing it was heartbreaking to hear. As much as she wanted to wake up from this dream, it was a real nightmare on fire. And now, she was fanning the flames. She sighed out, glancing at Jungwon with a hesitant expression. "I want to be the one to tell him. When the time is right."