Chapter Text
Prologue
The pavement was painted scarlet, the color of his memories.
Wooseok dropped to the floor, shaking, putting his hands around his friend’s body to try to stop the blood from gushing, but he knew damned well that was almost impossible.
“Please don’t die.” Wooseok sobbed. “Not again.”
His friend’s smile was faint, as if he didn’t have the energy for that anymore. “What do you mean again? This is the first time I die.”
“Don’t say that. You’re not gonna die,” Wooseok whispered, ripping his own shirt to wrap around his hands and body. Yet he didn’t know what to do it properly, his brain didn’t work. “The ambulance is coming. Hang in there, I beg you.”
The one dying in front of him would never believe it, but this wasn’t the first time this same thing happened.
“Wooseok,” he said, coughing, his face devoid of any color. “I’m cold.”
Wooseok heard that before, so he shook his head like a mad man because he knew what was coming next.
“No, no. I’m gonna warm you up.”
Death was coming.
“Thank you.”
And that what was the second time Wooseok watched the light go off in those same dark eyes.
Cho Seungyoun was dead.
Again.
Chapter 1
A normal person has one life to live, right? Well, ever since the beginning Wooseok knew he wasn’t a normal person.
When each and every person in the world was born, their first memories came from their early days, their childhood. You come as a baby, naked to the world, knowing nothing and learning every single thing. Step by step you learn to eat, to crawl, to walk, to play, to live.
Kim Wooseok didn’t have that much time.
He came to this world in the middle of the dark woods, naked but not as a child. He was 17 years old.
For a while he roamed, crying, trying to understand what was going on, but his mind was simply… empty. He knew how to speak and his mind was not one of a baby, but his brain was empty of any memory. He didn’t even know his own name back.
He ran, desperately even though his feet hurt and bled until he saw a cabin in the woods.
“Is there anyone there? Please? Help.”
Wooseok screamed so hard his throat became coarse and when someone finally got out of the cabin, his vision went blurry.
“Please, help,” he whispered, while his legs started to fail him. And when he closed his eyes, he was gone.
When his consciousness was back, he was in a bed in a white room. Finally dressed, he still didn’t understand what was going on.
“He woke up,” someone, a woman, said.
“Where am I?” Wooseok said, but his throat was dry and hurt. “Water, please.”
A woman dressed in white offered him a cup. “Hello, good morning. My name is Nurse Park and I’ll be taking care of you.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re at the local hospital, dear. The police is coming.”
“Po-police?”
“Yes, we need to find your parents.”
Parents? Did he have any? He wasn’t sure, and thinking about it caused his head to hurt.
Another woman dressed in white arrived, and together with the first, they talked in hushed tones, watching him as if he grew a second head.
He wanted to try to remember something, but it was impossible with four eyes fixed on him.
“C-Can I be alone please?”
“Sure, dear.”
He looked down at himself. Someone dressed in a light blue robe. His feet bled at some point, but they were healing. He had been here for days, he was sure.
He got closer to the window and analyzed the surroundings. The hospital was big since the building went over to the right, and he seemed to be around the 5th floor.
Some very loud part of him was screaming to jump out of that window because he didn’t belong here, but another part of him thought this was ridiculous. He couldn’t jump that high. Besides, he needed to know more about himself. What better than the police to find this out?
He went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Maybe it was an outrageous thing to even think about it, but he was relieved to recognize himself. Brown hair, big eyes, a pretty face.
He sat down and waited patiently until two men dressed in dark uniforms came to his room and introduced themselves as local police department.
“We’ve been scanning missing persons reports for a few days and I think we might have a hit from a family in Seoul.”
“Seoul?”
“Yes. We contacted them and they are driving here as we speak. Let’s wait for them.”
He sat on the hospital bed, squirming silently under the watch of those two cops until a man and a woman stormed the room.
“Son,” a man in his 50’s said with his eyes full of tears.
The man stopped in front of the bed to contain his emotions, but the woman didn’t stop herself.
“Wooseok, my son,” she said as she threw herself to him and hugged him tight.
The woman looked a bit younger than the man, but she had fine lines around her eyes that showed kindness and yet a lot of worries.
“Wooseok,” he whispered. “I’m Wooseok?”
She laughed as she touched his face. “Yes, you are. Kim Wooseok. Our family's precious jewel.”
He let himself be hugged, but the reality was that he didn’t remember having a family. He didn’t remember anything at all.
“Kim Wooseok,” he whispered to himself, trying to stir a thought or a memory.
The mother patted his head. “Yes, my baby. We’re gonna take care of you now.”
And that’s what they did. For days, the boy called Wooseok looked at his parents with a hint of suspicion and a ton of curiosity. Something always seemed a bit out of place, but he started to relax when he realized how well they took care of him at the hospital.
Yet there was still a gap in his brain, a space he didn't know how to fill with conversations. All he had to give was a small smile of someone who isn’t sure of anything.
That awkward mood continued during the family ride home. Home. That concept seemed so foreign to Wooseok. He closed his eyes and tried to picture how living with a family would be like, but all he saw was darkness and those woods once again. And when he opened his eyes and tried to remember as he watched the road, his headache came back once again.
They arrived to their house a few hours later. Wooseok stopped at the door and breathed a sigh of relief, but pretty soon he felt like he still had nowhere to go.
Their house wasn’t the biggest, but it was a house in a good neighborhood in a city full of apartments. Their lifestyle was probably comfortable.
Comfortable. Wooseok didn’t know if I understood what that really meant.
“My room… where is it?”
The mother lost her smile she had throughout the whole car ride. “It’s upstairs on the right, sweetie.”
Wooseok looked for his room, leaving a worried mother behind. He wished he could comfort her, yet he didn’t seem to know how to do that. His immediate goal was to try to find something that might trigger a memory.
His room was spacious and warmly decorated, just like the rest of the house. The only thing that stood was a big screen and some other apparatus on the desk.
His search was uneventful as the room as a typical teenager den, yet he made a beeline for a family portrait on one of the shelves.
Call him crazy, but deep down he really didn’t think he was part of this family. Yet the family photo confirmed just that. There he was… Kim wooseok with his mom and dad, their smiles dazzling under the bright beach sun.
That portrait wasn’t the only depiction of Wooseok in his element. His phone was full of pictures with friends and family.
He was really Kim Wooseok. But why did it feel wrong?
Wooseok tried to ease his mind by taking a nap, but sleep wouldn’t come. He stayed there, looking at the ceiling, not knowing what to do until his mother - he guessed he could call her that - called him for dinner.
When he arrived there, both of his parents were sitting with big smiles on their faces. No wonder, though. Apparently Wooseok had been missing for a few days, and they were worried sick. They could relax and celebrate now.
The table was plentiful of warm dishes, but at first he didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to eat.
“Go ahead,” his mother said, gently pushing a bowl of rice towards Wooseok with a smile on her face. “I prepared your favorite dishes.”
“Thank you.”
Wooseok might not remember much, but apparently his stomach did. On the first bite, it was clear that those foods were indeed his favorite in the whole world.
“I just knew all this food would perk you up, son.”
“It’s delicious,” Wooseok said with his mouth full of food. “I love everything.”
“I knew you would,” his mother said, squeezing her husband’s hand. For a moment, they got teary, but they shook the moment away when they started to eat too.
“This family is whole again,” the father said with a loud laugh.
Wooseok still didn’t know what to say, but he found out the food subject was a safe one since his father was enthusiastic about the subject and his mother would tell stories about his baby days and peculiar eating tastes.
And so they found their comfort… that is, until they mentioned a school.
“School? What school?”
His mother nodded. “Yes, you need to go back to school. You missed many days already.”
“Do I really have to go?”
“Of course you have to go,” his dad said, laughing. “Don't think you’ll be able to skip more school than you already did.”
“What if I don’t feel well enough to go back?”
Going to school might be more than he asked for with this memory loss. If his headache was already big dealing with two people, imagine a whole class full of loud unknown teenagers.
His mother grabbed Wooseok’s hand. “You can rest for a few days, but eventually you need to go back otherwise your education might suffer.”
“I understand.”
For days, Wooseok acclimated himself to the house and his parents. But he knew they wouldn’t let him miss school forever.
So a week later, he decided to go to school. To make things less embarrassing, Wooseok studied the face of his friends with the help of his mom. But he knew there was only so much she could do for him.
Like a big boy he was, he grabbed his stuff and walked towards school. Wooseok wanted to drag his feet and postpone getting there, but he decided to quicken his pace and get over it already.
When he arrived at school, people stared at him for some unknown reason. The girls, especially, seemed to take notice of his every step. His once steady pace turned into an insecure parade around the premises.
“Hello, hello, look who finally decided to show up,” someone, a male, said as he hugged Wooseok’s chest from behind.
Upon further inspection that happened when he was finally able to get rid of the other boy, he realized this was Kim Siwon, a junior and one of his best friends.
“Kim Siwon, good morning.”
Siwon slapped his back. “Why do you sound so formal, hyung?”
The slap was harder than he was expecting, but Wooseok tried to laugh it off. “I’m off my balance after some problems.”
“What happened to you?”
“Some stuff,” Wooseok said as he started to enter school.
“What kind of stuff?”
How could Wooseok tell him he was wandering naked in the middle of the woods and didn’t remember anything, much less his name? He couldn’t.
“I was a bit sick. Let’s head to our class.”
Siwon beamed like a little kid. “We don’t go the same class though.”
“I know.” Wooseok didn’t know.
“Okay, then. See ya.”
Last night, Wooseok made some notes about everything in this school. Holding the paper, he breathed deeply and looked for his classroom.
“Kim Wooseok,” someone screamed from across the hallway.
“Han Seungwoo, good morning.”
Seungwoo laughed. “What’s up with the way you’re addressing me?”
“Oh, sorry,” Wooseok said, bowing. “Good morning, hyung. How are you?”
“No need to be so stiff. Are you alright?”
Seungwoo might had sensed his nervousness because he touched Wooseok on his back reassuringly.
Wooseok sighed. “I’m okay. Gotta head to class though.”
“Do you have any paper or group presentation today? You look like you’re headed to the death row.”
“Oh, God. I hope not.”
“Good luck.”
Wooseok’s arrival caused a small uproar in the classroom. Everyone surrounded him to ask what happened, where did he go and many other questions. Lucky for him, the teacher arrived to the class and made everyone sit down.
“Glad to have you back, Kim Wooseok.”
The school was informed by Wooseok’s parents that he had been to the hospital, and Wooseok was at least relieved he didn’t have to explain that much to them.
“Thank you, teacher...”
He didn’t know the name of the teacher, but it seemed like everyone was waiting for him to say something, but luckily someone else entered the classroom and took everyone’s attention away from him.
“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” the teacher said to the boy that had just arrived. “Class, meet Cho Seungyoun. He transferred from another school.”
“Hello, my name is Cho Seungyoun,” the boy said, bowing. “Please take care of me.”
Wooseok couldn’t move as he looked at Cho Seungyoun. Ever since that day in the woods, there was nothing he recognized about this world, but the moment Wooseok looked at the new boy... his breath hitched, his heartbeat stopped. Why?
“Kim Wooseok, you show him around school after class.”
“What? Why me?”
“You are class representative, am I wrong?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then it’s settled.”
Wooseok’s face burned in embarrassment, especially because the new boy was smiling at him. He wanted to look at him back, but he could only stare down at his desk.
Seungyoun finally sat down in the second row, so Wooseok was finally able to look at him. His hair was dark as a raven and short. He was taller than most in class and certainly way taller than Wooseok, but he didn’t feel big and threatening.
He felt… familiar.
Yet Wooseok didn’t have time to think as the teacher started to explain something complicated with numbers.
Classes were just what he expected: confusing like everything else. Yet he tried to read his old notes and make new ones. Some part of him still thought this life he was living didn’t belong to him, but his notebook had his handwriting, a scribble so peculiar not a lot of people in the world could reproduce.
Finally the bell rang, but Wooseok was so enthralled by his notes he didn’t realize someone stopped in front of his desk.
“Hi.”
“Oh,” Wooseok said, then he looked up. It was him. “Hi.”
“Shall we go?”
Wooseok jumped from his chair. “Sure, sure. Let me just do this here.”
He picked his stuff and threw in the bag and left the classroom, which made Seungyoun giggle.
“Calm down, I’m not in a hurry.”
Wooseok stopped on his heels to wait for Seungyoun. “Sorry.”
“Don’t sweat.”
Wooseok tried to follow Seungyoun’s advice, but despite the cold, he was sweating a bit as they went down the stairs.
“Isn’t it better to get to know the classrooms first?” Seungyoun said, pointing to the classrooms they just passed by.
They couldn’t do that because Wooseok didn’t know these places himself, but he decided to take him to the sport fields he saw when he was arriving to school.
“Let’s go to the bigger places first.”
“Sure.”
They walked in silence, deafening silence, until he finally spotted the field.
“So, this is the soccer field.”
Seungyoun nodded. “Great. Nice.”
“And all the way to the back, that’s the gym.”
“Should we go there?”
“Let’s go.”
Just as they approached the gym, Wooseok felt something moist on his head. “What is this?”
Seungyoun smiled widely and touched the top of Wooseok’s head. “It’s snow.”
Then he twirled and laughed, grabbing the flakes that fell like a kid on Christmas.
That head touch made Wooseok’s breath hitch again, that giggle made Wooseok smile and something about that twirl made his heart beat faster, as if he lived and weeped for that moment before.
Wooseok didn’t know anything, yet his heart seemed to know something. And that something was about Cho Seungyoun.