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Gyuvin enacts everything like a scene from a rehearsed play: cutting through the lively little park, stopping at the roadside flower shop for the bouquet of forget-me-nots… and watching Ricky from the hospital parking lot window.
Everything is on a rinse and repeat cycle now.
Walk.
Stop.
Watch.
On the first day, the ajumma at the flower shop had asked him who the flowers were for, and all he could manage was that it was for his boyfriend who had been in an accident. She gave him a pitying look and extra flowers, he didn't bother to correct her because he had lost his boyfriend.
Now, she prepares it wordlessly and Gyuvin wonders if she’s thinking the same thing as everyone else—when will he let go?
The answer is never, because if he does, their story will end
Matthew and Taerae are inside with Ricky today. Gyuvin leans in closer until his face is pressed against the glass, but he can’t hear anything.
Idiot. He could be inside right now, talking to Ricky himself but he blew his chance. Two weeks ago when Ricky first woke up after the car accident with amnesia, Gyuvin had broken down, begging on his knees for Ricky to remember him, to remember them.
He can’t take it all back now, can’t just act normal in front of Ricky knowing those very eyes that held stony unrecognition once gazed at him with love.
Gyuvin ends up waiting outside until Taerae and Matthew leave the hospital room.
“Just go inside!” When they spot him, Matthew looks sympathetic, Taerae not so much. “I don’t understand why you can’t just talk to him instead of watching and leaving gifts like a creepy stalker.”
Gyuvin shoots Taerae a glare. He has never wanted to steal his hyung’s pragmatic personality as much as he did now.
And he tries, he really does. He usually waits until Ricky is asleep to leave the flowers, but not today. It’s good, a pathetic but commendable effort he tells himself.
“I really hope you aren’t wishing death on me with all those flowers you bring daily.”
The familiar dry humour catches him by surprise just as he's about to leave and he lets out a laugh—his first one since the accident.
“Well, they are forget-me-nots,” he smiles. “But they symbolise… something else.” Eternal love, longing to be remembered.
“How ironic–” Ricky pauses. “Gyuvin.”
His heart skips a beat or maybe ten when he hears his name. It’s foreign and mechanic, not the usual “Qubing” he misses but it's something.
He doesn’t dare to hope, but he asks anyway. “Do you…?”
“Matthew and Taerae told me,” Ricky replies quickly, because hope is dangerous and he knows it too. “But I remember a little, that I know you.”
“Oh.” Gyuvin wants to tell him that he more than knows him but he stops himself.
He lost his boyfriend, Ricky lost far more.
“How does it feel, do you know that something is missing or do we just look insane telling you about a whole life you never lived?”
“It’s a gap, an empty void I can’t seem to grasp anything from,” Ricky swallows. “Maybe it would help if I could match your voice with your face though.”
Gyuvin had forgotten he was hidden by the doorframe, but now he was glad it was there. “You saw me, that day when you woke up.”
Ricky considers for a moment. “I meant your face when it’s not twisted in pain and streaked with tears because I’m sure you being happy would be a more familiar sight if I was really your boyfriend.”
“You were,” Gyuvin’s voice is insistent.
“Then what are you afraid of?” The question stumps Gyuvin, because he’s afraid of so much. Above all, he’s afraid that he’s not enough for Ricky anymore, that Ricky loving him the first time was just a fluke.
“I’m afraid… that you won’t fall in love with me again,” he admits. “That if our story repeats, you won’t make the same choice–”
“Stop,” Gyuvin can make out Ricky shaking his head through the curtain blinds. “That stupid car took away my memories, not my heart.”
Gyuvin blinks, he’s right. Ricky is still the Ricky he knows and loves, memories or not. He finally steps out.
It’s refreshing to see Ricky’s face instead of the back of his head and the nape of his neck for once.
Ricky seems to enjoy it too. He takes in all six feet of Gyuvin, scanning him from his excited puppy grin down to his scuffed sneakers that Ricky himself had gifted to him.
Gyuvin lets out a sudden laugh.
“What?” Ricky eyes him.
“It’s uncanny, you did the exact same thing when we met at the Yuehua agency for the first time,” Gyuvin tells Ricky gleefully, his smile wide and brimming. “You looked at me for so long I thought you were judging me.”
Ricky snorts. “I probably was.”
“You told me it’s because I was tall and ‘kind of cute’ when we started dating,” Gyuvin pouts.
“How did we start dating?” Ricky asks curiously. “Because even if we’re starting a new love story, I don’t want to miss out on the old one.”
“...which must have been pretty good if you were mourning the loss of it on your knees,” he adds.
Gyuvin plops himself down, legs swinging off the side of the bed. “Well I guess it started from the stupid meme I shared with you about a water drought in California…”
He tells their love story to Ricky, for the both of them to relive.
When he finally reaches the night of the car accident, he stops.
“Well, I guess that’s the end,” he shrugs.
“It isn’t,” Ricky promises.
Gyuvin isn't quite afraid of the end of their story anymore, because he knows that there will always exist a new beginning.
That him and Ricky are infinite, over and over in every universe, whether they know it or not.