kismet - 3
Pairing: JongIU
Synopsis: Every happy ending deserves a second chance.
Every time Jonghyun closed his eyes with the intention to fall asleep that night, he ended up replaying that terrifying moment when Jieun proclaimed she had no idea who Minho was, but knew all too well who Jonghyun was - or, at least, what he used to be.
He’d wake with a start, palms damp with sweat, heart racing. When he heard Jieun say those words, he was almost waiting for her to laugh and say she was just kidding, and call Minho over to her with open arms. So when that didn’t happen, he almost turned and ran and never looked back.
He saw when Minho turned and looked at him, face still and complacent but his eyes both angry and curious. Jonghyun worried if Minho thought that Jieun meant Jonghyun had still been with her even when she married Minho, and that’s why he was so vehement about “fixing” her lost memories. The thought of his wife going back to her old life with another man probably both scared and angered him.
Jonghyun went through this cycle of sleeping and waking for the entire night, giving up the fight when the sunlight poured in through his window and his alarm clock blared in his ear. Before he’d attempted sleep the previous night, the doctor called and told him to come to the hospital in the morning to see Jieun.
“I know it’s hard, but try to think of it as acting,” the doctor had said. “She remembers you as her boyfriend so you have to try and play that part. If you don’t show up until later in the day, or don’t show up at all, she’ll get confused and that could only hurt her more.”
Jonghyun drove slowly to the hospital, ignoring the honks of the horns of the cars that passed him, frustrated with his lack of speed. What was usually a twenty-minute drive took nearly an hour, and when he finally arrived at the hospital and parked his car, he sat there for another ten minutes, contemplating leaving again and driving back home.
Then he thought of Jieun, pictured her laying in her hospital bed, nursing a migraine and wondering where he was. He opened his car door and stepped out. He didn’t want to keep her waiting.
“Jieun, you have a guest,” the nurse said, stepping aside to let Jonghyun into the room. She smiled brightly as Jonghyun approached her, holding a bouquet of roses he bought in the downstairs gift shop on his way up.
“Aw, thank you,” Jieun said, taking the flowers from him. She smelled them and put them to rest on a table beside her. “You’re here early... not that I’m complaining, of course.”
Jonghyun pulled up a chair to Jieun’s bedside and sat down in it. “Ah, well... I wanted to see you.”
Jieun scrunched up her nose. “You look tired. You could have slept.”
No, I couldn’t have, Jonghyun thought, but instead, he shrugged. “You’re more important.”
Jieun chuckled, then raised her eyebrows at Jonghyun. “Guess what the doctor told me.”
Jonghyun shrugged. “What did she say?”
“They said I’ll be able to leave by the middle of next week,” Jieun said, glowing with joy. “It feels so far away, but it’s not, right? I’ll be back home with you in no time.”
Jonghyun smiled outwardly, but on the inside his organs were twisting themselves into knots.
When they were still together, Jieun used to split her time between her own apartment and Jonghyun’s. Half her wardrobe used to be there, so much so that she’d often drive over to Jonghyun’s apartment on those days she stayed at her own apartment half-dressed, either wearing a jacket to cover her up top or ratty pajama pants to cover up down below, to find the other piece of her outfit.
But when they broke up, every trace of her disappeared. She came and got her clothes the next day, he unframed all of the pictures he had of them on the walls and on the coffee table and on his dresser. His house was eerily empty, and it took him most of the year after they’d broken up to readjust. He had no idea how he was going to reverse it.
“Can’t wait,” Jonghyun said finally.
The first thing Jonghyun did when he got back home was search his closet for the box where he put the photos of himself and Jieun after they broke up.
He realized that, since Jieun believed they’d never broken up, and after they did, she left her apartment and moved in with Minho, Jieun had no “second home.” His apartment was now for the two of them - but trying to tell her that without actually telling her was going to probably be the hardest part about it.
Once he found the photos, and spent some time going through them, he got down the second box with the frames that had held those photos. He reframed each photo, then went around his apartment placing them as close to where they were before their breakup: a series of three across a wall of the living room, one on the coffee table, one on his dresser, and a final one on his bedside table. He took a look around; it was strange, and though he had good reason to replace them, he felt delusional. On one hand, they needed to be back where they were because that’s how Jieun remembered it, but on the other hand, anyone else who came to the apartment would think he was being opportunistic.
That doesn’t matter, he told himself. This is for Jieun, not for anyone else.
He sat down on the edge of his bed, cellphone in hand. He looked from the phone to the closet, threadbare save for a few dressy shirts and pants. Jieun’s clothes used to take up most of the space, her shoes would litter the floor of the closet - it was basically her closet, since everything he needed to wear on a daily basis was stored in his dresser.
He needed to get some of those clothes back. If Jieun came home and realized her clothes were missing, Jonghyun didn’t know how he’d explain that.
He scrolled down to Sunyoung’s name and hit the call button. It rang a few times before the line opened and Jonghyun heard what sounded like a busy train station in the background.
“Hello?” Sunyoung said.
“Hey,” Jonghyun said. “Did you hear that Jieun’s getting out of the hospital next week?”
“No way!” Sunyoung exclaimed excitedly. “Wow, that’s great... I bet you’re excited.”
Jonghyun sighed. “I need you to do a favor for me,” he said.
“Like...?” Sunyoung replied.
“Jieun will be staying with me while she recuperates,” Jonghyun said. “You know, part of the whole... she doesn’t remember being married to anyone thing.”
“Of course,” Sunyoung said, a smirk in her voice.
“Can you or someone, I don’t know, give Minho a call and tell him to have someone bring a good chunk of Jieun’s clothes to my apartment?”
Sunyoung snorted. “I understand why you’d ask that, don’t get me wrong, but I’m picturing the look on his face when I tell him that his wife’s ex needs her clothes,” she said. “What if he says no and demands you bring her back to his house? Oh, the drama...”
“Sunyoung.”
“I’m just saying... okay, I’ll give him a call and if it goes well, I’ll drive over there and get the clothes from him,” she said. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Bye,” he snapped, ending the call and tossing the phone aside. He groaned and laid back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Part of him really, really hoped Jieun would regain his memory, if not for her sake, at least for his own. The pressure and stress were already overwhelming.
Minho watched in silence as Sunyoung picked through a suitcase full of clothes, transferring the pieces she chose to a separate suitcase. Sunyoung glanced at him and smiled. “Convenient, because she hadn’t unpacked her clothes from the honeymoon yet,” she said. “It just makes my job so much easier, doesn’t it?”
“Do you have a filter?” Minho snapped, and Sunyoung frowned.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“You don’t seem to know what you should say and when,” Minho said. “You’re better off keeping your mouth shut.”
Sunyoung gaped at him and he walked away, heading towards the balcony adjacent to the bedroom.
In the few days since the accident, Minho was truly exhausted. He’d been through every possible emotion in no time at all: he was happy, then scared, worried, hopeful, happy again, shocked, angry. It was quite possible that he had lost the ability to show emotion; nothing mattered because nothing was going the way it was supposed to.
Before he met Jieun, he’d been very run-of-the-mill, the typical college boy that wasn’t looking for a serious, long-term relationship. He never cared very much for anything that wasn’t a casual hook-up or a friendship that included a bit more - but when he met Jieun, his feelings changed completely. She was different from the type of girl he usually found himself interested in - where the other girls were outgoing, Jieun kept to herself. Where other girls changed their voices to sound cute around him, she simply spoke, and when she spoke it was like she was singing. When they were paired up in class, he spent most of the time trying to woo her, and once she gave in, he felt invincible. She admitted that she had a boyfriend, yet never mentioned who he was. Soon thereafter, however, she asked him if he wanted to have dinner with her, and the rest was history.
She’d spoken about Jonghyun plenty of times - but every time she did, she addressed him as her “best friend,” never her ex-boyfriend. He figured that she’d done that in order to protect their friendship; if he was going to be honest, he probably would have stopped Jieun from inviting him to their wedding if he’d known the complete truth.
Just when he thought he’d won - he’d finally fallen in love, married the love of his life, was about to embark on a whole new chapter of life with her - she’d been taken away from him with no set time limit on how long it would take to get her back. What hurt more is that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Minho flinched, plucked from his thoughts, as he heard a glassy knock behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Sunyoung pulling her hand away from the glass on the balcony door to turn the knob. “I’m all done,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”
“Hey,” Minho called as she turned to leave. She stopped and looked back at him. “Sorry for snapping at you earlier. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Sunyoung shrugged. “I don’t blame you,” she said, and with that she walked to the door on the other side of the room and left.
Minho faced forward again and leaned against the steel balustrade, staring at the moon in the distance. He tried to summon some hope, hope that maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and remember everything and come back to him. It was a pipe-dream and he knew it, but he figured it would be able to help him sleep at night.
The days leading up to Jieun’s release from the hospital turned into a ritual. Jonghyun would wake up early, shower, eat breakfast, then get in his car and drive to the hospital. On his way, he’d buy Jieun a gift - flowers, a teddy bear, a balloon - then go up to the recovery room she’d been transferred to the day after she woke up. They’d talk for about an hour, and then he’d leave, just to start the whole process over again the next day.
Before he knew it, he was on his way to the hospital - not to sit and talk, but to bring her home.
Jonghyun stood by as the nurse removed the gauze from around Jieun’s head, smiling as Jieun giggled excitedly as she got one step closer to leaving. She put her hand to the back of her head and gasped as she felt a series of stitches. “How many are there?” she asked.
“I think it’s... thirty on the back of your head, and twenty-five on your forehead,” the nurse said. “You have to come back next week to get them removed, okay?”
Jieun nodded enthusiastically. “I like the sound of ‘come back.’ I like it because it means I’m out of here!” Jonghyun chuckled to himself as she did a little victory dance in her seat.
“You have to be very careful once you leave,” the nurse said. “You have a concussion, so you need to rest. You don’t have to lie down all day, but nothing too extreme, okay?”
Jieun nodded again. “I don’t do much anyway,” she said, looking at Jonghyun. “He’ll tell you, I’m really lazy.”
The nurse glanced at Jonghyun and gave him a knowing smile, then looked back to Jieun. “I’ll have you discharged and you’ll be all set to go. Feel free to get your things together.” She left the room and shut the door behind her.
Jieun stood up from her chair and went over to Jonghyun, who had started to put Jieun’s belongings in the tote bag he’d brought with him. He went rigid as Jieun wrapped her arms around his back and held him tightly. “So glad I’m leaving,” she said. “It’s hard only having you around for an hour a day.”
Jonghyun glanced back at her and smiled. “And I’m glad that you’re coming home.”
“You haven’t kissed me at all, did you realize that?” Jieun asked. “You know, just because I’m hurt doesn’t mean I’ll break if you kiss me.”
Jonghyun chuckled, trying to hide the nervousness that was bubbling up the surface. It was bad enough that he was playing boyfriend to his married ex-girlfriend, but kissing someone else’s wife sent his moral compass spiraling out of control.
He would be lying if he said he didn’t still love Jieun. He always loved her, and continued to love her even when she got engaged. He found himself trying hard not to kiss her when they met up for lunch back before she got married, claiming to himself that if he didn’t care so much about the fact that she was with someone else, he’d kiss her until she came back to him.
Now that he actually had the chance, and had her permission, he couldn’t find it in himself to do it. He knew that he had to, because otherwise she’d go on questioning him about why he was acting strangely since the accident - when the whole point of doing this was to make her feel comfortable in the life she remembered living until she remembered the life she was truly living.
“Kiss me, baby,” Jieun whispered, and she let him go as he turned to face her. He held Jieun’s face in his hands and pulled her closer; she slightly puckered her lips and closed her eyes and Jonghyun gulped, his heart pounding. He put his lips against her forehead, in the space between her eyebrows, then pulled away.
Jieun opened her eyes and gave him a look, and he smiled. “There you go,” he said, and she playfully punched him in the arm. “Hey, the nurse said nothing extreme. Don’t hit me.”
“You owe me a kiss when we get home,” Jieun said. “I feel like I haven’t kissed you in a year.”
Jonghyun laughed at the irony. “Funny, I feel the same way.”