Maybe There's No Need to Care Anymore
I knew how stupid the question was.
If Yujin’s situation differed from what I expected, I knew exactly how strangely Shin Yujin would look at me. I hadn’t prepared any response for that scenario at all. I had simply been certain. Certain that Shin Yujin had experienced the exact same thing I had. If she hadn’t, I never would have been able to accept the situations I kept running into over and over.
The moment the question left my mouth, a short silence settled between us—one that didn’t feel short at all.
“...What do you mean?”
When Shin Yujin’s answer reached my ears, my heart dropped like a stone. But in that heavy atmosphere, her expression finally registered. She couldn’t meet my eyes easily, like something had been exposed. Her hands kept fidgeting, betraying her anxiety.
It looked like I needed to hammer in undeniable proof so she couldn’t dodge it.
“That hand gesture you kept showing me, Yujin. That’s not a habit from an old fracture, is it?”
“Huh?”
“After we got married, you fractured your index finger early on. Once it healed, you thought the cracking sound it made was fascinating, so you kept doing it. That’s the habit, right?”
Another silence fell.
What broke it was none other than Shin Yujin’s deep sigh.
“Old habits really are impossible to break.”
It was a voice I didn’t recognize. But the speech pattern and tone were painfully familiar. For a moment, the Shin Yujin I knew overlapped with the one standing in front of me.
“When did you figure it out?”
“At first I had no idea. I started guessing after I saw your hand gesture.”
“Really?”
“You knew something was off too, didn’t you?”
“From the moment I mentioned my favorite coffee order. After that, the way you kept looking at me like you already knew everything started to bother me.”
We sat back down on the bench.
Even though the massive worry that had been tangling up my thoughts was gone, my head was still a mess. I had no idea how to keep the conversation going.
“Is this a dream?”
“It’s way too detailed to be a dream. It can’t be a dream.”
“It’s hard to believe I was thirty-four just yesterday and woke up twenty overnight.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“About what?”
“We both know everything. I’m asking what you want to do about it.”
“...You’re not about to say something weird like ‘since we’re back at our first meeting, let’s start over,’ are you?”
Hearing Shin Yujin’s firm stance cleared the dizziness in my head. Knowing she had regressed with her memories just like me, start over from the beginning? I had zero intention of doing that either. If we both carried our memories, the same things would just repeat.
“I have no intention of that.”
“Good. Neither do I.”
“The people around us don’t seem to have any memories from fourteen years in the future. That’s why I asked what you wanted to do.”
“Yerim and Hojin oppa probably thought we’d end up together, right?”
“Probably… yeah. If I think about what today was like fourteen years ago.”
“I don’t think we need to pretend to date. From what I remember, back then we also started by keeping in touch like this.”
Shin Yujin scratched her head and stood up from the bench. Her expression looked incredibly complicated. It didn’t seem like her thoughts were settling easily.
“Let’s just tell our friends we’re keeping in touch and hanging out. That should be enough.”
“Yeah, that sounds better.”
“Considering the effort they put into setting this up, it’s probably the right thing to do.”
“Let’s go with that.”
Just as Shin Yujin turned her back to walk away, a single thought flashed through my mind. I shot up from the bench and grabbed her wrist as she started heading in the opposite direction.
“Yujin.”
“...What?”
“You remembered everything too, right? The things I like, my hobbies, all of it.”
“Even though I hated it so much and couldn’t understand why I’d married this person, it all came back naturally. I kind of hated that part.”
“So you were the same as me.”
“Still, I liked it when you called me by my name. It had been so long.”
“Yeah, same for me.”
“I’m going. Take care, Yuchan oppa.”
With only those words, Shin Yujin shook off my hand and walked away. Her last sentence kept echoing in my ears. For a married couple who found calling each other by name awkward, it was an overwhelmingly powerful thing to hear.
About five minutes after Shin Yujin left, I finally headed back to my one-room apartment. Grabbing her wrist hadn’t just been to ask something so simple. I had wanted to apologize one last time—for spitting out those emotional words about not understanding why we’d gotten married. But that apology never left my mouth.
If I had said it, maybe we could have parted on slightly better terms. Since we were both starting our lives over.
Maybe there’s no need to care anymore.
I thought it was a dream. I desperately hoped it was a dream.
The moment I returned from the house I had shared with a man just yesterday to the studio apartment from my university days.
I wished it was a dream, but the reality was far too vivid and raw to dismiss it that way. While I was still struggling to accept what had happened, I got a call from Yerim and learned that a group blind date had been arranged.
The instant I heard about the appointment, I realized it instinctively—what kind of blind date it was, and what kind of time I would end up spending there.
I arrived at the meeting place carrying all those speculations, and every one of them turned into certainty.
“Ah, yes. Ah, hello. I’m Han Yuchan.”
It was a face I knew well, yet within that familiarity, something felt impossibly foreign. Clean skin, objectively handsome features, broad shoulders, and impressive height. Seeing the twenty-three-year-old Han Yuchan, I finally understood why my twenty-year-old self had been drawn to him. The deep, resonant voice that made ears perk up couldn’t be ignored either.
I began to suspect that maybe Han Yuchan had returned to this exact day fourteen years ago just like me. To confirm it, I copied the exact behavior I remembered from my twenty-year-old self. Even then, I still wasn’t completely sure.
“What would you like to drink, Yuchan?”
“I’ll have an Americano.”
“Um, I’ll have…”
“Cappuccino.”
The moment I named the coffee I liked, my suspicion steadily hardened into conviction. Thinking it was still too early to be certain, we kept talking. While I spoke about myself, Han Yuchan’s expression kept catching my eye. He was only asking questions and responding, yet it looked like he was answering right along with me, confirming that his guesses had been correct.
Even though we had fought every single day without fail, bickered over the smallest things, and lived through times worse than hell.
Why did Han Yuchan remember everything about me? It was simply a question. But the same was true for me. Whenever he seemed about to say something about himself, I would already have the answer ready in my head. Eventually I couldn’t hold it in and let one slip out loud.
After our relationship began to deteriorate, I had convinced myself I no longer loved him. I assumed he didn’t love me either. But seeing that look on his face—like he knew everything about me—made me wonder if maybe, despite all the fights and terrible times, we had still loved each other.
Since I knew it was meaningless anyway, I didn’t dwell on it. At some point he started staring intently at my hand. Who could have guessed it was because of that old habit?
“How’d it go with Yuchan? Did it go well?”
“I decided to start dating Hojin oppa right away today!! You know he confessed immediately?”
“Really? Anyway, I’ll be home late. Sleep first!!”
“Yeah, Yerim.”
“Uh… for now we decided to keep in touch. He seemed like a good person.”
“You’ve been talking about Hojin to me for ages. It was obvious you liked him.”
“Okay, have fun and take your time.”
Unlike us, the atmosphere between Hojin oppa and Yerim was flowing exactly as it had fourteen years ago. From what I remembered, she had bragged about dating him from their very first meeting and stayed out late. Back then I had spent the time at home contacting Yuchan so I wouldn’t feel lonely. This time, it looked like I would have to spend it alone.
“The two of us live together, but now my friend has a boyfriend. What am I supposed to do now?”
I stepped inside, dropped my bag, and threw myself onto the bed. I don’t know why, but I found myself staring at the wrist Han Yuchan had grabbed. His warmth still lingered there—familiar, yet strangely foreign all at once.
In the moment he caught my wrist, maybe I had hoped, just a little, that he would say it. That we should start over. That even after everything that happened, we could fix things from the beginning.
But I never heard those words.
Well, since we were both going to live our lives over again.
Maybe there’s no need to care anymore.