Who Are You?
Who are you?
"It's amnesia."
At the doctor's matter-of-fact greeting, I gaped like an idiot.
"…Excuse me?"
"The accident was quite severe. There were several fatalities as well."
With the practiced detachment of a man who dealt with death for a living, he flipped calmly through the chart. He was so composed about it that I almost wondered if it had just been a fender-bender.
"I suppose we should call you lucky, patient. For an accident of that magnitude to leave you like this—it's nothing short of a miracle."
Which was exactly why the congratulations on my good fortune didn't feel welcome in the slightest.
"Fortunately, aside from the fracture in your left arm, there are almost no lasting physical effects. Your recovery is progressing quickly, so you'll be able to leave the hospital soon enough."
I didn't answer. I just looked around the room.
A pure white ceiling. The faint smell of disinfectant. The hard plaster wrapping my left arm.
I knew this was a hospital. I knew the man in the white coat flipping through the chart was a doctor.
And beyond that, I knew absolutely nothing.
"Wait—hold on a second, Doctor."
My dry mouth finally managed to open. The cracked voice that came out didn't even sound like mine.
"What did you just say?"
"It's amnesia."
The doctor repeated the same greeting, with about as much feeling as if he were announcing today's lunch special.
"It appears the trauma from the accident damaged your memory."
"…"
"Do you remember your name, by any chance?"
My name. My name.
I reached into the blankness, and nothing was there.
"Do you know what year it is?"
I shut my mouth against the cruel question.
As if he'd expected as much, the doctor calmly continued writing on the chart.
"You're currently presenting with extensive autobiographical amnesia."
He clicked his pen as if that were hardly a problem worth fretting over, and went on.
"Simply put, you've forgotten the memories of your life. All of them."
Amnesia.
A word whose origin I'd already forgotten kept looping through my mind.
And why did my head hurt so much?
I pressed hard at my throbbing temples and gave up on thinking altogether.
"What the hell is going on…?"
I opened my eyes and found myself in a hospital.
All I had was a stiffened left hand and the patient gown on my back.
The only thing I knew was that I knew nothing at all.
Who I was, why this had happened—everything was pitch black.
The one thing I had managed to learn was the three characters written on the doctor's chart.
"Shin Ian."
I rolled the syllables around awkwardly. The letters floated, weightless.
Could a name really feel this foreign?
Was Shin Ian even my name to begin with?
It was a thoroughly bizarre sensation.
I knew I had lost something, and I knew what I had lost. But if anyone asked me what that something had actually been, I wouldn't have a single word to offer.
"Who was I?"
I was murmuring the question blankly to myself when—
Knock knock.
The knock was less a request for permission than a notice of arrival. A woman in a suit strode straight in.
A suit pressed without a single crease, and a neat black bob falling just past her shoulders. Pale skin and cold, settled eyes.
She was the kind of woman whose smile was almost impossible to picture.
"You're awake."
Naturally, it was a face I had no memory of.
"Who are you?"
Click. Click.
Even so, she walked toward me without the slightest hesitation.
"I worried. I fretted. I waited."
"Um…"
"I'm talking."
"And I'm asking."
I closed my mouth on whatever I'd been about to say next. The air around her was so sharp I half expected it to cut my tongue. My breath caught a little.
"Shin Ian."
And strangely enough, it was only then that I could accept that my name was Shin Ian.
Because a woman like her wouldn't make a mistake.
Whether it was instinct or intuition, I couldn't say. Maybe some scrap of memory that hadn't been erased was telling me so.
"So who are you?"
"How curious. You're really treating me like a complete stranger."
She pressed down on the shoulder I'd half-raised, then—with a touch that almost seemed tender—traced along my neck and tipped my chin up.
For some reason, the fingertips against my skin felt like a blade.
I didn't push her away. The corner of her eye as she looked down at me, and the single thread of affection visible between them, had already gone and drawn a picture of the two of us across the blank page of my mind.
"I missed you, Shin Ian."
There was no room left to doubt the picture.
I barely managed to swallow.
Don't tell me…
"I'm really sorry, but—what exactly were we to each other?"
"You don't remember?"
A strange guilt pricked at a corner of my chest.
A lover? A girlfriend? Or—God forbid—had I been a married man?
As I sat there unable to answer amid the swirl of possibilities, she lowered her head and rested her cool forehead against mine.
"I'm Cha Seeun."
"R-right."
The excessive closeness was still awkward when, all at once, a soft sensation brushed my cheek.
Before I could even be startled, Cha Seeun whispered against my ear.
"If you forget again, I'll tattoo my name all over your body."
Then she rose lightly and vanished straight out of the room.
"Hey—wait, you're just leaving like that?"
Calling after a Cha Seeun who wouldn't hear me, I blankly rubbed the lip print left on my cheek.
My head was spinning from the sheer absurdity of it.
She'd walked in out of nowhere, told me her name, kissed me on the cheek—and then promised that if I forgot, she'd just go ahead and carve it in as a tattoo.
It was a vicious warning. And the lips that had delivered it had been soft.
Everything about Cha Seeun—especially the still-vivid feel of her mouth—was far too much stimulation for an amnesiac patient who hadn't even been awake half a day.
"Is this for real…?"
What I was sure of was her attitude, her presence. From the look in her eyes to the touch of her hand to the kiss that followed—not a single thing about it had been a lie.
Which meant that before I'd lost my memory, I had been dating a terrifying beauty who would tattoo me at the drop of a hat…
What kind of man was I, exactly?
Had I really been that impressive?
I was still privately marveling when—
Bang!
The door nearly came off its hinges, and a living doll came charging straight at me.
"Iaaaaaan!"
It was a sudden assault. I reflexively threw off the blanket and tried to dodge, but she barreled into me blanket and all.
The soft sensation pressing through the fabric made my whole body go rigid on its own. Strangely, it felt familiar.
"Do you have any idea how worried I—mmph!"
The arms locked around me were full of strength.
As the air left my lungs, I patted her back, and the blanket slid down. She lifted her head.
Hair of a pale gold that seemed to hold sunlight it had never quite touched. Beneath it, large eyes brimming with tears.
She was the kind of girl who made the words first love float unbidden to mind.
I reached toward the corners of her eyes—ready to spill over at any second—before a belated confusion caught up with me.
"Who are you?"
A woman who came running in, threw her arms around me, and started sniffling. The closeness was thoroughly disorienting.
If we were this close, maybe we were family. A little sister? An older one?
But her tear-choked answer sent a chill down my spine.
"You're so mean!"
She collapsed against me again, and my whole body locked up.
"How could you not even remember me…!"
A girlfriend?
Wait. Something was very wrong here.
Even with nothing left in my head, wasn't it common sense that you only got one girlfriend?
I swallowed hard again.
"Are you sure you don't have the wrong person?"
At the question I managed in a trembling voice, her tear-filled eyes looked up at me as if she were about to burst into full-blown sobs.
"Ian… how could I ever mix you up with anyone else."
The name was right.
"It's okay. I heard you got hurt in the accident."
The reason for admission was correct, too.
"From now on… yeah. We can just start over."
No matter how I looked at it, she was completely sincere.
For a moment the suspicion crossed my mind that this whole thing might be some elaborate prank at my expense. But—
"As long as you're alive… that's enough."
Even if every bit of this were an act, I'd have to blame my own judgment first. Suspecting a girl like her just wasn't something a decent person did.
Which meant that before I'd lost my memory, I had been—without any room for excuse—a complete lunatic.
"Ian."
"Yes? Me? Are you talking to me?"
Still dabbing tears into my patient gown, she slipped her arms gently around my neck.
"This time I'll be the one to confess. Wait for me."
It was a request I couldn't bring myself to refuse.
My heart skipped a beat faster.
Then soft lips brushed my cheek.
"Next time… I'll do it on the lips."
With a silly little giggle, she pulled away from me.
"When we meet again, call me Chae-a. Yu Chae-a."
The situation I was in left no room for argument. Still dazed, I could only nod.
Yu Chae-a covered her puffy eyes and smiled with a mischievous glint.
"Then call me once right now."
"Chae-a."
"One more time."
"…Chae-a."
Her lips trembled and a tear slipped past, so I just kept talking. It wasn't hard.
"I look so ugly today I can't stay any longer!"
Only after I'd said her name a few more times did Yu Chae-a whirl around and flee.
Her exit was every bit as abrupt as her entrance.
"Hey… at least close the door on your way out."
Figuring a passing nurse would shut it if I left it alone, I pressed hard at my throbbing eyelids again.
A growing dread of my past self was creeping in.
I'd been hoping I'd been someone impressive. The conclusion, instead, was that I'd been impressively insane.
No matter how long I turned it over, the conclusion didn't change.
Two-timing a girl who loved me that much? Or had I been two-timing with Yu Chae-a?
A chill ran down my spine.
I'd have to get that tattoo, wouldn't I?
Cha Seeun's ice-edged voice seemed to dig into my ear.
This… could not get out. I genuinely did not have it in me to handle the fallout.
The same went for Yu Chae-a.
Telling a girlfriend who had sobbed with relief that I was alive, Well, funny story, and letting her find out about Cha Seeun?
I'd rather get in another accident and reset my brain. At least I'd already been through that once.
"Haa…"
I was looking for something to wipe the cold sweat with when I suddenly felt a gaze on me.
Knock knock.
A woman stood in the doorway of the room.
Long, straight black hair so deep in color it stopped the eye. A white dress that suited the clean-cut ends falling at her waist with perfect composure.
The air of quiet elegance about her, and the refined poise of her neatly folded hands, were anything but ordinary.
She looked like a young lady from some old estate, rarely allowed out for a day.
"Hello. It's been a while."
She offered a greeting that felt oddly out of place, then quietly knocked on the door that was already open.
"May I come in?"
"And if I said no, would you not come in?"
"Yes. I suppose I would have to."
The demure answer only made my head throb harder.
Honestly, I wanted to tell her to turn around and leave.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because you're beautiful."
That was precisely the problem.
Cha Seeun and Yu Chae-a before her. Both of them had been beauties who set a heart racing on sight.
So every time another beautiful woman came looking for me, I couldn't help imagining just how deep the sins of my past self must have run.
"Heh. I did put in the effort—I'm glad."
Still waiting outside the door for my permission, she covered her mouth and laughed softly. I couldn't laugh.
I wanted to believe it wasn't the case. But there were already not one but two precedents.
"Come in, then."
At a permission that was closer to surrender, she approached me one careful step at a time. For a moment my eyes caught on black hair that didn't sway even as she walked.
And at the voice that followed, I closed my eyes.
"Would you like to touch it?"
Ah, please.
Too awkward to be family. Too forward to be a friend. Too close to be a business connection.
So what answer was left?
Even knowing, I couldn't not ask. Pinning hope on uncertainty was human nature.
"So… who are you?"
"My name is Seo Arin."
As if she'd already read the please don't say it in my face, her eyes sparkled at me like a child's.
"Ian and I promised each other a lifetime together."