.

Eun Hyung continued speaking concernedly, “Even though we stop teasing Jiho and apologize to him, I think we can’t help if the problem actually stems from Yeo Ryung’s feelings toward him… She’s going through a hard time right now, losing all her memories. We can’t ask her to change her mind and try to trust a stranger whom she feels very uncomfortable with.”

I replied with a groan, “That’s true.”

“Yeo Ryung isn’t able to consider others’ feelings and control her emotions herself.”

What Eun Hyung said all made sense, so I just heaved another sigh.

Touching my temple with my forefinger, I diverted my gaze back in the direction where Eun Jiho disappeared. Since our destination is the same, we would meet him in front of our house, but what should we do afterward? As Eun Hyung said earlier, we could apologize for teasing him, but how could we deal with Eun Jiho getting his feelings hurt because of Yeo Ryung revealing her true emotions? There was obviously no solution for that now and forever.

Being lost in thought for a moment, I suddenly turned my head to look at Yeo Ryung.

“Yeo Ryung, you said you can’t believe that Eun Jiho and you were friends, right?”

“Huh?”

As if she roughly understood the overall situation through our conversations, Yeo Ryung hesitated for a second then nodded meekly.

“Uh-huh…”

“Then would you believe it if we have proof?”

“Oh, yeah, the evidence! I wasn’t able to think about it!” shouted Jooin, snapping his fingers. He even looked somehow refreshed.

Whoa, how could I come up with something that Jooin wasn’t able to think about it? It was unbelievable. Staring at him for a second, I switched my gaze back to Yeo Ryung. She nodded with a frown.

“Yeah, maybe… perhaps…” she replied slowly. Then she added in a small voice, “But does it really exist?”

Listening to those words, I realized that Yeo Ryung was sincerely not regarding Eun Jiho as her friend. Oh, poor little Eun Jiho… I even felt pity for him.

I covered my face with my hand and nodded determinedly. ‘Come on, there would be, at least, something,’ I thought. As Eun Hyung mentioned earlier, we had a long history of friendship. Besides, it was during our middle school to high school years that we’d spent much time together. When we were about to go on field trips or a short getaway, our parents gave us cameras to take as many pictures as possible. Even I had a lot of photo albums from middle school. Thus, I became very confident.

When we entered the entrance to our apartment, Eun Jiho was there waiting for us, as we expected. He still looked sulky, but Eun Jiho usually had a straight face, so it was difficult to read his mind.

“Are you still mad?”

Asking carefully, Eun Hyung approached him, but Eun Jiho turned around abruptly. I could tell that he was still in a sulk. However, as Jooin told me earlier, Eun Jiho was generous enough to forget about it soon, but the problem was Yeo Ryung.

I turned around and secretly exchanged eye contact with Jooin.

Entering the passcode on the door lock, I stepped inside my house with quick and big steps then took a bunch of photo albums from the drawer.

Looking at the stack of pictures, Eun Jiho became bewildered.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Acting nonchalantly, I put down the albums on the floor and replied, “What am I doing? Bringing back Yeo Ryung’s memories! Before her parents get back from work, we should, at least, try something to let her know the truth.”

“Oh…”

“She’s in most of my pictures like more than half?”

In fact, pictures without her seldom existed except for the beginning of our freshmen year in middle school. So were the Four Heavenly Kings. They were also taking a lot of part in these albums.

Opening the first page of it, I laughed in my thoughts, thinking, ‘Haha, this is it! Things will get sorted out ASAP, right?’

Jooin, sitting beside me, also flipped through the pages of another album to help me find the pictures of Ban Yeo Ryung and Eun Jiho.

So, that was our goal–finding the picture of Eun Jiho and Ban Yeo Ryung looking close.

While we sat flop on the living room floor, flipping pages, Yeo Ryung came close and began to look at the albums interestingly, resting her chin on my shoulder. A moment after, Eun Hyung and Yoo Chun Young also took a seat on our sides and looked through the photos.

At first, we were about to find the pictures that had only Ban Yeo Ryung and Eun Jiho in them, but taking a close look at each of them slowed down the process.

Pointing at a picture, I said with a grin, “This was taken on Sports Day, but why are my eyes so red? Did I cry? I didn’t get hurt at all…”

“Oh, at that time, you drank a bottle of coke with wasabi inside during the obstacle race,” replied Jooin in excitement.

I clapped my hand, saying, “Oh, yeah, that’s right!” With a giggle, I also flipped through other photos, but something caught my eyes all of a sudden.

It was a picture of two people from the same angle–one had swaying, long black hair, and the other was platinum blond. They were very obvious to distinguish who was who. Finding the answer, I became so excited that I raised my voice involuntarily.

“Oh, my god! Look! Here…”

Speaking to that extent, I suddenly paused. Jooin stared at me in wonder, but his eyes went down to the picture I was pointing at and froze. The look on his face seemed as bewildered as mine.

He murmured, “This is…”

It was good that Ban Yeo Ryung and Eun Jiho were in there together. However, the problem was that Ban Yeo Ryung was running, almost carrying Eun Jiho on her shoulders. Since he was being delivered like a sack of rice, Eun Jiho looked, of course, very disturbed in the picture. Although the photo was out of focus due to the lacking technology in those times, I could still tell how ridiculous he felt during that race.

Jooin and my eyes met in the air. We were asking each other like, ‘Should we just ignore this and move on?’ However, Yeo Ryung’s eyes were already glued to that picture. Well, since I acted so loudly as soon as I found it, she couldn’t miss it, of course.

Feeling frustrated, I asked Jooin, “When is this taken?”

“Um, MAYBE… it’s the last round of the obstacle race. You know, bringing someone or something with you that’s written on the note…”

If Jooin used the word, ‘maybe,’ in his sentence, it indicated one thing–the truth that’d unfold sooner or later wouldn’t be that good or helpful to us.

However, it aroused my curiosity that I asked a question about it.

“What was written… on the note?”

There was a moment of silence in the living room.

After quite a while, Jooin responded hesitantly, which slowly suffocated us in the silent air.

“The most annoying person you have ever met…”

“…”

I turned my head stealthily to the side. Eun Jiho and Ban Yeo Ryung were there having a deep frown on their faces.

‘Geez, I screwed up!’

If there was a secret intention behind Ban Yeo Ryung’s memory loss, it would be definitely breaking the two apart from each other forever, instead of developing chemistry between the two.

A moment after, I put myself together and barely broke the ice. With a burst of exaggerated laughter, I stretched out my hand to flip the pages in a batch.

“Ahaha… I chose the wrong timeline…! Let’s skip the freshmen year. You know, at that time, you and Eun Jiho just met… and had different personalities back then…”

Instead of recovering her memories, I was almost distorting them!

While I made some ridiculous excuses with a murmur, Jooin also nodded as if he was agreeing with me.

“R…ight, mama… I forgot those too…”

Then we faced each other and kept laughing. Yeo Ryung looked at us like a pair of tricksters.

Girl, but we didn’t lie at all. Everything was true!

Four years ago, the two first met. Recalling their historical encounter, I slightly trembled my shoulders.

‘Interesting. You’ll see. I won’t let you win on the next exam.’

‘Whoa, you LET me win, for real?’

‘I said, you’ll see.’

Hmm… I raised my head and directed my eyes to Eun Jiho. Thinking of him behaving that way to Ban Yeo Ryung four years ago, I kind of understood Ban Yeo Ryung’s instinctive hostility against him… no, my bad.