.

However, nothing had changed even though I closed my eyes as tightly as possible.

With tearful eyes, Ban Yeo Ryung was still showing an expression on her face, asking me to explain further. From a distance, Eun Jiho, Jooin, and Eun Hyung were now bending their steps toward us after finishing their discussion. The crowds were whispering at us, and the seagulls were flying round and round above our heads.

SPLASH! The sound of waves broke and vanished somewhere under our feet. The wind blowing on my cheeks was painfully vivid.

The second time I closed and opened my eyes tightly, Yeo Ryung’s voice echoed around me. It was surprisingly very low.

“The days I wandered around you, trying to read your mind… Did the times burden you that much?”

I still couldn’t say anything.

Raising her head, Yeo Ryung retorted with wet eyes, “So many days I’ve wondered about such questions–how to apologize to you, or how to initiate a conversation with you–willing to talk the next day. Every night my head was full of these thoughts… but since you went through everything quite smoothly, should I just keep ignoring all that and move on?”

“…”

“… Do you… know… how much… I…”

Continuing her words stammeringly, Ban Yeo Ryung shoved her face in her palms, at last, and kept her mouth shut.

Her words seemed to strike me on the head, but there was now a pause, which doubled my pain.

Then at the moment, Eun Jiho’s voice pierced through the suffocating silence.

“What’s wrong with you two?”

“Oh…” As soon as he found out Ban Yeo Ryung sobbing, Eun Jiho asked in surprise, “Are you crying? What’s… um…”

Both Jooin and Eun Hyung ran toward our direction in astonishment. They looked back and forth between Ban Yeo Ryung, wailing, and me, keeping silent, then became bewildered at the situation.

Meanwhile, Ban Yeo Ryung put down her hands from her face. She blushed in the heated situation.

“Sorry, but I want to go home…”

* * *

I had no idea how I returned home. On the train and subway, I never looked around even once.

Being in new places put me on guard. I usually look here and there to find out if I was going in the right direction. However, this time, nothing came into view as if a dark curtain was blocking my sight.

All I did was just walking after someone’s back. If I lost pace or went in the wrong direction, someone pulled my wrist and helped me in.

I wasn’t even sure if I appreciated their help. In fact, I couldn’t even remember who was who. Sometimes, it was Eun Jiho, sometimes, Jooin, or Eun Hyung maybe.

Anyway, one thing was clear–there wasn’t Ban Yeo Ryung.

She didn’t come beside me, even once, on our way home, even on the way back to our apartment.

Once I returned to my room and put my backpack down on the floor, almost like throwing it away, that was when I realized that I’d been on a trip.

It was necessary to unpack my stuff immediately and sort things out since I used my school backpack today, but I really didn’t feel up to it. Looking inside the bag would make me recall the painful moments I had a couple of hours ago. Thus, I wished this was all just things inside my dreams.

After standing still for quite a while, I slowly plopped down on the floor, leaning against the bed. Ban Yeo Ryung’s crying face was dominating my mind even until now.

Last time, when she cried in front of us, it wasn’t my fault. That time, she was crying FOR me, but today, I made her cry. There was a big difference between her two emotional behaviors. It banged my heart so severely.

Being in a daze, I blurted out to myself, “Why didn’t I say a word?”

I could have made some excuses, but no… I shook my head. I was now too sick and tired of making up things to conceal the truth.

What on earth should I do to make none of us get hurt?

I wanted to lessen Ban Yeo Ryung’s anxiety derived from amnesia. The conversation I brought up as to become mindful had, eventually, pushed her to deeper confusion and chaos.

And now that she was asking me to clarify things, I couldn’t confess that the Ham Donnie she had known and myself right now were completely different people. If I did, she would get shocked even more. Thinking to that extent, I shook my head again. No, that’s really a no-no.

In fact, what scared me the most wasn’t Ban Yeo Ryung getting hurt–it was Yeo Ryung turning her back on me once she becomes aware of the truth.

‘If that happens and she begins to look at me like a monster or fake friend who turns out to be a swindler, then I’ll be like…’ I kept shaking my head from side to side.

No matter how many times I tried to think it over and over, the best answer in that situation didn’t come to my mind. All I could say was that it was such an awful decision to confess my deepest secret to her just because she had lost our fond memories.

Being blanked out for a moment, I suddenly got up, then took out some random books and flipped through a couple of pages. After repeating those meaningless actions for a few minutes, I was able to throw them on my desk.

I murmured, “Yeah, right, because I’m not inside the book…”

The world right now was inside a web novel; I wasn’t outside the book, existing as a reader. So, I wouldn’t be able to flip pages, go back, or even rip them out.

Throwing myself on the bed, I murmured, “But then why did the author of this book let me notice that this is a world inside a novel?”

Why did the writer make that decision at the very moment–when I tried to quit thinking that my loved ones here weren’t characters in a book anymore and began to give them my heart–on all occasions?

If I knew it beforehand, I would have stopped loving them, or if I didn’t know anything, I would have kept building our friendship with ease.

This situation itself seemed like a punishment to me, who lost a sense of balance.

Since when did I start sleeping? Burying my face onto the bed deeply asleep, I later woke up from the bell ringing outside.

Mom and dad were gonna be late today, then who was it? I pressed the call button on the intercom and looked outside through the small screen, then became silent for a moment. There stood Yeo Ryung nervously in front of our door.

“We need to talk,” she said, looking so anxious and exhausted just like me.

I watched for a second then opened the door. Yeo Ryung came in wordlessly and took off her shoes.

There was only silence in the entrance.

It was quite unexpected. After seeing her wail, I even thought that we’re likely to become nobodies to each other until our graduation day, but how could she come see me like this so quickly?

While I dropped my gaze at the floor, Yeo Ryung quietly detached her lips.

“Since you said you have no memories of me before our first day of middle school, I thought that you’d have no idea what had happened right before that day.”

“Huh? Oh…”

I showed a look of wonder on my face, but it turned stiff at her following words.

“You know we had a fight…”

Oh, yeah, that happened.

The topic was brought up a couple of times by Yeo Dan oppa, Yeo Ryung’s mother, or a few people around us, but whenever that happened, I tried to ignore the story or change the subject since I couldn’t respond to the memories that didn’t exist in my mind.

Yeo Ryung also grimaced or talked about something else when someone brought that up. But now, she was initiating a conversation about that story.

As soon as I had those thoughts in my head, Yeo Ryung clenched her fist and spoke out of the blue.

“First of all, I’m sorry to lose my temper earlier…”

Eh? Why was she suddenly apologizing to me? Feeling bewildered, I scratched the back of my head.

I uttered, “Uh, it’s okay, but why?”

Even I would get angry in that situation. Let’s say, a best friend of mine began to behave strangely one day, so I struggled for a few days, almost pulling an all-nighter, to find out what I had done wrong. However, then I got to know that it was actually from her memory loss. She didn’t tell me about it at all even after we recovered our relationship. How could I not piss off when I later discovered the truth?

Besides, it wasn’t just a few days between us–but months. Right after we became middle school students, the moment when adapting to new environments was necessary, her bestie–me, Ham Donnie–suddenly showed a change of attitude, instead of being a reliable buddy.

‘Geez, even the timing was so badly coincidental…’ I sighed.

Ban Yeo Ryung replied, “Perhaps it’s too late to think of it this way, but… the reason why you lost your memory… it seems to be my fault…”