Chapter 204 - A Long Forgotten Memory

After their intense lovemaking and sweet chatting afterwards, the couple struggle not to sleep, trying to overextend the pleasure of being in each other arms as much as possible. It doesn't matter they engaged on a teasingly bragging of how they made the other shiver and m.o.a.n. And how they proved their point one more time late in the night.

But, humans as they were, both Jun Hyeon and Ye Rim couldn't resist the tiredness of their bodies and mind. Sleep stole them from each other for a moment.

°°°

Jun Hyeon saw the sky coming towards him, and ironically thought it was fantastic, but it could only be very wrong.

"I am dreaming, right? This is crazy!"

Except that, unlike most of his dreams, he felt a great excitement, and it didn't seem like the end, but the beginning of something. Then his body spun in the air, as he awkwardly tried to correct the parable, and Jun Hyeon went towards the clouds for a moment. He closed his eyes, preparing for impact when he came down. It was so fast that when the impact happened, Jun Hyeon didn't even feel it. He just noticed his body getting weak, his brain trying to adjust the change in speed, and feeling a panic overtake his mind as he realized what had really happened.

'Am I going to die? Oh hell, it's happening.'

He hoped to be mistaken.

He waited for the pain, which came after a few seconds, excruciating as he expected. Jun Hyeon screamed, unable to control himself. Then the pain subdued. Time seemed to stop as snow fell on him.

'I'm not going to die because of this stupid accident, but because I am I going to freeze out here. Is it so?' it was a revolting thought. A ski trail and a stupid, overconfident boy. Someone who felt like the king of the world for being a millionaire overnight. What a stupid death.

His forces were draining fast, and he heard the characteristic wet screech! when skis stopped beside him, scattering snow everywhere. He heard his noona's voice. A cry of despair,

"JUN! Jun Hyeon! Please talk to me!"

As if it were a poorly edited film, confused things happened in his dream, but Jun Hyeon was in the hospital in Switzerland. Yes, he lived in a dream where he was young Jun Hyeon, although his a.d.u.l.t mind was aware. 

The long recovery time.

"What happened to you?" He asked the other teenager waiting for his turn in the X-ray room. Jun Hyeon had been hospitalized for several days and didn't quite understand what people were talking about, but he heard his native language and turned the wheelchair to check over the melodious voice that answered something.

The boy with the angelic face had also gotten shocked by the coincidence. He also wore hospital clothes, like Jun Hyeon. His legs were in plaster and with frightening orthopedic hardware as external fixators, like Jun Hyeon's.

"Oh, uhn ... I fell out of the window. Of the hotel."

Jun Hyeon found that much more frightening than his own accident, but he didn't have time to comment or continue the conversation. The nurse was already gently taking him to the x-ray room. He just waved, unable to bend his neck because of the neck brace. The other teenager also waved.

°°°

"Thanks for the magazines, Miss. Blanche," he thanked in his lousy English to the nurse who left manhwas and American magazines on the nightstand, on her shift.

"Don't thank me, Kimmie," for some reason the woman called him that, regardless of any logic. "Thank the patient from the next room. He's also Korean. Maybe he wants to be your friend."

°°°

"What about these balloons?"

"Well, it's your discharge day, isn't it, Kimmie? It's good to celebrate. Soon you will bid farewell to this hospital and return to your life in your country! It's actually like a brand-new life. You survived and have no major sequelae. Isn't it great?"

"Yes, you and all the staff have been kind to me these months, but I will be happy to leave."

"Don't blame yourself. Leave us behind in your memories. You are young and you don't need to remember pain and wasting so much time in a hospital."

The conversations with Nurse Blanche, whose face only returned in her dreams now, seemed vague and displaced in time or space, just a tenuous connection to an obscure period in her mind. 

Then his father arrived and took Jun Hyeon away. In the hospital parking lot, while his father kept some objects in the trunk, Jun Hyeon felt that he should look at the floor where he spent so many months.

Someone was looking out the window, holding one of the golden balloons by the string.

The patient in the next room.

°°°

Jun Hyeon woke up stunned, feeling his heart beating very hard against his chest. He felt the comfort of the sheets and the warm body against his, in addition to the intoxicating scent of Ye Rim's hair. 

He hugged her tightly, molding his body to hers in a spooning. It was a relief to be beside Ye Rim, who reacted with a cute grunt when he squeezed her, and tried to escape. But he didn't let her out of his embrace. Dr. Kim stuck his face in that silky jungle with coppery hair and took a deep breath, wanting to escape some of the painful shock that dream brought him.

'A dream… or a memory?'

After a few moments, he felt Ye Rim stiffen, fully woke. She sighed,

"Are you all right, Jun Hyeon?"

"Hm no. I'm not all right, I wish I was," he confessed, finally sitting down, concluding that he couldn't go back to the wonderful idyll with his beloved Ye Rim while that thought haunted his mind. 

Jun Hyeon told his strange dream to her. Ye Rim listened to him while lying down, playing with her hair while giving him full attention.

"That's what's on my mind right now, when I wanted to be thinking only of you," Jun Hyeon explained, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

"You mean, in your dream, the boy next door was ... Dae Won?"