Chapter 4: Memory Loss

She straightened in her seat and tapped the phone. The clock bloomed across the screen, and Jeong Yeon-jae's lips parted on a hollow laugh.

She had come straight here after sending the message. From the hour the scorching afternoon sun stood high until a deep, late darkness had settled over everything, Yeon-jae had waited for Gu Je-heon at the residence for half a day.

Her feelings had climbed and plunged like a ride on a roller coaster. She had told herself he had only been cold because of the people around them — and still the merciless look in his eyes as he had gazed at her would not leave her. Even so, once he had seen the message saying she would wait here, she had believed he would come.

One o'clock. I'll wait until one, and not a minute more.

She looked down at the phone, well past midnight now, and rose from her chair with no strength left in her. The scrape of the legs against the floor sounded unnaturally loud. Slowly, she let her gaze travel the hushed rooms of the residence.

"From now on, when I call for you, come here."

"Where is… this?"

"My house."

The man who had held out a black master key to her. At the word house, Yeon-jae's eyes had gone round.

Je-heon had an official address — the apartment in Samsung-dong, near the Gu-il Group headquarters where he served as CEO. But the key he had pressed into her hand had not been for Samsung-dong.

"A place no one knows about. So don't bring anyone with you. Just you."

This residence was his private space. And Yeon-jae had been its first visitor — its only one.

"I ordered extra cups, and toothbrushes, and towels."

"What, why don't you just move in while you're at it?"

"Would that be all right?"

No. She might have spent more hours here than Je-heon, who actually owned the place. She had always been the one waiting for him.

Her gaze reached the kitchen, passed the sink, and came to rest on the drying rack. Two mugs standing side by side. Two pairs of spoons and chopsticks. At the end of that slow, drifting look, memories rose one after another, tender and new. Then her eyes turned last of all toward the grand piano in the wide living room, and heat flared along her lashes. She bit down on her lip.

"I hate the piano."

"Then why did you buy it?"

Je-heon, who had claimed to loathe the instrument and then brought in the finest one money could buy.

"You're prettier when you play."

The man who had held her the entire time she performed, burying his face against her.

"But I can't be like this at home."

Sitting together at the piano. Kissing. Laughing. The year they had spent in this place had not been short. Every moment of it had been real.

Tears dropped before she knew it, pooling on the back of her hand. She lifted her palm to stop them, but once they had started they ran as if a floodgate had given way. Strangely, from the instant she had set foot in this place, they would not dry. Foolishly, she could not even name the feeling. She gathered her face into both hands, and her shoulders shook for a long time.

Then a presence stirred beyond the door, and she turned. Footsteps, ringing through the silence. But those steps faded as quickly as they had come, and a bitter little laugh caught in her throat.

"Now I'm hearing things… ha."

Better to go find him than sit here like this. She knew Je-heon hated people acting on their own — but they were lovers. That much should have been allowed. She was just deciding to go to him when an electronic beep split the quiet.

As if something had taken hold of her, Yeon-jae walked toward the entrance. It was the door lock. She reached the front hall, and through the half-open door a figure appeared, and her eyes flew wide.

Je-heon was there. The man she had believed would not come.

Their eyes met. The longing she had packed down so tightly began, little by little, to spill. This isn't a dream. It can't be. She rubbed at her blurred vision, wiping the wet away. Emotion rose in her chest until it hurt to breathe, and she ran. In a single rush she reached him and threw her arms around him.

The warmth inside the circle of her arms broke her open all over again. The afternoon, the small fear that had clung to her — all of it melted at the sight of him, like snow in a sudden thaw.

"Why were you so late? I really thought something had happened to you."

The water running down her round cheeks soaked into him.

"I missed you."

"……"

"I missed you so much, Je-heon."

Desperate love lived in that damp voice. And as if it had reached him, he flinched. On her toes, Yeon-jae lifted a hand and stroked the back of his head with care. Hair slipping through her fingers. The deep breath gathering at the nape of his neck, reminding her over and over that he had come back.

"I really missed you so—"

She was still forcing the words out when a scoff, a laugh like a snort of contempt, slid into her ear.

Yeon-jae's body jerked, a small flinch. She had not been hoping for some tender answer — I missed you too, Yeon-jae. He had never been a tender man. But the voice that shattered against her ear was thick with revulsion. The same as it had been that afternoon.

"Let go."

No. I misheard him. I must have. Telling herself that, she lifted her head.

"Didn't you hear me? Let go."

The eyes that met her skin were chillingly fierce. Time itself seemed to stop. In that endless stretch of it she could not move. A sensation as cold and crawling as sinking into the deep sea pressed down on her.

"Jeong Yeon-jae."

The low murmur of her name made her start. She raised her head properly, and the black eyes watching her from inches away filled her sight.

"How did you know about this place?"

The look that had been on her slid past her shoulder, taking in the rooms behind. Space after space gathered in his pupils. He stared as if finding her here were something utterly foreign.

How did I know.

It was the most obvious thing in the world. Before the accident, they had been here together more times than she could count. Yeon-jae clenched her fist. The small object in her palm bit into her skin. Even if she wanted to believe this was a dream, the bright, stinging pain at her fingertips was far too real.

"What… do you mean?"

His gaze, which had been sweeping the apartment, came back to her. His mouth twisted, and a scoff formed there.

"Are you asking because you don't know?"

Je-heon snatched her wrist and yanked it into the air. Her fist opened as he twisted it, and the object dropped with a dull clack.

"Why do you have that."

He pointed downward with his chin. Yeon-jae's eyes fell to the master key lying on the floor.

"This is a place even Madam Pyo Myeong-hee doesn't know about."

Her heart dropped at the voice seeping into her ear.

"Are you investigating me now too, Jeong Yeon-jae? What the hell are you… ha."

Pitch-black pupils, like sediment settling in muddy water until only the dark was left. Yeon-jae shrank from the naked contempt written so plainly in those eyes. The look fixed on her was a stranger's — and, at the same time, maddeningly familiar. It was a look she had lived with for more than ten years.

She closed her eyes, and old memories stacked themselves over the dark, one after another.

Take the piano out of Jeong Yeon-jae's life and there was nothing left. When she pressed the keys, her heart beat. The notes that bloomed from her fingertips were the only comfort in a life that counted for so little.

The Gu-il Foundation. A student raised by the world-class pianist Pyo Myeong-hee herself. Of all the children the foundation sponsored, Yeon-jae was the only one who had endured.

Behind those brilliant accomplishments lay a thicket of interests. Jeong Yeon-jae, the finest result the Gu-il Foundation — which Myeong-hee ran herself — had ever produced. A genius pianist created by a world-class pianist. Pyo Myeong-hee's one and only student. The pride of the Gu-il Foundation.

Not once had the name Jeong Yeon-jae ever stood on its own. The three syllables were so easily lost under the stream of titles that followed her. Take Pyo Myeong-hee and the Gu-il Foundation away from Jeong Yeon-jae, and what remained?

Yeon-jae gave a small shake of her head. A passive life, lived because of Myeong-hee. Je-heon was the first thing that Yeon-jae had ever dared to want for herself.

"Did you forget what I told you?"

The low voice pooled in her ear as her body was pushed back. She lifted her head, and their eyes caught again.

"I don't date the kids Madam raises."

She could see herself reflected in those deeply sunken black eyes — trembling under that fierce look, like prey that had walked into a predator.

"I told you to find someone on your own level."

A look and a voice she had surely known before. Yeon-jae's mouth trembled. Old memory laid itself over the man in front of her.

But there was no such thing as an eternal wall. In the end, the two of them had become lovers. And now he was telling her to find someone suitable.

She dropped her eyes, and they found the master key. That key was something he had given her himself. Memories she had left buried for a long time began to surface, one after another, and her heart hammered as if it had lost its mind.

He doesn't remember? No. That can't be.

She jerked her gaze up, and their eyes met. Looking at him carefully, she felt an atmosphere entirely different from the Je-heon who had said he would come to her recital. Disgust lay thick in those coldly opened eyes. So that was the unease she had felt, looking at him after he woke.

Her lips, still parted, shook hard. No memories. That was impossible. It had to be.

"Je-heon… you don't have your memories?"

Even as she asked him, Yeon-jae closed her trembling fist.