FADE Chapter 3: Eyes That Don't Know Me | Drama Web Novel

I

The first thing Jina realized when she opened her eyes was the ceiling.

White. Smooth. Illuminated by a light that didn't resemble sunlight. Then the sounds: her own breathing first, then an electronic beep pulsing rhythmically nearby, followed by faint footsteps and distant conversations in the corridor.

She tried to move her hand and felt a weight in her arm. A transparent tube. She turned her head very slowly, as if her bones had forgotten how to move, the room spinning slightly once before stabilizing.

A white room. Machines. A window with its curtain half-drawn.

Hospital.

The word came effortlessly. Hospital. She knew what the place meant even before she could remember its name.

But why was she here?

She opened her mouth to say something, and a raspy, broken voice emerged, one she didn't recognize.

Then she saw the man.

He was sitting on a chair beside her bed. A tall man with black hair and calm features, he was holding something in his hand but dropped it when he saw her move. He stood up.

Approached.

And placed his hand next to hers on the blanket.

- "Jina."

He uttered her name in a tone she couldn't describe. It was as if that single word held more weight than a single word ever should.

She looked at him.

A structured face. Dark eyes. Something in the way he looked at her made her chest tighten for no apparent reason.

- "Who are you?"

Three words. They came out with complete simplicity because it was the only logical question.

And she watched something happen to his face. Something subtle but real, as if a small piece of the armor he stood with had shattered silently.

Then he said:

- "I'm Joon."

And waited. As if hoping the name alone would make a difference.

It didn't.

She looked at him with the same blank gaze, unaware of how much it hurt.

- "I don't know you."

II

The doctors arrived a few minutes later.

Lights in her eyes. Questions asked in a deliberately calm voice, as if they were speaking to someone fragile enough to break.

- "What is your name?"

- "Jina. Jina Park."

- "How old are you?"

She paused.

How old was she?

The number was somewhere in the part of her memory that still worked, but it needed a second to surface.

- "Twenty-seven."

- "Do you know where you are right now?"

- "A hospital."

-"Do you know why?"

She paused again.

No.

She didn't know.

She knew her name, her age, the meaning of the tube in her arm, and the machines around her, but the reason was entirely absent, as if a whole page from her book had been torn from the middle.

- "No," she said quietly.

The doctors exchanged a look over her head.

In the corner of the room, the man named Joon tightened his grip on the armrest of the chair and said nothing.

They explained it to her.

An accident. A coma. Thirty days.

She listened while staring at the ceiling, her mind trying to absorb this information the way a sponge absorbs water, slowly and with limits.

- "The amnesia might be temporary," the doctor said. "Your memory could return gradually with time, rest, and avoiding pressure."

- "And if it doesn't?"

The doctor went silent for a single, telling second.

- "Every case is different."

She closed her eyes.

Thirty days. An accident. A lost memory. And a strange man sitting beside her who seemed to know her better than she knew herself.

III

When the doctors left, he remained.

She didn't ask him to leave; she didn't ask him to stay. She was looking at her hand, her fingers where blood was flowing once more, trying to gather something from the quiet chaos that was her memory.

- "Do you need anything?" he asked in a low voice.

- "Water."

He stood up immediately. He poured water from a pitcher on the table beside the bed and handed her the cup. When she reached out to take it, his fingers brushed against hers for a second.

She felt nothing.

Or so she told herself.

She drank slowly, then placed the cup on her lap and looked at him.

- "Who are you to me?"

He sat down, placed his hands on his knees, and looked at her in a way where she could read something he was trying to hide.

- "I am your husband."

The two words landed in the room like a stone in a stagnant lake.

She looked at him.

- "My husband."

- "Yes."

- "Since when?"

- "Since the day of your accident."

She thought about this.

- "The wedding day?"

- "Yes."

She looked at her hand. There was a ring. Simple, gold. She hadn't noticed it until now.

- "Why don't I remember you?"

And for the first time since he entered the room, he couldn't find an immediate answer.

He finally said:

- "The doctors say the accident affected some of your memories. They hope they will return."

- "They only hope?"

- "They only hope."

She returned her gaze to the ceiling.

A husband. She had a husband she didn't know. In a hospital she didn't know how she reached. After an accident she remembered nothing about.

- "Do I have family?"

- "Your mother was here. She will return soon."

Her mother. Yes. Her mother existed in her memory, a woman with dyed hair and a voice that brooked no argument.

She clung to this small detail like a rope in a dark place.

IV

The mother arrived.

She entered the room and stood before her again, in the exact way, Jina didn't know it then, but she would learn later, the mother used to deal with difficult things.

Then she leaned down and hugged her.

Jina slowly raised her hand and gripped her shoulder.

The mother was crying but made no sound. Exactly how Jina imagined her mother would cry.

- "Mom," she said in a raspy voice.

And she felt her mother tighten the embrace.

That was the first moment since waking up that she felt something resembling real pain. Not for something she remembered, but for something she had clearly lost without knowing its shape.

In the corner, Joon quietly stepped out.

He said nothing, opening and closing the door behind him with utmost care so as not to interrupt the moment.

He stood in the corridor.

Min-joon was there, his professional face attempting to hide what lay beneath.

- "She remembers her mother," Joon said quietly. "The recent memory is what's missing. Everything before roughly two and a half years ago is still there."

- "That is good," Min-joon said cautiously.

- "It is."

Silence.

- "Min-joon, what are the arrangements for returning to the palace?"

- "Whenever the doctors decide..."

- "When they decide, I want everything ready. Her room, the care staff, everything."

- "Yes, sir."

- "And I want everything to be as normal as possible. No one treats her like a patient. No one makes her feel incomplete."

Min-joon looked at him with something in his eyes but didn't comment.

- "Understood."

V

A week later, she was discharged from the hospital.

The car was official, long, and escorted by security guards. She looked out the window at the streets of Seoul passing by in a blur, everything simultaneously familiar and unknown. The city was in her memory, the neighborhoods, the names, the large shops. But the route the car was taking was completely unfamiliar to her.

Joon sat beside her and did not speak. He wasn't staring at her; he was looking straight ahead, but she felt, by something she couldn't name, that he was watching her from the corner of his eye constantly.

- "Where are we going?" she asked.

- "The Presidential Palace."

She turned to him.

- "The Presidential Palace."

- "Yes."

- "I live in the Presidential Palace?"

- "Yes."

She thought about this quietly.

- "Because you are the president."

- "Yes."

- "The President of South Korea."

- "Yes."

She returned her gaze to the window.

Somewhere in her memory, she knew who Joon Kim was. The name existed. The face existed in official photos. The young politician who reached the presidency four years ago.

But what was between her and him? How did this man from those official photos end up by her side in this car?

The void was limitless.

The palace was larger than she expected.

She stood at the inner entrance, looking at the long corridors, the polished floors, and the details that clearly stated a place like this was never part of her original life.

Her original life.

Busan. A small apartment. An office on the third floor of an import company.

How did she get from there to here?

- "Do you want to rest first?" She heard his voice behind her.

She turned.

He was standing two paces away. The distance was calculated in a way that seemed intentional, as if he were maintaining a space she hadn't asked for, but he had decided to grant her anyway.

- "I want to see my room."

- "All right. I'll take you."

He walked ahead of her with calm steps, and she followed him. She noticed that the aides bowed when he passed, and he moved without stopping for anything. The guards rotated regularly at the doors. Everyone here behaved in a controlled, deliberate manner, as if chaos were forbidden.

Then he stopped before a door.

He opened it and went in for a brief second to check on something she couldn't see, then opened the door fully and motioned to her.

- "Your room."

VI

The room was spacious and bathed in warm light.

A large window overlooked an inner courtyard garden planted with white and cream flowers. A bed in the center seemed larger than she needed. A table adorned with photos. A full-length mirror. And a faint fragrance in the air that she didn't recognize, though it didn't bother her.

She entered slowly.

She looked at the photos on the table.

Approached.

Picked up a frame. She was in it, laughing with her eyes closed, a cup of coffee in her hands. She didn't recognize the place. She didn't recognize the moment. But the laugh was hers. No doubt about it.

She picked up a second frame.

Her and a man. Joon. Standing together in an official setting. She was in a blue dress, and he was in a suit. Her eyes looked at the camera, but his hand was placed behind her back in a way that seemed casual in the photo, but upon closer inspection, was anything but. It was careful. It held something.

She set the frame down.

And turned around to find that he was still standing by the door.

- "Are you going to stay there the whole time?"

- "No. My apologies," he said quietly. He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

And she was left alone in a room whose shape she recognized but couldn't remember how it became hers.

VII

In the following days, the contours of her new old life began to take shape.

The personal assistant who knew her entire schedule. The nurse who came in the morning for routine checkups. The food that arrived at regular times. The garden where she was permitted to walk every afternoon.

And Joon.

Joon, who would appear.

Not in an annoying way. Not in a way that made her feel watched. He simply appeared in the spaces she occupied, sitting in the same room when she sat, walking down the same corridor when she walked, asking only one question each time, a question that required no long answer.

"Do you need anything?"

"Is the food alright?"

"Is your sleep good?"

She would reply with a word or two, and he would settle for that and walk away.

And the strange thing was, this didn't bother her.

What bothered her was the others.

The aides who smiled plastic smiles whenever she passed. The officials who spoke to her with exaggerated gentleness, as if she were a child. The psychologist who came twice a week and asked how she felt in a way that made her feel like a project requiring monitoring, rather than a human needing a conversation.

Joon alone spoke to her normally.

She noticed it on the fifth day when she sat in the small library attached to her suite, and he was reviewing files at a nearby table. She said without introduction:

- "The psychologist bothers me."

He raised his eyes.

- "Why?"

- "She asks how I feel as if the correct answer exists and I've failed to find it."

He looked at her for a second.

- "I'll request to change her."

- "There's no need," she said quickly.

- "If she bothers you..."

- "I said there's no need."

Silence.

Then he returned to his files, and she returned to the book she was trying to read without focusing.

After five minutes, she heard him say without raising his head:

- "I'll request another doctor next week. Because of scheduling, not because of a complaint from you."

She looked at him.

He was still looking at his file.

She said nothing, but she thought that this strange man was gentler than she had expected from a man in his position.

VIII

On the ninth day, she asked him the question that had been on her mind since the beginning.

They were in the garden. He was walking beside her at that same calculated distance he had accustomed her to, the air pleasantly cool, white and cream flowers filling the spaces between the trees.

- "Why did you choose me?"

He stopped. Turned to her.

- "What do you mean?"

- "I'm from Busan. From an ordinary family. I work at an import company. And you are the president of the country. Why me, specifically?"

He looked at her in a way she couldn't read.

- "Because you were you."

- "That's not an answer."

- "It's the only honest answer I have."

He continued walking.

And she walked with him after a second, her mind replaying the sentence. Because you were you. A phrase that says nothing and everything at the same time.

- "How did we meet?"

- "At a conference. You dropped your files."

- "And we talked?"

- "And we talked."

- "And after that?"

He stopped again and looked at her with eyes holding something that resembled nostalgia, but was remoter and deeper than that.

- "And after that, each of us decided that the other was worth getting to know more."

IX

At night, she lay in her wide bed and stared at the ceiling.

A strange man. A palace. A lost memory. A ring on her finger. A whole life she couldn't enter because the key had been lost in an accident she couldn't remember.

But the thing she couldn't dismiss from her mind wasn't the palace or the lost memory.

It was him.

It was the way he said it when she asked why he chose her. Because you were you. As if the answer were so obvious that any clarification would diminish it.

It was the way he requested to change the doctor without letting her know, under the pretext of scheduling, so she wouldn't feel indebted to him.

And it was the distance he kept every time he was near her. Not too close to annoy her, yet not too far to seem like an insult. A precisely calculated distance that didn't happen by chance.

Joon Kim, a man accustomed to controlling everything, was acting around her as if her comfort were the only thing he wished to control.

She closed her eyes.

You don't know him. You don't know him. You don't know him.

She repeated the phrase like a necessary reminder.

But the reminder didn't help her fall asleep any faster.

X

Early in the morning, before her schedule began, she went out to the garden alone.

The sun was still slowly climbing behind the trees. The air was crisp and cool, the flowers wet with the night's dew.

She sat on a stone bench and pulled out the photo she had taken from her room. The photo where she was laughing with her eyes closed, the cup of coffee in her hands.

Who took it?

She looked at the photo for a long time. At the laugh that wasn't forced, because her eyes were closed, meaning she didn't know she was being photographed.

Who was with her at that moment and decided to preserve it?

- "You wake up early."

She didn't jump in fright. She didn't know why. Perhaps because his voice had become familiar faster than she expected.

She turned.

Joon was standing near her in a light coat, holding two cups in his hands.

- "I usually wake up early too," he said, then added, "You used to as well."

He extended one of the cups to her.

She took it. Coffee. It was exactly the way she liked it.

- "How do you know how I take my coffee?"

- "Because I used to watch."

He sat on the opposite bench. He didn't sit next to her.

The calculated distance.

She looked at the cup, then at him.

- "Who took this picture?" She extended the photo to him.

He took it, looked at it, and something subtle crossed his face.

- "I did."

- "Why?"

- "Because your face at that moment deserved to be preserved."

He handed the photo back to her, took a sip from his cup, and looked out at the garden.

And Jina looked at the photo, then at him, then at the white flowers.

She said nothing. But she didn't get up to leave either.

And they remained like that until the sun fully rose, two strangers in one garden, drinking coffee in a silence that wasn't as uncomfortable as it was, in a way she didn't yet understand, comforting.

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