Chapter 555: Chapter 555

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As soon as I thought that way, Yoo Chun Young uttered, “As you said, you didn’t have an option to choose those things to happen or not. All you could do was, therefore, just working hard to overcome such things.”

“…”

“Not sure if you are your experiment, struggling to succeed in dealing with those things, or the result of that past. However… I don’t think that you’re wrong or lacking something right now.”

Yoo Chun Young finished his words calmly.

“Anyway, it’s you right now whom I like.”

“…”

“Your effort seems enough,” he added.

There was a moment of silence. Only the glare in the warm, yellow lighting gently swayed above us.

I held the cup of orange juice tightly in my grip, then suddenly took a sip from it. Yoo Chun Young was staring at me for a while.

At last, I detached my lips from the cup and said, “It tastes bad…”

As if the water and sugar in the juice evaporated while being microwaved, there was no taste of sweetness; only a bit of some weird, sour flavor was left.

Yoo Chun Young stretched out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said. Taking a quick sip, he perked the corner of one brow upward and revealed an enigmatic expression on his face.

Putting down the glass, he uttered, “Sorry.”

“No. Come on, you bought it for me,” I replied with a giggle.

I appreciate you for bringing me here, listening to my crap––the moment I tried to drop those words, I, in the end, just left the words unspoken and put my head down on the table, burying my face onto my arms.

Instead of getting bewildered, Yoo Chun Young just gazed at me silently.

Hiding my face in my arms, I murmured in a subdued voice.

“Why are you like that…?”

I, eventually, couldn’t help but just mumble the words I said to myself earlier when I first bumped into him today.

‘Why does it have to be you of all people?’

I murmured lifelessly, “Why are you always like that?”

In fact, Yoo Chun Young could have responded differently to my complaints. He could have shared his imagination of myself being born from another family or advised me that my story was just meaningless, wanting escapism.

However, he did neither of them.

‘Anyway, it’s you right now whom I like.’

That was all he said in a dreadfully quiet and composed tone.

He noticed that my self-hate had led me to those thoughts; he eradicated my negative way of thinking at once.

I raised my head to look at his blue eyes. So many of my concerns and questions had been solved ridiculously with ease in front of those eyes.

While I kept staring at him, Yoo Chun Young asked me in wonder, “Why?”

One of the greatest things about him was that Yoo Chun Young dealt with such problems without flattering himself or perceiving how superbly he had tackled them.

Shaking my head wordlessly, I tried to return words of thanks. That was when I heard some vibrating noise.

I looked at my pocket instinctively, then paused. Since my phone was broken in half, the sound was, of course, not coming from my phone.

On the table, Yoo Chun Young’s smart device was making a spin around with some buzzing noise. When he put his hand out to his phone, I read the name that appeared on the screen.

[Ban Yeo Ryung]

The magic spell seemed to have broken. I leaped from the seat.

“Yikes,” I blurted out. I was in trouble.

Yoo Chun Young tilted his head and brought his phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he responded.

Ban Yeo Ryung asked, “Yoo Chun Young! Did you finish shooting?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then help us to find Donnie!”

Just as I expected, she called Yoo Chun Young to search for me.

Before he replied, Yoo Chun Young threw a glance in my direction, so I held out my hand to him.

“Let me talk to her,” I uttered.

A surprised voice came over from the phone.

“Donnie!” she cried.

It was such a familiar voice and word that I always heard. Well, to think of it, how many times did we call each other’s names in a day? I somehow asked myself.

Perhaps, at least, ten times––beginning from saying hi, greeting each other in the hallway early in the morning. Although she calling my name was such an everyday thing, for some reason, I felt unbearably odd at the moment.

That was when I realized that almost a week had passed since Ban Yeo Ryung lost her memories. She, of course, stayed beside me for the entire time, but she never called my name so friendly with no hesitance just like now. The irony here was that once she returned to herself, I was able to become fully aware of her absence, at last.

While I was captivated by some weird emotions, Ban Yeo Ryung seemed to have been extremely worried about me.

She gushed, “Donnie, where are you?! I’ve brought the yearbook message you’re looking for, but your house was empty all of a sudden. You weren’t even answering my phone calls. Besides, it’s just after the incident, so I…”

“Sorry, I just felt stuffy at home and wanted to take a short walk, but my phone was suddenly broken. I met Yoo Chun Young, shooting the drama, on my way home,” I replied.

“On your way home? Oh, you mean my uncle’s cafe?!”

Yeo Ryung quickly grasped our location and said she would come. I stopped her from doing it since we were almost finishing our drinks. It was time to get up and return home.

Putting the empty cups on the tray, I replied, “No, we’re about to leave right now. Let’s have some talk at home.”

“Huh? Oh…” Her voice sounded surprisingly lukewarm. Being concerned about me, she tried to see my face immediately. However, as I said to her, ‘Let’s have some talk,’ that might be when she noticed that we still had some things ongoing between us.

In fact, the problem was no one’s fault. I smiled bitterly.

No one did wrong for it to happen; it didn’t even occur from ourselves willing to destroy our relationship. Thus, we could just sit down relaxedly and take enough time to tackle it. However, both of us were unexpectedly acting so sensitive to each other, dealing with it––I learned them right now.

Being involved in various incidents from time to time, perhaps, Ban Yeo Ryung and I had been very exhausted. When she finally suffered a loss of memories out of the blue, our fatigues might have turned into irritability and reached their peak.

Her sudden amnesia struck us dumb, but something else could have actually mattered.

There was a prolonged silence over the phone.

“Yeo Ryung.” I broke the ice.

“Uh-huh,” she replied. Her voice sounded unusually stiff.

I spoke with a smile, “Welcome back.”

We might have become sensitive, not because Ban Yeo Ryung lost her memories, but since we lost each other. Wouldn’t it make more sense?

It was our first time to stay separated that long since we were fourteen. Ban Yeo Ryung and I were like sisters, who grew up at the same house, and hung out together all day. However, we never felt sick and tired of it.

Ever since we became besties, we were like a perfect piece of the puzzle for each other. Perhaps that was why Ban Yeo Ryung didn’t notice any big differences between myself before and after thirteen. Especially, when we were having fun or acting like other people to tease the kids, we had always hit it off together that even Eun Jiho shook his head out of bewilderment.

I often exclaimed myself about where on earth did a friend like her come from.

Anyway, the reason why I decided to leave my original hometown behind––the other universe––and stay in this unusual world was, in the end, because of her.

That Ban Yeo Ryung had disappeared from me for the entire week, so how could I be all there? Geez, I should have realized this earlier…

I uttered, “Earlier when your memories came back, this was what I wanted to say. Sorry, it’s too late, right? But… still… welcome back, Yeo Ryung.”

There wasn’t even a sound of breathing over the phone. I stealthily dropped my gaze at the floor.

“I was like, ‘This might be what you would have thought,’ when you waited for me last time. You know, I wished you guys to remember me if I were gone, but going through it this time, I don’t think it’s that good either.”