YOONGI COULDN'T SEEM to stop staring. and apparently, neither could she. he was sitting by her bed now and had somehow managed to convince her to stay lying down and not sit up.
"when i woke up that morning, the name and number you wrote at the back of the picture were all smudged and i couldn't make out anything except the word, 'min' and the first four digits." she told him. he flipped the picture over and saw she was right. most of what he'd attempted to write had ended up a messy, indecipherable black smudge. and he remembered waking up with ink stains on his hand and wrist.
"i didn't realise." he mumbled, staring at it. "you never called and i already had a hard enough time recollecting most of that night, so i started to believe the bits and pieces i remembered were an alcohol induced hallucination."
she chuckled and he recognised the sound. it felt so familiar and strange at the same time. "i decided to hold on to the picture as some sort of keepsake and tried to forget that night too. not that it was so difficult since i also only remembered slivers of what happened. but then january rolled around and came to an end without me seeing my period. i took a test—several actually because i couldn't believe it—and it came out positive. they all did." her smile was small as if she found younger her amusing.
"i tried finding you but it wasn't easy. yonsei is a huge school. i remembered you said something about computers, but that didn't help much, especially since everyone in our year was preparing for graduation. i never found you, but i decided i was going to keep the baby. i was actually excited to have her because outside of my grandfather, i didn't have any other family."
yoongi's brows furrowed in a frown. "i'm sorry. i had no idea, hae." he said, voice soft and low. "it's okay. you gave me something beautiful and irreplaceable. and it's haesun, min. choi haesun." she told him. his smile was soft and slow. "haesun," he sounded out the name that had eluded his memory for years. "also it's yoongi. min yoongi." he replied. "ah," she chuckled. "sounds a bit familiar too." she mused.
he let out a soft laugh. "probably," he simply said, deciding not to offer a possible explanation for why that was. "but..." her eyes moved from his face to the picture in his hands. "how did you get that? last time i checked, it was supposed to be in a box of my things at rian's place." she pushed herself up slightly.
"oh," he placed it her hand carefully. her gaze ran over the polaroid, a nostalgic look on her face. "haneul had that with her. i think she always carried it around. it was pressed between the pages of a little yellow notebook in her bag."
"what?" she looked at him in shock. "haneulie did?" she blinked, looking at the picture again. he nodded. "i'm not sure how she found it but i think that's why she followed me around without hesitation the first time we met. and started calling me daddy."
she was quiet for a moment and when she looked at him again, her eyes were glossy with tears. "she knew." her hands shook. "she already knew who you were to her without ever asking me." she was crying now. yoongi panicked at the unexpected tears and got on his feet. "hae, don't cry." he reached out awkwardly, unsure of whether it was okay to touch her.
she leaned into him, giving him the confirmation that he needed, and he gingerly wrapped his arms around her frail body. "she never once asked who her father was and i never asked her why because i was too afraid to open that can of worms. so i just let it be. all this time, she'd probably already seen the picture and guessed who you were and—oh god—"
yoongi patted her back softly, gently hushing her. "it's okay, haesun. it's okay." he whispered in a calming voice. "we don't want you getting a headache because you were crying, hm?" he said and she laughed softly. "and i think... haneul is very happy right now in her life. she has people she can call mum and dad. maybe she never asked because having you was enough for her all this time." he continued to pat her back soothingly.
haesun didn't say anything, so he continued to hold her until she seemed to have completely calmed down. "do you feel better now?" he leaned back, searching her face. "yes, thank you." she bobbed her head. "okay, lie back down." he said and helped her back down on the bed. she laughed abruptly and his brows arched in question. "what?" he asked. "nothing. something inappropriate just occurred to me."
his brows arched even higher in curiosity. "do i want to know?" he asked. "probably not. i have a feeling you would turn the colour of beetroots." she remarked, eyes sparkling. yoongi could find traces of the girl he'd drunkenly chatted with all those years ago. "hm, if you say so." he hummed.
"wow," she breathed when he sat back down. "i can't believe i actually met you after all this time." she said, staring at the ceiling.
yoongi felt the same. he felt like he'd just received an information and sensory overload but couldn't unpack any of it yet. he was taking it all in but assimilating none of it. like it were happening to someone else and not him.
for the last seven years, yoongi had pushed what happened to the deepest recesses of his mind. he'd kept that night under lock and key and did his best not to revisit it—or what he'd remembered of it. he hadn't had a drop of alcohol since then. didn't like the fact that he lost control of himself when he did. and especially didn't like the repercussions that came with the morning after.
seeing haesun and hearing everything that had happened since then felt like he'd only twisted the key in the lock but not opened the box yet. he wasn't sure he was ready for the onslaught of emotions if he did that right now.
"yeah. me too." he nodded. "who would've thought haneul would be the reason we'd meet again?" she mused more to herself than him. "i never would have seen it coming." he admitted. "i don't think i ever would've seen the past few months coming to be honest."
she chuckled lightly and turned her tired eyes on him. "i'm sure that feeling is going around right now."
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