past, present, and future | hwang hyunjin

t h i r t y - s e v e n

c h a p t e r   t h i r t y - s e v e n

"Nurse, do you have my phone?"

"Yes. Do you want it?" The nurse replied to me with a question of her own.

"Yes, please," I nodded, clasping my hands together in a pleading gesture.

The nurse chuckled. "You don't have to beg. I'll give it to you."

Smiling, I received my phone from her. I noticed that I had changed the case from what I remembered it being, and that I had a... picture of me and Hyunjin together behind the inside the case where no one could see it. It was inside the JYP building, and it was just a selfie where we were just posing cutely together. Apparently, I had thought that it was a good enough picture to deserve a spot in the back of my phone case.

One thing that I did remember was that I took much care in selecting which photos took their treasured place in the back of my phone case.

Maybe Hyunjin really was special, huh? I might never know, but I really would like to find out.

Next, I turned my attention to the actual phone itself. I put in my usual password, which didn't work. I wanted to die because I was obviously the only one who had known my password. But then something hit me. If Hyunjin was really special enough for me to put a picture of us together at the back of my phone case, maybe I had changed my password to something about him.

"Nurse, do you know Hyunjin's birthday?"

"March 20th, 2000. Why?" She replied curiously.

"Nothing! Just wondering," I replied quickly with a reassuring nod. 032000. I typed that into my phone. Beep, wrong. What if I put our birthdays together? Coincidentally, they just happened to be able to make a mixed password. Adding the 0320 part to my birthday on July 3rd, 2002 made a password of 070320. I frantically pressed the buttons on my phone, hoping for the best.

Wanna know something funny? It actually worked.

Now that I was inside my phone, my first thought was to look at my messages. The "Island-I💗💗💗" group chat was the one with the most messages. looking through them, it was mostly my members being concerned about me, worrying about me, and occasionally something about the promotional activities, because they still had to promote without me while I was passed out.

Promote. That word was foreign to me. I had promoted, I just had no recollection of it. And that was the equivalent of not promoting.

My next most popular chat was the one with Hyunjin. "my hyunjinnie ❤️", it read. As I read through the messages, I reflected on what they meant. I thought that our relationship looked pretty healthy. There were barely any, or actually, no fights at all. We texted pretty much every night as well. I scrolled through them, skimming the words with my eyes. I did catch a few key words though. Like the fact that he loved to end our conversations by telling me "I love you". I would respond with "I love you too", obviously. Once I asked him why he would do that, and he responded by saying that it's his job to make his girlfriend know that she is loved. 

I think I actually might have gotten butterflies from that because it was so cute. 

My next thought was to look through my camera roll. Surely there would be some pictures in there that might spark my memory.

There were a lot of pictures of me and Hyunjin together. Wait, we went to the Han River? When was this?

Sighing from not being able to remember, I kept scrolling. One picture caught my eye, however. It was a selfie of me and an unknown female idol. She had tan skin, large eyes, a pretty smile, and a short haircut. I thought she was really pretty. 

"Who's this?" I showed the photo to the nurse.

After squinting for a moment, the nurse looked dumbfounded as she looked back up at me. "Y-you don't know? Even if you lost your memory, you still remember things before May 28th, and that should include her?"

Exasperated at people being surprised at my lack of knowledge, I half-seriously and half-jokingly yelled, "Just tell me who she is!"

The nurse laughed. "Okay, easy now. Her name is Jihyo, and she's from the girl group Twice. How...?"

"I guess I'm just too stressed about my own trainee endeavors that I haven't been keeping up with k-pop groups at all," I sighed. Then shocked, I covered my mouth. "Oh, wait! I already debuted." Great, just great.

"Don't worry, you'll learn them all in no time. It was pretty easy for me," The nurse nodded. "Sometimes I still can't believe I'm talking openly to you, a K-pop idol. But of course, you don't even remember anything about being an idol."

"Right, thanks for rubbing it in my face," I scoffed, then broke the silence with a small laugh.

"Alright, I need to get back to work," The nurse told me, and I nodded respectfully. Then I went back to looking through my phone. My camera roll also had pictures of me posing with a microphone headset attached to my head, in front of stages and backstage as well. Pictures of my group and horrible pictures of certain groupmates also dominated the stage of my personal photos. I don't know why I had a mega-large forehead 0.5x pic of Zoe saved on my phone, but hey, it is what it is.

There were a lot of really... unnecessary but funny photos of Hyunjin as well. I noticed a few screenshots of a certain performance where it looked like he was at Studio Choom, but without his groupmates. His hair was flying all over the place and his face was contorting, making him look like a dying monkey. I low-key snorted, causing the nurse to turn her head questioningly. Still trying to control myself from wheezing, I put my hand up to say stop. She only sighed with a smile and turned back to her computer.

There were other funny pictures from when we were hanging out together as well. I must've really liked forehead pics because there was a 0.5x forehead pic of Hyunjin someone in there. I passed by it briefly while scrolling, but was too lazy to go back and find it.

After doing more probably questionable things on my phone and taking one dose of painkillers in between, I noticed it was getting kind of late. I shut my phone and rubbed my eyes. "I'm going to sleep," I informed the nurse, who was about to leave anyway.

"Yeah, 'course. Call us if you need anything, from here," She pointed at a big red help button. I smiled weakly because I was really tired.

As soon as she left, my eyes shut almost immediately and I fell into a deep sleep.