Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN ( Wounds Don't Heal, They Scar )
FOR ONCE IN a long, muddled, and forgotten lifetime, Cha Jaehwa finds happiness when she stares into Ahn Suho's eyes. They suffocate her with warmth she had long forgotten the touch of, gently caressing her skin as though she is porcelain and fragile.
It feels like nothing has ever changed — There is no void in the pit of Jaehwa's stomach, and her smile is finally strong enough to shine through the bleak canvas of her saddened face.
Cha Jaehwa feels whole again.
( Suho is an infinite void of sunlight and a heart well-kept, and he swallows any doubts she has with one gaze of his bottomless eyes ).
When she arrives back home a windswept mess of stained cheeks and shivering shoulders, there is no one to greet her at the door.
But there is someone who bids her goodnight and makes her feel as though she can bear the lonely cradle of sleep if it means waking up with her chest full to the brim of this sweet feeling.
( Cha Jaehwa has never known warmth, because she does not know even the skin on her face or the bruises on her knees ).
Jaehwa falls asleep, and that night she dreams of memories she doesn't have.
COME MORNING, BOTH Cha Si-woo and Moon Boram sit languidly at the kitchen table when Jaehwa wakes up, the very picture of domesticity in a broken home without a daughter.
She stares at them for a moment and drinks in their return with weary eyes.
"Mind if I join?" The amnesiac asks with a small smile. It is her first time voluntarily joining them for breakfast without being asked, and even the words that leave her lips seem so insurmountable that she wishes to swallow them all over again.
Moon Boram's lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile, and she conceals it beneath her steaming coffee mug. The presence of their daughter warms the cold house, and her artwork is displayed along the fridge in a timeline — A testimony of a youth Jaehwa seeks to remember.
"Of course, Jaehwa." Boram tests the name on her tongue, and the child she has molded into a replica of both herself and Cha Si-woo takes a seat across from her.
When her mother says her name, Jaehwa feels the silky threads of warmth that ease down her throat like warm tea. This feels sweet. This feels like Home.
