Star-Crossed Lovers

Chapter V - Someone from The Past

It was half past eight in the evening. Both Jaemin and his granny were resting in the living room after finishing their dinner. His granny was knitting a sweater while Jaemin was preoccupied with his book.

Suddenly, a shot of memory came across Jaemin's mind. It was the memory of when he heard Jeno's rant for the first time in the underground storage room.

Came to think of it, he never actually got the answer as to how Jeno knew his name. Or maybe it was not even his name Jeno was muttering in the first place.

"Granny, do you, perhaps, know anyone from the past who had the same name as me? Maybe about two hundred years ago?"

Jaemin broke the silence. His granny's fingers stopped in the middle of her knitting. She looked up at Jaemin with raised eyebrows, quite surprised with the sudden question.

"Where in the heaven did that question came from?"

Jaemin just grinned and scratch the back of his head. His granny put her half-done knitted sweater on the side desk and got up from her seat.

"Come with me, my dear."

She smiled at him and headed to the staircase. Jaemin put his book down and followed her to the attic.

His granny turned on the light and approached the classic looking wardrobe at the corner of the attic. She opened the door and took out a book that looked like an old diary. She made her way to the couch in the attic and gestured Jaemin to sit beside her.

"Do you know how we were even related?"

Jaemin shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

"I'm not really sure. Mother told me you were grandma's second cousin or something."

His granny smiled and reached out to hold his hand.

"Actually, it was much more distant than that."

His granny started to tell the whole story, which brought back to more than five or maybe six generations before them, at about two hundred years ago.

That night, Jaemin learned something new about his maternal family tree and the previous ancestors before him. He was connected with his granny about two hundred years ago, where their ancestors were siblings.

He was more surprised to learn that his ancestor, which was the younger sister of the two siblings, was the one with the same name as him, Na Jaemin and her brother's name was Na Yuta. It was purely coincidental because even his mother had no knowledge of her previous ancestors. She was also married to a man from another Na family out of fate and pure love.

The diary belonged to Yuta where he had wrote down all his thoughts on his sister's forbidden love with the youngest lad of the Lee family, who were their own family's sworn enemy. Jaemin's heart was throbbing wildly as he listened to his granny's tale.

The tale was told as if she had learned it by heart, because never once did Jaemin saw her opening the diary. Jaemin also watched her wiped away some tears with her fingers while telling the unfortunate events that had befallen upon the two young lovers, where a wrong decision had led them to a lifetime of regrets.