"I thought I would stop seeing you here Jungkook," the nurse proclaimed, sighing deeply as soon as I walked through the door.
I gave her a crooked smile, holding up my bleeding hand for her to see.
"It wasn't my fault. I don't know how it happened," I said, and nurse Seo's eyes furrowed as she walked toward me, grabbing a blue glove off her desk while she did. She held my hand carefully, inspecting the cut through her calculating eyes.
"It looks superficial," she stated, "Not that deep, but your hand is covered in veins so any cut will cause more blood loss than one on another part of the body. How did this happen?"
"I don't know," I said again, "I bumped into my classmate Bitna and the cut just, I don't know, appeared."
"Are you sure? Injuries just seem to appear on you a lot, Jungkook," she replied, letting go of my hand. She looked to Bitna, who focused her attention on the white tiled floor at the sudden stare.
"Were you holding anything sharp, Bitna? You also seem to have a knack for injuries," the nurse commented, and Bitna quickly shook her head.
"I wasn't doing anything either. It could have been the corner of my paper or something like that," she said, her eyes still avoiding the nurse's questioning look. At that, the nurse sighed and let go of my hand, retreating back into her office.
"What I am going to do with the two of you?" she exclaimed, disappearing around the corner of the office, "You make my job so difficult."
Bitna and I laughed softly, but she still couldn't bring her stare away from the floor.
"You two can go sit on the chairs for now," nurse Seo called, but before we could do so, she added, "Bitna, grab some tissues from my desk and press them against Jungkook's cut. I can't have him bleeding out."
"Okay," Bitna replied back, and as I walked to the dull brown chairs she went toward the box of tissues on the nurse's desk, taking a few tissues with her.
I sunk into the soft cushions, the familiarity of the situation starting to set in my body. I leaned back into the chair, trying to get comfortable despite the stinging pain in my hand.
"I'm sorry Jungkook," Bitna said, sitting on the chair next to me. She carefully folded the tissues in half and gestured for me to give her my hand again. I shook my head, in which she tsked at me, reaching to grab my hand.
"Let me, Jungkook," she said, the tips of her nails grazing the surface of my hand, "The nurse told me to."
Even so, I felt an inclination to move farther away, a vague emotion coming over me that I couldn't pinpoint to its origin. A slow shroud of a veil of hazy thoughts and memories started to move over my conscience, and I brought my hand to my chest.
"I got it," I said, reaching for the tissues in her hand, "I'm not a kid."
As I reached for them, her straight-lined lips and persistent gaze softened into defeat and she sighed, holding out the tissues for me to take. I finally held the tissue against my cut, using another to clean the blood that traveled down my hand.
We sat like that for a moment, with the sense of familiarity never leaving my mind. I couldn't find out why I felt like that because I had no recollection of coming to the nurse with a cut, even more so coming with Bitna.
After I stopped my relationship with Bitna, it was like I had flushed out any association from my memory of her. When I tried to recall the events, it came in scattered pieces of her, the recollection in my mind becoming more vivid towards the end of our relationship. Although I didn't remember everything, the overwhelming emotion of the entire experience of being with her was the thing I couldn't shake. It always left me confused, trying to find out why it went so wrong and why we let it go that far.
Nevertheless, there were moments like this where my mind would spark up with an unknown memory, leaving me only with the feeling of lost nostalgia. I would grasp at the threads of the misty images, but they would fall out of reach every time, always a bit farther away.
I looked up from my cut, to see if maybe looking at Bitna would retrieve the picture in my head, but to my surprise, she was looking at me with knowing eyes, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
"Do you remember?" Bitna asked, her hands intertwined in her lap. Her eyes were wide with expectancy when she locked gazes with me as if trying to draw the memory out with her irises. It was scary how she felt the same as I did, yet she managed to remember it and I did not.
I shook my head, and a quiet laugh escaped her lips.
"I thought you would at least remember that," she said, looking up toward the ceiling before looking back at me, her expression more wistful than expectant.
"You really don't remember?" she asked again, and before I could say no, Dr. Seo walked back into the room with a small first aid box in her hand.
"Remember what?" she asked teasingly, walking toward us and setting the box on the small table in front of us, "Did Jungkook lose his memory too?"
"Apparently," Bitna responded, crossing her arms in front of her chest. I could sense the light flush that was bound to appear on my cheeks, so I scratched the nape of my neck, not knowing how to respond. Dr. Seo laughed and grabbed my injured hand to put the band-aid on it.
"Poor kid," she said, removing the tissue and replacing it with ointment, "What did he forget?"
"Something important," she said, glancing at me for a quick second before staring at somewhere else in the room.
My brain halted at the mention of "something important", and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt. If it really was a significant memory, why couldn't I remember it? I could remember the times when she would pass me silly notes from across the class, when she would drag me out to play outside, and when she would introduce me to random students in school.
But for whatever reason, my brain could hardly grasp at what Bitna was alluding to, even though the sensation that I had been here before was becoming more apparent the longer I sat in that nurse's chair. It was like someone was waving the memory right in front of my face, but I didn't have the strength to get up and reach it.
Until the nurse said this;
"Oh really?" the nurse replied, placing the band-aid on my cut, "Like what?"
There was a pause, and I looked to Bitna, waiting to see if she would keep the memory a secret. She seemed to contemplate it, and once again glanced at me before looking down at her knees.
And she spoke.
"When we first met."
A/N: why hello there fine reader. i haven't seen you in a minute.
i've been writing this chapter for like a month now and i didn't really know how to write it because it involved jungkook and bitna's relationship dynamic? and their past? and i wanted to portray it in the most authentic way i could because they have a lot of history, which you will learn more about in the next few chapters.
and once again, i am deeply sorry for the delay due to school and distractions, but at the same time i'm happy because this book almost has 20k reads! like woah. i never expected this to be read so much because of my lack of updates but people just keep finding it, and for that i am grateful. chapter 49 is in the works right now, so expect it sometime soon! (i promise). and thank you always for reading, commenting, and voting! it really makes my day.
+ have a wonderful day/night, wherever you are.
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passing notes | j.jk
Fanfiction"i wrote on that piece of paper because i was bored. i would have never thought it would lead to all of these emotions that i can't control. my mind is going crazy, trying to understand you and myself at the same time. the complications of the wor...
