Unforgettable You {Extraordinary You Sequel!}

Episode 22: About Baek Gyeong

KRRCHK.

Dano's eyes snap open. She's in the library, standing on a box against the shelf. She sifts through the spines of random books, wondering what the heck she's doing here this time.

Someone thunders into the scene. His breathing is heavy like he's just been running. The hairs on the back of Dano's neck stand up; she knows who it is before her character looks at him.

"Excuse me. Dano, right? Right. I need to see Saemi. Urgently."

"Oh, Saemi?" Dano replies dimwittedly. "Uhh... I-I think she left the library, just a while ago... like, maybe, ten minutes?"

"Thank you."

Haru pivots around and leaves.

WWHHS.

Without stopping, Haru jerks back around to face Dano, lurching forward, "Eun Dano!"

She just stares at him. He falls calm upon looking at her, his rapid breathing eventually soothing. Soon, he is as still as she. Their gazes entwined, Dano blinks slowly, and then finally tears her gaze away first. She turns back to the lined books.

"Yes? What do you want?" she demands, not looking at him.

"There's something you need to know about Baek Gyeong."

"No, no... no. No. You don't."

"It's important," he presses. "You're going to want to hear this. He's—"

"I don't care what you say he is!" she says. Without realising, she's suddenly raising her voice. "You don't get to say things about Gyeong. You don't know him. Every—everything you think you know about him, it's someone else."

Haru's expression coils into an irritable frown, "It's not someone else, it is him. From another lifetime."

"From the other books?"

"Yes."

"Well, how does that make it him? Huh? How is it the same person?" Dano gestures wildly. "The writer writes different characters for different books. So what, we have the same names? You can't say someone from the Joseon era, and then someone from the 21st Century is the same person."

"It's the same soul," Haru persists, growing more-than-irritable. He is jealous. F*ck he's jealous. He's been silently seething with it, but now it's growing harder and harder to hide. "It is the same person. Just like it's the same things happening. The same dialogue, the same events—inside and outside the stage."

"See, I don't even know what you're talking about anymore," Dano shoots, glaring at him. He's so tall that even while she's on a box, they're almost eye-to-eye. "What same events, what same dialogue? I don't think there is such a thing, I think you're lying. Because you hate Gyeong."

Haru gasps a laugh, exasperated, "And you really think I'd hate him without a good reason?"

"Well, how would I know! I don't know you!"

A moment of silence follows. And then it drags onto another moment. The irritable frustration in Haru's eyes wanes as he gazes at her. Dano almost immediately regrets her words.

"Wow. Really?" Haru whispers. "You really like him that much?"

Dano's lip quivers, "Yes—"

"Is that what you really believe?"

"Yes. I don't know you, and you don't know me."

"I know everything about you," his eyes are darkened, fed with grilling determination and wild anguish. He takes a step forward, "You're Eun Dano. You're cheerful, you talk so much that people get sick of you, but the truth is they shouldn't because you are so kind. Without realising. You like helping people, because of your empathy. You like this specific flower—the trumpet flower. It's pink. You love pink. And you love it when the stars—"

"Stop it," she hisses through grit teeth. But her eyes fill with emotion.

"—and you're clumsy. You fall down all the time. Like... if nobody caught you, I'm pretty sure you would have wound up in a concussion by now. And you love your friends in ways you express so often, even if you don't say it enough. You love your Dad. And you want to cherish every moment in this world because you realise how precious each one is, every moment, because everything was nearly taken from you. You... you nearly... you were almost dead. And you did die in another life. But you're sincere and honest in ways that people take for granted. You're so dramatic about everything because you love attention, and you deserve it. But above all—the most important thing to know about Eun Dano," his eyes are large, and shine, reflecting the thousands of stars that haunt Dano's dreams. They well with pain, "is that she is in complete control of her life... she doesn't let anyone tell her what to do. Not the writer. Not Baek Gyeong... she knows what she wants... she is the master of her own fate. And she's writing her own story."

Dano stares and stares and stares into his eyes. She wants to kiss him.

And then a memory hits her—