Another Tale Of A Nine Tailed

Chapter 10: Greetings from the past life

„This feels so weird... I need to watch it again.."

Yi Jeong and Woo Bin had snuggled up on the couch after breakfast. Armed with tea and a plush fox on his lap, he was watching Yi Rang's message to his dead brother for the fifth time now.

„I know, right? When I watched it, I couldn't believe it either.. I was expecting to see some guy who looks a bit like you, not... you."

„So the guy whose scent I'm smelling all the time is my dead brother who got reborn after I sacrificed myself but I am already reborn, too? Why did he have to creep around us like that? Would have spared us a bit trouble if he just showed us this in the first place, right? I mean.. no matter how crazy it sounds, this is some convincing evidence." Yi Jeong looked at Woo Bin, who tilted his head a little.

„I understand his motives, though. He said he started noticing your scent just right before he sent his wife to the art school. He said he met you once, when you were still a child. He recognized you from your looks but nothing else back then. Do you remember meeting him?"

Yi Jeong was turning it over in his mind but couldn't really remember when that could have happened.
He only saw the guy once in the restaurant and on family pictures. Maybe when he actually talked to him, he would remember, but for now he shook his head and shrugged.

„Anyway." Woo Bin continued, „He saw your happy life and tried to protect that, so you wouldn't have to deal with weight from the past but obviously, it was nothing that could have been stopped. You left behind a family, that woman from the park, she is a Gumiho you once saved, the other two from the restaurant are her husband, a friend of your brother and also a Gumiho and the kid from the pictures on your phone, who is the reincarnation of the puppy you lost in a fire in your previous life. You saved him too. That's all I got from Yi Yeon."

Yi Jeong took a deep breath. „I wish that wouldn't make sense at all but it kinda does, right?"

Woo Bin nodded. „Hey. If that's all too much... No one forces you to do anything you feel uncomfortable with. But I think you should meet Yi Yeon at least. He can teach you how to fox and stuff."

Yi Jeong snuggled up closer and closed his eyes. „You know.." he mumbled, „Though something about that woman felt familiar, I have no memories about what happened in my past life.. I can't just show up and pretend... I'm not the one they lost. I don't share their memories.. That woman looked so happy when she saw me the first time. My old phone is full of pictures of them, so I must have loved them a lot. I died for my brother, so I must have loved him the most. But I don't remember those feelings.."

„Yi Yeon said they have a way for you to see your past life. He asked me if I want to see mine, but I don't want to..." Woo Bin spared the part when Yi Yeon was wondering if he was a Gumiho, too.
As much as he wanted to share the same fate with the one he loved, the thought alone to find out that he was nothing but ordinary scared him. The idea that he could be something else scared him too.

„Why not?" Yi Jeong asked quietly and started to play with the drawstring on Woo Bin's hoodie.

„I don't know... What if I was a cockroach and you stepped on me? I don't want to know that..."

„I never stepped on a cockroach. Also I'm sure you were something else. But I get it. When I think of the sadness I felt... Do I really want to know? On the other hand... When I can't separate my current self from my previous one.. If I start to remember bits, it might be good to know it all? Or would it be like watching a movie...Then I just know more things I don't feel... and then maybe I feel a pressure to feel something that is not there."