forget-me-not || lee dohwa

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐍𝐨 𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐲™

There is No Other Way to Have This Conversation Than the Creepy Way™

Looking for Haru seemed like a good idea to Dohwa. He could request him to draw a sketch of his person—his Gyeoul—from the little he knew or assumed he knew of her. The photograph Dohwa had of her had faded into obscurity, thanks to Namju, and he didn't want to take the risk of losing what was left of it. He had tried to take a photo of the photo, or even have it copied, but everything had resulted in a blank.

"Maybe it's because I'm the second lead?" Dohwa mused out loud, "Haru's an extra so maybe he could do it? Even if he doesn't remember her?"

He couldn't find Haru in his classroom, the labs, or even the infirmary. Jinmichae hadn't seen him either. The school had emptied and the sun had set by the time Dohwa had made his way to the library. He scanned the area from the first floor, huffing in disappointment when he was met with an eerie silence.

Just as he turned away to leave, Dohwa caught something out of the corner of his eyes. A figure had shuffled under the staircase, a place the students usually avoided—something about things appearing and disappearing from that spot had had it labelled as haunted.

Dohwa trudged down the stairs, knelt and bent his torso through the wide space between the railings, and called without a second thought, "Haru, are you there?"

The sharp scream startled him so bad that he nearly fell off. He shot to his feet, accidentally hitting his head against the wood of the railing, "Wait—no, I'm sorry—it's me—" Dohwa fumbled, tripping and wobbling down the stairs in panic, "I'm so sorry. I thought you were my..." He trailed off, arms still raised to show he meant no harm.

The person, sitting on a sofa he didn't know existed in the library, had half their body twisted away as they covered their frightened face with a book. Trumpet Creeper, it read on its back. They lowered the comic slowly so that Dohwa could see their eyes.

"Sorry," Dohwa apologized in a daze as she brought the book down and pressed it to her chest, over her powder blue shirt, while trying to calm herself, "I thought you...I was looking for my..."

"No, that's okay," her freckles and her eyes and the cupid's bow of her lips and her voice—they were all so, so familiar. "I get scared easily, Dohwa."

He blinked rapidly and mentally slapped himself out of the trance, "You know who I am?"

"Doesn't everybody in this school?" She smiled a strangely familiar gummy smile and something bubbled in his chest as he watched her stand up. She seemed to be cautious of him, not out of fear but out of...he couldn't tell.

Dohwa had read and re-read his notepad so many times that he had memorized every word written on it. He had gone around the school campus, trying to match people to the codewords he had penned down. As non-creepily as possible, Dohwa checked if it was her.

There wasn't any green on her. But she was tall and there was that birthmark under her eye. The constellations were scattered across the band of her cheeks and her shoes were red. And most of all, it was the longingness and the nostalgia that swirled around his stomach and chest every time he looked at her face.

Dohwa's hands shot out before he could form another coherent thought. The girl flinched violently from his sudden movement. She opened her eyes slowly when she realized that he had cupped her face in both of his hands.

"You're her!" Dohwa breathed, relief spreading through him at the fact that the warmth of her skin was real and not something he had imagined for weeks, "I looked everywhere for you. You're my Gyeoul."