Chapter One:
Collision
A/N: Hello, readers! I thank you in advance for giving this fanfic a chance! In the past, I came up with dozens of fanfic ideas, but never published them. I finally decided to publish this one so I hope you enjoy~! Only my OCs belong to me.
In the dark of the night, a lone sedan drove silently through a road that had rice paddies surrounding it on both sides. However, unlike the hushed outside of the car, the inside of the vehicle was filled with noise. Inside the sedan, a young woman had her left hand on the wheel and her right on her iPhone, bickering with the person on the other side of the line while Happy by Pharrell Williams played on the radio, contradicting the mood of the car.
"Shayla, you can't disregard your parents like that." the young woman groaned, frustration etched into her face. A few moments later she spoke again, "Look, Shay, I'm not trying to stop you. I don't have any right to stop you. Even though you don't agree with your parents, you should try to... I don't know, have a serious talk with them. Let them know how much you want this."
Too caught up in the quarrel she was having over the phone, the young woman failed to notice a dark figure stumble onto the road, but when she realized that there was a staggering individual in the road in front of her, she stomped on the brake. However, she was too late and her sedan collided with the mysterious figure.
"AAAHHH!" she shrieked as her car slammed into the body of the unlucky individual. Her phone clattered to the floor of vehicle as the young woman watched the body roll a couple of feet away from the car. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh..." she muttered in a hushed voice as she sat in the driver's seat completely shocked at what just happened. "I just hit a person with my car... I just hit a person with my car!" coming to her senses she threw open the car door and rushed to the collapsed person's side, her long dark brown tresses flying behind her. "A-are you alright?!" the brunette asked in Korean as she gently turned the individual so that her was facing her; the individual was a foreign man, "Sir, are you alright?" she asked more urgently this time in English.
"Ugh...what...?" was his reply as he gradually opened his eyes.
"Sir, I'm so sorry, I just hit you with my car. I think you need to go to the hospital." the brunette said frantically, but to no avail, the man lost consciousness. "Sir? Sir?!" the young woman called out, but as she reached out to gently shake the man, she noticed something gleam from underneath the man's sleeve. The brunette extended her hand out and lifted his sleeve, only to find the unexpected: a metal hand. She immediately dropped the sleeve and took two steps back away from the body. "That was a metal...hand..." she said to herself absolutely shell shocked. Unsure of what she saw, she approached the man's body again and slowly lifted his sleeve, but sure enough, the metal limb was still there.
This man was definitely not normal. A normal person would not go for a stroll down a dark road next to rice paddies at 9:00 at night with a risk of getting hit by a car or have a metal arm. The young woman stared at the man, but this time she glanced at his face and not his unusual limb. Although the lighting was poor, she could make out the dark bags under his eyes and the growing stubble on his face. If she called the police or ambulance, she doubted that they would know what to do for the man had a metal arm. She also concluded that the attention of police was something he was trying to avoid since he was gallivanting in rice paddies at night in an unhealthy state.
The brunette glanced at the unconscious man once more and huffed before she finally made her decision; she was going to take the man to her house. She gently wrapped her arms around the man's torso from behind and pulled him up with much difficulty. "Why is he so heavy?!" she thought as she dragged him toward her sedan. As she approached the door of the backseat, the young woman failed to notice the dent in the right corner of her sedan. She opened the door and practically tossed the man into the backseat. She huffed and puffed for a moment before adjusting the man's feet so that they were inside the car and closed the door. The brunette went around the car and opened the driver's door and plopped herself on the seat.
She closed the door and noticed her iPhone on the floor of the car and picked it up, "Hello? You still there, Shayla?" Surprisingly she heard her friend on the other end reply and quickly said, "Yeah, I'm okay, but I have to call you back later, bye." and immediately hung up. As soon as she put her phone in the cup holder, she put her seat belt on and quickly drove away with both hands on the wheel this time. "What am I going to do with this guy?" she contemplated as she sped through the night. "Ugh, I'll worry about that later..."
"Bucky?" a blonde man stared at him with a shocked expression.
"Who the hell's Bucky?"
His eye's flew open only to be met by a white ceiling. The man looked around the room only to find that the blonde man was nowhere to be seen. It was just a dream. He looked around the room again and noticed that he was laying in a queen sized bed with blue covers. He slowly and quietly sat up and got out of the bed, careful not to make any sounds in case someone was outside guarding the door. As he approached the door, he listened to hear if anyone was right outside the door, and when he found that no one was there, he silently opened the door. He heard a feminine voice singing from down the hall.
"Say want you wanna say, and let the words fall out honestly..."
He smelled something savory coming from the same direction of the singing, so he followed the scent and voice. They led him to the kitchen where he found a young woman with her dark brown locks tied in a ponytail who was no taller than 5" 3' stirring a pot with her back towards him. The man deftly advanced toward the oblivious woman. As soon she was about to turn around the man grabbed a nearby kitchen knife and backed her into the sink with the knife pressed against her throat.
"Who are you? Who do you work for?" he snarled out and glared icily at her face. Wait a minute, he knew her! She was the one that ran him over with her car. "You tried to kill me by running me over. You're going to have to try harder if you're trying to kill me."
The brunette slowly raised her hands up as a gesture of surrender and as calmly as she could, replied to the threatening man that currently held her life in his hands, "I-I wasn't trying to kill you. I was just driving while talking on the phone and I wasn't paying attention. I-I'm sorry I hit you. You seemed to be in bad condition so I just brought you to my home, okay? I just did what my gut told me to do and I brought you to my home. I thought that calling the police about a man with a metal arm wasn't such a great idea." her gaze drifted to the man's left arm.
The man observed her face with an intense glare, never faltering the knife that was pressed into her pale skin. She was Asian, Korean to be exact if he correctly remember where he was, and yet she spoke English so fluently. Her eyes were a deep chocolate brown filled with innocence and fear that gazed up at him trying oh so hard to convey that she was not trying to harm him. Slowly, he moved the knife away from the Korean woman's throat and took a step back, tossing the knife back to where he found it with a clatter.
The brunette released the breath that she didn't even know she was holding and grabbed the edge of the sink for balance with one hand while the other was placed on her chest in an attempt to calm her racing heartbeat down, "Oh my, goodness... Thank you..."
"Who are you?" the man repeated the question, but not as threateningly as before.
"My name is Stella Kim. I'm just a ceramic artist, I certainly don't work for anyone. I have my own little store downtown that sells ceramic products like plates and cups." she answered still wary that the man might pick up the knife again. "What about you, what's your name?" Stella asked trying to undo the intense atmosphere.
The man hesitated; he didn't know his name. But, he did remember the blonde man say that his full name was James Buchanan Barnes, so he replied gruffly, "I don't know, but I think it's James Barnes."
"Wait, you're not sure of your own name?" Stella questioned him, "Are you like an amnesiac? Wait a minute," she gasped. "I didn't make you lose your memories when I hit you with my car, did I?"
"No, you didn't. I lost my memories a while ago." he chuckled at the brunette's slight state of panic. "I heard people around me say that my name was James Buchanan Barnes; Bucky was my nickname." Bucky seemed to relax a tad more seeing that the short Korean woman, or Stella as she had introduced herself, posed hardly any threat to him.
"Bucky? What kind of name is that? That sounds like..." Stella trailed off, not wanting to insult the man that could practically end her life right then and there if he wished to. "Never mind what I just said. Can I just call you James?"
"I don't see why not."
"Okay, great!" Stella said before she walked over to the stove and picked up the pot that she was stirring not too long ago, "How about some breakfast, James? It's 9:30 and I'm starving" she inquired before quickly adding, "It's not poisoned or anything if you still doubt me. It came from the can." the brunette pointed at an empty can which read "Healthy Choice" that was sitting at the edge of the sink.
Bucky's gazed followed Stella's finger and landed on the soup can, "Breakfast sounds good."
"Alrighty then, just take a seat at the dining table and I will bring you your gourmet Healthy Choice chicken noodle soup in a minute." Stella walked over to the dishwasher to pull out two bowls while still holding the pot in one hand, "I kinda want to ask you more questions about yourself. Of course, in return, I'll tell you about myself, too, if you want."