For a whole year she thought she was fine.

Sure, she had spent the year before in a coma after a sudden and odd episode of drowning. She woke up with atrophied muscles, some delayed plans and postponed projects, a huge debt on her name and no place of her own to live. But all of that aside, she was fine, she was alive, her recovery had been successful and left no aftereffects. The doctors said she was as healthy as one could possibly hope to be. Hajin just had to work hard to be able to stand on her own feet again, to rebuild her life, but she was good at that.

For a whole year she thought she was fine, but one stroll around an art exposition changed that. One stroll, and now she carries a weight that is far heavier than what she had thought to be the worst year in her life.

Now she locks herself in her room every day after coming home from work. She stays away from the rest of the modern world, which is too loud, too bright, too polluted and too fast for her. She turns off anything that connects her to the outside life, and turns down anyone that comes to her.

Now she's back to Goryeo, even though her body isn't.

Now her parents and her friends are worried. They look and sound even more worried than the day she woke up from the coma. They are unsure of what to do, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to take her abrupt shift in behavior. They all fail to reach and comfort her, they cannot give what she's looking for, and she cannot blame them.

They press her to return to counseling, at least to check her sudden outburst and panic attack. She says she will, then she says she has, then she says she's already fine.

They had all told her — therapists, clinicals, specialists — a year ago that she was fine.

She's not fine.

And she cannot blame anyone at all.

There's no way any of them — not even the doctors — would notice that part of her memory had disappeared after she finally woke up. There's no way they would know what even she didn't know. They couldn't possibly notice that her memories of Goryeo had disappeared, because there was no way she had lived ten years in Songak while lying unconscious in a bed for one year.

But now she remembers. She remembers all of it. She remembers and she can't go to any of her friends (or parents, or doctors) for help, because there's no way they would believe her. And if they did, there's no way they could do anything.

She wanted to go back — back to when Myung Hee was still alive, when she was free and careless, when she was just Go Hajin trapped in a teenager body, when she dared to dream of a happy life. She wants to go back, or she wants to just drown and fall asleep forever, no one's life to mess with anymore.

Now, her room is filled with books. As many books as she could find. She started collecting them as soon as she recovered, and now she has filled her shelves with ancient history in the first few weeks that followed her encounter with him in the art exhibition. They are all somewhat related to the early period of Goryeo. Some of them are vague, others detailed, but they all have something about the rulers and their families. On the walls she traces a timeline of what she lived there, and on top of it she attaches post-its, memos and pictures of what she reads in the books.

Now she has confirmed her memories as facts, and even her visions as real events — the deaths, the purges, the bloodbath. And even though she has managed to list some of the good aspects of Gwangjong's reign, she can only focus on the parts she wanted to change the most, but failed to.

It was all red.

People were dying.

He was smiling.

I never saw it happening. I only had a brief vision when he walked to perform the rain ritual. I only had a glimpse of it when I saw his painting in the gallery.

I never saw it happening, because I left him and died before it came true.

I couldn't stop it.

I couldn't change anything.

She once again wonders if she had anything to do with all that happened in the past, if she was responsible for his ascension to the throne, and consequently for everything that happened.

She wonders if he was hated and feared because of her.

.

.

.

.

At home, one day, her mother comes into her room. She tries not to look worried when she sees that there are more books, more writing on the walls compared to when she last came in, although Hajin knows her too well. But she's not offended, as the older woman brings her a warm cup of invigorating tea. She cheers up, making a loud and grateful sound, moving past all the stuff scattered around the floor and getting ready for work.

When she sits at the table, she doesn't eat much, her mind constantly going through all the memories and theories, all the things she could have done, all the chances she lost when she lived in a land a thousand years in the past. But then she blinks and notices that her young brother is telling another absurd that it's most likely an attempt at a joke, her father cracking up* from time to time. Her mother fixes her a lunchbox and asks her what she wants, how much she wants. She watches her family and smiles long enough to reassure them. Go Hajin was a terrible liar, but Hae Soo has learned how to keep appearances and hide behind a mask.

So, after they are fooled by the words of the Sanggung — the modern girl still breaking down on the inside — she stands up and goes for another dull day that won't change anything inside her.

She knows they are only trying to bring her spirits up without forcing her to tell them what's wrong, but she's too stuck in the past to care about being fine, to worry about her mental state and unseen scars, inexplicable traumas.

At work, she knows she's lacking, she notices the others in hushed conversations about her. She doesn't miss their worried looks, their attempts to cover for her without her noticing. Hajin is grateful, but she can't seem to be able to return the favor. After her shift is over, she only wants to run away again, to escape from the modern world, to lock herself in her bedroom and fall asleep while reading books about the deceased.

"Take care, Hajin-ssi!" Nari tells her before she leaves, a tinge of worry underneath her words, and she forces a tiny smile on her lips.

She braces herself for the cold on the outside as she leaves the store, enlacing her arms around her shoulders and closing the jacket up to her chin. On the outside the wind hits her strongly, and she is considering the idea of taking a cab home when she sees him again.

She freezes in the spot, mouth hanging open, feet refusing to move, as she just stares at the figure dressed in black before her.

For a second she sees the old 4th Prince Wang So, just as she saw him for the first time. Sturdy, steady, unmoving and detached from this world. But then he moves away from the light pole he was leaning on and walks closer to her, and she sees the new him, short hair and modern clothes, modern posture and a modern air around him. She wants to run away and to leap at him at the same time, but she fights to stay rooted in her place.

She fights to not faint right there, but it's hard when he's looking straight at her, with a sweet polite smile, coming close enough to make sure he wants to talk to her, and yet distant enough to not be considered intrusive.

He's not him, she starts repeating in her head.

He doesn't even know who I am, she argues logically with herself.

"You must be Go Hajin."

She hears him speak. She feels him speak. His voice is like a ripple that resonates through her body, making her heart beat even faster than a few seconds before. The way he says her name — her modern name, Go Hajin, not Soo (Hae Soo) like Wang So always called her in Goryeo — is meant to be polite. But for her, his voice is like a shot to the heart, an electric charge through her nerves and the death of her last bit of sanity.

His voice is engraved deep in her heart, but she always feels like she's hearing it for the first time. And if seeing him walking towards her didn't make her pass out, his voice certainly would.

He notices her dumbfounded expression, and at her silence he seems to waver, looking down to his feet then back at her. Then he takes something from the inner pocket of his jacket and offers it to her.

"You let this drop at the café the last time we met," he says nodding down to her planner, one with a pink cover she was trying to make use of, but didn't even notice she had lost after running away from him, "I'd take it to your house, but you'd probably think I was some sort of stalker."

She imagines him standing before her door, knocking on it and waiting for her. She imagines herself opening the front door to find him standing there and she doesn't think she would survive that.

Her eyes finally start to tear up and she immediately takes the pink notepad from his hands and bows, deep enough so he won't notice she's about to burst crying, and speaks mechanically, "Thank you, but you didn't have..."

"Is there anything wrong?"

She freezes for a second when he interrupts her, and then she realizes he's talking about her tears. Hajin looks up, but not at him, never at him, trying to make them go away and act as nonchalantly as possible.

"No, nothing is wrong," she says, but the lie is obvious, "I just..."

"Then why are you always crying when I see you?"

She freezes, not sure how to react to his blunt question. She didn't even realize that she had cried in all of the three brief meetings they had. Her crying had become a constant in her life after her memories returned.

Hajin's confusion must show in her face as she tries to recall their encounters in this 21st century without collapsing again, so he helps her with some reminders, "You were crying at the art exhibition a few days ago. And you were crying last time at the café. Are you going to start crying now?"

Yes, she is. She is going to cry like a baby again, because even though she could never truly forget his face, it seems like she had forgotten just how handsome he was, how much his presence could affect her. She is breathless, torn between staying and running away again, fighting against that familiar pain in her chest, feeling that her heart is going to explode.

She is going to cry until she sleeps tonight and she knows it, but there's no reason for her to let him know that. Not when he looks so worried for this peculiar stranger before him. She has to leave soon, otherwise she's going to cry in front of him.

Then she looks down to her feet, hoping that if she's not seeing his beautiful and captivating eyes — those same eyes that she still remembers once looked at her with a loving gaze (later, with hurt and betrayal) — she'll be able to hold it in for a while longer.

"It's PTSD..." she whispers, going for the first excuse that will make sense. She remembers hearing something like that when she first mentioned her weird dreams to one of the doctors. They told her that after drowning and being in a coma, it wasn't surprising. Whenever she woke up crying they would say it was some sort of mental sequela, and that her therapy would help her to deal with her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and she would feel herself again soon.

She knows now that it wasn't PTSD, it was far worse.

For the man before her, however, is something bad enough, and she can see it in the way his eyes bulge slightly, and his polite inquisitive tone changes into an apologetic one, "Oh. I'm sorry."

It's odd for her to see him recognizing a modern word, as in the past he would only stare puzzled at her, trying to repeat what she said. And then her ribcage tightens even more around her already struggling heart.

"It's okay," she chokes out, trying to make him leave before she starts crying again, "You couldn't have known."

Hajin thinks this conversation is over and he'll now apologize and move on to his ordinary life, but what he says shocks her even more.

"Am I triggering your attacks?"

"What? No! No, that's not it," Hajin corrects him hurriedly, her head shaking violently, her eyes going back to him against her will, "You just happen to be around whenever I'm in a crisis... That's all."

"Well, that's a relief then," the stranger says, looking genuinely relieved, "I'd hate to make you cry."

His lips curve into that sheepish smile Wang So always used when he tried to look innocent for her; and that, even though it never fooled her, always made her heart melt.

It makes it melt this time as well.

"You don't have to worry about that," she says as she looks away, before she's hypnotized once again by this man that looks so much like her King, "It's okay now. I better go."

Hajin bows again — how many times has it been already? — and turns around quickly to leave, forcing herself to not look back, to not linger any longer to him, to not ruin his life once again.

But before she can take two steps away, the man stops her one more time.

"Would you like to talk about it?"

There is warmth in the stranger's voice, an invitation that's way too hard to ignore, that makes her resolution shatter and scatter away, as Hajin turns around to look properly at him. The look in his eyes makes her believe that he knows she's trying to flee and he's dead set on not allowing her to run out of his sight.

"What?" Her voice breaks when she asks, her mind caught between the past and the present and she thinks she's going mad and seeing things again.

"I've had something like PTSD before," he explains casually, unaware of the effect he has over her, "I would crash down all the time, especially when I didn't expect it. Therapy helped a lot, but having someone else to talk about it outside of my sessions was great too. It could help you as well."

Hajin blinks in confusion a few times. Not because she doesn't understand what he's talking about, and not even because the amount of modern words he spilled at once shocked her. She just doesn't see what his point is, so she just shrugs, trying to think of cohesive sentences.

"You might be right. But it's too complicated to talk about."

"Then, do you want to talk about something else?"

"What?"

He takes one step closer to her. And even though it's not threatening nor invasive, she flinches a bit, her breath getting caught in her throat. He seems to notice as he stops and smiles warmly at her again.

"How about we sit down, have a drink and talk?" he suggests, "At least until you're feeling better."

She's sure she's mad now. She's completely insane, because there's no way this man so similar to the 4th Prince is trying to ask her out, not after she has just recovered her memory and decided to not come into his life. She must be crazy, because the man before her definitely isn't acting all awkward, as if he has any interest in her and she has just realized it.

Then he raises one eyebrow, waiting for an answer, and she finally understands why he waited all this time to give back her planner himself.

Hajin doesn't want to, but she immediately compares the polite behavior and words of the man with the straightforward and blunt statements of Wang So. And that's why she knows it's not right for either of them to sit down for a drink.

"What? Now? I'm sorry, I can't."

"That's okay," he says hurriedly, as if he's afraid she'll try to run away again, "You must have something else to do, sorry for imposing."

"No, you didn't. That's not what I meant, it's just..."

"It's because I'm a stranger, right? I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself," he bows, smiling awkwardly, a bit shy and a bit out of place, but adorable in his own way, "I'm Kim Hyeonjin, and it's nice to meet you."

"It is nice meeting you, Kim Hyeonjin," she ignores the thump of her heart when she says his name out loud, "But I really cannot go, and it's not because of you. I'm just not a nice company to have tonight."

"That's not why I asked, though," Hyeonjin speaks with a low voice, sending a shiver down her spine, "Don't you want to let go of that burden you've been carrying around lately?"

Hajin wants to. She desperately wants to. But there is so much about her that he's unaware of. She's not even sure if this man has any relation to a monarch who died a thousand years ago. She's not sure if she has the right to even accept his invitation, or if another time paradox will unfold the second she follows him.

Her eyes start to tear again, her desperation taking over her.

"You don't even know me."

You can't possibly ever know me.

"I know you'll be crying alone tonight," he says softly, smiling as if he can see her worries and knows exactly how to deal with them, "And I know I want to help you feel better. I promise that's all. We don't even have to share numbers or emails and I won't come after you tomorrow. I just can't let you go like this. We'll get a drink, and then you can tell me everything about it or about something else, as long as you take some weight off your shoulders."

Hyeonjin's words seem to erase all of the resolution she still had left, and at the same time they seem to offer her a little bit of solace.

Hajin knows that part of her, the part that lived as Hae Soo for almost ten years, still longs for Wang So. And maybe that's why she can't ignore Hyeonjin's invitation. But there is also a part of her that is desperate to share some of her worries, to give them to a person that doesn't fuss over her with condescending eyes.

Maybe that's why, this time, she doesn't refuse him and doesn't run away again. This time, she doesn't take refuge in her bedroom, in her books, in her haunted memories and mind.

This time she follows him.

A\N: AND SO THEY MET!

Is it over? Not yet, a few more steps ahead of us