CHAPTER FOUR
( Goodbye, Autumn )

AHN SUHO WEIGHS like a sinking ship against Jaehwa's chest. He is so familiar in a way that is so unfamiliar, and Jaehwa hates when things are too comforting and too distant to call her own.

Feelings, emotions, all of the things Jaehwa has learned to hide because they are entirely not hers. They belong to the girl whose body she has stolen; Everything, the love of Cha Si-woo and Moon Boram, Ahn Suho, and even herself.

Cha Jaehwa's skin is peeling to reveal the horrid flesh that rots through her bones and burns her body, and she cannot hide beneath the sheets of a bed that she cannot fully call her own, surrounded by a home and by a warmth that is unbecoming of her sins.

Jaehwa is a thief - She steals and feasts upon frowns and heavy hearts, for she needs to satiate the cataclysmic pit that tears her apart.

Perhaps one day, Cha Jaehwa will learn to be whole.

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‎MORNING SETTLES UPON Jaehwa's bones like a dull premonition of the coming winter, chilly and wet and all too mind-numbing.

Not for the first time, Jaehwa lets the light from outside filter through her curtains for a while longer before dragging the weight of her body upwards. Blankets erode her body, carving Cha Jaehwa into a sculpture of a dead woman only a breath away from deterioration.

Cha Si-woo knocks twice against the closed bedroom door. He feels inclined to do so, because the girl on the other side of the room is not inherently his daughter. He doesn't know this new Cha Jaehwa, even though they share the link of a last name.

"Jaehwa-yah" He calls her name softly, as though she might fade into nothing but Jaehwa-scented blankets and bitter memories.

She grumbles her response, too disoriented to feel awkward, or domestic. Jaehwa doesn't know what she has once called Si-woo - Father, perhaps? - So she chooses the logical option and stays silent.

"It's Monday." He states the obvious. Jaehwa spares a glance at her bedside clock.

The girl nods before she realizes there is still a thin door between her and Si-woo. "I know."

Silence.

Si-woo seems to be contemplating something heavy from behind the door. Jaehwa can hear the creak of the floor as he paces slightly. His voice pressed against the door, slightly muffled.

"Can you come out of there?" Taking on a pleading tone unbefitting a man of his caliber, Si-woo's voice is docile and unsettling.

Jaehwa squirms out of her blankets, letting them fall to a heap on the floor. She hesitates as the cold doorknob sears her fingertips, pausing to wonder what would happen if she opened the door.

Si-woo deflates when Jaehwa's mess of unbrushed hair and heavy eyebags greets him at the door. He offers her an uneasy smile.

She doesn't return it.

"Are you hungry, Jaehwa-yah?" Si-woo's voice is a thin strand of solemness, as though he is speaking to a wall and not to his only child.

The question presents itself as such - Should Jaehwa give them what they clearly want by joining them for breakfast, or will she be selfish as she always is and ignore their pleas?

Lips settle between her teeth, and she unconsciously bites down hard enough to draw blood.

"A little." Is her timid response, keeping her eyes level with the floor.

If she looks at the man's face - Her father's face - The dawning realization that she cannot recall his features might be the final blow to her shattered body.

His body relaxes from the high-strung mess he had been when he first knocked on Jaehwa's door.

"Ok. I'll prepare your plate. We have something to tell you, too." Si-woo rushes off to tend to breakfast.

Hopefully, Moon Boram is the one cooking this time.

Jaehwa shuts the door and sighs. Her clothes seem to puddle around her body like too-big reminders of what she's trying to conceal beneath them, and she shrugs them off in favor of a fresh new set of clothes.

Pretending to be her parents' daughter is a difficult feat indeed.

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‎THICK CLOUDS DOT the stormy September sky, and Jaehwa knows that rain is coming. She feels it in her bones the way she knows summer is a passing season, humid and hot and all too forgettable.

Yeon Si-eun, whom Jaehwa does her best to keep away from, is more like Autumn than Summer. He is frigid and bitter and beautiful - In the way the falling leaves are beautiful. He is someone Jaehwa can remember.

It is inevitable, that together, as Autumn and Winter, Cha Jaehwa and Yeon Si-eun are fated to forever be conjoined in one way or another.

She thinks, that perhaps Jaehwa had been Spring, once. Too far away to experience the muddle of summer into fall, and fall to winter. Too warm to be considered cold.

Now, she is exactly the right distance and exactly the right kind of wrong that Yeon Si-eun is capable of reaching out to.

The premonition of rain is sweet against Jaehwa's tongue. She feels - Deep within those vaults in her mind - That she loved the rain.

Something about the rain was alluring to 16-year-old Jaehwa. Losing her memory, at the very least, did not amount to forgetting all that she had once been.

She spares a glance at the boy in the elevator. He keeps his head low, buried in his own world. Jaehwa acknowledges that she is not a part of it, for she has been ignored from the second they were forced to share such close proximity.

Moon Boram, for all the gentle glory she presents herself as, is calculating and loves the way no mother ever has. She is a breeze that ruffles Jaehwa's hair and tosses her face first into the pavement instead of holding her back - That is the type of mother Moon Boram feels like.

It is refreshing in its own way - Being treated as though she is not a broken piece of machinery for doctors to fuss over and fix. She is Cha Jaehwa, Moon Boram's daughter, and a few scars won't change that.

The silence is agonizing. Yeon Si-eun, who is so similar to Cha Jaehwa, says nothing at all. His back is slouched, feet shuffling every few seconds to ring against the quiet elevator.

On his back is a thick black backpack - Jaehwa had caught the boy just as he was on his way back from school.

She feels both jealousy and relief - School is something she doesn't have to worry about, and that is both a blessing and a curse. It makes her all the more abnormal, and all the more distant from who she had been.

"Is school fun?" She blurts the words like a mindless toddler to an adult, and she finds swallowing them back would've been easier than letting them spill out.

Yeon Si-eun looks up at last. His eyes are pools of chestnut, sprinkled with cinnamon and an unhealthy sheen of countless nights without sleep. There is something comforting about his gaze - It is familiar. Cold, haunting, but familiar nonetheless.

"Is it supposed to be?" Si-eun answers Jaehwa's question with his own, and the blood that pounds in her ears lessens to a steady heartbeat.

Her sallow face twists into a rancorous smile, too bitter to be called such but too genuine to be anything else.

"I wouldn't know." She answers honestly. Her eyes burn, and the elevator seems to grow smaller.

Had her conversations with the boy always been so . . . Sharp edged?

Si-eun catches his tongue before any more resentment can bleed into his words. She is not Cha Jaehwa, the student who constantly stole from him first place. She is Cha Jaehwa, the girl who cannot even recall the name of those she once loved.

And it shouldn't bother Yeon Si-eun at all, because she had meant nothing to him but a number on a piece of paper that determined their values.

"You do know." He says softly. "Maybe not now, but you knew. School was not about fun for -

Us. School was not about fun for us. For Yeon Si-eun and Cha Jaehwa, that bled away for a grade and kept their ugly feelings at bay. Or at the very least, Yeon Si-eun has not changed much in that aspect.

His sentence is left unfinished. The elevator dings, and he excuses himself, leaving behind trails of autumn that feel too empty to admire.

Jaehwa is left alone, and winter envelops her bitterly once again.

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‎ ✧ AUTHOR'S NOTE !

si-eun and jaehwa are so autumn and winter coded i love that sm 🤗 would suho be more spring or summer ?? i'm leaning more towards summer

almost 2k words of me just yapping ab whatever i can think of ! dedicated to the lovely soobszn, good luck on ur tests ! i said tuesday but i had some motivation and maybe there mighttt be another update soon 😉

i actually adore si-hwa (my ship name bc im too lazy to write out the full names)

ate wingstop and all of a sudden i felt like i could write all about my angsty bbs !!

no suho interactions but def next chapter ! rn everything is pre canon bc i honestly don't know when to start writing off the show but i def think soon !!

other than that pls lmk if there are any mistakes in the spelling or anything so i can fix it !

also don't b afraid to vote or comment, i will probably (very likely) reply!!!! and if you don't understand something, plsplspls lmk!! i want yall to fully understand what's going on

happy reads!

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─── ANNIE