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Nia and Taehyung headed for home around six that evening.  They’d had a good day walking around shopping, and Taehyung didn’t know it, but Nia had remembered a few things.  She was starting to see why she’d fallen in love with him thirteen years ago.

Thirteen years.  That was so long.  They’d met when they were seventeen, and they were now both nearly thirty.  And nothing had happened.  Would those two teenagers be disappointed if they could see where they were now?  What had those two kids dreamed of together?

Nia wished she knew, but she still couldn’t remember.  She wished it would all come back to her at once.  Like it did in those movies.  She was now realizing how unrealistic those movies were.  She wished they were.  She wanted to just wake up one morning and remember everything.

Her parents had told her a few things about her childhood, but not much.  It was almost as if they hadn’t been there for it.  But they’d never told her anything about her life after she’d turned seventeen.  And now she knew why.  Some days she cried because she knew her parents would never be supportive of her and Taehyung.  They weren’t even in a relationship at the moment, but her parents resented him.

“Hey, is something wrong?” Taehyung asked.  They were stopped at a red light, and he’d looked over at her to see a saddened look on her face.

“Do my parents hate me?” Nia asked suddenly.

“I…don’t think so.  Why?”

Nia shrugged. “They just don’t seem to care about my feelings at all.  I mean, they kept you from me for eight years, and from what I can remember, we loved each other a lot.  So, why keep us apart?”

Taehyung chewed on his bottom lip.  Recently, he’d begun to wonder if her parents had wanted her to be with Hobi for the money.  He’d voiced such a thought a few weeks earlier.  It was the only thing that made sense to him.  Her parents had always been nice to him, but he’d been dirt poor.  Hobi’s family was rich, and Nia’s family had been barely getting by.

Was there really another explanation for why they’d told Taehyung she was dead?  And then separated them for as long as they possibly could?  He honestly wasn’t sure there was.  He didn’t want to talk about it at the moment, so he didn’t mention it to Nia again.

“I’m not sure,” was the simple response he gave her.  Then they spent the rest of the car ride in silence.

When they got home, they were greeted by Taehyung’s little fluff ball.  Yeontan was running around and yipping at them the moment they walked through the door.  Taehyung scooped her up.

“Did you miss us?” he asked as his face was showered in puppy kisses.  He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“What should we do for dinner?” Nia asked as she set the bags down on the table.

“Let’s just order some takeout.  I don’t feel like cooking, and I’d imagine you don’t either.”

Nia laughed. “Ok, sounds good.”

——————–

They found themselves out on the balcony that night.  The sky was clear tonight, not a rain cloud in sight.  The city lights drowned out most of the stars, but a few of the brighter ones were visible.

“Do you remember how we used to stargaze?” Taehyung asked as he stared up at the sky.

“I…do!”

Nia gasped as one certain memory came back to her.  She’d seen it thrice in a dream, but now she remembered it as simply a memory.  She could see the tears on Taehyung’s face clearer now.

“You cried so much that night,” she whispered.

“Which night?”

“The night we promised to meet again.  In our next lives.” She smiled. “We fulfilled that promise, didn’t we?”

He looked at her, his face blanketed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“We’re not the same two people we were then, right?  You went on to become a millionaire CEO whose face is on every magazine rack in a forty-mile radius from here, and I…I rebelled against my parents.” She grimaced. “Ok I didn’t change much.”

Taehyung chuckled. “Yeah, you did.  It just wasn’t becoming rich and famous.” He sighed. “Honestly, some days I wish I didn’t have the company.  I liked living with my mom and working a small job to support the two of us.  I miss her.  In a way, this job stole me away from her.”

“Did she live with you at least?”

He nodded. “She did.  But I was barely home.  I didn’t know how to run a company, so I spent months learning.  And then, once I finally had learned, I spent all day every day working.  When I finally cut down on the hours I was at work, it was too late.” His voice caught a bit, but he continued. “She died…only a few months later.”

“Oh, Tae…I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s all right…it was inevitable.  She was constantly in and out of the hospital for various reasons….”

Nia patted his shoulder.  She had a brief memory of him rushing off occasionally because his mom was in the hospital again.  Somehow, in the month and a half Nia had been suffering, his mom hadn’t been hospitalized at all.  It had to have been a miracle because there was truly no reason for it.

Remembering this, Nia felt all the worse for Taehyung.  First, he’d lost her, then he’d lost his mom.  How had he even managed to keep himself going?