jongin felt like he was living backwards. forgetting a little bit of himself everyday. losing a piece of his humanity to every cigarette, broken promises hanging thicker than the smoke. he had said he wouldn't forget this time. he did that he would remember them forever. well, forever doesn't mean much when you can't remember an ever. kyungsoo had promised to never stop loving him. if only he would stop smoking. he told the deteriorating boy that he would swallow every burning rod that jongin put to his lips, consuming a fire greater than the flames flickering against them, setting their minds ablaze and lighting up his heart. but even though he promised, kyungsoo still forgot. it wasn't his fault, jongin knew. he was well aware that the hyung who specialized in piecing together stuffed dolls couldn't piece together his ruined brain. he smoked his heart to ashes, but kyungsoo never returned. the cigarettes were stubbed out on worn sticky notes, scrapbook pages, and Polaroid pictures fading with age. results of a late night of overthinking and too much to drink. he should have known. they were all lies. love was only as real as the sheets in the book, easily torn and forgotten. how could you honor a promise if you couldn't even remember your name? everything disappears when you woke up the next day. so is it better to never forget, or be unable to remember? pack after pack of tobacco rolls were inhaled, exhaling out smoke and blood and tears. kyungsoo wasn't there to extinguish the pinpricks of light at the ends of the sticks like he said he would. lying in the hospital bed, dying of a broken lung but more so of a broken heart, while the man who unintentionally ruined him was waiting every night at 7, for a dinner guest that would never show again.

his voice echoed through his mind, haunting him.
"my name is kim jongin. i call you hyung. don't forget!"
kyungsoo, no matter how hard he tried, was unable to remember. there were pale patches on his wall in the shape of perfect squares, and a jagged line in the middle of his scrapbook, faint etchings of a heavy hand detected on the following pages. occasionally he found clothes that weren't his, periodically turning up in his laundry. they smelled like smoke and cinnamon and shots of liquid gold.
every night he returned home from giving sight to neon blue penguin plushies. there was a mysterious pororo residing in his house, with a dusty thank you note whose contents had long since faded away. at 7 o'clock, there was always something pulling him towards the elevator, but the metal device remained empty. kyungsoo got the sense that he was supposed to go somewhere, that there was something important he had forgotten. he followed his heart one time, but he just ended up in front of the hospital. sighing in disappointment, the frustrated man trudged back to silent meals and duets with minseok falling oddly flat.
kyungsoo stood in front of the hospital. taking a deep breath, he followed his heart.
"kim jongin," the plaque read. the name resounded inside his mind, stirring up feelings long since buried. the corpse inside, as he could only described as, barely breathing and a bundle of skin and bones, was asleep. but the face, the face was still intact. though sunken and marred with jaundice, the contours were ever so familiar.
"jongin."
whispers by a bed of a man no longer.
the scene was wrong. he was too late, the body of ashes and tears was wheeled away. there was a sticky note on the counter.
"I'm kim jongin. I call you hyung. let's meet again soon, and maybe you won't forget."
lines of ink in a notebook arabesques traced onto searching hands tickles along bellies laughs under covers kisses through glasses of milk and fireflies from inside
"jongin. I remember you."