“Seriously Chanyeol, can you please learn to drive better! Where do you think you were looking?” Baekhyun screeches as he slams the passenger door angrily.

“Well excuse me for avoiding that squirrel.” Chanyeol responds grumpily.

Baekhyun turns his head and cringes as he wipes his shoes on the ground before him, a mixture of pine needles and grass.

“You still ran over it,” he notes.

“Well sorry.” Chanyeol complains, slamming the door on his side of the car.

“You ran over it and hit a tree. You ruined a company car! I can’t believe you.” Baekhyun growls at him.

Chanyeol makes his way to the front of the vehicle and inspects it, running his hand over the dashboard. The engine lets out a sickening splatter and goes quiet. Chanyeol thinks up an excuse.

“We’ll just say I was saving a puppy, yeah! He likes puppies, right?”

Baekhyun thinks for a moment.

“He’s more of a cat person, actually.”

“Fine! Whatever he wants. Crisis averted.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes and shuffles around to the back of the vehicle, looking around. There are tall pine trees that line the area, so far removed from the rest of civilization.

Baekhyun can’t fathom how someone would live so far away from everyone else, up on this cliff top in amongst the foliage. Such a secluded lifestyle is not something that Baekhyun would favour.

“Get the equipment out of the car.” Baekhyun instructs.

Chanyeol sighs.

Baekhyun makes his way around the vehicle, inspecting the roadkill.

“Tsk, tsk.”

“What did you expect me to do?”

Chanyeol takes the equipment out of the boot and begins the journey up a slight path carved through the foliage. Baekhyun follows suit.

Soon the pair find themselves at their destination, a large mansion in the middle of nowhere. They knock and await a response.

“Not a bad place to retire at, huh?”

Chanyeol nods before laying down the equipment on the pebbled ground.

“It sure is nice, but it’s got to be annoying buying the groceries and lugging them up back here. I could do better.”

Baekhyun shakes his head at his partner, deciding to knock once again.

“It could be another all-nighter. Wish I brought coffee,” he complains.

The door is pushed open by a shorter man with wide eyes and a tuft of dark hair. He looks young, at least Baekhyun believes.

“Oh, hello. Chanyeol and Baekhyun, I presume?”

Baekhyun nods as Chanyeol drags their equipment into the doorway.

The house is cozy, despite its large size. Photographs hang from the walls, and a grand piano sits in the living room, just beyond the threshold. A small, intimate kitchen and dining room area breaks off at a hallway, and there are stairs leading upwards to a second level. There are lamps and candles sitting on pieces of furniture, illuminating the room in a soft yet warm yellow glow.

“Thanks for coming at such short notice.”

“Not a problem,” Chanyeol responds, “I tend to be bad at predicting deaths as well.”

Baekhyun slaps Chanyeol on the arm.

“Are you the patient’s son?” he asks.

“Oh no, I’m Sehun’s caretaker,” the man responds. “Kyungsoo.”

Baekhyun holds his hand out and Kyungsoo takes it.

“Where is Sehun?”

“Upstairs.”

Chanyeol rolls his eyes and picks up the equipment again, dragging it up the stairs with a hunched back, Baekhyun follows eagerly behind.

“If I break my back, I’m suing you.” Chanyeol complains, rubbing his behind.

“Stop complaining.”

Kyungsoo leads the pair off into a small bedroom. There’s a double bed in the centre of the room, surrounded by a bookshelf, small bedside table, and wardrobe. A candle is lit somewhere to the side. There is a man, about the same age as Kyungsoo, sitting on a small ricking chair beside a bed, holding the hand of what Baekhyun identifies as their patient, one Oh Sehun.

The man is old, with a wrinkly face. His hands are rough.

Baekhyun steps forward, holding out a hand.

“My boyfriend, Kai.” Kyungsoo introduces the pair.

“Ready to set up?” he asks.

Chanyeol smiles toothily and runs an extension chord across the room, connecting it to a small outlet on the wall. Once this is done, he makes his way back to the machine and presses a few buttons. There is a buzz, and a screen is brought to life.

“How’s he doing?” Baekhyun asks, looking over the old man.

Kai turns and places a hand on the older man’s forehead.

“He’s got about two days left…”

“That’s plenty of time,” Baekhyun reassures.

Kyungsoo shuffles until he stands between Kai and Baekhyun.

“So you two can grant him any wish, huh?” he asks.

Chanyeol nods and fiddles around with his machine.

“That’s the idea. Give the person one wish before they die.” Chanyeol remarks.

“So what’s the wish?” Baekhyun asks.

“The Moon.”

Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrow.

“The Moon?” he repeats in surprise.

“That’s right. He wants to go to the Moon.”

Chanyeol clucks to himself.

“Geezers just keep getting crazier,” he mumbles under his breath. Kyungsoo gives him an odd look, his eyes bulging at the tall man’s attitude.

“Can you do it?” Kai asks.

Baekhyun gives a curt nod.

“So can you tell us anything about our client?” Chanyeol asks.

“Not really,” Kyungsoo responds. “He was certainly a quiet man, in the later years of his life. Worked as a craftsman, trying to rebuild and fix up that lighthouse a little way to the north.”

Baekhyun nods.

“Any immediate family?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head.

“No one really. He was alone. I believe he had a partner, a man called Luhan? But he passed away two years ago.”

Chanyeol lets out an aggravated sigh.

“I would have known more if I were his paperboy, for Christ’s sake!”

“Shut up, just do your thing,” Baekhyun growls. “I suppose we’ll have to look around for a prompt. You said he spent a lot of time at the lighthouse nearby?”

Kyungsoo nods.

“Just follow the garden path to the left once you leave the front door. It can’t be too difficult to find. Just listen for the sounds of the sea.”

Baekhyun turns on his heel and decides to follow Kyungsoo’s advice, whilst Chanyeol finds a needle and inserts it into Sehun’s arm. A small monitor starts to beep on one side of the screen; Sehun’s heart rate. It’s steady, for now.

After a while of walking with little more than the moonlight above him, Baekhyun finally finds the lighthouse.

“This place could use a paint job.” he remarks to himself.

Baekhyun pushes his palm against the splintered wooden door. It’s slightly ajar, and with very little effort, the door swings open, revealing a darkened room. There are cobwebs lining the corners of the walls, and Baekhyun shivers. It’s so lonely in here.

Baekhyun fiddles around in his coat pocket an brings out a small torch.

“Woah!”

The room is more eerie than Baekhyun expected. There’s a small stuffed bear sitting in the middle of a sea of folded origami figures. A literal sea.

The paper lines the whole of the carpet, each made in the most precise way. They look like small rabbits.

“So many origami rabbits? Does this mean…?” Baekhyun thinks aloud.

“Nevermind.”

Baekhyun makes a mental note to ask Kyungsoo just exactly why there are so many origami figures on the ground, as he makes his way back along the garden path to the house. He stops for a second as his torch flashes over something jutting out of the ground.


“Hang on…”

There's a plaque of metal, scattering the light over the grass around it. Baekhyun runs a hand over the metal, wiping a substantial amount of dirt that has slowly accumulated over time off of it.

“Lu Han,” he reads aloud. “Must be Sehun’s partner.”

Baekhyun weaves his way back to the foliage, pushing open the front door and making his way up the stairway once again.

“I finished ages ago, where were you?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun shrugs.

“Do you know anything about all of those origami rabbits?” Baekhyun asks Kyungsoo, completely ignoring his partner.

Kyungsoo shrugs.

“No idea.”

“We're ready to go,” Chanyeol announces to the room, after there is a small beep.

“How does it work?” Kai inquires, walking over to Chanyeol. “What do you do?”

“We don’t really do the ‘doing’ part, that’s the machine,” Chanyeol explains with a glint in his eye.

“We navigate a person’s memories, and we try and embed the person’s wish in their memory.”

Kyungsoo nods his head in understanding.

“So you depend on people fulfilling their own wish by simply having the desire to? How could that be? Everyone has ambition for things, but most don’t accomplish them.”

Chanyeol shakes his head.

“It doesn’t quite work like that. We provide prompts, and that is the drive that goes through a person’s whole memory; it becomes the fabric of their existence. But it’s not real; it doesn’t overwrite that person’s reality. It is just a projection of the reality that could have been, had life been kinder.”

Kyungsoo purses his lips, his eyes wide and lost in thought.

“We’d better get started.” Baekhyun says.

“Oh, sorry.” Kyungsoo takes Kai’s hand and drags him out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind him.

Chanyeol smiles and flicks a few levers. Soon, the pair of them are both gone, swimming in a sea of memories.