“…This is all your fault,” Chanyeol tells Luhan. Luhan doesn’t hear, because he’s just a memory.

Chanyeol finds himself in the cafeteria of the school, standing right next to the teen. Sehun’s nowhere to be found in the memory, and Chanyeol knows Baekhyun has already started tampering with it. Chanyeol can’t find Baekhyun either.

He makes his was down to corridor in silence. It’s dead quiet and empty, a stark contrast to the memories he has walked through and experienced before. He sees a lone figure standing off to the side.

“Baekhyun?”

The figure turns.

“I know what you’re planning to do,” Chanyeol says.

“I know that you know,” Baekhyun responds curtly, turning away. “Look, our contract is to send him to the moon. I’m just doing what will make this happen, OK?”

Chanyeol shakes his head.

“You’re really going to do it?”

Baekhyun nods.

“Is it worth it?” Chanyeol asks angrily. “Is it really worth removing Luhan from his memories?”

Baekhyun shakes his head at him, tears springing in his eyes.

“It has to be done!”

Chanyeol doesn’t agree, and he lets Baekhyun know with a tremor in his voice.

“The reason why Sehun even wants to go to the moon in the first place is because Luhan died!”

“We are legally bound to the contract to-“

“ the contract, Baekhyun!” Chanyeol yells. “I didn’t take this job to make him miserable, Baekhyun. I don’t know about you, but I signed up to help the freaking geezers die happy!”

Baekhyun sighs.

“I know, Chanyeol. It’s all I want too. But… this time, we have to. If we go against our legal obligations, we could both be screwed over. I couldn’t deal with that.”

Chanyeol can’t believe what he is hearing.

“We need to make people happy, Baekhyun! Sehun will be a lot happier if he doesn’t go to the moon!”

“I think Sehun will be a lot happier with a lot of differences in his life, Chanyeol. This is just one. I’ll make up for not having Luhan, just you watch Chanyeol.”

“IT’S NOT OUR JOB TO PLAY GOD!”

“IT’S NOT OUR JOB TO LET HIS WISH GO TO WASTE EITHER!” Baekhyun snaps.

Chanyeol thinks for a second.

“How are you going to make up for it? How? How could you?” Baekhyun turns away.

“We’re running out of time…”

Baekhyun looks back at Chanyeol with fear in his eyes, like he doesn’t understand himself anymore. He takes a few steps down the empty corridor, his hand rubbing against a few lockers in the process.

“Just trust me.”

Baekhyun dashes away, and Chanyeol notes that things around him begin to change. Walls begin to warp into doorways; lockers from around him become water fountains or pot plants.

Chanyeol feels dizzy as things begin to shake, like an earthquake is rocking through the hallways, or a volcano will erupt up from the floor.

Chanyeol is truly scared.

“Baekhyun, please stop this!” he yells, placing his hand on his head. He’s dizzy; very dizzy. He doesn’t know how much of this movement he can take.

The lights start flickering from above, and Chanyeol knows he needs to start moving if he’s got any hope of saving Luhan’s memory.

“Don’t, Chanyeol! I don’t want to hurt you!” Baekhyun’s voice booms from the loudspeakers overhead.

Textbooks seem to fly through the air, and lockers begin toppling over every step Chanyeol takes towards the stairwell. Chanyeol stumbles around in the dark, using his hand to find his way around.

“DON’T!” Chanyeol screams. He narrowly avoids rows of lights that fall from the ceiling. He makes a quick sidestep to the side to avoid a sliding piano, as the corridor seems to have sloped into a steeply inclined hill. Chanyeol doesn’t even know where the piano could have come from.

Art easels fly through the air and Chanyeol gets on his hands and knees, crawling to avoid getting his head sliced off. Baekhyun has never been like this before. It confuses Chanyeol.

As Chanyeol ducks and weaves, he realises that things start to repeat themselves around him, which confuses him further.

He finds himself almost at the door, but desktop computers, one by one, start flying out of the doorway.

“BAEKHYUN!” Chanyeol screams.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO MOVE!” Baekhyun yells back.

Spikes start jutting out of the room, and Chanyeol jumps up on a table, terrified.

“THAT’S ENOUGH, BAEKHYUN!”

Everything stops. The lights flicker back on.

It’s raining inside.

Raining.

Older versions of Sehun seem to appear in different rooms of the school in different stages of his memory. Chanyeol freaks out.

Baekhyun has muddled Sehun’s memories far beyond repair.

Chanyeol finds himself in a small office; he looks around.

Silence.

There’s no one in the room, just the desk in the centre, a small chord-less phone sitting on top. Chanyeol jumps when it begins to ring. He picks it up.

“Hello?”

“Chanyeol.”

It’s Baekhyun.

“Listen, whatever you’ve been doing Baekhyun, you need to stop now! Things are screwing up! We might not know what Sehun wants, but we know what he doesn’t want. And what he doesn’t want is exactly what you are accelerating.”

There’s a pause and Chanyeol strains his ear to listen.

“It’s already done, Chanyeol…”

Chanyeol looks around.

“Why don’t you come out now?”

A doorway opens from the wall right beside him, and Chanyeol shakes his head. The first, and perhaps only, rule Chanyeol knows about his job, is to make as little changes as possible and let the desire take its course. This was anarchy.

Chanyeol claps the door handle and pushes it forward. He can hear the click of his shoes on the concrete; the door creaks as he closes it behind him.

The memory reverts back to what it was before; a corridor, Lay and Sehun marching down it. Sehun still has his green hair.

But the stairwell is empty. Ghosts appear in the background, masked figures that seem to have been conjured up by Baekhyun.

Chanyeol recognizes one of the ghosts.

Luhan.

It takes Chanyeol seconds to realise that neither Lay nor Sehun can even see Luhan. Luhan just stands there, his eyes darkened, his face ashen, watching as events unfold.

Baekhyun walks up to Chanyeol and presses his chin on Chanyeol’s shoulder, on his tiptoes as he is smaller than Chanyeol.

Chanyeol pushes him off.

“It’s one thing to change a person’s favourite food,” Chanyeol begins, “but it’s another to wipe away a person’s lover. This, Baekhyun, is way out of line.”

Baekhyun steps back, his face stony.

“I’m sorry, but this just won’t go anywhere if you keep on resetting the memory. At this point, this is the only way. We have a deadline… I’m asking you to trust me.”

Baekhyun smiles sadly at Chanyeol.

“Please, just calm down and stay here.”

“Just pull the trigger already. Where are you going?” Chanyeol asks pointedly.

Baekhyun taps his stylus on the laptop screen and another door appears to form out of the wall.

“…There’s just one last thing I need to do,” Baekhyun says.

Chanyeol thinks he must look angry and hurt, because Baekhyun turns around and presses an unwanted kiss on Chanyeol’s lips.

“Why are you fighting so hard… for this?” Baekhyun asks, throwing his hand around.

Chanyeol has no answer for him.

“…Forget it,” Baekhyun says coldly. “Just wait for me. I’ll make this work.”

Baekhyun steps through the door, and Chanyeol finds himself staring longingly after him. This isn’t the Baekhyun Chanyeol fell in love with.

The teenage Sehun runs down the hallway, Lay pushing him from behind. He’s nervous, and Chanyeol realises that this is the exact point in time when Sehun first asked Luhan out.

The green-haired teen rounds the corner.

“Hello-“

But there’s nothing.

No one to say hello to.

Chanyeol can feel the loneliness emanating Sehun’s presence, and he walks over and touches the teen on the arm. He knows Sehun can’t feel it; after all, Chanyeol is not really here.

But this action seems to comfort Chanyeol in some way, like he is apologizing.

“I’m sorry kid…” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

What happens next, Chanyeol doesn’t expect.

“Come on guys, they’re going to get all the good tables before we get there!”

A new Sehun runs down the stairwell, jumping over the last bit of the bannister in his hurry. Lay runs behind him, exercise books still in hand.

“They’re all the same, Sehun!” he shouts back.

“Sehun’s right. The tables by the kitchen always smell nicer. I like watching the chefs cook up the food!” A tall boy smiles and pats Sehun on the head.

Chanyeol’s eyes widen.

Junmyeon.

Chanyeol patrols Sehun’s memories warily. They’re completely different, but Chanyeol feels a sense of closure.

Baekhyun steps towards him slowly, taking his hand.

“He can always find another ‘Luhan’, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun explains, rubbing Chanyeol’s arm affectionately.

“…But he’ll only have one brother.”