Four

 

“We need to leave.”    Kris’ voice cut like a sharp knife through the stony silence and I found myself flinching, just from the harshness of the tone.   Jongin, however, ignored him, and started up the driveway towards the house.   “Kim Jongin, I’m talking to you; do you hear me?” Kris snapped, reaching out and snagging Jongin’s sleeve as he passed by. “We shouldn’t be here.”   “Let me go,” Jongin shot back, yanking his arm out of Kris’ grip with a snarl. “You said ‘get us out’ and I got us out. Now leave me alone.”   “Jongin-ah, the first place they’re going to look for us is with our families. We aren’t safe here,” Joonmyun said, as if trying to talk sense into the younger boy   “Then you leave.” With another scathing glare at the rest of us, Jongin spun on his heels and continued up the driveway. We watched as he upturned a flowerpot on the front porch for the spare key, then silently let himself into the house.   “What a brat,” Jongdae said, conversationally breaking the tense atmosphere.   “Why don’t we just go?” Tao added, glancing around nervously. “Joonmyun is right; this is the first place they’ll look. If Jongin wants to stay and risk it, let him.”   “We have to stick together,” Kris replied, sighing heavily. “It’s…Joonmyun and I will explain more, later.”   “I guess we should follow him then,” Sehun said, glumly.   The inside of the house was spacious and clean, with hardwood flooring and an elegant winding staircase. There were several pictures hung up on the walls showing a tan woman in her graduation gown, who was obviously Jongin’s sister.   “Jongin?”   “The kitchen’s to the left!” came the reply, halfway up the stairs. “Help yourselves to whatever.”   “Bad idea,” Kyungsoo muttered, darkly. “The twelve of us could probably eat him out of house and home.”   Suddenly, there was a yell, and a string of explicates rang out from upstairs.   “Jongin? Is everything alright?” Kris took the stairs two at the time and the we all followed, wondering what had happened.   At the top of the stairs, I saw Jongin standing outside of one of the rooms, a horrified look on his face.   “What’s wrong?” Kris asked, worriedly.   “My room…it…doesn’t exist anymore,” Jongin replied, numbly.   I peeked under Kris’ arm and saw that sure enough, the room was not a bedroom, but a home office, half library, half study.   “How is this possible?” Jongin muttered. Out of habit, his finger came up to touch his lip, and his glanced around, frantically. “My room…my bed…my stuff.”   I watched him stride across the room to the desk calendar, and count the days.   “I’ve only been gone for two months! How could they have replaced my bedroom with a study? How can they just forget about me so quickly?!”   “I don’t think they had a choice,” Joonmyun replied, darkly. “Did you notice how all of the pictures on the walls were of your sister? I think – well, Kris and I overheard some of the Labcoats, those are the doctors and scientists, by the way, say that they have developed a way to make people forget things. We heard that -”   “- none of us will be missed because there would be nothing to remember,” Kris finished.   “Kind of like a synthetic version of Min’s power?” Minseok asked.   I was about to explain my brother was the one good at making people forget things, but decided that it was not really important at the moment.   “Similar, I guess,” Kris agreed. “At that time, the scientists were still doing final adjustments and tests. I guess the drugs worked, then.”   “That’s impossible.”   My head snapped to the direction of the voice, my eyes met with Jongin’s dark, stormy ones, full of disbelief.   “It is what it is, Jongin,” Yixing said, soothingly, reaching out towards him. “Things are different now. We need to stick together, and figure ev