Hoya wakes up earlier than the other members out of habit. He’s still bent over the desk, with an uncapped pen hanging hovering over the page. He straightens up, feeling his lower vertebrae crack as he stretches his arms across his torso. He looks down and sees the two words he wrote out last night. He tsks in annoyance and shuts the book, slipping it into the top drawer of the desk, acutely aware that today is Day 2.

            Washing his face doesn’t give Hoya any new ideas, so he grabs his jacket and sets off into the clear gray morning towards the dance studio. When he gets there, he wipes his shoes on the doormat, shrugs off his jacket, and puts in his earbuds, turning up the volume of his iPod to drown out his own scrabbling thoughts.

            He practices for a bit, carefully observing his reflection as he feels his body begin to warm up, radiating heat into the surrounding still cold air. After about thirty minutes, he pulls out his earbuds and walks to the back corner of the room. He turns on the fan there, and then squats down by the water cooler, sipping from a paper cone of water. A couple papers skitter by him, pushed by the fan’s draft, and he quickly steps on them before crouching down to pick them up.

            He immediately recognizes Dongwoo’s nearly unreadable scrawl filling the pages. The letters suddenly become larger, and then gradually shrink again, correlating to his level of excitement.

            Hoya reaches up and turns off the fan, then lays the sheets in front of him. Dongwoo has annotated the pages in a green pen, presumably during his re-reading. There’s one word densely circled by the green pen, and Hoya lifts that green marked page from the floor, peering at it and finally making out the word.

            “Remember.”

            Hoya snorts. Well, that’s what he’s trying to do, but it’s somewhat easier said than done.

            He sets down the page and, glancing at the others he notices the date written at the top of one. September 1^st, 2011. The day of their first #1 win.

            Hoya immediately brings the page up to his noise, squints at it and begins to slowly translate Dongwoo’s scribbles. Hoya can barely remember what it felt like to win that time. He has some faint impressions of lights and hugs, but nothing more than that. Here, though, was something concrete, something that could spark his memory.

            It turns out that Dongwoo’s writing is not only illegible, but nearly incomprehensible. It’s full of metaphors that start, and then trail off to nothing, or bullet pointed descriptions of miniscule details. Suddenly, though, these wispy trails of thought solidify into a dialogue, each line alternately labeled “Hoya” and “Me”

Hoya: What are you doing?

Me: Writin.

Hoya: Well, yeah…

Me: Making sure I remember (that word circled and circled and circled), you know?

Hoya: You think you could really forget?

Me: It’s amazing what we can forget in a couple years.

Hoya: In a couple years there will be other wins to remember, though

            Hoya picks up the papers and slips them into his bag. He turns off the lights in the room, and, putting his coat back on, heads out.

            Dongwoo is eating rice porridge when Hoya knocks on the door and comes in. He drags up his stool, as usual, and after fishing in his bag, brings out a thin stack of papers and lays them on the breakfast table, smirking slightly.

            “These look familiar?” he asks.

            Dongwoo almost chokes on his breakfast, and then blushes brilliantly.

            “Where did you get these?”

            “You left them in the dance practice room.”

            “What?” Dongwoo thinks for a moment, staring at the pages. He then nods slowly and picks up the papers, examining them.

            “Ah, our first #1 win,” he muses.

            “Yeah, and you wrote more about a conversation we had afterwards than about the actual thing.”

            Dongwoo chuckles as his eyes scan the entry.

            “I don’t know, so much happened that night that it felt like a dream…” he looks at his attempts at description, shaking his head. “The thing that felt the most real that night was our conversation, so that’s what I could say.”

            Dongwoo takes his own notebook from his bedside table and carefully presses the pages Hoya brought back into their torn binding. Hoya turns Dongwoo’s words over in his mind. In the past, those sort of thoughts would’ve seemed so nonsensical to him that he would’ve dismissed them, but now he mulls over them.

            Hoya turns as he hears the door open behind him. An older women, and two girls around his own age sweep in. The older woman brushes past Hoya, proceeding to fuss over Dongwoo. She brushes his hair away from his forehead and rubs his shoulder as she chatters.

            “Hi, Mom, hey Kkotip , hey-“

            “How are you feeling?” his mom asks.

            “I’m doing oka-“

            “What have you been up to? Does the hospital have any activities?”

            “Um…”

            Dongwoo laughs, knowing the futility of trying to answer all his mother’s questions. The sisters stand by Dongwoo’s bed and Dongwoo’s dad takes the arm chair. Hoya hadn’t even noticed him coming in, he must have followed the initial rush.

            Having rearranged Dongwoo’s hair into some acceptable order of disarray, Dongwoo’s mom reaches down into a plastic bag at her feet. She takes out a plate and a wide Styrofoam cup. She pulls the plastic lid off of the cup and pours its contents (naji bokum) onto the plate. She’s bringing it to the microwave, still asking Dongwoo questions about his health, when she notices Hoya there.

            “Hoya!” She says, quickly putting down the plate on the table and embracing him.

            Hoya hugs her back, a little stiffly, but she doesn’t seem to notice it, her hug as warm as Dongwoo’s laugh. With his arms wrapped around her well-pressed blouse, he feels her breath and notices the slight hesitation before each exhale, and the slight catch before each exhale. She puts her head on his shoulder and Hoya understands.

            She gives his arms a quick squeeze and then pulls away. Hoya stays slightly bent, trying awkwardly to offer a sympathetic smile, and she nods slightly in thanks. She picks up the plate again and the quiet moment is gone as she brings it to the microwave, telling Dongwoo how important it is to eat well and how everyone at home thinks so also.

            She takes a deep breath as the microwave begins to warm up (something has to fuel all that chattering, after all) and the sisters take the opportunity to exchange a few quiet words with Dongwoo. Hoya can’t hear what they’re saying, all he sees are their sad smiles and their hands softly patting Dongwoo’s legs through the sheets as Dongwoo talks, nodding his head with the cadence of each deliberate statement.

            Dongwoo’s mom soon returns with a hot plate of food. Taking a seat by Dongwoo pillow, she balances the plate on her knees as she expertly cracks a pair of chopsticks, also taken from the bag. She begins to feed Dongwoo, insisting that the hospital food is insufficient. Dongwoo laughs again, trying to explain around a mouthful of octopus that the food is perfectly fine. Dongwoo’s mom sets down her chopsticks with a huff.

            “So I guess it’s better than your mother’s naji bokum then,” she snips.

            “No no, that’s not what I-,” Dongwoo begins, but she quickly stuffs another chopstick-load of octopus into his mouth, laughing with him. 

            Hoya checks his watch. It’s 9:30; he should be getting back to the dorm. He leans over, catching Dongwoo’s eye around the body of his mother, and waves, mouthing “I’ll see you later.” Dongwoo waves back, calling “goodbye” around a mouthful of octopus. His mother turns around and bows slightly, her conversation with Dongwoo instantly becoming a stream of thanks to Hoya for staying with her son, as Hoya smiles and waves it off, telling her that it’s really not a big deal. Dongwoo’s father, sitting with his elbows on the armrest of his chair and hands folded in front of him, offers Hoya a small nod and Hoya bows back before heading out.

            When Hoya walks in, the other members and the managers are sitting around the kitchen table, eating breakfast. Hoya bows deeply and apologizes to the managers, telling them he will stay with Infinite. They nod silently, pretending that they’re doing him a favor in accepting his apology, but Hoya can tell that they’re secretly relieved from the quiet relaxing of their features.

            “How’s he doing?” Sunggyu asks as Hoya sits down at the table.

            “He was in pretty good spirits this morning, his family’s with him.” Hoya folds his hands in front of him on the table. “The cancer’s metastasized. He starts radiation therapy today, but his chances of recovery are very slim.”

            “Is he going to come back to the dorm?” Woohyun asks.

            Hoya swallows, forcing himself to look at Woohyun. “Probably not.”

The table is silent. Woohyun brings his bowl, still full of cereal to the sink. When he gets there, though, he just stands there, staring at the wall, bowl in hand. Sunggyu finally stands up, and his action ripples through the table as life clicks back into motion.

That night, after hours of forced smiles, Hoya sits down at Dongwoo’s desk. His mind whirs with the thoughts and frustrations of last night. So much in his head, but nothing which comes easily. Hoya watches the digital clock blink on and on.

His arm hangs heavily at his side, as if it’s some nonliving extension to his body, but Hoya slowly lifts it and places his pen on the paper. He forces his pen to move across it, painfully beginning to write:

Nothing I write now can fully explain or satisfy me. I write only to remember. Hopefully, sometime in the future, these notes that will help me to finally put it all together...