It always hurts more when they forget… Do Kyungsoo knows that. It happened to him. I watched it happen to him. It must have been horrible, but what could I do? Nothing. That’s what. I have no emotional attachment to him whatsoever, so why do I care enough to tell you the story of how it happened? Because I do have an emotional attachment to the other main character. Not Do Kyungsoo – but Kim Jongin.

 I suppose the beginning is always a good place to start a story (at least, that’s what I’ve heard) and so I will. Jongin has always been good to me: I’m his best friend – he tells me this regularly and we’ve been best friends ever since the day he first found me – he knows all my secrets, and I know his. It is his deepest, darkest secret that is the foundation for our story.

It began in the spring, when I first met Oh Sehun. I was on my way to return something to Jongin, and expected him to be alone – but no, someone was with him, someone I’d never seen before. The most unusual thing about this stranger was the fact that (on a hot and sunny day) he was wearing a thick, black leather jacket and didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all! Anyway, after being introduced to the stranger whose name was Oh Sehun, I completed my task of returning to Jongin what I owed him. After that, I never once left his side until we made our way home together.

The next time I met Oh Sehun was a day after the first. As it turned out, he also had something to return to Jongin – something he’d left behind the previous day. Sehun stayed with us for a long time that day, and only left when Jongin insisted that he did. “I’m afraid you have to go now – it’s getting late. Will you be alright walking on your own?”

“It may be late, but it’s still light out. I’ll be fine.” Sehun smiled as he spoke, but it looked insincere to me. Jongin, on the other hand, was oblivious. “When will I see you again?” He was beginning to annoy me by that point; I just wanted him to leave.

“Tomorrow.” I turned my head to glare at Jongin but he wasn’t looking. Instead, he was writing something on Sehun’s hand. When he let go, Sehun glanced at what he’d written and smiled – a genuine smile this time. With that, the two of them bid each other farewell and then he left, leaving me alone with Jongin for the first time all day.

My happiness, however, was short-lived. Jongin didn’t speak to me for the rest of that night. He gave me food without even bothering to look at what he was giving me – he didn’t even look at me – left me alone in the room and went straight upstairs to bed.

Oh Sehun had ruined everything for me.

I barely saw Jongin the next day either. He went out to see ‘someone’ – who I suspected to be Sehun – and refused to let me go with him. That was the first time he’d ever done something like that. He was out all day with this ‘someone’ and when he eventually returned my suspicions were confirmed – after what felt to me like a lifetime, Jongin finally came home… with Oh Sehun.

Oh Sehun stayed with us all night that night, and his visits became much more frequent – too frequent – after that. He was with us almost all the time and Jongin didn’t seem to even care; he never had time for me anymore. He started to yell at me a lot – I knew Sehun didn’t like me, but I never thought that it would cause Jongin to stop caring about me as well.

Then one day, it all changed – the atmosphere between those two, I mean. They became distant, and instead of yelling at me most of the time, they yelled at each other. Sometimes they hit each other, and sometimes they threw whatever they could grab at that point at each other. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and there’d be glass littering the floor, and sometimes there’d even be blood. I never liked Sehun, but I hated him even more when he hurt Jongin.

It was usually quieter during the day; they tended to only ever yell or fight at night. On some days, Sehun was barely in the house during the daytime, so I had more time alone with Jongin. It was on one of those days – a snowy day in December, if I remember correctly – that I encountered Do Kyungsoo for the very first time. I don’t know why, but he stayed in our house for almost the entire day (he had to leave before Sehun came back). I didn’t really care about him, but I certainly liked him more than Sehun. Jongin was happy with Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo was happy with him. Jongin’s happiness has always been the most important thing to me, even if I do sometimes resent him for ignoring me. Kyungsoo seemed to like me too, which is much more than I can say for Sehun, who simply detested me (I was never too devastated about that, seeing as I never could stand him anyway). Kyungsoo was with us most of the time, and, on several occasions, Jongin stayed out all night – presumably with Kyungsoo – without Sehun ever finding out about his existence.

Kyungsoo was with us every day – every day until the accident. I was never told the details of that happened – I just knew that something happened to Jongin when I wasn’t with him. It happened in the spring – a year after I met Sehun. Ever since the accident, I haven’t seen Kyungsoo. I used to wonder if that meant that Kyungsoo caused it, but I was wrong. I’ll probably never know what caused it, but it was not Do Kyungsoo. Sehun looked after me up until the first time I saw Jongin after the accident, when he left.

Jongin was different when he came back. He’d changed. He stopped doing all the things we used to do together. He didn’t know who I was.

He forgot me.