|  5  |

“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah man, me too.”

…It’s not the same, he thinks, we’re thinking about completely different things. He tries to laugh but his throat starts to hurt and he doesn’t know if it’s the burn from the alcohol or if it’s something else entirely.

。。。。。。。。。。

 “We were in dire need of a subject from which we could acquire a genome. Luckily, one of the scientists in our team for Project Daisy had a nephew.” Yongguk didn’t need to see the turn of her head to know who she was referring to. “He was desperate to save a…friend, of his, and offered him up as our test subject—we were his last resort, you see—and of course, we took the opportunity without hesitation. He was begging and sobbing at our feet, there was no way we could turn him away. That would make us heartless beings wouldn’t it? Refusing to help a boy who was crying for our help?”

The words fell into the air as Yongguk struggled to take them in. This was surreal—this was beyond surreal. He stole a quick glance at Daehyun and Himchan and seeing that they were both relatively unharmed and their breathing sounding even and less frantic than before, he refocused his attention on Ms. Song.

“We managed to extract your genetic information in time and insert it into an artificially created egg, along with our transgene of interest…” a beat of anticipation, “it was successful. Our first and only success thus far. Granted, there were a few holes in your memory as our CN-Unit was weak in that area—memory’s a funny thing—but considering their lack of importance in comparison to the magnitude of this experiment, the fault was negligible.”

Yongguk opened his mouth to respond but no words came out. What did these missing memories hold? The words he needed to communicate his feelings and thoughts beyond the realm of mind at that moment did not exist and so he sat there, speechless and at a loss. Everything that he knew of his life from the day he closed his eyes to sleep on that hospital bed, lulled by the systematic beeping of machines—it wasn’t meant to be. He wasn’t meant to be here.

Now when did he hear those words before?

“What sort of memories did I lose?” Yongguk asks, almost afraid of the answer. He listens with anticipation and somewhere, in the room, a heartbeat quickens.

“You really don’t know?” Ms. Song looks at him carefully. For a moment he thinks he sees a flicker of sadness in her eyes—that maybe she does hold some semblance of humanity within her.

“Your first love.”

Something inside him clicks into place, a blank puzzle piece that holds everything and nothing.

"Any more?" 

Yongguk shakes his head. He's heard enough. He watches as she nods her head towards him and two large figures approach slowly.

Before his consciousness is swallowed by a sharp pain in his neck and a suffocating black, Yongguk hears the muffled sound of pain from Daehyun’s general direction and something that sounds like his name coming from Himchan’s. The last thing he hears is an apology, and it takes him a while before he realises it’s his own voice.

“Himchan, I’m so sorry, for everything. Daehyun—”

And then nothing.

。。。。。。。。。。

Waking up proved to be quite a difficult task. His bones took time groaning and snapping back into place after being still for god knows how many hours and he’s still tired from been injected with some sort of tranquiliser. For how long he was unconscious he doesn’t know, but it must have been a long time judging from the ache in his neck and the mugginess clouding his mind. He pushes himself up off the floor and absorbs his unfamiliar surroundings as he sifts through what he remembers of the events that took place the last time he was awake.

Ah, that’s right. He learnt about the truth of his existence. He was an experiment, an artificial life created after cheating death.

And right now he was in a cell of sorts, all white and closed off from the outside world. There was nothing on the walls and nothing in the room except a bunk bed (presumably to save space)—also white, and a featureless square in the wall which—with an educated guess—Yongguk supposes is the door. He inspects the square for a while before pushing it a couple of times and coming up with the conclusion that he’s stuck in this room with absolutely no way of escaping.

“.” He digs the heel of his palm into his sore eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, this wasn’t how anything was supposed to be. He kicked the wall in a vain attempt to release his anger, but the hardness only served to remind him of his containment and remind him that somehow getting out was out of the picture. He bites his lip and scrunches his eyes shut, sub-consciously willing the world away. “What the !?”

“Yongguk?” A small voice calls out. He turns around and is met with the sight of a small body unfurling on the ground. A long brown tail stretches out and Yongguk sprints over—as best he can in the small area of the cell—and drops to his knees, gathering the smaller body in his arms and hugging him tight.

“Daehyun.” Yongguk mutters into the thin cotton, “Daehyun. Oh my god, Daehyun, you’re here. Are—are you alright?”

He feels the other nod, forehead pressed on his shoulder and he grips him tighter. Yongguk pulls away and checks Daehyun for any injuries, pawing at his face, his arms, legs, torso. Other than the ones on his forehead, he seemed fairly unmarred and Yongguk slumps onto the ground in temporary relief. It’s a good start at least.

“Where are we?” Daehyun asks weakly from under the strands of hair that curtained his eyes. Yongguk sighs and places a hand on his head.

“I don’t know.” Yongguk answers with a voice laden with defeat as he pushs the hair away from the boy’s face. The uncertainty and fear that sits in his gut is slowly festering into poison and he feels like hurling. “We’re in some cell of sorts. Most likely in some institute or lab in the middle of -all.”

“What’s going to happen to us now?” Daehyun asks as he reaches out timidly for Yongguk’s hand. It’s the only comfort available and it’s the only comfort he needs. It is a simple action and an even simpler request.

“I don’t know.”  Yongguk answers as he complies, interlacing the warm fingers into his own, “I’m sorry.”

。。。。。。。。。。

The air hangs stagnant and the room is quiet save for the breaths that curl into the air together and the heartbeats that synchronise unwillingly. Daehyun’s head is resting on Yongguk’s shoulder as they sit, arm-to-arm, leg-to-leg, and feel the comforting warmth of the other pressed against them—basking in the basic human need for the presence of another. They stay like that for a long time, until their hands start to sweat and their position on the ground does everything to make their tailbones sore and their spines hurt, but they make no effort to better their positions or posture.

Occasionally Daehyun’s ears would flutter and tickle the side of Yongguk’s neck or his tail would twitch as it sits on Yongguk’s lap, or Yongguk would the side of Daehyun’s hand with his thumb and nuzzle his hair. They would share small kisses and I love you’s in the midst of all this white and confusion and those moments—those brief moments of happiness and those few seconds of smiles, are what keeps them both awake, eyes open and waiting.

。。。。。。。。。。

For a month or so they survive on poorly manufactured food with minimal bathroom breaks. Hygiene is maintained but they’re supervised and led the moment they step out of the cell and soon, to them, the concepts of privacy and time become foreign and inapplicable. They pass time by talking about stuff they did, the people they’ve met, recalling worthwhile memories. After all, memories are the only things they have anymore. They talk about what they plan to do afterwards—if they were to be let out from their ivory prison, and they talked about Himchan and what he and Yongguk used to be. But Yongguk claims he doesn’t remember anything and assures Daehyun that he doesn’t feel anything, because “I love you now, and I don’t want to think about loving anyone else” and that alone makes Daehyun feel guilty and elated at the same time.

。。。。。。。。。。

And during their intermission, in the dark, between a whisper and a kiss, a door opens.

And there were no goodbyes, no farewells. No last I love you’s.

Nothing.

。。。。。。。。。。

The apartment is quiet when numbers collapse from three to one. The plates are dusty and the utensils don’t shine like they should. Sometimes when he forgets, his muscle memory causes his hands to hook under three plates and gather up three sets of forks and spoons before he sits down and realises he’s made a mistake. The laundry load is significantly lighter but the weight of it still bears down on him, impossibly heavy for only a few shirts and pants, and the milk is expired because he doesn’t eat a lot of cereal between him and himself and he accidentally bought the large size instead of the small.

See, it’s the little adjustments like that that need to be made that hurt the most, because they’re so easily forgotten.

。。。。。。。。。。

The next time Yongguk opens his eyes, he’s lying in a different room, one just as white and sterile looking as the one before. He makes a move to sit up, but with the tight straps around him, he almost dislocates his arm doing so. He doesn’t even notice the presence of other people in the room until one speaks up.

“Oh, he’s finally awake!”

“Where’s Daehyun?” is the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that leaves his mouth.

“He’s been taken care of.”

He tries to move his arms but to no avail, “What are you doing to him?” The straps are bound so tightly that Yongguk thinks it’s cutting off his blood circulation and he feels like his arms and legs are going to fall off any time soon. That’s when a familiar voice decides to speak up.

“Like we said. He’s been taken care of.”

“And I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

“Of course, you’re now aware that he was incomplete. A glitch, a defect.” Yongguk turns his head to the best of his abilities to meet her eyes, “They don’t belong in this world. He was a mistake, and mistakes are to be analysed, to be learned from, and then erased.”

The last words cut through the air and he sees the world disintegrating in front of his very eyes. If what she says implies anything, Daehyun is in trouble—serious trouble and Yongguk is powerless to do anything. He was going to be killed while Yongguk continues lying here, unable to move an arm or a leg. He’s probably scared and Yongguk won’t be there to hold him and kiss the fear away. He was going to leave, and Yongguk won’t be there to even say a goodbye or a sorry.

“If you’re wondering, it’s already been done.”

And that was it.

。。。。。。。。。。

Things were not meant to turn out like this. Life as he knew it was supposed to continue from where they left off, from the day he walked out of the hospital and left him in their care.  Everything was supposed to be alright. Project Daisy was supposed to make everything alright. That’s what he was promised when he stood there with eyes stinging and hands trembling, a month shy of eighteen. It was an incredibly selfish choice to make, he admits, but he was naïve, and it’s true what they say: love makes people crazy.

Now only embers remain, but again, they remain. First loves don’t burn out that easily. On a blank canvas the first mark is the one that stands out the most. A second, a third, a fourth, may draw the attention away but the impression the first one leaves will always be there, somewhere.

Himchan lies still in bed at night and listens for their improbable return.

All he gets is piercing silence and the guilt the oxygen from the air and makes it hard to breathe. But hey, at least his reservoir has run dry and he no longer sleeps on a damp pillow case.

。。。。。。。。。。

“You ing .” Yongguk curses through gritted teeth as droplets form in the corners of his eyes. His voice is shaking as his knuckles blanch, “I’ll ing kill you and everyone here even if it’s the last thing I do.”

Ms. Song folds her arms under her chest as she clicks her heels over to where he’s tied down. She peers down at him from behind her glasses.

“We’re not as heartless as you think.” She begins and her voice grates on Yongguk’s ears and he is filled with the insatiable urge to tear out, “We did take your feelings into consideration.”

“Bull.”

“You’ve been out for a few months now and he’s been gone from this world for approximately the same amount of time you were under. For those past couple of months our CN-Unit has been working hard to make sure that after this, you can live life comfortably—”

“God, you know, I have no idea what you’re on about I just know,” Yongguk takes a deep breath through his nose as he fights to keep his temper under control, “that there is nothing more I want to do in this world than to rip your spine out, and then beat your lifeless corpse with it.”

“Graphic.” She replies, fixing the sleeve of her blazer, “Don’t worry. Your feelings about me will soon disappear, and so will your feelings about him. It’ll take a while for your memories to fully disintegrate into nothing but, in time, they will. Don’t worry.”

For the first time since he woke up, Yongguk takes in her words and lets them sink in.

Then it hits him.

Daehyun is gone—has been for months, and—if the CN-Unit does a good job—he’s going to forget everything. Slowly, one by one, all his memories with Daehyun—anything to do with Project Daisy will be nothing but dust in the endless cosmos.

He doesn’t want to forget Daehyun. He would rather live with the pain and the memories than nothing at all. The memory of the way he smiled when he saw another cat creeping along the fence outside the window, the way his tail would swish cutely from side-to-side when he was happy, the way he laughed at anything remotely amusing. He wants to remember the first time he heard Daehyun sing to the flowers, the way his hair felt tucked underneath his chin, the first time he took him outside and choked on ice-cream. The day he took him home when it was pouring with rain.

Those memories are precious.

He wants to remember everything.

But they’re about to be ripped away from him and soon they’ll be lost to the world.

“What about Himchan? What’s going to happen to him?” Yongguk asks finally.

“Well, when you see him again that’ll all be up to you.”

。。。。。。。。。。

When he’s finally released from the institute, he expects everything to be different.

He sits quietly in the car as he’s driven back to resume his normal life at his normal apartment. Yongguk watches bitterly as the people walk past like everything is fine and everything is okay, unaware of what’s happening all around him.

He expects everything to be different, but really, everything is almost exactly the same.

。。。。。。。。。。

When he hears the door opens, his first reaction is to hide. After this whole ordeal, how could he face them? How was he supposed to apologise? How was life supposed to continue? He stands up from the couch and faces the door. And he’s there.  Just him.

“Yongguk! You’re…where’s—“

“They killed him.” Himchan is knocked back when the answer comes fast and hard-hitting.

The words hang heavy in the air like a curtain between them. Himchan doesn’t reply, instead he attempts to apologise once more. And again. And again. He doesn’t know what else to do as Yongguk moves into the room and drops himself onto the couch, so he just stands there, staring and waiting for something to happen, perhaps a punch in the face or a kick in the stomach. But there’s nothing. He sits on the couch and waits.

Ten or so minutes of agonising silence passes between them before Yongguk speaks up again, “They said my memories that have anything to do with him and this…this whole thing…they said I’ll forget it all.”

“, I’m so sorry.” Himchan mutters, burying his face in his hands, “This whole thing is my fault—”

“Don’t—just…don’t. You never meant for things to happen like this, so just don't. But still…it hurts, you know?” Yongguk says as he tilts his head back and counts the cracks in the ceiling, “I never even got to say goodbye or anything. I…” He shuts his eyes and Himchan knows it’s to prevent the tears from falling.

“I really…I really loved him. It’s stupid and dumb and really ing cheesy but I really did, Himchan. And now he’s gone and he died alone and afraid…just like that. And it’s not long before my memories of him will be gone too. It’s just not fair on him—he doesn’t deserve this. God, it ing hurts, so much.” His voice cracks at the end of his sentence and Himchan fists his hands in his hair because , this is hurting him too.

“I thought I’d be able to live with the pain of remembering him and knowing he’s not here anymore. But maybe she’s right, maybe it’s better if I forget. It’s selfish of me, I know, but god...I’m so weak.” Himchan lifts his head up and stares at Yongguk. This is a Yongguk that’s broken and hurt and he’s given up. And he’s the one that did this, that made him like this. “Himchan.”

Himchan looks at Yongguk with a heavy heart and eyes shrouded with guilt.

“Can you remember him, for the both of us? Keep him alive, at least, in your memories. Don’t let him die while you’re still here…because…because I can’t do that for him.”

And Himchan nods, because after everything, it’s the least he can do.

。。。。。。。。。。

What if’s are one of the worst things you could ask yourself, because it augments the guilt that already resides in ourselves, curled up and heavy at the base of our lungs. Yet we all do it, it’s something we can’t help when something bad happens and all we can think about is how to blame ourselves and our choices for everything going on.

“What if I had arrived earlier?”

“What if I hadn’t left?”

“What if I stayed at home?”

“What if, instead of stopping, I ran all the way back?”

“What if I never took you home?”

。。。。。。。。。。

Yongguk can feel the memories slowly fade. No matter how much he tries to keep a tight rein on them, they always somehow slip through the spaces of his mind. It irritates him to no end, and he finds himself reciting facts to himself every day. Jung Daehyun, seventeen years old, brown hair, brown eyes, likes to sing, likes to eat. Went to the park, Daehyun fed a few ducks, got attacked by a few geese, weather got . He writes them all down, details ranging from what Daehyun liked to eat at breakfast to the places they went when they had free time. Everything.

He finds these pieces of paper lying around in his room and on the days when what’s written on the paper doesn’t match up to what’s in his head, he reads them over and over again in hopes of rebooting his memory. It doesn’t work.

It never works.

Until one day he gathers all the pieces of paper up and sifts through all of them, picking out the ones that make no sense to him and placing them in a pile on the floor beside his bed. The ones that do make sense go on the bedside table, he decided. At the end of his sorting, he realises with a despondency that all but one piece of paper has been placed on the pile on the floor. Then in a rash fit of rage and frustration, he scoops up the thick pile of paper and heads outside to set them all on fire. He watches as the papers curl and blacken as the flame eats away at them, watches as the charred pieces fall to the ground, before the ashes of his memories are picked up by the wind and whisked far, far away.

。。。。。。。。。。

Himchan finds a piece of paper a few days later with the name Jung Daehyun written in messy penmanship on it beside Yongguk’s bed. He must have written it before he went to bed the night of his return, perhaps he thought that he should at least remember the name, or he thought it would somehow help preserve the memories and anchor them, preventing them from falling into nothingness. Himchan contemplates taking it, for Yongguk’s sake, but a last-minute decision makes him turn around and leave the room. It might hold a great deal of significance for Yongguk and if he wanted it gone then he would throw it away himself, he decided.

They haven’t talked a lot about Daehyun since the day Yongguk came back and to Himchan it looks like the CN-Unit has finally perfected the art of rearranging memories in a person’s head.

The first few days were painful, having to watch Yongguk beat himself up as he felt Daehyun’s slip into the empty abyss of his mind, to be lost forever.

It goes from “What kind of stuff did we even do together?” to “I can’t even remember what colour his hair was” accompanied with a lot of frustration and hair-pulling and even a hole in the drywall. However, a few days later it boils down to, “What did he look like?” and there was no fight in him left as he asked the question. He didn’t expect an answer, he never did, because Himchan never answered. For Yongguk’s sake.

It’s when Yongguk walks into the kitchen one morning as Himchan burns another piece of toast, in an old black hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, holding a piece of paper with the name scribbled on it and scratches his head and asks “Hey, bro, do you know a Jung Daehyun? Do you owe him money or something?” that Himchan finally takes the paper and stutters a hurried “O-oh yeah! That’s the one” before scrunching the piece of paper up and throwing it into the trash can. He apologises profusely in his head, to both Yongguk and Daehyun, as soon as the ball of paper hits the top of the rubbish pile because he feels like by doing that he’s destroying the last piece of Daehyun that Yongguk holds, and so it won't be long before Daehyun is lost from Yongguk forever.

“Oh, by the way,” Yongguk calls out as Himchan places the lid back onto the bin, “I think we have moths or rats eating through our clothes. Like, really ing clever ones.”

“What?” 

“Yeah, for some reason I have holes in the back of some of my sweatpants, like all in the same place. Maybe we should invest in some mothballs. My gets cold at night. Or is it you that’s cutting holes in my pants?”

Then Himchan laughs but it's dry and lacks spirit.

“ off, why would I even bother with your sweatpants. And I’m not buying mothballs. Your clothes are gonna smell like naphthalene forever and you could develop anaemia or cancer or some .”

Himchan says this like a joke but inside, he knows he says it because he doesn’t think he could stand having Yongguk fall ill with any type of serious sickness ever again.

。。。。。。。。。。

Himchan finds it hard to sleep, even with Yongguk back and everything returning to the way it was before Yongguk picked up the stray cat from the alleyway

Everything is back to normal, but this isn’t how things were supposed to be.

。。。。。。。。。。

Yongguk wakes up on some mornings clutching a pillow feeling colder than usual, or the bed feels just a little too big or a little too empty.

He blames it on the fact that they’re caught in the middle of winter and everything is colder and everything is gloomier. But he still feels like something is missing, like there’s a hole in his heart where something (or someone) should be.

Although he convinces himself it’s nothing, something feels awry when his mind is still blurry.

And he falls back asleep to dream of songs and sometimes, in his dreams, he meets a person that loves him as much as Yongguk loves them back. He doesn’t know their name and he can’t see their face, but he feels that somewhere in his heart is a reservoir of love specially reserved for them, yet he doesn't know why or how he has come to love them so much. He doesn’t know where these dreams come from or why he has them but he wakes up in the morning feeling warm and cold at the same time.

But then he shrugs it off and life continues as normal.

As it should.

。。。。。。。。。。

“Yongguk, when a person dies, where do they go?”

“Into the ground, buried. Or they could get cremated and have their ashes put in an urn…maybe scattered across the mountains if they’re going for a dramatic exit.” A laugh bubbles into the air.

“But I guess if you’re talking about this on a more spiritual level, a lot of people believe in a place called heaven that you can go to after you die. It’s supposed to be a great place, made of gold and pearls and…I dunno, happiness?”

“Then…where would I go?”

“What?”

“I want my eternity to be spent with you, whether it’s here or in heaven. What if heaven is only for humans?” A light flick on the forehead.

“What are you talking about? You’re just as human as I am.”

“Then…that means we can both go to heaven together, right?”

"Of course.”

“But what if one of us goes first?”

A small chuckle erupts from his throat. “Then…we’ll wait for each other.” 

“Okay. Then we’ll just have to remember each other so even if we’re separated for years and years we can still find each other when we’re both finally in heaven. Okay?”

“Okay.” Another laugh.

“Don’t forget me, okay?”

“Okay.” He laughs again.

“Don’t ever, ever forget me, okay?”

“Okay okay!” And again.

“Promise me!”

“Trust me, Daehyun, I will never forget you. Never.” Smiles form and laughter melts into the air, “I promise.”

“Good.”

And then there’s a light kiss, on the nose, on the lips, and there’s the sound,

  of a dying promise,

    that drifts along the breeze that slides through the open window.

      And at that moment one could see:

        They were so, so happy.

-fin-

---------

A/N: when will I ever write something that has a happy ending? WHEN?!?! No-one will ever know.

So...I sincerely hoped you guys enjoyed it and I hope you didn't think it was a half-assed or a cop-out ending ; ; it was not my intention. Maybe the plot seemed a lot more thought out in my head.

Um anways I thought I'd just fill in a few holes and share a few final bits of trivia for you guys about this story if you guys are interested:

> The animal trait that was transfected into new and improved tuberculosis-free Yongguk was the sharp hearing of a dog. I don't know if you any of you guys had noticed but I tried to pay special attention to often mention things that Yongguk could hear, sometimes even things that a human would not have been able to pick up (heartbeats, breathing etc). I guess if you re-read the story (holy why would you do that you brave soul) you might pick up on the little things like the snarling and the "barking" and the growling. I tried to do it as subtly as I could so if you didn't get that then don't worry! Just thought you'd like to know (^:
> The CN in CN-Unit stands for cerebro-neuro that probably doesn't make sense but I thought??? maybe it would??? 
> Those grey bits at the beginning of each chapter were flashbacks to when Himchan was younger. In his POV.
> The name 'Project Daisy' actually came from Daisy the Cow, the genetically engineered cow :^D I just thought it'd be fitting seeing as transgenics is quite important to the story and she (Daisy the Cow) is quite a well-known transgenics experiment creation thingy-ma-bob (wow so scientific).
> Aaand for my gamer readers out there that do play Borderlands 2, my headcanon is that Himchan plays Krieg, Daehyun plays Zero and Yongguk plays Salvador. Stalkers and buzzards are the enemies I hate the most so I wanted to write them getting destroyed by those three (^:

Anyway, that's it guys!! That's it!! You don't have to put up with me anymore!! Thank you so so much for reading it all the way until the end and a big thank you to those that left lovely comments, upvoted, subbed etc you guys made me very happy. As always I enjoyed reading all your comments and replying to them. Just knowing you guys enjoyed it is enough for me ^ ^

holy this author's note is long.

I love you guys so much! You don't even know! ♥ ♥ ♥

Goodbye! ♥