June 13, 20xx, 14:07

"No, wait," Jinki said, holding up a hand to stop Minho from speaking.

Minho stopped mid-sentence in surprise.

"I... I'm not trying to run away from anything," he said. Minho shut his mouth. Jinki swallowed. Continued. "But before we talk about it -" whatever it was "- could I ask you something?"

"Ask me what?"

Jinki worried at his lips between his teeth, eyes meeting Minho's full on. "I want to ask you about your past."

If he hadn't been watching for it, he wouldn't have caught the momentary double-take in Minho's eyes. Bingo, he thought.

"Why are you asking this suddenly?" Minho asked slowly.

"It's important," Jinki said. "Someone's going to get kidnapped—and um it's probably better not to ask how I know because I don't really have an answer for you—and I think it has to do with people in your past."

"That's..." Minho frowned, considering this as he straightened, having gradually been leaning towards Jinki. His phone rang. He reached for it, shooting Jinki an apologetic look.

"It's from work, right? What happens if you don't answer it?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Minho asked, and answered the phone. "Choi Minho speaking."

He leaned forward, straining to catch the conversation. Minho's expression was solemn. "That's..." If possible, his frown got deeper. "No, yes, I understand."

He stood, pushing back his chair, shooting Jinki an apologetic look. "Sorry, it's—"

"Work," Jinki finished. "I—"

"We'll talk about this later," Minho said abruptly. By the time Jinki managed to form a vaguely coherent sentence, Minho had already jogged halfway down the street.

"," Jinki breathed quietly to himself. He felt like he had a little license to swear, right now. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out the phone again. He scrolled through the contacts, pausing first at the one labelled "Home ♥", and again "Minho ♥". Eight past two, the time read. He could call him. Call him and ask him, because Minho definitely knew something. Maybe. At least who, or why, Jinki decided.

The phone dialled once, twice, and then again, before it disconnected, leaving Jinki with a 'call ended' flashing across the screen as he held it away from his ear. "Caller ID," he murmured to himself. Well so much for that, he thought, sliding the phone back into his pocket. His fingers brushed against paper, and he instinctively tugged out a folded note. He hesitated, feeling like he was in grade school peeking into a classmate's desk looking for his missing pencil case again, unfolding the sheet slowly. Any little bit of information helped, he told himself firmly.

His eyes scanned the words quickly, catching on the "I'm sorry"s and "maybe"s crossed out and rewritten and crossed out and rewritten again. His mouth formed a quiet "oh", as things fell in place. Sort of. The wrong things.

His eyes skipped to the end of the note, quietly trying the name penned there on his tongue, revelling in the way it felt just wrong enough to feel right. If he even knew what that meant.

The sound of a car cruising past snapped Jinki out of his musings, and he knocked the chair back as he stood.Find him, he reminded himself. "But how?"

But how.

He found himself pacing to the bakery again, hesitating as he approached. He strolled by the second laneway as nonchalantly as he could, peering down the space to see two men deep in conversation. He stopped abruptly, a slight frown on his face as he replayed what he'd seen in his mind. Well, someone else's mind, but his consciousness? That—that wasn't important, focus, he reminded himself. A flash of white though, a sheet of paper changing hands. A note. It was important, he had a hunch. 

A note. His mind flashed to a different note altogether as his fingers brushed against a slip of paper. Jinki swallowed apprehensively—Minho knew something for sure. He could... he could use that, maybe, ask the younger man.

He made his way determinately down the laneway instead. A short cut. That was all he was doing. "Hello," he greeted, forcing the nervousness out of his voice. The two men barely spared him a glance, moving aside to let him pass instead. The one on the left, he remembered, glancing at their faces. "It's a nice day, isn't it?"

"Yes...?" The other answered hesitantly.

Jinki blanked, trying to draw for words. It turned out he didn't need to, his empty train of thought derailed quickly enough. "If you don't mind, we're busy people," the taller one said, clearly dismissing Jinki as he his heel. The other shrugged and offered Jinki a smile, before following.

"W-wait!" someone yelled. The someone being him, he realised a beat later, when there were two pairs of eyes trained on him. "Um, I was looking for someone," he said, without really thinking. "Minho. Choi Minho. Around this tall—do you know him?" Which wasn't what one would ask when looking for someone, he also realised another beat later, but it was too late to take it back.

The taller one just looked at him blankly, but there was a definite flicker of recognition in the others' eyes. "No, we don't," the first said, only to be countered by a "no he's—" by the latter before he was cut off by a glare. "No we don't," he said more firmly, and Jinki nodded automatically.

On the other hand, that did tell him there was maybe more to Minho than it seemed.

If there was more to that thought, he didn't quite remember, because there was a sharp pain at the back of his head, and then nothing.


-

That was the funny thing about memory. It was hard to tell if it was memory, or if it wasn't. Or something like that.

"I..." he heard himself stammer. "I don't know."

"Why not?" Frustration. A lot of frustration. He realised this as if it were something new, like the little details you picked up only the fifth time you'd watched a movie.

"It's not—"

And then he was kissing someone. A memory, he decided. Wrong enough to feel right.

Right enough to feel wrong.

No, not a memory. Too wrong for a memory.

"You're running away." Anger, this time. This wasn't new. But it wasn't real anger. This was new.

"No."

"Yes."

"We... we shouldn't." Shouldn't, because there were too many things that could go wrong, ways people could find out, reasons that would hurt him, would hurt Minho.

Minho.

Oh.

So that was what it was about.

Then it was a memory.

Or wasn't. It was getting hard to tell.

-

June 13, 20xx, 20:03

The room is still dark.

He stares up at the ceiling, the silence of his breathing loud in his ears. He drops a hand on his chest, just to reassure himself of the rise and fall, the warmth sliding through to his fingers.

"Hey," he calls quietly. They would hear, he's sure. "Did you guys ever fix the problem with the memory?"

There's a sharp gasp, a rapid intake of air. "You remembered!"

"Not really," he says quietly. "Just that there was a problem with the memory. Wasn't there?"

"There was." Resigned. "Is."

"It never got fixed. Didn't know how, right?"

"We... No, never mind. About Jonghyun, did you—"

"Maybe. I think I have an idea."

Jinki falls silent, listening to his own breathing. If he strains his ears, he can just hear Taemin's breaths as well, quiet in anticipation. Has several ideas, really, some better than others. In another time, another place, maybe he would've explained them all, gone through them, debated the pros and cons. But this is neither another time nor another place, and Jinki doesn't elaborate.

"Hyung. I—"

"It's okay," he says automatically, cutting Taemin off. Even if his gut feeling is that it's the furthest thing possible from 'okay'—but Jinki doesn't think he wants to hear it either. "How much time do we have left?"

"Fourty five minutes, give or take," Taemin answers after a moment of hesitation. "Hyung—"

Jinki doesn't let him finish. "Onew. His name is Onew. Tell me about him."

He can hear Taemin hold his breath, hesitate. "Wrong place, wrong time, died from gunshot wounds. He was an up and coming singer, before the incident. He was twenty three. Same... Same as you."

"Have you found the motorcycle yet?" Jinki asks, changing the topic abruptly.

"Kibum hyung's still working on it."

Jinki nods. "Send me back in," he says, and hears the shuffle as Taemin pulls a keyboard towards himself. He braces himself for the disorientation, almost but not quite used to the feeling.

"Hyung, I'm... I'm sorry," he thinks he hears Taemin say, before the world drops out from around him again.