Prologue

The Memory Thread

-

This story is not one I can recall with great precision. The memories fade and grow twisted amongst everything else that life torments me with, but I'm not one to complain. After all, this story isn't my story. And the chaos that ensues within these chapters are not my problems.

It starts with a death before a birth. And ends with a rebirth before a death. People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

I wonder how strange mine were.

-

Winter speaks of sudden showers whispering at windowsills, leaving sprays beneath their fingertips. The fire crackles and dips low in its cage, scattering soot against its walls while Kyungsoo traces milestones with his eyes, toes cold and curling in his slippers with thin gaunt fingers splayed across each arm in a useless defence against the chill. The apartment rings empty save for the line of photo frames hung too high against fresh paint; blue the colour of cloudless skies.

They are a series of empty faces and smiles; the blurred entities of Kyungsoo's past, like pages ripped out of a history book. These photos aren't a reminder. They're an escape. They hang like mug shots against the blatant irony of sky blue, trailing noxious fumes. Loneliness, Kyungsoo discovers, becomes an acid which eats away at you.

A siren blares weakly in the distance and Kyungsoo wonders how it could have all come to this in so short a time period. He shuffles to a stop in front of a small wooden frame, between the smiling faces of Suho and Jongdae.

The light bulb dims and flickers and its entropic light distorts against the glass, leaving the two figures indiscernible. Kyungsoo blinks and he's lying down with the dip of a trampled snow angel beneath him. He could taste the drifting flakes on his tongue, burning the flesh like a brand. Mirroring the dark skin which pressed flush against his; sweaty despite the cold. The boy beside him is still panting slightly and Kyungsoo could feel his breath hot and condensing against his cheek. Their lips are blue with the chill but their faces are raw and scoured with ice.

"Smile for me, hyung" is said against his ear and Kyungsoo turns and breathes in the whisper like an aphrodisiac and pulls his frozen lips taut at the camera lens, feeling them split with the movement.

The knock rings sharp and relentless, and time trickles by once again. Kyungsoo doesn't take his eyes off the photograph, instead waiting for the tinkling of keys and the smooth swing of the front door. The greeting comes like an expected rush of ice on skin and he's knocked back into reality, like a shocking punch to the chest.

"Hey, hyung."

-

Memory is a fragile thing.

It's a long singular thread which stretches on from the moment one's consciousness forms in the simple mind of a foetal mass; the moment one changes from something to someone. This thread is a twist of fibres so weak that it could easily fray and snap, forgotten as another fibre blooms and grows to replace it. The existence of a memory is pitiful in its painless detachment. The lack of emotion is a cruel emphasis of just how little value was placed upon that one moment in our dull repetitive lives.

People are forgotten, places unrecognisable, actions and reactions are stored in the recesses of our mind and the dust grows into mountains in our memory place.

However, sometimes the opposite will happen. Sometimes, a stray fibre may float in the wind through the whispering ghosts of forgotten things, land and find purchase on the memory thread. It is a mindless, simple being; yet it clings on with the primitive desperation and desire to survive. And eventually, that fibre will grow to interweave and live on amongst its counterparts as one.

At least, until it too frays at its ends, collapses and falls apart into nothingness once more.

-

Kyungsoo's thread trundles on in a loop of seemingly meaningless gestures and words. He leans with his cheek against the cold glass and breathes in deeply; the miasma of vinegar used to disinfect its surface piercing his olfactory senses almost painfully. He does not stir, eyes heavy against his lower lids and the buzz of the market around him dims into a roaring silence.

For this one blink of a moment, Kyungsoo's thread stills and watches the entropy whipping in a storm around him.

"Excuse me."

The moment curls and dies away, and the thread continues without it; oblivious of any loss. Kyungsoo opens his eyes.

Jongin stands tall before him in a graphic shirt and shorts; a mass of dark hair and glittering eyes. It is this first image of him which Kyungsoo would never be able to retrieve, no matter how hard he squints and stares at the trail of his thread and its branching memories. After all, there's no such thing as a recalled memory. Memories are repressed. Surplus is forgotten.

At this moment, Jongin is one of the many surplus beings whom Kyungsoo's uncle calls customers; existing in Kyungsoo's memory place during transaction and cut off like a contagious disease.

He picks up the raw fillets with a steel tong and drops them in a plastic bag like an organ, weighs it and parrots the price back to the boy. Money exchanges hands and by the time Kyungsoo lifts his head from the till, there is only the swarm of people across the damp walkway of the fish market.

Publish Date: 11 DEC 2014 || Date of Completion: _ _ / _ _ / _ _

This story's plot is all my own work. Please don't change or copy ANY of this work. Respect me and the work that goes into my stories.

Thank you for all your support and understanding!

© 2014