Like everything he did, Junho ate slowly. After being in the bathtub for nearly an hour, he simply walked out of the bathroom without using the towel I’d given him, clutching his stomach with a strangely attractive pout while voicing his need for ‘nourishment’. I wrapped him in a blanket and gave him the leftover’s Mrs. Ok sent me home with, and it was fascinating watching Junho pick apart the meal, eating it all with a spoon rather than chopsticks. He suddenly made a face and then spat the mouthful of food onto the surface of the table, examining the half chewed mush and then picking out a small piece of grilled pork and holding it up.

   “This is not desirable to me.” Junho set the meat back on the table and then started picking through the whole dish with the spoon, taking out every tiny piece he could find.

   “Junho,” I finally allowed myself to ask and he immediately stopped eating to give his full attention to me. “What happened to you?”

   It was clear by the look on his face that he didn’t understand my question, so I tried to be more specific and found myself struggling for words.

   “I mean . . . Where are you from? What were you doing in the woods?” I my suddenly dry lips and tried to steady my voice, but I was mentally freaking out inside. “And what happened to your clothes?” I was afraid that I was overloading him with questions but he just looked blankly at me, almost as if he were thinking, or reliving something.

   After a moment, he looked at me and then smiled softly. “I do not have a name for where I am from, so you would not comprehend . . . your other questions, I do not know the answers to.”

   I tiled my head and tried to understand what he’d just said. “You don’t remember?”

   “Correct.”

   “But you remember your name . . .” I wondered aloud, letting my mind wrap around this situation as it slowly became clearer. Junho had to have been in some sort of accident that made him lose his memory, at which point he wandered into the woods and I then I found him.

   “I do not,” Junho said and I looked up at him. “I gave myself this name.”

   “But why ‘Junho’ then? It must important to you if you can remember the name, if not anything else.”

   He simply smiled, rather mockingly for someone who had lost his memory and was now sitting in a stranger’s house. “That is incorrect.” I raised an eyebrow at him and he set his spoon down and explained carefully. “When you carried me inside, a synapse in your brain triggered a ghost memory of you carrying a wounded boy in elementary school . . . his name was Junho. As you were reminded of this, I chose this name because you were familiar with it; it would be soothing to you.”

   How the hell did he know that?

   “I completely forgot about that.” I murmured in a slight daze, the irrational part of me failing to warn myself that this boyish man sitting it my kitchen could be dangerous and quite possibly crazy.

   Junho shook his head softly. “That is also incorrect . . . you only thought you forgot.”

   I jumped up from the table and took a few steps back, looking at him with wide eyes before taking a few deep breaths and pacing around. How could he possibly have known that lost, tiny little detail about my life just by touching me? I hadn’t noticed that Junho had also stood up until I felt his warm hand on my back, his quiet voice just a moment after.

   “Have I frightened you?” I looked at Junho when he asked, his brow was furrowed in concentration as he rubbed small comforting circles on my back. “Your heart rate is elevated . . . I believe you are suffering anxiety and I fear that I am the cause, I apologies for this, I did not wish it.”

   The oddest thing is that I felt so much better listening to him. A simple, his hand on my back, the kindness in his eyes, made the world stop momentarily and nothing else matter. When I calmed down enough to breathe normally, Junho’s lips curved beautifully and he smiled that same smile at me that he had shown in the bath.

   I stared at the beauty of it, memorizing every line in his face and letting it imprint into my mind. There was no way he could be normal. “What are you?”

   Junho lifted his hand and curled his fingers, opening them as he watched the function carefully. “For now, I am human.”

   “For now?” I questioned.

   “Yes,” He watched me closely and then added. “Everything is temporary.”

   Temporary. For some reason, I felt like he already knew that I understood that well. That everything in my life was temporary, momentarily filling me with a joy and then vanishing into the mist of time, as if it was never there at all.

   “What were you before you were human?”

   “A sentient prokaryotic nano-organism living on a cluster of photons in the outer exosphere.”

   I wasn’t a scientist, but I wasn’t stupid either, though almost none of that made sense. “Exosphere? You mean like in space?” I motioned with my thumb upwards, unable to really believe what I was hearing.

   Junho only nodded and I threw my hands up in defeat, my pacing started up again and I ran a hand through my hair as I tried figure out whether to believe him. I looked to him for further reassurance and found no hint of falsity in his eyes. He truly believed what he was saying.

   “As I said before, you will not comprehend.”

‘So is this guy crazy, or what?’ Taecyeon asked over the phone and I looked around to see if Junho was watching me before murmuring into the receiver that I held to my ear.

   “I don’t think – I don’t know . . . He’s just . . . different.” I sighed.

   ‘Well does he look crazy? What’s he like?’ He asked and I bit my lip, glancing around again just to make sure.

   “Honestly, he looks like a ing model . . . one of those city types, perfect body, perfect face, absolutely gorgeous. But he acts weird – he’s obviously intelligent – but he’s got this look in his eyes when he sees simple things . . . kinda like he’s never seen it before.” I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. “I don’t know man, it’s weird.”

   ‘He doesn’t remember anything at all?’ Taec questioned and I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me.

   “That’s what he claims . . . I think something happened to him, something bad, so I’m gonna keep him here for a little bit.” I heard him snort at me but it didn’t change my conviction. I knew in my heart that there was more to this boy than meets the eyes, more to the story than what was being shown in the moment, but despite the numerous possibilities of what could happen, I knew that right now he needed me. So why did it feel like I was really the one that needed him?

   “Hey,” I broke the silence that fell on the line and Taecyeon hummed in acknowledgement. “Can you ask around, see if there’s anyone missing in one of the neighboring towns? Keep a look out for anything out of the ordinary . . .”

   ‘Will do, chief . . . in the mean time, you should probably get back to your guest, before he disappears on a photon cluster.’ I rolled my eyes at the chuckle that came from the that was my best friend and then sighed. “Whatever, see you in the morning, jerk.”

   I hung up the phone and felt an eerie silence in the house. My feet moved me down the hall and up the stairs, panic filling me more and more with every step up. “Junho?” I called out and received no answer. Quickening my steps, I cut the corner at the top of the stairs and stopped dead in my tracks to see him standing in the middle of the hallway, staring intently at a picture frame that hung on the wall. My worries faded, but concern still lingered as he didn’t move until I got close to him and tugged on his shoulder. “Hey, I was calling you . . .”

   He lifted his head to look at me, reaching up and pointing his finger to the glass, and the picture that rested behind it. “Who is that?”

   I didn’t have to look closely, I’d passed that picture every day and I remembered taking it with the old film camera that I salvaged from the garage one summer in my teenage years. Even still, I looked at it. My eyes gazed the image of that person’s smile glued onto the paper in various shades of black and white.

   “That’s just a guy I used to know.” I finally said.

   “Do you not know him anymore?” When I shook my head, Junho frowned. “Why?”

   It sort of felt like I was explaining this to a child, but I had to remind myself that Junho understood things in a way that I couldn’t ‘comprehend’, as he would say. “He went away a while ago . . . He wanted a better life.”

   Junho’s face softened and he looked back at the picture before turning to me. “He has been deeply embedded into your prefrontal cortex.” I raised an eyebrow and he smiled, though I don’t know what he found so humorous about talking way over my head. “Your long term memory database.”

   I stared at him and he just stood there, watching me back with absolutely no awkwardness in his demeanor. “Yeah, he is embedded pretty deep there.”

   “I will sleep now; my body has reached its limit to function normally under exhaustion.” He excused himself and walked towards the guest room – my old bedroom – and I tried to take my eyes off the twitch of his hips as his body swayed under the change of old clothes I had given him.

   “Goodnight.” I said right before he closed the door and he paused, looking at me questionably for a moment.

   “Are you afraid the night will have negative aspects to it?”

   Was he serious? Unable to stop the carefree laughter that fell from my lips, I shook my head and looked at the floor, tickled by how adorably innocent he seemed. “No, it’s just something we say,” I thought about how to word it, oblivious to the fact that I had started referring to people other than him as ‘we’, as if he wasn’t one of us. “Like bidding someone a pleasant rest.”

   Junho nodded, flashing a small hint of that smile that I wanted to see over and over again. “Goodnight, as well.” He disappeared into the room and I almost lost it, right there. Staring at the closed door until the light coming from the crack at the bottom turned dark, I went to my own room to turn in for the night with a heavy mind and even heavier heart. I must have been crazy, because I seemed to feel Junho’s presence even as I sat in my bed.

Greetings from the Author:
Well...I hope you guys are more intrigued by the story now.
It's coming along...slowly. But that's the whole feel of this story.
Look forward to more updates and please, don't be shy on the comments, I need to know how you guys all feel about this story so far<33333