“We don’t have a paleontology class. Chan would never shut up about it if we had.”

Jun scratched his head at the sign next to the classroom door. But that wasn’t the only weird one. Minghao walked along the hallway, reading the signs. “Advanced Chemistry. We only have introductory chemistry. I wonder why they canceled that subject. Modern literature, creative writing, information economics, forensics. Man, there must have been a lot of budget cuts. We don’t have any of these.”

While the wizard read more subjects, Jun kept scratching his head, lost in the motion. He knew he was forgetting something. He felt it might have been important, but for the life of him, he couldn’t even recall what it related to.

Perhaps if the other boy’s abs weren’t uncovered he might find a moment to focus. The slender waisted, tightly muscled stomach was practically begging to be stared at.

“History?” Minghao came back from the other end of the corridor. “That seems like a strange subject to cancel. Why don’t we have a history class?”

“No idea. But we can ask the headmaster once we made it out of here.”

Opening the door to a random class room, the boy paused in case some unseen creature was waiting to attack. As nothing happened, he waved Minghao to enter. He made sure nothing was following them and entered behind the wizard.

There was a remnant in the air. A feeling of melancholy. A smell of old things. Parchment, stale crackers, thick sweaters and that weird odor grandparents have. The room must have been full of ghosts - recently. Or perhaps they were still present, hiding. Unless they had oozed through the walls and were now roaming the school's periphery.

Jun saw no reason to frighten Minghao with that knowledge, not least because ghosts weren’t going to be much of a threat anyway.

They made it to a window. Even through the dust it was clear that they didn’t lead to the outside that should have logically surrounded the building. What they saw was the manastorm. An odd twist in space, stretching and compressing the vision until it left nothing to interpret. There was no darkness, no void – it was nothingness. The part of the brain that registered input from the eyes treated the windows as nonexistent.

Jarring, to say the least. Whenever Jun fixated his eyes on a spot where he logically knew that a window should be, he saw a wall. Only in the corners of his vision was he able to spot the other, far out windows. Moving his eyes at all caused them to disappear from his sight, while the original – now seen from the corners – was suddenly present. It was a blind spot hunt. And there was no way to win.

“I think I know what’s going on.”

The wizard looked at his elder, expectantly. “You do?”

“It’s a nexus. I don’t know how it’s being kept stable, or how it can exist for so long or envelop an entire building or… anything really. But it’s the only thing that can look like this.”

“Does that help us?”

“If we find the source we can turn it off. Something, or someone, is controlling this storm and it has to be at the center. You said up, right?”

“Yes, up and to the middle of the wing.”

They searched for a staircase, walking closely together, surrounded by three light orbs. Jun had de-summoned his dadao, instead brushing his hand against the younger’s. He felt the tension of his friend and wondered if there was anything he could say. He couldn’t promise they were save, because it was evident that they might not be. Any other statement seemed equally vacuous, whatever language he could use to utter it.

As their sleeves brushed against each other for the umpteenth time, Jun looked over, his eyes lingering for a second on the frowning face – and for a split second on the hard abs. He took the younger’s hand in his, squeezing it to say what he couldn’t otherwise express.

Arriving at a staircase without incident, the boys made their way onto the second floor. The feeling that he was forgetting something important, kept niggling at the back of Jun’s mind. It was infuriating.

At the first intersection they turned left, after Minghao had confirmed that stray mana particles were pulled in that direction. The pressure on the vampire’s skin increased slightly, as they were nearing the source.

“Where now?”

Minghao wiggled his wand again. “Left again.”

It only took a few steps to get to the next intersection. There, they turned left. And so they did at the following one.

“Um, did we just make four consecutive left turns?”

The boys looked at each other. The epiphany dawned quickly and simultaneously. They were walking through an illusion. A labyrinth designed to trap people or keep them from the center. Whichever it was, the solution was the same.

Jun shoved his mind into the metaphysical walls around and let his intuition guide him to the cracks he could use to chisel away at the construct. Minghao pulled and plugged on the strings that made up the manaflux and figured out which one’s his wand could move around. Holes in their vision widened, showing a similar, but not identical corridor behind the illusory one.

With a loud crack, the labyrinth collapsed, leaving the lost students stranded on the real upper floor. Minghao hugged the vampire tightly. When Jun didn’t react, the boy let go, somewhat bashful. In truth Jun had just been momentarily overwhelmed, unwilling to touch his friend in the almost shirtless region, where his hands would have naturally grabbed onto.

They continued walking in silence, sans handholding. Every now and then, Minghao confirmed that they were still closing in on the source. After several minutes of circling around an area, they concluded that they must still be following the wrong path.

“Somehow we don’t get any closer,” Minghao said. “We’re walking around it. But I see nothing here. Even if we cross the area we only… wait, the upward drift is still there.”

“You mean... there’s an attic? Only the main building has one. The outer wings don’t go that far up.”

“Then, maybe the roof?”

“Good thinking. Let’s look for a staircase up.”

“Why so complicated? We can blast through.”

Jun pondered the option. There didn’t seem to be any monsters around in the upper floors. Perhaps the risk was acceptable. “Lead the way, wiz boy.”

Repeating the trick from the basement, Minghao turned the ceiling into a wax-like substance, slowly dripping down until a comfortable opening had been created. Letting the rubble solidify again, he held onto the vampire, by hopping on his back.

Jun lifted off, carrying his own weight and the wizard’s – piggyback this time – onto the roof.

With the manastorm all around them, it was nauseating to look at the un-sky. The brain failed to substitute the massive blind spot with anything interpretable. Debris formed a hip high maze all over the roof. In the center of it was a nest off metal rods and concrete slabs.

A snake reared its deformed purple head. Towering a meter or two over the boys it swayed back and forth. The massive snake was grossly disproportioned, the huge horn covered face too big to be held up by the frail body without magical support.

Jun remembered.

“It’s a demon. An abstract demon! It eats memories.”

Next to him Minghao was aiming his wand, beginning to cast the nightmare catcher charm.

The vampire’s mind went into overdrive. Everything made sense now. The zombies, powered by the human emotions related to forgetting. The fact that nobody knew about the north east wing. It had been deleted from everybody’s minds when the demon had enveloped the building. The classes, both of regular and obscure subjects, had never been canceled. The staff and students just forgot that they had ever been there. No one remembered history ever being taught at the school.

“Minghao, we have to-“

Staring right at Jun, the demon opened its toothless mouth disturbingly wide, almost rolling its jaws behind its head. A warty tongue flailing through the swooshing air.

It ate.

Jun forgot.

A vampire found himself alone on a roof, facing a demon. He recognized it as a Memory Eater. Good thing it hadn’t begun to eat yet. Since nobody else was there to consider, he shadowstrode. Becoming intangible to the hellish beast in the twilight of the shadow dimension, he was safe from losing any memories. Nothing to worry about anymore. Now, where was he and how had he gotten here?

Irritated by some noise he looked for the source. Some blonde boy. A cinnamon role of a mortal wizard who was shooting rapid-fire attack spells that the vampire knew wouldn’t do a thing. Silly human.

The handsome cinnamon roll-ish boy was yelling for someone named Jun and swearing in Chinese. Weren’t they in Korea? The vampire felt like he was forgetting something. He looked down on himself. He hadn’t lost any limbs. Arms and legs all attached. He wasn’t bleeding either.

Determined not to let the fighting sounds in the background distract himself, he took a closer look. It was technically possible that the demon had injured him and eaten the memory of the wound, so he would bleed to death, never knowing anything was wrong. His legs were fine, his wasn’t even bruised, he had ten fingers, his dark heart was still beating, his abs were- Abs!

He had been thinking about abs a lot lately. But not his. Whose abs had he forgotten? There had to be a face connected to it. And a name. Who was it?

“Mee… Mim…Mint? Ming? Minghao!”

The cinnamon roll wizard boy. The one fighting. Who was he? His brother? His friend? His dongsaeng? His hyung? His lover? His boss? His husband? His butler? His uncle?

How had he forgotten that he had accompanied someone? Of course, the demon must have eaten already.

The vampire concluded that he was supposed to join the fight. Something kept him from getting a signal out. Did he have a weapon bound to himself? He didn’t know, but he tried to reach into abstract swordspace anyway. A black dadao slid into his outstretched hand. Nice.

There was one problem. He would have to attune himself to do any damage to the demon. But with some of his memories already inside the beast’s belly, he’d cause a backfire that would injure his metaphysical essence. He needed something to channel his mind through that wasn’t him. But there wasn’t anything he knew around here. Except…

“Minghao?”

“Jun!”

Jun? Was that his name? He didn’t remember having this one, but he didn’t remember having a different one either.

“Yes, Minghao. I think… Sync up with me.”

There was no time to talk. The demon was already about to eat – presumably a second time – and the wizard boy would be its target. Jun had to guess the attunement. But they had to think of each other as part of the same relationship for it to work. It was now or never. If he picked the right emotic state he was golden, if he picked the wrong one he wouldn’t do more than tickle the serpentine creature.

Brother? Uncle? Boss?

...Boyfriend!

Winding up for a second, the vampire by the name of Jun loaded the attuned energy of his own and the wizard’s mana into the hit. He swung.

Black lightning - un-bright like a dark sun - burst from the dadao in an arc. What he had hoped to slice the snake’s throat did so much more. It took a fraction of a second and nothing was left of the creature – or the roof.

The demon exploded so hard that for the next few days, Jun kept re-remembering things he hadn’t even forgotten yet.

“For rediscovering the lost and forgotten north-east wing, restoring the memories of many people including me, successfully fighting one of the most dangerous and notoriously undefeatable demons of hell and bravely battling hordes of undead, it is my pleasure to hereby award Wen Junhui and Xu Minghao the highest honor our school can give: Student of the week. History classes start on Monday.”

The two boys sighed as the collective studentship’s unenthusiastic applause brought the headmaster’s speech to an end. Somehow Jun’s hand had found Minghao’s.

“Hyung?”

“Yes?”

“If I find another strange new door that shouldn’t be there, stop me.”

“Don’t worry, I will do just that. I’ll tie you up if I have to.”

Minghao yawned. “I need sleep now. I think I got a chunk from that demon hitting me in the head and now I’m having memories that aren’t even mine.”

“Join me in my coffin, maybe? It’s fluffy and quiet.”

“I’d love to. But Chan heard of that paleontology class we discovered. He enlisted my help to convince the headmaster to bring it back.”

“See you later then,” Jun said, squeezing the wizard’s hand one last time before letting go. “Don’t worry, I’ll still be there. I won’t forget you.”

[What to say? I know Jun is usually very flirty, but I was already stretching my comfort limit with how ualized I made the cinnamon roll. This pairing is a first for me. I wanted to try my hand on some china-line shipping. Did I succeed? You tell me.]

PS: If you somehow stuck with me through the entire Adore Me sequence, you have my gratitude. This is more than I've ever written and I wouldn't have believed that I could do it.

And... I'm starting a short little Meanie couple story. It has no connection to Adore Me. It's called The Dead Life. Take a look if you like.