Word count : ~2.8k

Pairing           : Jongin×Kyungsoo

Summary      : The thoughts Kyungsoo had forgotten were kept in a box.

 

 

Moonlight drifts into Kyungsoo’s dream, cold metals getting warm under the pressure of his palms, and a delighted scream fills into his ears as cold wind wraps around his skin. He turns around, and the smooth floor transforms into cold sheets.

 

When he opens his eyes, the sprinkled dots of stars and the various shades between black and dark gray are replaced by a ceiling, suddenly looking suffocating because it’s meters too low than the night sky he had longed of. Still in dazed state, he sits up on his bed, not even bothered to yank his worn off blanket away. His eyes shift slowly to the small window at the end of his narrow bedroom. It’s opened, and he doesn’t remember why he had left it to be because the harshly cold air is seeping into his room endlessly; in fact, he feels like he doesn’t remember a lot of things he should’ve remembered.

 

His eyes finally land on the walls at the other side of his bedroom. The walls are mostly covered in green sticky notes jumbled up together, some just got stuck recently, some got taped on. Colored texts, diagrams, numbers, and dates at every top of them. They are filled with things he should remember if he was ever to forget a lot again, which happens rarely these months. The treatment has done well on him, and he doesn’t wake up forgetting again, at least not every morning, and not everything.

 

It’s been months since the last time he needed to check every single one of them to know that they explain how many days have passed for him ever since the last time he could recall it, and what he’s meant to do for the day.

 

He notices a few of empty spots between the notes. They haven’t been occupied for as long as he can recall. It’s actually one of the evidence of his promising progress, but he can’t help that every time he notices them, he feels something is missing, or should’ve been there.

 

=

 

“Why don’t you take a day off?”

 

Kyungsoo looks up from the papers scattered on the table at the very end of the bar. It’s still morning, and the bar is still empty. Minseok gazes down at him, still in his casual wear since it’s still not the opening hour yet. “You mean a night off?”

 

“Not just for tonight. Those papers can wait. Your boss won’t nag at you if you take a day off.” Minseok indifferently reasons, but there’s something quite off to it.

 

Kyungsoo shrugs the suspiciousness away. “He said this novel is due by the end of this week. Which is the day after tomorrow, if I may remind you.”

 

“It feels nice to be reminded of something by you.” Minseok laughs. “But I’m sure your boss will understand.”

 

To think again, his boss had asked something unusual the day before. ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ the editor said. ‘Proof reading the novels you handed me.’ he had answered.

 

Everyone seems to be interested in what he’s doing today.

 

“It’s Friday. Everyone relaxes on Friday.”

 

“Which is why I’ve always been busy every Friday night.”

 

“I’m giving you a chance to run away this week. What do you say?”

 

Kyungsoo doesn’t really know what to do outside of his routine, but since it’s been in a tradition that such luck must not be wasted, he thinks for a while before he sighs and gathers all the papers, carefully stacking them so the pages order won’t be messed up. “Who will replace me tonight?”

 

“You remember Jongdae?”

 

“Ah, your one-night-stand buddy?”

 

“We’ve stepped out of that ty stage last night.” Minseok grins. “I’ll ask him to sing a couple of songs.”

 

“I’m counting on him.” Kyungsoo pats Minseok’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

 

“Thank your boss too.”

 

=

 

In the end, Kyungsoo finds literally nothing to do.

 

Judging by the notes, Polaroids, diary entries and Minseok’s sight about him, he never really had anything to repeatedly do outside of working and singing at the bar. In those eight years that went missing from his memory, he didn’t find the version of himself who enjoyed something in his life. All his days were dedicated to make up for what he lost the moment the day before left him.

 

He never thought about it that much until now.

 

He never even recalled wanting to be something more.

 

Arriving at his apartment building, he immediately hops into the elevator. It’s just recently fixed, technical and interior wise, thus he accidentally inhales too much amount of orange scented air-freshener they had just installed a few days before. He coughs as he wonders why he can’t remember how the elevator was like before the renovation. Was it always this bothersome?

 

He’s met with silence once he closes the door to his unit, just like how the yesterdays went.

 

At least he remembers how his yesterdays went.

 

He drops all of the stuffs from his hand and takes off his jacket. He shivers a bit, noticing that he hadn’t properly closed the window before he left a few hours ago. January has always been cold, according to a memory of him walking home from school with his friend by his side. Baekhyun. Someone good who is already in somewhere better.

 

The wind blows into his room the moment he pushes the window to open wider. A soothing sound of sheets of papers fluttering through the breeze catches his ears, and he turns around, eyes hovering at the green notes on the wall. He doesn’t really need all of them anymore, yet he never found the will to throw them away.

 

He never stopped thinking some tiny pages are missing.

 

But he can’t question the mind who does not remember.

 

He was about to go to the kitchen counter when his foot trips on his own shoe and sends him forward, slamming his weight against the wardrobe, and when he gains his balance again, something drops from its top.

 

A black box, covered in months’ worth of dust.

 

=

 

He remembers a few months ago, when he just got home from the hospital. His boss, who wasn’t his boss at that time, tagged along with him and offered to help him renovate his apartment.

 

He remembers his boss staring at the sticky notes, and he had asked him if he ever read them again. When Kyungsoo said no, he just nodded.

 

When he came back from the bathroom, everything was neat and newly arranged. He thanked his boss, and the said man made a very short talk before he left. Oh Sehun was never a talkative person.

 

He doesn’t remember ever seeing the box.

 

And since the feeling of not being able to recall something makes him nervous, he immediately checks the contents that were spilled out of the abandoned box. There’s an ancient looking notebook, with dog-eared edges and ink stains all over the cover. There are more green sticky notes, ones he never saw before.

 

And surprisingly, a bunch of yellow sticky notes as well.

 

He glances back at the wall behind him. There hasn’t been any other color than green. He can’t remember ever having the yellow ones. His hand reaches for them even without him knowing. The pages are slightly worn out. He pulls one from the bunch and reads the writing on its surface. No dates. No information. Just –

 

‘We talked about ballet. You hummed a tune and my fingers did an arabesque here’

 

- something he doesn’t remember ever doing.

 

‘because your ceiling is too low and I’d rather not hit my head, okay’

 

The handwriting is a little bit messy. Artistically messy.

 

‘here, grand jete onto the floor, fouette en tourant and then sissonne on the back of your hand’

 

Had he learned ballet sometime along the way?

 

‘Pas de valse fast up your arm and you smiled’

 

Did he ever smile because of something so trivial?

 

Or did someone ever make him happy enough to smile?

 

Kyungsoo puts down the note and takes another one.

 

‘This is where you undressed me’

 

He throws the note away in shock. Wondering what on earth he did before that note was made, he takes another one and reads it out loud.

 

“This is where I undressed y-“ he chokes and throws the note again. His stomach churns in a very unpleasant way.

 

Someone was there, in his missing years.

 

=

 

His hands tremble with the new revelation.

 

Someone was really there. Someone he can’t remember. Someone neither Sehun nor Minseok ever told him about.

 

He takes the notes and lines them one by one on the floor. He reads from the one at the left end.

 

‘Here you sat, dangling your legs. I put my palm on your kneecap and you bent forward and kissed me first’

 

‘And here I pushed you up against the wall and kissed you really hard (approximately, it was kind of dark) and we thought we should have ’

 

He gulps down the imaginary lump in his throat. Who is this person? The one who he apparently had once shared an intimate night with?

 

‘I leaned on this and read your green sticky notes while you went around cleaning up invisible messes. It came to me that all the green looks like grass, and grass is boring without daisies’

 

He leans back and looks at the wall behind him again. All the notes are green. The ones he just found are yellow.

 

Someone had put another color into his life.

 

‘So I hope you like yellow?’

 

‘Your name is Do Kyungsoo. You have short-term memory loss, antesomething amnesia, so you won’t remember what happened last night. But let me help you out’

 

Someone had helped him to remember his yesterdays.

 

But who?

 

Still with trembling hands, he immediately stands up, disoriented as he looks for his phone. Making a call to the very first person that came in his mind.

 

“Are you done with the proof reading?” Sehun’s voice sounds involuntarily rough as usual. “Because if you are then you can take a day off-“

 

“Someone was here.” Kyungsoo beats him to it. “When I couldn’t remember a lot of things. Someone was here, we were – do you know? Did you get to know?”

 

There’s a silence from the other side. “Where are you?” Sehun asks.

 

“Home.”

 

“I’m coming.”

 

“Just answer my question!”

 

“I will.” Sehun says, surprisingly calmly, as if he had known this would happen. “After I get there. I promise.”

 

The call ends. Kyungsoo feels suffocated inside. He drops his phone as his eyes hover at the notebook. He hesitatingly takes it and opens the cover. Something’s written on the first page.

 

‘Daisies’

 

=

 

‘Here’s to someone the time has stopped for, from someone the time runs too fast for’

 

Kyungsoo’s breath hitches. The first page looks worn out. Weird stains are all over it. Shrugging off the sickening feeling inside his chest, he flips through a few pages. Some of them are totally covered in words, while others only have a few sentences on it.

 

‘He was the perfect object. The most beautiful tragedy. An anomaly that time either hates or loves to deal with, all at once. For those who has too much unappealing memories to carry around, he shall be envied. For those who cherish whatever it is that I don’t really understand about, he is a sad melodrama.’

 

‘He forgets his yesterdays.’

 

‘Such a gift. Can I have a taste?’

 

Kyungsoo flips a few more pages. There’s this one, with the ink smeared a little bit, as if a few drops of some liquid substance had ruined it.

 

‘The perks of being forgotten every day? I can say anything on my head to him without fearing that he won’t look at me the same anymore.’

 

‘The cons? I can’t even say anything when he looks at me, confused, wondering why is a stranger acting like he knows him. He does. He knows. You just don’t know. And it’s not even your fault.’

 

‘I never planned this. All I wanted was to make my last work to be the best piece I’ve ever written. It would be great. A glamorous way to leave this ty place called world. People would yearn for me when I’m not even there anymore. A legacy everyone would talk about for years. I’m sure even my ghost would stay to see it unfolds.’

 

‘He ruined it all for me. He ruined my dreams, and rebuilt it with his own hands and made it a new one. A dream, where he would sit there at the other corner of the bench on his balcony, sipping coffee, staring at my cig with such hatred that would only make me fall harder than I did.’

 

His eyes are burning.

 

Kyungsoo closes the book, turns it around and opens the last page. He can’t take it anymore.

 

‘My name is Jongin.’

 

His eyes widen.

 

‘I’m the writer who lives next door.’

 

‘See you tomorrow, hyung.’

 

He drops the notebook. A ton of weight falls onto his head.

 

‘Don’t forget!’

 

=

 

He presses his head against the floor.

 

And screams.

 

And screams.

 

It hurts to the extent he never reached before. It’s as if a strong wave flows into it, bringing in all the memories that he should’ve kept. Someone. A guy. A face. A beautiful, sunken face. Long black trench coat. The shirt with hand-sewn Pororo print on it that does not go along with the person’s look. Halfway burnt cigarette. Balcony. Metal railing bars.

 

‘Isn’t it terrible? You’re caught in time but time moves on. You can’t remember people coming or leaving. The world diminishes around you while you’re stuck in the center. All of your old friends leave or die and you can’t make new ones. You can’t love. You can’t hate.’

 

He cries. Tears pour down from his eyes like a newly built waterfall.

 

‘And we’ll watch the dusk. I’ll keep singing and you’ll grab my hand, drag me off the roof. We’ll dance together. Laugh. You’ll laugh harder but I’ll laugh longer.’

 

‘Or maybe I’ll give, when you grab my hand and pull me in and kiss me really hard.’

 

Kim Jongin.

 

The writer,

 

who lives next to his apartment,

 

who smokes

 

and sometimes dances.

 

Very melancholic and bitter.

 

Pure and innocent.

 

Indifferent towards pain.

 

Patient.

 

He stands up from the floor, stumbling his way towards the balcony. Looking at the other one at his side. The glass doors are closed.

 

He gets back inside and checks the notes again. As he searches through them, he notices a couple of yellow notes sticking against the back cover of the notebook. He pulls them off and reads them.

 

‘Last night I put my head on this pillow and my arms around your waist. My name’s Kim Jongin. I call you hyung. Yesterday you loved me. Today you’ll love me again.’

 

He turns to the other note.

 

Someone opens the door without knocking.

 

‘And here’s Kim Jongin. Say hello to me?’

 

He looks at the door.

 

“Jongin,” Kyungsoo whispers brokenly, “Jongin,”

 

=

 

“Jongin,” Kyungsoo whispers brokenly, “Jongin,”

 

Sehun doesn’t do anything. He just stands under the door frame, sighing quietly, watching as horror and betrayal swirl thickly in Kyungsoo’s orbs.

 

“Where is he?” Kyungsoo asks carefully. “I remember. I remember him. Where?”

 

Inviting himself in, Sehun walks towards the broken figure, getting on one knee as he observes the mess on the floor. “So you found the box, huh.”

 

“Why did you never tell me? Where is he now?” Kyungsoo repeats. “Please tell me – I can’t remember anything after – I can’t recall what happened to him – is he okay?”

 

Sehun remembers what the doctor had reminded him about. The patient might experience sudden memory recall. The patient might not remember all of the details. The patient might not be able to remember all the events he had spent with someone particular. The patient might not –

 

“He’s away. Far away.”

 

- be able to handle the emotional weight.

 

“W-what?” Kyungsoo whispers in disbelief. “Away?”

 

“His health has been bad, remember?” Sehun smiles. It looks crooked, unnatural, but at least he tried. “He went for a, um, a better treatment. You made him leave to do it.”

 

“When did he leave?”

 

Four years ago. “Actually he left a few weeks before you got into the accident. But don’t worry, I didn’t tell him. You told him that any communication would bother his treatment so I followed your suggestion.”

 

Kyungsoo is severely confused. Nothing seems real anymore.

 

“But hey,” Sehun his lips, “at least you will recognize him once he gets back.”

 

‘If the memory is too overwhelming to handle with, the patient might reject it again and end up forgetting about it again. It’s the brain’s defense system.’

 

“I will.” Kyungsoo says to himself. “I will.”

 

“Yes, you will.”

 

Sehun just hopes his lie will do some wonder.

 

 

[A/N]

 

This was a rendition to Anterograde Tomorrow.