9 :  o n e  t o o  m a n y

Donghae uncapped the carton of milk he'd found in the fridge and sniffed it.

"Oh god, gross."

He scrunched his nose and tossed the carton into the bin and continued searching the kitchen for something, anything, consumable. It had only just occured to him that in his mad spontaneous rush of booking a ferry ticket and packing for Busan almost immediately after waking up that day, he had completely skipped breakfast. It was nearly half past three in the afternoon, and he was famished. He'd even contemplated dropping by Kyuhyun's next door to eat but decided against it upon knowing that the man wasn't home. He raided the last of the kitchen's cabinets, chancing upon a tin of Danish butter cookies hidden in the back of one of the shelves. Grabbing his newfound treasure, he pushed the cabinet door close and walked into the living room, slumping into the sofa.

Donghae propped his legs onto the coffee table, shifting in his place before taking off the lid off the tin of cookies. He gasped.

"What the—"

Instead of discovering a tin full of savoury, or more likely, stale butter cookies like the picture on the lid had promised his starving being, he had, instead, opened some sort of literal Pandora's box to the past. He rubbed his thumb along the slightly rusted rim of the opened tin, staring at the items nestled within its frame. There was a silver locket necklace; its pendant was made of some sort of metal that had been carved into a pair of wings that overlapped each other, forming a heart, a small photo album only slightly larger than the size of a namecard, some loose beads and paperclips, and a frayed letter. He set the tin onto his lap, first picking out the locket. His fingers traced the grooves in the carvings of the pendant carefully. Donghae then split the locket apart, unveiling a tiny photograph on each side of the open locket. Both photographs were sepia-coloured; on the left was a picture of a man slightly older than Donghae, whose features were identical to his, and on the right, a lady of around the same age with dark, wavy hair, smiling. He brought the locket closer to his face, inspecting the photographs at close range. Nothing. Neither of the photographs rang a bell to him. You ing useless piece of , he scolded himself mentally, prompting a pang of guilt to spread throughout his insides. Remember something, god damn it! For some odd reason unbeknownst to him, he felt like he should've recognised the strangers in the photographs. Instinct instigated him to put on the necklace, and so he did. He was determined to form a connection with whoever those people were, so he figured he'd leave the necklace on until he could ask Kyuhyun about them later. Maybe Kyuhyun knew something he didn't.

Next, Donghae picked up the photo album, cracking it open to its first page.

"Huh," he huffed, feigning surprise.

There on the first page of the miniature album, was a photograph of the same couple that was featured in the locket. In it, the couple huddled close together, and in between them was a baby boy, swaddled in some sort of blanket. Donghae stared at the photograph, unfeeling. Hypothetically, he had figured out who the couple probably was, and he was sure he knew who the baby was. He continued browsing through the album. More photographs of the same couple followed, with occasional appearances by the baby, who grew bigger with every page he flipped. He knew it was him. He just knew.

About two-thirds of the way through, Donghae closed the album abruptly, a strange thought crossing his mind. He laid the album back in the tin and covered it, before placing the tin in the duffel bag that he had lugged to Busan with him. He stood up and crossed his arms, staring intently at the door of one of the rooms diagonally to his left while biting his lip. The pace of his heartbeat picked up.

All those years ago, after he had gotten discharged from the hospital and Kyuhyun's family took him in, Donghae had only returned to the house several times to retrieve items that were supposedly his from his bedroom, accompanied by Kyuhyun. There was one room in the house, however, that he had never, not once, stepped into since returning home from the hospital. His parents' bedroom door had always been shut, at least in his memory, and he had always made the conscious effort to avoid it. He never felt prepared to face whatever was behind that door, especially since he had been and still was recovering from the post-accident trauma. Even if he had wanted to, Kyuhyun wouldn't have let him.

" it." He cussed, walking towards the room. Kyu can't stop me now.

Standing in front of the bedroom door, Donghae put his hand on the doorknob. He hesitated; his thoughts beginning to race. What if? What if? What if I regret? What if I can't take it? What if I find out too much? What if I wish I hadn't gone into the room at all? What if the past is something I don't want to remember? But what if it is? I won't know unless I do it, right? But , what if I regret? What if I—

Donghae wrapped his hand around the knob tightly, took a deep breath and turned—click!—but the door wouldn't budge. It was sealed shut and locked from the inside. He tried again, only to be greeted by another audible click of resistance from the door's built-in mechanism. He stepped backwards, heaving a loud sigh. Maybe it just isn't meant to be, whined his conscience. He ran his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes. C'mon, Lee Donghae. Think of something.

Then he had an idea. He quickly fetched two paperclips from the cookie tin he'd found earlier and bent them out of shape with his teeth. He inserted one of the paperclips into the keyhole with his left hand and applied slight pressure, before pushing the other paperclip into the top of the lock's keyhole with his right. He began to scrub the plug inside the door's built-in mechanism with his makeshift pick. Donghae pressed his ear against the door, listening for any sounds that would point him in the right direction. After several scrubs of the pick, he heard a click. He turned the knob. Bingo. The door creaked open.

"My dumb Youtube video binge-watching spree didn't go to waste after all, huh, Kyu?" he said aloud, greeted only by a deafening silence in return.

A familiar scent escaped the room, raising the hairs on the back of Donghae's neck. He squeezed past the door and froze like a deer in headlights barely three steps into the bedroom. For some reason, he felt like he was trespassing. It didn't feel like the room had once belonged to anyone related to him at all. Instead, it felt like he had callously intruded a stranger's private space, and that thought alone flushed his cheeks pink. Blanketed in an odd mix of awkwardness and bewilderment, he looked around, moving only his eyes. The walls of the room were covered in a dull floral wallpaper, unlike the rest of the house, which had been painted white. A mahogany brown cuckoo clock had been mounted in the centre of the wall that faced a queen-sized bed. The bed itself was made; its pure white pillows, bedsheet and duvet had been arranged neatly and left untouched. It suddenly occured to Donghae that the bed had probably been in that same state since the family last left the house together seven years ago. What a thought. He approached the wardrobe at the far end of the room and opened its doors, raiding it with a hunger for clues to his forgotten past. There was nothing interesting in it, apart from a myriad of clothing hanging from a railing, and a few piles of clothes folded neatly at the bottom of the wardrobe. He closed the wardrobe and advanced towards the dresser next to the bed instead, puling its drawers open one by one. An insane amount of semi-used cosmetics filled the first drawer, followed by a second drawer filled with an assortment of jewellery. It looked to him that everything had been thrown into the drawer with no regards whatsoever to whether attempting to organise a bit more would've made finding one's items a tad bit easier. Eomma must've been one hell of a vain, disorganised mess. It's no wonder I'm just like that.

He knelt down and opened the third and last drawer. Contrary to the first two drawers, the contents of this one were a bit different; there were three compartments consisting of various items. In the first compartment was a stack of opened letters. Donghae lifted the stack and swiftly flipped through them. Probably just bills or something, he concluded, judging by the formality in the way the addresses had been printed onto each envelope. He returned the stack of letters to its original position, shifting his attention to the next compartment.

"What do we have here," he muttered under his breath, picking up a small tiger cub doll that fit snugly in his hands.

He rose slowly, glossing his eyes over the doll as he turned it over. He dusted its fur with his fingers, smiling. Cute. Donghae began rubbing the doll against his cheek fondly, breathing in its scent. Something about it felt so familiar and comforting to him, but he couldn't put his finger on it, and then—

Sweetheart—Donghae's head began to—you're too old for soft toys—throb in excruciating pain as he—I'll keep this for you, okay?—dropped the doll and threw his head into his hands, swaying unsteadily.

"Stop! Stop! Please STOP!" He yelled, hitting his head repeatedly in a desperate attempt to overcome the throbbing ache.

In his subconscience, he saw the silhouettes of a woman and a man towering over him. He could barely make out the woman's smile, but he knew who it was. She reached her hand out, still smiling, and he saw his own hand reaching for hers. Just as their fingers were about to make contact, the illusion evanesced, and Donghae returned to reality, falling onto the bed. He scrambled about, picking up the doll; the only tangible part of his past that he had at the moment, apart from the locket around his neck; clutching it to his chest. Curling into a fetul position, he started to cry. What began as a soft murmured cry grew gradually louder, and in minutes Donghae was sobbing hysterically into the little tiger cub he'd found in the drawer earlier. He cried for what felt like hours, both perplexed and frightened at how his body reacted physiologically to encountering pieces of his past.

"I d-don't—" he sobbed aloud, "k-know what's happen-n-ning to me!"

He didn't know if he regretted entering the forbidden bedroom that belonged to his late parents, or if he would've preferred to not know anything from his past at all, rather than to hurt like he did now. It hurts. It hurts. He repeated to himself in his mind as if to validate the physical and emotional pain that he felt. Everything hurts. And so he laid there, crying loudly making no attempt to move, hoping someone would find him and embrace him, or that no one would ever find him at all.