C5: I Am Not Me

We end up at my place, Taeyong sitting opposite me at my kitchen table. He sighs and asks if I’m ready to which I nod in reply.

He sits up straighter in his chair. “You and Doyoung dated since like the middle of junior year, it was beyond obvious you two would end up together. Jaehyun and I could tell long before it happened.” He smiles at me. “You two were like glued to each other’s hips. One couldn’t go anywhere without the other. So naturally you both signed up to go to the same college, we all ended up at the same place coincidentally.” He snorts at us. “We graduated high school and prepared for college. But a month or so after high school ended something happened.”

I lean on the table ready to hear him.

He swallows glancing away nervously. “Your parents got into an accident, and neither of them made it.” He pauses watching my face fall. They did? Was that why I did it then? “I don’t know if you remember but you and your parents were super close. You were devastated. You started shutting people out, Jaehyun and I rarely saw you. But you let one person in, Doyoung.”

He takes a deep breath. “Jaehyun and I figured you’d be okay eventually, because if Doyoung was by your side then you could get through anything we thought. And just when I thought nothing could get worse, it did.” He bites his lip still refusing eye contact with me. “You see I have known about your memory thing since the end of freshman year. I haven’t really ever understood it or why you had it. It honestly scared me at times and I didn’t want to believe you when you told me. But you would use it often in high school so it was hard not to believe you. I didn’t particularly think what you did was right but you did help people, Taeil our senior was torn up about losing a family pet that had been with him since childhood. So you erased his memories of him. Or the time Jaehyun had that stalker junior year, you stopped the stalker from potentially hurting him by erasing the stalker’s memories of him.”

I let out a low breath.

“So seeing what you could do made it all more real.” He nods to himself. “You and I would disagree all the time about your use of it. And I never wanted you to explain to me how you did it. I honestly hated what you could do.” His eyes dart up to mine and they seemed dull. It seemed odd but maybe the story was that bad?

“So then what?”

“So then it happened.” He rests his hands on the table not looking at me again, but at his hands. “Doyoung had finally got you out of the house one night. You went back to his, I’m guessing you maybe were going to spend the night?” He shrugs, his fingers joining together. “It happened that night.” He pulls his hands off the table and into his lap. My eyes watching him intently.

I squint. “So you don’t know exactly how it happened?”

He firmly shakes his head no. “I didn’t want you to tell me. Like I said, it scares me, what you can do. I seriously hate it.” He turns away from me. “I thin