“Taemin?”

What? What do you want this time?

“Taemin, it’s me. Minho.”

I know it’s you.

“Do you remember me?”

Of course I ing –

“Do you remember – remember us?”

Of course I remember.

I may not remember much when it comes to unimportant affairs, nor may I remember daily trivialities. I don’t remember my fifteenth birthday – or my sixteenth or seventeenth or any of them actually – I can’t remember what I had for breakfast five minutes ago. It’s a ing curse. My mind always reels; my memory is a dusty chalkboard, and today the duster has decided to make an appearance, after years of unwanted desires and excruciating yearning.

Does he think that my depression has claimed all of me – my entirety? What ignorance; he never cared about me, or made any lasting effort to. Everything was by the book. My blood boils, but I don’t speak. When he walked into this decaying excuse of a room, what did he feel? Pity, disgust, scorn?

“Taemin – Taemin please talk to me –”

Minho is the only thing I’ve tried to forget. He made me forget, but he can’t – won’t – be forgotten, like a hideous splash of paint on a crumbling wall of more crevices and filth. I don’t want that.

I recall everything of him in detail more acutely than daylight. The way he held me down on the bed, three years ago, our breaths laboured and mingled. My fingers traced the contours of his biceps, the chiselled dips of his frame; his scent was so inviting, his breath was minty when he whispered promises, empty and broken, into the shell of my ear. As if they mattered.

Now he looks searchingly into my eyes – “They’re – your eyes are so hollow. They used to sparkle.” I cannot identify the emotion in his voice. It’s foreign. Probably forgot it. He goes on: “You used to sparkle.”

Used to? He never said anything of that sort in the past. He said, just two pathetic months into our relationship and ten years into our friendship, that we couldn’t be together – because we were wrong, we were men – no – you’re just a boy, you’re so immature, Taemin – and his words were like swords, sharpened and steeled, dipped into white-hot flames: They hurt more than anything. I remember the way his lips moved; how he enunciated each word, chastising till the last syllable.

The razor blades can be pressed into my skin until my head spins from the sheer smell of blood, but the scars on my body can never match up to the ones he’s left on my heart. My chest tightens.

He’s the one who doesn’t remember. He does not recall the way our fingers entwined themselves together gently, the way our palms touched in their lukewarm company, or the way he laughed, genuine and charming, over our honey-glazed meals.

The way he looks at me tells me that no, he does not think – does not reminisce about the past. Not anymore. His implorations are meaningless –

“Do you remember?”

But I remember, Minho. Of course I remember.

A/N- Oops okay I think I got a little carried away with this. It could have been a oneshot, but I figured that would make it too long. So in the end, this story is longer than the typical drabble, and shorter than the average oneshot. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! :)