There was a man he saw everyday on his way to work. They always passed each other at the same time, always one step past the midway point of the crosswalk that connected the opposite sides of 52^nd street. His way to work took him up 52^nd and across the street. The man’s direction was always the reverse, across the street and down 52^nd. Monday through Friday.

He would stand on his side of the street, right in front of a bakery that sold an apple beignet that he’d fallen in love with, reach up and press the button for crossing. The man would do the same, although not having to reach as high as Jinki had to, to jam his thumb up against the large silver button. And as the world revolved around an incessant need to stop and go, they would wait.

The occurrence wasn’t anything out of the norm, people passed by each other every day. They would nod in passing familiarity, understanding the grind of waking up early, getting dressed and leaving the house on time, kissing loved ones goodbye, or not, and taking the same path to and from work. It was the monotony they understood, the routine, the equability of a cookie cutter standard.  But they also understood that each day held small pleasantries that could brighten the dullness, if only for a fleeting moment.

This man, in his tailored suit and shiny shoes, looking impeccably groomed and put together, was that little bit of sunshine for Jinki. From what he could tell, and he was by no means a scholar on the stranger, the man didn’t smile often. He held a brooding sort of charm that Jinki could see from his side of the crossway. Honestly, he’d notice it a million miles away if given the chance.

But as time slowed down to those four seconds, as shoulders went shy of touching, the corners of this stranger’s mouth would lift up just enough for Jinki to see. And however rash Jinki’s imagination was when it came to this man, he held some satisfaction in the conviction that maybe, just maybe, Jinki was his dash of sunshine each day as well.

However, no matter how slight and insignificant it was, what made this interaction so special wasn’t strangers and chance meetings, these kind of once in a lifetime incidents that kept reoccurring to the two of them, but to Jinki, it was the energy in it.

You see, Jinki was amnesic.

Following a fall down a flight of stairs, he’d lost a portion of his memory. There were large swatches of blank space where his memory should be. Things he couldn’t recollect, a piece of his personality that was long and gone, dates and times and moments that sat under the surface of murky muddy water.

He’d come to terms with it. It wasn’t like there was much he could do. Therapy sessions, flash cards, listening in on the continuous belaboring of stories he was present for but didn’t feel a part of, a notebook full of reminders, sketches of faces to match names, labels in his yearbook.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t like he was hopeless. He’d recaptured a large bank of his memories as he was proud to say. And to make up for the ones he couldn’t, he’d done enough in the last three years to rebuild, to start from scratch, to make himself anew.  The pain of what was gone was only a scar somewhere in the back of his broken mind.

And to that, every morning, 7:45 a.m. to be exact, right when 52^nd street began to smell like coffee and early morning frustration, when traffic began to build up as the
daily commuters and honking cars began to fill the streets, when he stood at one end of the crosswalk, and his Mr. Sense and Sensibility stood on the other, did he feel something.

It was brief, akin to if someone flashed something in front of you, a word, a picture, and right as it began to make sense, they’d snatch it away. Or if you glared into a bright light for too long and the image burned into your vision. You couldn’t quite make it out, not even if you concentrated and you honed in on the blurry fuzziness of it. Despite your efforts, the ambiguity was still there.

The moment they would cross paths –four seconds where everything in Jinki’s world would disappear outside of this bubble, where the corners of this stranger’s lips would rise in a sort of appreciation, where Jinki was left breathless– would these images flutter in front of him, right outside of his reach and then disappear.

One day, when it made sense, because strangers don’t trigger memories, he’d figure out why.




Ambling down the corridor and into his office, Jinki sighed as he as he fell back into his chair, his kakis still stiff from the cold. Not even seconds after his computer booted up did Jonghyun stick his head into Jinki’s office.

“Jinki-doodle,” he called with sharp attention to annoyance.

“I think I’ve told you not to call me that,” Jinki muttered, his eyes roving over a spreadsheet. “And seeing how your memory is perfect, I find it astounding that you manage to forget every single time.”

“You used to like when I called you that.” Jonghyun pouted childishly but Jinki could hear the humor in his voice.

Instinctively, Jinki glanced up at the picture Jonghyun had taped to his monitor. It was a high school picture eight years past, an ode to performing arts and music sheets and long nights in silence when they would save their voices for recitals. It had “Jinki-doodle” scribbled in black marker under it. It was one of the few things Jinki could remember.

“Don’t you have your own job and the people there to harass?” Jinki laughed at Jonghyun’s offended gasp. “How did you get pass security, anyways?”

“The lady up front likes me,” Jonghyun stated cockily as he took a seat on the edge of Jinki’s desk, knocking over his cup of pens. “I got us a gig.”

Jinki scoffed as he slid the pens back into the holder. “Really,” he drawled. “Let me guess. Kibum’s place. Open Mic.  I’m so excited.”

Jonghyun laughed as Jinki frowned. “Kibum’s place, yes. Open mic, no. We’ll be paid for our talents this time.”

“You said that last time. And the time before that and the time before th–“

Jonghyun slapped down a handful of wrinkled thousand won bills. “Kibum is trying to impress a new investor and he knows the kind of crowd we draw, so,” and he held out arms out wide as if the space between them was all he needed to convince Jinki,  “we sing, we get paid. It’s almost like free money.”

Jinki’s frown deepened because there was no such thing as free money, just free labor, no matter what Kibum had convinced Jonghyun of. As he opened his mouth to press that point, his phone began to ring. Sensing Jinki’s impending busyness, Jonghyun snatched a pen out of the holder and rushed to scribble down the time of their set. Jinki began to delve into the wonders of corporate-level risk management, and as Jonghyun back-peddled out of the office, he mouthed a “be there”.

Jinki waved him off.





Kibum’s cafe wasn’t a run of the mill coffee shop. It was loud and busy with bright colors and splashes of animal prints, eccentric sculptures and out of print books. The odd thing about the whole ordeal was Kibum didn’t even like coffee, he hated it, moreover he hated coffee shops, but he liked the atmosphere he’d created and it easily allowed him to enjoy a clientele that suited his taste. Rich ones. None of it ever made sense to Jinki, how could you promote something you didn’t love, but he remembered his job and was quick to shut up.

The stage was nestled in a corner of the kooky C-shaped café, settled in a way to attract attention, but not so pretentious that it bothered the patrons who wanted their coffee sans entertainment. Jinki pulled his keyboard case along with him as he approached Jonghyun, who was already making himself comfy on a stool.

“You’ve never been one to let me down, Jinki-binki. That’s why I love you,” Jonghyun offered as Jinki set his case down.

Jinki ignored the nickname. Jonghyun had a long list of them and as soon as Jinki coaxed him into erasing one epithet, another one shortly took its place. “Where’s this investor?” He asked as he hoped up on stage.

Jonghyun shrugged. “Beats me.” Jonghyun eyed the bend of the café. “There’s a few minutes before the first set, I’ll go ask Kibum.”

Jinki watched as Jonghyun took a short hop from the stool, weaved in between the patrons crowding around the stage and up to the coffee bar. As he plugged in his keyboard, Jinki noticed the dip of Jonghyun’s frown and the stubborn unimpressed look on Kibum’s face.

He’d known Kibum the longest. From elementary school all the way up to a bona fide adult friendship. Like with Jonghyun, sometimes there were tiny potholes where memories should be, often covered with thin strings of webbing that held everything together. But Kibum and Jonghyun handled Jinki with kid gloves. He would forget a name, a date, maybe a birthday, simple facts that would waft through his mind with blazing unrecognizability. When he would stumble through a memory, they would be there to help him out, gentle reminders of details that Jinki couldn’t wrap his mind around.

He was glad for his friends and their subtle approaches. Where Jonghyun was live and in living color with stories of their past, Kibum was more of a familiar presence, where his actions spoke louder than his words. Where Jonghyun was a detailed tome of everything they’d been through together, Kibum was like a memory itself, wadding through the deep recesses of Jinki’s mind and softly placing the thought there. They worked like ying and yang, an arresting reminder of why they worked so well together, with helping Jinki and with each other.

Ying and Yang also applied to their temperaments. Jinki placed his elbow on his knee, laid his chin in the crevice and watched with frank interest as the two spun into another argument.




What Jonghyun’s words didn’t say, the pinching of his brow and his furious glare did. He was angry, very, but more than that he was confused.  Of all the stunts for Kibum to pull, this was insane. But here Kibum went, stubbornly doing things his way and without consulting him first.

“You could have told me. I’m not the one with the memory problems here.”

“So you could have opened your big mouth and ruined this? Fat chance,” Kibum said tersely as he jammed a thumb to the cash registered monitor.

“This isn’t a surprise birthday party. It’s his ing memory. It’s his past. Don’t you think I should have been informed?” Jonghyun shifted to move into Kibum’s path as he tried to breeze pass him.

“You were informed. Just a few seconds ago, “ Kibum replied with a raised brow. He pushed passed Jonghyun to pick up a pile of receipts, only for the older man to slap them out of his hand.

“Goddamn it, Kibum! This isn’t funny!”

“You’re right. It’s not funny. I’m not even sure it’s ethical. But I’m tired, Jonghyun. I want my old Jinki back. I want him back so bad it hurts. I want him smiling and I want him happy. I want to see him laugh and it not be one of those stupid forced ones. Back when he used to make outrageously unfunny jokes that we never laughed at.”

Kibum bent down to pick up the scattered receipts. “You think just because he has us, he isn’t lonely? That he’s happy? That somewhere in that head of his, he doesn’t miss him, too?” He turned to Jonghyun with a layer of pleading slowing down the bite in his words. “This might just work, Jonghyun. It might. And if does, if this helps, I’m doing it, and I don’t care who has a problem with it.”

Jonghyun sighed and slumped against the bar, his eyes trailing to the corner. He locked eyes with a man, and saw the sadness in them. “And what are we going to do if he does remember?”

Kibum looked up patiently. “We are going to do what we should have done three years ago. Heal the right way. We can’t hide behind this for the rest of our lives.”




After their second set, Jinki noticed the tightness in Jonghyun’s face as he stared at Kibum with an anxiety Jonghyun wasn’t known for. From his position on stage, he couldn’t see much of Kibum at all; the bend of the oddly shaped cafe hid him and the investors from his view. He heard Jonghyun’s sigh, a loud exhale thick with a sour bite of frustration as Kibum rose from the table and made his way towards the stage, his two guests on his heels.

Jinki examined them, used to the habit of separating stranger from friend. The woman was short all around; short stature, short haircut, short cut of her business skirt. She was older with sharp observing eyes, and walked with confidence. Yet, no matter how intimidating she was, her presence was minuscule in the shadow of the man who stood beside her.

“You…”

Six feet of daily four second reciprocal synergy stood there, staring at Jinki as if he were time itself, a life line to constants and stability. The look melted away in between blinks, but Jinki saw, captured, and stored it between the folds of a memory he didn’t take for granted.

It was a funny thing, how time worked. In another world, between 52^nd street and infinity, four seconds felt like forever. Here, time had wings and it flew.

Kibum stood to the left of them; his normal elephantine presence dulled and serious.

“Jinki, Jonghyun. This is Motsumoto Rei from the PCN Group and this is her friend,” Kibum took a moment to glance at Jinki meaningfully, “Choi Minho.”

He committed the name to memory and blinked the fleeting images floating in front of him away as the suavely dressed man took a step forward with his hand extended.

He shook Jonghyun’s hand first, and strangely, Jinki saw no unfamiliarity in Jonghyun’s eyes. They shook hands like they were old friends.

When the man turned to Jinki, the look of lukewarm intimacy that the stranger often reserved for him wasn’t there. In its place was a flit of overwhelming familiarity that knocked Jinki off balance.

He reached across the space but before their hands could met, the stranger spoke warmly. “Hello, Jinki.”

The name, the timbre, the wonted way in which he said the name, blindsided him, smashing into Jinki as a bright flash of pain that thundered under his skull. He staggered, causing the man to reach out to grab him. Jinki instantly snatched his arm away. The touch was hot, molten, and it burned Jinki to the bone.

The rough action had Jinki fumbling to keep his balance, and this Minho, the name fresh in his mind, reached out again. Jinki hands shot up to stop him. “Don’t!...Don–“

The ceiling of Kibum’s shop was the last thing he saw before he out.



‘Sensory recollection’ is what his doctor called it. The ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people, triggered by direct exposure to the five senses. When the previously experienced event (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste) is re-experienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals.

It’s how he relearned most of Jonghyun. Through songs. The younger man sang to him in the hospital, every night without fail, his guitar laid across his lap, his thumb strumming the notes to a song that Jinki wrote his senior year in college.

He’d relearned Kibum mostly through touch. Hugs, plenty and plenty of hugs, kisses on the forehead, holding hands. Embraces that calmed him when Jinki panicked, when he tried to remember something and he couldn’t do it. Hands that held his shaking ones, looks that comforted him when he felt low.

The accident changed them.  Jinki became the center of Kibum and Jonghyun’s –and on occasion, Taemin, although rare – world, almost like a child. And although he resented his younger’s friends coddling him like he was helpless, suffocating him with their ever present presences, Jinki could help but feel appreciative of the depth of their sincerity. Now they moved in tandem, an unbreakable force of support and understanding. However, sometimes he wished there was a border to where caring for him stopped them from making decisions for him.

He wasn’t helpless. Just a little broken.




Hours later, the pain that had immobilized him earlier was now just an annoying throb right above his eyes. When he found the strength to get up from Kibum’s bed, he waded into the living to find his three friends, Jonghyun, Kibum and Taemin, sitting around the coffee table. Motsumoto Rei was there as well, her head bent towards Minho as they discussed something in furious whispers.

Jinki cleared his throat and watched five heads turn to him in unison.

“I um…I’m fine. Just a dizzy spell.” He took another step in the room, holding his hands up in a placating manner when Kibum moved to stand. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Minho stood, clearing the distance between them with a steady worried gaze. “I don’t want to take that chance. I wanted to take you to the hospital, but Kibum said you had these often…”

A glance at Kibum and the younger man averted his eyes. “Well, however…pleased, I guess that’s the right word, I am with your concern, it’s actually none of your business.” Minho’s mouth opened just a crack before clamping shut in a thin line of sobriety that stretched to the corner of his lips.

“Uh, actually.” Jonghyun rubbed the back of his neck, a trait Jinki recognized as guilt. “Have a seat, Jinki. We need to talk.”

He hesitated for a slight moment, enough to let the silence crowd in the corner, glaring at all of them, before he walked to the only seat left.

"Ms. Motsumoto Rei isn’t an investor,” Kibum said softly. “She’s actually a developmental psychologist from the PCN Hospital Group in Japan. She’s here to…”

“My memory is fine,” Jinki interrupted through gritted teeth.  “I don’t need another doctor poking around my head convincing you all that I’m more damaged than I really am because I can’t remember a few simple things. Everyone that was a part of my life is here, there’s nothing I need to remem–“

 “–But you don’t remember me.”

Jinki’s head snapped up and he looked across the coffee table to Minho. His head was dipped and his hands were clenched in his lap.

“I don’t know you,” Jinki said simply.  The resounding echoes of Jinki’s statement had a declarative ring to them.

It was a marvelous reaction, watching Minho’s face change, the tightening in the muscles of his jaw, the vein that stood out against his forehead, the lids of his eyes blinking rapidly, as if he were trying to fight off tears. It was heartbreaking, even if he didn’t understand why.

Rei took this chance to speak up. “I am here only as an observant. I’ve studied your case with your doctor and Dr. Gensu agrees. There is a roadblock there, Mr. Lee. A large one, holding your memories hostage like a dam. We move it and everything will realign itself with your mind. The roadblock, we believe, all of us, in fact, is Minho.”

Jinki’s eyes jutted around the room, looking at his friends as they avoided looking at him, the acceptance, the conspiracy. He stood and glared at them angrily before he turned away. “If you guys were going to gang up on me like this, a warning would have been nice.”

They all flinched as the bedroom door slammed shut.




Jinki pulled his jacket around him tighter, wishing that he had the foresight to have dragged his thicker feather stuffed coat out of storage. The wind was whipping around him and through him, cutting like a razor and he had to lean his body a bit sideways to avoid the bite. He mulled up 52^nd, debating stopping by the bakery for a fresh bagel, thinking it could warm his body, maybe his soul with it. So occupied on staying warm that he didn’t realize where he was until long white rectangles greeted him between the layers of his coat.

On impulse, he looked up. He paused, inhaled the cold air into his lungs and released his hesitation through his nose. “You can do this.”

He squared his shoulders as the walk sign lit green and held his head up high as he made his way to the other side of the street. Minho, there in all of his punctual and salient glory, crossed as well.

Four seconds four seconds four seconds and this will all be over. He kept his eyes straight, drew a line in the sand and stayed far right of it as he walked.

When you remove one sense, the remaining senses heighten. It’s a reactionary effect, a survival instinct. So although he avoided Minho burning gaze like his life depended on it, there was nothing Jinki could do as the sandalwood spice prickled along the edges of his olfactory awareness. A flash of a memory blocked his vision and he stuttered to a stop.

When it passed with nothing gained or lost, Jinki opened his eyes. He found Minho there, standing as if the world had melted away and there was only them on this stupid crosswalk, his hard gaze locked on him.

Jinki’s reaction was instant. He pivoted on his heels and turned in the opposite direction, sprinting until he found safety on his side of the street. He doubled over as he fought to catch his breath.

“Jinki.”

He screamed because he expected it to hurt. He expected Minho’s voice to hurt him. But it didn’t. It was warm.  This, however, did not stop a deluge of images, ones he could actually sit and analyze, dissect and make sense of, to flutter behind his lids.

Keen curious eyes from across a university library. A cup of coffee carefully sat beside his stooped form. A timid hello from the opposite sides of a tall bookshelf. 

Jinki didn’t care. He didn’t care if he remembered anything about Minho. He didn’t like surprises, no matter how well they were packaged.

With reflexes he didn’t know he had, he turned hard for the sidewalk, pounding the pavement, weaving in and out of pedestrians’ way as they made their way to work. He crossed streets without checking for lights and he didn’t apologize as drivers slammed on their breaks to avoid hitting him. Jinki didn’t stop until he was at the park. And alone.

Panting, he jogged over to a gazebo sitting in the middle of a rose bush garden and knocked a little of the frost off the wooden bench before taking a seat. He rocked back and forth as his eyes fluttered close and he pushed his hands in between his thighs to warm them up. He just needed God to give him a moment, alone, to think.

An out of breath voice. “I knew you’d come here.”

Apparently, God wasn’t listening.

Jinki groaned loudly, his eyes creeping open as Minho stood at the base of the gazebo, stooped over, an eye squinting as he fought to caught his breath. “How could you possibly know a thing like that?” Jinki spat as he eyed his surroundings, waiting for an opportunity to run again.

“You always come here to think.”

Jinki’s fist clenched between his thighs. “I don’t care what you, or Kibum or Jonghyun say. I don’t care.”

“Jinki, if you would just give me a moment to –“

“NO!” Jinki rushed to stand. ”I don’t know you! I’ve never seen you before in my life. But my head, it keeps flashing pictures of you. Pictures I’ve never seen and I want it to stop! My heart…” he crouched low as he searched for words that he knew didn’t make sense, “I miss you! I miss you and I don’t even know who you are!”

“You…you miss me?” Minho questioned, his voice raw. He took a step forward, his eyes searching Jinki over.

Jinki noticed his advancing steps with wide frightened eyes stare and stumbled back, away from him, falling back on his hands. “WHO ARE YOU?!” Jinki cried.

Minho stopped and held out his hands helplessly. “I’m me,” he answered as if that would make all the pieces of the puzzle fit somehow. When he was greeted with a blank stare, he stopped to clear his voice. “I am…was...your fiancé.”

“My-my WHAT?”

“We met in college. Kibum and Jonghyun, they introduced us. We dated for...like forever.” Minho’s looked powerless as Jinki features hardened over.

“No.” Jinki shook his head hard, standing up. “No. You’re lying,” he murmured before he charged out of the gazebo.




Kibum raised his bare foot from up under the covers and nudged Jonghyun with it. When the older man didn’t respond, Kibum repeated his actions, this time with enough force to kick him out of the bed.

Jonghyun ran his hand through his hair, bewildered and half asleep as he looked over the edge of the bed. “WHAT?” He spat out.

“The door. Go answer the door,” Kibum muttered as he rolled over and went back to sleep.

With a loud dejected sigh, Jonghyun slipped his pants over his hips and shouldered his way into a cardigan before he slouched into the living room and towards the door, not bothering to look through the peephole. As he turned the lock, the door flew open, knocking him back against the wall.

“What in the –“
 

“Where are they?” Jinki stood in the foyer holding a picture album in his hands, his hair all over his head and his eyes red from crying. He wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the weather and that was enough to prompt Jonghyun to drag him in from the cold entryway.

Jinki stormed into the house, turning on light after light before marching into the living room and plopping down hard on their futon. He threw the picture album onto their coffee table and pointed. “Where are they?!”

“Hey,” he whispered, “keep it down, Kibum is sleep.”

Jinki sniffled and ran the back of his hand across his nose. “I do not care if he is sleep, answer the question. Matter of fact…” Jinki tipped his head back and screamed, the pitch of his voice frantic and impatient. “KIM KIBUM! GET UP! GET UP AND GET OUT HERE!”

Seconds later, Kibum fumbled into the living room, his sleep red eyes wide with shock. “What! What happened?”

“If Jonghyun won’t answer, I know you will. Where are they?”

“Where are –“

“The pictures. Of me and Minho. You say this man knows me, that I know him, but where are the pictures? How can I know him if there are no pictures?”

The picture album was Kibum’s idea. Every picture they’d taken from high school to this point was in there. It was supposed to be a way to fill in the gaps. When they reminisced about a time Jinki couldn’t remember, he would go home later that night and flip through the picture album until he found a visual guide for a story. So far, there had been one for each and every story, for every memory.

However, a whole person was missing from the album. Not one reference, not one picture or snapshot of Choi Minho. This picture album was his bible, his connection to what was real and what was simply his imagination trying to color in between the lines. If Minho wasn’t here, he didn’t exist.

The color in Kibum’s face drained. “He isn’t in that album,” he admitted softly as he stared down at the bright plastic binder.

“What do you mean that album?”

Wordlessly, Kibum walked over to the closet, opened the door and reached high over the racks of jackets and scarves to grab a depilated cardboard box. He pulled it down, blew the dust from the top and walked it over to the couch.  Carefully, Kibum laid the box down in front of Jinki and took a step back.

Curiosity had Jinki rushing to open the box, flinging back its weathered folds and delving into its contents. There were so many things he’d never seen before. A letterman jacket pin, a matching pair of coffee mugs, an old scarf, a broken pair of glasses.

Kibum pulled the pin from the box. “Minho ran track…the day he was pinned, like some lovesick fool he raced to give that pin to you. The mugs were a gift from his mother. The scarf, I’m not sure of, but the glasses…he wear contacts now, but on your first date, you kind of ran your forehead into his forehead and his glasses broke.
He thought it was funny so he kept them.”

Jinki looked at each item as if they were lost artifacts from a time where he didn’t exist. As he reached for the glasses, his hands ran across the spine of an old beat up leather book. Gulping to moisten his throat, he carefully pulled the book from the box and laid it across the table. Shaking fingers turned the cover over and his heart dropped out of his chest.

There were pictures. Hundreds of pictures of him and Minho together.

Jinki tried not to cry in front of others. With a stockpile of his weaknesses on display daily, the thought of adding another to the list was unbearable. But not even his stupid ego and false convictions could stop them from cresting over his lids and down his face. The pictures didn’t bring back any memory in particular, just a warm wash of familiarity. Jinki looked up to his friends, to two people he trusted more than the world.

“Why…”

Kibum rushed to his best friend’s side, throwing his hands around his neck. “I…we wanted to protect you. I’m sorry but that’s all I could think of was protecting you. When you first woke up, even mentioning his name physically hurt you. To the point of you passing out. The doctors didn’t know why, no one knew.  Your mind discouraged any thought of Minho. We didn’t know what to do…so we hid him from you.”

“For three years,” Jinki said lowly.

Jonghyun nodded as he tried to pry Kibum from around Jinki’s neck. “It would have been forever and Minho agreed. He didn’t want to see you hurt. And it worked for a while. Minho kept his distance and we helped you regain your memory, even if it was slowly. Even if there were things you’d never remember. But Minho…he began to break down. He missed you and his desire to see you, even if it was from afar was too much for him to handle. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I figured out he’d been keeping an eye on you. As a test, I’d mentioned his name at length and there was no reaction, no pain...nothing. When Minho found that out, he found Rei and convinced Kibum to help you try to remember him.”

Jinki flipped to another page and stared at the pictures. “He said he was my fiancé.”

Kibum chuckled unbelievably through his own sniffles. “He went straight for the kill, didn’t he?”

“So, it’s true. All of it.”

Kibum picked the hand that had dropped from his lap to his side. “You loved him, Jinki. You loved him so much.” He squeezed the hand in reassurance.

Jinki's stare fixed on their intertwined fingers. He slipped his hand out of Kibum’s grip and stood. “Yet, he “loved” me enough to let me think he didn’t exist.”

Jinki he packed up his box and walked out.




Minho’s head flew up as a large leather-bound book was dropped on his desk.

“I’m giving you a week. Only a week.” Jinki his heels and began to march out of Minho’s office.

Minho stood and raced around his desk, reaching out for Jinki. “Wait! Wait! A week for what?”

Jinki paused with his hand curled around the handle to Minho’s office door. On the wall was a picture of them. Jinki looked happy with his hands wrapped around Minho’s torso. Minho long arms were draped over his shoulders and his smile was brilliant.

“To make me remember that I love you.”




Minho showed up at Jinki’s doorstep, nervous and sweating, his hands clutched around an unnecessarily large bouquet of flowers. They were Jinki’s favorite, and the fact that Minho knew that without having to ask didn’t bother him as much as he wanted it to.

“I, uh…um here.” He the flowers into Jinki’s hands, who accepted them with a raised brow before he took a step back to allow Minho into the apartment.

“I’m guessing Kibum gave you my address?” Jinki asked as he walked towards the kitchen for a vase.

“Uh…no. I’ve always known where you lived.”

Jinki paused and slowly turned towards back to where Minho stood.

“I didn’t mean for that to sound as creepy as it did. It’s just…I know. I can’t not know if I know. So I know. Knew.” He cleared his throat nervously.

“I’m just messing with you,” Jinki admitted with a wave of his arms. “A little memory humor.” Jinki placed the flowers onto his table.  “So what plans have you cooked up and don’t tell me you plan on trying to recreate our first date or something corny like that.” Jinki laughed, trying to lighten the mood Minho’s nervousness was causing.

He was met with a withering frown. “Oh  god, you were, weren’t you?”

Minho’s frown deepened. “I saw it in a movie once…”

“Sensory recollection, Minho. I need to listen to you talk. See you. Here, have a seat.”

When Minho sat down, Jinki plopped down beside him. “See, this isn’t so bad.” He looked over and saw Minho was stiff as a board with his hands fisted on his knees and his eyes straight ahead. “You’re going to have to relax. You only have a week to convince me you all aren’t lying to my face, and you can’t do it being afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“You can’t be afraid to hurt me either. I’ll be okay.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Jinki brow pinched. “You’re stubborn.”

“Hello, pot. I’m kettle.” Minho drawled.

Jinki blinked and then tipped his head back in laughter. They fell into that so easily that it surprised him.




The first night was all talk. No stories of their past, no trips down memory lane, just Minho and Jinki talking about any and everything they could think of under sun. It was weird to Jinki because it felt like a first date but without all the pretenses. Minho’s personality felt familiar to him, and although he couldn’t remember much outside of fragments that weren’t worth a damn in creating a whole picture, Jinki didn’t feel haunted when he was with Minho. To be honest with himself, he never had.

The following days followed like the first. Minho would come over, always with a gift, always with a smile. Jinki would let him in, go out of his way to make Minho feel nervous, because it was funny to him and then they would fall into endless conversations.

One night, as Minho pouted over a pot of overcooked noodles, Jinki mindlessly hummed a tune as he whipped out a takeout menu. Melodiously and miraculously, Minho laced words over the tenor of Jinki’s song.

“…loving you is easy, easier than time can miss. Far outside the memory of my existence, is your kiss.”

Jinki felt Minho’s feather light where his neck and shoulder met. The words were hackneyed and saccharine sweet, and he was sure he’d wrote them on some kind of emotional high he’d never be able to explain. But the effort to align Minho with some sort of cornerstone in his life became marginally easier when Minho’s sincerity weaved with the silk of his voice singing the words to Jinki’s song.

“You wrote that song… for me,” Minho finished sheepishly, taking a step back from Jinki and tucking his hands into his pockets to keep them from wandering towards home.

He thought back to the sheet music he had framed in his bedroom. In the corner of one page were the initials CM. He never understood what they meant, why he would write them there.

“Powerful stuff, those words,” Jinki said quietly. His eyes moved to Minho’s and a stretch of silence ensued.

“Yeah, they are.”



Jinki couldn’t say he was falling in love with Minho, his brain didn’t work off instant chemistry, it needed something solid to stand on, but he could say he was learning this stranger and finding out that he wasn’t so strange after all.

Most of their talks ended in heated debate, and despite the shallow anger, he often caught Minho staring at him, his eyes soft, one corner of his mouth tipped upwards.

Sometimes he would turn away and sometimes Jinki would match his stare, trying to figure out Minho’s thoughts without asking, to see what Minho saw in him, to understand him through his eyes.

“You’re beautiful.” The compliment flowed from Jinki’s lips before he could stop himself

Minho had his chin propped in his palm, a resting place as Jinki told him in fifty different ways why he was wrong about the similarities between music and sports, but his hand faltered and he fell forward at Jinki’s sudden proclamation.

As Minho tried to recompose himself, leaning back into the cushion with his face twisted in a smile, Jinki often wondered how he could has missed something so rare and magnificent not being in his life.



By the fourth night, Minho had managed to lure Jinki out of the house and to an art gallery exhibit for a friend of his. Art wasn’t really Jinki’s thing and Minho knew that, but it would give them the chance to be together without all of the clenching tension a date would bring.

“Art never really made much sense to me. You’ve got these lines and these splotches of paint. You hammer it to a wall, slap an expensive price tag on it, and suddenly people are hailing you as the next Van Gough.”

Jinki had learned not to shy away from Minho’s touch, he almost seem to welcome it, so Minho slipped his larger hand between the spaces of Jinki’s to pull him to the next piece. “It’s more than that. It’s about your interpretation. What you see. What the person next to you sees. It’s sort of like me and you.”

Jinki tilted his head as he stared at a painting of abstract hands. “Like us?”

Minho hummed, the price tag of the piece carefully before standing back from it. “You see me. I’m here. I’m an object, I have mass. I can move and talk. Sometimes I make you laugh.  But you are unable to see me. I don’t stick in your brain. I don’t matter. We…don’t matter to you.”

Jinki opened his mouth to object, but Minho held up his hand. “It’s okay. It’s not like I don’t get that. But when I look at you, when I look at us, I see something completely different. There’s movement in us. I see energy and secrets and memories and kisses and making love and…I see it all.” Minho tilted his head in the opposite direction. “It’s all about your interpretation.”

“You matter to me, Minho,” Jinki said quietly. “If we didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

Minho chuckled. “I want to believe that, but I think it’s more your curiosity than anything else. Who is this crazy man that wants to spend the rest of his life with me? Why does he think I love him back? Where did he come from? Why won’t he go away? That sort of thing. ” Before Jinki could say another word, Minho placed his hand on the small of his back. “It’s okay Jinki, really.” There was another level of the gallery to explore and Minho and Jinki made their way to the stairs that led lower.

Jinki wasn’t scared of stairs. He wasn’t. It’s just that every time he was around them, his palms would moisten and his breath would shorten. Right now was no different. He paused at the top, inhaling to quell his anxiety so he could take the first step. Minho wasn’t paying attention to Jinki’s apprehension, ready to get through with the exhibit below and back to Jinki’s apartment and nudged him just slightly to encourage him forward.

Something snapped. Jinki felt himself falling. He felt himself hitting each step on his way down. He felt his head knock against the banister before it slammed into the wall. He felt the wind being knocked out of him and he felt inky blackness all around as he lost consciousness.

When he blinked, he was still standing at the top of the stairs in the gallery. Slowly, as if every monster that hid in the darkness of his dreams was breathing down his neck, Jinki turned his stupefied glare to Minho, his mind sharper than it had ever been. That had been an entire memory, not broken into stuttered spaces or fuzzy lines. An entire memory that terrified Jinki more than anything in the world.

“You…you pushed me,” Jinki whispered, terrified.

Minho’s brow rose in confusion and he opened his mouth to say he’d only nudged him a little but the clarity in Jinki’s accusation let him know he wasn’t talking about tonight.

“Jinki…what are–“

“Oh, god. You pushed me. The night I fell. It was you. It was your hand. It was your face I saw as I fell.” He took a step back. “It was you.”

Jinki saw the panic, he saw the way Minho’s eyes went wide with fear. He saw everything. He wish he could remember more, but all he could see was Minho’s hand on his shoulder and his face flying out of focus as his body careened down a flight of steps.

“No, th-th-that’s not what–”

Jinki didn’t wait around for an explanation. He tore down the steps, through the crowd of confused art gallery patrons and out the door, ignoring the coat check lady calling after him. He looked left and right down the long sidewalk, hoping to get a taxi’s attention but the street was empty, save the valet attendants mulling around the check-in kiosk. Seeing no other choice, he took off down the sidewalk, not caring when he bumped into people, into things. He had to keep running. The memory hurt too badly for him not to run.

He heard Minho calling his name behind him, and he sped up. He spotted the end of the block and raced for it. As the sidewalk turned into black pavement and Jinki pivoted to curve around it but he turned the corner too sharply. Jinki cried out as his body hit the pavement with a hard thud as his ankle gave out.

Minho was on him in seconds. Without waiting for Jinki to do something stupid, like scream, he scooped the older man up in his arms, holding him close to his chest, ignoring the strange looks they were getting. He paced back to the sidewalk, readjusting Jinki in his arms as he went and carefully sat him down on a bench.

“Why are you always running away from me?”

“Go away.” When Minho ignored him in favor of checking the small cut on his brow, Jinki pushed him. “GO AWAY!”

Minho stumbled, but wasn’t discouraged. Setting his shoulders, he advanced on Jinki again, this time stooping low to check his ankle. “I don’t think you sprained it. It might be a little sore to walk on but –“

“Why are you not listening to me?” With his free foot, he kicked Minho away from him again. “I said go! Leave me alone!”

Minho hit the ground, his arms moving just fast enough to break his fall. “Damn it! I never meant to hurt you, Jinki! Why can’t you believe in me? Trust me?”

“Believe in you? You pushed me! I fell! My-my brain is  now because you pushed me. How can you even try to explain that away? You thought I would never remember?” Jinki cried, his voice hoarse. “That I’m so damaged I would never remember that? Well I did. Of all the stupid things for me to remember, I remembered that.”

Minho was shaking at this point, his hand snaking around Jinki’s ankle. Tears were sitting proudly on his eyelids, ready to spill over.

“We were arguing and it got out of hand. You shoved me and I reached out to grab you, to stop you…but my hand slipped. I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t, but you were falling and it was too late. Who do you think called the ambulance? Who do you think stayed by your bedside day and night? It was me, Jinki. I wanted to be the first person you saw when you woke up. To tell you I was sorry, that I never meant for any of this to happen but the very sight of me hurt you. I didn’t know what to do.” Minho speech was broken down into sobs and he laid his head in Jinki’s lap as he cried. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please…”

Jinki let Minho cry into his lap, feeling all the emotions that he could never quite cull from Minho’s eyes, his actions, his words, leak into his lap. It was at that moment that Jinki understood Minho’s feelings for him.

“What were we fighting about?”

Minho pulled his head from Jinki’s lap, rubbing at his eyes in a pitiful way that reminded Jinki of a puppy. “You wanted to break up.”

“Why,” Jinki pressed.

“You,” Minho inhaled deeply and let it go in a shuttering breath. “You thought I wasn’t being faithful to you.”

Jinki’s eyebrow rose. “Why would I think that?”

“I don’t know,” Minho said quietly.

“No. You do know and you’re going to tell me.”

Minho picked himself up off of the ground and sat beside Jinki. He reached for Jinki’s hand, but he snatched it away. Not out of anger but as a broker for the truth. He couldn’t reward concealment anymore. “I didn’t answer my phone for a week while I was in Thailand on business. I’d told you that I didn’t get any of the messages, but when you checked my phone, they were all there. So you thought I was cheating, that I hadn’t pick up my phone because I was hiding something.”

Minho turned to him, “I was feeling restless. I felt like I needed freedom. You were everywhere and…I thought it was cold feet but I was just scared. So I focused on work and nothing else. But I wasn’t cheating on you.”

“Do you still feel that way? Because…this is your chance.”

Minho’s brows dipped in confusion and Jinki pressed his fingers against eyes tiredly. “To be free.”

“No! I couldn’t…I wouldn’t have done all of this if I didn’t need you.”

Jinki was silent for a few moments before he stood abruptly. He tested his ankle with a roll of his fot and when he felt he could bear weight on it, he turned for 52^nd street and began to walk. After a few steps, he stopped.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

Minho head shot up. “Huh?”

“For some odd reason I believe you. Head versus heart kind of thing. My head hates you right now, but my heart…not so much.”




While Minho waited in the living room, Jinki peeled off his shirt to look at his injuries. He glared at his bruised arm, darkening in an odd shape but luckily it looked worse than it felt. He threw the shirt in the hamper and walked out of the bathroom. “It looks like someone tried to kill me.”

Minho’s eyes widened and Jinki knew it was a terrible time to make a joke like that. He moved his arm up and down, flapping it like a bird. “Look, it still works.”

Minho stood from the couch and silently walked to where Jinki stood. He loomed over the shorter man as he studied the bruise intensely. “This is my fault, too.”

Jinki was quick to laugh. “Yeah, kind of, but mostly mine. Choi Minho, track star, meet Lee Jinki, fumbling idiot.” He didn’t have a chance to laugh at his own joke before
Minho snatched him into his arms, wrapping around Jinki so tightly that it almost hurt.

“I never want you to look at me with fear in your eyes again. I’ll do whatever it takes. I want you to trust me.”

Jinki, although hesitantly, laid his head against Minho’s chest. “It’s funny how familiar this feels.” His hands, the curious things, moved from Minho’s back to his arms, up his arms to his neck, until he had Minho’s face cradled between them. “Let me take a look at you. Never seen you this close up before.”

Minho let Jinki inspect him, his fingers running over the hard ridge of his nose, across his cheekbones, feather light touches to his forehead. Jinki’s fingers paused at his lips, and Minho looked down his nose to see Jinki’s gaze centered on them. “Touch…sight…smell…hearing…”

Minho’s eyes narrowed in slight confusion.

“They want me to learn you. I know your heart. I do. It’s amazing, but I know it. It must have always been there. But I don’t know mine. I still don’t remember you, all of you. There’s so much I need to know.”

Jinki’s hand moved from Minho’s lips to his neck to thread his fingers into the short layers of his hair. “I do trust you, Minho.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” Jinki pulled Minho closer, so close that he could feel the energy radiating off of his lips. “Taste…”

He experimented with a tepid touch of lips, enough to know that the touch wouldn’t hurt him. Feeling braver, he tried it again, feeling the restraint flowing just under the surface of Minho’s skin. On the third try, their lips met in the middle, and Jinki titled his head to deepen the kiss.

Their tongues met and mild flavors of mint and wine seeped into his taste buds and the feeling in the wake of it all was overpowering. His senses overpowered everything. He could taste, feel, see, smell and hear every part of Minho. He opened his eyes to glimpse the wetness just under Minho’s lashes.

Smiling, Jinki leaned back in for another taste when he staggered at a squealing pain blasted under his eye lids, so strong he dropped to his knees. His hands flew to his head as the pain worsened and bright lights swam in his vision. Minho was there in a flash, wrapping an arm around him, his free hand blindly fumbling for the phone in his pocket.

But as soon as it started, it was gone. The pain, the bright lights, the loud noises, all of it, gone. Jinki inhaled a large galloping breath, willing his heart to slow down, for his breathing to regulate, to give him a chance to speak.

“Jinki! Jinki, talk to me! Are you okay! I’m calling an ambulance! Just hold on!”

Jinki reached up blindly and pushed the phone away from Minho’s mouth. “No.”

“What do you mean no! I’m not going to sit here and let you –“

“No,” and Jinki laughed through the gasp of air. “I’m okay! I’m…” he laughed even louder, to the point where the only thing Minho could do was frown down at him.

“Jinki…what are you laughing at?”

“Oh, god.” He couldn’t stop the laughter, it racing around in his core, causing him to throw his hands around his middle in an effort to control it. “Oh, god! Minho!”

“What?” Minho said, panicked.

Jinki twisted and threw his hands around Minho’s neck, squeezing and laughing in his ear. He pulled back and peppered his face with kisses, laughing as he laid a particularly long one on his lips. “I remember.”

Minho’s frown deepened. “What are you talking abo –“

“I remember. Everything. I remember the library, when you first approached me with that cold cup of coffee because you’d sat there too long trying to work up the courage to speak to me. I remember our first date, at the planetarium. The broken glasses after our first kiss. The coffee mugs. The letterman pin. I remember it all. I remember moving in together. I remember you. I remember you.” Jinki laughs broke up into sobs, and his hold on Minho tightened. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t remember you, that I looked you in your face day after day and day and couldn’t even recognize you. How could I do that to you?” Jinki pulled back with tears flooding down his face.

Minho looked down at Jinki in pure wonder, his hands shaking as he cradled Jinki’s face. “You…remember? Me? You’re serious, right. This isn’t a joke?”

“Everything.”





“You could have said something.”

Jinki tucked his head under Minho’s chin while running his hand under the thin cotton of Minho’s undershirt, refamiliarizing himself with the ridges of muscles, and the way his light touches caused Minho to his stomach in. They were lying in bed, Jinki’s bed, in absolute agreement to never leave it until everything was right between the two of them.

“We had an agreement. I couldn’t.”

Jinki chuckled as he pulled down the neck of his shirt to kiss Minho’s collarbone. “But it’s okay to show up every morning and walked pass me like a stranger? I wouldn’t have done that to you, you know. I would have shaken you by the shoulders and made you remember me.”

Minho snorted. “How innovative. Memory recollection by violence.”

Propping himself on his elbow, Jinki managed to look affronted. “It would have worked. It would have been a better than your City of Angels approach.”

“When everything’s made to be broken…I just want you to know who I am.” Minho reached up to kiss just under Jinki’s chin. “Leaping off of a building to get you back would have been worth it.”

“I wish you’d said something to me…” Jinki admitted, his eyes misting over slightly before he blinked them back.

“None of that matters anymore.”

Jinki’s hand trailed down Minho’s torso, playing with the waistband of his pants. “No, it doesn’t,” he said softly before he bent down to kiss his lips.

That night, Minho made Jinki remember what their love making felt like.



Months later, the five of them, all back together again amongst overturned chairs atop tables, sat idling in Kibum’s café after it closed.

Minho gave Jinki a look, which Jinki admonished quickly. Minho elbowed him and narrowed the look to a point. Jinki rolled his eyes and turned towards Kibum.

“Hey Kibum. Remember that one time in high school when Jonghyun ran onto the football field and you had to explain to your parents how your boyfriend wasn’t a psychopath.”

Two heads swiveled towards Jinki, their eyes wide, one with panic, the other with slight confusion. Taemin snorted into his latte and Minho lowered his grin behind his hand.

“I’ve never told you that story,” Kibum states.

“How do you remember that,” Jonghyun says as well, both speaking at the same time, their words fusing together into one big messy sentence filled with implication.

They both turned to Minho. “Did you tell him that?” They ask in unison.

Minho chuckled. “Wasn’t around for the high school memories, remember?”

Kibum and Jonghyun slowly turned their heads towards each other, and then to Jinki. Kibum squealed, jumping up from his seat to throw his hands around Jinki’s head.

“You remember, don’t you? HOLY , you do, you little ! How could you not tell me, huh? How could you not –“ he never finished his statement, opting to crawl into Jinki’s lap and stay there.

Minho cleared his throat. “Could you please remove your hindparts from my fiancé’s lap?”

Kibum snorted. “Fat chance of that happening – wait. Fiancé?” Kibum scoffed. “You guys are engaged or re-engaged, or whatever?”  When his question was met with silence snatched Jinki’s hand up and shrieked even louder. Sitting on his ring finger was Jinki’s old white gold plated engagement ring.

Kibum stood up from the table and pulled Jinki with him. “I’m going to be an uncle!”

Jinki frowned because of the look of pure craziness in Kibum’s eyes. Minho frowned because Kibum was still clutching Jinki like a doll, and Jonghyun frowned because, “That’s not what they said. Kibum…babe…that’s not physically possible.”