When things had settled down for me, I ordered a nice sugarless coffee with French cream added to it. Alongside I had myself a nice light cake, nothing heavy. It was small and blue, with accented golden designs around the edges. It was almost too beautiful to eat, but I was hungry and had other problems on my mind. Minho didn’t order anything. He said that this was his treat to me and that he was never really hungry. For some reason, that sentence spoke out to me to me the most. When he spoke it, there was this strange tone.

The crowd began to settle after my spasm attack but occasionally when I looked up from out my booth, I could see more than one pair of eyes staring at me as some alien sat in their wake. I didn’t blame them, though. I’m sure I looked less crazy than I seemed which would probably surprise them. Heck, probably surprised Minho too. If anything, he just didn’t want to hurt my feelings, so he said nothing about the incident. He looked like that sort of guy.

“So, are you just staying at the hotel for a minute, or are you staying for a long time?” He asked after a long moment of silence immersed between us.

At first, I heard him but for some particular reason, I didn’t respond. Instead, I swirled the little straw stick they gave me with my coffee, and slowly turned the liquid.

“Taemin?” He asked.

I looked up, my eyes widened. I acted as if I was surprised, though I knew deep down that I wasn’t. I was off my game ever since that trip down memory lane I went through. I guess my mind was just staggering on other things though I’m sure it was blank for the moment.

“Oh sorry,” I responded.

“Just have a lot to think about?” He questioned.

I chuckled a bit and shrugged my shoulders. The irony. A sigh creeping out of my lips, I decided to take a sip of coffee and a very small bite out of my sculptured cake.

“I guess you can say that,” I replied. “Not much to think about when you don’t know what to think….” I paused for a moment. “That’s why I’m here if that answers your question.”

“Oh.” His voice was subtle.

“And I’m not sure when I’m leaving the hotel. The friends that I was within the country just told me that they paid to have me stay there for a long time and that I could cancel whenever I wanted. They said that, if I stayed there so long and my time went up at the place, to just give them a call.” My words came out blunter than I wanted.

I seemed indifferent and bleak about the whole situation. Ungrateful would be a good word for it.

“Sounds like some good friends you made back there. How long have you guys known one another?”

“That’s just it,” I replied, bringing my tone up to a proper level, “I haven’t known them for long at all and yet they were so nice to me. I’m basically a complete stranger to them. There the nicest people I know. The only really.”

Minho pinched up his lower lip at the last part of my sentence and peered into my eyes with deep thought.

“What’d you mean? Is your family long distance…or…something?” His words stumbled over one another and I could see it in his face that he believed he was treading on thin water, but he wasn’t. Nowhere near it actually.

“My situation’s a little more complicated than that.”

****

So for the time being, I told him everything. From the moment I woke up to my strange episode now. I even told him the reason I asked him to read the sign for me which was the strange reading problem I seemed to have had in the life I don’t remember. I didn’t know why I was telling a total stranger all this. For all I knew, he could have been a serial killer just waiting me out or some weird psycho ready to stalk me, especially now that I’ve told him that I don’t remember anything. He could even try to take advantage of me.

All these possibilities, but when I looked back into his eyes as I spoke, I didn’t see any of this. Maybe I was being too nice and trusting to people I just met. Maybe this was how I was in my forgotten life. If I was, why did I wake up alone, feeling deserted next to what I thought to be a dying tree? It just didn’t add up. But the more the questions piled up in my head, the more of a headache I knew I was going to get.

When I told Minho all of this, his simply nodded his head along as I spoke. There was no emotion in his nods, no sincerity or judgment. He just looked as if he was listening. As if I could go on for days and he wouldn’t mind. And when I stopped, he stopped nodding.

“Sorry if it’s a little too much,” I added at the end.

Slowly, a smirk crept upon his face, and it was sweet and gentle.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. Life is a mysterious wonder.” He answered.

“You know,” he leaned over the table and crossed his hands together, his palms touching and his fingers interlocking with one another, “I like to think that everything happens for a reason. Not very different from how a lot of people think. But sometimes those reasons, we push upon ourselves.”

“What’d you mean?”

“Well, look at you,” one of his hands escaped from its place as he gestured it towards me. “You’ve forgotten everything about your life, yet you’re here, at this place. And why? Because something told you to come here. Maybe something you’re trying to remember?”

He questioned the last part and emphasized his eye look towards me as if I was supposed to have an answer but I just stared blankly back at him.

“You’re quite an interesting man Taemin.”

“How is that? I don’t see myself as being very interesting.”

“I guess that’s the best part.”

I pursed my lips together and moved them to the side as I tried to register his words. After listening to him for a while, I came to realize that he’s definitely a character for speaking riddles.

“You’re very interesting yourself, I guess.” I tried to half smile but instead looked down at my coffee and decided to drink more of it to pass the time.

****

When I was done, he decided to help me back. We stopped once the two of us walked into the building. It felt better to be inside here, not lost out there in a world I didn’t remember.

“I suppose you can remember the way to your room?” He joked.

It actually made me laugh. I pulled the card out of my pocket, but when I dug, I could feel the chain just sitting in there, waiting for me to figure out why it belonged to me. But I shook my head. No thinking hard right now. Right now, I just needed to get back to my room and go to sleep or something. Wind my mind down from all this chaos it was causing me. He walked me to the elevator and together we waited for it to come to us.

“You should come visit my studio.” He suddenly spoke.

“Your studio? Where is it?”

“It’s here.” He gestured his finger up towards the ceiling. “I’ll send a person for you in the morning. Eleven okay?”

“You’ll send a person?” I asked a little taken aback.

He adjusted his shirt and smirked.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it would be showing off if I did, but I’m the owner of this place.”

My eyes widened.

“The owner!” I yelped accidently.

“Well don’t tell the whole world.” He chuckled. “Even though a lot of people here already know. They just get used to seeing me around. I don’t like to talk about it much. I only own the place because my father wanted me to follow in his grand footsteps.” He exaggerated.

The elevator arrived and with a loud and eerie ‘ding,’ it opened. We both stepped inside and he waited after we both put our floor number in.

“Maybe a little artwork will help jog your memory.” He stated.

It was soothing that he thought of me like that.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“Mysterious Interesting Taemin,’” He added.

“Really, I don’t understand why you think I’m so mysterious or interesting at all.” I laughed, scratching the back of my neck.

The door opened for me and I made my way out.

“Because you’re most likely doing it to yourself and you don’t even realize it.” He called out to me.

“Doing what?”

“Your forgotten memory may not be your fault but the reason why you’re struggling to remember may be.”

“What?”

“Maybe the reason you can’t remember is because a part of you doesn’t want to. But now that you’ve forgotten, you want to remember what it was you so desperately wanted to forget.”

I was speechless but he smirked.

“It happens to the best of us, ‘The Mysterious Taemin.’” With the simple gesture of his fingers coming to his forehead, as if he had a hat on, he tilted it down just as the doors closed. And like that, he was gone.