Chapter Text
Jisung didn’t feel like the day he had been waiting for a whole month was finally here. He had woken up like every other morning in the same bed in the same room in the same hospital he had been admitted to. He had had the same breakfast he always had every day: a red shiny apple, some organic cereal he came to like with time and an orange juice. His mom had come to visit him like every other day for the past month, and even that day she didn’t tell him the news. His friends, Chan, Changbin and Felix had visited him too but no one dared to tell him the news of his release. Only after the doctor came into his room in the middle of that same afternoon he found out, and a beaming smile curved on his face: he was finally free. Jisung had patiently waited for this day to come for the whole past month, and he couldn’t wait to start writing songs again with his friends and return to the one thing that always brought him joy: photography. He couldn’t remember the last time he took a picture, the last time he held his polaroid camera in his hands and shook a picture, waiting for it to be revealed.
The one thing everyone had been surprised about – and no one had understood – was the fact that Jisung had taken in the news of his reasons why he was in the hospital so calmly and acceptedly. When his doctor had come in one day after the whole process of erasing his memory, he had explained what had just happened to him and Jisung hadn’t even flinch. “We have erased part of your memory upon your wishes. Everything that we’ve done to you was requested by yourself. Don’t worry, no crucial information, such as your family and friends, has been deleted from your long-time memory,” were the words the doctor had used. The only thing Jisung had done was nod. It had been as if a part of himself had accepted the fact that his memory had to be erased; as if an unconscious part of his brain already had known this. Of course he had wanted to know why he had deleted something – or someone – from his memory, but it was not the place nor the time. He would figure it out eventually, and find out why it happened, why he did this to himself. So he had just nodded.
The ride back home with his mom was pleasant. Even though neither of them spoke, it wasn’t an awkward atmosphere, music filled itself where words could never: there was simply just nothing to say. It was peaceful. Jisung leaned against the window of the passenger’s seat, watching how the tall buildings gradually turned into smaller houses and how the sun slowly hid itself from the sky and his view. He wanted to take a picture of the sky and its beautiful colors, that reddish and orange-pink cloudless sky, but he didn’t have his polaroid camera with him, which he regretted profoundly. Jisung’s body felt paralyzed: he was exhausted. He was not hurt, not in pain, but he didn’t want to move an inch.
When he was finally home, something didn’t seem right. He had only been gone for a month but it somehow felt like years, like an eternity. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in his room, the last time he had slept in his bed.
He spent the rest of what was left of the afternoon reorganizing his room. His room didn't feel like his; there was an opaque feeling inside of him. He wondered what had happened that made him lose that feeling of home. He wondered if he would ever feel it again.
When the night finally came, he went right to sleep. He didn't eat dinner with his family, no matter how hard her mother had tried to convince him. Jisung's body was drained, weak. "He just needs some time to get used to it, let's leave him alone for now. He needs space," were the words his mother used to explain to his father why he wouldn't be eating dinner with them. He couldn't look at the disappointment in his father's face through the door of his bedroom, but he knew it was there. It had always been there, ever since he confessed to his parents about not wanting to go to college and wanting to be a songwriter. Now, at 21, he was happily writing music with Chan and Changbin, and he was proud of it, of their two mixtapes. He had always hated feeling like a disappointment, but he had chosen not to live his life string-attached to his parents idea of a respectable, good son; he knew it wouldn't make him happy.
Jisung woke up in the middle of the night; he felt as if he was having a heart attack, and he wanted to throw up. He had a perforating pain in the stomach, and he was sweating uncontrollably; his mouth, dry. His head hurt and spinned and he couldn't understand what was happening to him. He took his hand to his chest and heavy breathed, and then glanced at the clock on his nightstand: 2:18 am. He stood up immediately, hand still on his heart, and shuffled to the bathroom. He opened the door in a rush, and thudded onto the floor. The surface of it was icy cold, and Jisung felt as if he was lying on a block of ice. He whined in pain, but no one could hear him.
The next day, Jisung woke up to the sound of heavy rain, still on the bathroom floor, surrounded by his drool and sweat. He carefully stood up, but felt much better than the night before. He still had a headache, but his chest pain was completely gone, it had vanished. When he was already up on both his feet, he lumbered to the kitchen: there was nobody home. He figured both of his parents were at work. Jisung picked up his phone from the counter – where he had left it the day before – and checked the time; 3 pm. He had a voice message.
"Hey, it's Chan. I heard you're out of the hospital. I'm glad the whole thing worked out. Wanna hang out? We really want to see you. You know where to find us."
Jisung grabbed the first raincoat he could find and went out. His skin tightened as the March rain poured in around him, almost soaking him completely despite the coat, but he wasn't troubled by the rain. He walked unhurriedly, steady, striding his way through the puddles. He took a 4419 bus, the one he always used to carry himself around, and walked three more blocks until he got there.
Chan and Changbin lived together in a small apartment. It was always messy, clothes on the floor here and there, and it always had an odd smell of dirt, sweat and burnt food but Jisung didn't mind. He was used to it already, after spending countless years going to their place and writing music there - because that's where the magic happened - right in their apartment. It had always felt like a second home to him, but that feeling was gone. He knew as soon as he stepped into the room that something had changed, not about the room itself, but inside of him. His feeling of home had died out.
"Quite a nice mess you have in here," he couldn't help but say, standing on the threshold of their apartment. He looked around the place once more, his eyes drifting from the ceiling, to the kitchen and back to the living room again, where his friend Changbin waited for him. Jisung hanged his drenched raincoat and sat down on their filthy couch, making himself comfortable.
"It's been a long time since you were last here," Chan explained, closing the door and sitting down next to him.
"I know," Jisung said. He wanted to know how long, but decided against it. His eyes still wandered around the room: everything was the just as he remembered, but different.
They spent the afternoon catching up, Jisung asking them how they had been this past month and if they had written any new music without him. He had forced himself not to ask them about why he erased part of his memory, he knew they wouldn't answer him. Besides, he erased it for a reason. He tried not to think too much about it, but he had found himself thinking about it all the time. It was like a virus: at first he didn't think much of it but now it was all he could think about. It had infected his mind, and he was still on the lookout for a cure.
"He's not the Jisung we once knew," he heard Changbin mutter before he closed the door behind him and walked home.
He arrived home in time for dinner, and he knew this time he had no escaping the dreadful dinner with his parents. Being an only child, the questions were always darted directly at him, and he couldn't dodge them. He knew his father like the palm of his hand: he knew his way around his mind, his dull thoughts, his questions to him. His father had only visited him once at the hospital, right after the whole process. Jisung knew why he had gone to see him: he wanted to check if he still remembered his father. Of course he did. Facing him had always been a nightmare when he was a kid, he used to be afraid of the power he had. Not anymore, he had said to himself several times growing up, I'm not afraid anymore.
"He will be so glad to see you," his mother said before they sat for dinner, "After all this time, we're together again."
He wasn't exactly sure what she meant, because it had only been a month, but he didn't pay much attention to it.
Dinner went smoother than he thought. He answered all of his father's questions - which had been less than five - but his eyes never left his food plate. He made eye contact with neither of them, but he was sure his mother didn't mind: Jisung bet she was just grateful for his presence in the house, to say the least, for dinner itself. When it was over, he picked up his plate with one hand and his glass with the other, and carried them to the kitchen, where they would be washed by his mother. He would've cleaned them himself but it involved further conversation he was not yet ready to engage.
Once he was back in his room, he finished reorganizing the last few things he had not been able to put away the day before. He still had clothes where they shouldn't be and he couldn't understand why; it wasn't like he had taken all his clothes to the hospital, so why weren't them in their right place? He took his hoodies off the drawers and hanged them on the wardrobe, but when he opened it, - to his surprise - he found something peculiar: lying on his dark brown wooden wardrobe floor, below his coats and hoodies and sweaters and shirts he rarely used, behind his polished black formal shoes, there was a box. A faded light brown box laid untouched. He had the urge to pick it up and open it, see what was inside - because he certainly couldn't remember no matter how hard he tried - but decided not to. Without being able to take the mysterious box out of his head, Jisung went to sleep, hoping that what had happened the day before wouldn't happen again.
He was wrong. Jisung woke up in the middle of the night, again. He had an unbearable pain in his chest, like a thousand knives being stabbed into his heart. He couldn't breathe; he felt as if he was drowning and he was slowly dying, his life slipping away the harder he gasped for air. Tears rolled down his cheeks onto his neck. Once again, he couldn't understand what was wrong. Were these side effects of his erased memory?, he wondered, exasperated. He took his hand to his heart, listened to his heartbeat - which was fortunately still there - and heavy breathed: it sounded heartbroken, empty. It felt as if his heart was waiting for something, or someone, that was never going to come. He panted, uneasy. Jisung knew he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep all night. He glanced at his nightstand clock: 2:47 am, and stood up as quick as lightning, as if his bed were on fire and he was being burned alive. He put on his robe and quietly tiptoed to the kitchen, as not to wake his parents up, for a glass of water in hopes of calming his heart down and catching his breath.
Just after he returned to his room with the glass of water, he remembered the brown box he had found in his wardrobe. He couldn't help but ask himself what was inside, why it was hiding itself from him. He tried to fight the urge to open it but failed; he turned on his nightstand lamp, put down his glass next to it and went for the box. It was heavier than it looked, covered in dust and larger; he used both of his hands to drag it out.
There was a small piece of paper on top of the dirty lid he failed to notice before. He snatched the folded paper enthusiastically and opened it in the blink of an eye. The first thing he noticed was the handwriting: it was his own. His messy calligraphy was the star of the script. Jisung couldn't remember writing it. He read it carefully:
Dear me,
If you're reading this it must mean you got your memory erased. Wise choice, I'm proud of you - of us, actually. You're probably curious about what you deleted from your memory and, more importantly, why. No one will be able to explain it to you better than me, than yourself. By now you must be feeling odd, out of place, empty, lonely probably, I don't know. There is something out there, some piece of information everyone - including me, your past self - is hiding from you, information you're missing out. Before I tell you anything, you need to know I did this - the whole "let's get my memory erased" thing - because of our own good, I did this for both of us, and what was best for our heart. What you're about to dig into will be a joyful and painful journey of rediscovery, of finding out how your past self was. Sure, you're probably thinking you remember your old self, but let me tell you, you're wrong; you still don't know what I do. I know I can't stop myself from looking inside this box and what you, future self, want to find out so badly. So go ahead, dive right into your forgotten past, no one will stop you.
It was not something, it was someone. His name was Lee Minho, and he was our beginning and our end, and this is our love story...
That name sounded somehow familiar; something in the back of his mind tingled and he immediately remembered someone with that name from school. Dance team, senior. His face came to his mind like a gust of cold wind: baby soft skin, hazel brown hair, a calming smile. Jisung couldn't remember anything else, he was absolutely sure he never met this man, that he never had a conversation with him.
He peeked inside the box excitedly. As soon as he lifted the dusty lid off, never-ending piles of pictures flooded out of the box, spreading all over his bedroom floor like a wave. So many letters, so many doodled hearts, so many lost memories.
Jisung noticed that the pictures were numbered and that he would have to follow a pre-established order, as if he was following an invisible timeline. He was amazed by the carefully carried out plan his past self had done for him, and he couldn't wait to uncover the hidden secrets his partially erased mind hid from him.
He delightedly picked up the first polaroid and goggled at the picture in his hands: he recognized his school, the ugly cafeteria tables and the poorly painted walls, but what really caught his attention was that a few tables in front of him, a brown haired boy was eating his food peacefully. It was not just any boy, it was Lee Minho. He stared at the picture for a long time before turning it around, and to his surprise, the polaroid had a title, still with his poor handwriting;The day my eyes met yours. Inexplicably, he could remember that day as if had happened yesterday.
The day my eyes met yours
"I'm having a heart attack," I say as soon as I notice a new guy a few tables in front of me, talking to some other guy I don't know. "Is this love I'm feeling?"
"You don't even know the guy," Changbin says, discreetedly turning around to take a better look at him. He sighs, turning back at me and rolling his eyes.
"Not yet, but I will."
"I don't know what Chan would say if he were still here." I know Changbin misses Chan, but he graduated and now it's out turn to graduate.
"I bet he's a senior," I say, completely ignoring my friend and without taking my eyes off the stranger. He looks older than both of us. I need to take a picture of him, I will take a sneaky picture of the owner of my heart, yes.
I take out my camera off my backpack in the blink of an eye, but before I can snap the first picture, Changbin hisses at me.
"Oh my God, Jisung," he stares at the camera in my hands. "Put that away now, are you a stalker? Stop looking at that guy for Christ's sake!"
"Relax," I say, snapping the first picture. "I just want to take a few pictures." I keep on snapping pictures, trying to dodge Changbin out of sight. He tries to get in my way and block my sight but he continuously fails. I giggle in satisfaction.
"I think you took enough already," he says, now trying to take the camera away from me. "Gimme the camera, that's enough!"
"A few more and I'm done, I swear." I want to capture the aura this mysterious guy projects. I want to capture how the sunlight hits his eye with such softness, how he doesn't look annoyed by it. How his eyes look peaceful yet understanding and rebellious. For a moment, he looks like he's full of rage. I snap another picture with caution. To me, the history and persona of a human can be discovered through the lens of a camera, of a single picture, and this guy has a lot going on in his mind. Not just by the way his eyes drift all the time and his attention spam is long, but because he is calm. Calm yet his eyes reveal something else: accumulated anger. I want to find out where it comes from, and why he bottles it away so flawlessly. What is he hiding? I bet he thinks no one notices, but I'm not like most people. The eyes of a person are the eyes to the soul.
"That's it," Changbin says, snatching the camera away from me. I got distracted for a single minute and I already lost my camera to my friend. Shame on me, I should've held it tighter.
Jisung dropped the picture, astonished. He remembered how falling in love with Lee Minho felt like; he remembered it had felt like the stars aligned for him and that he had finally found the missing piece of himself. He had known, right at that moment when he first stared at him, that Minho was going to be the one to kill off his feelings of loneliness, that he would complete his heart. Jisung had found a home, a place he wouldn't lose but, in the end, he did lose it.
The butterflies he didn't know he had inside woke up after a long hibernation, and were now flying around his body. He wanted to throw up wings and antennas; the butterflies were attacking him, tickling his stomach. His heart pumped out wings of all different colors and suddenly his blood turned rosy pink; he was in love - well, his body was in love. He wasn't sure what he was in love with, if he was in love with Minho, or the idea of him or his memory. Jisung recognized this feeling, he knew he had felt this way before, many years ago when he first saw Minho. He was amazed he remembered, and felt a strange feeling of home. Lee Minho had formed a home inside of him he had failed to identify. He smiled, relieved; he was, once again, alive.
He wanted more; he picked up the next polaroid, waiting for the picture to trigger another lost memory. And it did.
The day I met your soul
"I know detention is not going to last forever but we can take advantage of this time and get to know each other. What do you think?" I say, approaching the hazel haired boy and sitting down next to him. There is no one inside the classroom except us two.
He looks at me, turning his head to the left. "Sure," he nods shyly. "I've been wanting to meet you too."
I make a weird face. "How do you know about me?"
"I just saw you hanging out with Changbin the other day. You two seem to be really good friends."
"He's my best friend," I say, leaning forward. "How do you know about him?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.
He looks away, embarrassed. "He looks intimidating."
"He's not," I say bluntly, "He just wants to be seen that way. I'll tell him he's making a hella good job," I raise both thumbs up, cheerfully. "Anyways, there are some things I wanted to ask you."
He giggles, nervously. "Sure, but I still don't know your name."
My face burns, I turn red in embarrassment. "I'm Han Jisung."
He smiles. "I'm Lee Minho, nice to meet you," he says, and we shake hands. His skin is soft, like a feather. They're relatively small, too.
"Now that we introduced ourselves, let's go on."
"Fire away," he says, grinning.
I roll up my sleeves. "First of all, why are you here? You don't strike me as the typical bad boy," I say, checking him out. Of course I used this excuse to look at him more closely, and make sure he's just as good looking as I first saw him, three days ago. He is.
At first, he hesitates, but replies, "I took the blame for someone."
"Aren't you a new kid?" I blurt out, and cover my mouth immediately. That was mean of me. I want to apologize, but instead I say I admire him, and that he's brave.
He smirks. "What about you?" he asks.
I lean backwards, putting both my hands behind my head. "I've been skipping a few classes here and there, nothing serious. Also, my grades are extremely low."
He breathes out a laugh. "I could help you with that, I'm actually quite a nerd." We burst into laughter, and I notice a cute little dimple on his left cheek.
"I would love your help, thanks."
He spits a question he has been wanting to say for a while now. "What are your hobbies?"
I peek at him with the corner of my eye. "I make music with my friends."
He gasps, "With Changbin?"
I nod. "Yes, and another friend, Chan. We're 3Racha, like the sauce."
He chuckles, "That's a weird name."
"You need to get to know our stage names, they're even weirder," I say, grinning.
Minho's eyes gleam in amazement. "What's your stage name?"
"J.one," I say, proudly. I'm very fond of my stage name.
"J.one? That makes you sound badass."
"Whoever told you I'm not badass?" I snap quickly, a smile between my lips.
He cackles, covering his stomach with both of his arms, closing his eyes.
Before I can tell him anything else, a teacher comes through the door, killing what is left of the conversation off.
Jisung wiped a tear off his face. He wanted to go back in time and prevent himself from erasing his memory: Minho was lovely, he couldn't understand what went wrong. He knew he didn't know the rest of the story, and Minho was practically still a stranger to him. Sure, he could remember a few things here and there, where they first met and their first conversation, but it didn't guarantee anything: his memory was still gone.
He picked up both polaroids and compared them: he looked exactly the same. His aura was peaceful and calm and everything about him looked intriguing. He wanted to find out more about him, he was sure that deep inside in his brain he had stored all of his memories about Minho, and that they hadn't been erased but instead locked away. And he didn't have the key nor password. Not yet.
He instinctively turned them around and noticed something he didn't notice the first time: dates. The polaroids had been not only titled but also dated. Both pictures were almost six years old, and he gasped at the realization that it had been a long time since he first met Minho. Jisung wasn't sure about anything anymore, he was lost between remembering memories he chose to erase for unknown reasons and what was actually real. He felt he was losing sight of what was there and what was not. Minho was not there, but the pictures were definitely real. The memories were real. His feelings? He still wasn't sure where they came from, they were a question with no answer. Nothing had an answer anymore, and the harder he buried himself into answers, more questions arose.
The date on the first polaroid was "year 1 month 1 day 1" which he deducted was the beginning of something. Jisung still wasn't sure of what, like pretty much everything so far, he had questions unanswered. The second polaroid's date was "year 1 month 1 day 3" which made no sense to him, but it did help him figure out that the polaroids were indeed in the correct order.
Jisung wondered if there was, somewhere in between the whole ocean of pictures he had on his bedroom floor, a picture of the two of them. "I will find it out sooner or later," he mentally answered himself. When he picked up the next polaroid, unlike the previous ones, he spotted a crumpled paper loosely attached to the back of it. The paper looked kind of old; he figured it must've been from the very beginning as well. He opened it slowly, carefully, tracing the scars on the paper. It had small, untidy pink hearts all over, and even though it didn't have anything written down, he somehow knew it was a message for Minho, one that came solely from the heart: an unhearable I love you.
The day I met your mind (year 1 month 1 day 14)
"So you live alone, why?" I ask, throwing the books and the school supplies over the hard marble kitchen table. Minho's apartment is small but cozy, and it only has two doors: the front door and the bathroom's.
"Family problems," he mumbles hurriedly, "You don't wanna know about it."
"Oh, but I do," I say, sliding the books aside, folding my arms on the table. He has my full attention.
He hesitates, biting his lower lip. He takes a chair out and sits down in front of me, interlocking his hands on the table.
So that is where the accumulated anger comes from. Bingo!
"They have a different lifestyle. They're old-fashioned and they always criticize everything. They used to criticize my grades, my friends, my girlfriends.."
I cut him off. "Girlfriends?"
"Don't worry," he says, leaning backwards and stretching his arms. "It was just to impress them. To make them satisfied. I never felt anything for any of them."
I sigh, what a relief. He gazes at me, I bet he's trying to figure out what I'm thinking about. He looks like he has an answer.
"Why did you ask me about my girlfriends?" he questions, raising a suspicious eyebrow and flashing a malicious grin.
"Forget it," I say, picking up a pen and opening a book as fast as lightning. "Let's start, tutor."
Jisung woke up on the floor the next day, surrounded by the polaroids that triggered memories he regretted erasing from his brain. He squinted at the sun coming through his window and lazily stood up, turning the light on his nightstand off and drinking the remaining water with the little strength he still had. Leaving the whole box untouched, polaroids still scattered around the floor, he grabbed the first hoodie he could find and went out, in search for answers.