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Jisung hates the Lotus Facility. He hated it the first time he walked through the doors six months ago, into the cool-toned foyer with the soothing music playing in the background and the fish tanks on the walls and the staff that greeted them with sympathetic smiles. He hated it more with every subsequent visit; the cafeteria with bland, uninteresting food; the common area with all the furniture bolted to the floor; the gardens with the ornamental pond, lotus flowers floating on its surface.
But as much as he hates visiting, he hates leaving even more, because he has to leave Minho behind.
🪷
The first time, Minho had looked so hurt. So lost and confused, like a cat being dropped off at a rescue shelter. He had clung to Jisung’s sweater, refusing to let go.
“I need to go, jagi,” Jisung had said gently, although it felt like he was ripping his soul out of his chest to do it. He had wrapped his fingers around Minho’s, attempting to prise them open. Minho had only gripped tighter.
“I want to go home.” His voice was so small and quiet, but his eyes were big and full of fear. “Can we go home, Sung-ah?”
Jisung had started crying then. “You have to stay here,” he had said, voice breaking, fingers tugging uselessly at Minho’s iron grip. He couldn’t look at him. He had thrown a desperate look at Chan instead, who looked seconds from crumbling. “Remember, honey? You have to stay here to get better.”
“No,” Minho had said, pulling Jisung back down on the couch and wrapping his arms around him tightly, so tight that Jisung’s lungs were constricted. “Don’t leave me here,” he had pleaded in Jisung’s ear, terrified.
Two nurses had appeared then. When gentle coaxing didn’t work, they had to physically pry Minho’s arms off of Jisung. Chan had helped, tears rolling down his cheeks, whispering broken apologies the entire time.
Jisung hadn’t been able to look back as they left, but he heard the desperate sob Minho made all the same.
He had burst into tears the moment they closed the doors of Chan’s car, his knees curling up to his chest and his hands covering his face. Chan had pulled him into a hug immediately, uncaring for the centre console as he leaned across it and wrapped Jisung up tight because Minho couldn’t.
“It’s just for a few weeks,” he had murmured as he stroked Jisung’s hair and rocked him back and forth. “He doesn’t understand now because he’s unwell, but he will. It’s not forever, Sungie, I promise.”
That night, Jisung had stretched his hand across the bed, letting it settle on the cool sheets where Minho should have been.
🪷
Leaving never got any easier after that. A few weeks came and went, and Minho wasn’t better. If anything, he was worse, and continuing to decline.
“He’s refusing to engage in therapy,” the consultant had explained when Jisung brought it up, watching Minho through the one-way glass as he sat, so still it was unnerving, in the armchair by his bedroom window, staring out at the ornamental lotus pond. The buds had cracked open, the petals peeling outwards as though waking up from a deep sleep. “He refuses his medication and doesn’t socialise with the other residents. And there have been… outbursts.”
“What do you mean, ‘outbursts’?” Chan said from beside them. Despite how busy he was, carrying the team and continuing to hit the studio, and performing damage control over Minho’s unexpected hiatus, he still accompanied Jisung every single time.
Jisung isn’t sure whether it’s for Minho, or for him. He suspects it might be both.
“When he becomes overwhelmed, he seems unable to regulate himself. He hurts himself,” the consultant said. “We’ve removed everything possible that could be considered a risk, but when a person is desperate they will find a way. Yesterday, he started to bang his head against the doorframe and we had to use rapid tranquilisation to calm him down.”
Jisung had looked back at Minho, heartbroken to see the mottled bruise blooming in the centre of his forehead.
“So what’s your plan, then?” Chan had asked, crossing his arms as though it would hold him together.
"For now, we'll continue to offer therapy and medication,” the consultant said. “Patience is important. He may, with time, become willing to engage with us. If he does, we can work with him to develop a treatment plan."
“And… if he doesn’t?”
The consultant’s lips had thinned into a brief grimace. “Then we will have to revisit our options.”
When they had walked into the room, Minho hadn’t looked up straight away, as though his mind was far away from his body. He hadn’t cried, or begged to go home. But he hadn’t laughed, teased, or played like himself either. Chan had told him that the members missed him, and he had smiled politely. Jisung had tried to hold his hand, and Minho had let him, but his grip was loose, like he had already accepted that Jisung would leave again.
His gaze had continually drifted to the lotus pond, watching the mid-morning sunlight catch on the fresh, delicate petals.
All Jisung could focus on was the bruise, a glaring reminder of all the other wounds and scars Minho had carefully hid from them all for so long.
This time, only Jisung cried when it was time to leave, and it was Jisung that clung to Minho rather than the other way around. Minho had let him. Chan was once again tasked with untangling them, guiding Jisung out of the facility and back into his car. Jisung had felt guilt hit him like a truck when he saw Chan slump down behind the steering wheel, exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” he had whispered into his hands.
Chan hadn’t started the car straight away, staring through the windshield for a few moments as though collecting the strength to keep going.
“I just miss him,” Jisung blurted, the tears already falling again. “I hate leaving him here. He’s not getting better. Can’t we bring him home instead?”
Chan had gripped the steering wheel so tight the leather creaked. “You heard the consultant. We just have to be patient.” His voice was quiet. “Minho has been unwell for years, he’s just been really good at hiding it from us. It’s not going to be fixed overnight.”
Jisung had noticed the shift.
Chan was no longer assuring him that it was ‘just for a few weeks’. Instead, he was asking Jisung for patience without promising an end.
In bed, Jisung had turned away from the cold, empty side, unable to acknowledge it.
🪷
They tried to be patient. They visited every few days, and tried not to get disheartened when Minho was worse with every visit. Quieter. Thinner. He still let Jisung hug him and hold his hand, but there was no hope of reciprocation. Minho simply sat there and let him, limp and passive in his arms.
The staff offered everything. Talking therapy. Medication. Meditation. Hypnotherapy. Even the stranger, more magical things that had worked for other residents – crystal vibrations, séances, lucid dreaming.
Minho refused everything.
Meanwhile, he got more distressed, more frequently. Jisung watched the furniture in his room change. The photoframes containing pictures of the group, of Soonie and Doongie and Dori, of Minho’s parents – all gone. The knitted blanket Jisung had brought from home, confiscated after Minho unravelled it and wrapped the yarn so tightly around his ankle under his pants that his foot had been blue by the time the staff discovered it.
“He’s not getting better,” Jisung had said, in the consultant’s office. “He’s worse than when he got here. I thought you guys were supposed to be the best in the country!”
Chan had stiffened in the chair next to him, hand tightening on Jisung’s knee in warning. Jisung had noticed the changes in Chan, too. The bags under his eyes were now permanent fixtures. His hair was longer and unstyled, dark roots showing through. The company had finally relented and agreed to a group hiatus when it became clear that Minho wasn't coming back any time soon. The other members had refused to work without him anyway.
But that didn't mean Chan was free from his duties.
He still came to every visit.
“We’re just frustrated with the lack of progress,” Chan has explained, far more diplomatically than Jisung. “We’re concerned that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be for Minho to get better.”
The consultant had nodded, looking grim. “I agree. We would expect some improvement after six months, no matter how small. I’m extremely concerned for Minho’s overall health at this point.” He had set down his pen with a weary sigh, across the reams of notes and charts documenting Minho’s lack of progress. “We’ve reached the point where we need to discuss another option.”
“I agree,” Jisung had said coldly, and Chan’s hand had tightened further on his knee.
“There’s a procedure we have used in cases where conventional treatment has failed,” the consultant continued, grimacing as though the very concept of this procedure was painful to think about.
His tone had terrified Jisung.
But surely nothing could be worse than what Minho had already been through.
Bottling up his feelings until they exploded out of him. Being restrained by people he was supposed to trust. Being injected until his mind went quiet.
Jisung’s mind had tried to conjure up what could possibly be so extreme that it was only reserved for the worst cases. Electroconvulsive therapy. Hiding medicine in Minho’s food. Transferring him to another facility, with more aggressive treatment plans.
“It involves memory,” the consultant said.
Chan had frowned. “What do you mean? Like hypnotism?”
The consultant shook his head.
“No.” His expression had tightened. “We’re way past that. Minho is under siege by his own mind, his own memories of the experiences that have led him to this state. At this point, it might be kindest to… remove those memories altogether.”
The office was quiet, then. Jisung stared at the consultant, feeling as though the barrier holding his organs in place had vanished and they were spilling all over the floor. Chan was so still he could be frozen, his expression horrified.
“Re-remove them?” Jisung said. Surely he had misheard.
The consultant had nodded. “Yes.”
“... All of them?” Chan said.
“The procedure doesn’t allow for us to be selective,” the consultant had said then. “We can only determine how far back we go. And that would be up to Minho, as to how much to remove.”
Jisung felt sick. His stomach had cramped violently, sweat pinpricking on his skin as his breathing turned shallow and fast.
They didn’t even know exactly what pained Minho so much. He had never opened up about that in all the time he had been at the Lotus Facility. They only knew that some of the scars on his legs and stomach were years-old, meaning he had been suffering for a while.
If Minho agreed to this, how much would he ask them to take away?
Two years?
The FIVE-STAR comeback had been rough on all of them, especially Minho and Jisung.
Five years?
Back to the pandemic?
Jisung's stomach twisted.
Their entire career?
He barely made it to the bathroom before he violently threw up, nothing but acid and bile.
Chan didn't follow. He was still sitting in his chair, staring blankly at the consultant.
The car ride home was completely silent that day. Jisung had slept on the couch.
🪷
The lotus flowers are fully open on the surface of the pond as they sit on the benches at its edge.
Minho’s cheeks are hollow and his eyes are sunken, his gaze blank and hopeless as he watches the flowers float on the water’s surface.
“Minho,” the consultant says, gently. “We have something to ask you.”
Minho doesn’t acknowledge him. His hand is limp in Jisung’s hold, the skin cold and clammy, the bones sharp.
“If you had the chance to forget, would you take it?”
For the first time in months, Jisung sees a flicker of life in Minho’s face. He blinks, as though waking up from a dream, and slowly turns his head to the doctor.
“What?”
His voice is hoarse with disuse, low and raspy. He sounds the word out as though he’s unsure if he’s using it correctly.
The doctor patiently explains the procedure to him, and Jisung’s heart withers as he watches hope bloom across Minho’s face.
“Yes,” he says, so fast it hurts. “I want that.”
Chan’s breath hitches beside them.
The consultant gives a defeated nod. “Okay, Minho. How much would you want to forget?”
Minho purses his lips, hand tightening in Jisung’s. It doesn’t give Jisung the relief he would have expected from such an action.
Jisung glances at Chan. He is looking up at the cloudy sky, blinking hard, face pale.
Minho doesn’t give an answer.
The consultant seems to understand. “That’s okay. Take some time to think about it. Just know that it is an option.”
Minho nods jerkily, gaze returning as though magnetised to the ornamental pond. The doctor excuses himself, leaving them with their stormy thoughts.
They’re quiet for a long time. It’s Chan who eventually breaks the silence.
“How are you doing, Minho?”
Minho swallows.
“Bad.”
He looks almost afraid as he looks up at them both. “Really… really bad.”
Jisung thought he was all cried out, but he finds his cheeks are wet again.
“Are you thinking of saying yes?” Chan says.
Minho looks directly at Jisung. A heartbroken, watery smile pulls at his lips. “Would you hate me if I did?”
Jisung makes a choked, wet sound, tears pouring down his face. “No, jagi. I could never hate you.”
Minho closes his eyes and leans into him, resting his head on Jisung’s shoulder and curling his thin arm around Jisung’s waist. He sounds tired when he next speaks.
“I’m going to think about it.”
Changbin has to pick them up that day, neither of them in any state to drive. That night, Jisung and Chan sleep in the bed with Changbin and Hyunjin, wrapped around each other.
Jisung wakes in the middle of the night and reaches out instinctively, his hand brushing against a broad shoulder. He smiles, fingers curling into the T-shirt. For one blissful second, he imagines Minho watching him with warm eyes and a gentle smile.
Then he opens his eyes.
Chan is staring back at him sadly.
🪷
They’re back in the garden again, by the pond.
“If you could go back and do something differently, would you?” Minho says, surprising them both. He hasn’t initiated conversation in months.
Jisung’s hold around Minho’s sharp shoulders tightens, seeing where this is going. “Maybe. Is there something you would change?”
Minho is quiet for a moment, watching the lotus flowers. Chan strokes his hand up and down Minho’s back.
“I wish I never became an idol.”
When Minho looks back at him, Jisung sees the guilt on his face. Minho knows what is wrapped up in those painful memories. He knows what else he would be forgetting.
Not just the inhumane workload. The societal pressure. The policing of their bodies. The loss of freedoms they had once taken for granted.
But also the laughter. The stolen kisses. The whispered confessions. The love.
Jisung.
What hurts Jisung most is that Minho isn’t saying, I wish I hadn’t met you. He’s saying that he wishes he had lived a different life than the one that made him so unhappy.
That life just happens to be so tightly wound up with his love for Jisung that the two are inseparable.
And Minho is hurting enough that he would still choose to forget all of it.
Minho’s eyes flutter as he watches Jisung understand.
He looks so tired. So thin.
There’s a fresh bruise on his forehead.
What kind of love would it be, if Jisung begged him not to do it?
He doesn’t trust his voice not to crack if he speaks, so he just swallows and nods, his shoulders already shaking with the force of the sobs punching through his body.
Chan abruptly stands, a strangled sound catching in his throat. He turns and walks quickly back towards the facility.
For the first time in six months, they’re alone together.
“I’m sorry,” Minho says, climbing into Jisung’s lap and wrapping his arms around his shoulders. His eyes are clear and focused as they look at each other. “Jagi, I’m… I’m sorry.”
Jisung lifts a hand and tangles it in the long hair at the nape of Minho’s neck. “There’s nothing to apologise for,” he says, still crying as he presses their lips together in a chaste, shaky kiss. “Nothing at all, baby.”
He doesn't have to tell Minho everything he's feeling. How it feels like the Earth is spinning too fast, threatening to throw him off into the cold void of space. Minho already understands, from the way he kisses back with chapped lips, from the way he tightens his arms around Jisung's neck.
“I love you,” Minho says against his lips, so quiet it could be snatched away on the breeze.
“I know.”
This time, when Jisung leaves, it takes them both a long time to let go. Changbin drives again. The whole group falls asleep on mattresses piled across Changbin and Hyunjin’s living room floor, tangled together, hands tightly clasped and tears drying on their cheeks.
🪷
Jisung hates the Lotus Facility. He hates what has happened within its walls, what Minho has become within them.
He hates that this will be his last time within them, too.
They’re in Minho’s room, Minho sandwiched between him and Chan on the small couch with the consultant sitting opposite them. Two nurses and another doctor wait outside the room, in case they’re needed.
Minho’s parents are there, ready to take him home.
Not Jisung and Minho’s home. Gimpo.
Minho's hands are shaking.
Or maybe it's Jisung and Chan.
He can't tell anymore.
The consultant opens a small white box, about the size of his palm, and places it on the table between them.
Inside sit three lotus petals.
“The magic is very simple,” he explains as they stare down at them. “Three petals is enough for ten years of memories. Once you eat them, the memories will begin to fade within a few minutes. You will know that something is missing, but the pain will be gone.”
Minho nods, his face pale and sharp.
“It is very important that you understand that this is permanent,” the consultant says, fixing Minho with an intense stare. “Once they are gone, you cannot get those memories back. There is no changing your mind.”
Minho looks terrified, but resolved, as he nods again. “I know.”
The consultant smiles sadly and pushes the box across the table towards him.
Jisung’s breath hitches, his heart in his throat. He looks desperately at Chan, who is staring back with a wild, frantic expression. Minho sits between them, expression turning serene as he regards the petals.
He leans forward and picks them up, cradling them gently in the palm of his hand. Three petals, ten years of memories. He holds everything that has become dear to Jisung in his grasp – the experiences that shaped him, the memories that inspired his music, the person Jisung fell in love with.
It’s about to become Jisung’s to carry alone.
Minho looks between them, seeing the pain written on their faces. Chan’s heartbroken acknowledgement that he failed Minho. Jisung’s grief.
He pulls Chan into a surprisingly fierce hug. “Thank you for everything,” he whispers, his fingers folded carefully around the petals as Chan sobs into his shoulder. “You are the best leader I could have ever wished for.”
Jisung will never be ready for his turn, but it comes all too quickly.
Minho releases Chan, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and turns to face him. He brings his free hand up to cradle Jisung’s cheek, much as he cradles the petals. “I wish I had another choice.”
Jisung nuzzles into his hand, openly crying. “Me too. I’ll miss you so much, aegi. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Minho’s lip wobbles.
“You too, jagi. You’re the reason I kept going for so long.” He squeezes his eyes shut and a few stray tears spill out, lingering on his pale cheeks. “Promise me that you’ll keep going too, okay?”
Jisung could never hate Minho. But in this moment, he almost wishes he could, just for asking such a thing of him.
When Minho kisses him, Jisung knows he would forgive him anyway. It’s soft and lingering, warm and simple, like the thousands they have shared in the privacy of their apartment. It’s far too final.
“Make sure to eat something other than instant ramyeon,” Minho says as he pulls away, tilting Jisung’s face to kiss each cheek, then his brow. That’s what breaks Jisung, the sobs punching out of him in painful staccato.
He blindly reaches for Minho’s hand as he feels it pulling away, pressing a kiss to his fingertips as he cries.
“I love you so much. I’ll always love you.”
“I know,” Minho says softly, and pulls his hand away.
Jisung feels himself cast adrift, a boat with the moorings cut, doomed to float in an endless sea with no land in sight.
“Minho?” the consultant says. “Are you ready?”
Minho’s voice is wet and shaky, but his resolve is firm. “Yes.”
He places the petals on his tongue and bites down. His hands find Chan and Jisung’s again as he chews, the room silent save for their broken sobs.
He swallows.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then he blinks.
Once.
Twice.
His shoulders relax and the pinched, pained expression on his face fades, his eyes brightening. His grip loosens in Chan and Jisung’s hands, fingers uncurling.
When he breathes, it’s unburdened, full and clear.
He looks down at their intertwined hands, frowning before looking first at Chan, then at him. Jisung’s heart lurches as their eyes meet.
“I’m…” Minho says, his voice lighter than before. Younger. “Do I know you?”
Jisung feels his entire soul crumble as he shakes his head.
“No.”
Minho hums in confusion, looking down at their hands again. He gently wiggles his fingers free, and it takes everything in Jisung’s broken heart not to chase him. But then he looks up again, capturing Jisung in that wide, unburdened stare.
“You’re crying.”
Minho brings his hand up and wipes Jisung’s cheek.
Jisung closes his eyes.
His fingers are warm.
He remembers that hand against his cheek in the mornings. Curled around his own under restaurant tables. Tangled in his hair. Holding him through nightmares. He remembers every version of this hand.
Minho remembers none of it.
“Are you okay?” Minho asks.
Jisung laughs, except it comes out as something between a sob and a gasp.
“Yeah.”
Minho studies him for a moment, head tilted in that weirdly feline way, unconvinced. It's so familiar, it's still him, but it's not Jisung's Minho. That man is gone.
He may as well be dead.
“You don't look okay.”
Jisung wants to grab him, shake him. Wrap his arms around him and scream into his chest, beg for the man who loves... loved him... to snap out of it.
Instead, he leans away, letting the warm hand fall away from his face for the last time. “You're right. I'm not.”
Minho's brow furrows.
Then, very softly, he whispers, “I'm sorry.”
🪷
The entire group is waiting outside the facility when they leave. Jisung takes one step into the sunlight, then another, then his knees give out. They catch him, sweeping him into their arms as the grief they've been holding back finally breaks free.
The parking lot echoes with his grief-stricken howl. He dimly registers Chan falling to his knees beside him.
When he hears the older man's sobs, it's somehow a thousand times worse.
Minho is gone. There's a shell back inside the Lotus facility, walking around with his face and his voice and his gentle heart, but the man is gone.
The company sends taxis to collect them.
They try to persuade him to sleep in their blanket fort again that night. Jisung refuses, returning back to his dorm for the first time in weeks.
His dorm. Not his and Minho’s.
In bed, he reaches for the empty space beside him, fingers curling in the cold sheets. All that’s left is a lingering smell of Minho – his Gucci perfume, his shampoo, his detergent.
Like the memories, that will fade too.
He doesn’t know if he can keep his promise to Minho when that happens.