[fic] As a Memento
Mar. 27th, 2012 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sessho08Title: As a Memento
Fandom: Dong Bang Shin Ki
Pairing: Homin
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,514
AN/Warnings: Old idea that I thought dead already but that suddenly attacked me again, with actual inspiration and whatnot. Could not resist (and believe me, I tried).
Also, this is not a happy fic.
Beta'ed by the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isaofdoom - thank you, thank you!
It’s a slow process. Frightening in its lack of momentum that lets you stay aware of what’s happening to you and the world. That mercilessly leaves you with just enough of a clear mind to make you realise what it is exactly that you’re losing with each next day.
Later, no one knows when it has started. No one notices.
After all, it’s normal, isn’t it? To forget to buy milk, to write this pressing assignment or to lose the details of the day that’s just passed. People are busy, people are tired, people just don’t have enough of memory capacity to bother with remembering irrelevant stuff.
No one realises.
***
Shim Changmin wakes up in a place he can’t recognise, very naked and with an equally naked male body that doesn’t seem familiar either pressed to his.
“Great,” he mutters under his breath as he berates himself in his mind for somehow having had a one-night stand.
What does one do in such a situation? Rouse the other party? Awkward. Wait until they wake up by themselves? Awkward. Slip away then, it is, he thinks and he’s about to make a subtle attempt at untangling himself when it hits him. Not only does he not know where he is, but where he’s supposed to go if he does get up is lost to him as well. Where does he live, again? Surely, even alcohol intoxication couldn’t have messed up his memory as much as to make him forget something like this.
That’s when the other man chooses to finally stir. He raises his head from where it’s resting on the pillow, blinks sleepily and rubs at his eyes. His gaze focuses on Changmin and he scoots closer with a small smile on his face. Changmin freezes. The stranger, probably having felt him tense, inquires softly, “Min-ah?”.
For some reason, Changmin’s relieved at that. At least he hasn’t fallen that low to sleep with people who don’t even bother to ask for his name. Still, it also makes him an asshole if he doesn’t remember anything. He opens his mouth, fumbling for some words, for some explanation, but stays silent.
The man looks at him with a strange mixture of sadness and resignation, and -- understanding? and sighs.
The “You don’t remember, do you,” that follows, is more of a statement than anything else. Finding the confirmation in Changmin’s expression, he continues. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“Yesterday’s dermatology classes. ...It is Friday today, right?” Changmin makes sure.
“I’m Yunho,” comes the unexpected reply as the stranger, no, as Yunho sits up, providing him with much needed space. “This is why we try not to fall asleep right afterwards - to avoid mornings like this,” he gestures vaguely and lets out a small mirthless laugh.
“But it’s best if I’m not the one explaining. Tried and sound method, you know?” he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that Changmin, for some reason, finds appealing. It could be just the fact that the guy’s gorgeous but there’s this tug at his mind that tells him it’s more than that.
Wariness doesn’t leave him as Yunho offers that they dress, walking up with ease to the huge wardrobe that’s in the room and handing him clothes that indeed are similar to what he could see himself wearing and that end up fitting perfectly. Neither does it cease as the man makes for the DVD player and the plasma TV, picks one of three CDs laying on it, inserts it and presses play.
To his surprise, it’s his own face that appears on the screen. First thing that strikes him is how it seems at least several years older than what he knows he looks like right now, what he knows he should look like. And it’s in his very own voice and in the way of speaking he’s so familiar with that he hears this unbelievable story about some disease, an amnesia that apparently comes and goes and that everyone, with no exceptions, is suffering from. The older him continues talking for a short while, suggesting some things, advising others.
Then his recorded self proceeds with another, almost as incredulous, story how this man, Yunho, is, well, not his husband as same sex marriages are illegal in South Korea, but important. The digital him smiles self-consciously as his gaze skips to something (but it’s probably someone, isn’t it) beyond the screen and wrings his hands slightly in a gesture of embarrassment that Changmin’s well accustomed with, that he has tried to get rid off of many times in the past. He’s clearly distressed by what he’s saying but he also seems... happy? To be looking at this someone like this, to be looked at back.
Instinct (or maybe just the image of himself on the TV) makes him raise his left hand to his eyes – to a thin silver band glinting on his finger.
When the recording ends, Changmin leans back heavily in his armchair, feeling spent and overwhelmed and, most of all, awfully small and lost. He doesn’t want to believe in what he’s seen just now but there seems to be no other option. His own aged face that he sees in the mirror when he finally succeeds in taking the reins of his distressed mind tells him as much.
The rest of the day proceeds rather uneventfully even if it’s filled with furtive glances and the air feels thick with awkwardness at times. Thankfully, it’s Sunday so no work today - and he works now, finally a doctor that he’s always strived to become, what do you know; it's a pity he doesn’t really remember anything from most of the studies he’s supposedly finished with top marks - but Yunho reassures him that these things, sudden absences from work and whatnot, just happen now and no one bats an eyelid anymore.
In the evening they go to sleep in the same bed, even though Yunho tells him he can just take the sofa, no problem. It doesn’t sit right with Changmin, though, considering that it is Yunho’s home as well. As hard as it still is to fathom.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, knowing. Not everything but enough to grasp at the shoulders of the man sprawled on the edge of the bed and then embrace him tightly when he opens his eyes in the sleep-caused confusion. Enough to whisper, “Your name—only your name now. I remember everything else, I remember yesterday morning— What is it, please.”
“It’s Yunho,” the man he cares about most in the world whispers back, starts caressing his face gently, far too gently for him to take.
And then they’re in each other’s arms and his ribs almost hurt from the initial force of this embrace but he doesn’t mind, he’ll never mind, he thinks as the mantra of “Yunho, Yunho--Yunho” trickles from his lips in a hurried stream, as he wills himself never to forget anymore.
***
No one catches that something is wrong until suddenly people start finding themselves not being able to recall what their own favourite food is, the number of the bus that they’ve been taking to work on daily basis for over fifteen years.
It’s not normal when all of sudden you can’t remember your mother, sibling, your lover’s name, what their faces look like.
It’s not but there’s still no reason to panic, right? These things happen, they must. The recollection comes back after a while, several hours at most, so it’s still fine. It’s just exhaustion, too many small things and problems pilling up, anyone could go crazy with that. They tell themselves that it’s just temporary and ahaha, oh God, I really need to take up a more regular lifestyle, don’t I.
The panic only comes when people start talking - with friends, with co-workers, with classmates and realise they’re not the only ones. When their favourite announcer is at a loss of words when he’s supposed to introduce himself, when he just can’t say the name of the news station he works for right in the middle of the broadcast. When that revolting politician they hate halts during his fierce speech and utters a hesitant “where am I?” after a short fearful pause.
***
Yunho forgets, it’s as simple as that. He forgets where he put his keys, phone, dirty underwear, clean underwear, his personal bowling ball, the Korean essays compilation he’s been reading, his head and that shoes are to be taken off when he “drops in just for a sec--!” and how he’s not supposed to drink straight from the milk bottle because it’s gross. It just happens, both him and Changmin have already gotten used to that even if the latter still finds it frustrating at the least.
Even Yunho doesn’t forget where he lives.
And then Changmin begins having all these holes in his memory. One day Yunho - of all of people - reminds him to call his sister with birthday wishes and he answers “...What? Haha, so funny, last time I heard I didn’t have any sister, what’s gotten into you.” At first, Yunho just laughs, waiting for the “just joking,” that doesn’t come, so he stares, searching his face for anything signaling that this is just his usual teasing. Then he has to fetch a picture of a woman that shares the Shims’ facial features from Changmin’s wallet and Changmin lets out a surprised, disbelieving gasp...
They know then that something’s very, very wrong.
***
At people’s demand (and simply because the people at the top are scared as well), the government first issues an official statement that’s full of complicated terms and intricacies and that basically says “we don’t know anything either, no one does,” and then employs their best scientists to work out what the issue’s about and how it can be solved.
The research takes a while even with frightened masses of people rushing it with hundreds of thousands of angry, hesitant, hopeful, inquiring, rude, polite letters, e-mails, sometimes even visits and full blown increasingly violent street walks. After several long months, during which people are forgetting more and more, the results are finally forwarded to the public at a special conference.
The reason of the UMTA (“Unidentified Mass Temporary Amnesia” as they called it) is, as the name itself would suggest, unknown. Apparently, there’s no cure.
The conference ends with a riot, huge number of people injured and taken to hospitals and the first fatalities since the whole issue’s been brought into light appear.
Governments come and go, new researches are conducted simultaneously by uncountable faculties, some of them topnotch and some scams whose instigators want to prey on people’s vulnerability.
Nothing changes. No one can tell what has brought this on, no one knows how to solve it.
People have to face the fact that they’re slowly but steadily and surely losing their memory, think by themselves how to prevent it, how to make themselves (and each other) remember again.
***
It’s not always this drastic. Sometimes it’s only details that they can’t recall. The name of that lovely old lady that lives next door. That Yunho has stomach problems and can’t drink this much alcohol. That Changmin enjoys leafing through fashion magazines. Small things, things you can get by without. All the small things that made up the intricacies and uniqueness that the human personality consists of.
The problem is, some things return after some time – and it can take an hour or a whole day, sometimes a bit longer but they do – but if they’re still not back after two days, they just disappear. Erased from memory with no traces whatsoever left.
When the fact is forwarded through from the research institutions to general public (though more observant individuals have already discovered that by themselves, Changmin being one of them), people start coming up with the methods to preserve things they don’t wish to forget no matter what.
Changmin knows people that live and are deeply involved with someone else, like him and Yunho, are in a more favourable situation. Unless they happen to lose the same information simultaneously (which doesn’t really happen that often), they can remind each other of it.
It’s also the more painful way – he almost doesn’t want to remember how it felt when Yunho turned to him with a sheepish “Um, sorry, but who are you again? I completely suck at the whole linking names with faces stuff at the beginning,” for the first time – but if it means he’ll recognise Yunho for a day, a month, a year longer he’ll take it all. He’s the lucky one, they both are.
They still resort to everything they can only watch, hear of or read on the Internet that could make for effective reminders. They attempt to write short notes - their apartment overflowing with hundreds of colourful post-its stuck on every available surface, various facts from their lives written on them, happy moments, sad moments, things that added to shaping the people they’ve become, things that aren’t really that essential to their well-being but that they still wish to keep alive.
They decorate all the empty spots left between post-its with pictures, all of them properly labeled – who’s in them, when they were taken.
They start a diary in which they both write. The perfect arrangement would be each day having an entry by both of them but they don’t have that time – they still haven’t quit their jobs and if they want to keep it that way, they have to constantly relearn stuff they managed to forget and it’s all very time-consuming. They still would rather make memories together than write them out, as hopeless and meaningless as it seems on the bad days, when they open their eyes in the morning to a world that’s missing yet another pieces that they held dear.
They buy dog tags and they ask for some additional information to be engraved in the metal besides the standards. Dog tags have been the ‘it’ item lately and isn’t that sort of funny, Changmin muses sometimes. “Maybe I should buy one for Taepoong! You get Mangdoongie one, too!” Yunho quips with a mischievous grin and Changmin bats at his arm lightly after he suppresses the urge to smile because he will not laugh at such a lame line.
He’s never been fond of marking and altering your body in any artificial way but he still concedes when Yunho proposes getting tattoos. It’s nothing much, just a simple “I am Changmin & I love Yunho” at the back of his hand - so it’s easily and immediately visible.
“I think ‘I don’t want to forget Yunho’ would be enough. It’s me, I’d know what I meant even if I didn’t remember,” he insists with his face flaming red but he still doesn’t yank away his hand from where Yunho’s tracing “love” on it with his finger.
“But what if one day you lost the thing that lets you get over your denial of the feelings you have for me? Knowing you, you’d think it means ‘I don’t want to forget him because he’s a friend’ or something like that,” Yunho retorts and he still doesn’t remove his hand but he does kick Yunho in the shin.
***
The news start reporting on the increased and still rising number of suicides. With no perspectives of a cure being found anytime soon and people’s memory rapidly deteriorating (it gets worse and faster after some point is reached, although it’s different for everyone) people start losing hope.
No preventive measures can stop or slow down the process anymore. Surrounded by people that insist on knowing you well and vice versa, met with a face of a stranger in the mirror – some people can’t take the pressure and cornered, they chose the certainty of death over the foreboding unease of the future.
Some people still try to live on as if nothing happened (as if something terrible wasn’t continuously taking place) but it gets increasingly harder. How to do your job when you don’t remember what it is about? What’s the point in attending school if you don’t remember anything from the classes from the month ago?
More and more people are becoming recluses, locking themselves up in home almost all the time, leaving only when it’s absolutely necessary. Delivery companies (now led by individuals that still have it in them to let themselves be taken over by greed) have never earned more.
***
Then one day they both wake up not quite sure about the details of their relationship. The affection, the love is a fact. The tattoos surprisingly help as well and they remember enough for Yunho to be all smug and “told you so” about it. That, they’re clear about, but it’s everything else that’s... foreign.
The apartment’s layout. The dog bowls on the floor. The pictures that include anyone else that’s not them two.
The right way to make love, what kind of caresses the other likes. Relearning is anything but unpleasant, the memory etched in the cores of their bodies aiding them greatly as well, but the knowledge that they still forgot is frustrating. It hurts.
The knowledge that they forgot at the same time is terrifying.
It only gets progressively worse with each next day. With every morning (and sometimes even after an innocent nap) they remember less.
The pictures, the post-its, the diary and the dog tags – they’re all just symbols, they can read the words, they can see the images but they don’t bring anything to mind anymore.
And then they forget how to read and it’s crippling. They haven’t thought of that and Changmin berates himself for being this stupid, for daring to hope. He still knows what’s written on the back of his hand but it’s just this – knowledge. It’s fickle and treacherous and he can only wait in dread for the moment when this particular piece of information is torn away from him as well.
They try and search for an another tattoo artist that’d help them engrave in their skin images of each other this time but they discover there’s no one like this left.
They’ve been naïve, they’ve been dumb, they’ve been too sure of themselves, Changmin doesn’t care about pretenses anymore as he thrusts into Yunho on their bed (so fucking nice that they still remember what beds are for) and tears trickle down his face and when he leans down to kiss him messily, they mix with Yunho’s own tears.
Yunho’s crying too, he realises right then, only then and really, if that’s not the best indicator of just how hopeless this situation has become.
They decide to avoid sleep as much as they only can in a manifestation of some desperate hope that tells them not to give up on fighting, that they can still somehow win this battle.
It works, they don’t forget when they’re awake and conscious but there’s only so long that one can go without sleeping before they pass out. And pass out they do, Yunho first, and Changmin shakes him as hard as he can his own body weakened greatly by the lack of proper rest. He yells at him to stay the fuck awake, not to leave him, how dare you, don’t do that, please-- God, no. Yunho struggles then to keep his eyes open for another several minutes and Changmin almost starts crying from relief, from sadness, from the madness of this all, he doesn’t know what anymore. But then none of his bordering on violent attempts help and Yunho drifts away and then, there’s no point in him trying either, is there?
They wake up not remembering each other’s names. They talk and talk and make love and keep on fighting to stay awake until the sleep finally takes its hold on them.
They wake up and Yunho can’t recall what’s this silver thing on his finger. Changmin tells him and prays to whatever deities that there are (there is none, is there, there can’t be any) that the man just takes his words as they are.
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t know what the thing, body part was it? that his ring is on is called. Yunho says it’s a “finger” and he thinks why not and does it really matter.
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t remember how to form words anymore. Yunho cries and cries and cries until Changmin shows him that he can still communicate with his fists. Changmin still remembers how to laugh so they do, the broken sound of it grating on his ears.
They wake up and Yunho can’t speak either. Changmin smiles at him because it’s fine, isn’t it, they don’t need words.
They wake up and they realise that—
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t know—
They wake up and Yunho no longer—
They make sure never to wake up again.
Comments and critique very much appreciated! ♥
Fandom: Dong Bang Shin Ki
Pairing: Homin
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,514
AN/Warnings: Old idea that I thought dead already but that suddenly attacked me again, with actual inspiration and whatnot. Could not resist (and believe me, I tried).
Also, this is not a happy fic.
Beta'ed by the lovely
isaofdoom - thank you, thank you!It’s a slow process. Frightening in its lack of momentum that lets you stay aware of what’s happening to you and the world. That mercilessly leaves you with just enough of a clear mind to make you realise what it is exactly that you’re losing with each next day.
Later, no one knows when it has started. No one notices.
After all, it’s normal, isn’t it? To forget to buy milk, to write this pressing assignment or to lose the details of the day that’s just passed. People are busy, people are tired, people just don’t have enough of memory capacity to bother with remembering irrelevant stuff.
No one realises.
***
Shim Changmin wakes up in a place he can’t recognise, very naked and with an equally naked male body that doesn’t seem familiar either pressed to his.
“Great,” he mutters under his breath as he berates himself in his mind for somehow having had a one-night stand.
What does one do in such a situation? Rouse the other party? Awkward. Wait until they wake up by themselves? Awkward. Slip away then, it is, he thinks and he’s about to make a subtle attempt at untangling himself when it hits him. Not only does he not know where he is, but where he’s supposed to go if he does get up is lost to him as well. Where does he live, again? Surely, even alcohol intoxication couldn’t have messed up his memory as much as to make him forget something like this.
That’s when the other man chooses to finally stir. He raises his head from where it’s resting on the pillow, blinks sleepily and rubs at his eyes. His gaze focuses on Changmin and he scoots closer with a small smile on his face. Changmin freezes. The stranger, probably having felt him tense, inquires softly, “Min-ah?”.
For some reason, Changmin’s relieved at that. At least he hasn’t fallen that low to sleep with people who don’t even bother to ask for his name. Still, it also makes him an asshole if he doesn’t remember anything. He opens his mouth, fumbling for some words, for some explanation, but stays silent.
The man looks at him with a strange mixture of sadness and resignation, and -- understanding? and sighs.
The “You don’t remember, do you,” that follows, is more of a statement than anything else. Finding the confirmation in Changmin’s expression, he continues. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“Yesterday’s dermatology classes. ...It is Friday today, right?” Changmin makes sure.
“I’m Yunho,” comes the unexpected reply as the stranger, no, as Yunho sits up, providing him with much needed space. “This is why we try not to fall asleep right afterwards - to avoid mornings like this,” he gestures vaguely and lets out a small mirthless laugh.
“But it’s best if I’m not the one explaining. Tried and sound method, you know?” he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that Changmin, for some reason, finds appealing. It could be just the fact that the guy’s gorgeous but there’s this tug at his mind that tells him it’s more than that.
Wariness doesn’t leave him as Yunho offers that they dress, walking up with ease to the huge wardrobe that’s in the room and handing him clothes that indeed are similar to what he could see himself wearing and that end up fitting perfectly. Neither does it cease as the man makes for the DVD player and the plasma TV, picks one of three CDs laying on it, inserts it and presses play.
To his surprise, it’s his own face that appears on the screen. First thing that strikes him is how it seems at least several years older than what he knows he looks like right now, what he knows he should look like. And it’s in his very own voice and in the way of speaking he’s so familiar with that he hears this unbelievable story about some disease, an amnesia that apparently comes and goes and that everyone, with no exceptions, is suffering from. The older him continues talking for a short while, suggesting some things, advising others.
Then his recorded self proceeds with another, almost as incredulous, story how this man, Yunho, is, well, not his husband as same sex marriages are illegal in South Korea, but important. The digital him smiles self-consciously as his gaze skips to something (but it’s probably someone, isn’t it) beyond the screen and wrings his hands slightly in a gesture of embarrassment that Changmin’s well accustomed with, that he has tried to get rid off of many times in the past. He’s clearly distressed by what he’s saying but he also seems... happy? To be looking at this someone like this, to be looked at back.
Instinct (or maybe just the image of himself on the TV) makes him raise his left hand to his eyes – to a thin silver band glinting on his finger.
When the recording ends, Changmin leans back heavily in his armchair, feeling spent and overwhelmed and, most of all, awfully small and lost. He doesn’t want to believe in what he’s seen just now but there seems to be no other option. His own aged face that he sees in the mirror when he finally succeeds in taking the reins of his distressed mind tells him as much.
The rest of the day proceeds rather uneventfully even if it’s filled with furtive glances and the air feels thick with awkwardness at times. Thankfully, it’s Sunday so no work today - and he works now, finally a doctor that he’s always strived to become, what do you know; it's a pity he doesn’t really remember anything from most of the studies he’s supposedly finished with top marks - but Yunho reassures him that these things, sudden absences from work and whatnot, just happen now and no one bats an eyelid anymore.
In the evening they go to sleep in the same bed, even though Yunho tells him he can just take the sofa, no problem. It doesn’t sit right with Changmin, though, considering that it is Yunho’s home as well. As hard as it still is to fathom.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, knowing. Not everything but enough to grasp at the shoulders of the man sprawled on the edge of the bed and then embrace him tightly when he opens his eyes in the sleep-caused confusion. Enough to whisper, “Your name—only your name now. I remember everything else, I remember yesterday morning— What is it, please.”
“It’s Yunho,” the man he cares about most in the world whispers back, starts caressing his face gently, far too gently for him to take.
And then they’re in each other’s arms and his ribs almost hurt from the initial force of this embrace but he doesn’t mind, he’ll never mind, he thinks as the mantra of “Yunho, Yunho--Yunho” trickles from his lips in a hurried stream, as he wills himself never to forget anymore.
***
No one catches that something is wrong until suddenly people start finding themselves not being able to recall what their own favourite food is, the number of the bus that they’ve been taking to work on daily basis for over fifteen years.
It’s not normal when all of sudden you can’t remember your mother, sibling, your lover’s name, what their faces look like.
It’s not but there’s still no reason to panic, right? These things happen, they must. The recollection comes back after a while, several hours at most, so it’s still fine. It’s just exhaustion, too many small things and problems pilling up, anyone could go crazy with that. They tell themselves that it’s just temporary and ahaha, oh God, I really need to take up a more regular lifestyle, don’t I.
The panic only comes when people start talking - with friends, with co-workers, with classmates and realise they’re not the only ones. When their favourite announcer is at a loss of words when he’s supposed to introduce himself, when he just can’t say the name of the news station he works for right in the middle of the broadcast. When that revolting politician they hate halts during his fierce speech and utters a hesitant “where am I?” after a short fearful pause.
***
Yunho forgets, it’s as simple as that. He forgets where he put his keys, phone, dirty underwear, clean underwear, his personal bowling ball, the Korean essays compilation he’s been reading, his head and that shoes are to be taken off when he “drops in just for a sec--!” and how he’s not supposed to drink straight from the milk bottle because it’s gross. It just happens, both him and Changmin have already gotten used to that even if the latter still finds it frustrating at the least.
Even Yunho doesn’t forget where he lives.
And then Changmin begins having all these holes in his memory. One day Yunho - of all of people - reminds him to call his sister with birthday wishes and he answers “...What? Haha, so funny, last time I heard I didn’t have any sister, what’s gotten into you.” At first, Yunho just laughs, waiting for the “just joking,” that doesn’t come, so he stares, searching his face for anything signaling that this is just his usual teasing. Then he has to fetch a picture of a woman that shares the Shims’ facial features from Changmin’s wallet and Changmin lets out a surprised, disbelieving gasp...
They know then that something’s very, very wrong.
***
At people’s demand (and simply because the people at the top are scared as well), the government first issues an official statement that’s full of complicated terms and intricacies and that basically says “we don’t know anything either, no one does,” and then employs their best scientists to work out what the issue’s about and how it can be solved.
The research takes a while even with frightened masses of people rushing it with hundreds of thousands of angry, hesitant, hopeful, inquiring, rude, polite letters, e-mails, sometimes even visits and full blown increasingly violent street walks. After several long months, during which people are forgetting more and more, the results are finally forwarded to the public at a special conference.
The reason of the UMTA (“Unidentified Mass Temporary Amnesia” as they called it) is, as the name itself would suggest, unknown. Apparently, there’s no cure.
The conference ends with a riot, huge number of people injured and taken to hospitals and the first fatalities since the whole issue’s been brought into light appear.
Governments come and go, new researches are conducted simultaneously by uncountable faculties, some of them topnotch and some scams whose instigators want to prey on people’s vulnerability.
Nothing changes. No one can tell what has brought this on, no one knows how to solve it.
People have to face the fact that they’re slowly but steadily and surely losing their memory, think by themselves how to prevent it, how to make themselves (and each other) remember again.
***
It’s not always this drastic. Sometimes it’s only details that they can’t recall. The name of that lovely old lady that lives next door. That Yunho has stomach problems and can’t drink this much alcohol. That Changmin enjoys leafing through fashion magazines. Small things, things you can get by without. All the small things that made up the intricacies and uniqueness that the human personality consists of.
The problem is, some things return after some time – and it can take an hour or a whole day, sometimes a bit longer but they do – but if they’re still not back after two days, they just disappear. Erased from memory with no traces whatsoever left.
When the fact is forwarded through from the research institutions to general public (though more observant individuals have already discovered that by themselves, Changmin being one of them), people start coming up with the methods to preserve things they don’t wish to forget no matter what.
Changmin knows people that live and are deeply involved with someone else, like him and Yunho, are in a more favourable situation. Unless they happen to lose the same information simultaneously (which doesn’t really happen that often), they can remind each other of it.
It’s also the more painful way – he almost doesn’t want to remember how it felt when Yunho turned to him with a sheepish “Um, sorry, but who are you again? I completely suck at the whole linking names with faces stuff at the beginning,” for the first time – but if it means he’ll recognise Yunho for a day, a month, a year longer he’ll take it all. He’s the lucky one, they both are.
They still resort to everything they can only watch, hear of or read on the Internet that could make for effective reminders. They attempt to write short notes - their apartment overflowing with hundreds of colourful post-its stuck on every available surface, various facts from their lives written on them, happy moments, sad moments, things that added to shaping the people they’ve become, things that aren’t really that essential to their well-being but that they still wish to keep alive.
They decorate all the empty spots left between post-its with pictures, all of them properly labeled – who’s in them, when they were taken.
They start a diary in which they both write. The perfect arrangement would be each day having an entry by both of them but they don’t have that time – they still haven’t quit their jobs and if they want to keep it that way, they have to constantly relearn stuff they managed to forget and it’s all very time-consuming. They still would rather make memories together than write them out, as hopeless and meaningless as it seems on the bad days, when they open their eyes in the morning to a world that’s missing yet another pieces that they held dear.
They buy dog tags and they ask for some additional information to be engraved in the metal besides the standards. Dog tags have been the ‘it’ item lately and isn’t that sort of funny, Changmin muses sometimes. “Maybe I should buy one for Taepoong! You get Mangdoongie one, too!” Yunho quips with a mischievous grin and Changmin bats at his arm lightly after he suppresses the urge to smile because he will not laugh at such a lame line.
He’s never been fond of marking and altering your body in any artificial way but he still concedes when Yunho proposes getting tattoos. It’s nothing much, just a simple “I am Changmin & I love Yunho” at the back of his hand - so it’s easily and immediately visible.
“I think ‘I don’t want to forget Yunho’ would be enough. It’s me, I’d know what I meant even if I didn’t remember,” he insists with his face flaming red but he still doesn’t yank away his hand from where Yunho’s tracing “love” on it with his finger.
“But what if one day you lost the thing that lets you get over your denial of the feelings you have for me? Knowing you, you’d think it means ‘I don’t want to forget him because he’s a friend’ or something like that,” Yunho retorts and he still doesn’t remove his hand but he does kick Yunho in the shin.
***
The news start reporting on the increased and still rising number of suicides. With no perspectives of a cure being found anytime soon and people’s memory rapidly deteriorating (it gets worse and faster after some point is reached, although it’s different for everyone) people start losing hope.
No preventive measures can stop or slow down the process anymore. Surrounded by people that insist on knowing you well and vice versa, met with a face of a stranger in the mirror – some people can’t take the pressure and cornered, they chose the certainty of death over the foreboding unease of the future.
Some people still try to live on as if nothing happened (as if something terrible wasn’t continuously taking place) but it gets increasingly harder. How to do your job when you don’t remember what it is about? What’s the point in attending school if you don’t remember anything from the classes from the month ago?
More and more people are becoming recluses, locking themselves up in home almost all the time, leaving only when it’s absolutely necessary. Delivery companies (now led by individuals that still have it in them to let themselves be taken over by greed) have never earned more.
***
Then one day they both wake up not quite sure about the details of their relationship. The affection, the love is a fact. The tattoos surprisingly help as well and they remember enough for Yunho to be all smug and “told you so” about it. That, they’re clear about, but it’s everything else that’s... foreign.
The apartment’s layout. The dog bowls on the floor. The pictures that include anyone else that’s not them two.
The right way to make love, what kind of caresses the other likes. Relearning is anything but unpleasant, the memory etched in the cores of their bodies aiding them greatly as well, but the knowledge that they still forgot is frustrating. It hurts.
The knowledge that they forgot at the same time is terrifying.
It only gets progressively worse with each next day. With every morning (and sometimes even after an innocent nap) they remember less.
The pictures, the post-its, the diary and the dog tags – they’re all just symbols, they can read the words, they can see the images but they don’t bring anything to mind anymore.
And then they forget how to read and it’s crippling. They haven’t thought of that and Changmin berates himself for being this stupid, for daring to hope. He still knows what’s written on the back of his hand but it’s just this – knowledge. It’s fickle and treacherous and he can only wait in dread for the moment when this particular piece of information is torn away from him as well.
They try and search for an another tattoo artist that’d help them engrave in their skin images of each other this time but they discover there’s no one like this left.
They’ve been naïve, they’ve been dumb, they’ve been too sure of themselves, Changmin doesn’t care about pretenses anymore as he thrusts into Yunho on their bed (so fucking nice that they still remember what beds are for) and tears trickle down his face and when he leans down to kiss him messily, they mix with Yunho’s own tears.
Yunho’s crying too, he realises right then, only then and really, if that’s not the best indicator of just how hopeless this situation has become.
They decide to avoid sleep as much as they only can in a manifestation of some desperate hope that tells them not to give up on fighting, that they can still somehow win this battle.
It works, they don’t forget when they’re awake and conscious but there’s only so long that one can go without sleeping before they pass out. And pass out they do, Yunho first, and Changmin shakes him as hard as he can his own body weakened greatly by the lack of proper rest. He yells at him to stay the fuck awake, not to leave him, how dare you, don’t do that, please-- God, no. Yunho struggles then to keep his eyes open for another several minutes and Changmin almost starts crying from relief, from sadness, from the madness of this all, he doesn’t know what anymore. But then none of his bordering on violent attempts help and Yunho drifts away and then, there’s no point in him trying either, is there?
They wake up not remembering each other’s names. They talk and talk and make love and keep on fighting to stay awake until the sleep finally takes its hold on them.
They wake up and Yunho can’t recall what’s this silver thing on his finger. Changmin tells him and prays to whatever deities that there are (there is none, is there, there can’t be any) that the man just takes his words as they are.
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t know what the thing, body part was it? that his ring is on is called. Yunho says it’s a “finger” and he thinks why not and does it really matter.
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t remember how to form words anymore. Yunho cries and cries and cries until Changmin shows him that he can still communicate with his fists. Changmin still remembers how to laugh so they do, the broken sound of it grating on his ears.
They wake up and Yunho can’t speak either. Changmin smiles at him because it’s fine, isn’t it, they don’t need words.
They wake up and they realise that—
They wake up and Changmin doesn’t know—
They wake up and Yunho no longer—
They make sure never to wake up again.
Comments and critique very much appreciated! ♥
