Chapter 1: The Dance of Forgotten Intimacy
The mirror was merciless. Hyukjae watched his own reflection, a man in his late twenties moving with a precision that felt both his and not his. His body knew the routine—the sharp pivot, the fluid roll of shoulders, the exact count where his foot should strike the polished wood. His mind was a blank page. The music pumped through the speakers, something modern and percussive he apparently helped choreograph. He knew the steps. He didn’t know himself.
“You’re tilting your chin a fraction too high on the second eight-count,” a voice said from behind him.
Donghae. He was leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed. He’d been quiet for so long Hyukjae had almost forgotten he was there. Almost.
“It looks cocky,” Donghae continued, pushing off the wall. “The move is supposed to be vulnerable. Open.”
“Since when do you critique my angles?” Hyukjae asked, not stopping the motion. His muscles burned familiarly. Sweat dampened the hair at his temples. This, at least, was real.
“Since always.” Donghae moved into the mirror’s frame, standing just behind Hyukjae’s reflection. His gaze in the glass was steady, warm. Too warm. “You used to say I was your best mirror. That I saw things even you missed.”
Hyukjae didn’t remember saying that. He remembered a gangly eighteen-year-old Donghae with a brilliant, goofy smile, his best friend since trainee days. He remembered shared lunches and stupid jokes and dreaming of debut. He did not remember this weighted gravity between them, this feeling that every casual word was laid over something deep and unspoken.
“Well, thanks,” Hyukjae said, his voice tighter than he intended. He switched off the music. The sudden silence was a physical presence, broken only by the hum of the air conditioner and the faint, erratic buzz of a neon sign outside the window. The room smelled of lemon floor cleaner and old sweat and the subtle, clean scent of Donghae’s shampoo.
Donghae reached out. His fingers, familiar and strange, brushed a damp strand of hair from Hyukjae’s forehead. The touch was simple. It lingered.
Hyukjae flinched back as if scorched.
The air left the room. Donghae’s hand hung in the empty space between them for a terrible second before falling to his side. His expression didn’t collapse. It retreated, hardening into something careful and still.
“You used to like when I did that,” Donghae said softly. His voice was even, but a tiny fracture ran through it.
“I’m not… I’m not used to it,” Hyukjae stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs. Confusion, thick and sour, rose in his throat. “We’re just… we’re friends. That’s… a lot, for friends.”
Donghae let out a short, humorless breath that was almost a laugh. “Friends.” He turned and walked to the cracked vinyl chair where his guitar case lay. He didn’t pick it up. Just stared at it. “We haven’t been just friends for seven years, Hyukjae.”
The words landed like a physical blow. Hyukjae’s mind scrabbled for purchase, finding none. “That’s not possible. My last clear memory is my eighteenth birthday. You were there. We were kids.”
“And then we grew up.” Donghae finally looked at him, and the pain in his eyes was so raw it was difficult to hold his gaze. “Together. We fell in love. You told me you loved me on a night like this, in this room, after everyone else had gone home. You said it was the most terrifying and obvious thing you’d ever done.”
“Stop.” Hyukjae put a hand to his temple. A headache was blooming, a dull throb behind his eyes. “Just stop, Donghae. You’re messing with me. This is some twisted joke because I’m… because my head’s a mess.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
He didn’t. He looked shattered. He looked like a man watching his entire life burn in front of him, unable to put out the flames.
“You have to remember something,” Donghae pressed, taking a step closer. The desperate hope in his voice was worse than the pain. “The first time we kissed. It was by the Han River. You tasted like the strawberry milk you’d just drunk. You laughed into my mouth because you were so happy.”
Hyukjae’s stomach churned. A ghost of a sensation flickered—cold air, distant city lights, a giddy, boundless joy. But it was formless. It was nothing. A trick of a damaged brain.
“I don’t,” Hyukjae whispered, backing up until his spine hit the cool mirror. “I don’t remember any of that. To me, that’s something you’d do with a girl. With a girlfriend. Not with… me. Not with you.”
The fracture in Donghae’s composure finally split wide open. His face crumpled. He looked away, toward the window with its jagged neon shadows. “So what? The last nine years were nothing? The plans, the trips, the way you’d curl into my side when you slept… that was all a lie your body told?”
“My body doesn’t remember either!” Hyukjae snapped, the frustration boiling over. He gestured wildly at the space between them. “You touch me and my skin crawls because it’s wrong! You look at me like you own a part of me and it feels like a violation! The person you’re talking about is a stranger. You are a stranger.”
Donghae went very still. The friendly, warm guy from Hyukjae’s youth was completely gone, replaced by this wounded, ancient-seeming man. He nodded slowly, as if accepting a verdict.
“Okay,” he said, his voice now flat and empty. “Okay, Hyukjae.”
He picked up his guitar case, slinging the strap over his shoulder. He walked to the door without another look back.
“Where are you going?” The question left Hyukjae’s mouth before he could stop it, laced with a panic he didn’t understand.
“Out,” Donghae said, hand on the doorknob. “The you I know, the one who loves me, he’s trapped somewhere in there. And sitting here, watching you look at me like I’m a monster… it’s killing me. So I’m going to go to a bar, and I’m going to drink, and I’m going to try to forget for a few hours that the love of my life has just told me I’m a stranger.”
The door closed behind him with a soft, final click.
Hyukjae slid down the mirror until he sat on the cold floor, his rehearsal clothes soaked with sweat. He stared at Donghae’s guitar still on its stand in the corner, strings slightly out of tune.Waiting. The neon light from outside pulsed red, then green, then red again, bleeding across the empty chairs.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Once.Twice.
He pulled it out, his hands unsteady. The screen showed a cascade of notifications—schedules, messages from other members, a reminder for a doctor’s appointment about his memory.
And one new message, from Donghae.
The preview read: I just need you to remember one thing.Just one.
Hyukjae’s thumb hovered over the screen. The silence in the practice room was no longer quiet; it was a scream. He didn’t open the message. He just sat there, in the ruins of a life he couldn’t recall, afraid of what was written there, and more afraid, somehow, of what was not.