Chapter 4: Memory's Cruel Resurgence
The address was a smudge of ink on a cocktail napkin, folded and refolded until the fibers threatened to tear. Donghae held it in his palm like a live coal, staring at the cold coffee cup on his counter. The fridge hummed, a low, steady drone that seemed to vibrate in his molars. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t changed his clothes. The smell of the bar—whiskey and other people’s perfume—still clung to him, a sour reminder of his failure.
He wanted to call. He wanted to drive to Hyukjae’s apartment right now, bang on the door, and shove the napkin in his face. See? I’m doing something. I’m trying to fix this. But the memory of Hyukjae’s face in the bar—that cold, contemptuous mask—stopped him. It was a look he’d never received in ten years of friendship. In five years of love.
His phone buzzed on the counter, skittering on the tiles.
It was Hyukjae.
Donghae’s breath caught. He stared at the screen, at the familiar name that now felt like a warning label. He picked it up.
“Hello?”
“We need to talk.” Hyukjae’s voice was tinny, strained. “Now. At your place.”
“Hyukjae, it’s two in the—”
“Now.”
The line went dead.
Donghae stood very still. The invitation—no, the summons—hung in the silent kitchen. This was new. This was Hyukjae coming to him, pushing instead of pulling away. It should have felt like victory. It felt like the calm before a storm.
Twenty minutes later, the buzzer sounded. Donghae let him in, listening to the heavy footsteps coming up the stairwell. When he opened the door, Hyukjae looked like Donghae felt: wrecked. His hair was messy, his eyes bloodshot, but there was a wired, frantic energy thrumming under his skin. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He shouldered past, into the kitchen, turning to face him under the stark pendant light.
“Who was she?”
“Jessica. I told you. A stranger at a bar.”
“A stranger who held your hand.” Hyukjae’s words were clipped, precise.
Donghae leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. A defense. A barrier. “You grabbed her wrist, Hyuk. Not the other way around. She was being kind. I was… I was desperate.” He dared a step forward. “And you walked in and saw a story you wanted to see. Easier than the one I’ve been telling you.”
Hyukjae’s laugh was short, harsh. “The story you’ve been telling me.” He paced a tight line, running a hand through his hair. “It’s infesting me. I can’t sleep. I see things.”
A flicker of something—hope, fear—sparked in Donghae’s chest. “What things?”
“I don’t know!” Hyukjae whirled on him, his voice cracking. “Flashes. Like a broken film reel. A hotel room with a view of… neon. Rain on a window. Your hands… your hands on my waist, backstage, in the dark.” He was breathing hard, as if confessing a crime. “And then it’s gone. And I’m just me. Eighteen. And you’re my friend. And none of it makes sense.”
Donghae’s heart hammered. This was it. The breakthrough Jessica’s doctor friend theorized about, happening raw and uncontrolled. He took another cautious step. “Hyukjae, that’s your memory. It’s trying to come back. The hotel in Tokyo, the rain—”
“Stop!” Hyukjae flinched as if struck. “Don’t you see? You’re putting them there. You’re saying things and my brain… it’s making pictures to match. You’re confused and lonely and you’re dragging me into your delusion!” His voice rose, edged with panic.
“My delusion?” The words cut deeper than any accusation from the bar. Donghae dropped his arms, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “You think I’ve imagined a whole life for us? Five years? The time you got food poisoning in Bangkok and I stayed up all night holding your hair back? The stupid little cactus we bought together that died because we both forgot to water it? The way you snore, for god’s sake, a tiny little puff of air every third breath?”
“I don’t snore,” Hyukjae shot back, childishly, his face flushed.
“You do! And I used to poke you to make you stop, and you’d swat at me in your sleep, and then in the morning you’d swear you never snored!” Donghae was shouting now, the frustration of weeks boiling over. “Is that a delusion? Is that the elaborate fantasy of a lonely man?”
Hyukjae stared at him, chest heaving. The fridge hummed, filling the savage silence. The flashes were clearly warring inside him, battling the solid, immovable wall of his eighteen-year-old reality. He shook his head, not in denial, but in pure, overwhelmed confusion. “I don’t… I can’t trust any of it. Any of you. What if… what if you’re just using this? Using me? What if… what if there were others? At bars. Like her.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The absolute worst thing.
The careful leash on Donghae’s pain snapped.
“Others?” The word came out quiet, deadly. “You think I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you to remember, just to… what? Play some twisted game?” He advanced, and Hyukjae, startled, took a step back, his lower back hitting the edge of the refrigerator door. “You have no idea what these weeks have been like. To look at the person you love and see a stranger looking back. To have every touch, every private joke, every future we planned, just… evaporate. And you have the audacity to accuse me of cheating?”
“I saw you with her!” Hyukjae shouted back, pushing off the fridge, getting in Donghae’s face. The space between them crackled. “You looked at her like—”
“Like what? Like someone who was listening? Like I was drowning and she was a piece of driftwood?” Donghae’s voice broke. “The only person I have ever looked at like they were my entire world is you. And right now, looking at you, I don’t even know who you are.”
Something in Hyukjae’s eyes shifted. The anger faltered, replaced by a dawning, terrible horror. Not at Donghae’s words, but at something rising unbidden from within himself. His gaze flicked to Donghae’s mouth, just for a fraction of a second. A reflex.
“No,” he whispered, to himself.
“No what?” Donghae pressed, leaning closer, their chests almost touching. He could feel the heat coming off Hyukjae, smell the faint, familiar scent of his sweat beneath the night air.
“I remember this,” Hyukjae breathed, his eyes wide and unfocused. “Arguing. In a kitchen. Your face… right here. Close. And I wanted…” He trailed off, his breath hitching.
“What did you want?” Donghae urged, his own anger melting into a desperate, perilous hope.
Hyukjae’s hands came up, not to shove, but as if to frame Donghae’s face. They hovered in the air, trembling. A muscle ticked in his jaw. The memory was there, palpable, a ghost in the space between their lips.
Then his eyes cleared. The ghost vanished. The wall slammed back down.
The fear of that lost intimacy—real, visceral, and utterly rejected by his conscious mind—morphed into a new, more primal anger. The confusion was too much. The proximity was too much.
“Get off me!” Hyukjae snarled, and his hands, which a second before had almost touched with love, now flew up and shoved hard against Donghae’s shoulders.
Donghae stumbled back, his hip catching the counter’s edge, a shock of pain blooming. Before he could right himself, Hyukjae was on him, driven by a rage born of terror. He grabbed a handful of Donghae’s shirt and slammed him back against the refrigerator door. The metal shuddered with a loud, hollow boom. A magnet clattered to the floor.
They were frozen. Hyukjae’s fist clenched in the fabric, his other arm braced against the fridge by Donghae’s head. Their faces were inches apart, breath mingling—sharp, ragged, furious. Donghae could see every fleck of brown in Hyukjae’s furious, terrified eyes. He could feel the frantic beat of Hyukjae’s heart through the grip on his chest.
The air left the room. The fight drained out of them both, leaving behind a vacuum filled with something else entirely.
Hyukjae was looking at his mouth again. His grip didn’t loosen, but the tension in his arm changed. It was no longer about restraint. It was about holding on.
Donghae didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He saw the internal war play out across Hyukjae’s features: the revulsion, the fear, the magnetic, horrifying pull.
Hyukjae’s lips parted. A silent, struggling word formed there. A name. A question. A plea.
Then he shuddered, a full-body convulsion of revulsion, and pushed himself away as if burned. He released Donghae’s shirt so abruptly Donghae sagged against the fridge.
Hyukjae backed toward the door, his face ashen. He looked at Donghae—really looked at him—and what Donghae saw wasn’t hatred. It was sheer, unadulterated panic.
“Stay away from me,” Hyukjae whispered, the words hollow. “Just… stay away.”
He turned and fled, leaving the apartment door swinging open behind him.
Donghae slid down the smooth surface of the refrigerator until he sat on the cold tile floor. The hum of the appliance vibrated through his skull. He touched the spot on his chest where Hyukjae’s fist had been clenched, where the fabric was still crumpled and warm.
He had been right there. On the precipice. The memory, the feeling, had been right there in his eyes, in his trembling hands.
And it had terrified him more than losing it.
Donghae looked across the room. The folded cocktail napkin with Doctor Park’s address lay on the counter where he’d left it. It wasn’t just a piece of paper anymore. It was a sledgehammer. And after tonight, after seeing the raw, frightened animal his love had become, he knew he had no choice but to swing it.