Chapter Text
There's a faint, insistent beeping in his ear as his head spins through clouds of confusion. The throbbing behind his eyes pulses in time with his heartbeat, a dull drum of pain that’s familiar, this isn't the first time he's woken up like this. Fainted again, he thinks, the words surfacing through the fog with a weary familiarity. But he hadn’t done that in a while now.
He tries to piece together what happened, where he was, but his thoughts slip away from him. Instead, he focuses on his surroundings, the softness beneath him, the clean smell that burns his nostrils, the way the lights are too bright beyond his eyelids.
Slowly, carefully, he opens his eyes to stare at an unfamiliar ceiling.
There's a warmth in his right hand—fingers interlaced with his own, thumb pressed against his pulse point. Mother, he thinks with a flutter with a kind or relief or maybe dread. Things must be really bad if his Father called her. The thought sits heavy in his chest. His parents' separation had been … eventful. For her to be here now...
He sighs, letting out a puff of air he didn't know he'd been holding, and the small sound—barely more than a breath—causes the hand in his to jolt away as if burned.
"Sieun-ah—"
It's a girl's voice. No, a woman's voice. The distinction matters somehow, though he's not sure why his mind catches on it. She sounds young but definitely not a teenager, not a girl.
He turns his head—too fast, the room tilts—and focuses on her face. She's looking at him with an expression he can't quite make out, concern, yes, but something deeper, Her hair is cut in a pixie style, shorter than any women he’s seen wear it. But he doesn’t know many women.
"Are you okay?" she asks, and before he can answer—before he can even process the question—she's already moving. "Wait, let me go get the doctor."
She scrambles toward the door with the kind of urgency that’s commendable, and for a second, Sieun thinks she might be a nurse. That would explain the hand holding, the concern, the way she seems to know exactly where to go. But would a nurse hold his hand like that? The thought feels wrong even as he thinks it. There had been something too personal in her grip, in the way her fingers had curved around his.
Then who is she?
The question hangs in the air as she disappears through the door, leaving him alone with the beeping machines and his own confusion. He doesn't know her. He's certain of that. He would remember that haircut, that face, those eyes that looked at him like his waking up brought her relief.
But if she's not a nurse, why was she holding my hand? Why did she look so... concerned?
The door opens again—too soon for him to have solved the puzzle—and a doctor enters, chart in hand like a script he's already read a hundred times. The woman doesn't return, and Sieun feels an unexpected sense of relief. So maybe she does work here after all.
"You're awake," the doctor says, and it's not quite a question.
"Yes," Sieun replies, his voice rougher than expected. The word scrapes its way out, catching on the dryness of his throat.
The doctor settles into a practiced routine, the kind that comes from delivering news too many times to count. "You were out for about two hours. No heavy bleeding, which is good. We did a scan while you were unconscious. How are you feeling?"
Sieun swallows, trying to work moisture into his mouth. Two hours. It doesn't seem so bad, not in the grand scheme of things. He's lost more time than that to studying, to the gray space between waking and sleeping. But his body feels wrong, heavy and foreign. Every limb is weighted with invisible stones.
"I'm okay," he says, because that's what you're supposed to say. Because anything else invites more questions, more tests, more time in this room with its coldness and sharp smell.
He's about to ask where his parents are, when the doctor pulls him back with a question of his own.
"Some questions for you," the doctor says, pen poised over paper. "Your name?"
"Yeon Sieun."
"Good. And your birthday?"
Sieun rattles it off automatically, the date as familiar as his own reflection. The doctor nods, writes something down.
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen." Why are these questions so simple? Does he think I hit my head that hard?
The doctor's pen stops. He looks up, and there's something in his eyes that makes Sieun's stomach drop—pity, maybe, or concern, or that particular kind of professional worry that doctors learn to wear like a mask.
"Okay," the doctor says slowly, carefully, like he's defusing a bomb. "And what year do you think it is?"
Sieun tells him. He thinks of his mock exams, if it will mean anything at all.
The doctor looks at him with such gentleness that makes Sieun's skin crawl. He writes something down and when he looks back up, his eyes are carefully kind.
"We'll have to do more tests." A pause, weighted with things unsaid. "There seems to be some gap of time missing in your memories."
The words take a moment to land, like they're traveling through water to reach him. When they do, Sieun feels the world tilt sideways.
"What?"
A gap. Time missing. Memories. The phrases tumble over each other in his mind, each one more impossible than the last.
The mock exams are in two weeks. How am I supposed to study for them now? The thought is immediate. Or have they already passed? How much time did I lose? Days? Weeks?
"Mr. Yeon," the doctor says, and the formality of it—the adult weight of it—makes startles Sieun. "You're not seventeen years old. You're twenty four."
The words don't make sense. They can't make sense. Sieun hears them, but they hit some wall of impossibility in his brain and shatter.
"I... what?"
Twenty four. Seven years. Seven years gone.
The room feels too small suddenly, the walls pressing in like they're trying to squeeze the truth into his skull. Seven years of his life, just... missing. Not forgotten like a dream upon waking, but gone, erased, as if he'd simply blinked and skipped forward through time itself.
I'm not in school anymore. The realization creeps up on him. I'm living the life I presumably worked all my life for.
But what life? What did he become? Did he get into a good university? Did all those hours of studying pay off? Does he have a job?
"Head injuries are tricky," the doctor is saying, his voice floating through the static of Sieun's thoughts. "The brain is an incredible thing. We'll run some more exams, get your friend back in here. She might be able to tell you more. Excuse me."
And then he's gone, leaving Sieun alone with the machines and the impossible truth.
Twenty four years old.
He stares at his hands. The ones that are supposed to be twenty four, that have presumably lived seven years he can't remember. They look the same as they always did, thin fingers, prominent knuckles, the callus on his right middle finger from holding pens for too long. Still he notices some old scars. They're not the same, are they? These hands have lived a whole life.
The door opens again, and the woman—his friend apparently—comes back in. She's agitated, her movements quick and jerky. Like she feels out of place or nervous.
"Yah," she says, and there's an intimacy in the informal address that makes Sieun's eyebrow raise. "I told you not to get on that ladder. I said we should have waited for Suho or Baku or someone slightly taller."
Suho. Baku. The names mean nothing to him, but she says them like they should, like they're supposed to conjure faces and memories and shared experiences. She's reprimanding him, but he can see real concern bleeding through the scolding—she's biting her thumbnail, her other hand gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles have gone white.
The doctor must not have told her yet, Sieun realizes with a sinking feeling. About the memories. About me not knowing who she is.
He studies her face, trying to find some spark of recognition, some buried memory that might surface if he just looks hard enough. But there's nothing. She's a stranger wearing the concern of a friend, and the disconnect makes his head ache worse than the fall probably did.
She can't be my girlfriend. The thought comes unbidden, accompanied by a lifetime of self knowledge that even amnesia can't quite erase. Something in him—something fundamental that seems to have survived the gap—knows that's wrong. Unless I changed over the past seven years. Unlikely, but... maybe?
"Babe?" he tries, his voice going an octave too high.
This is stupid. It's not like he can fake his way out of amnesia. He doesn’t even know her name.
The look she gives him is withering, that answers his question before she even opens her mouth.
"Sieun-ah, how hard did you hit that head of yours, huh?" There's a beat where she seems to process what she's seeing in his face, and her voice rises. "DO I LOOK LIKE AHN SUHO TO YOU?"
Suho again. The name keeps appearing like a refrain in a song he doesn't know the words to.
“No, sorry, the doctor said I’m missing seven years of memories—” The word catches in his throat. She’s older than him, he thinks, though something about that thought feels wrong in a way he can’t articulate. Still, it seems rude to keep calling her “woman” in his head, this stranger with the worried eyes who won’t stop watching him like he might disappear. “Miss, what’s your name?”
Her face crumples like paper being crushed in a fist. The hospital lights catch the way her features collapse inward, and for a moment she looks much younger—vulnerable in a way that makes Sieun’s chest tighten with an emotion he can’t name.
“Don’t be polite to me, Sieun-ah, what is this…” She lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “Suho’s going to kill me. Then the ladder. Then me again. Oh my god.”
It’s a joke he can tell from the way her voice lilts upward at the end, the exaggerated despair that’s meant to be funny. But he doesn’t know how to respond. The silence stretches between them uncomfortable, and he finds himself wondering what kind of person he is now that *this* is who sits beside him in a hospital room. Someone who has friends who make jokes about their own deaths. Someone who knows people well enough that they’d rush to his bedside.
It feels impossible. Like he fell down a rabbit hole into an entirely different world.
“I’m Yeongyi.” She wipes at her eyes with the heel of her palm, she looks this this is a nightmare for her too. “We’ve been friends for… coincidentally seven years, I guess.” Her voice drops, goes softer, more careful. “You don’t remember meeting me yet.” She bites her lip hard enough that Sieun sees the skin go white under her teeth.
Sieun nods because it seems like the thing to do, but even that small movement sends his thoughts scattering like marbles across a tile floor. He tries to think, to remember anything, but his head hurts too much when he does that. A sharp, bright pain that starts behind his eyes and radiates outward. So he stops. Lets the blankness settle back over him instead, it feels safer.
“Who’s Suho?” The question comes out quieter than he intended, almost tentative. The name keeps appearing, Yeongyi said it and now she’s mentioned it again. If he thought her reaction to him forgetting her was bad, this is so much worse.
The color drains from her face. Actually drains, like watching water swirl down a sink. “You don’t remember Suho?”
The words come out slowly, carefully enunciated. Her eyes search his face desperately, hunting for some flicker of recognition that isn’t there.
“Suho? Ahn Suho? Suho?” She keeps repeating it, each iteration slightly different—questioning, desperate, disbelieving. The name bounces around the small hospital room until it loses all meaning, becomes just a sound, and that irritates Sieun more than anything else has today.
“No, I don’t.” He says it matter of factly, lets the words fall flat and final between them. He can feel his jaw tightening, frustration building a pressure behind a dam. She can repeat the name a thousand times and it won’t make him miraculously remember who this Suho is. Memory doesn’t work like that. Nothing works like that.
Yeongyi stares at him for a long moment, her mouth slightly open, and then she moves. Pulls up one of those uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs with a scraping sound that makes Sieun’s almost wince. She drops into it and immediately pulls out her phone, thumbs flying across the screen. The blue light illuminates her face from below, casting strange shadows.
Then she looks up at him, and there’s something in her expression that makes his stomach drop, like she’s about to tell him someone died.
“Suho is your boyfriend.”
The words hang in the air between them. Sieun blinks once, twice. Processes.
That makes more sense than him having a girlfriend, honestly. But he’s still amazed, he didn’t think it would be like this. Having friends. A boyfriend. Things he seemed fundamentally unable to understand in all his seventeen years of life. Things that felt distant and unreachable.
“Boyfriend?” He tests the word out loud, feels how it sits in his mouth.
“More like soulmate. Love of your life.” Yeongyi’s voice has gone soft again, almost wistful, and she’s watching him with an expression that’s both fond and heartbroken.
She stops abruptly, seems to catch herself before she can continue rambling. Leans forward in her chair, elbows on her knees. “What do you remember?”
Sieun thinks. It hurts, but he does it anyway. “I’m in school. I’m seventeen. I—” He pauses, grasping for details that feel solid. “There’s an important exam coming up.”
She’s frowning now, and it’s not the exaggerated expression from before. This is real concern, carved into the lines of her forehead. “Well then… I don’t know why you don’t remember Suho. He was a classmate of yours.”
That stuns him. Truly, genuinely stuns him in a way nothing else in this situation has. He doesn’t remember a Suho, but then again, he really can’t put a name to half the guys in his class. Sieun’s too focused on studying, on ignoring everyone there, on keeping his head down and getting through each day. No face comes to mind when he thinks of a Suho, and when he tries harder, all he can remember is that the boys in his class are pretty much just loud and irritating, and some are downright idiotic in their need to humiliate others.
Who could it be?
He’s still deep in thought, mentally flipping through faces a collage of unpleasant memories, when there’s a knock at the door. Sharp, sudden, intrusive. A tall, broad guy comes in looking distraught, his hair is messy like he’s been running his hands through it, and his eyes are red rimmed.
Sieun can only guess. “Suho?”
Yeongyi groans, the sound dragged up from somewhere deep in her chest, and smacks her palm against her forehead hard enough that the slap echoes. The guy—not Suho he presumes now by the reaction—stops short just inside the doorway.
“That’s Baku, and this would be so funny if it wasn’t kind of terrifying,” Yeongyi mutters into her hand.
Sieun is left more confused than ever, frustration building in him like static electricity under his skin.
The guy—Baku—his distressed face suddenly transforms into a grin, wide and mischievous. “Oh, I can be Suho if you want, Sieun-ah.” He moves forward like he’s reaching over to ruffle Sieun’s hair, and Sieun instinctively leans back into his pillows.
But Yeongyi shoots out a hand, catching Baku’s wrist mid reach. “Knock it off. Suho will kill you, and so will Gotak.”
“What, I can’t mess with him just a bit?” Baku’s grin doesn’t fade, but there’s something almost uncertain underneath it now.
“No, asshole, this is serious. He genuinely doesn’t remember anything.” Yeongyi’s voice cracks on the last word.
“Oh.”
And they’re sharing a look that Sieun can’t comprehend but he doesn’t like, something loaded with history and meaning that he’s not privy to. Like these people know more about him than he knows about himself. Baku. Yeongyi. Gotak. Suho. So many new names, people crowding into his life like uninvited guests. His head is hurting worse now, a dull throb that pulses in time with his heartbeat.
“Be quiet. I’m going to sleep.” He says it seriously, with finality, and closes his eyes against the too bright lights and the too concerned faces.
That shuts them up for approximately one second.
“Wait, let me go ask the doctor if he can go back to sleep yet—” Baku’s voice is suddenly urgent, worried, and Sieun hears him scramble out of the room, heavy footsteps receding down the hallway.
Sieun is puzzled by the concern. It feels strange coming from a stranger, wrong somehow. Everything feels strange. Maybe if he sleeps and wakes up, the world will be right again. Maybe this is just a bad dream, the kind where you know something’s off but can’t quite put your finger on what.
He wants to sink into unconsciousness, let the darkness take him, but he can feel Yeongyi’s eyes on him. When he cracks one eye open, she’s looking at him with that same worried expression, biting her thumbnail now.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, and it feels wrong too, he should be the one being asked what’s wrong. He’s the one in the hospital bed.
She takes her seat next to him again, the chair scraping closer. “I haven’t called Suho yet to tell him what happened.”
“What? Why?” The words come out sharper than he intended. How close could they be if his boyfriend wasn’t here at the hospital with him? If this Suho person really was the “love of his life,” wouldn’t he be here?
“He’s spending the weekend at his grandma’s. She’s like two hours away and she needed some help around the house. You would have gone too, but it’s Juntae’s birthday tomorrow and you didn’t want to miss the dinner.” The words tumble out of her quickly, like she’s been holding them in. Another name. Another person he’s supposed to know.
So much information. He’s still parsing through it, trying to file everything away in some kind of order, when Yeongyi continues without giving him time to think. “Honestly, I was hoping you’d wake up, be fine, and tell me not to tell Suho what happened and we’d all be good. But…” She trails off, and there’s real fear in her eyes now. “He really will kill me if he comes home Monday and you don’t know who he is.”
Sieun thinks about it. He really can’t fake not having amnesia, especially to his boyfriend of… how long?
“How long have me and Suho been together?” He asks, the grammar feeling clumsy in his mouth.
“Um… four years.” Yeongyi says it quickly, a small smile ghosting across her face despite everything, like the answer itself is something that should be special.
Four years? Sieun can’t wrap his head around it. A boy he is in class with—was in class with, he assumes they graduated, went to the same university—then what? Fell in love? Sieun can’t imagine loving anyone. The concept feels so abstract. But he knows they’re not lying to him. There’s too much genuine emotion here for it to be anything but the truth.
“Call him. Tell him.” Sieun doesn’t want to make this boyfriend of his any more upset than he apparently is going to be. “I’m sure he won’t be that upset if you just tell him.”
“Yah, Sieun-ah, you’re only saying that because you don’t remember.” She scoffs, but it’s not unkind. “He’s scary when it comes to you. He doesn’t play about you, not one bit.”
She reaches for the nightstand by the side of Sieun’s bed, where his phone sits, black and inoffensive. When she picks it up and the screen lights up, she frowns. “I don’t know your passcode, actually. Um, do you?”
He looks at her, gives her the most deadpan expression he can manage given the circumstances. Takes the phone from her hands it feels absolutely foreign, lighter than he remembers. He tries the passcode he remembers having at seventeen, basically yesterday in his mind, but it’s not that. He tries a few other number combinations—his birthday, his address—until his phone warns him he’ll be locked out if he tries again. He puts it down with more force than necessary and shakes his head.
Yeongyi is already on her phone, calling and hanging up like ten times in rapid succession. “He takes a million years to answer his phone, but I swear he answers your calls in point-two seconds, the asshole.”
Sieun watches her thumb hit the call button again and again, each time letting it ring for maybe three seconds before hanging up and trying again. There’s something almost manic about it.
Finally the phone connects right when Yeongyi is about to hang up and try again.
“Fuck, why are you blowing up my phone?”
It’s on speaker the voice comes through clear and loud, slightly tinny from the phone’s small speaker. Sieun scrunches his nose. He’s so loud. Everyone in his life now seems so loud, like they all exist at a volume he’s not adjusted for.
“Um—” Yeongyi’s tentative now, and Sieun just looks at her. He won’t be the one to tell this Suho that his boyfriend had an accident and doesn’t remember him. He doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t even know the guy.
“What…” The voice on the other line goes quiet, and Sieun can hear the shift from annoyed to concerned in the space of a heartbeat.
“Okay, so first of all, do not freak out.” Yeongyi’s using her careful voice again. “Me and Baku are with Sieun now. We won’t leave him alone until you get here.”
“Yeongyi.” The voice immediately sounds strained and breathless, like someone’s squeezing his lungs. “What. Sieun. What happened.”
Each word is its own sentence, punctuated by barely controlled panic.
There’s so much emotion in the voice, raw and unfiltered that Sieun has to look away. It feels too intimate, too private, like he’s eavesdropping on something he shouldn’t be hearing. Yeongyi looks concerned too. Nothing seems funny anymore, not to her at least. None of this is funny to Sieun, who feels like a stranger in his own body, watching his life happen to someone else.
“He had an accident. He hit his head. He was unconscious for like two hours.” She’s talking fast now, ripping off the bandaid, trying to get more information out before she gets interrupted. “The doctors did scans. He woke up, but—”
“But what, Yeongyi? Is he okay?” The voice cracks. “And why isn’t Sieun telling me this? Let me talk to him.”
She looks to Sieun, eyebrows raised in question. He shakes his head firmly. He really doesn’t want to talk to him. Can’t explain why—it’s not rational, not even particularly kind—but he supposes he’s nervous. Of disappointing someone he doesn’t remember, of saying the wrong thing and making everything worse.
Yeongyi seems to understand. Nods back at him. “He’s sleeping again,” she lies, and Sieun is grateful for it.
“Well, is he okay? What did the doctors say?” There’s rustling on the other end, like fabric moving, doors opening. “I’ll be there in like three hours.”
Just like that. Dropping everything to come. Sieun blinks. The certainty in that voice, the absolute lack of hesitation, does something strange to his insides.
“Suho…” Yeongyi swallows hard. “He’s having some memory issues.”
She says it delicately, like she’s handling something fragile, and Suho must know something about it then, because he does a rough, sharp intake of breath. “That’s not good.”
Yeongyi looks like she wants to cry now, really cry, and Sieun closes his eyes. Wishes this wasn’t happening. Wishes he didn’t have to witness the fallout of something he can’t remember the significance of. He doesn’t know these people, doesn’t want to feel bad for causing this. This grief, this panic, this absolute devastation.
“He’s got more tests coming. I’ll ask the doctor to update us as soon as he can, but Suho…” Her voice drops to barely above a whisper. “He’s lost like seven years of memory. Maybe more. He doesn’t remember anything. Any of us.” She pauses, and Sieun can hear her struggling with the next words. “Doesn’t remember you.”
The “what” on the end of the line is devastating.
It’s small and broken and disbelieving, and Sieun shuts his eyes tighter against it, presses his eyelids together until he sees colors blooming in the darkness. It’s a ridiculous notion, but it feels like that voice doesn’t belong to him, to his life, to his story. Like he’s watching a drama or something, some tragic television show where the protagonist loses everything. This isn’t real. Can’t be real.
Yeongyi takes the phone off speaker and moves toward the door, her voice dropping to a murmur. She can tell he’s getting overwhelmed, Sieun thinks. Can read it in the way his breathing has gone shallow, the way his hands are fisting in the thin hospital sheets.
He closes his eyes. Tries to go to sleep.
Wishes he’ll wake up to a world he knows.
When Sieun wakes again—certain he’s only managed maybe twenty minutes of restless, fractured sleep—the quality of light in the room has changed. His eyelids feel heavy, gritty, like someone’s lined them with sand.
There are voices. Hushed, urgent, the kind of whispered argument where people are trying very hard not to be overheard and failing spectacularly at it.
He keeps his eyes closed, listening through the fog still clinging to the edges of his mind.
“—should at least know something happened.” That’s Baku, his memory supplies with the strange confidence of recent information fighting against the vast emptiness of everything else. “You can’t just not tell them their son is in the hospital.”
“And what exactly do you think that’s going to accomplish?” Yeongyi’s voice is sharp, cutting through the quiet of the room. “His mother will get here in a panic, his father will show up out of obligation, and Sieun will wake up to them fighting over whose fault this is. You know how they are.”
There’s something in the way she says it—you know how they are—that speaks to years of shared knowledge, to conversations Sieun has presumably had but can’t remember having. It’s strange hearing someone discuss his parents with such certainty, such intimate understanding of family dynamics he can only think of as personal and complicated.
“That’s not—” Baku starts, then stops. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. But it still feels wrong. They’re his parents.”
“And they’ll make it about themselves like they always do.” Yeongyi’s voice has gone flat, tired. “Sieun doesn’t need that right now.”
“Fine.” The word comes out on a sigh. “I’ll go tell the guys what’s happening. Keep them in the loop. You stay here.” A pause, then something that might be an attempt at humor falling flat in the heavy air, “Suho likes you more than he likes me anyway.”
Footsteps retreat, the door whispers open and closed. Sieun cracks one eye open and catches a glimpse of Yeongyi standing by the window.
He’s about to speak—to let her know he’s awake, to break this strange moment of observation—when her phone buzzes in her hand. She startles, then answers it quickly, already moving toward the door.
“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” she says quietly, and then she’s gone, slipping out into the hallway and leaving him truly alone for the first time since he woke up in this awful situation.
And then he’s alone. Sieun lies there in the dim room, surrounded by the sounds of a hospital settling into evening, distant footsteps in hallways, the muted beep of machines in other rooms, voices too far away to parse into actual words.
But beneath all of that, there’s something else. A sensation he can’t quite name, sitting in his chest like a stone. An ache that has nothing to do with his head injury or the fall he can’t remember taking. It’s deeper than that, more fundamental. Like homesickness, but for a place he’s never been. Like mourning something he never had.
But it doesn’t make sense. How can you miss what you don’t remember? How can absence create longing when you don’t even know what should fill the space?
He tries to relax into the hospital bed, to let his muscles unclench from the tension that’s been building since he first opened his eyes. But relaxation doesn’t come. Instead, there’s only disappointment, sharp and bitter. Disappointment in himself, in his body, in whatever part of his brain is stubbornly refusing to give him back seven years of his life.
He’d been so sure, in that hazy space between sleeping and waking, that all of it would come flooding back, and he’d laugh at how dramatic it all seemed.
But nothing’s changed. He’s still just… here.
The helplessness of it makes him want to scowl, so he does. It’s a small rebellion against everything, against the amnesia, the strangers who keep looking at him with such worry and familiarity. His face settles into the expression almost automatically, brow furrowing, mouth pressing into a thin line.
He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like relying on other people to tell him about himself, to fill in the blanks of his own history.
The thought of his parents surfaces unbidden, and with it comes a complicated tangle of feelings he doesn’t have the energy to unravel. From what Yeongyi said—you know how they are—it seems his relationship with them hasn’t improved in the seven years he’s lost. That shouldn’t be surprising. Even in the memories he does have, they’re distant figures, more concerned with their own problems than with him. His father having different priorities, his mother’s absence after the separation, the way home never quite felt like a place he belonged.
He wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that it were different. That he could call them now and they’d come, and they’d know what to say, how to comfort him. That he had the kind of parents who were warm and present and unconditionally supportive.
So it’s just him. Him alone with this broken brain and all these loud people he seems to have collected over the years, these friends and a boyfriend and whole relationships he can’t remember building.
How do you trust something you can’t remember choosing?
He’s several minutes deep into this spiral of contemplation when the door opens again.
A man enters. He’s tall with broad shoulders that fill the doorway before he steps through it. His hair is dark and messy in a way that looks less styled and more like he’s been running his hands through it compulsively, and even in the dim light, Sieun can see that his eyes are tired.
He’s objectively handsome. This is not a judgment Sieun usually makes about people, not something he typically notices or cares about, but it’s undeniable in this case.
Sieun frowns. Not because of the face, but because of everything else. The way this man is looking at him, like Sieun is the only thing in the room worth seeing. Like he’s been drowning and just broke the surface.
The man comes straight to him—no hesitation, no pause to assess—and reaches for Sieun’s hand where it lies on the rough hospital blanket. His fingers close around Sieun’s wrist, warm and solid, then travel upward slowly. Forearms, tracing the bones beneath skin. Shoulders, squeezing gently as if testing for injury. And then finally, carefully, two hands come up to cup Sieun’s face, tilting it upward, forcing eye contact.
Suho. Has to be. The intensity gives him away, that and the furrow between his eyebrows, the clench of his jaw, the whole expression that reads as anger until you look at his eyes.
Sieun really looks, past the surface tension to what’s underneath, and realizes with startling clarity that he’s wrong. It’s not anger. Not even close.
Worried, Sieun thinks, the realization arriving like something clicking into place. He’s terrified.
It’s there in the way those hands shake minutely against Sieun’s face. In the careful way he’s holding himself together, like he might fall apart if he loosens his grip even slightly. In the eyes, his eyes are so soft, so unbearably gentle despite everything else about him reading as barely controlled intensity.
“Sweetheart.”
It’s too much. Far, far too much, this intimacy he can’t remember earning, this tenderness he doesn’t know how to receive. Panic flares bright and hot in Sieun’s chest. He moves quickly, almost violently, grabbing Suho’s wrists and pulling his hands away from his face. He shoves himself backward on the bed, putting distance between them, the hospital sheets tangling around his legs.
The expression on Suho’s face falls.
That’s the only way to describe it. All that careful control, that worried emotion on his face, just crumbles. For one terrible second, Sieun sees everything, devastation, the fear, the raw ache of watching someone you love look at you like you’re a stranger.
Then Suho schools his features into something else. Not composed, but less openly destroyed. It’s still heartbreaking, just in a quieter way. The kind of heartbreak that knows it needs to be hidden but can’t quite manage it.
“Where’s Yeongyi?” Sieun asks, and he’s surprised by his own voice. How it comes out slightly desperate, reaching for the one person in this entire situation who feels even remotely like solid ground. The person whose face he knows, whose name he remembers, who hasn’t looked at him like her entire world is ending, not like Suho is looking at him.
“She’s getting the doctor to come talk to us.” Suho’s voice is rough, scraped raw by the emotions he’s trying to contain. His eyes haven’t left Sieun’s face, tracking over it with an intensity that makes Sieun want to squirm.
“Are you in pain?” The question is soft, careful, and underneath it Sieun can hear everything Suho isn’t saying.
Are you okay? Are you here? Do you know what this is doing to me?
Sieun shakes his head. He’s not in pain, not really. The throbbing in his head has faded to a dull background ache, and everything else is just exhaustion.
But he needs to be sure. Needs to confirm what he already knows, to put words to the obvious just to make it real.
“You’re Suho, right?”
It’s a stupid question. Of course he’s Suho. Who else would look at him like this, touch him like this, fall apart like this? But Sieun needs to hear it, needs the confirmation to settle something in his chest.
“Yeah.” The word is quiet, almost careful. “I am.”
Suho moves then, settling into the chair Yeongyi had occupied earlier, pulling it close to the bed but not quite close enough to touch. Respecting the boundaries Sieun just established even though it clearly costs him something to do so.
“I don’t remember you.” Sieun says it tentatively, though he knows Suho already knows this. Yeongyi told him over the phone in that devastating conversation Sieun had wished he had not witnessed. But hearing it from your boyfriend must be different. Must cut differently, land differently, hurt in ways that secondhand information can’t quite capture.
“I know. Yeongyi said—”
“No.” Sieun interrupts him, and he’s not sure why it feels important to clarify this, but it does. Something in him insists this distinction matters, that Suho needs to understand the full scope of what’s been lost.
“I mean, she told me that I should remember you. That from where my memories end, we’d already met. We were in the same class.” He forces himself to hold Suho’s gaze, to watch the impact of his words land. “But I don’t remember you. Not at all. Nothing.”
The silence that follows is heavy, enclosed around them. Sieun lets it sit there, gives Suho time to process this additional layer of devastation. Because he’s trying to imagine it, trying to put himself in Suho’s shoes, to understand what it would feel like if someone he loved couldn’t remember him.
Actually, he can’t imagine it. Can’t conceive of loving someone enough that their forgetting would feel like this. Like losing gravity, like having your entire foundation yanked out from under you.
But he thinks he’d want time to sit with it. Time to adjust, to figure out how to breathe around it. So he gives Suho that now, waiting in the dim room while machines beep softly.
“Oh.” It’s quiet when it comes, simple and small. Then, carefully, like he’s approaching something that might bolt. “What do you remember?”
Sieun closes his eyes. Now that he’s seen Suho’s face, heard his voice properly, he can try. Really try, pushing past the instinctive resistance to remember something, anything about this person who apparently means so much to him.
He focuses, reaching back through his memories. School, his classroom. The desks, the board. He can see it clearly, himself sitting at his desk, headphones in, textbook open, ignoring everyone around him because that’s what he did, that’s who he was.
But when he tries to find Suho in those memories, tries to place him in that classroom, there’s nothing. Just a blank space where recognition should be.
His head starts to throb, pain spiking sharp behind his eyes. He winces, face scrunching involuntarily.
And then warmth, a gentle pressure. Suho’s thumb against his forehead, right between his eyebrows, smoothing out the tension gathered there. The touch is featherlight, barely there, but impossibly tender.
“It’s okay,” Suho says softly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Sieun opens his eyes, meets Suho’s gaze in the dimness. His face is earnest, open in a way that feels almost vulnerable. And sad, so terribly sad beneath the reassurance, like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Sieun.
And for some reason, Sieun believes him. Trusts this stranger who isn’t really a stranger, whose hands know where to touch to bring comfort, who crossed two hours of distance to be here.
“Did you like me?” The question tumbles out. “When we were in school together? Yeongyi said we only started dating four years ago.”
Something crosses Suho’s face, fondness, maybe, touched with exasperation.
“She did a lot of talking, huh?” He huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “Can I hold your hand?”
The question catches Sieun off guard. Suho sounds nervous, voice dropping low, and he’s looking at Sieun like the answer might break him either way.
“Yes.” It’s fine, Sieun reasons. Just holding hands. Something they would have done before, something normal. Something that might help him understand.
“If you don’t want to, you can say no,” Suho adds quickly, words tumbling over each other. “I’ll never—I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I need you to know that.”
“I said it’s fine.” Impatience creeps into Sieun’s voice, sharpening it. “Answer the question.”
Suho laughs though it comes out wet and slightly choked. He reaches out slowly, giving Sieun time to pull away, and laces their fingers together. His hand is warm, callused along the palm, larger than Sieun’s own. The pressure is gentle. Careful. He squeezes once, as if to say I’m here.
“I did like you in school.” Suho’s voice is steady now, certain. “I’ve always liked you.”
It baffles Sieun. Genuinely confuses him in a way nothing else in this conversation has. Because from what he remembers—from who he was at seventeen—there’s nothing about him that would warrant this. He didn’t talk to anyone. He wasn’t even particularly noticeable.
So what changed? What did Suho see that made him want to know the weird quiet kid who sat by himself?
Suho seems to read the confusion on his face. Smiles at him softly.
“You always had your headphones in. I always wondered about you.” There’s something almost wistful in his voice now, like he’s pulling up memories that hurt in their sweetness. “We became friends first. The rest just came along after.”
Friends. The word sits strangely in Sieun’s mind. He had friends. He has friends now, apparently, Yeongyi, Baku, this Gotak person they mentioned, Juntae whose birthday dinner he was supposed to attend. People who care about him, who would sit with him in hospitals, who would drive hours to make sure he’s okay.
Sieun has a million questions. They’re crowding his throat, demanding answers, How did we become friends? When did you realize you liked me? How long before I felt the same way? What was our first kiss like, our first date, the first time I told you I loved you?
He opens his mouth to ask them, but before he can speak, the door opens. Suho stands immediately, turning to greet the doctor with a barrage of questions that Sieun can’t quite process, too focused on his own hand—the one Suho was holding just seconds ago.
It’s empty now. Cooler than it was, the absence of warmth more noticeable than its presence had been.
How strange, Sieun thinks, staring at his own palm like it might contain answers. I miss the warmth, he realizes with a start, and the thought shocks him slightly.
He drags his attention back to the conversation happening beside his bed. The doctor is explaining something—tests, follow-ups, procedures. Suho is leaning in, focused entirely on every word like his life depends on absorbing this information.
“—these things take time,” the doctor is saying, and that brings Sieun’s focus into sharp clarity. “Memory recovery isn’t linear. Sometimes it comes back quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes not at all.”
The words land with weight, with finality that makes Sieun’s stomach drop.
“Mr. Yeon.” The doctor turns to him now, and his expression is professionally kind but not optimistic. “Don’t stress yourself trying to remember. Don’t force it. That can actually make things worse. Just let it happen naturally, if it’s going to happen. We’ll see you in another two weeks and assess from there.”
If it’s going to happen. Not when. If.
There’s no guarantee. No assurance that this isn’t just his life now. Permanently disconnected from seven years of experiences, relationships, and growth.
Sieun feels the disappointment from earlier returning, sharper now, edged with something that might be fear if he let himself examine it too closely.
The doctor leaves, and Yeongyi slips back into the room, looking a lot more worried. She sighs when she sees them—Sieun in the bed, Suho standing beside it like he’s on alert, the weight of this entire day visible in the slump of both their shoulders.
“Come on,” she says gently. “Let’s get you home.”
Home. Another concept that should mean something but doesn’t. Another place he’s supposed to know, supposed to find comfort in, that will instead be one more unfamiliar thing to navigate.
They discharge him with paperwork he doesn’t read, pain medications he accepts numbly, and an appointment two weeks out that feels both too soon and impossibly far away.
And one whole boyfriend who watches him like he might disappear if he looks away too long.