Miiso

he hated that the mugs didn’t match.

when seonghyeon first brought his boxes over, stacking them neatly by the door of your cramped third-floor apartment, he had stopped dead in front of your open kitchen cabinet.

“they’re all different,” he said, pulling out a chipped blue tourist mug from a city you’d never visited.

“they all hold coffee,” you told him, barely looking up from your phone.

“not the point.”

“it literally is.”

the next day, there were four identical cream-colored mugs sitting neatly on the shelf. they were heavy, smooth, and expensive enough that you scolded him for spending the money. but he just smiled, that slow, lopsided thing that always made your chest feel tight, and filled one up to the brim for you.

☆

you hated mornings; he lived for them.

every single day, he’d slide out of bed before your alarm could even think about going off. you’d bury your face under the heavy duvet, groaning at the sudden shift in weight beside you, but he’d just chuckle, a low, gravelly sound thick with sleep.

he’d tie his long hair back with whatever stray hair tie of yours he’d managed to steal from the nightstand, padding down the hallway in his bare feet.

he didn’t even like coffee, he thought it tasted like burnt earth, but he made it anyway. because you loved it.

twenty minutes later, he’d return, pressing a soft, cool kiss to your bare shoulder. “angel.”

“mmm…”

“coffee.”

“five more minutes.”

“you said that ten minutes ago.”

“i’ll say it again.”

he’d sigh, that dramatic, fond sound he always made, and place the warm mug on your nightstand. then he’d crawl right back under the blankets, wrapping his long limbs around you like an anchor, pulling you back into the warmth until you were both running hopelessly late.

☆

the apartment slowly became a beautiful, tangled mess of the two of you.

his oversized hoodies migrated into your closet, smelling of cedarwood and your shared laundry detergent. your expensive skincare started crowding his shaving cream by the bathroom sink. 

and then, there were the sticky notes. it started as a way to remember groceries. 

buy eggs. and chocolate! LOTS of chocolate!!!!!!

don’t forget rehearsal <3

but then it turned into a game.

he’d hide neon yellow squares with i love you scrawled in his messy handwriting in the cruelest, funniest places—you’d open your laptop in the middle of a serious lecture and find one stuck to the screen. you’d pour a bowl of cereal and see it staring at you from the bottom of the box. 

once, you walked three blocks with a scratchy feeling in your left shoe, only to pull it off and find a crumpled note that read: you’re really cute when you’re annoyed.

☆ 

you knew every version of his habits, just like he knew yours.

you knew that when he was deeply anxious, his hand would automatically go to the back of his neck, rubbing the skin until it turned red. when he was thinking about a problem, he’d bite the inside of his cheek.

and when he was upset, he didn't scream or slam doors. he just got quiet. not a cold, angry quiet. just… heavy. like he was carrying something too big to share.

☆

“you’ve been quiet today,” you remarked one rainy tuesday, leaning your chin on his shoulder while he stared out the window.

“just tired,” he murmured, turning his head to press his lips to your temple.

“you’re lying.”

he’d just laugh, a little hollowly, the sound getting lost in the patter of rain against the glass. “had a rough day at work. don’t worry about it.”

you wrapped your arms tighter around his waist, burying your face in his back. you didn’t know it then… you didn’t know that he wasn’t tired from work. you didn’t know he was just standing there, looking at you, and silently grieving a person who was still sitting right in front of him.

☆ 

there was a small, irregular dent in the hallway wall right outside the bathroom.

neither of you ever repaired it, even when the landlord came by for inspections. you’d cover it with a poorly placed coat rack.

it had happened during your second winter together—an old, cheesy playlist was blasting from the living room speakers, and both of you were sliding around the hardwood floors in thick wool socks. he had grabbed your hand, spinning you around with entirely too much momentum, and attempted to dip you dramatically.

instead, his foot slipped and you both went airborne.

your shoulders collided with the drywall, leaving a perfect, shallow crater. you had laid there on the floor for ten minutes, tangled in each other’s limbs, laughing so hard that your stomachs ached and tears streamed down your faces.

“you know, we should fix that,” he had said months later, tracing the edge of the dent with his thumb.

“mhm.”

“we’re never fixing that, are we?”

“nope.”

it was your favorite mistake.

☆

then came the morning the air felt freezing. you blinked your eyes open, the bedroom unusually bright. the sun was already high, cutting sharp lines through the blinds. your alarm hadn’t gone off.

you turned your head. the other side of the bed was empty, the sheets cold. but the nightstand had a cream-colored mug on it. a faint wisp of steam was still rising from the dark liquid.

“you’re spoiling me,” you murmured into the quiet room, stretching your arms above your head. no answer.

you sat up, the silence in the apartment suddenly feeling incredibly heavy. it wasn’t the warm, sleepy silence of a lazy sunday. it was empty.

“seong?”

nothing.

you pushed the covers off and walked out into the hallway. the kitchen counter was spotless. the living room was perfectly still. you glanced at the entryway—his keys weren’t on the brass hook.

a strange, fluttering panic started to rise in your throat, entirely irrational. 

you opened the hallway closet to grab a jacket. his heavy winter coat wasn’t there. only yours, hanging lonely on the rack.

you ran back to the bedroom, throwing open the closet doors. the left side—his side—was completely bare. the hangers were empty, rattling against each other from the draft. you pulled open the dresser drawers. no hoodies. no sweatpants. no silver watch left on the vanity.

“no, no, no,” you whispered, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird.

you stumbled out to the living room, your eyes darting to the photo wall. the grid of black frames you had spent hours leveling together. you stopped breathing.

you were standing alone in every single frame—you at the beach, smiling broadly at an empty shoreline; you at a cafe, holding up a forkful of cake toward a camera that captured nobody; you standing by the dent in the hallway wall, laughing hysterically at nothing at all.

there was no seonghyeon. there had never been a seonghyeon in the prints. it was just you, posing with a ghost. your hands started shaking so violently you had to grip the edge of the drywall to keep from falling.

you stumbled into the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face, trying to wake yourself up from whatever nightmare this was. but when you wiped your eyes and looked up, you saw it.

a neon yellow sticky note, taped neatly to the bottom corner of the mirror.

the handwriting wasn’t yours. it was his.

good morning, angel. if you’re reading this... today’s one of the days you forgot me again. it’s okay, though. the doctors said it would happen. read the notebook in the bedside drawer. i’ll wait.

—s.

your legs gave out. you crawled back into the bedroom, pulling open the nightstand drawer with weak, trembling fingers. underneath a stack of old mail sat a thick, leather-bound notebook.

you opened the cover. the first page was dated three years ago.

if you don’t remember me today, my name is eom seonghyeon. i’m your boyfriend. we’ve been together for six years. you have early-onset alzheimer’s. some mornings you wake up remembering everything. some mornings… i’m just a stranger in your bed.

—s.

the world collapsed in on itself. you looked back at the wall of photos—it’s the cruelest part of the routine he built for you.

on your good days, when you remembered him perfectly, he would take photos of you. he loved capturing your laugh, the way you looked when you were happy, or just you standing in the apartment you shared. but he purposefully didn’t put himself in the frames on the wall.

because he knew what happened on your bad days—if you woke up with a completely blank mind, looking at a stranger in your bed, and then went out to the living room only to see photos of yourself hugging a man you didn’t recognize, it threw you into a violent, terrifying panic. you’d feel trapped, paranoid, and unsafe in your own home.

so, to protect your sanity on the days you forgot, he curated the apartment to look like it belonged only to you. he took down every photo of himself. he made sure the wall only showed you—looking happy, safe, and entirely at peace.

he hid the photos of the two of you together inside that notebook, buried in the nightstand, waiting for the moments you were strong enough to look for them. he erased himself from your sight just to keep you from being afraid.

suddenly, the memories rushed back, but they were warped, recontextualised with a sickening clarity.

the repeated conversations. the moments you’d wake up in the middle of the night, terrified, asking the man beside you who he was and how he got into your apartment. the way he would gently, patiently introduce himself all over again, showing you his driver’s license, showing you the matching mugs, never once raising his voice.

he had been rebuilding your entire shared life from scratch, every single morning, one agonising memory at a time.

you flipped the page, tears blurring the ink.

today you cried because you thought i deserved someone who could remember me. you apologised thirty-two times until you fell asleep. 

angel… i don’t stay because you remember me. i stay because you’re still you.

—s.

you flipped further, the pages turning into a blur of dates, sticky notes pasted onto the paper, small polaroids of the two of you actually together—the ones he kept hidden from the walls so you wouldn’t get confused on your bad days.

and then, you hit the final page. it was dated two months ago. the handwriting was shakier than the rest.

my cancer came back. i didn’t tell you because every day you still knew my name felt too precious to spend being scared. i didn’t want your remaining memories of me to be filled with hospital gowns and machines, you know? if you’re reading this… i probably couldn’t wait any longer. my body gave out.

i’m sorry i won’t be there to make coffee one day. but i know you’ll still check the nightstand. so i asked the hospice nurse to come by early and leave one there for you that day. just one last time.

love you. always. 

—your seonghyeon

you looked back at the nightstand. the coffee was still warm. it had been made by a nurse who barely knew your name, following a strict set of instructions left behind by a dead man. because the only person who loved you enough to learn exactly how many seconds to pour the milk was gone.

he had spent his final years keeping you whole while his own body was quietly falling apart, and even when he was completely out of time, he had still managed to remember enough for the both of you.

did you love him? did you miss him?

you stared at the cream-colored mug, your mind a blank, terrifying slate, crying for a man you couldn’t even fully picture anymore.

then, the front door clicked open. the sound was too loud in the dead silence of the apartment, making you flinch. heavy, hesitant footsteps padded down the hallway, stopping right at the bedroom doorway.

“hey,” a voice whispered.

you looked up through a thick blur of tears. it was keonho, seonghyeon’s younger brother. you knew his face—your fractured brain held onto that much—but his eyes were red, his shoulders completely slumped under a dark jacket.

keonho took one look at you sitting on the floor, the leather-bound notebook clutched to your chest, and the single cream-colored mug cooling on the nightstand.

he didn’t ask what was wrong. he didn’t have to. he connected the dots the second he saw the pages open in your lap.

“oh,” keonho choked out, his voice cracking instantly. “you read it.”

he dropped his keys on the dresser and crossed the room in two strides, dropping to his knees right into the dust beside you. he didn’t care about space or boundaries; he just pulled you into his arms, wrapping you in a tight, crushing hug that felt like a desperate attempt to hold your breaking pieces together.

“he’s gone, isn’t he?” you sobbed against his shoulder, your fingers digging into the fabric of his jacket. you couldn’t even visualise seonghyeon’s smile clearly right now, but the hollow space in your chest was agonising. “keonho, please. where is he?”

he squeezed his eyes shut, a hot tear spilling over his cheek onto your hair.

“he died yesterday afternoon,” he whispered, his chest heaving as he finally let himself break down. “at the hospital. he went really quietly. his last couple of days… he was so weak, but he kept making me promise over and over that the nurse would bring the coffee this morning. he made me swear it.”

you buried your face into keonho’s shoulder, the two of you shaking, crying so hard the small bedroom felt suffocating. you were grieving a ghost you couldn’t fully see, and keonho was grieving the brother who had loved others more than his own life.

“i’m sorry,” you sobbed, the guilt suffocating you. “i’m so sorry i forgot him. i forgot him while he was dying.”

“don’t say that, please,” keonho wept, rocking you back and forth on the hard floor. “don’t say that. he knew. he always knew it wasn’t your fault. he loved you so much.”

the room grew cold as the morning stretched on, the mug on the table turning completely icy, but neither of you moved. you just held onto each other in the wreckage of a story that had ended a day too soon.

© hyuneskkami ❦