Shattered Memories

Welcome to Shattered Memories 🖤

This story contains themes and content that may be triggering or emotionally difficult for some readers, including:

Memory loss.

Queer repression and closeted relationships.

Emotional trauma.

Identity crisis.

Mental health struggles, including grief, guilt, and internalized homophobia.

An off-page car accident and resulting injury.

Discussions of coming out under pressure.

Complex power dynamics in the entertainment industry.

Possible emotional manipulation and gaslighting in the context of memory loss.

Read with care, and take breaks when you need to. 🖤

CHAPTER 1

Zael

The lights hit hard, just like they always did. But tonight, they hurt more than usual because Riven was standing next to me again—laughing, smiling, and nudging my shoulder like nothing had ever changed. Like he hadn’t forgotten the night we climbed onto the hotel roof in Seoul and dared each other to scream confessions into the sky, one floor above the rest of the band.

Like I wasn’t dissolving right beside him.

“Smile, boys,” Marcus barked from the wings, his eyes sharp and calculating.

I forced a smile. My breath still tasted like coffee and the stale mint of that cheap backstage gum—my mouth felt dry and sour under the gloss they’d painted on. The screams from the crowd were deafening. This was our fans, our stage, our comeback. It was perfect, except for the one truth that hollowed me out: he didn’t remember us. He remembered me, sure. Just not us.

“Being back here… it feels like coming home,” Riven said, looking at me as he spoke.

I almost broke. I was home. I was the one who stayed, the one who waited at the hospital while he forgot the code to our shared locker, forgot the passcode to our old playlist, forgot the dumb cartoon we watched every night before tour. He turned back toward the crowd, his arm sliding around my shoulders with an easy, casual familiarity. It was pure muscle memory.

It used to mean I love you. Now it meant remember your place.

“This guy kept the ship afloat while I was out, huh?” Riven flashed a grin at the audience, the kind of look that used to belong only to me.

“Someone had to keep your mic warm,” I replied. The laughter and cheers followed instantly. A fan near the front screamed our ship name—MoonVale—and waved a glowing banner decorated with pixel hearts and a badly drawn chibi version of us holding hands. I kept the smile fixed on my face even though my cheeks had started to ache and the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat that smelled like nerves and setting spray.

Another camera cut across us, and we posed automatically, back-to-back, our shoulders grazing.

The host stepped forward, eyes sparkling like he was watching a K-drama reunion and getting paid to sell it. “We all missed you, Riven. How’s it feel to be back?”

“Like I never left,” Riven mused. “Like… I don’t know. Like the lights remember me or something.”

“And what about you, Zael?” the host asked, turning the spotlight on me. “What’s it like having him next to you again?”

I looked at Riven. He was already looking at me. “...It feels right.”

The host let out a dramatic little “aww,” and the crowd followed suit. Chants broke out in the back, our names mashed together into a single rhythmic pulse.

“Any surprises from the time apart?” the host pressed, leaning in.

“You mean besides realizing I can’t dance without this guy’s pacing?” Riven gestured toward me, his arm brushing mine. “It’s weird. I don’t remember all the steps, but he moves and my body just kind of… follows. Like it’s always been that way.”

“Maybe you’re soulmates,” the host teased, playing to the rafters.

Riven didn’t hesitate. “He’s my brother.”

The crowd screamed. I forgot how to breathe.

After the show, the hallways were a blur of photographers, stylists, and too many voices saying “amazing work” without actually looking at us. I pulled off my mic pack and handed it off, nodding and smiling in silence, keeping my head down. The collar of my shirt itched. My armpits were still damp.

“You okay?” Riven’s voice was close—low enough that I could feel the vibration in my throat.

“Yeah. You?”

“Kinda felt like I was gonna black out mid-chorus, not gonna lie.” He laughed, giving me that shoulder bump again. We still looked synced. We still looked like we belonged to each other. He always used to touch me like that. Back then, it meant come here. Now it meant nothing.

“But it was good,” he added. “Better with you up there.”

I looked at him. His grin was crooked as he ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. I remembered every detail of that gesture—how it used to end with his fingers tangled in mine, or tucked under the hem of my shirt during early mornings when neither of us wanted to get dressed yet.

“You didn’t miss a beat,” I said.

“Only ’cause you were next to me.”

A photographer passed by, the flash catching us off guard. “Sorry—don’t move, that was perfect,” she said, snapping another. Riven didn’t drop his arm.

Inside the dressing room, Marcus was already directing the staff, moving like a general. They began peeling us out of our stage clothes. Hands were everywhere—unzipping, tugging, straightening. I sat on the edge of the makeup table, letting them work, until a stylist touched my wrist.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“Huh?”

She held up my hand, pointing to a crescent of red at the base of my thumb. I realized my fingernails had dug into my palm again—a subconscious habit I’d picked up the moment everything shattered.

“Just nerves,” I muttered.

She nodded and went back to patting powder onto my jaw, covering up the stress rash that had bloomed under my cheekbone. Behind me, Riven was laughing with the hair team, leaning back in his chair and recounting a pre-show panic dream.

“I swear, in the dream, I showed up naked and the crowd just threw glow sticks at me until I disappeared.”

The room erupted. I managed a faint smile. He caught my eye in the mirror.

“Hey, Zael, remember the one where we got stuck in the elevator for three hours and I cried?”

“You didn’t cry,” I said softly.

“I did. Emotionally.”

The others cracked up, and I just nodded. He remembered the funny parts. The safe stuff. He didn’t remember how we kissed in that elevator like we were starving. Or how I held his shaking hands while he whispered, “If we die here, at least it’s with you.”

An hour later, most of the team had left for the after-party. I stayed behind, claiming a headache. I curled up in the greenroom with the lights dimmed, my hoodie pulled up, head resting against the wall while the vending machine hummed in the stillness. My stomach churned. I hadn’t eaten properly in two days.

Then came the footsteps. He didn’t knock.

“You hiding?” Riven stepped inside, his own hoodie up and sleeves pushed to his elbows.

“Just avoiding people.”

“Never thought I’d see you duck the spotlight.” He sat beside me, legs stretched out. We sat in silence for a long time. “You always sat like this when we were trainees. Remember?”

“Yeah.”

“I was scared shitless,” Riven said, staring into the dark. “You said, ‘Breathe like your body’s allowed to exist.’”

“Did I?”

“I never forgot that.”

I looked over. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“I don’t remember everything. Not the crash. Not a lot of the in-between. But you? You’re always just… there. Like a part of my wiring.” He cracked open a soda and took a sip. Let out a quiet burp and winced. “I hear your voice before I sleep. Sometimes I think I dreamed it all. But then I look at you, and it feels real again.”

I swallowed hard. The taste of coffee and bile hadn’t left. “I guess I’m hard to forget.”

“Damn right.”

He gave me that lazy, real smile—the one he only ever gave me. Then he tapped two fingers against my chest, right over my racing heart. “You’re my day-one. My ride-or-die. Always have been.”

I smiled back because I had to. Because if I didn’t, I might have shattered right there on the floor.

Later, at the house, the silence felt wrong. Like something had been left open too long and gone sour. I walked the hallway barefoot, passing the rooms where the others were already settling in. My socks stuck slightly to the wood. I should’ve changed them hours ago.

When I reached Riven’s door, it was cracked open, light spilling across the carpet. He was on the floor with a guitar in his lap, strumming softly.

“Hey. Creep much?” he grinned.

“You leave your door open, you get watched.”

“Come here.”

I stepped inside and shut the door. I sat on the floor across from him, and he passed me the guitar.

“Play that one you always used to do before tour. You know the one.”

I stared at him. He didn’t remember the name. He didn’t remember the lyrics we’d written while tangled together under a scratchy hotel blanket in Bangkok, sweat-stuck and laughing about how the chorus accidentally matched the tempo of the headboard banging next door.

But his fingers had still found the chords.

“Yeah. I know it.”

I played, and he closed his eyes, leaning back against the couch. “That’s it,” he whispered.

The way he said it made it feel like something had finally settled inside him. Like muscle memory. Or ghosts. When the last note faded, he smiled. “Feels like home.”

He drifted off after that, still on the floor, his face softening in the dim light. I watched him breathe, counting the uneven seconds between us. We used to fall asleep like this all the time. Now, I only stayed long enough to pretend.

I draped a blanket over him, and though his hand twitched, he didn’t wake.

“You used to pull me down with you,” I whispered. “Every time.”

He didn’t answer. Of course not.

I walked out and found my way to the empty practice room. Rain streaked the glass, turning the city lights into blurry, ugly smears of yellow. I sat on the floor, my back against the mirrored wall, and pulled my lyric book from my bag. My hands were shaking—not with drama, just a caffeine tremor I couldn’t shake.

I flipped to the last page. Our song. The one he said we’d release when we weren’t scared anymore.

I tried to read the words, but they felt like someone else’s life. I reached for the lighter I’d swiped from a stylist’s kit. My thumb flicked the wheel three times before it caught, the flint sparking uselessly in the dark. On the fourth try, a small, pathetic flame appeared.

I held the corner of the page to it. The paper didn’t just “vanish” into ash; it curled and blackened, smelling sharply of chemicals and expensive binding glue. The smoke stung my eyes, making them water for real this time, and I had to blow on it to keep the flame from catching the rest of the notebook. A piece of charred paper fell onto my thigh, burning through the fabric of my joggers just enough to sting.

“Dammit,” I hissed, swiping the ash away. My fingers were stained grey.

The room didn’t feel lighter. I didn’t feel “free.” I just felt like a person sitting in the dark with a ruined notebook and a room that now smelled like a trash fire. I stuffed the book back into my bag, the jagged, burnt edge of the page scratching against my palm.

As I walked back, I slowed by Riven’s door. He was humming.

It was the same melody from the song I’d just tried to destroy. He was off-key, hitting a flat note where the bridge was supposed to soar.

“You’re not supposed to know that,” I whispered to the wood of the door.

I heard him shift, the sound of the blanket rustling. I backed away, my heart heavy with a question I couldn’t ask: What part of me is still in you?

I didn’t wait for an answer. I walked down the hallway, my socks still sticking to the floor, feeling the grit of the ash under my fingernails. Inside my room, I pressed my back against the door. The silence was heavy, but his voice was the only thing I could hear, echoing from three years ago and five minutes ago all at once.

“You’re the only thing that still feels real.”

Somewhere in him, I was still there. But looking at my soot-stained hands, I knew it wasn’t enough. It was just a ghost of a ghost.