Song Junhee wakes up to the sight of pastel pink hair.

It belongs to a girl - a young woman, really - around his age, maybe slightly younger. She’s scribbling furiously into a notebook, a pork pie hat balanced precariously on the top of her head.

Junhee rubs his bleary eyes with a groan. “Ugh… Where am I?”

“You’ve just been in a car crash,” the young woman tells him gravely. “Unfortunately, the two other men with you didn’t make it. The ambulance was here earlier, but they saw you weren’t too badly injured, so they just left you in my care. I told them we weren’t related, but we couldn’t find your identification documents or anything, and nobody could guess the password to your phone, so…” She shrugs, gesturing around the apartment room they’re in. “Yeah. Here we are.”

“Take it easy,” she warns him when he sits up, “you haven’t got any major injuries, but you’re still bruised here and there. Welcome to Ahn Minji’s temporary detective agency for now, I guess. ”

“Nice to meet you, Ahn Minji,” Junhee recites automatically. He feels like he’s forgotten something, but he’s not sure what. Car crash… He remembers seeing that. He doesn’t know how he got there, but he remembers being almost crushed under rubble, sirens wailing in his ears, smoke sitting heavy in his lungs.

He doesn’t remember the two men with him. He feels like he should know, but his memories feel inaccessible. Like there’s a block between him, and everything that happened before waking up.

“Where do you live, uh…” Minji waves a hand. “I can’t keep calling you John Doe.”

“My name is Song Junhee,” Junhee answers. “And where do I live… That’s a really good question, actually.”

Minji cocks her head.

“I can’t remember.”

The confession spills like a whisper from his lips, like an admission of guilt even though Junhee is sure there’s nothing for him to be guilty about.

Minji’s gaze turns sharp, and Junhee can almost see the cogs spinning in her head. She’s a detective, hm? Maybe she could help him. “You can’t remember?”

Junhee shakes his head. “I remember my name, and…” He ignores the twinge of pain in his bruised arm and checks his pockets, finding nothing. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“Amnesia,” Minji mutters under her breath. There’s a light in her eyes, like a child excited for candy at Halloween. “Wait a second, I gotta get something.”

She skips out of the room, leaving Junhee alone, sitting on the bed. He gazes around the room, spotting various pinboards, a camera on the desk, and far more packs of post-it notes than a person should probably have.

Minji reappears seconds later, holding something behind her back. She grins at him. “Hi!”

Junhee blinks. “Is there a problem?”

“So, you remember me?”

“Yes, you’re Ahn Minji, you’re a detective, this is your apartment, but I don’t know what the address is, or what my home address is. I don’t remember anything from before.”

“Do you remember your parents? Your friends? Where you went on holiday last summer?”

“No, no, and no,” Junhee answers honestly. He tries harder to think, but the only thing that surfaces is guilt. “I told you, I don’t remember anything.”

“Aha!” Junhee jumps. “You’ve got retrograde amnesia,” Minji declares triumphantly. “So you can’t remember anything from before the car accident, from immediately before it happened all the way until your childhood. Am I right?”

Song Junhee, you have six months to solve the mystery of your almost-death, or suffer the consequences of failing. This is a deal with the devil, so keep your lips sealed.

Junhee flinches. The voice feels familiar, yet he can’t remember it, like a ghost on the tip of his tongue. The only thing he seems to remember is… He shouldn’t tell anybody about that, right? Minji would think he’s insane, anyway.

“I guess you’re right,” he answers, throat dry. Even if the voice-memory was a ‘deal with the devil’ that he couldn’t tell anyone about, the devil had never said Junhee couldn’t find help, right?

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“You’re a detective, so…” Junhee takes a deep breath. “Help me find out who I am?” That’s a good start to things, right?

A manic grin spreads across Minji’s lips. She looks far too enthusiastic about this, really. “I was just about to offer.” She brings out a messenger bag from behind her back. “This is yours, apparently. You were holding it like your life depended on it when I found you.” She falters. “Uh, is that a bad comparison to make?”

Junhee reaches for the bag, swallowing. “It’s fine.”

There isn’t much inside the bag. Just a phone, which unlocks at the sight of his face; half-charged airpods; and a pair of drumsticks. He twirls the drumsticks around in his hands, Minji looking amazed at how natural it is for him. Junhee isn’t as surprised as he should be, for some reason. Somehow, the drumsticks fit in his hands like they were meant to be there, his brain supplying him with the sound of cymbals and snares and high hats with each movement of his hands. He can almost hear the bass drum booming in his ears when he taps his foot against the bed.

“You can play drums?”

Junhee nods. It feels like a part of him. “Probably.”

The detective scribbles something onto her notebook. Junhee can’t be sure, reading upside down, but he thinks it might say musician?. It’s probably true. The realization feels comfortable, like a C major scale. No sharps, no flats, nothing out of the ordinary.

He checks his phone next, startling when a guitar pick and a polaroid falls out of the case. The pick is blunt with use, and there’s a smiley face etched on one side, a tiny, crudely drawn penis etched on the other side. Minji laughs at the disgusted deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face. “Cute photo,” she says, electing to ignore the pick. “I’m guessing that’s your friend? The bone structure is too different to be siblings, or even cousins.”

He glances at the polaroid, tucking the pick back into its place. He might not remember anything about his past, but he’s sure he wasn’t the type of person to draw offending phalluses on his own picks. Polaroid Junhee looks the same, but also different. His cheeks were rounder, a faint blush painted on them. His lips were redder than he thinks they actually are. After squinting, Junhee realizes he also probably had makeup on, because his eyes look bigger even though the eyeliner and eyeshadow are inconspicuous. Maybe he had contact lenses on too, because his vision is slightly blurry. Myopia, perhaps? Oh, and Polaroid Junhee has dark pink hair instead of the current navy blue.

What he doesn’t recognize is the silver-haired young man clinging to his back with the widest beam on his face. The exasperated but fond expression on Polaroid Junhee’s face feels unfamiliar to him now.

All of a sudden, it feels like two strangers are staring back at him instead of one. Yet nothing comes to mind, only emptiness and the feeling that something is missing.

Is this how it feels to be an alien in your own life? A living ghost with no recognition of the life you left behind? He wishes he could remember, but at the same time, a voice in his head tells him maybe it’s better that he shouldn’t.

God, he doesn’t even know anymore.

Checking his phone yields no results. Every single app is blocked by a password he can’t remember, even his call app. Just what kind of life had he lived to even have his photo gallery be inaccessible? What could even be in there? Something inappropriate immediately comes to mind, but he’s sure he wouldn’t save photos like that on his personal phone, right…?

“Unfortunately, hacking phones is not within my area of expertise,” Minji says mournfully. “I know someone who does, but I don’t think it’s legal to meet up with someone who’s in jail for hacking into government documents in the first place…”

“It’s not illegal if it’s my phone and I give permission.”

The detective cackles. “You’re funny, Song Junhee. If I wasn’t invested in trying to find out who you actually are, I’d want to keep you around.”

That sounds a little frightening, to be honest. For now, Junhee can only tolerate Ahn Minji in minimal doses. Being around a hyperactive detective who treats you like a mystery to be solved instead of a person can’t be good, even if you’re starting to feel too much like an enigma even to yourself.

Both of them jump when Minji’s phone rings, and she answers immediately, chirping “Ahn Minji’s Detective Agency at your service, are you requesting a private investigator?”

She flips her notebook open at the speed of light, scribbling madly as the person on the other side talks. Junhee tries to peek at the details, only to find her chicken scratch utterly unreadable. Junhee can only assume it’s about the new case. Something something ‘save’, or something something ‘look for’? Only the god of handwriting would know.

Minji turns to Junhee with gleaming eyes. “Guess what? I’ve got a new case. Since you don’t have anything better to do for now, why don’t you come along as my sidekick? I need someone to help me take better photographs of evidence, and you need to provide some form of payment for my services sooner or later. Maybe this could even help you.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nope!” Minji chirps.

Junhee sighs. “Fine, fine, I’ll go with you. I’ll be your sidekick or whatever until we get to the bottom of who I am.”

And how I died.

“Pleasure doing business with you!”

Some pleasure it is, alright.

They leave, but not before Junhee reflexively puts a cap and mask on until nothing shows except his eyes. He really doesn’t know where that autopilot move comes from, but instinct must be a funny thing to keep even though your memories are gone.

Minji hums, looking him over. “Good, but…” She takes his leather jacket off, swapping it with a black sukajan jacket with a crow embroidered on the back. “This is better. It’s my ex-boyfriend’s, but I assure you, he’s not coming back for it any time soon.”

“Slay,” Junhee mutters under his breath.