Illegal - Minsung

0.9. Left Behind

By the time Minho awoke, Felix was already in the kitchen baking cookies or whatever it was he did on Sunday morning's. Changbin sat at the table scrolling through something on his laptop and the older boy smiled to himself because of how sweet and domestic the situation was.

"Morning Changbin," Minho greeted the boy who had so quickly become a permanent fixture in his life.

"Morning hyung," Changbin replied as Minho sat on the chair across from him and they fell into a comfortable silence. However, despite the fact that Minho had only just woke up, his mind was already racing.

"Do you have time for me to ask you a few questions?" he asked Changbin almost pleadingly.

Upon hearing his tone, the younger closed his laptop and gave Minho his full attention, "yeah sure what do you need?"

Minho let loose on everything that had been bothering him since the second he stepped through the doors of the centre. "Why do they do this to us?" Was the first question to which Changbin appeared as if he had a perfectly calculated answer he'd given to many people before.

He looked as if he was about to speak before he stopped and sighed, "I'm not gonna give you the official answer hyung," he spoke sadly and Minho nodded in understanding, "they want us gone," Changbin said simply, "it's been like this for years, before 1957 they'd just kill you if you were found to be gay, male or female, young or old, the youngest person they killed was a 9 year old girl who had come home from school and told her mom she had a girlfriend," Minho winced at the thought of it but Changbin just continued, "then with the wave of the social justice movement, they decided that it was wrong to just kill people and better if they could rehabilitate instead, so for a few years they just tried therapy," the younger laughed bitterly, "obviously that didn't work so since 1960 they've just used this system, according to Unite's stats they've wiped the memories of almost a million people since we started up in 1975."

Minho almost felt his jaw hit the floor. "How many people have had their memory wiped more than once?" he questioned.

"I think the official stat is about 75,000," the boy spoke and Minho was once again left in shock, "most people leave the country when they find their lover," Changbin continued, "but some people have family members or friends that they can't bear the thought of leaving behind and that's how they get caught again, the success rate of us helping people on their second memory wipe is very very low, if you go in a second time, as soon as your memory is wiped you're put into a system that they call 'rehab therapy' which basically is brainwashing into thinking being gay is the most disgusting thing ever and anyone who talks bad about the government is the enemy."

It fell silent when Changbin finished and Minho couldn't quite comprehend the fact that the people who ran their country lacked empathy to that extent. "I- I can't even think of how they do that," he stuttered out his words and Changbin smiled sympathetically.

"It's always hard when you find out but you have to remember that there's so many people who want to support us but are way too afraid," the younger attempted to reassure Minho but it did little to get rid of his fear that he would be the cause of Felix or even Changbin himself getting caught again.

Silence took over the room again for a few minutes when Changbin opened his laptop again and Minho took some time to take in what he had said. It felt almost impossible that a group of people could be hated so much that people would go to any possible extent to get rid of them. He felt powerless and he couldn't believe the fact that the rest of the world couldn't see that this was going on. Of course, he knew the country was very closed and it tricked the rest of the world into thinking that things were a lot better than they actually were but he hadn't realised that it was this bad. The older boy thought of people like Felix and Chan who had come to the country simply to work or study and were unaware of the situation they had gotten themselves into whilst finding love here. Anger took him over immediately but nothing could quite overtake his feeling of powerlessness.