Chapter Text
Sieun's life used to be measured in a steady rhythm of counted breaths. In thirty-two minutes he walked to school, which gave him another twenty-eight to study before people started walking through the door. Seven minutes to finish a meal, two minutes to solve an equation. In four minutes he could read a page on a book and categorize important information, then memorize it.
Then came disruption, an insistent noise—like fireworks set off mistakenly and untimely—in the form of Ahn Suho.
Sieun lost count of many breaths after that. Routine stopped being home-school-cram school-back home; it became friday night motorcycle rides, running at 5 in the morning before he was barely awake, or a few more minutes in silence in a dark classroom, watching the steady rise and fall of Suho's chest as he slept on top of school desks and couldn’t see Sieun staring.
Routine wasn’t a routine at all, but living became as erratic as the sounds of Suho speeding away after dropping him off home at night, as lively as Suho looked when the sun started peaking through the gray Seoul skies in the morning and he would turn around to make fun of Sieun for his lack of stamina. Golden, alive, care-free.
"You're so warm-hearted," Suho had told him once, in a better mood than anyone should be after waking up in a hospital bed. "Your face, your eyes, the way you are... It's awfully strange."
Sieun hadn't been able to stop himself from smiling at the sheer ridiculousness of that. He found out once he started, he couldn't school his face into something neutral, not if he kept looking at Suho's surprised face.
"Just eat your food." Had been his only reply, his thoughts too clouded by unbearable fondness to say anything else; mostly for Suho, but also for Youngyi and Bumseok. He could have said something else, back then, just anything.
Just sleep well, rest and don't get hurt. Stop fighting my battles with me. Find yourself a better friend.
He thinks a lot could have been avoided if he had just kept to himself. Counted, measured breaths, steel-like focus on nothing but what was expected of him.
Now there's only silence, except for the beeping staccato of the machines Suho is hooked up to. Everything feels like a terribly distant memory, and the loneliness and regret often threatens to drown him as it pours from his eyes every time he lays eyes on Suho’s unconscious form. He can’t seem to stop crying these days. Youngyi hasn’t contacted him in weeks, and Bumseok… He doesn’t want to think about that anymore.
In one way or another, his life is back at the starting point—except he now counts the passage of time in the breaths Suho still weakly takes.
He reaches out a hand to rest it gently above Suho’s chest—something he always does in the absence of nurses or Suho’s grandmother—to feel, just for a few moments, if he’s still alive. He watches him just like he used to do in the mornings before class, except nothing is the same at all. Suho doesn’t wake up and smile at him, thanking him for not turning on the lights. Instead, Sieun is the one who thanks him for being stubborn and hanging on. His voice echoes in the room, unanswered.
–
It takes about two weeks for his school transfer process to be finalized. They tell him he’s lucky he’s not getting sent to a juvenile detention center, but lucky is not a word he would use about himself, ever. The only reason they’re not effectively wiping him out from existence is because he holds proof of what they did to Suho, and he regardless of their relationship, he still has both parents who would, in the very least, notice it.
He feels nauseous at the thought, not because he holds any attachments to his school, but because that means he won’t be able to visit Suho at the hospital as much anymore. When he tells Suho’s grandmother this, she seems relieved more than anything.
“I appreciate that you’ve been coming, but you need to take care of yourself, too.”
“I’ll still come on weekends,” He reassures her, “And I’ll call.”
“You’re just a child, Sieun-ah. They’ll do what they can.” Her lips tremble as she says so, and she reaches out to pat his hair the same way he sometimes sees her do to Suho. It's gentle in a way he's not used to.
He knows Suho has doctors and nurses at the press of a button, but that doesn’t make him feel any less responsible. Do they care that Suho only has his grandmother, who’s not at an age someone can be at a hospital at all times? Do they know his favorite food, or that he hates waking up to the curtains open, or how to tell him about everything that happened?
‘I can’t leave him,’ He doesn’t say, because she knows that even better than Sieun himself. ‘He has no one else.’
“I’ll come.” It’s final.
She pats his hair again, heavy sorrow in her eyes. “I’ll ask them to call you if…”
If he wakes up. He swallows down more tears, and doesn't let them fall. She doesn’t tell him it will be okay, and that Suho will wake up. They both know she can’t promise that.
–
High school boys are disgustingly predictable, but at least when he ties Choi Hyoman up with the straps of his backpack, then proceeds to lash out the palm of his hand on his face over and over again only on his first day in Eunjang High School, they leave him alone. At least for the time being.
–
To say that the days pass like a blur does not mean that they go by any fast, but that’s the only way Sieun can explain the emptiness of watching the passage of time after all that’s happened. Everything is out of focus and strangely still, but the days drag on as if each one of them won’t ever end. The world around him keeps moving and not sparing a single thought to Ahn Suho, and Sieun wants to break something, everything, out of pure frustration at the unfairness of it all.
He wonders if Youngyi thinks of Suho as often as he does. He wonders if Bumseok has started feeling any regret at all, if he gets any of the same nightmares that come to Sieun whenever he manages to sleep at all night; or if he lies awake as it dawns on him how badly he ruined their lives.
He wonders, too, if anyone has ever felt like this before—split in two, half of him working on autopilot, and the other half lost in his own mind, a hand on his phone at all times, waiting for a call that doesn’t come.
Life has managed to become even more meaningless than before he met Suho.
–
It takes Suho thirty-seven days to wake up.
The call comes in the middle of class, immediately heard by Sieun despite the cacophony of the classroom around him. His heart seizes in his chest at the familiar name on screen, and he picks up without a second thought.
“Grandma.”
There’s a few seconds of silence before her voice comes through, “Sieun-ah… You must be in the middle of class, but I wanted to tell you. Suho, my boy… He woke up.”
Despite how hard he had wished to hear these words for the past few weeks, it’s hard to fully process it when it finally happens. He’s up and out of his desk before he even realizes, uncaring for the eyes that fall on him as he walks out of the room.
“I’m coming,” He says, already mentally calculating how long it’ll take him on the subway to get back to Seoul and to the hospital. Maybe he could take a taxi.
“Oh, child, don’t come. He’s… He’s already asleep again, he was only awake for a few minutes. I just wanted you to know.” Her voice trembles with much of the same conflicting emotions Sieun can feel bubbling up inside of him. Fear, relief, confusion.
There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach at realizing he missed Suho opening his eyes. Alive, still, just as stubborn as he always was. Suho is alive , he woke up, and Sieun wasn’t there to see it.
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” He decides, because he can’t miss it a second time, he needs to see it for himself. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Suho’s grandmother or the doctors, but it’s a hard concept to grasp when none of them even knew if it was gonna happen. Suho hadn’t been getting worse, but he also hadn’t been getting any better. He was always a fifty-fifty with the odds.
“You don’t need to, child. He’s… We don’t know when he’ll be awake next. The doctors said it will take a while for him to be awake for any longer than a few minutes, and maybe not even for a few more days. Just come on the weekend.”
Sieun knows it’s true. He has researched, over and over again, everything to do with traumatic brain injuries and the aftermath of being in a coma. He knows that the first few days, most patients wake up for only a few moments at a time. He knows, also, that the time-frame for coma patients to have the best recovery outcome is two to four weeks. Suho’s been unconscious for five. He doesn’t want to think about the after-effects.
He wants to argue, but he knows it’s easier to just show up than to try and convince anyone that he should be there. They might not even let him in in case he comes when Suho’s grandmother isn’t there, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take.
“Please call me if he wakes up again.”
“I will, Sieun-ah. Go back to your studies.”
It’s only after he hangs up that he notices the wetness in his eyes, the relief he feels only enough that he can breathe easier than he has in the past thirty-seven days, but not nearly enough to stop him from considering ditching everything and making his way to the hospital on a Tuesday morning.
He stands in the empty hallway until Seo Juntae comes outside to ask if he’s okay. He’s a weird kid who keeps trying to ask about Sieun’s well-being even after witnessing just how easily he beat up Choi Hyoman on his very first day in Eunjang High.
“Hey, Sieun, are you okay? The teacher is asking to call you back inside, but if—”
Sieun looks at him and finds concern in his eyes. It might look real, but he can’t begin to trust it regardless.
He nods, “I’ll go back inside.”
He only registers the whispers and jokes on the back of his head. He can hear someone talk about ‘Sieun’s braindead boyfriend’ and follow it up with a snicker, and he realizes the rumors must have traveled all the way from Byuksan to try and get a rise out of him. None of them matter, anyway. All he can think about is seeing his best friend.
The following days, he misses a couple more times when Suho wakes up. One in the middle of the night on Wednesday, when even his grandmother wasn’t there, and he hates to think about him waking up alone. The other one is on a Friday afternoon, right before cram school starts and half a day before Sieun is supposed to go to him. He decides enough is enough, and barely thinks about the consequences as he takes the subway to Seoul, and only stops by his house to change.
–
Suho’s grandmother doesn’t look surprised at all when he shows up at the hospital at the end of the afternoon, when visiting hours are nearly over. He wasn’t even supposed to get in, but no one had been paying that much attention, and without his school uniform he doesn't stand out nearly as much.
He convinces Suho’s grandmother to go home and take a much needed rest, and doesn’t know what she says to the nurse in charge of Suho for her to allow Sieun to stay in the room alone with Suho overnight, but she only spares him a glance when she comes in to check on him a couple of hours later. She’s seen him before several times.
“Don’t get me in trouble,” She says, but keeps it at that, “Press this button immediately if he wakes up.”
He pulls out some of his textbooks if only to give him something to do other than stare at Suho, but his eyes keep looking up at his unconscious form from where Sieun is curled up on the small couch on the corner of the room. He tries to keep himself busy, replies to the text his father sent him a couple of hours before, then goes back to try taking notes about some History subject or another.
He’s hyper-aware of any noise, scared that he might miss it if Suho calls for him. The sky outside goes dark little by little, and it makes Sieun think of how many Friday nights like these he spent with Suho before, sitting on the back of his motorcycle with his hands on Suho’s waist, holding on a little tighter than he should have. He even got away with hooking his chin over Suho’s shoulder sometimes, and only half of it was excusable by the lack of space or how fast Suho was making a delivery. Suho had never made fun of him for it at all, or even called him out on it – he was even more tactile than Sieun ever had the courage to be, always with an arm around Sieun’s shoulder, or pulling him everywhere by the hand. He would touch Sieun’s face for no reason other than he could, and ruffle his hair with such affection that it had embarrassed Sieun to no end.
Nobody had touched Sieun in any way that wasn’t supposed to hurt except for Suho, not in a long time. His father kept a loving but awkward distance, and his mother... Well. Suho was his first real friend, the first person to stick by him without expecting him to be anything other than himself. He finds the impulse to reach out and touch the boy in front of him nearly unbearable.
–
Forty-one days and thirteen hours. That’s how long it takes between the last time they saw each other and the moment Suho wakes up in Sieun’s presence, late into the night.
Sieun only realizes he’s fallen asleep when he hears the soft groaning that certainly didn’t come from himself, and he’s up and alert in a matter of seconds. Suho’s blinking confusedly, movements slow and heavy, and it’s several seconds before his eyes meet Sieun’s. He can’t quite understand the wave of bottled up feelings that crash into him the moment that happens. He lets himself look for a second, searching for something, anything in Suho’s sleep-heavy eyes, and reaches out to put his hand over Suho’s chest.
“It’ll be okay,” He says, even though he’s the last person who could promise Suho that, “I’ll be here.”
He presses the button on the side of Suho’s bed to call for the nurse, his eyes never leaving Suho’s. There’s no spark behind his best friends’ eyes, no recognition, no anger, no happiness; only confusion. He knows, logically, that Suho couldn’t just wake up and be himself again, smile and make a joke about how they should stop getting into fights; but the guilt embraces him one again, as hard and familiar as ever.
It feels right to have him awake, but it feels immensely wrong to see him so broken.
The nurse rushes him out of the room merely a minute later, and no matter how much he wants to argue, he knows he could just as well get kicked out of the hospital considering he wasn’t supposed to be there anyway.
He watches from the door as Suho’s checked over. A doctor puts a light in his eyes, checks his vitals, motor functions.
“Do you know your name?”
He nods, “Suho.”
“Age?”
“Seventeen.”
“Do you know what year it is?”
It takes Suho a second to answer that and Sieun holds his breath.
“It’s 2022, right?”
Sieun breathes out a sigh of relief.
“That’s good, Suho-ssi. Do you know where you went to school?”
The pause, this time, is even longer. Sieun can’t see him clearly with the doctor and nurses surrounding him.
“That’s okay,” The doctor says, “You’re doing good. We’re gonna take this slow, but you’re doing good.”
Sieun doesn’t know what he expected, but the relief he felt only moments before is short-lived, and the sinking feeling in his stomach makes him nauseous all over again.
“Do you remember waking up before?”
This time, Sieun can see a nod.
“Very good, you can rest now. You did very well.”
As the room starts to empty out, the nurse allows him back inside the room.
“If anything at all happens, call for me again. Don’t push him too hard to speak and don’t talk about upsetting things, or you’re gonna have to leave. He’ll probably be asleep again in a few minutes. We’re going to call his grandmother. If he’s awake for longer tomorrow, we’ll run a few more tests.”
Sieun nods. He wants to ask more, but he knows this is all he’s going to get before Suho’s grandmother comes the next day.
Alone in the room again, Sieun doesn’t know what to say. Suho looks at him with much of the same confusion he did before, although he seems to be trying hard to say something.
“Are you thirsty?” Sieun settles for, instead. He doesn’t want to upset him.
Suho takes a long moment to reply, but eventually nods his head. He takes a cup of water to him, and tries to stop his hands from trembling as he holds Suho’s face as gently as he can in one hand and the paper cup in the other, helping the boy drink water in tiny sips.
He doesn’t drink much at all, but it’s something. Sieun’s glad to be doing something, even more glad that Suho is awake at all, even if he can see his eyes are already drooping.
Sieun puts the paper cup in the trash, and when he turns back to Suho he realizes he’s almost asleep again.
“You…” Suho says, not without great difficulty from the looks of it. Sieun’s heart seizes in his chest. He had thought he’d never talk to Suho again after that day. “You…?”
“Sieun.” He says, ignoring the voice in the back of his head saying that it would be much better for Suho if he didn’t know Sieun at all.
“Yeah… Sieun,” Suho mumbles. “You’re so…”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before falling asleep again. Sieun is almost proud of the way he holds his own until Suho closes his eyes, and only then Sieun lets the tears fall freely from his own.
He sits beside Suho’s hospital bed and holds his hand, and cries so hard that he’s scared he’s going to choke and drown in the storm of his own tears.
–
It takes them a few days to determine what Suho remembers.
He remembers his grandmother, his name, his parents’ names and what year it is. He remembers that his favorite color is red, that he owns a motorcycle, and his part-time jobs.
He doesn’t remember Sieun’s name, but he says he remembers, albeit vaguely, that they’re close. He doesn’t remember school, or any of their classmates' names. He doesn’t remember how what happened to him actually happened, although he seems to remember someone did it to him. He doesn’t remember the fighter, or the guys from school, and doesn't even remember Bumseok. They don’t tell him, either.
The doctor tells Suho’s grandmother that the process of recovering his memories might be very slow, and it might not happen at all. They’re not yet sure how much of it is brain damage and how much is being suppressed as a reaction to traumatic events.
Suho is, apparently, a miracle with how much more damage he could have sustained and seems to not have done so.
–
Sieun abandons all pretense of going to cram school at all, and starts spending much more of his days in Suho’s hospital room, which is only allowed because contrary to all odds, the nurses seem to have taken a liking to him and how much he cares for his friend. Sieun learns that from Suho’s grandmother.
For the next few weeks after Sieun has seen him awake for the first time since the attack, Suho is much more lucid than when he had first awakened. Sometimes, he’s as bright as he was before, and he makes jokes while watching TV with Sieun and his grandmother, or strikes up a conversation with Sieun trying to guess names and situations they’ve been through before that are as ridiculous as he can come up with, just to make Sieun laugh. They bicker about how bad Sieun is at guessing murder mystery movies. Those are the good days.
The bad days have Suho frustrated with needing help to walk, still not quite stable on his feet, or even simpler tasks like holding his chopsticks or a spoon. Then there's the headaches that have Suho shaking in anger and Sieun in fear of the doctors finding some more damage that they might have missed in his other exams. Suho yells at him once, when physical therapy seems to not be progressing at all, and cries in frustration at the missing pieces of memory that still haven’t found his way back to him.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry,” Sieun says, swallowing past the lump in his throat.
“Were we even friends?”
Sieun’s heart constricts in his chest. “Yes.”
“Most days, I don’t even remember your name.” Suho says quietly, deflating from all the frustration into an exhausted, slumped form. Sieun knows he didn’t say it to hurt him. He knows, and yet.
“Sieun.”
"Yeah, Sieun…”
That day, they don’t talk again for the rest of the afternoon.
–
A few days later, they’re eating dinner in Suho’s room mostly in silence, and Sieun takes some kimbap from the food he had packed for himself and puts it onto Suho’s sad looking plate of hospital food, something he has been doing whenever they eat together, just to try and dispel the discontentment on his best friend’s face.
“This food sucks so bad,” Suho pouts, but immediately swallows a piece of kimbap. It should be unbecoming of him. It doesn’t mean it is. “Ugh, I’m craving ox-bone soup.”
Sieun stills with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, but doesn’t say anything.
“You should bring me some again.”
Sieun is hit so heavily by shock that it takes him way too long to notice the little smile playing on Suho’s lips. He tries not to let his own voice tremble, but it comes out as shaky as he feels.
“You remembered?”
Suho smiles a little more openly, but he looks shy. “I might have remembered it as soon as I yelled at you that day, but I was embarrassed about doing that so I didn’t say anything, sorry.”
Sieun wants to hit him. He wants, even more stupidly, to hug him. “What nonsense are you talking about? You should tell me these things.”
Suho grimaces, “I know, but you were doing the kicked puppy face and I didn’t want to upset you more.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Yes, you do,” Suho counters, rolling his eyes, “It’s ridiculous. All the nurses talk about it, too. ‘Oh, Suho, your friend is so cute.’ It made me feel like we had a married couple's fight.”
Sieun can’t help it. It’s really so stupid, and it reminds him too much of the past, but he’s helpless to the smile that blooms on his face at Suho’s antics. He had missed him so bad it ached like hell, more than any physical pain ever had, but he doesn’t know how to tell him that. He doesn't know how to even begin to explain to Suho how hard he feels things when it comes to him. Sieun barely understands it himself.
“You’re a dumbass.”
“There you go, there’s a smile. Now you look like a happy puppy.” Suho smiles at him again, bright in a way that fully reaches his eyes, in a way he hasn’t done ever since he woke up. Sieun’s heart fills with so much fondness and hope and relief that it shows on his face, he thinks, from the way his cheeks get sore from trying to contain his smile.
“Fuck off, I’m not bringing you anything.”
He makes a mental note to bring Suho ox-bone soup the very next day. Somehow, he thinks Suho knows he will.