Jinki turned up the next day with a big plastic bag in his hand and an even bigger smile on his face. A delicious smell of warm caramel wafted into the hospital room with him, overlaying the coffee smell Jinki usually brought with him. The caramel smell wrapped gently around Kibum and drowning out for a moment the ever-present antiseptic reek of the hospital. Kibum couldn't help the smile that spread across his face to mirror Jinki's. The caramel scent was so comforting, a warm wash of gentle affection that made his heart glow. If he’d been a cat, he would have curled up to bask in this glowing scent-embrace and purred.

Jinki dumped the bag on the bed beside him and smiled down at him.

"You look a lot better," he said. "Happier. Glad to be leaving?"

"Yes," Kibum said. It came out so fervent that Jinki laughed.

"I brought you some clothes. I have to warn you though, Taemin picked them."

"Anything is better than these hideous things," Kibum said, plucking with distaste at his shapeless hospital pyjamas.

He let Jinki help him change into the clothes from the bag. He thought he could probably manage on his own, but Jinki was so earnestly willing to help that he didn't have the heart to refuse. It certainly was easier to slip his arms into the bright pink shirt Taemin had apparently decided he'd just love to wear with Jinki helping - his ribs still stabbed when he moved too much. It wasn't that the pink shirt on its own was so bad, Kibum thought rather ruefully as he watched Jinki’s fingers carefully do the buttons up his front. It was just that it was exactly the wrong shade to go with the red skinny jeans, and he was sure that no matter what fancy designer had created the shoes and how expensive they were, the tuft of orange fur glued to the back of them was a serious mistake.

"Are you sure Taemin isn't colour blind?" He wondered, standing still as Jinki threaded a belt through the loops of his jeans and did up the buckle for him. "Perhaps we should get his eyes tested."

"I think you look perfect," Jinki said loyally, and Kibum found to his astonishment that Jinki was speaking the absolute truth. Before his accident he would have thought Jinki was joking, or perhaps trying to reassure him, but now, somehow, he could tell that Jinki believed every word he said. Surprised, he watched his Jinki’s face as the worry line appeared again between his eyes and the smell of new plastic that somehow seemed to accompany it rose up to wreathe around them both. "But it's all much too loose on you," Jinki said, biting his lip. "You've gotten so thin."

"I can't help it. Being fed by tubes doesn’t exactly build muscle." Kibum looked impatiently at the door. "Can we go now? I've had enough of hospitals to last me the rest of my life."

Jinki grinned, and the new plastic smell receded to make way for the caramel and coffee smells again, though it still lingered faintly.

"At your service," he said, passing Kibum his crutches. He slipped his arms into them and Jinki picked up Kibum’s backpack. "They signed you out already, I checked, so we're good to go."

Kibum followed Jinki out of the room and towards the elevator at the end of the corridor. His crutches made a clicking sound on the shiny floor with each step. He paused to thank the nurses at their station on the way out. As they smiled and gave him their best wishes, he felt glad Dr. Ji hadn't made an appearance.

The elevator ride, however, took his mind right away from Dr. Ji. It was awful. As the elevator passed each floor, he was hit by a gust of foreign sensations that did not belong to him. The creeping malevolence of a metastasizing tumour; the artificial wheeze of a respirator forcing air into lungs that would not work on their own; and, mercifully brief, the silenced agony of a scalpel slicing into anaesthetized flesh. He gasped, and Jinki looked at him sharply.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Kibum managed. He couldn't explain the strange sensations without sounding crazy and he certainly didn't want Jinki thinking perhaps he needed to stay here longer after all. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the plastic grips of his crutches as the grinding ache of a broken bone and the glass-sharp shattering of a mother's grief washed over him.

By the time they reached the ground floor everything seemed to have gone weirdly bright, little pinpricks of light crawling in front of his eyes, and he felt like he was going to be sick. The invading tangle of foreign sensations were too powerful, too overwhelming, and he had no way of processing them. Jinki put his hand on Kibum's arm, and suddenly Kibum felt his hyung's concern as if it was his own. It was accompanied by the new plastic smell again, and Kibum felt sweat bead on his forehead as another wave of nausea rolled through him. Too much, it was all too much and he didn't know how to cope with it. But he must cope, he told himself fiercely. He would not throw up. He could deal with this. He had to prove he was okay, or Dr. Ji would get his hands on him again, with his ozone-smell and acid-touch and whispers.

"Kibum, are you sure you're okay? You've gone really pale," Jinki said worriedly, but the thought of Dr. Ji had brought echoes of the whispers to Kibum’s ears. They rustled around him, hissing their unintelligible, sinister words -

"Shut up," he ground the words out, and immediately felt Jinki's reaction. Shock, confusion, and worst of all, hurt, like a stab in the chest. Of course, Jinki would assume Kibum's words were directed at him. He became aware of the cloying scent of lilies.

"Sorry," he muttered quickly. He pulled away from Jinki's hand on his arm, and the smell of lilies and the sense of bewildered hurt immediately diminished, though did not entirely vanish. As soon as the elevator doors opened, he swung himself out and towards the exit. Jinki and the smell of new plastic and lilies followed him.

"I'm sorry, hyung. I didn't mean that how it sounded,” Kibum tried to explain. “I just want to get out of here. I think I'll go crazy if I stay much longer."

"It's okay," Jinki said uncertainly, and some of the hurt faded, though the confusion remained. "I understand." He didn't really, Kibum knew, but he couldn't explain any more. He couldn't even explain to himself what was going on with him, let alone make it make sense to anyone else. "It must be horrible being stuck in here for so long.”

"You have no idea," Kibum said fervently. The nausea was fading quickly now that he was away from the elevator, and the hospital doors were near. He felt, rather than saw, Jinki search his face and relax slightly, relieved to see colour returning to his cheeks. Then he wondered how he knew that. How could he tell what Jinki was thinking? It was impossible. He must be imagining it, or maybe having hallucinations from the drugs. But he'd skipped three doses of the pills now. Surely the drugs must be nearly out of his system.

The doors whooshed open and sunlight poured over him. It was like a cool breeze in his face, made of clean, pure energy. The light washed away the remnants of the nausea and the awful sensations he'd felt in the elevator. He stopped in his tracks, his face turned up to the sun, and closed his eyes as he let the sunlight wash through him, cleansing him of the lingering shreds of darkness. The last whispers of despair shrivelled up and vanished. Kibum took in a breath, and thought he could taste the sunlight.

Jinki's voice, fond laughter in it, and the scent of warm caramel and coffee grounds. All traces of lily-hurt were gone. Jinki never could hold a grudge, Kibum remembered with some relief. He'd already forgotten his snapped words from moments before. "You really did need to get out of there, didn't you?"

Kibum opened his eyes. "I think I can live again now," he said, and realised how much he meant it. The hospital was not safe for him.

Their manager, Daejung, was waiting with the van and Jinki helped Kibum inside, juggling crutches and belongings. It wasn't easy to climb in and sit in the seat. His hip ached like blunt teeth biting down on the joint, but he breathed as best he could and tried to absorb the pain. Jinki sat beside him and started chattering about all the things they'd been up to while he was ill.

"A rookie group called CheckMate have been dominating the charts," Jinki told him. "They've been at number one for weeks. SM are getting edgy about it - nobody's ever heard of Black Blade Entertainment before, but now everyone's talking about them."

"CheckMate," Kibum repeated, remembering. "I think Taemin told me about them. Something about weird music but good stage effects?"

"I'll show you some of their stuff later. It seems the group has actually been around for a while, but they didn't have much success and under Black Blade Entertainment they kind of re-debuted with a new name. SM want to counteract by pu