He breathes.

A gasp in and a whisper out.

Repeat.

It’s a slow process waking up and he takes his time, letting his breath whine out between parted lips and willing the lethargic spell pulling him down to slowly lift. He feels heavy, as if weights pins his arms and legs down, tying him to an endless slumber.

It hurts; he can’t make out a specific location to point out the source, but the pain is mind numbing, echoing through his whole body in an annoying reminder.

And he’s scared.

Don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.

His eyes shoot open as he gasps, painfully lurching forward in the sheets tucked around him. Air fills his lungs and he sputters, swallowing and choking around his own tongue. Had breathing always been such a task? Tears gather at the corners of his eyes as his hands – surprisingly lighter than he’d thought they to be – gather around his throat, groping up the slope to the plastic tied over his mouth.

The struggle comes to an end as the plastic, a mask, is tossed aside to clatter across out of his sight. And he breathes easier this time, feeling the dull drag from earlier lax his tension. The air is thick, thicker than before, but it feels more at peace with the new weight. It feels better now, more in its place and he closes his eyes, swallowing thickly around his swelling tongue.

“Oh?”

This time, opening his eyes come as a greater struggle, but they peel open in time, catching a small female by the corner of the white – too bright – room. Her eyes are wide as she wanders over, surprise evident in her movements.

“How are you feeling?” She hovers over him, a smile gentle on her lips.

He tries to respond, he does, but the sound comes a helpless wheeze and he frowns – or at least, that’s what he thinks he did. He tries again and this time it comes a small whine. The third time, the words come more audible, even if the girl had to duck her head close to his face to make sense of his garbled words.

And again, she smiles. “You’re at a hospital,” she starts slowly, patting his shoulder softly, only just barely grazing the skin. “You’ve been asleep for almost eight days now. Can you remember anything?”

He thinks. His head feels both heavy and light at the same time. It makes it hard to think.

“Can you tell me what your name is?”

At first, he feels offended; but the emotion dies as fast as it comes, leaving him feeling oddly empty. Because he’d forgotten – or perhaps he’d never known.

The girl smiles, it’s sadder this time. “That’s okay; it’s not abnormal for you to not remember.” She reaches over to brush a hand over his forehead, gently pushing his hair away.

“I’m just going to take this off.” Her hands feel small as they cup the back of his neck, lifting his head to pull an elastic band hooked around him around and off. It’s the mask. When had that been put back on? He could have sworn-, “It’s a respirator,” the girl explains, as she folds the elastic into the plastic, setting it aside on a nearby table before turning back to him. “I’ll go call the doctor now.”

He means to mumble a response, a thank you, or at least bob out an okay, but movement, words, come hard and resorts simply to letting his eyelids droop lazily, watching as the girl scurries out, her steps light and fairy-like. Like an angel, he muses.

Time moves fast and when his eyes blink open again, there’s a man crowding a corner of his vision, checking the devices that he’s only just now realized was there. His surroundings seem to come crashing to him just now – much like a tsunami – and he has to hold a breath and will his breathing to calm before he throws up.

Light flashes in his eyes and he flinches, making a sharp, uncomfortable sound. It hastily clicks off then and he’s left to blink away the bobbing spot in his vision.

“How are you feeling? Nauseous? Dizzy?”

He gasps out a word and the man nods in mock understanding, turning to the girl from prior and mumbling some words her way. He tries to pay attention, but his mind feels too jumbled, stuffed with cotton and unwilling to function properly. He frowns.

“Miss Choa says that you can’t remember anything?”

His eyes flicker over to the girl from before. Choa – was that her name? She sends him another smile and nods slightly. So he mouths a yes, swallowing the small gathering of spit locked in the back of his throat.

The man nods, whispering another word to Choa, who bobs accordingly, shifting over to the side table to pour out a cup of water and holding it close to his lips. “Slowly,” she whispers. He takes the liquid graciously, the man continuing on as he wets his throat. Water has never felt so welcoming.

“You were brought in at approximately twenty two o’clock, on the night of-,” he cuts off, chuckling. “I’m sorry, you must be tired. I’ll let Miss Choa fill you in slowly. If you need anything,” the man shifts, point toward a camera situated in the far corner of the room. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? He blinks. “Look over there and Miss Choa or I will be over as soon as we can to check up on you.”

When the man – Doctor Minhyuk, he later finds out – leaves, Choa helps him sit up, nudging his pillow between the headboard and his back for comfort. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

He had gotten the general run down as Choa had fussed over him, fluffing his pillows and making sure that he’d had enough to drink.

His name was Bang Yongguk, age twenty four and a senior at Sungkyunkwan University – or, at least he had been before he’d gotten into the car accident that knocked him out for the days he spent unaware. He was born March 31, 1990 and his blood type was an O positive.

“Your friend visits every day,” Choa hums as she refills a glass of water, leaving it in an arm’s distance for Yongguk to reach when he needed it. “I think he usually comes after classes, he always has his school bag on him.” She checks her watch, glancing back at him with a grin too wide. “It’s almost time that he normally comes, actually.” She looks proud as if she’d planned it to happen all along, timing his wake and his friend’s check in.

Yongguk – that’s his name – hums low under his breath. “A friend.” Not family.

His voice, at first, at startled him. It came low, like a deep rumble that started from far below his mid chest. He supposed that he’d been hearing it for years – twenty four to be precise – before his slumber, but, regardless, it had taken him a good several minutes to grow fond of it. He sounded just like a smoker.

Choa nods, straightening her back and folding her hands around her slim hips. “That’s right. I think he said that his name was…” she pauses, biting her lip. Yongguk can practically hear her brain turning, clicking in places and trying to return the slip of memory. “Himchan.”

Himchan.

Yongguk blinks. If this Himchan had been making it a daily effort to come visit, they ought to have been close. But why didn’t the name ring any bells?

The confusion coloring his face must have more obvious than Yongguk meant it to be. Choa laughs, a small tinkling of bells. “It’s alright, it’ll all come back.” She says it like it’s a fact and Yongguk finds it hard not to trust the bright smile. She seems so sure of herself. “And he’ll be over in a few minutes, I’m sure, to help fill you in.” The way she says it, it seems all so simple.

She asks a last time if there’s anything more that Yongguk needs before sliding off to return to her work. Choa was a nurse and this was a busy hospital. “Oh, and here’s your cell phone. It’s out of batteries right now, but I’ll plug it in right here for you.”

Yongguk nods out a thank you and watches as Choa scurries off, gently pulling the door closed behind her and leaving him to a nearly deafening silence. He sighs. One would have thought that they would grow accustomed to the quiet, having been drawn to the silence of sleep for so long.

He breaths.

In and then out.

The act comes easy now, not quite so restraining against his chest; an improvement, it’s an improvement. His limbs move at more ease as well, though still stiff and unwilling.

When breathing becomes less of an immediate chore, coming more automatic and needing of less attention, Yongguk reaches out for his phone, frowning at the length of time it took for him to take it from the stand, and pulls the device with the charger plugged in along. He nudges the home button, but it refuses to light, a reflection unrecognizable staring back at him.

It’s him. This was who he was; how he looked like.

The man on the black of the screen – him – looks nothing like how Yongguk might have imagined himself to be. He looks skinny, skin tight against his bones and sunken. There are bags under his eyes and he looks tired – much too tired. There is a gauze tapped into a side of his forehead and he imagines it to have been an effect from the accident. But more shocking than the wound of the imprinted stretch lowering his lip.

He looks exhausted, as if he’d lived centuries longer than the twenty four Choa told him.

Was that really him?

He sighs.

What kind of life had he led for him to have ended up looking quite so… defeated?

Yongguk looks down into his reflection from the screen, a thumb stretching over a series of cracks stretching across the surface of the screen. Had he dropped it? When – before or during the accident?

He thumbs over the home button a second time and to his surprise, the device lights, flashing brightly in swirling colors before falling black again. Yongguk blinks, biting at the inside of his cheeks. He does it again, push down at the button and again, the phone lights, but this time to the lock screen of the device.

It’s a fond picture that blinks back at him – one he unfortunately does not remember.

There are two in the shot, one of them is Yongguk, looking brighter and healthier than he felt now. In the picture, he’s smiling, cheeks pulled up and top teeth biting down into a puffy lower lip. He sits in the front of the picture, an arm stretched out toward the camera lens – he must have been the one who had initiated the picture. He looks much younger than he does now.

The other person in the shot, smiles as well, something more calming and picturesque. If Yongguk looked something of uncontrolled happiness, the one behind him, looking into the camera with a slight squeeze of his eyes and a closed mouth smile, looks more contained. He looks good – and something tells him that he knew it, judging the slight tilt of the second’s head to show the defined line of his jaw.

They look happy. They must have been – why else would he have saved it as his lock screen, had they been not?

Yongguk smiles, a thumb brushing over the screen even as the image fades back to black. If only he could bring it back.

He taps the screen back up, a slow breath coming as the smiles re screen.

He remains so, at one point trying – and failing – to unlock the four digit passcode, until a noise knocks him to attention. There is someone at the door.

“You’re awake.”

Yongguk breaths, blinking up at the man at the door, a step in and a step out.

“Yeah.”

It’s the boy from the picture, only older and so very much real in front of him.

He still looks good.

Better even, perhaps.