Slowly, hardly daring to believe any of it, Eunhyuk stepped into the room and closed the door mechanically behind him. It was not a large ward, with no window, just a single curtain around the slim white bed, patient name and needs scrawled on a paper tacked to a plastic clipboard. Someone had left a card on the table next to the bed: a cheap, store-bought thing with a generic, hollow message. There was something terribly claustrophobic and sterile about the room, the cloying scent of artificial flowers attempting to mask the decay, like everything was wrapping up for the end. Staring at the pale, emancipated face, it struck Eunhyuk that the man looked exactly like Donghae – or rather, this was what Donghae would look like in about three decades. Eyes flickering over the drips, the respirator, the words on the papers, the face, all the signs that he’d been taught in medical school, Eunhyuk suddenly understood with sickening clarity.

Donghae’s father was dying of cancer on the bed before him.  

A quick glance at the store-bought calendar covered in pastel flowers and teddy bears – did hospitals think that made people feel better – and he calculated that this had to have occurred when Donghae was in his late teens. Abruptly, he recalled the way Donghae had seemed to close into himself momentarily when he had mentioned his father's dream of him becoming a singer. Donghae must have watched his father waste away for years, until they'd reached this final moment. Feeling bile rise up in his throat, all Eunhyuk wanted to know was why.   

There was the sound of someone sobbing. Turning his head, he saw Donghae, the Donghae of the present day, sitting on the chair next to the bed. He was watching his father, choking back sobs. “You hid it here,” Eunhyuk said quietly, voicing out his thoughts as he slowly sank down to his knees, strength leaving his body instantly, “Somewhere we wouldn’t think to look – because it hurt you too much.”

The other man could only nod, covering his face with his hands as he gasped out the words. “It still h-hurts… It’s been years and you think that you’re not going to cry anymore – and then it just hits you right in the ing gut out of nowhere that they’re not coming back.”

“Why?” All the anger had fled him, and he stared up at Donghae, face twisting. “Why would you hide it here? Why would you do this to yourself?”

“Because I care!” Donghae spat. Eunhyuk flinched. “Yeah, sometimes people – people promise they’re going to be there f-forever and… they leave you but… It doesn’t mean it didn’t matter! That you can’t keep it as a good memory! That’s life! You're not broken! People leave or they die or they screw you over and you don’t all the time get what you want – but so what? You have to keep trying! Or what’s the point?”

Throat closing around the words, all rebuttals dying at the sight of Donghae's tears, Eunhyuk whispered, “Where’d you put it?”

Hiccupping, Donghae pointed shakily towards the bed. Crawling on his knees, Eunhyuk approached the metal bed frame and bent down, pressing his sweater-pawed hands to the ground. Under the bed was a skinny figure, curled up into itself. It flinched at Eunhyuk's approach. Reaching out gingerly, Eunhyuk grabbed his own hand, felt the clammy fingers close around his own, plaintive and fearful, and pulled.

And he saw himself.

Saw the haggard face, the skin sickly pale and sallow-looking. Saw the deep hollows under the eyes, the too-sharp cheekbones. Saw the unhappiness in the turn of the lips, the glassy, dead, lonely gaze in the eyes. Saw how skinny the frame had grown, collarbone and ribs sticking out, drowning in a too-big sweater. Saw the way they seemed afraid of people’s eyes, staring at the ground instead of the sky, forcing a smile and a laugh, without anything behind it, as though it didn’t even recognize him as another living thing.

This was him. This was what he made himself into.

This sad clown… Eunhyuk didn’t even want to look at it, didn’t want to meet those empty eyes, couldn’t even imagine why Donghae, Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun had bothered to want to be friends with such a loser –

And then he was crying. Great, heaving sobs rattling his slender frame, he cried, hunching over his own body. He screamed and he cried, rocking back and forth, covering his face with his hands as years’ worth of pent-up rage and grief and exhaustion and fear poured themselves out. He cried and he cried and he cried, for himself, for Hyoyeon, for Donghae, for Junsu, for so many different people and things that had occurred, things that he had done, things he wished he had stopped, and each time he thought the human body couldn’t produce more tears, more came.

They burst out of his chest in aching, tight gulps, like they were being forced out of something cracked inside, but soon the hurt eased, and it was such a relief just to cry everything out. 

Someone was hugging him, wrapping their arms around him. They were soft, and they were warm. Screw manliness. Eunhyuk clung to Donghae, not even caring that he was getting tears and snot all down Donghae’s front, not caring that he appeared weak and vulnerable and fragile, because he was. “It’s okay now, it’s okay now,” Donghae told him, patting him on the back, not complaining at how tight Eunhyuk was squeezing him.

“I’m sorry,” Eunhyuk choked out. He didn’t even know who he was apologizing to. Maybe to the Eunhyuk lying in front of him, wincing away from this scene, terrified of everyone around him. Maybe to Donghae. It just seemed the right thing to say. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Donghae murmured. He let Eunhyuk sob, rubbing soothing circles on his back – and trying to ignore the fact that he could feel each and every one of Eunhyuk’s vertebrate through his sweater – until at last, all Eunhyuk could produce were shaky gasps. His body sagged in Donghae's grip, the contrast between how frail he'd gotten, and Donghae's more muscular frame, apparent. I guess that ramyun diet was killing me, he thought wryly to himself, and had to choke back some more sobs. 

After a moment, Eunhyuk found his voice. He looked up at the other weakly. “Hey, Donghae?”

“Yeah?”

Hiccupping and rubbing his eyes with hands, Eunhyuk managed, “Why the are you friends with someone as messed-up as I am?”

“Why the are you friends with someone as messed-up as me?”

The laugh that choked itself out of his system was watery and painful, but it was sincere, and he smiled just a little. It was a good hurt, and he could live with it. Donghae laughed too. “Touché.”

“Does this mean that I get to keep it all?”

Releasing another watery laugh, Eunhyuk nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you do.”

Donghae grinned, and after a moment, Eunhyuk returned it. It spread across his face, went from a slender twitching of the lips into a full-blown gummy smile, puffy, watery eyes crinkling up. And though his skin was still too pale, and his body too thin, and the shadows under his eyes too dark, and he'd just wrung out every last tear the human body could produce, and that spoiled the effect somewhat, it was better than he'd been in years. So Eunhyuk smiled again. “So now what?” Donghae asked, shifting so that Eunhyuk could lean against the bed frame.

Tilting his head back, he thought about it. “Well, I guess –”

Suddenly, Eunhyuk felt something tugging at him. Almost as though there were an invisible thread attached to his body. He looked down, saw how his front had caved inwards. Donghae yelped. It felt like someone was pulling his stomach towards his spine, yanking him backwards. He had enough time to look up at Donghae in horror, utter, “Leeteuk!”, and then he was being ripped away from the hospital ward.

*

Eunhyuk shot upwards on the operating chair, feeling needles slide out of his skin, wires tangling around him, making him wince and shudder. He was in the real world. For a few terrifying moments, he couldn’t remember who he was and what was going on. His body spasmed, memories flashing behind his eyes as he fought to piece things together. Then his eyes slid to the side to meet those of a very, very disappointed and clearly upset Leeteuk, and it crashed into him like a ton of bricks. Glancing about wildly, he saw Donghae was still asleep, eyes twitching wildly beneath the lids, face twitching. The room was now crowded with people – a sombe-looking Siwon and his eager assistants Han Geng and Henry, tight-lipped Victoria and her bored assistants Amber and Jia, Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun staring at him in fear and concern, red-faced Leeteuk, even Sungmin, chewing on his lip, was there, God knew why, it wasn’t like being a receptionist advertiser was of much use.

I think this is the highest number of people paying attention to me at any point in my entire life, Eunhyuk thought vaguely to himself, still unsteadily trying to wrap his mind around things. 

Henry was bent over the monitor, Zhou Mi watching him warily. “Forced ejection of neural link-up complete,” he announced to the gathered group, puffing out his cheeks. “So…did we fry his brain?”  

“You pulled me out,” Eunhyuk realised, staring at Leeteuk. It was rapidly dawning on him that he was probably in deep, deep trouble, but it either hadn’t sunk in fully, or he honestly didn’t care whether he lost this job or not, because he didn’t feel frightened. If anything, he was starting to feel immensely pissed-off that Leeteuk could have turned him into a human vegetable for the sake of the clinic. 

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Leeteuk cried, throwing his hands up into the air in shock and exasperation, “Because of your complete and utter lack of professionalism, you nearly destroyed the entire process and reversed everything that the patient wanted you to do!”

“But he doesn’t want it anymore!” Eunhyuk responded, hands within his sweater paws. He needed to get back, Donghae was probably panicking…

“And why is