~~~~The longer time continued on, the harder everything got. It had been a few months since Taekwoon was diagnosed, and nothing had gotten better. They had told him that therapy would help and it was awful….torture. There was only one sole event more painful than being dragged to see that quack over and over again.

“Taekwoon, come here right now! You are going!” Taekwoon listened through the walls as his Aunt shouted at him. She had gotten more demanding after he was diagnosed, being told that if she forced him into situations he would get better. No one had tried to explain that wasn’t how it worked.

“Taekwoon! I am coming in that room!” Another addition she had insisted on, removing the locking mechanism. It had become much harder to hide away now, something which came back to haunt him daily. Times like this especially.

“No, I’m not going! Th---there nnot helping.”

“You have to give it time. It will get better.”

“Yyou---don’t understand.” No matter how many times he tried, it was pointless. The other people had mutated her thoughts, and she was becoming just as mean as them. His brain only considered this proof. 

After struggling to remain where he was, in the end he didn’t win. There was only so much argument he was capable of, and eventually she dragged him in the car and dropped him off at the psychologist’s office.

“I’ll be here to pick you up in an hour. Be good, okay?”

“Ddon’t-….don’t leave me hhere.”

“We will be fine Mrs. Min. Thank you.” His ‘doctor’ was quick to rush her out of the room, another person going to lock the door after she left. He had never been to anything like this before everything happened, but he thought that it was just supposed to be the two of them? With this person it never was.

“Alright, where did we leave off last week Taekwoon?” You were dissecting my brain like a piece of meat.

“……”

“Still not talking to me I see? That’s fine, let’s just look through your files. Oh, alright! Why don’t we start with….trauma shall we?” Taekwoon wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew he hated the sound of it.

“Traumatic events from your childhood, we’ll work through those. Let’s see…….oh. I see your mother died when you were little. You were there?”

No, the therapist had talked about a lot the past four to five weeks of seeing her, but he didn’t want this to be one of them. She had forced him to look at pictures, people running away from horrible things……they claimed it was to try and ‘awake his brain to real danger.’ She had shoved him in a room of people, not letting him out until he conversed with all 30-40 of them.

Taekwoon knew now, she wasn’t a real therapist. The first doctor had diagnosed him correctly, but then they switched. This wasn’t a doctor, just someone that got off on seeing people like him cry.

Her new target was ‘traumatic events.’ Otherwise known as Taekwoon reliving the death of his mother. ~~~~~~

Taekwoon sat in his bedroom, looking around and not entirely certain what to do. It had been around 2 months since they moved in together, and everything had worked out great. It was nice and all, it was just odd to always have someone around. This room still didn’t entirely feel like something that was his, and it was weird to think that it was entirely his own.

It was nice to know though, that they were finally done with getting settled in. They had soundproofed all the bedrooms, sanitized and created a safe area for Hongbin, gotten all of their medications put away and sorted correctly, it had been no easy process.

Now that they were finished, everyone was really happy. Taekwoon of course was glad, he just needed some time to himself. That was what he had come in here a couple hours ago to do, and it was really refreshing. As fun as they were, it was still 5 very unique people.

Taekwoon had sat there, not doing anything in particular when all of a sudden he looked to his door to see it shaking. Someone was pounding on it, and they were pretty determined too.

Taekwoon walked over, completely unsure of what this was about. They had never done this, everyone left Taekwoon alone when he was in here. When he opened the door, Taekwoon back stepped from the sudden ranting.

“Taekwoon you need to come out here right now. I’m sorry because I know that were not supposed to do this but it’s really important and I hope you’re okay because Hakyeon and Wonshik are out and I don’t know what to do and Sanghyuk is just freaking out. You need to come fast really really fast. It just happened all of the sudden and we don’t know what to d-“

“Jjjaehwan breathe.” Taekwoon was pretty sure that was the first time he had personally done that. “Deep breath.”

Taekwoon waited as Jaehwan caught his breathe and tried to calm his brain a little. He wanted to reach out and help the other in some way, but it just felt like something awkward and dumb to do.

“Hongbin collapsed.”

“Wwhat?” Taekwoon’s breath hitched for a second, standing there as Jaehwan bounced anxiously in front of him.

“Come quickly Sanghyuk is with him but I think he’s really really sick.