The rest of the night was quiet in the ward, but the arrival of dawn brought a new worry, personified by the Kyungsoo’s squad leader. Team Leader Lee entered the room without knocking, his typical rumpled polo and khakis replaced with a black suit and tie. Kyungsoo struggled to stand and bow, but Team Leader Lee held up a hand.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said shortly, shuffling to Yeol’s bedside. He plucked the handcuff attached to the bed railing. “I heard what happened last night, but I didn’t expect to find you here, babysitting.”

“The department didn’t send a replacement guard, and it wasn’t safe to leave him alone,” Kyungsoo explained. “I never had the chance to file an official report, but this wasn’t the first attempt on Yeol’s life.”

Lee fiddled with this tie, folding and refolding the end, a sure sign he was working up to say something uncomfortable. Kyungsoo waited, the silence growing tense, until, finally, the team leader smoothed out his now-wrinkled tie, and leaned on the bed rail.

“Kyungsoo,” he began, “Have you looked out the window lately?” Kyungsoo glanced at the blank featureless walls. The ward was on the interior of the hospital, none of the rooms had windows. “Watched the news?” Kyungsoo shook his head, the television hanging quietly in the corner, its power cord dangling. The team leader nodded to himself, as if he’d confirmed something.

“What are you trying to say, sir?” Kyungsoo asked, anxiety beginning to fizz in his stomach.

Team Leader Lee pushed himself away from the bed and settled himself on the sofa at Kyungsoo’s side, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled. “The death toll was released last night. The entire segregation wing burned down, and sixty-seven people died- inmates, staff, and one visitor who had the worst timing in the world.” Kyungsoo’s heart plummeted at the news. It was one thing to know there were no survivors, but hearing the true number, knowing Yoondae was one of them, was crushing.

“Outside, the hospital is surrounded by protestors,” Lee continued. “The victims, even though most of them were the scum of the earth, still had families, and they’re all out there, hoping he,” Lee jerked his chin in Yeol’s direction, “will just die quietly during the night. To make things worse, that fanclub is on every station, squealing about unlawful imprisonment.“ He shook his head, chuckling bitterly. “We can’t even pin this one on him either. Preliminary investigations are pointing to a leak in the gas line, if you can believe that.”

“Do you believe it, sir?” Kyungsoo asked carefully.

“Not a chance,” Lee scoffed angrily, straightening. “An arsonist just happens to be the only survivor of a fire? This was obviously an escape attempt gone wrong. We just need time to prove it.”

“But he was injured,” Kyungsoo argued. “He couldn’t have attempted anything in his condition.”

“So you say, but you’re not a doctor. He could have been faking it.”

Kyungsoo could only flail in Yeol’s direction, indicating the multiple casts, the layers of cuts and bruises. “Faking?!” he managed.

“The injuries he has now could have been sustained during the fire,” Team Leader Lee said stubbornly. “Plus, the mere fact that you were able to find him at all is evidence that he was trying to escape.”

“How?”

“You were inside for barely five minutes. Even if you were an Olympic athlete, you couldn’t have made it all the way to the cell block and back in that time. Ah, right,” the team leader snapped his fingers.”Even if he was in the infirmary, like you claim, that’s even further from the entrance than the main cell block!”

Kyungsoo’s hands balled into fists on his knees as he pressed his lips together. Admitting that Yeol had been nowhere near the infirmary when he’d found him would just be confirming everyone’s suspicions, and he couldn’t explain how Yeol had managed to get all the way to the entrance in his condition. On the other hand, the team leader’s version of events fit almost perfectly. Blaming Yeol took barely any effort at all. It would just be the latest entry in the long list of crimes--another pile of ruins, another roomful of corpses. Then, if Yeol died, it was only the universe righting itself after so many wrongs.

“That guard would have done us all a favor if he’d succeeded,” Team Leader Lee pounded the sofa arm with conviction, his words echoing the direction of Kyungsoo’s morbid thoughts. “The families would get their justice, and the police can stop being dragged around by the nose looking for evidence.” He threw a dark look at the hospital bed, and Kyungsoo winced, wishing there was a curtain to shield Yeol from the ill-wishing in that gaze.

“He would have been dead already if I wasn’t here,” Kyungsoo admitted, anguish making his voice crack. Am I the only one who wants Yeol to live? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to organize his thoughts. A warm hand landed on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze.

“Yoondae’s funeral is today,” the team leader told him, his tone full of sympathy and understanding. “You should go. Jongdae needs a friend right now. He’s got nobody else.”

And while you’re gone, our problem will be taken care of. The assumption was unspoken, but unmistakable.

It would be so easy. Kyungsoo would only need to turn his back for a moment. Besides,he couldn’t stay by Yeol’s side forever. There were so many knives pointed in Yeol’s direction right now- the cops, the victim’s families, the mystery assassin—one of them would succeed eventually. Maybe it was better to walk away now. The choice might haunt him for a little while, but he could convince himself that staying wouldn’t have made a difference. It would only hurt the people he cared about. He opened his eyes, looking at Yeol lying alone and helpless in the middle of the room. Just answer when I call.

Kyungsoo rose slowly, painfully, from his seat, sliding away from his team leader’s comforting hand, watching the man’s face shift from sympathy to disbelief. “Tell Jongdae I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo forced the words out like they didn’t taste like bile, like every breath didn’t hurt.

—

After that, the doctor was the only person to visit the room, the nurses presumably having been warned to stay away. Another guard was stationed at Yeol’s door, but Kyungsoo viewed him as more of a threat than a reassurance. He took up permanent residence in Yeol’s room, sleeping on that uncomfortable sofa, eating at Yeol’s bedside, chatting for hours about nothing to his silent roommate to avoid his own thoughts. Two days after his team leader’s visit, when Kyungsoo woke, the air, which had been hospital-grade-chilly when he fell asleep, was toasty warm as if someone had lit a furnace in the middle of the room. Kyungsoo shrugged off the now-stifling blanket draped over him and stretched gingerly, trying not to disturb any of his burns. To his surprise, for the first time since the fire, no part of him stung or itched when he moved. He stood carefully, testing out the steadiness of his legs, bouncing on his toes. He twisted from side to side experimentally, squatting low and pulling his knees to his chest to work out the kinks in his joints. He was still a bit stiff in places from sleeping on chairs, but otherwise, he felt back to normal. When he rose to his feet again, he realized Yeol was watching him, a dopey smile on his face.

Kyungsoo scrambled to the side of the bed, but pulled up short, wary of jostling him even slightly. “How do you feel?” he blurted, hands hovering in the air, scanning the inmate’s face for any sign of distress. “Any pain? The doctor wasn’t sure you’d ever wake up…”

Yeol’s smile wobbled. “Kyungsoo-yah,” he said, his resonant voice reduced to the barest whisper. “You came.” A tear dampened the edge of the bandage wrapped around his head.

Kyungsoo had to turn his back for a moment and take a breath, blinking fiercely against the tingling in his own eyes. When he felt like he could control his face, he turned around, teeth bared in his best facsimile of a bright smile. “Of course I did,” he said, but Yeol was still crying, his bandages growing soggy. To escape the moment of sappiness, Kyungsoo grabbed the plastic jug of water from the bedside table and started to pour a cupful, his hands shaking a little. The water left in the jug trickled out, barely enough to cover the bottom of the cup.

He stared at the basically empty cup for a moment, flustered. “I’ll go fill this up,” he promised, heading for the door.

“No, wait!” Yeol’s voice was high-pitched with sudden panic, and the handcuffs encircling the cast on his arm clinked as he tried to reach out. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

Kyungsoo his heel, the pitcher falling to his side, forgotten. That hunted look was back in Yeol’s eyes—the same one he’d seen in the prison after their last interview. Kyungsoo returned to the bed, putting away the pitcher and sitting carefully onto the side of the mattress. “Three nights ago, the guard tried to inject a syringe full of air into your IV line.” Yeol’s eyes widened, he didn’t seem stunned at the news that someone was making attempts on his life. “Whoever paid him also paid six inmates to beat you to death so it would look like a random prison fight. Am I right?” The tips of Yeol’s ears glowed red, the surest sign he was trying to hide something, so Kyungsoo knew he was on the right track. “This person was so determined to make you dead that they smuggled ketamine into the prison to make sure you couldn’t fight back. Tell me who it is.”

“Even if you know, you can’t do anything about it.” Yeol’s voice was flat, tired, so different from the animated person Kyungsoo was used to.

“I’m already doing something about it!” Kyungsoo scrubbed his hands through his hair in frustration and held out his bandaged arms. “I ran into a burning building to save you, when the firemen wouldn’t even go near! I stopped the guard from assassinating you. And just so they wouldn’t have another chance to kill you, I didn’t even go to Yoondae’s funeral.” Kyungsoo thumped his chest with his fist, the guilt eating away at him finally spilling out. “We grew up together like brothers, but I couldn’t even light incense for him. I let Jongdae cry alone.”

“Tell Jongdae I’m sorry.”

Hearing his own worthless words come back to him shocked Kyungsoo into momentary silence, and he looked down, struggling to breathe past the lump in his throat. Yeol moved his fingers so they brushed against Kyungsoo’s leg.

“I didn’t start that fire, but it was my fault Yoondae was there,” he said softly, “Not yours.”

Kyungsoo coughed and cleared his throat shakily. “A gas leak is nobody’s fault, and Yoondae chose to be there so he could protect you.”

“It was a bomb,” Yeol told him. “But history will remember it as a gas leak, because that’s how the militia works.”

—

Kyungsoo pressed his fingers to his temples, massaging in small circles, harder and harder until he was digging his knuckles into the side of his head. Some of what Yeol told him made sense - a shadowy organizations manipulating events behind the scenes was nothing new. But the thought that they’d blown up an entire building just for one person was too much to grasp. It sounded like the plan of a drama villain, not a sane, real-life course of action. What possible reason could they have for wanting Yeol dead that badly?

“Who are you?” Kyungsoo demanded. He stared down at Yeol, who had drifted off while Kyungsoo had been agonizing over the revelation he shared. He flicked him in the forehead lightly, and Yeol’s nose scrunched in his sleep. “I don’t even know your real name, but I keep saving your life.”