It hurt.

Everything hurt.

Yunho let out a breath. It hurt.

He grimaced in pain. That hurt too.

He finally opened his eyes, and winced at the bright, white fluorescent lights shining into his eyes. He felt tears gather at the corner of his eyes at the pain, and he tried to focus on his breathing instead.

His head was heavy, and when he tried to focus on something else, he was also aware of an intense feeling of nausea.

And more pain.

He was much too disoriented to think clearly. He finally turned his head to look around, and he finally saw that he really didn't know at all where he was, and this wasn't his bed, it wasn't even a hotel room, and he was just so freaked out –

"Holy ," gasped Yunho. "What the –"

Yunho tried sitting up, but a bunch of wires pulled him back into the bed, which freaked him out even more. He began ripping the wires away in panic.

A bunch of alarms began to sound, and Yunho startled; he was halfway out the bed when a woman he didn't know approached him.

"No, no, Yunho, lie back down, we're helping you. You need to keep the wires on, okay? We're just monitoring you. You're fine."

"What… I'm…"

"Do you know where you are?"

"No, I don't, and I don't – wait – I'm just… who are you?" croaked Yunho.

"You're in the hospital, and I'm your nurse. You're in the Intensive Care Unit, but it seems like you'll be able to go to a ward bed soon, now that you're up."

Yunho swallowed and looked around and saw that, indeed, this looked like a hospital, with white walls,  He swallowed, and felt the burning pain again. He grimaced.

"Why am I… wait…" Yunho reached up with a shaking hand and touched his forehead. "Does my family know I'm here?"

"Yes, your parents were here all day, but they're not allowed to stay overnight, so they went home for the night."

Yunho closed his eyes. "I just… need someone to tell me what happened and why I'm here. I'm supposed to be competing at –"

.

Nationals.

"Wait, what – what happened, I'm just – Nationals – I was in the middle of that competition, I'm –"

"Yes, that's right," said the nurse, looking either impressed or relieved, Yunho wasn't sure, but she was being so tremendously unhelpful right now, when he was supposed to be at Nationals –

"I – wait, are finals tomorrow? I'm so –"

"I'm not the best person to explain what happened. I'm going to get the doctors to come in and explained to you what happened to you."

"But – the meet –"

"One of your teammate has been here the entire time, too. Maybe you'd like to speak to him?"

"Who?"

"Um… Shim Changmin."

She definitely blushed.

Yunho couldn't explain why, but he felt an enormous amount of relief when he heard Changmin's name. Perhaps it was because that meant that Yunho wasn't missing Finals at this exact moment – or maybe it was just because he wanted Changmin here. He didn't know.

"Did he go home too?"

"He's sitting outside the room right now," said the nurse. "I mean… we let him stay because he was being very adamant."

Yunho raised an eyebrow, kind of doubting that was the real reason seeing as Changmin was quite the celebrity, and also, for some reason, Yunho was feeling kind of protective; he turned his head towards the glass windows, just to see if he could see the familiar face.

He saw the national team colours first; soon, he could make out Changmin's form sitting in a chair outside with his hands in the pocket of jacket, and looking down into his lap.

"Can I see him?" asked Yunho, feeling an immense amount of comfort.

"Sure. Hold on. I'm going to call the doctors."

Yunho nodded, taking deep breath through the pain as he nodded, and waited patiently.

He watched as the nurse approached Changmin and pointed towards Yunho's room. Yunho then saw Changmin bury his face into his hands. He then stood up and walked towards Yunho's room as the nurse went away.

Changmin knocked, even though the doors were glass, and he walked in timidly.

"Hyung…" whined Changmin.

Changmin's face was a shining mess of tears, and Yunho took Changmin's hand.

"Changmin."

Changmin let out some more tears and wiped his face with his hand, and Yunho gripped Changmin's hand harder.

"Changmin. What happened with Nationals?"

Changmin looked up with his red, watery eyes. "Who cares about Nationals? Hyung, you almost died!"

Yunho swallowed as the nausea intensified.

"What actually… What happened…?"

"Someone put something in your drink," said Changmin. He sniffled.

"Someone tried to… poison me…?" said Yunho in disbelief. "At Nationals?"

But why? He was just an athlete, as far as he knew, he never hurt anyone –

"Yeah," said Changmin. "The police have arrested her."

"Oh," said Yunho. He wasn't sure what the proper response was, but he swallowed and looked at Changmin.

"So…" said Yunho, hoping that he didn't sound too dumb, "…did I miss the 400-metre freestyle finals?"

Changmin shot him a glare before he nodded apologetically.

Yunho sighed, and then felt a surge of anger and frustration in his chest. He forced both feelings down.

"Did you win?"

Changmin shook his head.

"I withdrew from the rest of Nationals," said Changmin quietly.

"Why?" croaked Yunho rather loudly. He winced at the pain.

"Didn't want to compete."

"But…"

"I already have my place on the team. I don't need to compete for the rest of the Nationals."

Yunho let out a breath and swallowed – and experienced the most intense, burning pain. He groaned in pain and put his head back down on the pillow just as the nurse returned with a doctor wearing a white coat.

"Hello, Mr. Jung. I'm one of the residents on your care team."

Yunho nodded. "Hello."

"I'm on the ICU team that's taking care of you."

"Sure," said Yunho. It was so much more of an effort to talk to anyone besides Changmin.

"Do you need something for pain?" asked the nurse.

"He has hydromorphone ordered," said the resident. The nurse nodded, but Yunho jumped.

"Wait, please, don't give me pain meds!"

"What's wrong? Why?"

"It's all banned," snapped Yunho. "Don't give any of that to me."

There was a silence as the doctor and the nurse processed those words, and also as it dawned on Yunho.

"What did you give me while I was out," said Yunho, voice shaking. "What did you give me?"

"Hyung, you almost died. Can they get you better, and then think about swimming?" said Changmin in exasperation.

"Yes, Yunho, by the time you get discharged from hospital, you're going to be in the clear. And they're not going to test you now," said the resident.

"I won't be in the clear for the rest of Nationals."

"You won't be swimming at the rest of Nationals, Yunho. This is serious. We still have a lot more work to do on you."

"Oh my God," whispered Yunho. The gravity of this situation was becoming so, so much more real. "What… Wait, how many days of competition did I miss…?"

Tell me just one. Tell me I just missed the night of the 400-metre freestyle finals.

"There are only two more days of competition left," said Changmin quietly. "The only events left are the backstroke and the medley events."

Holy .

"I… I've been out for a week…?"

He reached up and rubbed his eyes.

It wasn't just a week of competition that he missed.

He missed a week of workouts. He spent an entire week lying in bed, not using a single muscle, and getting no proper nutrition for a week.

And it was very clear very soon that he had never been this weak, this frail, or this out of shape in his recent memory.

He was transferred to the regular ward the next day, and besides the number of doctors and nurses who came to see him all day, there was nothing that was being done except Yunho being forced to wait it all out.

"You did really well, Yunho. The recovery might take a little while, but we expect you to make a full recovery," a resident had said one day.

"Did really well," repeated Yunho quietly. Did really well. His first nationals without a gold since he was fourteen, and he apparently did really well.

Obviously, Yunho didn't agree with him.

He had been keen to start on a healthy diet at least, but his doctors didn't let him; he had been put on a clear fluid diet, and spent the next three days drinking apple juice and forcing Jell-O down his throat. When he finally convinced the nurses and the doctors that he wasn't feeling nauseous and the pain had subsided (at least it was half true; he could at least deal with the nausea and the pain when it came), he was allowed to go on full fluids, which meant, at least, his mother could bring him chicken broth and he could at least have meal replacement drinks. Yunho threw up a couple of times with the creamy stuff, but he made sure not to tell the nurses or the doctors; he couldn't risk being set back, and he had to keep moving forward.

Throughout all of that, Yunho wasn't allowed to work out. There was a physiotherapist in the hospital who worked with him 20 minutes a day. At first, Yunho was so weak that he could barely even walk, much to his disbelief; he just couldn't believe that he was too weak to walk properly.

 Very soon, it was obvious that –

"I'm going to be out for the rest of the season because of this," said Yunho to Changmin quietly while he visited. "God, I'm missing Worlds, and it's the pre-Olympic year."

Changmin didn't have much comforting words to offer to Yunho.

A few other things changed though.

Apparently, while Yunho was unconscious, the public had turned over to him with sympathy again, and a few days after he woke up, Yunho saw that there was an anonymous post to an online community with the title: I was there at Nationals and they didn't air Yunho's full interview.

The post contained a shaky hand-cam of Yunho's interview, and the short video clip showed the entire interview that Yunho had given after the 200-metre freestyle finals, including the parts where he'd expressed his happiness for Changmin's win.

Everyone loved Yunho again, and there were hordes of people, swimming fans and not alike, saying "I told you so" and claiming to have been on Yunho's side the entire time.

Yunho didn't bother pointing out that they were nowhere to be seen just a few days prior.

His coach and representatives from the Korean Swimming Association visited and they brought flowers, but it seemed to him like they were actually there to see whether Yunho was going to be ready to be in contention for Worlds as opposed to being there to wish him good health. It was clear to all of them that Yunho wouldn't be ready for Worlds, but at least they told Yunho that he still had his spot on the National Team.

The police paid him a visit as well, to inquire whether he wanted to press charges on the girl who'd poisoned him. Yunho did think about it for a little bit, but in the end, he decided that he didn't want to go through with that, just because he just couldn't deal with yet another distraction to his swimming. Getting his personal revenge on this girl wouldn't help him get healthier.

Yunho spent a total of three weeks in hospital, and when he was discharged. The doctors wanted to keep him for a couple more days, but Yunho figured that a few days wouldn't make a difference, and his doctors reluctantly agreed.

Before he left, one of the residents asked Yunho for an autograph.

"I'm not a celebrity," said Yunho, and he hesitantly signed the autograph. "This autograph is not going to be worth anything."

"I used to be a swimmer, and I used to look up to you a lot, and really, I still do," he said with a smile. "I wished I would be as good as you, even though you were a few years younger than me."

Yunho blushed again. "Well… look at me now. I can barely even stand."

The resident smiled ruefully. "If you're the Jung Yunho I know, you're still going to go to the Olympics next year, and you're still going to win gold. And then your autograph is definitely going to be worth something."

"I wouldn't hold my breath," sighed Yunho.

And only in that moment, when he saw the perplexed look on the resident's face, did Yunho realize that he had no faith in himself.

Jung Yunho had no faith nor confidence in himself to get up from this.

And that was what scared him more than any devastating news that he'd heard about his body over the past few weeks.