The Phobia List ✷

MYSOPHOBIA; FEAR OF BEING CONTAMINATED WITH DIRT OR GERMS
Character(s): Hoya, Dongwoo and Woohyun
Author: kpopheart

Hoya tried to avoid bursting into laughter as he treaded over the mountains of plastic bags, trying not to get his awkward feet stuck in between the handles. Despite being a psychiatrist, he was quite clumsy, but he didn’t tell that to the person that gave him his degree.

“Why the hell do you have so much everywhere? Clean up; wait, aren’t you the clean freak here?” he said, after tripping and grabbing onto a nearby chair.

“I put new bags every day,” Woohyun replied simply, before putting a mask over Hoya’s face.

“O…k,” Hoya said awkwardly.

He put on his glasses, adjusting them in the small mirror attached to the wall. He didn’t need them – oh no; his eyesight was perfect. It was just that people had always labeled him as unprofessional, and this, unfortunately, was the closest he could get to professionalism.

And it did rather suit him.

Again, he was off topic, drifting off in his own thoughts, or in other words, talking to himself.

“So, what’s the problem? Mysophobia, I’m guessing?” Hoya raised his eyebrows and his pen, getting ready to take notes – the dreaded notes. He was guessing that Woohyun was the type to talk quickly and talk for ages, which caused his wrists a lot of pain.

But little did they know, he didn’t really care if the other had been scared of doing something absolutely stupid. He never really had the knack to care about other people. As long as at the end of the session, he got the money he needed, Hoya didn’t have a problem with it.

He probably would at least have some sympathy for a girl, for example, that had been a victim of , but even then, he couldn’t imagine himself being put into the girl’s shoes – for various reasons. But he didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff; there were much better trained people that they would call.

Hoya didn’t know whether to be surprised or not when Woohyun didn’t answer. He just sat on the glad-wrap colored seat, occasionally picking up pinches of it like he would pinch the dusty fluff of his jumper.

No more mahogany, antique furniture, glad-wrap was in!

Hoya felt it was very hard to focus on his client in this kind of atmosphere. The whole house seemed like it was from an animated movie. But it was never like he ever had a long attention span anyway.

“Do you ever go outside?” Hoya asked, pondering on why he looked so pale.

“No. I have a maid send stuff in.”

Hoya was curious on why he didn’t seal himself in a bubble of some sort; like those in quarantine, was it? Of course, he didn’t know – he learnt most of the things he knew from random movies anyway.

He nodded to himself, realizing that it would be horribly unrealistic to wrap the whole house in bubble wrap, tucking it under the bricks permanently, so no diseases would get in. But then again, air wouldn’t either. He mentally face-palmed himself at his horribly inaccurate expectations. But this didn’t mean that Woohyun was at a perfectly sane state either.

“What if the maid’s dirty?”

Hoya wanted to slap himself for saying something so ridiculously stupid. It was totally inappropriate and it definitely wasn’t supposed to make his patient feel any better. He began to breathe again, seeing that Woohyun seemed unfazed.

“I’m not that stupid, I’ve got it covered,” Woohyun replied arrogantly, rolling his eyes at Hoya who squinted his at his notebook. It didn’t really seem that Woohyun’s personality could change so easily from his scared less state to his now unexplainable one.

Now Hoya was stuck with no thoughts. He wasn’t the best psychiatrist out there; maybe the worst and he had just barely passed his exams. He didn’t really have a forte; he was just ‘the backup guy that just did whatever’. He ‘unprofessionally’ put his arm on his knees and placed his chin onto his hand, sighing.

Usually, at times like this, he would ask for money, leave, and get some research ready for the next session. Except he didn’t want to come again, seeing as Sunggyu was on holiday and he was the source of his ‘research’.

Woohyun seemed like an abnormal person anyway; his display of double personality was puzzling. Hoya looked at him carefully, absorbing the details of his – everything. He was dressed up in a posh kind of fashion; the type that Hoya could only dream about. He looked at him in jealousy, scanning his perfect features.

Despite never going out, he seemed like a rich person that was happy to be the unsocial type. Woohyun didn’t look like he had a lot of things to worry about, except his rare case of mysophobia. But now he seemed indifferent.

“When were you diagnosed with mysophobia?” Hoya asked, adjusting his glasses higher up his oh-so-retarded nose.

Woohyun stayed silent, hardly moving, just staring at the floor as if he was in deep thought.

“It’s terribly hard,” Hoya continued, “to stay away from every single germ cell. Even now, that you’ve got extremely high levels of hygiene, you need to realize that it just isn’t possible. Think of it this way – you’re dirty now. Getting dirtier won’t kill you.”

Woohyun didn’t answer, but Hoya didn’t expect him too. Right now, he looked lifeless. Hoya assumed it was his anxiety because of his phobia, but he wasn’t so sure now.

Suddenly, Woohyun’s face tensed up and he fell out of his chair, face down and his knees still buckled in the seating position.

“W-What the…?!”

Hoya helplessly shook his shoulder, slapping him lightly and occasionally, hoping to wake him up. He didn’t have his phone on him right now; Woohyun had stepped on it as soon as he had come inside, saying that ‘Phones have a lot of germs’.

“How am I supposed to help this guy?” Hoya said to himself. “Faints and I’ve hardly said anything.”

He slapped himself at his sarcastic state, reminding himself that he had to be a ‘nice and sophisticated’ person.

Hoya sighed before placing Woohyun on his shoulders, already tired. He was lucky there was a hospital nearby.

----

“He’s a robot,” the doctor said with a pissed expression on his face. “Do you really want to waste our time by bringing over rubbish, when we could have helped real people?! We threw him out back if you want the stupid thing back,” he continued sharply. He scoffed before leaving, his steps quick and in a hurry.