It occurred to me a while later that Sunny said that she wanted to talk to me.  I remember turning her down after she had checked my vitals that day, partially because I had previously promised Ryeowook I would practice with him, partially because I just hadn’t want to talk to her.

When I saw Sunny the next morning for our morning vitals, she didn’t bring it up.  I assumed it was because CL was also present, but when it was time for our one-on-one session, she still didn’t mention it.  Normally, I would have left everything at that and would have never brought up the topic again.  But against my better judgement, I decided to ask her about it to see what exactly she wanted from me.

“What I wanted from you?”  Sunny tilted her head to the side.  It was several days later, two days before the talent show was due to take place, that I actually approached her with the question.  During the time that had passed, she still hadn’t asked me and I was curious as to why she had waited.

“Didn’t you want to talk to me?  You said you wanted to talk to me but then you never went up to me and talked.”

“Yes, I did want to talk to you.”  She gave me another one of her annoyingly bright smiles and beckoned me inside her office.  She wasn’t wearing her doctor’s coat or her scrubs; instead, she was clad in a plain pink top, leggings, and black Nikes.  It was strange to see her in something other than hospital garb, and I looked her up and down for a few seconds before sitting down at the table we always sat in when we had our daily interrogations.  Only this wasn’t an interrogation.  Sunny was sitting across from me, but for once, she didn’t have a clipboard or a pad of paper in her hands.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”  I looked at Sunny and she looked at me.

“That’s up to you to decide,” she said with a straight face.  I narrowed my eyes.  What was that supposed to mean?  A vague answer from Sunny never had a single meaning, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.  I was already uncomfortable finding her outside of normal consultation hours and talking to her out of my own free will.  Who knew how she would choose to interpret that?  And ing analyze it, I unconsciously glowered to myself.  Then I realized that Sunny was watching my face and the way it had suddenly changed.

“So how was your day, Sungmin-ssi?”  She asked after a second or two.

“It was okay,” I replied.  That was my usual response, the response I had given so many times I had lost count.  Well, not that I had bothered to count in the first place.

“Hmm.  That’s good to hear.  Has anything interesting happened recently?  Anything particularly good or bad?”

My mind flashed back to the hours I spent with Ryeowook, preparing for the talent show.  We had spent today’s recreational therapy practicing in Joy’s office again, and Ryeowook had been trying to teach me a better breathing technique so that I would be able to sing the backup vocals more easily.  I was reluctant to tell Sunny about that.  She might tell my mother.  Telling her would mean me getting another lecture.

“Not really.”

“Is that so?  I heard from Joy that you and Ryeowook have been rehearsing for your talent show performance.  The two of you are going to sing, right?”

you, Joy.  I sighed quietly.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s pretty interesting!”  Sunny smiled again at me again and I gave her a weak one in return and nodded, trying not to cringe.  “I didn’t know you sang in your free time, Sungmin.”

“Oh, that’s because I don’t sing in my free time,” I said.  I remembered that my mother had told me when she visited that Sunny had heard me and Ryeowook talk about singing careers.  I made a mental note never to mention that around Sunny again.  “I actually didn’t want to do it.  Ryeowook wouldn’t stop bothering me until I said yes,” I lied.

“Really?  But I thought you wanted to enter SM one day and become a singer.”

you, Sunny.

“What’s it to you?”  I blurted out, annoyed.  “What does it matter to you what I want to do with my life?  It’s my life, not yours, and that means you can’t just in like that whenever you want.”

I flinched as the words came out of my mouth.  Once again, I had spoken too quickly, without thinking about the consequences.  I heaved another sigh.  Honestly, Sungmin.  At this rate…

But to my surprise, Sunny merely nodded, her face completely blank.  She didn’t look angry or annoyed as I expected, but she wasn’t smiling anymore either.

“Alright, then.  Is that what you really think?”

“What?”

“Sungmin, I want to ask you something, and I want you to give me an honest answer.  Tell me what you really think, like you just did.  Can you do that?”

“I’m not a child, Sunny,” I said, exasperated.  “You don’t have to talk to me like I am one.”

“Why do you so blatantly dislike me?”

In a way, the question didn’t surprise me.  I had expected that she would ask me something like that eventually.  Maybe she thought that if I told her exactly what was wrong with her-- but there were just too many for me to list-- she could change herself so I would open up to her.  I wasn’t entirely sure about that yet.  I had made up my mind earlier that I would consider giving her a chance, but that was still subject to change.  Everything was.

The thing that did surprise me was the fact that Sunny looked sad.  A corner of had turned up again, but her voice was flatter and smaller than usual.  Her eyes weren’t as bright as they had been when we first sat down.  Despite myself, I felt a little bad for her.  But she wanted a straight answer, and the words spilled out of my mouth, coming out meaner than I had intended them to be.

“You’re fake.  You and all the other doctors and nurses and social workers are so fake, it’s disgusting.”

“And how exactly are we fake?”  She replied evenly.  “Why would you assume that?”

I struggled to find a coherent answer.  Why would she ask something like that?  Wasn’t the answer obvious?  The fact that she didn’t seem to understand that sparked my frustration and I snorted loudly.

“You can see it literally everything you do.  The way you talk, the way you act around us, the way you pretend to care.  The way you don’t really take the time to understand all of us and the way you jump to conclusions about everyone and everything.”

Sunny nodded.  She didn’t look sad anymore.  Instead, her face had become completely unreadable.

“Anything else?  Any specific examples?”  She said with a perfectly straight face and a perfectly normal tone of voice.  I jeered at her question.

“Why would I need an example when everything you do annoys and frustrates me, Lee Soonkyu?  You wanted to know what I really think, so there you have it.”  Now that everything was out there, I was actually a bit scared that she would report me or punish me in some way.  But she couldn’t blame me for it.  She had asked for the truth.

Sunny sat there quietly, her eyes locked with mine.  As the seconds ticked by, the seconds growing into minutes, I grew more and more nervous.  What was she going to do to me now?  I had been rude to her and had lost my temper before, but I had never openly dissed her like this.

“How would you like it, Lee Sungmin, if I told you it was all just in your head?”

I blinked.  Huh?  I opened my mouth to respond, but Sunny kept talking, her voice becoming harder and colder by the second.

“How would you like it if I called you fake?  That you always behave is absolutely revolting, not only to me, but everyone around you.  It’s true, you just don’t realize it because you think everything here is centered around you.  You aren't the only patient in this hospital, you know.”

I scoffed at her.

“I’m not a ing attention ,” I glared, feeling annoyance bubble up inside me despite myself.  “Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself?”

“Some comeback,” she let out a huff.  “Trying to use the same accusation against me.  Maybe you’re too blind to notice anything outside your own fantasy land that only you live in, but what exactly have I done to be classified as an attention ?  I’m stuck here taking care of your miserable self, and everything I do, I do it because it’s my job.  Why would anyone want to take care of someone as bratty and obnoxious as you are?”

I had never heard Sunny talk or look like this before.  I had never seen her eyes so steely, and I had certainly never seen her jaw set so firmly, her entire face tensed up as she bore holes into me.  I told myself not to pay attention to her.  After all, what did she know?  She was in position to judge me for anything.  I ignored her, and made a move to get up and leave.  I didn’t want to deal with what she was saying.

“You think you’re the most important person in this entire hospital, don’t you?  Just because your father is Lee Chunhwa, CEO of Samsung.”  I stopped and stared, my mouth half-open.  I swallowed hard and tried to interrupt, but I didn’t get a chance.  “Just because you’ve gone through a few speedbumps in your nauseatingly easy life.  You have everything, Lee Sungmin.  Your problems don’t matter, nothing you want for yourself should matter.  You should be grateful for everything you have right now because without your parents and their wealth, you are worth absolutely nothing.”

Her words stung me, shattering the makeshift wall I had built around my emotions.

“What the are you saying?”  I said furiously, almost stomping to her side of the table.  I glared down at her, hoping to intimidate her with my height and my infuriated expression.  It didn’t seem to faze Sunny at all.  Instead of backing off, she pushed herself off the table and stood, her chin tilted upward in defiance.

“You idiot,” she spat.  “Do you really need me to spell it out for you letter by letter?  You know, you don’t need to keep up the pretense that you’re mentally ill.  Faking all your problems, which aren’t even real problems.  There’s no need to pretend in order to get the attention you want so badly.  Typical of an arrogant, thirsty, media-inflated chaebol.”

The last time Sunny had accused me of being attention-seeking, I was seconds away from choking the life out of her.  The same familiar feeling was back, but there was also something else.  There was really no reason why I should care what Sunny thought of me, but what she was saying really did hurt.  She was just an insignificant thorn in my side, nothing to worry about too much, but… why did it feel like my heart had stopped beating?

Why was my breath catching in my throat?

Why was my anger slowly subsiding, being replaced with a sadder, heavier emotion?

I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry, hidden away from the entire world and from Sunny and her insults.

“Get a freaking grip on yourself, will you?  Why can’t you be normal like other people?  Maybe if you just stopped telling yourself you’re depressed, it would all just go away.  No one likes attention .  Maybe that’s the reason why you never had any real friends.  Not even here in this hospital you don’t even belong in.  Why would we waste our time and energy on someone like you who doesn’t deserve treatment at all?  It would all be so much easier on everyone if you left.  You’re just a burden on all of us, including Ryeowook and myself.  I bet no one would notice if you just disappeared one day.”

When the conversation had started, we had been inches away from each other’s faces, absolutely enraged.  Sunny was still enraged, her stony demeanor betraying her.  I on the other hand wasn’t so sure what I was feeling.  I had taken a few steps away from her and wasn’t nearly as confident standing up to her compared to before.  I clenched my fists in an attempt to stop myself from trembling.

Stop it.  You know you shouldn’t be listening.  Ignore her.  Come on, do as she said and get a ing grip.

“Attempting suicide?”  Sunny’s voice shook a little as she bit down on her lip.  “You should have tried harder.  I thought you knew better, Lee Sungmin.”  The double meaning hissed from between her sneering lips.  I didn’t have time to interpret what exactly she meant before she said something that made me freeze.

“You’re just a failure at everything, aren’t you?  I guess everyone was right about you.”

It started out slowly, then the rest unfolded by itself.  First, it was my eyes and the tears that filled them.  Then it was my quivering lips.  I was crying before I knew it.  Crying in front of Sunny.  I was bawling in front of Sunny for the second time in a week, much harder than the first time.  I couldn’t stop, no matter how hard I tried to.

“How do you like that, hmm?”  I heard a quiet voice speak as I sobbed, my shaking fingers pressed to my eyes, tears leaking out anyways and dripping down my face.

I was too ing empty, yet too ing full of emotions at the same time.  My chest tight so that it was hard for me to breathe.

“How do you like being told that your personality and everything you do is fake?  How do you like being insulted the way you insulted me?”  Sunny’s voice had started out soft, but it was growing louder and angrier by the second.  “Well, Lee Sungmin, I’m so terribly sorry, but that’s just the person I am and I can’t change my nature.  Being treated the way you treat me when all I’m trying to do is help someone doesn’t exactly feel good, so I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t talk to me like that and yell at me for something that is not my fault and make me feel just as terrible as you’re feeling right now.  I just want to help you and you’re making it so difficult for me.  I’m not asking you to do anything but simply talk to me.  All this time you’ve been here at Incheon Psychiatric, I’ve wanted you to just have a normal conversation with me and not look at me like you think I’m stupid and worthless.”

I was still crying hard, but I was also listening.

“The way you’ve always acted around me, hating me so much when I didn’t do anything wrong.  I’m only human too, you know.  It hurts when I see that look in your eyes.  I know there’s this false stigma about psychiatrists and mental hospitals and that they don’t really care about your problems, but I genuinely want to help you.  Yet you always act like it’s the exact opposite.  All I want to do is help you and you’ve never let me.  It’s so, so hard helping someone who clearly doesn’t want you to help them because they hate you.  Why don’t you ever let me try to help you?  What have I done to you to make me hate you so much?  Why don’t you ever--”

Sunny’s voice was choked with emotion and she stopped talking for a few seconds.  At the edge of my field of vision, I saw her rub at the corners of her eyes.

It didn’t really know what to feel or think at this point so I just continued to cry.  Everything hurt right now and I didn’t want to think about anything.  All I wanted to do was to cease to exist.  That would make Sunny and everyone else happy, right?

If one of the more unstable and dangerous patients in the wards below us had lost control and had somehow gotten a knife and for whatever reason decided to enter our ward on a drunken killing spree, I would have been more than happy to let him stab me to death.  I didn’t want to deal with life anymore.

Suddenly, there was a small gasp.

“Sungmin?”  I heard Sunny take a step towards me.  I was too emotionally drained to make a move away from her.  “Sungmin, are you--”

Slowly, I moved my hands away from my face.  I knew my eyes were bloodshot and my nose was running all over the place.  I looked like a complete wreck, but I was too tired to do anything about it and met Sunny’s eyes slowly.  Somewhere in the middle of the buzzing emptiness going on in my brain, I registered that her eyes were wide and quickly flooding with tears.

“Oh my God,” she managed to get out.  She was on me in seconds, enveloping me in a rib-crushing hug like she had done so last time, only harder.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

What’s she apologizing for?  I thought to myself.  She was right, wasn’t she?  I should have tried harder those nights I tried to kill myself.  I should have taken more pills, and earlier in the night, and hid the spare bathroom key from the maid so she wouldn’t have walked in on me and called the hospital.  I should have made sure my head had hit the rocks, not the water.

Lee Sungmin, you… you know what?  I don’t even have words for you anymore.

Mhmm, that’s right.  For once, my two consciences were telling me the same things?  They weren’t fighting with each other?  Strange.

Not really, if you think about it.  Sunny’s right about everything-- everything you’ve done to everyone and to yourself.  Including the way you’ve been treating her.  You deserved to have her scream at you and insult you the way she just did.  It’s no less than what you’ve done to her and no less than you deserve.

In fact, you deserve worse.  You deserve nothing.

I swear, you’re the worst human being I’ve ever seen.

Sunny was crying and apologizing frantically in between the rivers of salt water streaming down her cheeks.

“Sungmin, please, I didn’t mean it.  I just-- I just lost my temper and I never meant to yell at you.  I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I truly am.  No one deserves to have those things said to them, least of all you.  I’m-- I-- I’m so sorry.  I was just so worked up and frustrated about what you told me and I lost it and I wanted to hurt you because-- because I was so mad.  I swear on my life, I didn’t mean it to come out like that.  No, I didn’t-- I never wanted to say those things.  No one should ever feel like they’re worthless.  No one should be told that they’re an attention and that their problems don’t exist.  I’m so s-sorry.”

I didn’t say anything.  I watched as more panic filled Sunny’s wide eyes.

“Please forgive me.  Please, Sungmin.  I don’t want you to-- to believe anything I said about you being a failure.  I promise, you’re not a failure.  I promise that you are worth it and all of us do care about-- about you and-- and--”  Her words became unintelligible and she squeezed me even more tightly.  Minutes passed, but Sunny could not stop crying.  I stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do.

Don’t do it.  Don’t do it.  I cringed to myself as I watched Sunny wipe her eyes for the umpteenth time, although there was little sign of her stopping.

I had never seen Sunny cry, nor had I seen her in such an emotional state.  It was an interesting, yet painful sight.  If this had been last week, I couldn’t have cared less.  Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true.  As much as I had disliked her, seeing her crying like this made me feel sad and regretful.

I would never forget what she had said to me earlier-- calling me a failure, hinting that I should have tried harder to kill myself.  I tried my best to think about the situation objectively.  Maybe Sunny was right to yell at me like that.  I hadn’t been the nicest person to her, and I guessed that it was natural for her to be frustrated.  I supposed it was natural wanting revenge like that.

But despite that, was her behavior excusable?  Was my behavior excusable?  Why had she gone so far, knowing how I would react to her words and making me suffer for it?  Why had I mistreated her before?  Did she deserve forgiveness?  Did I deserve forgiveness?  Who was wrong and who was right?  What…

It was too confusing for me to think about, and I was tired.  Not only was it well into the night, I was also worn out from crying so hard.  I didn’t want to put in the effort to think about the situation more carefully.

Against my better judgement, I sighed softly and wrapped my arms around Sunny.  I didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do, and I didn’t know if I would regret this decision in the future.  But right now, it was the easiest way out.

Alright, Sunny.  You win.  I can’t guarantee anything, but the easiest way out is to just forget about it all.  Starting over in a sense.  I hate being in confusing situations like this, situations where we’re both kind of wrong, yet we’re both kind of right.  It would be a lot less confusing for both of us if we just pretended nothing had ever happened between us, regardless of whether it was good or bad.

***
 

As I had suspected when Minah had first announced it, the talent show wasn’t exactly a talent show.  There were no winners, no losers, no prizes.  It was held on the hospital rooftop, where I had never been before because patients were usually not allowed there.  The “talent show” was simply a few hours set aside for us to perform and present whatever we had prepared, and after we had gone through everything, we could do whatever we wanted to: hang out on the rooftop and stare at the Incheon skyline, go back to the common room and talk, anything really, as long as it was within hospital regulations.

I had never been to one so I didn’t know if my assumption was accurate or not, but it kind of seemed like a party.  Live performances, music, karaoke, and food and drinks.  I didn’t know what else people usually did at parties, but it didn’t really matter.

A good portion of the hospital staff was there with us-- most of the social workers and doctors in our ward.  Among the many people, there was Sunny, back to her bubbly and bright-eyed self.

The day after the incident, I apologized for everything told her my thoughts honestly for the first time.  I told her about how things would be a lot less complicated if we forgot everything, including how hurtful her words had been that day and how rude I had always been to her.  It wasn’t quite forgiveness.  I wasn’t too sure about that, and I decided it would be easier not to deal with it and just start anew.  Thankfully, Sunny agreed with me.

Heechul was up onstage with a drum set.  The rest of us, both patients and staff, were sitting in folding chairs, looking on as he thundered on, emitting sounds from the drums that were louder than I thought possible.  It was deafening because I was in the first row, close to the speakers.  But despite the loudness, Heechul was better than I thought.  I didn’t remember whether he had ever mentioned to me that he played.  Not everyone could make such a melodious-sounding racket.

Several people had gone already.  CL, Hyuna, and Sooyoung had started off with a dance cover of ‘The Baddest Female’, one of CL’s solo songs back when she had been an idol.  Taemin had done a cover of some hip-hop song I didn’t know the name of.  Kris and Tao sang a remake of the song ‘Rewind’, originally by a Chinese soloist named Zhou Mi.  After Heechul, Ryeowook and I were supposed to go up.  To my surprise, I wasn’t feeling as nervous as I expected I would be.  My foot was still shaking in anticipation and tension, but otherwise, I wasn’t panicking.

After I had decided to tell Sunny more about what Ryeowook and I were planning to do for the talent show, she responded with a supportive attitude.  She offered her advice as she always did, but this time, it seemed genuine.  Then again, I couldn’t really tell the difference.  Maybe she had always been genuine, but I hadn’t been able to tell because I insisted that her very existence was bad for me.  Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but that was in the past, and I told myself to forget all of it.  We talked about things for an hour, but for the first time, it wasn’t all that bad.  It almost seemed like a normal conversation.  There was a lot less of the usual awkwardness surrounding us.  It had only been two days, but things were going okay so far.

I felt a cool hand slip into mine and I blinked, returning to the stage where Heechul was still beating the drums so passionately that his eyes were closed and his head was flopping up and down like a fish out of water.  His facial expression was one of great concentration.  I looked back at Ryeowook, who was sitting to my right.

“Hyung, it’s almost our turn,” he said very quietly, his eyes very wide but his voice steady.  I unconsciously turned my head back to Sunny, who was a few rows behind us.  Ryeowook turned his head as well and gave me a smile, squeezing my hand again before letting go to adjust the cuffs of his sweatshirt.

Ryeowook was the first and only person I had told about the change between me and Sunny.  The corner of my mouth tilted up as I remembered telling him about what had happened.  Maybe the reason why I wasn’t nervous right now was because I didn’t mind as much about the fact that Sunny and the staff were there with us.  I was less afraid that she would judge me for it.

It felt good to do whatever I wanted to and not care as much about what people thought.  Choosing to open up to Sunny a little bit, choosing to spend my time practicing my off with Ryeowook these past couple of days, choosing to be here performing with him today: those had all been my own choices.

Heechul was nearly at the end of his song-- I could tell because the music was getting louder and more intense, building up to the grand finale.

I glanced over at Ryeowook.  Now that he wasn’t facing me anymore, he actually looked like he was about to fall off his chair in fear.  His calm demeanor had slid off his face.  I recalled that this was his first time singing in front of others, and I knew he had a small problem with crowds.

Before I could do anything, however, Heechul finished with something that sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.  But it sounded like a very talented and very charismatic string of firecrackers going off, and we all cheered and clapped as he got up and took a bow.  Less than a minute later, somebody was announcing our names, and CL, who was sitting on my opposite side, was motioning for us to go up.  She flashed us an encouraging smile, and I smiled back before I started up the steps.

The stage actually wasn’t very big, and it wasn’t that high off the ground.  But from my position, elevated two or three feet above everyone else, I had a clearer view of everyone and everything on the rooftop.

What little anxiety I had prior to this moment suddenly grew exponentially.  For a moment, I thought I was going to throw up in front of everyone.  What felt like a house on my chest.  What felt like a pillow smothering my lungs.  What felt like rocks in my stomach.  Seized with absolute terror, I stood in the middle of the small stage behind the two microphone stands, unable to lift my arm to reach for the microphone as the initial applause died down so they could wait for us to start.  I gasped softly as I became aware of what I was doing for what was seemingly the first time.  Ryeowook and I were going to sing in front of all of them.

And then it was gone as soon as it came.  I had no idea what happened, but everything just seemed to disappear as my mind quieted.  My eyes swept over every person on the rooftop and the weight lifted from my chest.  These were my friends.  All the patients were my friends and they would not judge because we were all in the same positions.  There was absolutely no reason why I should be paralyzed with fear in front of them.  After all, we had all seen each other at our worsts.  There was a certain bond we shared that was unlike other normal friendships.

To me, the most special bond was the one I had with Ryeowook.  I glanced to my side and saw him gripping the microphone tightly, still looking nervous but not as much as he had been when he was sitting.  As the music started playing and Ryeowook began to sing his part, I closed my eyes for a brief moment and listened to him.

Ryeowook’s sweet, cold voice filled the air and I felt comfortable again, the last of my anxiety leaving me.  We had practiced for hours, me struggling to hold the notes for longer periods of time, Ryeowook struggling to memorize the foreign sounds and the lyrics he couldn’t understand without a Korean translation.

Just like how it had been with Kris and Tao’s performance, there was a projector projecting translated lyrics onto the screen behind us so that everyone would be able to tell what the words meant.

I remembered the reason I had chosen to sing ‘Story’ out of all the other songs we could have chosen.  The lyrics were about how there was always someone beside us-- someone we could lean on when we wanted to cry, someone we could talk to when our feelings threatened to overwhelm us.  We didn’t need to keep everything to ourselves because none of us were alone.

Ryeowook was heading into the chorus now, and I gently moved my head along with the music as the notes flowed through the air like silk.  And when it was my turn, I forgot everything and just sang with as much emotion as I could muster.  I sang with the intent of moving the others and making them realize what the lyrics were really saying.

When the song ended, Ryeowook’s voice blending perfectly with my own, I closed my eyes for a second.  I opened them again as the applause filled the air.  As everyone clapped, we stood there for a moment before we headed down from the stage so the next performers could go.

My eyes swept across the entire rooftop once more.  Heechul’s look of absolute admiration, CL’s half-open mouth and wide eyes, Sunny’s huge smile-- I wanted to remember it all.  I took a mental snapshot and tucked it away somewhere in my head.

Eventually, the talent show and the party came to a close.  Most of the excitement died down as people began to leave the rooftop to go back to their own business.  I was not one of them.  Instead, I walked over to the edge of the building.  There was a large wire fence around it for safety measures, but I sat down on the stone edge anyways and looked through the wire at the city below me.

There were a lot of thoughts going through my head, but I was satisfied with letting them run wild.  For the first time in who knew how long, I was genuinely happy.  I didn’t want to let my jumble of consciences ruin the moment.

I heard footsteps approaching behind me.  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Ryeowook sat down next to me, two cookies in his hand.  The staff had ordered baked goods for us from the same coffee shop I had gone to when I had first came here.  Ryeowook handed one of the cookies to me.  I murmured thanks and took a bite, faintly registering that there were almonds and white chocolate chips in it.

The two of us sat there for a while and watched as the orange afternoon sunlight illuminated Incheon, reflecting off the tall glass skyscrapers.  It wasn’t quite sunset yet, but it was pretty late into the afternoon.

I had Ryeowook, I had this beautiful view of the city, and I had my cookie.  Life was good.

As we sat there, not talking, my mind drifted to something Sunny had told me recently about how everything that was done at the hospital was done with a purpose.  Which doctor talked to which patient, what types of questions were asked during group therapy, et cetera.

Sunny had never explicitly told me about this, but now that I thought about it, I wondered if there had been another method to selecting which patients were in which ward besides categorizing us solely based on how unstable or dangerous we were.  I recalled my first day at Incheon Psychiatric and how Heechul had told me during our first dinner together that all of us in the ward was somehow connected to the music industry.

The reason why Sunny-- or whoever was in charge of grouping the patients together-- had placed us all into one ward was so that it would be easier to form bonds with one another and learn how to depend on each other.  Which was coincidentally just what the lyrics to ‘Story’ said.

Hi my readers/subscribers ^^ and this is my first update of 2016... I hope you enjoyed it and if anyone has any questions about Sunny's logic in this chapter (or just questions in general) feel free to comment below and ask me ^^ I've been replying to all comments so far and I'm trying to be a better author in terms of responding to comments, so lol XD

Once again, I strongly urge all of you to listen to 'Story' and read the English subtitles if you haven't already done so... and if you already have, you can do it again LOL I especially chose this song when I was first brainstorming for the fic and it's inspired a lot of the plot and stuff... also, I think it's a really beautiful cover and Sungmin's voice is so underrated and we need to appreciate his voice more... same for Ryeowook, WHO BY THE WAY IS MAKING HIS SOLO DEBUT IN LESS THAN A WEEK OMFG YAS FINALLY IT'S ABOUT TIME IT'S BEEN OVER 10 YEARS NOW I'M SURE HIS SOLO DEBUT AND HIS ENTIRE ALBUM WILL BE FAB AF

Anyways, thank you for reading, comment, subscribe, and upvote if you haven't already, and have a lovely day everyone ^^