Where the Road Turns

            Strange how things can change in a moment.  In one moment, everything was going right in my world.  Super Junior’s popularity was on the rise.  Super Junior KRY had success as well, putting out songs together.  As a result of this unexpected success—unexpected by SM Entertainment, but not by us members or the managers—the company was finally investing a little more time and money into our group.  Of course, due to our hard work together and the rewards and acknowledgements we’d been given, we have slowly grown closer as a group.  In the course of a year, I’d begun to consider these men my brothers.  With the exception of one. 

            Ryeowook and I had started dating early on.  Within a few months of joining the group, we were secretly dating one another.  Of course, secrets don’t last long when you live with nine other men.  At this point, everyone in the group knew except Siwon.  (Well, he didn’t live with us and he’s ultra-Christian, so we were still trying to work out how to break it to him.  But he clearly knew that Ryeowook and I were closer than most people, even if he didn’t know the finer details.)  Anyway, they ended up throwing us in a room together, although we weren’t allowed to acknowledge that publicly, in case anything about our relationship was ever revealed to the public.  We still meant to deny it to any outsiders. 

            From the moment I first kissed him, I knew that he was the only one for me.  Several of the others that I suggested this to thought I was crazy and told me that I was too young to know my heart.  The only one who took me seriously was Hyukjae.  I think that perhaps Heechul did as well, because he was always doing things to help protect us, but he just wouldn’t admit that he believed we’re meant to be together forever.  Ryeowook said that he loved me and he would never leave me.   I believed him.

            Of course, we were discussing how thing change in a moment though.  No worries, Ryeowook still loved me, but little did I know that this fateful moment was about to happen that might steal him away from me.  We’d had a fight earlier that day, which may have stemmed from jealously on my end and gone a little off topic from there, with him complaining about how needy I am and how I never pick up after myself.  It wasn’t a new argument, just the ongoing one we like to have from time to time when we’re feeling cranky, because I was not going to be miraculously turning my life around and becoming less demanding of him and he was not about to stop flirting with other men.  He called it talking or joking around, of course.  I called it flirting.  Not important to the story.  Aside from this, things were going well between us.  But on the night I’d left to guest star on Kiss the Radio, we still weren’t speaking to each other.  I considered this a temporary issue, mind you, and figured that I’d apologize to him in the morning.  The thing I’d never considered was that I might not have the chance.

            For as young as I was, I joked with my friends back home that I’d already accomplished everything in life that I really cared to do.  Let me stress how that wasn’t an invitation to end it prematurely.  One moment, my life was nearly perfect—or what I considered that to be as a teenager—when I walked out of the radio station with Hyukjae, Shindong, and Leeteuk.  We piled into a van with one of our managers and headed back to the dorm.  I was slouching in the seat, listening to my mp3 player, and closed my eyes for a few minutes.  I was tired, both physically and emotionally, and it was past midnight.  The next I knew, the van was suddenly spinning, there was loud banging and crashing, and then I lost consciousness.

            I don’t remember much about the accident itself.  I had maybe been woken from sleeping when it happened and then I was unconscious again a moment later.  I remember waking up on the side of the road and it hurt just to breath.  Each inhale and exhale was a struggle.  When I opened my eyes, all I could see was darkness and a streetlamp in the distance.  I tried to get up, but all I could manage to do was sit up.  As I did, I looked across the road and noticed the van overturned a ways away.  How did I get so far from the vehicle?  Did someone take me out and carry me away from it?  The cold wind blew past me and I shivered.  The cold air made it hurt even more to breath, but I tried to look around to see if I could find anyone, but there was no one near me.

            Just then, as I blinked to get better focus, the strangest thing began to happen.  I suddenly began to watch my entire life replay before my eyes.  I saw myself on vacation with my parents, in school with my friends, cuddled on the couch beside Ryeowook.  I saw everything replayed over again.  In this version, however, I could also see how my actions and inactions affected those around me.  It both humbled and shamed me and I began to cry.  I realized then that I must be dying.  Wasn’t that what people meant by watching their lives flash before their eyes?  People said it happened before they were about to die.

            I didn’t know what was about to happen next and I was alone and frightened.  Instinctively, I began to pray.  I did not want to die.  What would Ryeowook do?  He would be tormented by the fact that the last time we spoke, we’d argued.  I couldn’t let that be his last memory of me.  And I still needed to apologize for being a jerk.  Then there were my parents and sister.  My mother and father would completely regret letting me join Super Junior if they thought it meant losing me so young, but I didn’t want them to regret that, because it meant so much to me.  And then my friends from the group.  If something happened to me, would they be okay? 

            Even as I prayed and contemplated the fact that I was likely to die and leave everyone behind, I was still looking around in the hopes that someone would walk by.  I was terrified by what I’d seen, I was crying without stop, and I didn’t want to be alone.  Thankfully, I did not have to wait by myself for long.

            “Kyuhyun! Kyuhyun!” Hyukjae hollered from down the road.  He ran over to my side and slid into the grass beside me.  “Oh my god, this is crazy, are you okay?”

            I was still dazed from what I’d seen moments before and had too much trouble breathing to speak right away, so I shook my head.

            Hyukjae cupped my face.  “What’s wrong?”

            “I…breathing,” I tried to tell him, “hurts.”

            “Hold on a moment,” he said, standing up and running off.  I didn’t want him to leave me alone again.  I’d suffer anything but that, but I didn’t have the strength to call him back.  My lungs would barely let me speak, let alone yell.  Yet, he was jogging back before I’d fully begun to register that he’d left.  This time, I paid more attention and noticed that he had a slight limp.  Clearly, he did not walk away from the accident unscathed himself. 

            “Leeteuk is bloody.  He looks terrible, although he’s conscious still and says he’s just cut up from the glass.  I told the paramedics that you were hurt and they said they’d be over in a minute.  I hope they hurry,” he said, sounding uncertain.  “Shindong is shaken up, but he’s okay.”

            I instantly worried about our leader, wondering if he was going to recover.  Leeteuk would not be okay if something happened to me.  I felt it deep down.  He would blame himself for this somehow, even if it was just a freak accident.  He would blame himself for not being able to protect me.  It wasn’t logical, certainly, but I felt it was the truth.  I could not die.

            Hyukjae held my hand at this point, still muttering to me about the accident, rambling because he didn’t know what else to do.  He felt helpless.  But a person is never completely helpless. 

            “Hyuk.”

            He looked straight at me, his eyes watery.  “Yeah?”

            “Will you…pray with me?”

            Hyukjae nodded.  “I’m not very good at it.”

            “You don’t need…to say…formal prayers,” I told him, struggling for breath as I spoke.  Then I clasped our hands together.

            “Okay,” he said, his first tear slipping down his cheek.  Then he began to pray out loud for the wellness of everyone in the accident and for all of our family and friends, so they wouldn’t be afraid for us when they heard the news.  I silently prayed along with him.  Please, let me live.

            So Hyukjae and I prayed together until the paramedics came.  When they reached us, they realized that I was in far worse shape than Leeteuk, although he was a bloody mess from the glass breaking his skin.  Bones were broken in my pelvis area, which is why I couldn’t stand.  Even worse, several ribs were broken and had punctured my lungs, which was making it hard to breath.  One lung had already collapsed.  I was slowly dying.  If they didn’t get me to the hospital fast, I wasn’t going to make it.

            “Kyuhyun,” Leeteuk groaned, half delirious from the pain as they wheeled him to an ambulance on a stretcher.  “Kyuhyun…”

            “Somehow he knows,” Matthew said, pointing up at the window.  “Do you see that?  He’s nowhere near where his maknae is, but he keeps saying his name over and over.”

            “Eunhyuk told him he was injured,” Ferrand pointed out.

            “He did, but he did not tell him about his trouble breathing or that he felt particularly uneasy about it.  He did not tell their leader that Kyuhyun could not move around.  Leeteuk remembers this from the meeting on some level and he has an eerie feeling about it.”

            “Hyukjae feels something is terribly wrong as well.  He was shaken up by the accident himself and has several bruises and scrapes, but his first thought was to go in search of the boy.  I heard his thoughts loud and clear,” Malina said, who was watching Hyukjae’s window a short distance away.  “He completely disregarded his own needs.  What a good hyung!”

            “But we didn’t tell him about the accident,” Amara pointed out.  “And despite Heechul telling Ryeowook without our permission, neither Ryeowook nor Kyuhyun broke protocol and told any of them about the accident as children.  They only stressed the need to work together as a group to the older ones they could still influence in dreams.  Eunhyuk would have been too young to remember.  So, there could be no way he would have a premonition about it.”

            “He may not know what the possible outcome is, but the men are good friends and have been for thousands of years.  There can be no hiding when something is wrong,” Matthew claimed.  “He can sense the distress from Kyuhyun himself and knows there’s a problem.”

            “Perhaps you’re right,” Ferrand admitted.

            “And in almost all the trial runs, Kyuhyun lost consciousness again before now,” Amara pointed out.

            “Yes, he did,” Ferrand said, sitting down in the chair and resting his chin in his propped up hand.  “Why do you think that changed?”

            “Because Eunhyuk’s with him earlier than normal,” Matthew suggested.  “Kyuhyun usually gets dizzy and falls back to the ground unconscious, which further damages the lungs.  Eunhyuk is holding onto him now.”

            “Eunhyuk’s also praying with him,” said the short woman, Raisa. 

            “Wait, yes,” Matthew said, clapping his hands together.  “That’s a new development as well, isn’t it?  They’re both praying together.  Eunhyuk does not normally get to Kyuhyun’s side this quickly and Kyuhyun is usually unconscious again when he arrives.  He’s alerted the paramedics faster to Kyuhyun’s condition and now they’re praying as well.  Eunhyuk’s earlier arrival has changed the outcome.  Kyuhyun will probably make it to the hospital alive.”

            “But the problems at the hospital will still be the same,” Ferrand reminded them.  “Even if they get him there faster and stabilize him, the same idiot doctors are going to insist on going through his throat and ruining his ability to sing.  He’ll live, but he won’t be in the group.”

            Pedro, a tall, tan colored gentleman who’d rarely spoke during Kyuhyun’s meeting with them, now voiced his thoughts.  “There’s another doctor.”

            “No there isn’t,” Ferrand said.  “I just looked at who’s at the hospital and it’s the same people.

            “He’s on call,” Pedro insisted.  “But he only shows up in a few of the scenarios in which Kyuhyun happens to live.”

            “Now that you mention it, I do remember him,” Amara said.  “He was only in a couple.  In fact, it’s usually in the ones where Kyuhyun’s voice is preserved as well.”

            “They don’t always call him in,” Pedro said, “but the hospital just did this time because the paramedics informed them about Kyuhyun’s condition in advance and told the hospital they had him stabilized at the moment.”

            They all looked around at each other in silence a moment.

            “That’s the second major switch to the normal template,” Ferrand agreed.

            “What was the first one again?” Malina questioned.

            “That he’s not going to arrive dead on arrival,” Matthew informed her.  “Eunhyuk looked for him earlier than he did when we ran the preliminary tests on this.  Kyuhyun is still conscious when the paramedics arrive and can communicate with them.  They figure out what’s going on faster.  Time is everything in a situation like this.”

            “We don’t know that he’s going to live yet,” Malina pointed out.  “He arrives to the hospital alive in many circumstances and dies during or after the surgery.  His survival rate in surgery is still less that fifty percent.  If that.”

            “Twenty-nine,” Ferrand threw in.

            “But it’s looking more promising, isn’t it?” Matthew pointed out.  “He’s stable before reaching the hospital.  That’s a change in the norm.”

            Malina shrugged.  “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

            “Very well,” he conceded.

            “Who says an infant can’t remember?” Amara wondered.  “It’s not impossible that it’s still lingering in Eunhyuk’s subconscious somewhere, is it?”

            “Ryeowook and Kyuhyun never did any work with Eunhyuk because they thought he was too young to retain any of the memories, even on a soul level,” Ferrand informed her.

            “But they did talk about the accident in front of him that one time, while he was sleeping,” Raisa reminded them. 

            The rest of the group looked over at her. 

            “Remember…after Kyuhyun went to visit Leeteuk, he went to check on Eunhyuk as he slept in his crib and that’s when Ryeowook joined him and told him he already knew about the accident from Heechul’s letter,” she continued.

            “He was sound asleep,” objected Ferrand.

            “Was he?  Or was he contentedly listening to voices that he recognized from the Other Side?  It can be hard to tell sometimes,” Amara reminded him.

            Matthew smiled to himself.  “So they affected the unconscious memories of Eunhyuk without even realizing they did it,” he laughed.

            Amara sat down in the chair beside Ferrand.  “This is like watching a soap opera.”

            “I know,” Ferrand said, rubbing his face with his hands.  “And I don’t like having to watch it in real time, since it goes so slow.”

            “We’ll know if they succeeded or failed in the next day or two,” Raisa said.  “In the scheme of things, that isn’t much time at all.  At the end of it, we’ll either be reviewing it with Kyuhyun again or we’ll be watching all new material.”

            “Shhh…let’s keep watching,” Malina said.  “Kyuhyun’s out now, so we’ll have to pull up his father’s window and perhaps Ryeowook’s.  He’s about to get the news that his boyfriend’s been in an accident and it won’t go over well, I’m sure.”

            “Pull up the doctor as well,” Pedro said.  “Everything hinges on him.”