V

                Kai visits at least once a week, if only to change the flowers.

                Taemin, of course, doesn’t notice. He just lies on the bed, eyes half-open and all spacey. Kai tries not to look at the eyes, but he always does. It never gets any less creepy.

                Taemin should be dead – he essentially is dead, really. He’s just got a lot of stuff plugged into him to keep him from completely clocking out. It was almost as if his body had been ready to heal, but his brain had run away from the problem, unable to face it. If Suho weren’t so determined to save him, he would have faded into nothingness already. But Suho is sure – so sure – that Taemin could live, so he keeps him plugged up while Taemin’s eyes are half-open and all spacey.

                The flesh wounds have healed – the skin on his arms is strange-looking and scar-ridden, but it’s there, and hair has begun to grow back over the place where Taemin’s head cracked open. But Kai doesn’t look too long, because it hurts, so he busies himself with exchanging the withering hydrangeas for carnations. He gets so busy with the flowers that he hardly notices someone in a wheelchair coming into the room.

                “Good morning, Kai.” Kai snaps his head up only to sigh in relief.

                “Good morning, Jinki.”

                Jinki wheels himself over to Taemin’s bedside and takes one of the unmoving hands in his. “I bet he never imagined that I’d be visiting him in the hospital and not the other way around,” Jinki says quietly, running his thumb over Taemin’s knuckles. Kai looks on wordlessly and settles in a chair on the other side of the bed from Jinki.

                “After what happened,” Jinki says before coughing briefly. “I wanted to keep him away from monsters as best I could. I was really nervous when he told me about you, but then I figured it would be better for him to face his demons than run away from them. But this,” he whispers. “I could have never protected him from this. From himself.”

                “There are ways to control it, you know–”

                “Oh, I know. I wasn’t talking about the transformation. I was talking about how scared he was.” Jinki looks up at Kai, and the hunter has to keep himself from breaking down. “He could have controlled it, but he was too afraid of it. And what that stalker did made him even more scared. I just wished he told me, so I could have told him it was alright to change.”

                Jinki inhales, long and deep. “I guess the monsters inside us are more dangerous than anything else.”

                Kai takes one more look at Taemin before sighing sadly. “I guess so.”

                -

                Taemin wakes up, entirely drenched in his own sweat.