”Stop it.” I was pleading for Sangmin to stop hitting MyungSoo who was lying down on the asphalt, seemingly lifeless. Yet, Sangmin didn’t stop and continued what he was doing while laughing. My body had frozen to the ground and I was unable to move as I watched how Sangmin sent punches and kicks all over MyungSoo’s body.

All of a sudden the rain started to pour down on the three of us as Sangmin stopped and let go of the grip he had around MyungSoo’s collar. MyungSoo’s body fully hit the ground as blood flooded out from his injuries and the rain puddles around him got themselves a red color. Once Sangmin was completely gone I dragged my body over to MyungSoo’s before I kneeled down and gently started to shake him, but there was no reaction at all.

Carefully I placed my head against his chest so that I would be able to hear his heart beating. But there was nothing. His heart wasn’t beating any more. Tears fell from my eyes and blended together with the raindrops as they hit the ground.

My eyes shot open and I found myself staring at the whitest ceiling I’d ever seen. That was when I heard a voice in the far distance telling someone that I had woken up. What that now meant I didn’t know. I saw how someone hovered over me but I couldn’t tell who it was because my sight was blurry, and in order to fix that I blinked my eyes a few times before I fixed my gaze at the person.

It was a doctor, yet the first sentence that I asked him weren’t what had happened to me. No I asked him about MyungSoo, was he okay, because the dream was too real? But the doctor in front of me didn’t answer my question and that made me a bit mad. That’s when it hit me, what was I doing inside a hospital?

“Ehm, why am I at the hospital?” I stared at him, not remembering anything what had happened. “Don’t stress yourself; your brain has still not recovered completely.”

What the heck was he talking about? And why wasn’t MyungSoo here? I shoved the doctor away as I sat up in the bed and glanced around. A needle was attached to my arm and a machine was watching my heart rate.

“YAH, MYUNGSOO-SSHI.” I yelled on top of my lungs and immediately a shot of pain hit my head and I hurried to bury it in my hands as I tightened my jaws together. I could hear how the door to the room was slung open before not only one voice appeared, but several voices.

“What’s wrong with her?” I heard one of the voice’s ask and it wasn’t that hard to tell who it was, Sung Yeol. I glanced up from my hands and found that it wasn’t just Sung Yeol in the room, but MyungSoo and Yong Sook as well. Though my gaze shifted to MyungSoo in an instance and I saw that his lip had been stitched together, I guess that the crack had been that severe. And that made me feel ever worse. I had to tell them.

“Yong Sook-ah could you please wait outside, I need to talk to those two?” I directed my words towards Yong Sook and saw how he nodded once before exiting the room. Something that I thought the doctor and the nurse would do as well.

“You too, go.” I half yelled to them, something that probably didn’t seem all too great because suddenly that pain reappeared and I found myself burry my head in my hands as I screamed. Why was it hurting so much? Images flashed before my eyes, all kinds from when I was a little girl until the hit in the head I got from Sangmin.

“Hwani, relax.” I felt a hand on my shoulder as Sung Yeol told me that. But it was hard to relax when I knew what Sangmin had done. And I knew that he would do it again, only that next time it could have the same ending as my dream. That one of them actually died. Something that I couldn’t let happen.

Once the worst of the pain had lessened I looked up and stared right into Sung Yeol’s eyes, but instead of keeping it like that I found myself looking over at MyungSoo. I needed to tell them now, but the doctor hadn’t left yet. Something that I told him and he gave me a frown before actually disappearing from my sight together with the nurse.

I broke loose my stare from MyungSoo and simple just stared right forward, without fixing my eyes at any of them before I began.

“Please, just stay away from me. I don’t want any of you two to get hurt and if you step in like MyungSoo did then it’ll only trigger him on further and it will only get worse. And what happened earlier today, I can’t let that happen again.” In the middle of my speech I directed my gaze to MyungSoo, as if it was directed to him. I know that the both of them have helped me out, but MyungSoo is the only one of them that got beaten as well.

Silence filled the air and I could sense that the atmosphere became rather awkward, but I was doing this for them. Or maybe it was for my own good. “Nothing happened today.” MyungSoo broke the silence and I turned to look at him. What was he talking about? “It’s Saturday today, you’ve been in a coma for five days.” My eyes widened at Sung Yeol’s statement.

“W-what?”

So I had missed yet another week in school.

“Don’t you remember what happened?” it was Sung Yeol speaking this time as well, and I shook my head in a small light movement so that my head wouldn’t hurt. Well, I could remember snippets of what had happened. Such as the pain I felt inside of me when Sangmin hurt MyungSoo. That was probably the most overwhelming feeling that I had right now, much more than that I couldn’t remember, except for the hit in my head. Other than that, it was nothing else.

A soft sigh escaped Sung Yeol’s lips before he bent forward and planted a light kiss on my lips, something that came as such a surprise that my eyes were still fixed on MyungSoo. I couldn’t help but notice that he pressed his jaws together at the sight of the two of us.

Hesitantly I pulled away and glanced at the floor while telling them once more that they should just pretend that they don’t know me. And if they see me in school they should just walk past me like I didn’t exist. Because that was what I was going to do, pretend that they didn’t exist.

I watched as Sung Yeol briskly stood up and then stomped out off the room like a little child. MyungSoo only glared at me before he too exited the room, and I could literally feel how my heart sank as well as tears began to form in my eyes.

Somewhere I wondered if I had made the right decision in pushing the two of them away, but on the other hand. Aren’t you supposed to keep the ones that mean the most to you safe?