He could hear everything, the clattering of the nurses shoes as her heels slapped the tile, the taps of the doctor’s pen as he took notes on his clipboard, the beeps signaling his heartbeat on the monitor that he was connected to, the silent click of the door as it shut after the doctor left.

They thought he was asleep because they were the ones who put him into the slumber to begin with, but it was quite opposite of that: he was perfectly conscious. He could feel them touching him, smell the familiar cologne of the doctor who checked on him everyday, hear them talking about his condition; he just couldn’t open his eyes or command himself to move.

He felt like he was stuck in a prison, trapped by walls on all four sides and chained to his bed. He prayed every single day for someone to wake him up, to rescue him from the torture chamber he was shackled to for no reason, someone to rid him of his loneliness. But the only people who ever came were the doctors and nurses who injected him with medicine that made his life a living hell.

When three years past by and no one had come, he began to pray for someone to kill him. Even death was better than being subjected to the dark abyss he was engulfed in. His muscles had deteriorated from disuse and he didn’t even have the strength to slit his own wrist.

Silently, he allowed a tear to slide down his pale cheeks as the cruel reality hit him like a 10 ton boulder. No one was ever going to wake him up because he didn’t deserve to be woken up, because to the rest of the world, Cho Kyuhyun had already died of a heart attack three years and two months ago.

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After Kyuhyun’s sudden death, Sungmin decided to pick up the sorry remains of his life and finally do something to make his late boyfriend proud.

He’d re enrolled himself in college and spent three years finishing the med program that he’d been in before meeting Kyuhyun five years ago. It had been love at first sight for both of them when they accidentally bumped into each other at the corner of a street, Sungmin spilling the coffee in his hand all over Kyuhyun’s hand and Kyuhyun hitting Sungmin in the face with a book that had flown out of his arms when they collided. The day they met, Sungmin had been in his second year of med school and Kyuhyun had just become a lawyer.

Sungmin could still remember the glimmer in Kyuhyun’s eyes when they sat next to each other in the emergency room, him sporting a broken nose from Kyuhyun’s book and Kyuhyun nursing a second degree burn on his hand from Sungmin’s coffee. For some reason though, neither was mad at the other and it was during the long wait for the doctor that Sungmin had gotten a closer look at Kyuhyun.

His face was like that of a doll, each feature carefully chiseled and defined, yet soft and smooth. He had a smile that was perhaps brighter than the sun, but not blinding like the light of the sun. They had met for less than ten minutes but it seemed like they known each other for eternity. One could say they were destined by fate to meet, rather it was at that street corner or somewhere else.

A month after they met, they started to date in secret. Exactly 4 weeks later, Sungmin’s parents found out.

Having been from a proper korean family, dating someone of the same was considered outrageous. Naturally, his parents strongly opposed his relationship with Kyuhyun. But Sungmin was just a boy in love.

The day after his parents threatened to disown him, Sungmin rented his own apartment and moved in with Kyuhyun. The saying goes though, that there is no such thing as free lunch. In order for him to be able to pay for the rent, he had to work full time. Kyuhyun’s pay as a lawyer was more than enough for them to live on, but Sungmin’s pride wouldn’t allow him depend on Kyuhyun without contributing his own share. Furthermore, now that Sungmin had severed ties with his parents, it meant he was going to have to pay for college with his own money, and that would be near impossible. In Sungmin’s mind, the solution to this was simple. He dropped out of college and began to work as a full time barista.

Before he died, Kyuhyun had been trying to persuade him to return to college and complete med school. His boyfriend had insisted that his own salary was more than enough to support the two of them, but Sungmin had refused time after time. Yet Kyuhyun never gave up.

"If I die one day, I want you to live a happy life. Pursue your dreams, find another man better than me, anything, just don’t be sad."

Sungmin took a deep breathe as he entered the familiar hospital, the very same one that the love of his life had died in. He could almost see himself collapsing into a chair as a no longer breathing Kyuhyun was wheeled into the ER. The sense of regret came flooding back, never had he wished he had finished mel school sooner more than the very moment his lover left his side. He could feel his eyes welling up and he almost had the urge to bolt out the large double doors. As much as he wanted to run, he recognized that it wasn’t an option if he wanted to be a doctor and instead took to staring at the entrance to the ER for several moments, Honestly, he would have prefered to work at a different hospital, but it was as if life was on a mean streak; he wasn’t given a second choice. Feet heavy, he slowly walked to the counter and introduced himself.

Ten minutes later, he found himself zoning out the chatter of the doctor next to him who was giving him a tour of the hospital. Staring down the long hallway, it seemed like a fairly ordinary in-patient ward. Everything was arranged in an orderly fashion and painted all the same shade of white. That is, everything except the door at the very end of the corridor. The only door with a passcode lock, it seemed to emit a different aura even though it was designed in the same style as the doors to other wards. His curiosity got the better of him and he cut the rambling doctor off.

“What’s in the door at the very end of the hall? The one with the passcode lock.”

The doctor suddenly had nothing to say and he could feel the atmosphere growing tenser by the second. His personality took a 180 degree turn and the features of his face sharpened.

“That’s the restricted ward. Only the director himself and the head nurse are allowed in there. No one knows for sure what’s behind it, because so far, none of the people who have attempted to get past it have lived to tell the tale. If you want that pretty face of yours to stay attached to your body, I suggest that you don’t prod any further into this matter. Don’t dig yourself too deep of hole, otherwise you’ll never be able to get out.”

Allllllllllright. So, yes I know the story is very confusing right now, but I promise everything will be cleared up in the next chapter(there'll be a flashback). Sorry for taking so long to update such a crappy chapter of this story but please do feel free to comment.