Chapter 15: Waking Up (7468 words) 

"Woke the Up"- Jon Bellion 

"Time is running out, yeah 

Need to let you know that

Last night I woke the up 

Realized I need you here, as desperate as that sounds"

    Mingyu busted through the doors of the hospital and tried to think coherently for a second as to not waste anymore time. ‘Where would he be? Would he be in his room or Intensive Care? The ER maybe? Was it that recent? Could it be something they couldn't treat in his room? Mingyu thought back to the main doctor over his case, he remembered he recognized another one of the numbers that had called him and left a voicemail. Clicking on the number, Mingyu heard the doctor’s voice calmly coming through the speakers. Mingyu ran, putting his phone back into his pocket to the place that had begun to feel like home, room 351 on the pediatric cancer floor. 

    The sight that greeted his eyes whenever he walked into the room was both overwhelming and non-eventful. The one person in the room that he should be concerned about looked… normal. Wonwoo was lying on the bed asleep. There was nothing unusual about that at all. Mingyu almost wanted to hope that all this commotion and disarray had actually just been a big joke or maybe a misunderstanding or overreaction to Wonwoo’s tendency to sleep. A lot. Even for a cancer patient, Wonwoo slept abnormally large amounts and that’s saying something.

    Still, there were aspects of the room that did cause Mingyu’s heart to stutter a bit. The sleeping boy who somehow looked both extremely tired and unearthly beautiful wasn’t the concern to Mingyu at all. No, as usual, it was the other people in the room. The first person other than Wonwoo that Mingyu took note of was Wonwoo’s mother. She was crying, but she did that a lot. The difference was that this time it wasn't a weak and lost cry, rather the tears seemed much more directional and pointed. She was genuinely past the point of her normal stress. That made Mingyu worry. He realized in that moment that throughout his time with Wonwoo, he had never really felt fear or doubt. Sure, he contemplated the possible negative ends to their story on the regular, but somewhere deep inside he just knew it would work out fine. Maybe thats just because Wonwoo could only go up. Now that he's improved, he can definitely reverse back in the opposite direction. 

    The next person Mingyu noticed in the room was none other than his dear, slightly evil hyung, Jihoon. Thats when his heartbeat really picked up. Jihoon never physically showed emotions. The only emotions his face might portray was anger but this was the first time he'd seen Jihoon stressed. And of course Mingyu then noticed Joshua and Jeonghan boo-hooing as they raced in almost directly after Mingyu. The last person Mingyu had noticed was probably by choice. The one sitting next to Wonwoo with silent tears moving down his cheeks. 

    The look in his eyes confirmed things for Mingyu, #1: Seungcheol was undoubtedly in love with Wonwoo. #2: He looked extremely guilty #3: Both made Mingyu extremely and irrationally angry. He cursed his extremely self observant self as he felt unavoidable and inappropriate words bubbling up under the surface. 

    “What happened.” Mingyu said very pointedly towards Seungcheol’s direction. Jihoon looked at him with a very angry look that very clearly said, “Back the hell up, shut the up, you're overreacting” Mingyu could see the cringe wake throughout Seungcheol’s entire body and knew exactly what that meant as well, the dislike was mutual