Wide Awake- Katy Perry

The corridor seemed to stretch endless before the four of us as we stepped out of the elevator.

A grey hue tinted the misty sky outside, and the smell of rain clouded the air. A few thin clouds painted selective parts of the atmosphere a faded white. Even the sky seemed tentative, wondering about the future, undecided between whether to cry or to smile.

Room 418.

I began walking first, as expected of the leader, and the oldest...the oldest here and now. The polished ceramic floor reflected the muted sounds of my footfalls, bouncing them off the equally harsh white walls. I heard their footsteps follow soon after, hesitant and quiet, as if afraid to make noise in case they disturbed someone.

403, 406, 410…

The tarnished bronze number plates seemed to glower down at me from their fixation in the dark wooden doors, as if sniffing in disapproval. My pace quickened slightly, my heart anxious to see what waited at the end of the line, but dreading it all the same.

He’s alive. That was all we knew, and really, right now, it was all that mattered.

My stomach twisted uncomfortably as we passed room 417, and my footsteps faltered outside its screened-in window. The door beckoned, just a metre away.

Before I could move another inch, though, a voice, muffled by the wall between us, stopped me.

It was soft, low, soothing, like the gentle strumming of a harp. Inexplicable relief and security rushed into me at the sound, and I hastily signalled for the others to wait, listening more carefully to what he was saying.

I caught the others frowning in confusion as we listened to him speak, but I understood right away. He was speaking in the Chungju dialect.

“...yes Mother, the doctor says I’ll be fine. I just need to rest for a couple of weeks...”

There was silence for a while, as he paused to listen.

“I miss you and Father too...” his voice wavered ever so slightly here, but it was back to normal almost immediately. “How have you all been? Did Noona recover from her flu?”

A smile quirked at the edge of my mouth here: it was so like him to worry about the health of someone else when he’d just escaped death by a narrow margin.  

There was a low chuckle from inside the room. “Maybe I can use the operation as an excuse to come back home and see you all?”

It’d been ages since any of us had had the chance to see our family, I realised. He was silent for a while more.

“Say hello to noona for me, umma? I’ll call you again soon?”

I straightened, feeling a strange sense of serenity and relief overcome the atmosphere. It was a strange sensation, after a whole night of grief and anxiety. It felt like a fuzzy blanket on a cold night, or rush of cool water on a scorching afternoon. It comforted me.

Moving forward, a touch more confidence in my step, I turned the handle of the door and pushed it open slowly and light flooded the shadowed, dim corridor from the room. Looking in, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I braved on all the same.

I was presented a scene just a little different from what I was used to seeing, but something undeniably familiar as well.

Dong Woo was sitting upright on the elevated hospital bed, surrounded by standard white pillows, still loosely holding the hospital telephone in one hand. His dark hair was a sleepy tousle and he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

I suddenly stopped there, unsure of what to do next. He squinted at me, craning forward slightly to try and identify me, and I blinked, wondering for a moment if I should tell him who I was or something.

“Jin Young?”

I opened my mouth to acknowledge, but I was most rudely pushed aside by three increasingly impatient youths.

“DONG WOO HYUNG!” was pretty much all the warning they gave before simultaneously launching themselves onto him, arms outstretched.

I could only chuckle as they proceeded to clamber all over his shell-shocked form, pelting him with questions and bouncing impatiently on his bed.

“Hyung, what was the operation like?”

“Did they really cut open your stomach?”

“Hyung, was it painful?”

“Can we see your scar?”

“Will I get appendicitis too?”

“Hyung, did you die?”

“Let him breathe,” I said, amused, as I walked over to sit at the foot of his bed. “He did just go through a seven-hour operation, you know.”

They calmed down just enough for him to struggle out one sentence.

“Did anyone bring a pair of my glasses?”

Baro scratched the back of his head. “Er, no. What happened to the ones you were wearing?”

“The nurse “lost” them,” Dong Woo grumbled. “She probably just kept them to sell on ebay to some crazy fangirl or something, now I can’t see a thing.”

All of us laughed at this, though the chances of that assumption being true were considerably high. But our laughter was mostly from relief- relief that Dong Woo was really alright, that he was still the same old hyungnim we were used to, that everything was going back to normal nicely.

I smiled again, this time a little wider, as Sandeul and Chanshik continued to ask Dong Woo weird questions, and Baro started poking his abdomen in random places to see if he could find his scar.

Everything was going to be alright. I knew that now.

The sky outside cleared just a little.

*

“What is that?” Sandeul asked, a mixture of curiosity and repulsion in his voice.

We were all gathered on Dong Woo’s hospital bed the next morning, (except Baro, who was sprawled out on the neighbouring one) staring, transfixed, at a little jar he was holding and inspecting, or rather, the contents of the little jar.

The doctor had come in some time ago and had given Dong Woo some prescription drugs and water, as well as that little jar. After he’d taken the medicine, our attention was then brought to the strange item in the jar.

“Hyung, what is that?” Sandeul repeated, but Dong Woo didn’t answer him, still examining the object closely.

We were all silent for a while more, staring at the jar, until Chanshik shot up off the bed with a horrified shriek that could probably be heard by the border guards in North Korea, and pointed in disgust at the jar with a trembling finger.

“OHMYGOD, HYUNG IS THAT YOUR APPENDIX?!”

There followed a chorus of “ohhs” and “ewws”, and Sandeul and I patting Chanshik’s traumatised, shivering form soothingly, and assuring him that it wasn’t going to come out and eat him, until Baro spoke.

“Well I thought that was a pretty weird way to transport sausages.”

Dong Woo threw the jar at him.

*

“This one’s from Kim Sang-Mi,” I read aloud, from where I lay on my bed. “She says: “Get well soon, oppa, we miss you in performances. Take care of yourself and eat properly, okay?” Aw, that’s nice of her.”

We were all gathered in our room, taking turns to read out letters of encouragement from the fans. Baro and Chanshik were sitting on the floor, taking out the envelopes from the bag we’d lugged over from the main company building, and Sandeul, Dong Woo and I were lying on our bunks.

“A foreign fan all the way from America sent you a teddy bear, hyung,” Baro said, impressed. “She wrote in Korean too. She says: “Get better soon, oppa! I sent you a little friend to keep you company in the meantime!” Heart heart heart happy face happy face, more hearts, teddy bear. Cute. Now you have a little brother, hyung.”

“This fan gave a heater blanket!” Chanshik cheered as he extracted a fluffy dark blue blanket from the large bag. He immediately turned it on and snuggled underneath it, wrapping it around himself like a cocoon, till only the top of his head was visible.

“That is for Dong Woo hyung, you know,” I said pointedly to the dark blue lump on the floor, now rising and falling steadily.

“Sung-ha here says,” Sandeul cleared his throat. “Are you okay, oppa? I had appendicitis when I was sixteen too. My umma says these herbs will help you heal faster. Just boil them in hot water overnight and add it into your soup for drinking.”

“That’s practical of her, most of the fans just gave chocolate,” Baro commented as he opened the red box containing several oddly shaped roots and leaves.

“Which the doctor strictly included out of my diet,” Dong Woo complained, as he opened another envelope.

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Sandeul said, turning to stare innocently down at Dong Woo as he popped another piece of the candy into his mouth.

*

“Well?” I asked anxiously, as the doctor stood, folding his stethoscope back into his bag. The four of us, plus our manager, were hovering over Dong Woo’s bed, waiting for the doctor to give us the verdict on Dong Woo’s healing progress.

“Well, I think he’s healing considerably fast,” The doctor said, ticking something on his clipboard, before pulling off his disposable white gloves. “The scar hasn’t undergone any further infection, and his body’s coping well with the follow-up treatment. I say he should be able to join you during your official schedule in about a week or so.”

We waited until Manager had accompanied the doctor out of the dorm before the three boys leapt onto Dong Woo’s bed, yelling and jumping and hugging him.

“We need to celebrate this,” Baro declared, rolling off the bed onto the floor.

“Food!” Jung Hwan cheered.

“Video games!” Baro argued.

“Shopping!” Chanshik insisted.

An extremely stretched silence followed, in which all of us turned to stare at the maknae.

“...what?” Chanshik said defensively. “The physical sales for SNSD’s latest album just started, okay?”

“How about,” I said, raising my voice just enough to get their attention. “We get a movie into the DVD player and I make some popcorn?”

“Okay!” The three of them scrambled out of the room, now arguing over which movie to watch.

“Thank you,” Dong Woo rolled his eyes, gripping onto the ladder on his bunk to stand up from the bed.

“No problem,” I chuckled, offering a hand to help him up.

*

“Guys,” I announced, putting my phone down on the old table in the dance studio. “Manager says we’re performing on Inkigayo’s Take 7 in four days.”

Four sets of eyes snapped to me hopefully, waiting for me to say the words they’d been anticipating for weeks now.

“And yes,” I sighed. “Dong Woo can join us now.”

“YAY!”

The tiny studio erupted into cheers, as Sandeul and Baro started doing a victory dance on the studio couch.

“Good!” Chanshik beamed. “I’m sick of singing hyung’s lines and dancing alone. You have the dumbest lines, hyung.”

“Yah!” Dong Woo tackled Chanshik to the ground, tickling him, and the other two, delighted at the insinuation of a new tussle, joined in at once.

“You know,” I said, bemused, as I walked to stand over them. “If we’re going to perform, we’re actually going to have to practice.”

“Ahh, shut up, hyung,” Baro snorted, and Dong Woo reached up to grab my wrist, and despite my shouted protests, dragged me down with inhuman strength onto the human dogpile with the rest of them.

It was then, when I finally joined in to tickle Chanshik senseless, laughing along with the rest of them, that something just clicked back into place in my mind, setting me at ease at last, blowing all the haze that shrouded my confidence clear out of my head. I settled down in a cross-legged position on the floor, unable to wipe the smile off my face.

Everything was going to be alright.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note:

I know I really don't have the right to write this.

I'm sorry for the unforgivable delay >.< How do I say this? I kind of went through a mini writer's block after posting the 9th chapter of Shattered Secrets. I kind of just started hating everything I wrote, like literally loathing it. I tried writing a few oneshots to clear it, like Beautiful and the other Badeul one, but nothing was working, and I was pretty frustrated with life in general ._. I failed my Mathematics test badly and my grandfather was hospitalised, and other messing-up-life stuff happened. So...I'm sorry I couldn't update earlier.

But I woke up at 6 this morning and just felt really restless, so I came out and wrote for four hours straight (It's how I wrote Beautiful too) and this is...the result? Is it...acceptable? I realised I was just sick of the tension and emo-ness, so I wanted this chapter to have a much lighter feel to it, because we just have enough of emo-ness in life already :) 

The next and last chapter will be something like the epilogue :) So will you guys forgive me for being such an of an author? 

And...just asking...but based on my writing alone, how old do you think I am? (Weird question, yes, but I'm a weird person, so.)

Thank you all for supporting me and this story so far, and I hope I will continue to have your support for the next chapter to come :) Will you guys continue to comment?

Sincerely
WhiteWings19

P.S. Do check out B1A4's Beautiful Target Japanese version :) I love these boys <3