summary -

the italics signify his past memories coming back

The beeping got incessantly louder as Jongdae’s eyes flicker open slowly. He squints, blinded by harsh overhead lights and a horrendous white ceiling. He's always hated white.

“He's coming round!” Shouts can be heard around the room, and the frantic clanking of machinery starts to quieten.

Two unfamiliar faces lean over Jongdae. Although right now, everything seems unfamiliar.

“Hello, Jongdae. Can you hear me?” One of them asks, smiling. It's meant to be friendly, but Jongdae finds it disturbing and incredibly fake, and shies away.

He nods once.

“Good.” They lean to whisper in the other person’s ear. Jongdae can hear the muttering, but not what they're saying.

He turns his head to look around the room. He appears to be lying on a hospital bed. There's a needle in the back of each of his hands, and he's hooked up to a machine that beats in sync with the rhythmic thump of his heart.

He now decides that the people who are speaking to him are doctors. He wrinkles his nose in disgust. He's never liked doctors. They always wear white.

“What's your name, boy?” A doctor asks. His glasses sit precariously on the end of his nose, and his pen is poised against a clipboard.

“Um,” Jongdae pauses. He can't quite remember… what did the doctors call him earlier? “Jongdae, I think.”

The doctor looks unimpressed. “Right. How old are you, Jongdae?”

Jongdae shrugs. He has no idea.

“Do you know where you come from? You're far, far from home. Any family members we can contact?” Again, Jongdae shakes his head hopelessly.

The doctor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “What can you remember?”

Jongdae thinks hard. He remembers waking up to harsh white. He remembers hating white. Everything before white is black, though.

“I remember darkness.” Jongdae murmurs.

The doctor stands. He speaks quickly to an assistant, and all Jongdae catches is “severe case of amnesia”. What's amnesia?

“Hello, Jongdae.” A nurse comes over to him, resting her hand on his shoulder in a weird attempt at a connection. Jongdae has refused food for the past three days, saying he doesn't know what it is, and has had to be fed through a tube. “Jongdae, remember me?”

Jongdae rolls his eyes. Nurse 2739 has visited him every day since he woke up, greeting him with a scarily toothy smile and a happy voice that screams fake. Jongdae hasn't bothered to learn her real name.

Tests are run every day. He's wheeled about the hospital to different wings, seeing no face more than once. A new day, a new doctor, a new room, a new test. No new conclusions.

Severe amnesia. How to trigger the memories?

They won't let him go outside. Jongdae’s bed faces a window, a contrast from bleak white to gorgeous blue and rich greens outside. He stares blankly through the window, listening to the monotonous tick, tick of the clock. He tried to leave his bed once, and was forced back under the covers two minutes later when a nurse walked in and was adamant that he should “Go back to bed, and rest.”

Jongdae is tired of resting. He is tired of not knowing.

It's a month later when a nurse leaves her pencil and paper behind. It's just within his reach: if he stretches his arm far enough, he can reach the nurses table. He grabs the clipboard and pulls it onto the bed in front of him. Jongdae closes his eyes, running his fingers over the paper in front of him, finally remembering what paper feels like.

Jongdae remembers paper. He remembers something: he remembers sitting for hours in front of a heavy pad of cartridge paper - mostly watercolour paper though. Was I an artist, Jongdae wonders. Certainly the pencil feels right in his hand. He rolls the pencil through his fingers gently, before putting it to the paper. The room in front of him starts to form: a stylised version of the wall and window that portrays inside as a hellish contrast to the heaven of the outside sunshine.

An hour later, when the nurse finds his drawing slipping off the bed as Jongdae sleeps, she studies the drawing closely. T