CHAPTER TWENTY

those who stay

The police got in touch with Jongin the next day, admitting to the fact that they have barely found any leads regarding his sister’s death. They would have to discontinue active investigation, until further notice. Jongin had expected it from the start, but felt that he needed such a formal announcement from the other party.

‘Are you okay with that?’ Soojung asked.

Jongin did not answer and did not appear to object much to the circumstances he had landed himself in, although there was an apparent slight sadness in his dark eyes.

‘You do know this means no more hoping,’

After what was like a long pause. ‘I’m sure,’ he nodded. ‘But I want to say goodbye to her, and I want you guys to be there.’

‘We’ll do whatever you want,’ Chanyeol offered.

‘They said they had a small tombstone built for her. I haven’t gone there myself-‘

‘Just tell us when you want to go,’ Soojung pressed an assuring hand on his shoulder. Jongin nodded in appreciation. ‘I think she deserves a proper funeral.’

‘Thanks,’ Jongin’s smile was unsteady, as if he was not used to such words. No one said anything else. Rei and Sehun were busy with training and the three decided they should pay Baekhyun a visit. ‘Do you want to come along?’ Soojung asked Jongin.

‘I think I’ll pass.’ He gave a sorry smile. ‘I have to go to work.’ He said.

Baekhyun’s parents had not responded to the school upon finding out he was hospitalized.

When they arrived, they were immediately entertained by the doctor in charge of Baekhyun. He was sleeping, he told them. ‘Tell us everything,’ Chanyeol had asked. ‘What is the disease doing to him?’

‘You are aware that anorexia is a mental illness? That is the first thing you should know about it, and that it’s not some kind of destructive diet. Your friend here has a very distorted image of his body which he despises. He hates the way he looks, very, very much. He believes he is fat, when he clearly isn’t, and that worries him, scares him even. And while you might think what he’s doing is entirely his deliberate decision, but it’s not. The very reason he is suffering, is because he has lost control.’

‘What can cause that to happen?’

‘We can’t pinpoint one cause, but people who suffer from eating disorders may have been bullied for their appearance or traumatized in some way. In your friend’s case, since he is a model, I would not be surprised if it aggravated his lack of self-esteem. Some models do suffer from these diseases, because their work usually requires them to be abnormally thin and they lose control.’

‘He can recover can’t he?’

‘It will take a while but no, it’s not impossible. What I ask of you, is that you support him. Understand how he feels. It’s an easy mistake to blame the patient for a mental disease, but it’s still a mistake. Don’t be those people,’

Chanyeol was quieter. Some words the doctor spoke fleeted through his mind like air. He did not admit that he still failed to understand what Baekhyun was feeling. When the doctor had called Chanyeol again, this time to sit down and talk with Baekhyun, he felt anxious, awkward even. Reading “PSYCHIATRIC WARD” above the entrance of the department made Chanyeol’s stomach lurch uncomfortably.

Funnily, when Chanyeol walked into the room Baekhyun was in, he seemed to emit the same hesitance on his face as Chanyeol had. It was 6 and the sun was still blazing beyond the urban horizon outside. The ward was not as hectic as the general clinic, but Chanyeol felt like a cat on hot bricks. The room was small and had a total of only eight patients. Baekhyun was at the edge-most bed, right by the window.

The bright yellow light outlined the curvature of his face, eating into the image of his skin. The colour of his skin itself looked grey, and Chanyeol could spot bags under his eyes. Across Baekhyun’s bed, a patient was humming while facing the wall behind his bed, muttering words he did not understand. Baekhyun did not blink at all.

Trying his best to ignore the other patient, Chanyeol took a stool and sat beside Baekhyun’s bed. Neither of them immediately looked at each other in the first moment until Chanyeol broke the silence. ‘Well, talk.’ he said monotonously.

‘I thought you’d be a little nicer since I’m unwell.’ The tone in Baekhyun’s voice clearly showed distaste for Chanyeol’s intonation. ‘Or do you still believe I’m doing this on purpose?’

Chanyeol’s gaze strayed further away. ‘Who told you that?’

‘It doesn’t take much of a thought to know what you would think, you know. And I know you better than everyone else in this damn country,’

Guilt toppled the pride inside Chanyeol, and he said no more. ‘I know what you think about my condition. You don’t have be here if you don’t want to be,’

‘I’m trying to help you get better, alright?’ he finally faced Baekhyun in the eyes.

‘Too bad. I don’t want to get better,’

‘They’ll make you.’

Baekhyun let out a scoff, as if mocking Chanyeol’s statement. ‘You’re stupid sometimes. What makes you think gaining weight makes my sickness go away? Did you honestly think they held me back here because I wasn’t heavy enough? Is that what you think this is about?

Chanyeol was silenced.

‘Then what is it about?’ his voice softened.

‘What does it matter? You won’t understand, anyway.’

‘I’m trying my best!’ Chanyeol raised his voice, much to the surprise of some other patients and a nurse in the room. Cursing himself, Chanyeol regained control. ‘I’m trying my best.’

The patient who sat across Baekhyun began making whining sounds, moving uneasily on his bed and scratching his ears as if trying to tear away something.  The nurse present immediately attended to him. Obviously Chanyeol’s voice had triggered such a reaction from him.

‘You don’t even believe what the doctor told you. What makes you think you even want to help me? I’m just a patient, Chanyeol. But I’m sick in the head. Yes, you can’t see it. But if you don’t want to believe it, then no one’s making you stay.’

‘You’re a pain in the , you know that?’

‘Sir-‘ the nurse approached him.

‘I know, I’m leaving.’ He said before she could pull him out.

The look on his face gave Chanyeol away. ‘Chanyeol, really?’ Soojung was expressive in her disappointment. She sighed, massaging her forehead. ‘You seriously have to deal with your load of crap before you walk in there and talk to him.’

‘It’s his crap I’m dealing with!’

‘For God’s sake, he’s your boyfriend! Why can’t you tone down? For once!’

‘He said he’s sick in the head. What am I supposed to do about that? What can anyone do about that?’

Soojung pursed her lips tight. The rage were bursting at the seams and her patience was wearing so dangerously thin. ‘You know how people get sick in the head? Baekhyun’s kind has killed the most people. It kills, Chanyeol. I don’t know what sort of problems you have that you can’t even have a decent talk with Baekhyun ever since he got in here, but I swear to God you won’t be saying ‘What am I supposed to do about that?’ if tomorrow he ends up dead.’

Chanyeol had nothing more to say, and no more reason to stay. He disappeared elsewhere, perhaps to kick something or release his anger. Soojung crossed her arms, similarly furious at the other.

‘Unbelievable,’ she muttered.

‘Can I talk to him?’ Kyungsoo offered.

Soojung nodded without looking at him.

‘Okay.’ Kyungsoo shyly took himself into the psychiatric ward. It was not witnessing Chanyeol that made him nervous; but the very basis that he was to sit down and talk to another boy. Kyungsoo had enough friends to get by before moving to Seoul, but his relationship with them had been strictly conservative in a sense that none of them (including himself) expressed themselves about their problems, particularly never about their physical insecurities.

Baekhyun was tight-lipped when Kyungsoo went in. The white hospital gown he wore over his head accentuated the paleness of his face and the unsettling darkness under his eyes. He wore no smile that day; the smile that had become his identity. ‘Hey,’ Kyungsoo said shyly.

Baekhyun merely gave him a nod as acknowledgement of his presence.

‘Doesn’t it get lonely here?’

‘It does. It’s the loneliest 24 hours I’ve ever had in my entire life.’ Baekhyun sighed. ‘Even the nurses won’t talk to me. Who wants to talk to someone from the psych ward? I think I can think and speak normally but they see me the same as everyone else in here. In fact, the only time they ever talk to me is when they bring me food and I can’t eat and they keep telling me “It’s alright. Bit by bit,”.’

Kyungsoo listened and remained quiet as he sat next to Baekhyun.

‘In fact, those are the only things they say to any of us in here. Comforting, but all you hear are robots.’

‘Is it hard? To eat, I mean.’

‘What are you scared of doing? Think of one thing.’ He said.

‘Dissecting a rat.’

‘Imagine having to dissect 3 rats every single day, and you cannot escape it at all. People will keep telling you “It’s okay, it’s fine. It’ll be alright.” But you just can’t hear them no matter what.’

‘Is that what it feels like?’

‘For me it is.’ He shrugged as if it was no more than a harmless preference.

‘I read that it makes you sick.’

‘It does.’ His eyes dropped. ‘The way bad food makes you feel sick. Or when you see something horrible, and you get that feeling in your stomach, you know?’

Kyungsoo nodded quietly. His silence was assuring. Baekhyun felt like he understood, even if he did not speak much. Maybe he did not understand it all, but there was comfort in knowing someone is sitting beside him and willing to listen to him, and Baekhyun knows he did not try to influence anything he said with his own opinions. That lack of judgement was assuring indeed.

‘What do you do besides meals? Is there a special medication?’

‘The doctors gave me anti-depressants when I kept crying after I ate my dinner. I was hysterical.’ Again, the indifference in Baekhyun’s eyes made Kyungsoo alarmed. ‘I don’t remember much but when I woke up it all came back to me. I thought it was a dream. I was dying to get to the bathroom to vomit everything out and everyone just had to calm me down and put me to sleep.’

Kyungsoo felt sorry but had no idea how to express it (again, this was caused by the lack of practice Kyungsoo had with his previous American friends). ‘I guess I’m not different from the other patients in here at all.’

‘Will they let you out?’

‘They have to. They said if I weigh 120 pounds at least, they’ll release me.’

120 pounds? Even I’m more than 130! Kyungsoo could hear himself. The sadness within him deepened, he felt as if he was inside a hole and it was digging deeper and deeper. ‘So you’ll gain weight then?’ Kyungsoo did not sound happy, nor sad.

‘For now. I’ll lose it all again once I’m out.’

Kyungsoo nodded.

‘But don’t tell anyone about that.’

‘I won’t.’ he promised.

‘You’re quiet, but you’re pretty cool. Very different from Chanyeol.’

Kyungsoo did not know what to make of such a comparison. ‘Does your parents know?’

‘Probably,’ he said, as if it did not matter either way, and Baekhyun knew it did not. Before the modelling agencies, there was Baekhyun’s family; a group of tightly-knitted people whom Baekhyun did not identify with. Baekhyun was the second out of three siblings, and the “ugliest and unhealthiest”, he told Kyungsoo.

Both Baekhyun’s parents were in the sports field; they both taught Physical Education in the same school in his hometown. In their spare time, they were devoted runners, sports players, swimmers and participants of any other physical event they could come across. Their love for sports were rubbed off on both Baekhyun’s older sister and younger brother, who were often celebrated for their school achievements.

Baekhyun, on the other hand, preferred fashion and photography. Though his grades were above average, his differences were not appreciated as much. On weekends when the entire family would go for marathons, Baekhyun would often refuse, preferring solitude at home which he used to expand his creative hobbies. ‘Staying at home drawing sissy dresses isn’t going to prevent you from diabetes.’ His mother would say every time he rejected their invitation, glaring the candies he would often eat as he did his work.

Baekhyun was not foreign to insults of his body and they mocked him where food was concerned. He ‘stayed at home too much’, had ‘too much flab’ on his stomach. ‘Look at your brother. He’s got more muscles on his limbs than you do on that plump fat of yours!’ they would laugh aloud with his aunts and uncles whenever they came by.

When they find out his ambition to become a model, they laughed even harder. It spurred his hatred and with tears b in his eyes, he finally resorted to move to Seoul. He wanted to prove them nothing, only wished him gone from their lives and they from his. Of course, no one could truly erase the past. Their mocking shaped who he was. His mother’s strict food rules became an innate habit within him that Baekhyun began examining every single thing he ate. Did it contain oil? Is it processed? Was it candy?

If there was no little brother to amplify his lack of appreciation for his physical self, there were taller, fitter boys roaming around school compounds like lions; so great, so mighty, so beautiful they were.

Baekhyun did not remember how it happened, but it did. And he was glad it did.

‘At least I can control myself that I don’t eat. Now I can say I have self-control.’

Kyungsoo could only offer a smile.