CHAPTER THREE | Still Alive

Rowoon felt warm. It wasn’t a died-and-gone-to-heaven kind of warm, but a cozy kind of warm. His body was relaxed, feeling light as a feather, but everything was black. He couldn’t see a thing. It was a surreal sensation that led him to believe that he was, in fact, dead. But if this was heaven, then he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. It wasn’t what he pictured at all. Where were the angels, the clouds, the gates, or the tearjerking slide show of his entire live up until now? There was nothing. Just blackness and silence.

“I’m going to go get some lunch, is there anything you’re hungry for?” A voice echoed through the dark abyss.

“Wait. I know that voice.” Rowoon thought, suddenly feeling a rush of energy within himself.

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.” There was another voice that sounded so familiar to him.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Come on you two, stop being so nasty to each other. You’re sending our poor boy bad vibes.”

“Shut it Dawon! If it wasn’t for you always screwing up this wouldn’t have happened in the first place!”

“Dawon?” The name breathed even more life into his body. As the voices argued amongst each other, every word they spoke made it more and more clear to him that he was definitely not dead. Instead, he was just sleeping and all he needed to do was to wake up. “Wake up Rowoon!” He mentally pushed himself, and willing, his brown eyes slowly fluttered open.

“Shhhh! I think he’s waking up!”

A harsh white light stung at Rowoon’s brown orbs as they opened, and he groaned in pain. His head was spinning, and his throat was irritatingly dry. He swallowed hard to wet it and blinked repeatedly to get a good view of his surroundings.

“Rowoon!” A female’s voice called out from beside him. He traced his eyes up to see Sooyoung’s joyous face looking down at him.

“Sooyoung? Where am I?” He rasped.

“You’re in the hospital! Thank god you’re awake!” She his cheek with her thumb and softly caressed the side of his face with her palm.

As his vision adjusted, Rowoon could make out that he was indeed in the hospital. He was laying in a bed under beige blankets that covered most of his body except for his leg that had been slung up into a thick white cast. On each side of him were white curtains that separated him from the rest of the patients in the room.

“We really thought we were going to lose you! You had me blubbering like a baby!” Dawon was sitting at the right side of his bed, beaming a big goofy smile at his best friend. He was sincerely grateful that Rowoon turned out alright, but most importantly, alive.

“What happened?” Rowoon asked.

“You took one mean fall you clutz! Don’t you remember?”

Everything was a blur to him. He could remember searching for Dawon’s dog, but his memory got fuzzy from there.

“Not really…”

“Seriously?! When we found Tilly, we ended up being chased by a bear! How could you forget that??” Dawon exclaimed.

“Let’s see, maybe it’s because he fell and nearly cracked his head open?!” Sooyoung snapped sharply.

“Yeah, I get that!” Dawon snapped back. “I mean, he was conscious and aware of what was going on before I left to get him help. So, I just figured he’d remember.”

Rowoon was stuck on the part about the bear. He could just barely piece together the appearance of the creature in his head. Maybe there were a few details that were coming to him? Like teeth and a large body? Not much else came to mind.

“It was a traumatic experience. It’s normal for him not to remember.” At the sound of his voice, Rowoon realized that Hwiyoung had been standing there at the end of the left curtain wall. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest, but instead of a warm smile like the other two, his expression was solemn. There was something about the way he was looking at him that made him feel uneasy.

“You’re right.” Dawon agreed.

Rowoon tried to sit up but felt shooting pain in his side as he did so.

“Careful.” Sooyoung supported his back and helped adjust his pillows so that he could remain upright.

“That bear really did a number on you.” Dawon said, feeling that he was to blame for that.

Rowoon took a peek down his shirt and spotted the blood-stained bandages covering the bite marks that were left in his flesh. “A bear really did this to me?”

“Apparently! It was planning on making you its late-night snack! Gave you a few good bites and even dragged you a good distance away from where you fell. Now that I think about it, I’m kinda glad you can’t recall what happened.” Dawon recounted the events for him.

“What stopped it from killing me?” Rowoon questioned curiously.

Dawon and Sooyoung exchanged glances then looked to the other boy in the room. “Hwiyoung found you.” Sooyoung replied.

“He fought the bear for yah!” Dawon joked.

Rowoon looked back to Hwiyoung and saw that he was beginning to chew on the nail of his thumb in deep thought. His stare was intense and didn’t break even with them discussing his brave rescue.

Sooyoung smacked Dawon in the head and the boy winced as a result. “Hey!” He rubbed at his stinging head and bit back the curse words that were threatening to escape his mouth.

“Stop being so childish!” She said assertively.

“I went back to look for you both when I got to the house. I thought you were behind me, but I was wrong. It’s a good thing I went back and found you Rowoon. The bear was gone by the time I reached you.” Hwiyoung broke his trance to explain his side of the story.

“He carried you all the way back to the house.” Sooyoung added on.

“You would have never known Hwiyoung was strong enough to carry you.” Dawon commented. “I always thought he was a frail guy with noodle arms.”

“No, that’s you.” Sooyoung remarked.

Dawon scoffed and the two went back and forth at each other, making Rowoon laugh in the process. He was happy and relieved to see them again. If he could only capture this moment and keep it forever. He didn’t care what time it was, or how long he had been asleep. What mattered to him was that he was alive and able to spend another day with his best friends.

“Visiting hours are almost over. You two should start saying your goodbyes.” Hwiyoung warned them after staying silent the rest of the time they were there. Dawon had just finished his story of how his older sister had let him off the hook momentarily for losing her dog out of sympathy for them narrowly escaping death.

“Aww man. Don’t the hours just fly by?” Dawon sighed and hopped off of his place on the bed.

“Yeah, I’ve got to be heading home to get my schoolwork done. Which is something that you should be doing too Dawon.” Sooyoung stood up from her chair and lovingly patted Rowoon’s head as she usually did whenever she left him. “Get better soon Beanpole. And don’t you ever think of helping Dawon with anything again! If he asks you a favor, you run the other way, ok?”

“Understood.” Rowoon chuckled.

“Ok, ok, that’s enough.” Dawon gestured for Sooyoung to get moving and guided her away from his bedside with a small tug of her arm. The girl shot him a look that read “touch me again and I’ll bite your arm off” and Dawon instantly cowered to where Hwiyoung was standing.

“We’ll be back to see you tomorrow after school.” Sooyoung informed him with her signature gummy smile. “Oh! And your parents are coming back early from their business trip to check up on you. They said they’d try to get here by tomorrow night at the latest.” She added in.

“Thanks for the heads up.” Rowoon nodded and waved at them as they started to leave.

“We’ll see yah Rowoon. Eat lots and recover quickly, please!” Dawon waved back at him and rounded the white curtain out of sight with Sooyoung leading the way. It was only Hwiyoung that lingered there, still giving him a strange, pensive look. Rowoon awkwardly waited for him to say something to him, but he remained silent.

“Thank you, Hwiyoung.”

Hwiyoung’s body visibly stiffened when he thanked him and he turned around to follow the others. “Yeah…” He replied with a hint of conviction in his tone, then joined his friends out of the room.

“Was it just me, or did you notice that he wasn’t speaking with a stutter?” Rowoon could still hear Dawon’s voice loud and clear from down the hall.

He laid down in the bed with a smile and pulled the blankets over his shoulders for warmth. He was comfortable despite the pain from his injuries, and he took a long while to try and remember that night to the best of his recollection. Still, nothing was coming to him.

With a sigh, he squirmed to find a convenient position to sleep in and dozed off.

✦✦✦

Getting good rest was proving to be a problem for Rowoon. After sleeping for about an hour, a nurse came to wake him up for a round of medication and to persuade him to get some food into his system.

He wasn’t sure if it was the quality of the food, or if his tastebuds had gone funny, but nothing he ate was sitting right with him. Every bite of rice, every sip of juice tasted sour against his tongue. The more he ate, the sicker he felt.

The nurse made it out to be a possible reaction to the medication or the infection he had contracted from the bear, but for some reason Rowoon thought it was more than that. His hunger was increasing, but no matter what sat in his stomach, his cravings would not be appeased.

Falling back to sleep was rough. With him feeling so nauseous, and none of the medications working to reduce his ailing, he couldn’t keep his eyes closed for more than five minutes.

As the afternoon turned to night. His hunger grew stronger and so did the sickness. Beads of sweat accumulated on the surface of his skin and he restlessly tossed and turned in his bed. His breathing became shallow and his hands started to shake and twitch as his fingers curled inward.

The monitor next to his bed rhythmically started beeping faster and faster, keeping track of his rising heart rate.

The noise caught the attention of a woman who was on the other side of one of the white curtains. She was there looking after her injured son and couldn’t help but peek at the boy on the other side of the makeshift wall.

“Are you ok young man?” The woman asked worriedly. “Do you need me to get a nurse?”

Rowoon was oblivious to her presence and said nothing. His mind was being occupied by flashes of red eyes and scenes of sharp teeth shredding into flesh. He shook his head as an attempt to expel the visions he was having, but they remained. They were like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

“Young man?” She called out to him, causing him to shoot up in his bed, gasping and growling in pain. The woman was startled by his sudden movement and screamed as she retreated to the wall behind her. “I-I-I’m going to get you a doctor ok?” She frantically advised him and hurried out of the room with her heels clanking loudly against the linoleum flooring.

Rowoon’s long black hair covered his eyes as he glanced down at his shaking hands. His fingers were pulsing uncontrollably, and his vision seemed to go in and out of focus. He couldn’t tell if it was just another nightmare, or if this was really happening to him.

The beeping of his heart monitor was blaring in his ears, making him cringe at the high-pitched sound. He covered his ears to block out the noise, but it was just too loud and piercing. His body was burning up. Rowoon ground his teeth together and flexed his neck to the right when he felt an intense heat crawl up his neck in the form of purple webbing that clearly stuck out against his pale skin.

With so much happening, Rowoon’s muddled mind forced him out of his bed. He ripped all of the tubes, needles, and electrodes from his body and unsteadily stammered across the room to the exit.

Rowoon had to use the walls for support as he zigzagged through the hallway. Everything was spinning and a plethora of sounds came at him all at once. He could hear things like dripping water, the flickering of a dying light, and many different voices that pounded at his brain. But there was one sound that was irresistible to ignore. It was like a low growl that beckoned to him to find it. Such a yearning propelled him forward, knocking into chairs and medical supplies that were set out along the walls.

“Excuse me sir? Are you supposed to be out of your bed?!” A male nurse had spotted him as he rounded the corner immediately and rushed to his side, placing both hands on him for support. Doing a quick scan of the boy, he called for backup on his pager.

“You don’t look good at all.” The man muttered and tried to restrain Rowoon who was still driving himself forward, dragging his nails across the wall to pull away.

“Calm down! You need to go back to your room!” The man gripped him tighter, but that made things worse. Rowoon grabbed both of the man’s wrists and bent his arms back so that the man screamed and toppled to the floor in pain.

Nothing was going to stop him from finding the source that was calling out to him. Nothing.

Before backup could make it to his floor, along with the concerned mother from before, Rowoon had taken the elevator down to the basement. When the doors opened, he leaned against the metal frame of the door and heaved rigid breaths. His body was about ready to collapse. Car horns and the sound of screeching tires were like an assault to his ears, but the growl was getting louder. He was getting closer. He needed to find it.

Maneuvering through cars in his gown and heavy cast, he reached an exit door in the very corner of the dark parking garage and shoved his way out of the building. There, the sound was like a soothing song that drowned out all other noises. It rendered him into a hypnotic state.

Off to the side of the building was a collection of trees and bushes all strategically planted to complement the building itself. In the bushes were two red lights that drew Rowoon towards them. The song was the loudest in their direction, so he followed, inching forward bit by bit. The faulty streetlamp above him revealed his own glowing yellow eyes. All he needed was to go a little further. He was so close.

Out of the blue, he was tackled to the ground with enough power to knock the air out of him. He rolled across the pavement with a heavy weight tumbling along with him. As soon as they stopped, he was pinned down by his wrists and Rowoon looked up to see none other than Woomin’s infamous psychopath, Kim Taehyung, staring straight back at him. He was shocked. His trance began to melt away as they locked eyes.

“Snap out of it you idiot!” He hissed and turned in a split second to catch the large creature that came hurling itself at him.

Rowoon was free from his restraints and watched in a panic as Taehyung was pressed up against the brick wall of the hospital by a monstrous animal that snapped and clawed at him viciously. The sight of the creature brought his memories of the previous night hurdling back to him like a wave of remembrance.

“Run !” Taehyung demanded as he fought back against his attacker’s strength.

Rowoon shakily dragged himself backwards then hobbled away as fast as his injured body could carry him, except he didn’t feel the pain anymore. There was not a single ounce of pain that registered as he ran on the leg that he had supposedly almost snapped in half. His body felt energized. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins at a rapid speed. It felt good. It felt like he could run to the next town over without stopping. The feeling was powerful, and he didn’t want it to stop.

Rowoon didn’t know how he had gotten into this situation, or how Kim Taehyung tied into it, but he had no desire to make sense of things now. All he knew was that he needed to get away from that monster.

Navigating through dark alleys and sprinting down barren sidewalks, he came to a screeching stop when something big crashed into the gate of a house in front of him. Two blazing red eyes and the body to match came crawling out of the rubble and dust, growling at him savagely. Saliva spurted from its mouth as it barked and bared its razor-sharp teeth.

“Ooooh god!” Rowoon backed up and darted in the opposite direction. “Why me???” He mentally questioned the universe for putting him through such a ludicrous predicament.

He dove down a narrow alleyway and his eyes nearly bulged out of his head when he saw a big white dog running straight at him. No, it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf. A giant. White. Wolf.

Rowoon squatted low to the ground and covered his head with his arms to shield himself from the oncoming canine. He was ready for an attack, but instead, the wolf jumped over him and clashed with the monster in a mess of fangs and claws ripping and tearing.

Peeking at them with one eye, Rowoon saw his chance and took it, bolting out of the alleyway and into oncoming traffic. Cars skidded to a stop in order to avoid him. The sound of shrieking tires sent electric shocks through his body as he pushed back on the hood of the cars that came just inches from colliding with him.

The sight of him staggering along the sidewalk in his hospital gown drew the attention of some of the people who were passing him by. Rowoon didn’t care to stop for anyone. He pressed past all the bystanders, knocking into a few, and continued to run without showing any sign of slowing down. He didn’t have a clear destination in his head, but his feet subconsciously carried him back to his own neighborhood without stopping. It felt as if he had made it there in a matter of seconds. The familiar street welcomed him with a line of streetlamps that guided him straight to his house. Everything started to get hazy from there.

As he stammered towards his front door, his vision shifted in and out of focus. He was on the verge of blacking out with every blink of his heavy eyes seeming to last longer and longer. The sense of adrenaline and power he had felt just moments ago was slipping away, allowing his body to start to crumble at an alarming rate. As his sight faded to black then slowly returned, he collapsed onto his porch with his ears ringing and the sound of his heavy breathing drowning out all others. The last thing he could remember before fully losing consciousness was the sudden sensation of heat spreading through his body as he feebly reached out for the doorknob of his front door.

Tah-Dah! Third chapter done! Finally...

Taehyung, swooping innnnnnn!!

 Leave a comment! I really wanna hear from you ♥