Blindness stretched on for miles, except for the glow of zebra-crossing stripes. Thoughts took the shadowy forms of people and populated the street. Their paths crossed and they frequently bumped into each other, the collisions pulsating harder with every passing minute. They walked through one another, melded into a single entity for a moment and then, as if with some hesitation, parted without any farewells. Within the confines of their strange and wordless activity the thoughts formed thoughts of their own, thinking and thinking… scheming all by themselves until there was too much to think about, too much to dwell on. In the middle of it all, a giant pool of murky uncertainty kept swallowing the thought-people— one-by-one dragging them into the deepest edges of insanity. Drowning was now a real danger, but the ideas kept running, their minds burning from the excessive speeds.

The thoughts breathed, resurfaced, were snagged back down into the depths of the black whirlpool. A massacre of the mind, a planned annihilation of notions, a ruthless spilling of blood… there was so much blood…

Key lightly jolted off his pillow, his brain automatically creating an escape route from all the unpleasant imagery in his dreams. His sleepy hand landed to his side and was met with an unforgiving coldness, instead of a warm chest and soft hair. When his hand wasn’t slapped away, like it always was, his brain knew something far worse than the dreams was happening here, in reality.

It was like the boy was shocked; made to sit up, sleep still hanging off the ends of his lashes. Through the haze of his half-open eyes he took in the gloomy room. Its walls looked familiar, as if from a dream, with clean squares showing in places where old posters and paintings used to be. It was probably the heat outside, but Key’s ears were ringing. The side of his face felt damp with sweat. The beds on either side of him were squeezed in with his, as always, but empty and…

and what was that…?

What was all that dark stuff?

Blinking once, twice, six times in total, Key’s eyes finally got accustomed enough with the dimness to notice the smears of red on the pillowcase.

Onew’s pillowcase.

When realization slammed into him, his neck felt like it was about to go limp, his jaw tightened then suddenly stuck fast, as if blocking sound. His palms took flight and rose in front of his chest, in some unsure form of defense.

“I—I killed him…!” Key gasped, hands latching onto a trembling mouth. “I killed— I killed him!” He pushed himself backwards, scrabbling to get away from the stains of his crime.

A split second before his body hit the rough carpet, Key began to scream.

The floor taunted him, pricking through his loose clothes. Dampness in the air pressed into him, slapping his chest with difficulty to breathe. Through his yelling, he saw nothing but red; miles and miles of red coloring the sea, the sky, the soil— even his own hands and face. It ran from his nose, dripped over his lips and clashed with his tongue. Swarms of hands grabbed him up and off that coldly mocking floor, while his own pulled at his hair, as if possessed by madness.

“Hyung, hyung!!” a worried voice called to him from between waves of deep crimson, and Key only responded with his screeching. Then, the blindness returned.

They said it would help with his individual popularity— which wasn’t a very important issue for him. He had plenty of fans. Maybe not as many as Taemin or Jonghyun, but still enough to be content with and not feel any self-pity.

“Get a nose job,” the company official had said in the kind of tone generally reserved for discussing the weather. “It won’t be anything much. Just an enhancement of your natural looks.”

“Are the doctors good?” the boy asked uneasily.

“Of course!” a crisp tie was adjusted. “We only hire the best, you know?”

Everything Key had done all his life, as far as he could remember, had been for this band. SHINee was his life. The fans were his life. The music they created, the raps they wrote, the notes they hit, the beats they moved to— it was what was made of, and made for. He knew nothing else. There was nothing else defining him, but this band. So he knew that the management would meet with no opposition when it came to him co-operating on the matter. If he had to change himself for the sake of popularity, he would do it. No questions asked.

Consequently, an appointment with a skilled plastic surgeon and some reading material was arranged for. Sure, there was some apprehension on his part when it came to something as serious as surgery. But after skimming through the very generic text on “How to Cope with the New You”, Key had no reason to resist.

So the night before the operation, he lay twisted in his sheets, waiting for the light outside to come back on again. He’d agreed to get a new nose, a new identity. He'd convinced himself that it was his duty. Even the doctor himself had called him to answer all his questions, to ease his slight twinges of worry. Things would be fine. Everything would go perfectly according to theory. Jonghyun even patted his back at the news-- an action Key took as encouragement, regardless of the absence of a smile on the lead singer's face at the time. He was ready to do this.

But... but it wasn’t quite sitting well with his subconscious. Some flickering doubt kept sizzling the ends of his mind, not ready to go out with a simple huffing of air. As he stared at the back of his eyelids, Key's hands fiddled with the fabric of his duvet, curling the cloth ends around and around. Breathing had suddenly become a difficult task. Imaginary glints of sharp metallic objects kept flashing before his eyes, tossing and turning his body around till sleep wasn’t even a thing to consider.

What worried him wasn't the doctor's skill at the operation table. Key was majorly concerned about his own decision. Was this the right this to do? Will he not miss his own face? He'd never been too proud of his reflection, and company statistics said he looked average, apparently. Is that not why he had to get himself fixed? The boy put a hand to his forehead, something he famously did whenever he wanted to stop himself from frowning in worry.

It seemed he wasn't the only one awake, though.

“Kibum ah,” a familiar voice mumbled next to him. The rustling sound signalled oncoming attention. Key almost groaned at the aspect of having to discuss this with someone. Instead, he turned it into a hum to show he was listening.

“Are you happy right now?” Onew asked.

Key turned his head to look at the leader, frowning his incomprehension. “What kind of question is that?”

“I can’t tell you that. But you do have an answer for it, whatever the meaning may be." Onew replied. Gesturing around them, he added: "Think— are you happy right now? With us, in this house? In this cramped room, on your bed that you have to practically share with two other full grown men. Are you happy?”

Key pursed his lips, and for a while his vision strayed over to that one ceiling panel in the far corner of their room. The one that had an orange-brown water seepage stain on it. Key thought on how it was his favorite ceiling panel in the whole house, because among the rest of the tiles, it stood out. Of course, that may have been because of its imperfection, but it still stood out and that was what mattered in the end. This tile had a specialty none of the others could boast of: individuality. And that fact made it beautiful.

Right?

“I’m happy,” Key nodded. “It’s not the life of my dreams. But I’m happy.”

The boy hadn’t even noticed how close the leader had shuffled to him in the meantime. Their faces had probably never been so near each other, and it was a little unnerving. It made Key feel oddly intimidated. But when Onew spoke, his voice was the epitome of comforting.

“Then stay happy, Kibum ah,” he said. A stubby finger trailed down the bridge of a sharp button nose. “Don’t leave us tomorrow. When you go…” he paused here, as if hesitating, and the finger remained poised in the air for a second, before gently repeating its previous path. “When you go, I will miss you. I don’t think I’ll like your replacement.”

Key blinked at this peculiar show of affection. He wasn’t too close to Onew, never had been, but the elder’s words filled him with so much satisfaction, it was as if—

Key frowned. No… that was a stupid thought.

He closed his eyes and let it go.

In the morning, instead of going to the rhinoplast’s clinic, Key slept in. Onew woke him up later, with a warm cup of milk.

When his eyes opened, it seemed like seasons had passed.

It was raining outside and the color of the sky suggested it was dusk. The taste of something powdery lingered in his mouth and it seemed like all the strength in his muscles had walked away. He groaned from the heaviness in his head and made to touch its front— the old habit of phantom frowning.

Taemin spoke from somewhere to his left. “Hyung, you’re back.”

“What month is it?” Key asked, sure it was probably half a year past his last time awake. His window had shone with sunlight back then.

“Don’t worry; you’ve only been out for a few hours. We brought you here last night,” the maknae assured in a way that didn’t quite feel assuring. Key blinked, trying to take in more of the room than his weary eyes allowed him at first. There was manager hyung, sitting in a chair at the farthest corner from the patient. Taemin, contrarily, had placed himself as close to Key as possible without being on the bed, too. A bespectacled lady stood beside him, smiling kindly. From her lab coat, it was evident she was Key’s attending doctor.

“How do you feel?” she asked in a soft voice, making Key feel fragile. Like he would burst apart if anyone spoke too loud.

He nodded in response and asked, “What happened?”

“You had a panic attack, hyung,” Taemin answered, squeezing his hand. Key felt things hit rock bottom at that statement. “I think your earring caught onto a thread or something… it got pulled off in your sleep. There was some blood, but nothing serious. You got shocked by it, though.”

Key remembered short glimpses of red splashed across Onew's bed. So it had just been his delusion...The relief he felt was minuscule, but he welcomed it anyway.

“Shocked?! He was loud enough to be heard in Busan!” the manager said in his usual tone of disbelief mixed with outrage. Key decided he did not want the man here, not right now. “We had to get you here in an ambulance! Everyone saw!”

The reason behind that sour face in the corner of his room finally became clear. “Everyone knows, then.”

Taemin bit his lip and nodded solemnly, face blank of any expression.

He should’ve felt guilty— Onew’s coma had been a big, well kept secret. And Key had foiled it all with a tiny bit of hysteria. He was sure his ambulance had been followed by a lot of obsessive fans; sure that some poor hospital staff had been bribed to give a particularly conniving reporter all the information they needed. All the information that was probably floating around on TV screens across the country as they spoke.

But there was no guilt. If anything, the diva felt a sense of accomplishment.

“This is the same hospital?” Key asked, not recognizing the design of the room from previous visits to Onew’s. “What floor am I on? Can I go see him? How is he? Has he moved?” Suddenly a barrage of questions hit Key square in the face. It had been a little over a week since his last call here. He had no updates and he was afraid none would come.

“I’m actually here to talk to you about just that, Kibum ssi,” the lady doctor answered him. She extended her hand and despite his confusion he weakly took it, shaking it with an effort.

“I’m Dr. Ali. I’m a neurosurgeon here.”

“They assigned me a neurosurgeon for a panic attack… SM really does like to go overboard with things,” Key shook his head in slight disbelief.

“Actually…” the doctor began. “I’m here without anyone’s knowledge. And... if you please, I'd like it to remain that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I— I’m here because of you. And your friend.”

Key stared at the woman, her deep brown eyes shone with sincerity. “Again, what do you mean?” he asked, letting the words out slowly.

“I'm new here, but I’ve seen how often you visit him. And I cannot even imagine what you must be going through…” a slight pause and then she spoke with some more purpose. “Kibum ssi… You must understand that a case of brain herniation is not an easy thing. For any of the parties involved. But it is curable when addressed at the right time. And for this to happen, we need to talk.”

Key’s ears would have perked up at these words, but something kept him in check. “No one has bothered to answer my question: what—”

“What is causing the herniation,” Dr. Ali completed for Key. “I’m truly sorry you were handed such an unforthcoming doctor... Now, I'll try my best to be as delicate and informative at the same time. But please forgive me if I say something that sounds insensitive,” she declared in a gentle voice. “It is not my intention to offend.”

Key nodded for her to go on, seeing the lady in a new light all of a sudden.

“I want you to imagine a water balloon,” she said, pursing her lips in slight nervousness, but keeping her eyes fixed on the boy’s face; determination to help them shone through and Key appreciated it. “If you fill it with too much, it bursts from the pressure, right?”

He waited for her to go on.

“Onew ssi’s head is like that right now. Our brains rest in a protective sheath called cerebrospinal fluid. It’s very helpful against external force, bacterial infections: that kind of stuff. And it’s very important. I’m sure you follow me, Key ssi,” she said. It made the boy feel slightly at ease that she wasn’t taking him for an idiot.

“Sometimes, because of certain irregularities in the body, this fluid becomes excess. And pushes the brain upward, just like a floating volleyball.”

“A-and…” Key ventured. “And now his brain his being pushed into his skull and there’s too much pressure,” he finished, and looked up at Dr. Ali. “Is that what you’re saying?”

She stepped forward and took his hand in hers, and maybe it was something about women’s hands that felt naturally reassuring. “Key ssi, did your friend fall ill right before the hospitalization? Do you remember signs of… sickness, muscle spasms, too much sleepiness? I ask because it would give us a further clue.”