Scrubbing his hands against his face, Minho bent over and took a shuttering breath. “How the hell did Heechul find out?” He said confusion etched in his voice. 

“His aunt works on the same floor that Jinki has been on.” Key answered, “If she’s half as gossipy as Heechul it’s no wonder he found out first.”

Jonghyun stood up from his place on the couch and walked over to where Minho and Taemin sat. Key remained in his place but his eyes were sharp on Jonghyun’s actions. “What did auntie say?” Jonghyun questioned as he stood before Minho. “How is it possible?”

Clearing his throat, Minho sat back up and released his face from his gripping fingers. Red marks appeared on his cheeks from where he had been extra rough with his scrubbing. Trying to find the way to begin, Minho started to speak slowly. “About fifteen minutes after everything was undone and Jinki was free of the wires, his fingers began to twitch. The doctors said that it was a normal reaction but when it continued for another few minutes and his other hand started to twitch as well.”

Minho’s eyes closed and he rubbed the palms of his hands over his eyelids. His cheeks hurt he had already rubbed them so hard. “So uncle demanded they test Jinki’s brain activity again and when the doctors argued, uncle had another doctor flown in by helicopter to take over the test. It was almost instant.” Minho’s voice was thick with tears as he began to cry. “It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. Enough that it could change Jinki’s status from brain dead to in a coma.”

Jonghyun’s knees began to shake and Key leaped from the couch and rushed to his side just before the older boy was brought to the floor. Jonghyun sobbed loudly and clutched Key’s shirt in his fists. Key’s own eyes were wet with unshed tears and were turning red and swollen from the force he was using to keep the tears in. 

Minho’s voice came again, hardly able to be heard over Jonghyun’s tears. Taemin had to strain to hear him even though they were seated right next to each other. Although, he thought, that may have more to do with the ringing in his ears than anything else. 

“Auntie said that she understands that we’re going to want to go and see Jinki but she asks that we don’t go visit right yet, they want some time with Jinki but we can come on Saturday like usual.” There was an underlying tone of bitterness in his voice. 

“Screw that.” Taemin found himself saying. The words came out before he could even think about what he was saying. “No.” 

Minho blinked at Taemin in shock, he hadn’t heard that tone of voice come from his younger friend. It was a deep, no nonsense tone that added years to Taemin’s emotional age. Minho sometimes forgot about when little Taemin had shared about his childhood, but it was clear in the way the youngest began to hold himself that he was made of stronger stuff. 

“I’m not waiting until Saturday.” Taemin continued, ignoring the shocked looks on his friends faces and standing up to pace. “Isn’t that just too suspicious? The day that they decide to end Jinki’s life support is two days after we visit and now there’s brain activity. This isn’t a made for tv movie, miracles don’t just happen.” He tugged at the tie of his uniform and began to drag off the stiff clothing. 

Moving to the closet, he wrenched the door open and hangers scattered as he began to pull his street clothes out. His uniform became a pile on the floor and for the first time, he didn’t care that his friends could see the scars on his back, the barest yellowing from the final bruises. Nearly falling over as he jammed his legs into his pants, Taemin grabbed the nearest object to hold onto. 

Key had stood and taken Taemin’s hand, he held tight as Taemin tried to take his own back. “Taemin, stop.” 

“No!” Taemin pulled with more strength than he realized, his hand flew from Key’s and he finished dressing. “I’m…” his voice trailed off. 

“You’re not going anywhere if that’s what you think.” Key began with an angry tinge to his voice that he never used on Taemin. “This is Korea, not America. Whatever you’re planning to do, you can’t.”

“Jinki’s waking up.” Jonghyun’s voice was thick with his tears. “He’s waking up but he’s not awake. You can’t go running in there without a plan.”

“Someone was poisoning him!” Taemin began to rage. “Someone was keeping him drugged.”

“Drugged?” Minho questioned as if the thought hadn’t entered his mind. “This isn’t some television drama.”

“But it makes sense.” Taemin resumed his earlier pacing, stopping as his thoughts caught up together and he moved to his desk and opened up the binder with all of Jinki’s notes. “Doctors put people into medically induced comas to help them heal from massive injuries, who’s to say that someone hasn’t been doing that to Jinki?”

“But if it was a medically induced coma, wouldn’t it show up?” Key asked, his tone said that he was beginning to follow Taemin’s train of thought. 

“If it was a true medically induced coma it should.” Taemin said, “But if it doctors can induce coma, why is it so illogical that someone has created a drug to mimic death? Something like Juliette took to fake her death in Romeo and Juliette?”

“Belladonna?” Key said, trying to think back to the Shakespearean play. “It’s still too far fetched. Why keep Jinki alive but pretend he’s dead?”

“Because whoever ordered it couldn’t bring themselves to actually kill Jinki.” Minho muttered, more to himself than the room. “They figured if they kept Jinki drugged long enough then this parents would take him off life support and the doctors would be the one to kill him.”

“Except that they clearly never factored in the fact that if Jinki wasn’t really brain dead as soon as the drug wasn’t being administered he should wake up.” Key moved to the desk and began scribbling down his thoughts on a piece of paper he ripped from a pad on the desk. 

“This is crazy.” Jonghyun said, trails of tears on his face drying as he got hold of his emotions. “This is crazy.” He stood up and moved to pick up Taemin’s uniform pile. Taking it into the bathroom where he knew the other boys kept their dirty things, he returned shaking his head. “But it’s no more crazy than the long lost brother of your brain dead friend turning up in his old dorm room months after he was beaten half to death and left to die.”

“Unplugging Jinki probably unplugged whatever drug was being administered.” Taemin said, dragging his laptop out of its case and opening the lid. He rubbed the keypad in an attempt to make the computer work faster and the second the home screen came to life he was opening a browser. 

“It says that with a medically induced coma, patients can show signs of waking up within a few minutes of stopping the medications.” Taemin read directly from the English medical website. 

Key leaned over his shoulder. “It still doesn’t make sense, why didn’t the doctors notice?”

“Because they’re probably being paid off.” Minho supplied. “People were paid off to keep Taemin in America so why wouldn’t someone be paid to keep Jinki like that? Either that or its some new drug and the doctors don’t know the effects to look for because they don’t know about it.”

“Makes sense.” Jonghyun said. “I don’t like it but it makes sense.” 

“So what are we going to do?” Taemin asked softly, his earlier anger fading away as he read and searched about medically induced comas and brain activity. He didn’t see the other three exchanging a look. 

Turning to look at his friends, Taemin asked again. “What are we going to do?” This time he saw the look that they exchanged and he didn’t like it. “Don’t do that.”

Key sighed, he was always the voice of reason when it came to things like this. Jonghyun was too emotional and Minho was too invested personally on both fronts. “We’re going to wait. Not until Saturday-” he held up a hand to cut off Taemin’s protest, “we’ll wait until Thursday. That’s three days and that site just said it can sometimes take up to three days for a person to fully wake. There is no way that he’ll be released even if he wakes up tonight so its better if we appear to be following auntie and uncle’s wishes.”

“Unless you want to lead with the long lost son bit.” Jonghyun added in, noticing that Taemin was likely about to start to argue. “Then we’ll go tonight and hope that whoever did this to Jinki leaves you alone long enough for Jinki to meet you before they kill you.” 

Taemin gaped at Jonghyun’s harsh tone. He was use to the angry sound of Minho’s voice and Key’s voice, but Jonghyun was the one who had never spoken so harshly to him. 

“Jonghyun.” Minho scolded, not caring about politeness. “Don’t talk to him like that.”

“Someone has to.” Jonghyun glared. “He can’t just go running off without a plan, hell he can’t go running off with a plan. Jinki did, he kept us in the dark and made his own ideas and plans and look where that got him. I’ll be damned if I let another one of us go down the same way.”

“So what’s the plan?” Key asked, folding his arms across his chest and staring hard at Jonghyun. 

Having the grace to look sheepish at that, Jonghyun winced. 

Key sighed. “Let me sleep on it and I’ll see what I can come up with.” Key’s plans hardly ever failed and at that moment they needed the higher chance of success. 

The sound of Taemin’s stomach growling jolted everyone out of their oddly happy melancholy mode. It made Minho laugh. “Hungry?”

“My body is accustomed to eating at the same time every day, give me a break.” Taemin flushed with embarrassment. 

“I’ll go make dinner.” Key said, folding up his scribbled notes and putting them in his pocket to look at later. “I wish my mom stocked our kitchen the way yours does.” Key complained as he headed to the kitchen. “Taemin come with me, I’ll teach you how to make something other than plain rice.” 

Confused at Key’s sudden interest in teaching him how to cook, considering the circumstance, Taemin followed. Jonghyun and Minho’s voices started low after the they entered the kitchen but Taemin couldn’t pick up the words.

“Jinki will be alright.” Key said as he started to dig out cookware and food. “He’s always been a fighter and clearly this time is no different.” He handed Taemin an onion and knife. 

Taemin nodded, taking the offered items and sitting down at the table to chop. 

“We will figure it out.” 

Taemin hummed in agreement, waiting for Key to say something else. He set down the knife when he realized that Key was simply staring at him, half way between the fridge and the sink with the fridge door wide open. “What?” He asked, he hadn’t begun to chop the onion so he knew it wasn’t his chopping skills being watched. 

“Of course, before we introduce Jinki to you and tell him who we think you are, we do have one other situation to deal with first.” Key set his own vegetables down and leaned against the counter, staring down at Taemin. 

Confused, Taemin stared back. “Okay, I’ll bite. What?” He was grateful that Key would understand the English phrase, barely noticing that Key had switched to the other language for his last sentence with Taemin following suit. 

Smirking, Key laughed. “We’re going to have to figure out how to tell Jinki that his little brother and his best friend are bumping uglies.” 

Taemin choked at the crude English expression and was more than grateful that he had set the knife down, otherwise he feared he would have lost a finger. His face was bright red as he tried to stammer out a reply causing Key to erupt into near hysterical laughter. 

“Oh my god! I was teasing!” He quickly caught the look on Taemin’s face and sobered up. “Wait, are you really?”

“No!” Taemin shouted. Jonghyun and Minho’s voices’ quieted. Key called out that everything was fine and said nothing until he heard them start up again. 

“Well?” He moved to Taemin’s side. “Something happened?”

“It… it was… nothing… just nothing.” Taemin stammered. 

Key raised an eyebrow and Taemin sighed shakily. “It was just a kiss.” He was saved from saying anything else by his stomach growling. 

“We will discuss this later.” Key threatened. “Now dice half of that onion.” He headed back to his work spot, kicking the fridge door closed as he went. 

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Sorry everyone for the late update! I'm coming down with a cold and so my muse hasn't exactly been helpful these past few days! 

But she has returned, for the moment at least!

So thank you all for reading, commenting, subscribing, voting and everything!  You are all amazing! Please keep it up I love reading what you're thinking! 

Loves to you all

Kat