*Chapter 26;

"Hey, how ya feelin', Baekyonce?" Jongin smiled as he pulled up a chair to sit beside his hospitalized friend. After what seemed like hours, Baekhyun had opened his eyes and Jongin happened to be the first one to see his friend coming to.

Jongin couldn't leave Baekhyun's bedside even though it had gotten late and the doctors insisted he needed to come back another time. There was a sense of loyalty, of course, but there was also betrayal that settled in his gut. Jongin thought if he had arrived sooner, he would have prevented all of this from happening, or if he had been brave enough to rush into the flames, Chanyeol wouldn't have taken so long carrying Baekhyun out.

He wondered how Chanyeol had done it. How had Chanyeol mustered up the bravery to charge through a burning building with someone who weighed just as much as him in his arms? How had he risked everything he had to save someone else? Maybe, Jongin thought, maybe taking a risk had nothing to do with how smart you were but how loving you were.

It didn't erase the guilt, though, when he looked at Baekhyun and saw the other male sitting up. "Easy there." he said, "Everyone's been worried about you, yanno. You feelin' okay?"

Baekhyun looked around and groaned, rubbing his hands over his face that felt so numb all over. "Yeah, feels like I got knocked out with a brick." he muttered, massaging his scalp where it hurt. "How long was I out? Where's Chanyeol?"

Jongin didn't have the heart to answer the second question with an ounce of truth, so he answered the first. "For a couple of days. Good news is that Chanyeol's all right, bad news is that... well..." He frowned, unable to meet Baekhyun's gaze as his friend swept back the sheets and saw both of his legs wrapped in a thick cast. "You broke your legs. You were rushed into the operation room and they stitched you up."

"What?"

"You can't play soccer anymore, Baek. They put metal rods in you, the doctors said you need to cut back on sports completely."

"... What?" Baekhyun asked again, staring at Jongin in disbelief.

Jongin sighed, sitting up and reaching for the clipboard that was attached to the foot of the bed. He flipped through the papers, reading the diagnosis of the patient in a mocking tone only to lighten the mood. When he was done, he lowered the clipboard and sighed, plopping down on the chair again. "Hey... but you never know, if you'll be able to run again, you can set the bar and be the miracle case all the doctors talk about, right?"

He smiled, but Baekhyun didn't. That night, Baekhyun cried for hours and Jongin's shirt soaked in tears.

A week later, a court case opened to determine Chanyeol's fate. There shouldn't have been one in the first place, but when the officials working on the case received a signed petition from one high school fighting against Chanyeol's rehabilitation, the court decided to bring two lawyers on the scene to settle the case once and for all.

Twenty-four hours before the case opened, the defending lawyer requested a surveillance tape to be collected from Chanyeol's cell, to study if the boy really was violent in nature on a normal basis. The staff were reluctant to hand over a tape which the defending lawyer reviewed of the institution's quiet hallways and private cells.

There was one frame, however, that showed Chanyeol bursting out of a room, punching and kicking the staff that blocked his way. The lawyer returned the tape to the police station and searched for new material.

So far, things weren't looking in Chanyeol's favor.

When the court case opened, the institution's main staff occupied one end of the room. Chanyeol was taken between two men dressed in white, his wrists crossed behind him. He was so malnourished and exhausted that he kept swaying, the purple bags under his eyes extremely dark. It seemed like the men were holding a husk of a human being still.

Baekhyun entered from another door, in a wheelchair, with his mother pushing him along the ramp. Halfway down the little path, he told his mother to stop and he stubbornly pushed the wheels on his own to his seat which was behind a wooden podium of sorts. When the other people filed in, the court room was cold and there was a thick, palpable tension in the air that Jongin shattered when he cleared his throat.

For the first time in two weeks, Baekhyun and Chanyeol saw each other on different sides of the room.

Chanyeol's eyes widened and he almost yelled out Baekhyun's name if not for the fact Baekhyun turned his head away, Baekhyun's mother blocking his view of him.

Baekhyun chewed on his lower lip and tried to keep his gaze still, waiting for the judge to call the court to order.

Within minutes, the lawyer standing for Chanyeol's arrest had the odds stacked against them, with records and witnesses to show how and why Chanyeol had been arrested so many times before. The lawyer called his behavior violent and deranged, which led Chanyeol to kidnap his stepbrother and put him in grave danger. As a final word, the lawyer offered to show an observatory tape of Chanyeol's behavior right before his escape from the mental institution.

"Patient Park Chanyeol had no words to say in his defense at the interrogation, only the words I quote, It's all Chanyeol's fault, isn't it? It's all Chanyeol's fault that Baekhyun's hurt, isn't it? The patient has been saying these words for two weeks now."

The court proceeded to show the tape the institution had collected of Chanyeol's violent outburst at the hospital and then evidence photos of the arson that he had committed at the nearby neighborhood. The people who had been interviewed claimed Chanyeol was crazy and needed to be detained.

When it was the defending side's turn to speak, the lawyer, a small girl by the name of Kim Taeyeon rose from her chair. When she stood up, the men in the court room snickered softly. From the looks of it, she was definitely new and this was probably her first case. Ignoring the quiet taunting, she pushed up her wire-framed glasses and collected her papers. Her voice was small but it was delivered clearly. "I would like to point out some flaws in the tape that was shown earlier," she said.

When the tape was played again, she paused it at one point where the room Chanyeol had burst out of was wide open. She pointed at a hand that stretched out of it, the fingers covered in what looked like blood. "Patient Park Chanyeol was found at the scene with severe injuries on his face and torso."

"Are you accusing the hospital of promoting abusive behavior, miss?" the man in spectacles asked.

"Yes," she said, clutching her papers to her chest. "I returned the tape to the police station and had them investigate if the tape was edited at all, to which they found several clips snipped from the original length. As you can see here... the seconds of the video skip a few seconds, making it seem as if one event happened after another."

"Ridiculous."

"Carry on." the judge ordered.

Taeyeon cleared and pointed to another figure in the room Chanyeol had escaped from. "Also, we see here that there is another patient in the room with Mr. Park Chanyeol judging by the nametag on the right plate."

"That was a member of our staff." the man in spectacles muttered.

"On the contrary, the staff members wear their nametags on the left, the patients on their right. I've received permission from the family of the patient in the time frame to have her here with us today, to testify." She gestured towards another girl dressed in white just like Chanyeol who had her head bowed. The patient was taken to the podium.

"Miss Hwang Miyoung?" Taeyeon asked. "Could you please tell us what happened that night, when you and Park Chanyeol were taken into a room with the staff?"

Miyoung raised her head slowly, her face as pale as a sheet. She stayed completely quiet for a moment, her lips pursing as she glanced from Taeyeon to Chanyeol. She dropped her head and shook her head.

The man in spectacles sneered, "She hasn't talked since she was taken into custody here, your honor. Obviously she doesn't have the mental capacity to register anything past the norm of what happened."

"She can." Chanyeol interrupted, staring at Miyoung and murmuring softly. "She can talk."

"Wow, Chanyeol, how do you know the names of so many flowers? You're really smart, huh?"

When Miyoung raised her head in surprise, Chanyeol gazed at her for a long time and the girl averted her gaze if only for a moment. Her dry lips pursed again before she spoke timidly over the humming fan in the room. "Th-They took us into the room... they tied me to a table and did all kinds... of horrible things... and Chanyeol... Chanyeol tried to make them stop and..."

"Lies, she's speaking lies, your honor!" the man in spectacles barked, pointing accusingly at the cowering girl.

"Then?" Taeyeon asked Miyoung, her gaze still trained on her. "Then what did they do, Miyoung-sshi?"

"They told... Chanyeol... they would kill his brother if he told anyone."

The people that filled the room started whispering and talking amongst themselves in shock. The judge silenced them and turned to the equally shocked staff members that stood there, not knowing what to say. Even their lawyer seemed to be horrified, trying to collect whatever data he had to argue against the proof.

"Your honor," the other lawyer said, "The patient committed arson, endangered a number of villagers, and hospitalized his stepbrother. Surely that sort of violent behavior cannot be dismissed as sane."

"Actually," Taeyeon spoke, "Our witness Kim Jongin testified that the fire hadn't been set in the kitchen by Park Chanyeol but in the boiler. Logically, it doesn't make sense that Park Chanyeol would have purposely trapped his brother and himself in the burning building when he was found carrying Baekhyun out of the flames despite being disabled. The doctors testify that any later and both he and Byun Baekhyun would have perished in the flames. After further investigation, police have discovered that the fire was caused by a malfunction in the back room boiler. Why, then, has Mr. Kim Jongin witnessed that he has seen a member of the institution's staff with a lead pipe, leaving in a hurry?"

Another long period of silence fell over the court room.

"Here is petition of all the students in Chanyeol's grade that he is anything but violent in a classroom environment. In fact, I also have a handwritten letter from a foreign exchange student named Lu Han who claims Chanyeol saved him from jumping off the school's roof." Taeyeon held up a paper with several different signatures and another letter printed carefully and enclosed in an envelope sent from China.

When the first session was over, the lawyers were given minutes to speak to the witnesses. Taeyeon requested a session with Chanyeol and met him in a private room just for the two of them.

Upon sitting across the table from Chanyeol, she noticed he was staring at the flower brooch on her chest. She should have started questioning him about what he was going to say next, but she was curious to find out what he was like first. "Do you know what flower this is?" she asked kindly, pointing to her brooch.

Chanyeol nodded. "Baby's Breath."

"They say it stands for happiness." Taeyeon spoke softly, smiling.

Chanyeol shook his head slowly. "Only..." he croaked, his gaze distant and fingers tangling with themselves. "Only sometimes. It means... It means death... It means s-separation..." he said quietly, looking up as if he remembered something. "It means separation and death." He opened his mouth and wet his lips a bit, thinking hard. "And... And a rose means love... It means love..." He reached forward gently and gently poked the ruby red rose in the middle of her brooch surrounded by Baby's Breath flowers. "When there's a rose... It means... I love you until death."

Taeyeon smiled softly, seeing tears glisten in Chanyeol's eyes.

"Baekhyun..." Chanyeol said, looking up quickly, "Baekhyun is the rose... sometimes I'm separation and death... but with Baekhyun... I'm... more."

"You must love him a lot."

"Until death."

When the interrogation was over, Taeyeon had to take a few seconds fixing her make-up so the tears wouldn't smudge her light eyeliner. Then, she was called into the court room for the last session of court.

She took her seat and saw some people murmuring near the judge's podium until the judge announced the gossip out loud: "Witness Byun Baekhyun has withdrawn from the testimonial. The session will continue in his absence."

Author's Note: Hi guys~ Sorry for the super late update, as always. I've been very busy with real life things and whatnot since I had to graduate and wow, it's been hectic! But I promise I'll compensate for all the time you've had to wait and update new chapters everyday from now on! ^^