Chapter 1
The Blue of the Sky on Rainy Days
- "", Eunhyuk thought while pacing in the hallway.
His head teacher would have probably told him he only had what he deserved, and that he was finally going to be a bit useful to society. His father would have given him a big slap behind the head. But he was all alone and was holding back from sending a huge kick in the trash standing piteously near a potted plant as best he could.
- "What the Hell am I doing here anyway? I’ll burn this place at the first opportunity."
A nurse, completly dressed in white, came to interrupt his criminal plans.
- "Are you Eunhyuk, the troublemaker sent by the high school next door? In our center, even if we’re a bit short of staff, we don’t really like people who come to cause problems, I warn you right now... Your headmaster told me that if we had even the slightest complaint about you, you would be expelled right away. I understood that your presence here had nothing to do with volunteering, and that it was rather some new kind of punishment you were subject to, all the others having no effect on you...".
As she talked, the young man looked at her in a poisonous way which meant: you, if you have a car, I hope you also have a good insurance.
- "Are you listening to me young man?" The nurse continued, "you will only look after one patient today, only one, and you will be nice to him. He’s not violent at all, but completely withdrawn on himself... He’s suffering from a kind of autism if you prefer ... You also are about his age, it will do him good. Come on follow me, his room is on the second floor, next to the playroom."
Eunhyuk followed her with his most exasperated look, thinking he had done nothing that serious to be forced of having to look after a loony every Wednesday afternoon, instead of calmly going to loaf.
- "I hope this trisomic doesn’t drool at least."
The nurse walked him to the adolescence Service’s rumpus room, frequently turning around to throw him suspicious glances. It was a fairly large room that, like the rest of the building, had hints of hospital scent and dull yellow walls covered with ugly and naive drawings, like the ones you often found in primary school. Except that the noises that filled the room came from much older children. Eunhyuk, with a slightly disgusted expression, looked around him at the beings who inhabited this room, whose bodies looked twisted as a result of their psychiatric problems, and who did not really look like human beings as they seemed so unsociable or retarded. Nurses patiently took care of them as two years old children; he saw a girl, whose face was not really symmetrical, throw all her pencils and sheets of paper on the floor before rolling on the floor with rage, and a boy tried to grab her arm while almost shouting something nearly incomprehensible, before a nurse arrived to take care of him in a sympathetic but firm tone.
- "What a nightmare", Eunhyuk despaired.
Avoiding the patients as best he could as if they were plagues, he followed the nurse he suddenly and strangely found friendly and approachable towards the back of the room.
-" All right, here is the patient you will have to take care of. You won’t have much to do; he never talks and always stays alone. Just make sure that others don’t bother him, otherwise, he will start panicking and it will takes hours to calm him down, it's really exhausting. Oh, and his name’s Donghae. I leave him to you. If you have any problem, address yourself to my colleagues."
The boy she had just told him about was playing in front of a scoring board, limbs brought against his body. Eunhyuk noted with a shudder that he was dressed like a mess: he was wearing some kind of old moccasins which had probably been dark blue once, completely damaged and deformed, a brownish and too short ribbed velvet pants which revealed white and rough sport socks, an infamous rusty colored knitted sweater that he would not even have wanted as a mat, and a shirt with indescribable patterns near his neck.
- "My god, my god", Eunhyuk though, "that’s just atrocious."
The young patient kept on pushing the colored wooden balls regardless his presence, head tucked into his shoulders.
- "I don't even want to imagine the ruins he’ll show me as a face when he’ll raise his head, if he does someday."
Eunhyuk already imagined tons of red spots tracing big paths on a waxy complexion, squinty eyes, a disproportionate nose and a heavy lower lip shinning with saliva barely swallowed. Taking his courage in both hands, he approached about three millimeters, clearing his throat.
- "Ahem."
The young patient did not seem to have noticed anything; he remained focused on his game, locked into his own world.
- "Hello. I’m Eunhyuk. The y nurse told me your name's Donghae."
Still getting no response, he bridled his first impulse, which would have been to grab him by the collar of his filthy shirt with patterns to yell at him: 'Hey, look at me when I talk to you', and instead let himself sit down next to him while taking out his iPod. He had pushed the headphones in his ears and was trying to sit comfortably against the wall for a little nap and not waste time unnecessarily, when he noticed that the object had caught the young patient’s attention. The latter had turned his right eye away from his abacus and was looking at the thin mp3 player and his earphones, from which the sound was coming out, as if he had never seen one before.
- "What, you’ve never seen anything like this in your loony bin? It’s used to listen to music, you know what music is?"
As the other did not answer and still appeared dazed, Eunhyuk pushed his hips to the left to get closer to him without getting up, and put a headset in his ear, thinking a demonstration would be a better explanation. The young patient immediately snatched the headset away while screaming hysterically as if the sound, way too loud for him, had turned his brain upside down, and he began to make completely disordered gestures, knocking his abacus’ table over and making all nurses rush in the room. Two or three of them had to work together in order to block his limbs and immobilize him, but he continued to struggle as a demented without seeing anything around him and shouting.
- "What happened, what happened?" A nurse asked Eunhyuk who had managed to catch his iPod in extremis.
- "I don’t know, I made him listen to music and he went crazy."
-" You made him listen to music? You’re insane!"
- "Oh I don’t know what’s wrong, everyone loves music no?"
- "But hey, you should never..."
But he had already got rid of her with a sudden hand wave, and firmly walked towards the boy who was still struggling with all his might, to put the object right in front of his face.
- "Hey you, Donghae, when the sound is too loud, don’t squeal like a pig, just turn the trundle to lower it, you idiot."
- "Excuse me young man but I will ask you to immediately step back from the patient, he can be very dangerous in this state", a muscular nurse who was obstructing the crazy boy’s movements ordered him.
- "As if I was afraid of that brat, I can knockout five guys at once by myself! Come on now, stop whining Donghae and listen to that nicely. You’ll see, it won’t eat you, moron."
And on this, he the headphones, that he has significantly lowered the volume from, back into his ears, right under the shocked and helpless eyes of the nurses who were using all their strength to hold the patient. Again, the young boy struggled upon hearing the sound slip so close to his ears. But he had already exhausted his strength and Eunhyuk firmly kept his hands on his temples so that the headphones would stay unmoving, looking at him straight in the eyes with an unshakable balance. Gradually, he calmed down, stopped crying as his limbs became less stiff. Feeling he was exhausted, Eunhyuk pressed on his shoulders until he sat down on the floor, not letting him go until he was completely calmed down, then set him free under the dumbfounded expression of the nurses who dared not to move, and he told him with a smile:
- "I knew you were going to like Epic High, it’s my favorite band."
The young boy was almost done sobbing and was again growing interested in the mysterious object the sound came out from. Not without any apprehension, Eunhyuk let him take it in his hands.
Upon seeing the patient immersed in his own world again, the nurses slowly walked away while throwing him wary glances, ready to step in at the slightest movement he could do, put back the table in place and laid the abacus on it before leaving to take care of the other patients that the scene had turned very agitated.
Upon seeing the patient immersed in his own world again, the nurses slowly walked away while throwing him wary glances, ready to step in at the slightest movement he could do, put back the table in place and laid the abacus on it before leaving to take care of the other patients that the scene had turned very agitated.
- "See, you have to press here pause, and if you want to choose another song, you do it like this ..."
The nurse he had so abruptly pushed away pensively looked at Eunhyuk explain how his iPod worked. He could not have realized it, but what had just happened was truly exceptional, because usually, the patients’ hysteria of this service could go on for hours or even days, yet he had managed to calm the young man in a few minutes.
While escorting him to the elevator about an hour later, she asked him:
While escorting him to the elevator about an hour later, she asked him:
- "How did you get the idea of calming him down by making him listen to music again?"
- "Well, I just wanted to show him that there was nothing to be scared of. And seems like music is used to calm horses and even cows, so why not him ..."
- "In any case, I'll ask you to take good care of him. It seems like you are good at it, sir..."
- "Ah, my name’s Eunhyuk."
- "Nice to meet you. I’m Kaehyun, don’t hesitate if you need advices or if you feel despondent, and see you next week", she concluded as the doors of the elevator were closing.
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Here goes the first one~
For the moment I still don't know how often I'll update but.. yeah wanted to at least post the first one soon =)
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