Chapter 4
The Blue of the Sky on Rainy Days
The following Wednesday, chaos reigned in the playroom.
Eunhyuk immediately jumped in to locate Donghae; he failed to find him among all the patients who were screaming and trying to externalize their anxiety by inconsistent actions, sometimes bumping into each other. He saw Kangin and other nurses who were trying to somehow control a patient who was hysterically screaming and struggling as if he was being taken to the scaffold.
- "What's going on? Where’s Donghae?" He asked Kaehyun who was comforting a young patient girl in tears.
- "He’s precisely the one who's the source of this hurricane. I think another patient tried to steal the pen you gave him, and he put himself in this state to take it back. And we failed to calm him down even by putting the pen back in his hand."
As soon he understood what was going on, Eunhyuk ran towards the group of nurses, spanning a few patients who were rolling on the ground and jumping over a small bench.
He saw, between the nurses’ powerful arms, Donghae who was writhing with all his might, shouting, his patterned shirt for once undone, an old shapeless moccasin that had flew off, his strange strand falling in his eyes, mat-sweater all deformed, and in his clenched fist, the pen he had given him in gratitude for his math test.
He saw, between the nurses’ powerful arms, Donghae who was writhing with all his might, shouting, his patterned shirt for once undone, an old shapeless moccasin that had flew off, his strange strand falling in his eyes, mat-sweater all deformed, and in his clenched fist, the pen he had given him in gratitude for his math test.
- "Donghae, Donghae, calm down", he said in a kind but firm tone. "Let him go", he asked the nurses, "you’re hurting and scaring him."
Slightly hesitant, the nurses executed themselves following a nod from Kangin, but still remained close.
- "Donghae, what’s going on? Someone’s stol your pen right? But look big ninny, it’s in your hand", he said while continuing to advance towards Donghae who kept on struggling frantically, as if his nerves were blowing up.
Eunhyuk received a big hit on the jaw but continued to advance, slightly spreading his arms to indicate the nurses not to advance. Ignoring the arms’ hit that cascaded on him, he arrived close enough from the completely disrupted and lost patient to put his hands on his shoulders and immobilize him by pushing him back against the wall.
- "Donghae, it's me, your friend, it's me, Eunhyuk, I don’t want to hurt you", he kept on repeating until he stopped trying to get away. "Are you listening now? You shouldn’t freak out like that you know, it’s useless. When you do math, do you tear your paper and start yelling everywhere when you can’t finish an exercise? I know you can do them all", he conceded with a smile while looking straight into his eyes wet with tears. "But hey, it often happens to me, and do I do this? If you need to vent from time to time, tell me, will do taekwondo all right? And I'll tell you something else", he added, releasing the shoulders of the younger who was now attentively listening him, his chest only raised by some rare sobs, "I'm glad you like this pen so much, but that’s just an object. What's important is that we're friends. You’re aware that people can’t steal other people, isn’t it?"
In his sweater distorted by the struggling, through the tears which had obscured his face, Donghae made the corner of his lip go up in the kind of grin he used as a smile. Eunhyuk approached his hand from his forehead and he uneasily jumped again, which calmed down when he saw that he was only putting his hair back in place. Tsk what state do you put yourself in, Eunhyuk murmured in between his teeth. Donghae began to look at his only shoe left, his little grin still twisting his mouth.
- "Well, you should really get into a nursing career, kid", Kangin said to Eunhyuk while putting some chairs back into place. "Looks like you have a magnetic power over this kid."
- "We should maybe move Donghae to his room for a while, until the others calm down", Kaehyun suggested as she picked up an indoor palm tree from which several palms now pathetically hanged as it had broken in the fall.
Indeed, all the other patients were looking towards Donghae while protecting their head with their hands, or while stamping anxiously. Eunhyuk grabbed Donghae by his elbow and asked him to show him where his room was, but the young boy only stood motionless, rolling big, round eyes.
- "It disturbs him in his habits", Kangin explained. "Come on Donghae, don’t play sissy and show your room to your friend, all friends do this."
Kaehyun accompanied the two boys in the hallway towards Donghae’s small bedroom; inside were hardly holding in a small bed, a wobbly night table, a wardrobe and a light wooden desk over which a window surrounded by pvc offered a view on the sports fields, and further, his school’s buildings.
- "Hey, look Donghae, see over there? It’s my school. I walk this way to come here and see you." The young patient stood on tiptoe to watch with wide eyes the points Eunhyuk indicated. "Okay, so, can I visit your room?"
Donghae nodded and Eunhyuk opened the small drawer of his desk which contained nothing but a few white sheets a bit wrinkled. He then tested his bed, sitting down and fumbling over the quilt which fabric’s was almost as ugly as the shirts worn by the young patient. This gave him the idea to look into his closet. 'Can I?' He asked before opening the brown wooden door that matched the desk’s color. Inside hung the wretched brown velvet pants that Donghae was wearing the first time he had seen him, and another one of the same color in canvas whose knees were all blanched. There were also three shirts with very ugly and incomprehensible patterns and even a big red, fluffy sweater. On the shelf that made up the floor of the wardrobe, a few pairs of socks, and not a single shoe. Eunhyuk closed the door of the furniture that inspection’s had been fast.
- "You've been living here for a long time?" He asked Donghae.
- "It's been five years now", Kaehyun replied for him, "he lived with his parents before, but with adolescence, it became increasingly hard for them and they chose to make him come here for professional care..."
It was pensively that Eunhyuk walked back home, entertaining himself by shooting into a can. He thought about the life Donghae had probably lead during these five years in such a monotonous center, in such a small bedroom without colors, with old fashioned clothes, the other patients in the playroom, the anxiety attacks, loneliness. Then he thought of his own life, to which he would not have given a lot, made of afternoons at the video game arcade with his friends, cigarettes smoked in secret by his window, fights between his mother and his father who drank several liters of soju per day, the poor grades and the hours of detention he always received, hanging out with girls who came from surrounding high schools, fights in mostly engaged in to vent, lunches on the school’s roof, and now Wednesday afternoons at the hospital. He took a deep breath, realizing for the first time that he had something of fundamental importance: freedom.
- "Hey, Eunhyuk, we received your report card for the second quarter today. Your math teacher wrote that you progressed a lot, my son. I'm proud of you. I made red bean buns to celebrate that, darling."
Eunhyuk went to his room, thinking that it had been months since his mother had not called him darling. He called Heechul while lighting a cigarette.
- "Yo man! Well, it's been a while", he replied. "I thought you no longer wanted to see us and that you'd rather prefer to do math now!"
- "Don’t with me man", Eunhyuk answered. "What’s planned tonight?"
- "Oh you, you wanna see Yoo Ra again, or am I entirely mistaken."
- "Ok let’s do that then; usual place, usual time?"
- "Yeah, yeah. See ya man."
Eunhyuk therefore spent the evening drinking beers, first to the Nights and Days, then, later in the night, in an alley, sitting on stairs, Yoo Ra sitting on his laps, joking with Heechul, Shindong and Yesung, other friends from high school with whom he had lead proud fights.
- "Nah, I'm not drunk!" Yesung persisted in saying while stumbling with a can in his hand.
- "You are, drunk like a fat pig!" Shindong tirelessly answered.
- "You're the fat one! Ah ah ah!" Heechul guffawed, an arm around the neck of his latest conquest. "Ah, I'm stoned!"
They all laughed as demented to these ramblings about, when arrived a small group of visibly angry guys who advanced in the alley, scraping the ground like bulls ready to charge.
- "You", said the one who looked like the leader to Heechul, "what the are you doing with my girlfriend? You wanna die or what? Come on, you wimp!"
My god, this scene is a bit cliché, Eunhyuk thought while getting up, cracking his knuckles.
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