This chapter should answer a lot of questions! I'll be nice and post it early so you don't have to wait as long!

A pair of brown orbs cracked open and closed again in the same second to protect against the blinding white of the room. A groan of pain escaped his lips, mangled by the mask put on only the day before, but it woke everyone in the room from their half-sleep. “Taemin?” The eyes opened and looked for the speaker, finally landing on a blurry Jinki just as he jumped forward to grab a cold hand from under the blanket. “Can you hear me?” A silent nod. The two others let out a sigh of relief when they realized the boy in the bed was actually awake and with them. “Thank god… The surgery worked… It actually worked. You’re okay.”

Sobs ripped through the leader, but Taemin’s unfocused eyes only grew more confused. “Surgery…?” The one word strained him so much to say, but he knew he had to ask. Immediately, one of the other two burst into tears as well, but his vision was too blurred to see who.

“Yes, surgery. You’re heart failed and…” Jinki couldn’t continue even if he knew what he was going to say next, the sobs making it too hard.

“Who?” His voice was scratchy and painful, but he still spoke. He had to know.

Jinki couldn’t answer, collapsing to his knees on the ground at the question. There was the sound of someone falling into a chair and a deep voice that could only belong to Minho whispering. With all of his strength, Taemin turned his head to face the chairs, focusing as best he could until he could see Jonghyun held in Minho’s arms, the rapper trying to comfort him while he comforted himself as well. “Where’s Key-hyung?”

Taemin looked from the phone to the other three, tears in his eyes. “None of you tried to stop him?”

Minho glanced at the hyungs, knowing they would want him to explain being the only one that was there. “Taemin… he died,” he choked up there, but knew the boy needed to know and continued, “before the ambulance got to us.”

“But what happened?”

It hadn’t dawned on any of them that Taemin had no idea at all, because they were all just used to having thought about it every moment of every day. They’d always think of it when they saw him now. But he didn’t even know.

Minho couldn’t have possibly answered that—they all knew it. He simply looked down at the casted leg and they knew he was thinking back to the day. Just like whenever he tried to sleep. And Jonghyun hadn’t known until he had come to the hospital for Taemin—long after the two had gotten there in the ambulances. “They… they had a car accident, Taemin. Key was thrown through the windshield and a broken street sign went through his stomach. There was never a chance.” Jinki had explained it as lightly as he could without giving up on any of the details. He had a right to know, and they weren’t going to hide it from him.

So why did the leader feel so bad when the youngest burst into tears? “They should have helped him instead of me!” The already-fast heartbeat on the monitor got faster and louder. All three watched and tried to calm him down, but Taemin shook them all off, flinching from their touches. “I should have died! Why didn’t you let me die?”

Doctors and nurses came running into the room, afraid that something had happened since he had been moved from ICU. But Taemin brushed even them off, jerking away before they could give him medicines or anything. Finally, though, two of them got him held down enough to inject a sedative where the IV went into his arm. The three could only watch as his struggles became weaker, finally giving up and lying still as his eyes closed.

As if he was dead.

The mask he had torn off at some point was righted on his face once again. Questions were asked of them about what had happened and they answered as best they could, but what Taemin had said was stuck with all of them.

‘Why didn’t you let me die?’

When his eyes opened again, there was only Minho in the room. As soon as the rapper had realized he was awake, the boy was speaking. “You tore your stitches with that so you can’t move now. Okay?” Taemin blinked once and he chose to take that as an ‘okay.’ “Do you really want to die?”

He only got another blink at first and began to wonder if Taemin was even awake and listening to him at first. Finally, though, the boy on the bed nodded. “It hurts so much… I was ready by then for it to be the end. Hyung had it forced on him. He deserved to live more than I do.”

Minho only looked at the boy for almost a minute before shaking his head. “He was ready too, Taemin. He wanted you to grow up and make him proud. You can’t do that if you die now. Then what Kibum-hyung did would have been for nothing.”

“They should have saved him over me…”

Neither of them even knew what had happened, but Minho was up without his crutches and leaning on the bed so that he was right in front of Taemin. “There was nothing that could have been done. If they tried to save him, both of you would have died. Everyone is a crying mess already—people wouldn’t have been able to stand it if both of you were gone. Instead of saying what should have been done, be thankful for what was. Kibum was thinking of you even in his last seconds. The least you can do is listen to his last wish, just like we did for yours when we were going to pull the plug.” He didn’t say anything else, just grabbed the metal sticks from the chair and walking out, leaving Taemin alone in the room.

He was actually a little glad for that.

Yet the last part of Key’s video still played in his mind, the part Minho said he had to listen to. ‘My heart beats for you now Taemin. Use it well. I’ll be watching.’

The three were there again the next morning when Taemin woke up. “You have chemo on Thursday.”

“Thanks for the wakeup call Jonghyun-hyung.” Taemin gave a groan, but opened his eyes and looked at them, not able to sit up on his and too lazy to find the remote to raise the bed.

“Not a problem.” The singer tried to be joking with him, but it was hard to pull off with the swollen eyes he had. If Taemin closed his eyes though, it would have fooled him into believing everything was alright.

It wasn’t.

“How are you feeling today?” He felt Jinki’s worried eyes on him before he saw them, but once he did, he had wished he’d only looked at Jonghyun.

Because the leader looked even more broken than the dino. “I’ve seen better days.” It was the best he could say without lying and Taemin knew they knew that was why he said it. “Can someone raise the bed for me? It hurts to lay like this…” He hadn’t even finished asking before Jonghyun moved forward, the closest since Minho wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Taemin was just realizing that he had bandages all up his arms and on his head as well, not just the cast on his leg. How long has it been since I first saw him? Four days? I’m just noticing this… The bed stopped moving and he gave a little smile to Jonghyun that wasn’t even visible through the mask on his face. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem Taemin-ah.” He sat back down and the room fell into silence without Key there to give random things to talk about.

Finally, a question came to Taemin that he felt wasn’t too bad. “How long have I been out?”

It was one he never got around to asking, but it broke the silence and they were all thankful for that. “It’s October fifteenth today…” Jinki let that sink in to Taemin. “You woke up on the eleventh, so a little over two weeks.”

“That long?” He didn’t seem upset like that had expected him to be, only curious and a little surprised. “So the funeral already happened…”

“Yeah…” Jonghyun’s voice was quieter than when he spoke before now that he was confirming for Taemin, and wetter sounding too.

Even Taemin sounded smaller when he spoke again. “Can I see the grave?”

Jinki felt two gazes turn to him, and Taemin’s joined last, waiting for the answer. Slowly, the man nodded. “We’ll go when you are a little stronger. Okay?”

And Taemin knew that was the best he was going to get. So he nodded. “Okay.” I’ll be seeing you soon hyung.

Getting sick from the chemo was so different without Key there to tell him that it would be over soon. Jonghyun had tried to take the place, but it was nowhere near the same thing as having the frail arms wrapped over his shoulder and the perfectly-smooth blonde hair rubbing on the top of his head. In the end, Taemin had only sobbed harder than he had been before, because the substitute made him feel the missing piece even more.

It was like putting a piece of paper in for the missing piece of a puzzle—the gap was filled, but it would always be noticed and wouldn’t be right again. Not until the piece was found.

Their piece was never coming back.

Taemin had eventually pushed Jinki and Jonghyun both away to sit there himself on the bed, preferring to feel the pain of being alone to the pain of a false piece. It had hurt to them, but they understood how it hurt Taemin even more.

They had closure of knowing what had happened as it had, of seeing the end, of being able to prepare for everything.

Taemin had none of that.

He never would.

His puzzle was going to forever be missing a piece, but there were ways to make the space less empty feeling. They just had to find them.

And they’d have to do it together.