(From after the accident in Chapter 57)

Black eyes opened and then closed immediately after as the harsh rays of light hit him.  A hand flew up to cover them again, but before that could be done, something was holding it back. Yet he felt nothing but pressure on the arm. No feeling of touch or anything. “Careful. You have a cast there.” He only groaned and let the limb be guided back to the bed, not opening his eyes. The voice had sounded like the speaker was crying, but his muddled brain wouldn’t let him decide who it was. “I can see you are awake now. The doctors said you would be soon.”

There was only another groan in response. “Do you want some water?” He nodded his head gently, feeling the small motion giving him a headache before he had barely done it. The oxygen mask was lifted slightly and a straw made its way between his chapped lips until he could sip at the water in the cup. Once he was done, the mask was put back on and he finally opened his eyes.

Jonghyun was sitting on the edge of the bed, a playful smirk on his face even as his eyes were ringed in red from crying. “What happened?”

“You got in a car accident and got speared by a street post after flying through the windshield. Nothing major.”

“No, why am I still here? Taemin was supposed to…” Key’s eyes widened as soon as he said that. “Where’s Taemin? I have to see him.” He tried to sit up, but the dino gently held him down, not having to put much force for him to stay like that. “Let me up, please. I have to see him.”

“You can’t right now. He’s in ICU. None of us can get in.” The light struggling under him stopped, so Jonghyun leaned back from Key once again. “Just worry about you right now.”

“But what about Minho? He was trapped in the car and there was a lot of blood and is he okay? He made it, right?” He had known all that had happened, but it shocked Jonghyun a little with how much he remembered when the doctors had said he might have forgotten a lot.

His head had hit the ground not-so-gently, after all. “Jonghyun, please tell me he made it.”

“He did.” Jonghyun would have had to have been deaf to not hear the sigh of relief from Key. “He’s in surgery right now. They have to reset his leg and put a bar in it. Kind of like Heechul-hyung had.” That made minor panic flash through the younger’s eyes, but Jonghyun calmed it in seconds with a hand on Key’s no in the cast. “He’s going to be fine. It might take a while to heal, but he will. And you will too.”

“And Taemin?”

It was back to the maknae again. Jonghyun didn’t want to be the one to say it, but he knew he had to answer Key. “It’s… not looking so good for him. Jinki is talking with the doctors now to try and see what they can do to help him. He’s sedated and on a bunch of machines to keep him breathing and his heart pumping.”

“He should have had my heart…”

“He would have if you had died. It’s not your time though. If anything happens to him, it was meant to be. It will be sad, but it’s how things happen. He wanted hyung and me to tell you that he wanted to thank you, but they sedated him before you came.” The singer gently brushed a stray hair from the middle of Key’s forehead, one of the few spots where it wasn’t shaved off. The diva didn’t know that though. “He’s not upset. He wanted you to live.”

“He hasn’t experienced life yet though.” Before any more protests could come from him, Jonghyun placed his finger over the younger’s lips to quiet him.

“Neither have you.”

When the doctor walked into his room in the early morning just as he was getting up, Key knew something was wrong. The man was looking down, not at him, and didn’t have any files or anything. “You had asked to be told when something happened to Taemin… His heart failed. He couldn’t be revived.”

He could feel the tears running down his face, but didn’t choke up with sobs as he thought he would have. “Can I see him? Please?”

There was only a nod and a few nurses came in to help get him into a wheelchair without damaging any of his wounds and while keeping him attached to all of his equipment. “You friends are on their way as well.”

“And Minho?”

“He hasn’t woken up yet, but if he does and he wants to go, it will be allowed.” That was all the doctor managed to say before the nurse began to push him away, taking him to the one place he wanted to be.

Key was the first one to get to Taemin’s room. All the machines that had kept him alive for barely a day were still there, but everything was not attached to him anymore, merely a memory of what was. He couldn’t even stand to see the boy, but the bed was lowered enough that he could grab a still-warm hand from the side and hold it in his own. He looked at the perfectly-smooth face, the eyes already closed, and could almost pretend Taemin was sleeping.

But that would just make it harder for him. He didn’t know how long he sat there, just holding the hand and thinking of different memories, but there was a hand on his shoulder at some point, and then another on the other a few seconds later. None of them spoke, not even as Taemin’s hand grew cold in Key’s or after they were kicked out of the room.

Minho never showed. They said he hadn’t woken yet. What if he never does?

It was as if Jinki could read his mind, because he grabbed Key’s free hand and just held it as the nurse pushed the boy back to his room and they followed. “He’s going to make it Kibum. They just gave him a lot of medicines. And he had a big surgery.”

“Can I wait there for him?” It was for the nurse, but when the three of them looked at her, she shook her head. “Why not?”

“You’re injured too. It was an exception to even let you out of bed like you are now.” Just the way she said it told them that it was more than that. Even the hospital workers knew he would have thrown a fit if he couldn’t see Taemin one last time.

It was hard on all of them to think of it like that. They were never going to see Taemin again. Their loveable, playful, smiling maknae was going to be around no more.

It was too hard to think like that.

He was merely on a vacation for a while.

That was easier.

Minho woke the day after Taemin died. No one wanted to be the one to tell him, but he seemed to know the second he woke. “Taemin didn’t make it, did he?” was the first thing he said.

That could have been from the tear-filled eyes of the two elders in his room that he knew though.

Once they were both awake, the two were moved into the same room. It was easier for everyone that way. Amber had been the first one to come to them, sporting a brand new bandage on her arm that neither of them had to ask about.

Just like they had a part of them flowing through Taemin, there was now part of her flowing through them. At least, that’s how Key thought about it. She had been crying too, anyone could see, but as soon as she was in the room, she was simply their shoulder to cry on for the four.

She was one of the few people that understood. And she was the last person besides them that had seen Taemin, returning to the apartment for only a little while on his last day there to get a jacket she left. That was the last time she saw him, smiling in his sleep there. And they knew she just understood.

And she and Kai were there with them at his funeral on the Saturday. Amber had been the one to help his brother arrange the funeral when Taemin’s parents had refused and the boys simply couldn’t stand to help. She’d become their lifeline without even realizing it.

The seven of them were in the front, Key and Minho both in hospital wheelchairs but there. All wearing black slacks and button-ups and ties, they had been there.

They were released on the same day. Exactly two weeks after the accident, Key and Minho were returning to the apartment. That was somewhere none of them had been since then—Jinki and Jonghyun had dorm-hopped whenever they hadn’t slept in the hospital because none of them could stand the place alone. But they needed closure, and one of the ways was to face the place.

When they entered, it was almost as if they had gotten into the wrong apartment. Nothing had really changed, but at the same time, everything had. The mattress was moved from the living room but the stuffed animals Taemin had made a home with were all lined up along the couch. The computer was still where it had been, but there was a stacked of video burned onto CDs sitting on it—of what, they didn’t even know.

The bedrooms were left like they had been, nothing touched, but an air-mattress sat in the box on the floor in the one the three shared, as if whoever had been there had known the other bedroom wasn’t going to be entered for a while. Taemin’s clothes were removed from the one room, replaced with Jonghyun’s, and there were new sheets and everything for the one bed so they wouldn’t have to go where Taemin’s things were.

And all there was to tell who had done it, was a note with a smiley face. Nothing else.

The four were in the living room, Minho sitting across the couch so his leg was up and Key where Taemin as sat after his surgery so that he was sitting but stretched out, while the two oldest shared the floor. All of them were drinking bottles of strawberry milk, even if they hadn’t liked it before, and staring at a blank TV. “Should we play them now?”

There was a silent agreement and Jonghyun scrambled to stand and get the videos. They knew now that they were collections day-by-day of their video logs, Jin’s included.

And still, none of them knew who had done it.

Key could hear the others trying to stifle their crying as they reached the end of their letters, reading them like they had for months together. Yet, as he looked at the last lines, written shakily and obviously in his haste, he almost didn’t want to think of why that was.

But he knew.

These last letters were dated the day Taemin had the last attack, and the boy had started his by saying he was writing the last one. ‘I think I know now what I was feeling yesterday. Today is the end. It could be right now. I can feel it… the pain. But hyung, don’t worry. I’ll be waiting for all of you. I want you guys to take you time coming to find me again, because I promise I’ll be here waiting. It might be my time to go, but it isn’t yours. Not now and not soon. I love you hyung.’