Warning: Mention of Suicide, Mention of Self-Harm.

Henry had left her alone.

Mumbling something about a grand piano and running desperate fingers through his dark hair, he wandered off with light steps as soon as any qualified nurse left his line of sight. He didn’t fear getting into trouble later by Mihyun, who would most likely scold him for leaving a new patient on their own, as his practice was far more important than this petty task.

He had shown Eun Mi what she needed to see, and he was sure she would be able to figure out the rest on her own. He might have been selfish, but that didn’t quite matter to him either.

Eun Mi hadn’t taken notice at first, her eyes downcast to the linoleum floors so clean they reflected the blur of her small sweatshirt-clad body and the blue t-shirt her guide was wearing. She hadn’t seen floors that twinkled with cleanliness in such a long time.

She could recollect the floors at home were usually stained with small drops of drying blood, the crimson highly contrasting against the white tile.

She could only ask herself one question; had she remembered to clean up before calling the paramedics? Her mother would surely have plenty of qualms about the blood smeared just about everywhere in the bathroom, and Eun Mi wasn’t sure if she could withstand another scolding.

When she finally realized her guide’s pixelated reflection on the floor had vanished, she had reached the end of a hallway and Henry was nowhere in sight. She had become a small child who had lost her guardian, though one she hadn’t known long, and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to walk on without him. She was too much of a coward to have the audacity to even lightly tap someone on the shoulder and ask for help.

She wandered through the unfamiliar hallways, eyes flitting back and forth as she took distressed steps. The entire building looked the same, even with every twist and turn Eun Mi could possibly think of taking, with blindingly pale walls and prison-like dorm rooms. Each door had a small window, one barely large for the nurses to peer in, and a lock on the outside. From the few open doors, she noticed there were only locks available on the outside.

So no one locks themselves in...

She had no time to finish her brief thought when she nearly met with the chest of another patient. It was another woman, one not much older than Eun Mi, who expressed exactly what she wanted to say with the murderous look in her irises. Eun Mi shrunk to something much smaller and she suddenly appreciated how swiftly she was able to avoid crashing into her.

Even when she had reached a hallway she could finally recognize, the rusting bronze of unused hinges glinting from the corner of her vision where the last room Henry had introduced her to was located. It was now she noticed there was no door, no privacy for the patients desperate to enjoy themselves in such a dreary monotonous place, attached to the loose hinges still nailed crookedly into the door frame.

Curiosity--the same fault that had landed her in the position she was--overtook rational thinking and moved her legs toward said room. Asking someone for help seemed to be the last thing on her mind, a type of anxiety she had long forgotten the name for flipping the off-switch for the section of her mind that controlled common sense.

The recreation room was devoid of life, save for the boy she had noticed earlier--Kyuhyun, she remembered--quietly organizing the mess of a chess table other patients had left behind.

Checker and Chess pieces were thrown carelessly across their respective boards, the chipping black paint of a Queen coinciding with a pristine off-white Pawn. The television was left on, the laugh tracks of what seemed to be a comedy hauntingly echoing throughout the room. The remote was nowhere to be found, no matter where Eun Mi’s eyes wandered.

She crouched down in front of the television, just now noticing it seemed to be some sort of Vintage edition. Instead of simple buttons with their functions labeled just beneath or above them, there were two beige switches and two dials with only numbers and a letter to guide her. It shouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out.

Pulling up the long sleeves of her sweatshirt to the dip of her elbow, she went through each dial and button’s functions. When the fingers of her right hand slipped, still trembling and weak, and heightened the volume by more than a few decibels, she couldn’t help but widen her eyes and glance at the figure that didn’t even seem to flinch.

She flushed a light pink, an uncomfortable air of warm engulfing her cheeks as she lowered the volume and managed to turn off the television with her stronger hand. She was sure the temperature of the room hadn’t changed since she had entered not even two minutes ago, but the back of her sweater felt slightly damp with anxious sweat.

Her sighs were nearly silent, as they had always been. If this was supposed to be some sort of safe haven, why did she feel the same as she did before? Perhaps her judgment was just as clouded as her vision by the sedatives sprinting through her bloodstream when she barely signed the papers her mother had held out to her.

As she remained crouched in front of the dark screen of the vintage television, she glanced down at the bandage engulfing most of her lower right arm. It was neatly wrapped, the gauze placed perfectly underneath the cotton-like material above it, and Eun Mi suddenly wondered what kind of a steady hand someone must need for something such as this.

She averted her eyes only after a few more moments and rose to her feet in a way she could deem anything but graceful. She had never been good with remaining poised and it had even been something an old Ballet instructor had pointed out almost a decade ago.

Kyuhyun had paid no mind to her, she noted.

Despite the ruckus she was creating in an otherwise silent environment, not once did he even twitch from his comfortable position picking up scattered chess pieces and setting them up correctly by type and color. Never once did he turn his head in the slightest to glance at her. There wasn’t a moment where he even bothered acknowledging that she was there and she strangely found some comfort in that.

His eyes simply remained on the impeccably polished chessboard, never a moment where they wavered from the on count blinks and occasional glance toward the next table where there lied a mess of checkers pieces.

Eun Mi bit the inside of her cheek, desperate to start a conversation.

Her skills were speaking with others had rusted over time, as she had never found the time to polish them, and she had become somewhat introverted. Discourse was no longer a part of her vocabulary and it often took too much coaxing, and even a few forceful pushes, from her friends for her to even try. None of her friends were around to force her to speak so, in the end, she chose not to.

Instead, a simple--and rather stupid, she had to admit--wave was the only action she needed to speak the words that dared not flow from cowardly her vocal chords. This simple gesture, one that Eun Mi might have thought of as a friendly one, drew a larger response than she had expected. He had turned his head--only slightly, but it was something--to spare a glance at the intruder of his all too wide bubble of personal space.

Kyuhyun’s friend had always been the loneliness that filled a small coffee shop at the of midnight. It was the only company he ever wanted and by the way he ignored any advances toward him gestured that he didn't quite need anything else. Any gesture of kindness from another patient had become unfamiliar to him, his eyes darting away from whoever had attempted interaction behind the lenses of prescription glasses as his fingers began to tremble while pushing the chess pieces into order.

“H-hey,” Her voice was small and wavered like a breeze caressing one's cheeks in the autumn as she tipped her head in a slight bow. Though, it was a damn good assumption that he would not respond accordingly. “I'm, uhm, Eun Mi.”

Being ignored was somewhat expected—though, in the back of her mind, Eun Mi hoped for at least a noise of agreement or disagreement—but she took note that this Kyuhyun hadn't neglected proper manners when he returned the bow.

She began to wonder exactly why the other patients hadn't bothered speaking to him and why he was always so alone. He wasn't too off-putting in terms of appearance—acne scars littered his cheeks, roseate lips carved into a gentle frown, rectangular framed glasses hiding dark doe eyes resting comfortably on the bridge of a straight nose—unless one considered a studious looking, quiet young boy exceptionally frightening.

He brushed past her, silent and agile like an alley cat, and didn't flinch when the feedback from an intercom installed at each corner of the room engulfed the otherwise silent room. She was a different story, however, nearly leaping out of her skin at the sudden shrill sound.

The tips of her ears flushed a daring scarlet, the skin burning due to embarrassment, and she looked over to her shoulder to be met with a wave of relief. She had to thank whatever higher power there was that Kyuhyun had been the kind to not care much about another's reaction.

“Lee Eun Mi to see Doctor Jung.” Her heart pounded at the familiar syllables of her name, and she wondered how long she's been so jumpy and anxious. “Lee Eun Mi to see Doctor Jung.”

***

“It's your first day and you're being dragged just about everywhere, hm?”

Half an hour.

It took half an hour of mindless wandering in the hallways and the assisstance of a ever-smiling male nurse by the name of Joonmyun, who had spotted the frantic deer in headlights and offered to help her out, to find this Doctor Jung. According to Joonmyun, he was the resident therapist for patients who were considered a danger to themselves (“Perhaps a danger to others as well,” he added as a wistful thought).

“Yes, sir.”

Her hand lingered on the faux gold door handle when she gently shut the door behind her, an impromptu comfort object should anything she deemed emotionally damaging occurred. Her eyes wandered around the room, which was noticeably easier on her eyes than the hallways had been, the walls painted a calm hue of beige and the only furniture being the doctor's desk and two seats, cushioned and plush, placed neatly in front of it.

No longer did her irises burn and she found it much easier to breathe.

Being surrounded by a constant tunnel of white was maddening, twisting one's already mottled and mutilated brain into believing they had gone nowhere in the hours they had been walking through the identical hallways. She wouldn't be surprised by any means if there had been someone who had lost it completely due to those blank walls.

“You must be tired. Please, take a seat.”

Doctor Jung wasn't an elderly man,nor was he a young man either, frown lines accenting the gentle features Eun Mi was beginning to associate with those involved in the medical field. He was dressed fairly casually, excempt from the cream colored scrubs of the nurses and sharp suits of the executives, to which she took care not to quirk an eyebrow at.

His hands were occupied, one gripping a pen that had been lightly chewed on and the other holding on to a metal clipboard holding papers she could only assume were hers.

Eun Mi reluctantly took a seat in one of the cushioned chairs placed in front of his desk, sweatshirt-covered hands folded neatly on her lap. The last time she had sat like this was at the hospital, an I.V and heart monitor dripping and beeping to some sort of somber melody beside her, while she watched her parents bicker over what they were going to do. It was some sort taboo, a kind of hush-hush, around things like those.

The reason why: Eun Mi didn't quite know.

“Eun Mi,” Her head snapped up, resulting in a slight crick in her neck due to such a sudden movement, at the mention of her name. “I'm going to ask you a series of questions—standard protocol, really—and I trust you to answer them with comeplete honesty. Just say anything and everything you feel.”

“Uhm..” She faltered for a moment. Speaking so openly about things she had normally kept dormant would be more than a challenge that could be completed in a day. “Okay.”

The first few questions were relatively easy to answer, a simple 'how are you feeling' and 'have you ever seen a therapist before' answered with short yet truthful answers in near record time. After each answer Doctor Jung scribbled something down on the papers held in the clipboard, occassionally flipping through them and nodding to himself before asking another question.

“Do you know why you're here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another few seconds of quick writing before he looked up. Eun Mi couldn't keep eye contact with him—with anyone, really—and often averted her eyes to stare at the nearby wall as if it was hiding some sort of antique, priceless mystery.

“When did you begin having suicidal thoughts?”

Such a question felt like a harsh slap to the face, so much so that she had nearly reached for her cheek, as she looked down at the floor with something resembling dejection. She had her own assumptions as to why her parents had never allowed her to attend counseling and she realized now that part of the reason was a certain fear she wouldn't be able to handle the questions thrown at her.

“A f-few months a-ago.”

“Can you specify?”

“March.”

A quick glance to the calender hanging neatly behind his desk showed it was October, a few weeks after Chuseok and fewer weeks before Halloween. March seemed so long ago, it's warmth by way of blossoming flora and expulsion of the dead winter fading all too quickly in her mind. It was cold outside now, scarves and knit sweaters being pulled from the back of one's drawers to slip on before heading outside for a walk in the park.

“How often do you think about it? Do you feel as if you're a burden? Or that life isn't worth living? If so, what makes you feel this way?”

It was a barrage of questions Eun Mi was left deserted to answer. She wasn't asked this many questions, if any, when she had a stay in the nearby hospital not even a two days ago. They had never asked her to speak, really, and only came by her room to change the I.V drip or speak with her parents about matters she had been too drugged to understand properly.

“I....I think about it a lot.” She took a long pause, now staring at the bland ceiling as she recollected her thoughts. “No, sir, I don't think my life is worth living. I can't seem to do anything right.”

“What would that 'anything' be?”

“I'm not an intelligent person, sir. I never have been. I've failed more exams than I've passed and I swear it's a miracle I was accepted in a college.” Her trembling fingers grabbed onto the fabric of her sleeve so tightly it seemed as though the stitching would tear from the slightest movement. “All of my friends have left me, for one stupid bull—pardon my language—reason or another.”

Doctor Jung nodded in understanding, detail-oriented eyes catching her shaking arms and bouncing legs. She was trying to distract herself from thoughts—masochistic things that threatened to murder the already dead soul walking around in a breathing corpse—and he took instant note of that.

Black ink scrawled across the page at a rapid pace, filling it with syllables only legible to the doctor himself.

“I'm sure there is more to it than you are telling me.” She only nodded in defeat. “But it's alright if you can't bring yourself to talk about it just yet. We'll work toward it.” Another nod, this one of understanding. “Before you had suicidal thoughts, did you indulge in self-harm?”

Eun Mi struggled to even form the proper word to agree, swallowing the thick lump forming in as she pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down as low as she possibly could. The sound of pen against paper rang in her ears and she suddenly understood why Henry seemed to involuntarily twitch at every noise that didn't seem to belong.

Her fingers curled and uncurled rhythmically until the pen had finally left the paper and she was left with a silence that could drive someone to jump from the cliff of sanity into the trench of psychosis.

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“It's not something to be ashamed of, Eun Mi.” His words of comfort did nothing to cushion her fall. “It's far more common than you think.” Ah yes, that was the macabre thought she needed. “What kind of self-harm did you participate in? Did you cut? Burn?”

“I played the blood violin, sir.”

***

“Rumor is; you're a suicide attempt.”

Henry had a certain knack for disappearing and reappearing, Eun Mi noticed as she took a bite from the partially stale roll of bread in her hand. It would be in her best interest not to bring up his abandoning her earlier, as she figured it would be better to stay on his good side. He had slid in front of her at one of the tables in the cafeteria, a good for nothing devilish grin on his full lips, barely even bothering to touch his own food.

She narrowed her eyes, tucking her right arm underneath the table while she continued to chew with disinterest and the slightest amount in disgust. Henry's wide smile hadn't faded in the slightest, even as he rearranged the food on her tray to his liking all the while mumbling something about food being placed properly.

“Suicide attempts are rare here, believe it or not.” He rambled on, never bothering to realize how uncomfortable she seemed. “There's never really anyone that doesn't go through with it completely anymore.”

“Good to know.” She said in a near whisper, taking another bite from the vanishing bread. Taking a gander at the rest of the food while quietly setting her arm back on the table, she didn't really have the appetite for anything else.

It was insane--no pun intended on her part--how he seemed so comfortable to talk about such a topic. She had expected the nurses and Doctor Jung to be this way but, Henry was a certain plot twist she would have never expected. Even as he ate with such practiced manners, careful to pick up his roll of bread precisely each time or dropping it to try once more, she continued to wonder what exactly he was here for. Despite his perfectionist tendencies and bit of a strange personality, she couldn't quite pinpoint anything that could label him psychologically impaired.

“Hey,” His hand touched her arm, where he could feel the clear imprint of a well-wrapped bandage and gauze. She had rolled up her sleeve just after she had sat down, not bothering to remember the bandage covering the entirety of her right forearm. His smile softened, as did his voice, and Eun Mi wondered what degree of bipolarity he had been diagnosed with. “Everyone in here hit rock bottom and some of us are still there. We're all happy you're alive; don't misinterpret my words.”

“Ah,” She blinked, taken aback and definitely wondering if Henry had some sort of mood disorder. “Thank you. I suppose.”

A/N: I apologize for not updating. I've been so caught up with school and other things, it's been nearly impossible to do anything. I hope you liked it!