Chapter 7

*Warning: this chapter contains self-harm and a suicide attempt*

            Kyungsoo spent his day going back and forth from the living room to the bedroom he shared with Kai.  It was day 2 of Jongin being sick from his medication and the members have all decided that in order to get anything done before their comeback, they’d need to take shifts watching over their sick friend.

            “You seriously don’t need to take care of me Kyungsoo,” he said quietly from his position on the couch.

            “Go back to sleep Jongin.”

            “I’ve been sleeping for two days…I have no more sleep left in me.”

            “Then watch TV.”

            “I don’t want to.”

            “Don’t be stubborn…”  Kyungsoo hated to admit it, but he was really sick of this.  Kai had made it clear with all the members that he didn’t need anybody taking care of him when he got like this.  But all of Exo knew they needed to watch him or else it could happen again.  Everybody remembered it all too well.

            It was during their trainee days, very early on.  Jongin had just gotten accepted into SM Entertainment.  It was a hard decision for the company to make because of Jongin’s illness and how that could possibly effect the publicity for the group and the company in the future.  In the end, the company decided that they needed to accept him because he was just too good of a dancer.  Almost as good as Taemin who had only been accepted into the company a year prior.

            Jongin had just turned 15 and it was starting to get bad again.  He was still too young to think that he could handle his illness alone so as soon as he started to hear the voices again he told his mother.

            “Are you sure you’re hearing things again, honey?” she asked turning from the stove to face her son.

            “Yeah…I don’t want to get kicked out of SM…what do I do Umma?”

            “Give it a few days, the voices might go away and then everything will be okay again.  Remember, there will always be good days and bad days.”

            Jongin nodded and left his mother to finish dinner.

            Weeks went by and the voices just weren’t going away.  They were starting to affect him in an extremely negative way.  While Jongin was practicing with s the voices told him he was doing a terrible job. 

            “Jongin,” it said, “look at yourself, your awful.  You can’t dance, you can’t sing, you’re just dragging your members down.  Look at Luhan over there, you’ll never be as attractive as him.”

            Jongin tried his best not to listen to what was in his head.  But as the days went on it got more and more difficult.

            His self-esteem got lower and lower.  He was no longer confident in his dancing, even with Taemin’s help.

            “That was perfect,” said Taemin, “you don’t need to keep practicing, you’ve got it.”

            “No…it’s not even close,” Jongin frowned and began to push himself some more.

            Another few days went on and it was getting out of hand.  He was so beyond emotional at the time that he couldn’t focus on school work or his training and he just sat in his room with the lights off and cried.

            It was later at night and his parents and sisters were already asleep.  Jongin was taking a shower when the voices came back and told him again that he was worthless.  It was too much for him now.  He reached for his dad’s razor that sat alone on the rim of the tub and took a seat on the floor of the bath.

            His hands shook as he put the sharp edge to his left arm.  Tears began to fall from his eyes, he couldn’t take the pain anymore and to lessen it, he ran that razor across his arm.  He flinched at the physical pain, then he watched as the blood ran down his arm and right down the shower drain.

            That was the first time Jongin had self-harmed and it definitely wasn’t the last.  By the end of that year, he was cutting himself almost every day.

            His friends did notice that something was wrong with him, it would be eighty degrees outside and he would be wearing long sleeves and a hoodie.

            “Dude, it’s like the Sahara out here!  Aren’t you dying!?” complied Sehun.

            In truth, Jongin was dying under that hoodie and wanted to be able to take it off but he didn’t want Sehun to see his arms.  Instead, he lied and said, “I’m not hot at all.”

            “Dude, you’re sweating,” Sehun glared.

            More weeks went on…and it was the end of summer and the heat was finally beginning to die down.

            His parents had noticed him coming home every day wearing a hoodie, but thought that it was only just a faze because he felt ‘cool’ wearing winter clothing on the hottest days of the year.  But it was starting to get a little ridiculous.

            “Jongin,” his mother scolded, “if you keep going out in a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie, you are going to pass out.”

            “No I won’t,” he argued.

            “Jongin, listen to your mother,” his father added on.

            It wasn’t long after that, that Jongin began to get violent again.  He’s was biting his sisters whenever they were home from college, and taking things from his parents’ bedroom and breaking them.  He slammed his mother’s hand in the kitchen drawer when she told him to wait until after dinner to have a snack.  He would get into fights with his father that led to Jongin punching him in the face.

            Jongin had closed himself in his room all day and refused to open to the door for anyone.  His parents decided to give him his privacy for the day and talk it over together.  They settled on the fact that their son needed to see his doctor again.

            His mother was the first to knock on his door, “Jongin sweetie, can we come in please, there’s something your father and I would like to talk to you about.”

            No reply.

            “Jongin please open the door,” his mother tried again.

            Still no answer.

            His mother sighed in frustration and tried for the door knob.  It was locked.  His mother started to panic inside and tried the knob harder and harder.

            “Jongin, this isn’t funny open the door right now!” his father yelled.

            Eventually his father had broken the door in and what they saw would be etched in their brains forever.

            His mother screamed in terror and his father picked up the fallen chair, stood on it and took hold of his son that was hanging by the ceiling fan.

            With a struggle, his parents managed to untie the belt from around their son’s neck and call 911.

            Jongin was okay, but he needed to be kept under a 72 hour watch at the hospital and his doctor had finally been called to up his medication.

            Exo had been notified about their member’s suicide attempt and were very patient with the situation.  They knew that if their friend was to get better, that they’d need to be there for him whenever he needed it and they needed to be extra observant with him, something they all learned to do very quickly with the assistance of Jongin’s oldest sister Hana.   

            As time went on, Jongin had returned back to normal.  He was very self-conscious about the scars he had put on his body and continued to wear long sleeves until they were completely healed.  Which everybody understood, even when it was 90 degrees outside.

            Kyungsoo shivered at the memory of almost losing his friend when they were younger and was silently so grateful that Jongin hadn’t succeeded in taken his own life.

            He glanced back over to the couch to find Kai fast asleep once again.  He laughed at how easily his friend could fall in and out of sleep, and decided that it was time to take a break from watching Kai so closely and he too drifted off to sleep on the other sofa.

A/N:  If anybody was offended or disturbed by this chapter and would like me to change the rating on the fic, please let me know in the comments.  Thank you! :)