Session 1: Diagnosis

Now You See Me

Jonghyun always remembered Key as a bright, cheerful, fun to be around kind of kid. They hadn’t known each other all that well, but he had been Jonghyun’s highschool crush. However, one day Jonghyun gets a tearful letter from Key’s grieving mother. Key is in the psychiatric ward, sent there for delusions that disrupted his daily life. Jonghyun doesn’t know why he, of all people, has been asked to help – other than the fact that he is currently Seoul’s leading psychologist in severe mental disorders. But now he finds himself bonding with the strange boy who sees and hears things that simply aren’t there.

“Don’t you see them?” asked the boy crouched behind the chair, eyes barely peeking over the wooden rim, “Don’t you hear them?”

Jonghyun took a moment just to double check and looked about the room carefully, making sure there wasn’t anything in the room to trigger the boy. There wasn’t. A typical psychologist’s room, cushy couches and chairs, a calming waterfall sound emitting from the corner, pale blue walls (to promote peace and calm according to the rules of feng shui) and…a deranged patient hiding behind a chair. Typical office, typical day.

Except it wasn’t.

This patient was special. In school they had all learned that it was in both the doctor’s and the patient’s best interest to have no personal ties. But Jonghyun doubted it mattered, when it seemed that his patient couldn’t even recognize him. There was slight pang of discomfort in his chest, but he brushed it away. They had barely talked at all in high school – Key had just been his classmate…and crush. Not that anyone knew, in all their four years they had hardly spoken more than a word to each other. There was no reason for Key to remember him.

“Key…you are safe here,” he spoke softly, comforting the trembling boy hiding behind the plush dark blue loveseat, “Could you come out here and sit down? I’d like to talk to you –“

“You don’t believe me, do you?! No one does – but that will be their downfall. They’re all around you, all around us. You are all so blind!” The top of Key’s curly brown head refused to surface over the back of the chair and Jonghyun suppressed a sigh as he ticked off a box on his checklist.

Hallucinatory.

“I believe you, Key, I believe that you are projecting the circumstances of your life onto the world around you. Yes, it must be scary, but I can help –“ he was interrupted again,

“No you can’t! No one can! Let me out of here, let me go! Why should I trust you? Aren’t you always told as a child never to believe strangers?!” Key’s voice rose in a wail, “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! No…no of course not. Why would you? Why should you?” Key was then quiet but for the shuddering inhaling of breath and the choked sobs.

Paranoid.

Jonghyun was quiet while the boy’s eerie sobs echoed throughout the room, waiting it out as he thought back to that moment he had first received the phone call. It was not unusual to answer the phone to a crying individual, it came with his line of work. Some found it depressing and could not continue and moved on to less intense forms of physiotherapy, but Jonghyun doubted he ever would. There was something about the twisted mind of a patient that was a tangle of yarn needing to be unraveled. He didn’t always succeed, and the deaths were horrifying. But at the same time, the smiles on those he had healed could mend any broken heart. But this call hadn’t been from a mother who was crying because her child had died, taken their own life despite all the help in the world. No, this had been an all together different sort of grieving mother.

“Jonghyun? K-Kim Jonghyun?”

“Yes?”

“This…this is Ms. Kim. I’m Kim Kibum’s – Key’s – mother. You probably don’t remember my son –“

“I remember,” how could he ever forget the bright eyed boy from his high school days?

“You…you do? He…he needs help Mr. Kim. He’s –“ There was a quick inhale of breath, a choked sob,

“He’s in the hospital. No one can help him, he won’t stop trying to kill himself – he nearly succeeded this time. Thank the Lord the belt broke or-or-or he w-would b-b-be-“ she dissolved into sobs and Jonghyun had a moment to let everything sink in. Key? Kim…Kim Kibum? Suicidal? It seemed impossible to compare the sudden grusume mental image to the cute, cheerful boy who had always sat at the seat closest to the window in class, just to feel the sun on his face.

“It’s OK Ms. Kim…can you tell me what might be making him act this way? Typically there is some kind of reason for such behavior. I am perfectly willing to help, whatever the circumstances,” he was quick to say. How could he not help? This was a perfect opportunity to – wait, no, what on earth was he thinking?! Trying to make a move on a patient whose first priority seemed to be never waking up again? Was he losing it? So what if he spent the occasional day looking