--

"Hyung, I don't think I'm going to get better. This isn't helping. I don't want to stay here anymore. Can I go? Please?"

"Go? Where do you want to go?"

"Home, hyung."
I want to go home. I want to go back to the dorm so badly because I can't take this anymore, and I'm so tired of staying here. I'm not going to get well. This isn't going to stop. I know it for a fact. What's the point in keeping a dying patient here? Might as well free the bed, because I know I will die. It's just a matter of time. But if I work hard enough, I won't die fat.

"You...you can't, Kibum-ah."

"I'm not going to get better, hyung. I'm stuck like this."
I'm stuck in being sick. I'll stay like this forever. I won't get out.

"You can't go home, Kibummie. You're still sick. You can't."

I'm not sick. I don't have an eating disorder. How can I?
It isn't possible. I'm too fat to have one. People who have eating disorders are stick-skinny and tiny, they're beautiful. They think they're fat, but they aren't. This is not the case for me. I truly am big, huge. I'm not even close to being tiny. I'm ugly. I know the lipids and oils, the weight that I see on me, is not a figment of my imagination. The mirrors, the photographs. They prove this fact.
I'm sick because I'm fat.

--

He wants to go home. 
I want him to come home, too. Yet I know he can't, not now.

He looks feverish and exhausted, pale, skinny. Prominent collarbones and angular cheekbones, sharp enough to cut my heart.
The dorm is so, so empty without him. It's quiet and sad, it's lonely. 
The bedroom is so quiet without him around, my own heartbeat and breathing the only thing to lull myself to sleep. I want him to come home. But I want him to get better first. 

I need to wait for him, to learn that eating is not a sin. It isn't a terrible thing. It's normal, it's human. I need him to relearn just how to place food in his mouth without calculating calories, without imagining the weight he is putting on. 
I need him to know that he is beautiful.

Not right now, because now he's ill. He's confused and trapped, a prisoner of this mental mindset. He's sickly and tiny and fragile, and I fear to contact his skin with more than a gentle touch, because he looks as if he might shatter into a million pieces, and then I'll never have him back. 

He used to be. 
Laughing and rosy, with those gorgeous soulful eyes that just watched everything, loved everything and lit up when he smiled. Not like a Christmas tree, not like a lightbulb. But like the sun. Bright and merry and happy. Kibum used to love everything. 

Now he doesn't.
Now his eyes are filled with sadness and anger and confusion and fear, or worse, blank stares. Empty and soulless, as if they Key I know has ventured off somewhere, into deep, scary thoughts, where I can't follow him. I can't tell what he's thinking through his void gaze, which terrifies me because his eyes used to tell me anything. Whenever he was tired, sick, or excited, happy, I would tell from his orbs. 
I can't do that now.

He had never been fat.
Slim, ribs and hip bones forming smooth curves along his slender figure. Graceful and pretty and full of charismatic energy. The bit of flesh that he had covered by soft, smooth skin, glowing, bright, rosy when he danced. Definitely not enough to classify as fat.

Now he's thin. Too thin, bones angular and sticking out. Stomach concave, shoulder blades like the wings of a butterfly. Ribs standing out like piano keys. Elbows and knees knobbed, bony. Scary to look at, almost. What covers the bones is just a thin layer of pale, washed out skin. His lips, once soft and pink, are now tinged with a pale blue hue, his eyes too big for his sallow face.
It's scary, because he looks sad.

I barely recognize him anymore.

"You can't go home, Kibummie, you need to get well first, you need to eat."

He flinches a little, lowers his head slightly. " I don't need to eat."

"You do, it's important, if you don't eat, you'll die."
I can't lose you to this, can't give you up just because of a wrong way of thinking. I can't lose you just because you can't tell that you were beautiful, the way you were, before these thoughts took over your mind, I can't.

"Then...it's okay, then. I don't mind if I die."

He doesn't mind if he dies.
He doesn't mind.
Kibummie wants to die.

What is this creature that has taken him and warped him, changed him so he doesn't even care about his life, or lack thereof? What is it, why has it done this?

"Why do you look so shocked, hyung? I'm serious, it's okay. Do you want to go, now? You must be getting bored. You don't have to come if you don't want to. It's okay."

My heart feels as if someone is clenching it, grabbing it, so tight that it's pumping faster and faster but instead of carbon dioxide I'm giving out, it's tears, and they are pouring down my cheeks because why? Why does he think this way? What have I done that he thinks we no longer care about him, hate him and loathe him? What makes him think he is a burden?

"Don't...don't ever say that again, don't, just don't." 

He looks confused. I need to make him understand, I need to make him see.

"It's not okay, your dying is not okay. You can't just give up like that because I don't want to lose you like that. We all don't want to lose you just because you can't see that you aren't fat, you're beautiful. You are a wonderful wonderful person, Kibummie, and I don't want to watch you suffer just because of some warped way of thinking. I come because I want to, I need to. We all come because we need to see you and make sure you are doing fine. You're going to get better,  Kibum-ah. Don't talk about dying."

And I'm sobbing, with tears slipping down my cheeks like raindrops because Key looks so confused. He doesn't understand, he doesn't get that he does not deserve to die. He doesn't see that he deserves to get better and be happy, and that he can, he can push himself up and get out of this and go back to being Kim Kibum, who was beautiful and happy, not broken and sad. 

"If you don't want to live for yourself, Kibum, can you live for me?" 

--

A/n: next chapter is up :)  I feel as if I'm writing a lot of Jonghyun's pov lately. Oh and happy six years with SHINee heh