Jaehwan looks up at the lights above him. They’re bright – maybe too bright, which hospital has lights this bright? But he’s sure no one else in the room is as blinded as he is by them. Sanghyuk looks up briefly at what he’s looking at, and he doesn’t seem to get pain from the lights.

Hm. If he could shrug his mind shoulders, this would be it.                 

Except now they’re telling him there’s something wrong with his brain, so he’s not quite sure what else he has to go on anymore. Nakhun had frowned at some of his test results, and frowned even harder when he had to do vision tests.

But he doesn’t give a about what the doctors have to say. Given how much he fights, it’d be a wonder if he didn’t have some kind of defect. Sitting here, waiting for test results, he mostly observes Sanghyuk. The kid is a good kid – he lends Jaehwan his PSP, and thanks Hongbin for the hot chocolate even though it’s free from the hospital cafeteria. He’s a good kid, just too uptight. He stares at everyone who passes by, and Jaehwan sees the way he moves so he always has a direct path to the exit.

It annoys Jaehwan to say the least.                                              

Sanghyuk’s shaking hands and nicely styled hair – he hates it all.

But he doesn’t have time to get mad before Nakhun comes out and beckons them into a private room. Sanghyuk is doing well – gaining weight, growing taller, all things they originally thought impossible with the trauma. Then the doctor opens Jaehwan’s file and his expression darkens slowly around the edges.

“I think,” Nakhun says slowly. “We might be looking at traumatic brain injury with you, Jaehwan-ah. Have you suffered blows to the head in the past?”

“I mean, I probably have whatever it is you’re saying I have,” Jaehwan chews on his gum. “I’ve had blows to the head too many times to count.”

“Headaches, right? Blurry vision? Nosebleeds, maybe?”

“Yeah?” Jaehwan looks up. He doesn’t understand why Nakhun is being so serious. “Yeah.”  

“What about… personality changes?”              

Jaehwan frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Nakhun puts his pen down on the table and looks at Jaehwan. “TBI has knock-on effects on things like behavior, mood changes, the way you remember things – I mean, the brain, see, the brain is a complex organ. And when it suffers traumatic impact, the way nerve fibers and blood vessels are injured, there won’t only be a physical consequence. In a lot of TBI victims, we see cognitive and behavioral changes. Some people become totally different after –”

“But I feel fine.” Jaehwan deadpans. “I just need painkillers.”

“We need to run further tests, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’s happening here. It’s important to get a diagnosis so you can get proper treatment. And maybe you’ll understand yourself better if you just –” Nakhun pulls out the MRI scans from Jaehwan’s file.

“I said, I’m fine the way I am. I just need a prescription for painkillers.” Jaehwan glares at the doctor.

“But you’re not –” Nakhun starts, and Jaehwan just gets up to leave.

There is a flurry of movement happening in slow motion, almost like an orchestrated sequence from a movie. When the door bends back on its hinges as Jaehwan throws it open, Hongbin gets a sinking feeling as to what kind of person Jaehwan might be all about.

***

Jaehwan is smoking against the side of the building when they walk out. Sanghyuk doesn’t immediately see him, so he flinches when Jaehwan jumps out at them, feet shuffling noisily against the pavement.

“Yo,” He discards his cigarette in the road and Sanghyuk watches as it fizzles into a dirty grey. “Sorry for ditching you guys, but Mr. doc back there was being really annoying.”

“Or maybe you were just scared of finding out who you are.” Hongbin shoots back with a disarming smile, too cheeky for Jaehwan to take seriously, which is the whole point.

“Well, maybe, but also maybe not.” Jaehwan raises his arms in a placating gesture. “Do you, however, have my painkillers?”

Hongbin tosses them at Jaehwan, who catches them with a simple ease. “Paid for the next few times you have to fill-up your prescription. I’ll send you back to Wonshikkie’s.

Jaehwan playfully bumps into Hongbin’s path, lightly jolting Sanghyuk where he hangs onto Hongbin’s right arm. “You’re the best, dude.”

***

“Sup,” Wonshik says as he walks into the living room to get to the kitchen.

Jaehwan gives him a nod from where he sits on the floor, listening to music.

He tries to be out of the house when Wonshik is in – and mostly it works out, except on rare days like these. Wonshik leaves the house at night to work on his music so it’s around evening that Jaehwan can sneak in for some sleep and some heat. Then Jaehwan usually sets an alarm so he can slink out of the house to roam the streets before the house owner is back.

Wonshik notices after a while, and sticks a post-it on the coffee table, “I don’t mind that you’re here. Sleep in a little, it’s alright.”

Wonshik also gives him access to everything in the house – the kitchen, the bathroom, but Jaehwan doesn’t take more than he needs. The first few days he was so sure he was going to be kicked out, he eats all the food and leaves their packaging lying around. But Wonshik doesn’t say anything, just pushes all the trash to one side when he cooks a late breakfast after a hangover.

So Jaehwan has taken to cleaning the house for Wonshik. It’s the only repayment he knows how to give, besides ual favors.

Wonshik locks his room door when he goes to sleep every night, and doesn’t so much as look at Jaehwan leeringly. When Wonshik thanks him, it’s never for the way he walks, or the way his body looks; it’s always for his effort and help. That hardly ever happens to people like him.

At first he thinks that maybe Wonshik wants him to act innocent, naïve, clueless even, until he’s forced to give a . Then he’ll shed the role like a skin and pay Wonshik back.

But since Wonshik doesn’t give any demands, and Jaehwan doesn’t know how to pick locks, he’s more than willing to just get sleep instead of trying to pretend he knows what’s going on.

Later, as he’s lying on the couch, Jaehwan tries not to let his mind stray to his visit to the doctor, but it doesn’t work because it’s two sides of the same damn coin. The more he attempts to think of something inconsequential, the more it leads him back to what Nakhun had said in the afternoon. One side becomes clearer when the other side does.

He sits up in the dark of the night, growling in frustration, and searches it up on his phone. He turns it off (tries not to throw it right against the wall) when the first thing he sees on the list of behavioral changes is “anger”.

He had always thought that every feeling inside of himself – every dirty rage, every thirst for revenge, existed because he wanted it to exist. They didn’t put anything inside of him, because only he could control his own emotions. If his body decided to feel anger, then he can make do with it. If his body decided to feel pain, then he could deal with it.

He had lived like this his whole life, and it was a damned tough way to live. It was difficult, and it was messy. But at least he never took the easy way out. He’s a fighter, he pushes his way through things. He never burrowed, he never backed down. That’s who he is. He’s not like Sanghyuk, who avoids pain where he can and depends on other people where he can’t.

Yet deep down, if he were to be completely honest with himself, he knows that there is a monster lurking inside him that he did not cultivate.

He knows there is something foreign in his body he cannot control no matter how hard he tries or no matter what he does. And he has tried putting a leash on it for so many years – he was succeeding. He has to be, because he’s alive right now. He has out-monstered the monster.

It can’t possibly be a chemical change from whatever traumatic injury he’s had.

It can’t possibly be. Because he’s in control.                                 

He’s in control of everything – his life, his direction, his character. So yeah, he had a pretty personality, but that’s all on him. He chose to be this way.

The migraine comes back; it feels like knives sticking themselves into the base of his skull, then pulling back out again, one infuriating inch at a time. When it gets too much he pulls the bottle of pills out from his pocket and pops two in his mouth.

Then as if something in the air guides him, he takes a step back and looks.

He looks, and he looks, and he looks.                             

And maybe it’s the migraine, maybe not. But suddenly all he can see is a temporary shelter set up on some stranger’s couch, which he never could’ve gotten without a favor. And all he can see are the pills in his hands, the bottles of alcohol sloshing at the bottom of his stinking threadbare bag, the violence that resides within him. All he can see is how much suffering he’s in. He’s in hell.

Something curls in his stomach with a prickling pain.

Who is he kidding, he isn’t in control at all.