Five | Beautiful Disaster

Pastel Heart: The Fifth Chapter

 

Suin dropped her brush on the small table beside her, “Don’t be too loud, Sehun.” There wasn’t any irritation or anger being indicated by her tone and face expression, but she managed to collect her sweater before she headed towards the door. “I’ll come back later,” she said her last words before she disappeared.

Sehun looked at Jongdae’s stoic expression, and he was starting to worry about his favourite singer. Sehun wasn’t sure if Jongdae meant to keep the recently announced news as a secret, but judging from Jongdae’s shocked expression earlier, he was sure that the singer was very taken aback as well.

Jongdae remained static, until he felt his head getting dizzy and he abruptly stood up. “I need to see Kyungsoo,” he said, and he didn’t even bother to enlighten Sehun when he rushed to the front door. His legs walking rapidly as he headed to the elevator and his phone being held tightly in his hands, just in case Kyungsoo was gonna call.

He knew that there must be a mistake, because how could a needle destroy his life? He wanted stop cease his frustrating career, but this wasn’t the way that he wanted. Kyungsoo was gonna explain everything and say that the news reporter got it wrong. After all, Kyungsoo knew most information and it was impossible that male hadn’t informed Jongdae first if anything bad were to happen. Kyungsoo would clarify everything, and Jongdae found it almost relieving that he believed that.

But there’s a part of him which approved the news, like it actually wanted it to be true. Like Jongdae was actually freely accepting that he was nearing the end.

His phone suddenly rang while he was waiting anxiously in front of the elevator door, and he didn’t waste any time when he saw the caller’s ID. “It isn’t true, right?”

Kyungsoo’s breath was heard, “Come to your room first, and keep walking.”

“No, Kyungsoo,” Jongdae held his phone tighter, “you can clarify everything now.”

“Please, Jongdae. Just go to your room now. I’m there,” Kyungsoo pleaded, but his voice sounded adamant.  

Before Jongdae even managed to mutter another miserable reply, Kyungsoo already ended the call, and at the same time the elevator door was opened. This time, a woman with a child was in it. Jongdae reluctantly walked inside, and he settled himself next to the woman. Using the corner of his eyes, he glanced at the woman’s expression, and he was stunned when the woman smiled. Out of politeness, Jongdae smiled although he didn’t feel like he wanted to act nicely when he was crumbling inside. 

As soon as he reached his floor, he stormed outside. He strode faster, not even glancing around him and he only cooled down when he pulled the knob of the door to his room.

“Jongdae,” Kyungsoo said while hastily getting up from the chair when Jongdae appeared in his sight. Beside him was a woman in a white coat, who Jongdae guessed as the doctor and Jongdae felt butterflies in his stomach. Kyungsoo’s face was worried, and there was a sign of devastation but he kept quiet, letting the silence to linger in the atmosphere for a while before he approached Jongdae.

“This is Doctor Choi, and she’s the one who has examined your injury,” Kyungsoo introduced Jongdae to the young doctor, his voice soft and weak as he spoke. Kyungsoo stared into Jongdae’s eyes, and Jongdae feared that he saw tears in his manager’s eyes, “Doctor Choi here has told me about your condition,” he stuttered as he spoke, “and I’m pretty sure that you’ve hea-“

“So it’s true,” Jongdae murmured.

Kyungsoo gulped, but he chose to not dragging this any further, “I’ll let Doctor Choi speak with you.” Kyungsoo grabbed his coat, giving one last look to Doctor Choi to see the woman nodding in agreement, before he pulled the door knob and went outside. Jongdae heard a faint sobbing, before the door was closed.

Doctor Choi smiled, “First of all, I’m so sorry for the leak about your medical information. We’re trying to find the person who’s behind of the leakage. It’s really a huge regret from our party,” she spoke softly. She picked something from Jongdae’s nightstand: a document, before she headed back to Jongdae and handed in the document. “I’ve spoken to your guardian about this before, but I think that it’s good if you hear this from me directly as well.”

Jongdae’s hands trembled as he accepted the folder, and he felt like his heartbeat was getting more rapid when his fingers touched the edge of the file. His fingers fiddled nervously with the file first, before he gathered his courage to read it.

“As you can see, Mister Kim, a needle is stuck inside your flesh,” Doctor Choi said as she watched how Jongdae was scanning the file.

Patient: Kim Jongdae

Date of Birth:

Blood type:

Medical case: Foreign thing: a needle is stuck in the flesh

Doctor in-charge: Choi Sooyoung

“From your x-ray,” Doctor Choi continued talking, and Jongdae flicked to the said x-ray, “we’ve spotted that the needle has gone really deep into your flesh,” Doctor Choi paused, and Jongdae looked up from the x-ray to stare at her. “What makes your situation worse is the fact that we simply cannot perform a surgery on you, since the needle is now stuck behind your back, and the surgery may cause you to lose a lot of bloods thus causing fatality. It’s between continuing with the surgery, or trying to find a better solution. Unfortunately, we haven’t found any expert who can assist us with this case. As for no-“

“The surgery,” Jongdae said while flicking the file again, “is gonna make me die?”

“Yes.”

Jongdae closed the file, and he saw how Doctor Choi wasn’t even wavered. “So there’s no chance,” he stated, “at all.”

“There is, but the ratio of the success of the surgery to the failure of it is really big, and the hospital refuses to take any responsibility unless your guardian signs the agreement, which he has declined on doing,” Doctor Choi spoke.

“Kyungsoo declined?” Jongdae inquired, and Doctor Choi replied with a nod.

“Now Mister Kim, if you don’t mind me continuing my explanation,” Doctor Choi said, “I would like you to be aware of your own condition so that you could discuss with your guardian about your further treatment.” Doctor Choi waited for Jongdae’s respond and she continued speaking when Jongdae nodded softly. “The needle is moving towards your heart, and it’s going to burst your heart in any time. We estimate that it will take about a month or less for that to happen, so we’re doing our best to find an expert before the time comes.”  

“Is it even possible to find an expert?”

Doctor Choi’s face showed hesitation, “We’re trying our best.”

If Jongdae was to be asked, he felt like it was really impossible to find an expert especially in a month. It was practically already the end of him. He held the file tighter, refraining himself from breaking down in front of the female doctor. “Thank you,” he managed to say, and the Doctor took that as a cue for her to leave.

Kyungsoo cracked the door open when he saw the female doctor leaving, and he closed it slowly when he found Jongdae sitting on his bed. The singer had both of his hands on the sides of his head, placed beside him was a folder, a familiar one from Kyungsoo’s eyes. Kyungsoo gulped before he approached Jongdae, and he made sure to be in no rush since he could already feel that the singer was slowly falling apart.

“You can leave now, I don’t have a chance.”

Kyungsoo froze on his spot. “You can’t say that,” he said, “because the hospital promised to find an expert to settle this.”

“Admit it Kyungsoo,” Jongdae replied, “there are many times when we feel like we still have a chance,” he stopped for a while to inhale. “But this is the time when the ending is clear enough for us to prepare earlier.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t do anything.”

“Go,” Jongdae ordered. “Just go now, and don’t waste your time on assisting me anymore.”  

“No.”

“Even the doctor hesitated when I asked her about the possibility of finding an expert before the time,” Jongdae said. “It’s already more than enough, Kyungsoo.”

“CEO Byun said that he’s still gonna hold onto you,” Kyungsoo said, and Jongdae averted his attention to him. “He still wants you to record ‘Moon’.”

“Tell him that it’s pointless.”

Kyungsoo just stared at Jongdae before he sighed, “Is this what you really want?”

Jongdae didn’t hesitate when he said, “Yes. This is probably the perfect chance for me to let go of singing.”

“What about your fans? Didn’t you snap at me for belittling your fans?”

Jongdae buried his face in his own chest, “They can find another singer. They’ll find it to be easy, since there’s nothing special about me. Maybe that’s why people don’t listen to my music: I’m just another face in the crowd.”

A knock was then heard on the door, and a young boy’s head peeked inside the room. “Hi,” Sehun greeted awkwardly. “I asked the nurse about your room.”   

He let himself in when he didn’t get any respond from both Jongdae and Kyungsoo. He could clearly sense the tensed atmosphere, though. “I just wanna see if you’re okay,” his eyes lingered automatically to Jongdae’s face. 

Kyungsoo tried to put a smile on his face, “Chen is doing good, and we really wanna thank you for your concern.”   

Jongdae was glad that Kyungsoo answered Sehun for him, since he wasn’t really into the mood to chat with anyone.

“I wanna tell you that you’re a very good singer, and I do realize that people haven’t opened their hearts for you,” Sehun said, “but please know that I’m always gonna be your fan. You’re my inspiration, and I hope that you’re gonna face this strongly. You don’t know how excited I was when you treated me like your friend; it’s like a dream come true for every fan and I’m gonna respect whatever your decision is.”

Jongdae slowly lifted his head to face Sehun, “You heard us?”

Sehun, who felt stupid for exposing himself, nodded his head in guilt. “I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything, I just happened to be in front of the door when you guys were talking about it,” Sehun told Jongdae to defend himself.

“Sehun,” Kyungsoo said the young boy’s name sweetly, “it would be very nice if you keep it inside this room only since we don’t want another information to be spread around before it’s announced officially, right Chen?” Kyungsoo glanced at Jongdae who was nodding softly.

“I won’t,” Sehun lifted his right hand to vow. “I understand your decision,” he looked at Jongdae, “and it’s actually gonna be really selfish for us, fans, to expect you to continue singing during this fateful incident.”  

Sehun left the room after he was finished pouring his moral supports to Jongdae, wishing that his favourite singer was at least gonna feel a bit better. It must be a lie if Sehun were to say that he didn’t feel disappointed when he heard that Jongdae’s not continue singing- hell, Sehun had been waiting for Jongdae to release a new album- but he understood how devastated Jongdae was. Sehun could easily read Jongdae’s face, and even without reading the singer’s face, Sehun already knew that Jongdae was at the verge of despair. Jongdae, whom he had spoken and had a conversation only a few hours before, was a friendly person and tolerated a lot. But the Jongdae he saw in the room didn’t even bother to give a proper respond.

“He must be really sad,” Sehun thought to himself, and he suddenly felt saddened.

“Why do you look so sad?” Suin said as she looked at Sehun who had just entered the room. Suin was in the middle of opening the window and rolling up the curtain when Sehun decided to interfere. “Is it because of the dying singer?”

Sehun felt his blood boiling, but he knew very well that he shouldn’t lose it to Suin. “Why don’t you paint in your own room, by the way?”

“The view is better here,” she answered and she looked at Sehun. “Why? Do you feel disturbed?”

Sehun didn’t answer but he let his body collapsed on the bed instead. He stared at the ceiling before the voice of his cousin pierced into his mind.

“I’m interested on him,” Suin said, and she said that while ripping off the finished painting on the canvas. The painting was mainly in the colour of red, orange, dark blue and black. It was scenery of the polluted ocean, and if people failed to notice the detail, they would have never known that the polluted ocean was the main object of the painting. 

Suin didn’t get it easy to be the nation’s pride. She went through a lot of style changes in painting and many rejections before she succeeded to place herself as one of the most reputable artists. A minor excerpt of people actually thought that artist like Suin was such a disgrace for the human race for actually glorifying the pollutants and contaminations and turning them into beautiful things. Several environments related associations even made a petition for Suin to be stopped from painting those kinds of things again.

But Suin was never wavered by those kind acts, and she continued painting and defining the beauty from her own eyes. After all, she barely could feel the effect of any loathsome comments being thrown at her since she had a good reputation in the eyes of majority of the public. Suin was excellent at keeping her image, that even Sehun sometimes was having a hard time on dealing with the fact how brilliant Suin was at that field.

It came to the point where Sehun thought that it was too much.

Sehun managed to lift his head and glance at Suin. The girl’s face was as empty as most of the times Sehun had seen her. “As far as I know, you don’t even know him until a few hours ago.”

Suin shrugged, “I just found him to be interesting.”

“And why is that?”

Suin formed a thin smile, “Because he’s a beautiful disaster.”

Sehun was taken aback, and that’s when his eyes managed to catch the current painting on Suin’s canvas: Chen.

 

 

Author’s Note

Okay guys, so this is the part where I squeezed in the so-called facts. Please, please, please correct the errors I’ve made because I’m pretty sure that I’ve written bulls. The deadline of the writing contest is on 25^th December 2014 omfg I’m afraid that I’m not gonna make it. Please comment to motivate me! T^T

Jongdae has always been quite depressing since the very first chapter otl

Words count: 2.432 K

Written on 07^th November 2014