PATIENT: Lee Yongbok
AGE: 24
ADMISSION DATE: 20/07/26
UNIT: Closed Psychiatric Unit
ADMISSION STATUS: Involuntary / mandatory admission
PRIMARY REASON FOR ADMISSION: Suspected intentional medication overdose
CURRENT OBSERVATION LEVEL: Standard overnight observations — every 30 minutes
Initial intake completed at 18:45. Patient demonstrates hyper-awareness and rigid physical compliance. Relinquished personal belongings with mild hesitation and requested additional clothing, citing low temperature. Attended mandatory group therapy; chose isolation and remained mute except for a single, brief response regarding personal interests. Upon return to quarters, patient verbally contested the suicidal intent of the overdose, categorizing the event as an accidental mishap due to exhaustion. No acute behavioral agitation noted at lockdown. Strictly monitor vitals and sleep cycle through the night.
Chapter Text
The psychiatric intensive care unit was never truly quiet. Even when the halls emptied out, the air always buzzed with a low current of whispered gossip, shared inside jokes, and whatever mischief the guys could cook up. In a tight, high-observation ward like this, privacy was pretty much a myth. You couldn't really isolate yourself even if you tried. Boundaries blurred within few days, intense friendships formed purely because you were stuck together, and a very specific, chaotic kind of domesticity inevitably ensued.
Even at six-thirty in the morning, long before the sun had fully climbed over the bleak, grey hospital buildings outside, the unit was already waking up to its usual soundtrack. While half the guys (specifically jeongin and seungmin) were still dead to the world, buried under heavy regulation blankets, the ward itself was already alive with familiar noises. You had the rhythmic, electronic clack-click of magnetic door locks disengaging one after another as the morning shift started room checks. There was the sharp, annoying squeak of the nurses' sneakers against the freshly polished lino, mixed with the distant, low bass hum of the industrial washing machines vibrating from the basement below. And, as predictable as the sunrise, Han Jisung was already complaining about breakfast before the kitchen staff had even prepared the meals.
Honestly, it was less of a habit and more of a core personality trait at this point. Jisung had an endless supply of high-energy commentary for literally everything. If he wasn't groaning about the chalky aftertaste of his morning meds, he was aggressively roasting someone else's mismatched ward fashion choices, or restarting the exact same frantic argument about the movie he’d been begging the staff to let them watch the day before.
Living in an ultra-small, locked psychiatric unit was always a wild balancing act. On one hand, the tiny group dynamic was kind of great. It felt like a strange, hyper-observant family where you couldn't easily hide your bullshit. On the other hand, it made their entire ecosystem incredibly fragile. The peace existed on a absolute razor's edge since a single shift in the routine or a new face at the table could completely destabilize the room. If one person started to visibly spiral or slip into a relapse, it could easily trigger a devastating domino effect across the whole ward. But despite how crazy it could get, the small space was a safe haven from the outside world there were significantly lower levels of stress and sensory overload compared to the massive, chaotic state facilities, keeping their fragile little world just contained enough to survive.
Minho wrapped his hand around the warm paper cup of vending machine coffee as he stood at the nurses' station, blinking his eyes to prevent nodding off while scanning the overnight notes with the practiced ease of someone who had spent too many years doing exactly this scenario.
Although the job got exhausting occasionally, it was worth the seeing patients transition from distress when they first arrived like disheveled and frightened animals to a state of calm while ultimately recovering.
Most patients didn’t have a long stay in the closed wing, quickly moving to the open wing to continue their recovery journey in a relaxed, safe, environment. In contrary to the closed section of the psych ward is a secure, locked inpatient unit designed for short-term crisis stabilization and intensive assessment.
Very rarely, difficult cases ends up staying longer as a patient's medical needs are too advanced or complex for standard hospital resources or requiring a higher level of care.
After successfully getting his morning coffee without the machine completely breaking down and giving up, (because that would’ve been his last straw.) He scooted over and sat down at his desk. Curiously roaming through the updated logs from throughout the night.
Jisung Room Five slept four hours along with required PRN medication at 02:17 due to panic attack.
— Christopher
He took a deep breath through his nose, burying his face in his hands before exhaling a long, shuddering sigh. The restless night had followed him straight into the morning and he knew it was going to kick him in the ass. Curse him for falling into another Internet rabbit hole the entire night, resulting in, a terrible lack of sleep.
"Good morning, sleeping beauty," Chan hummed. As the section's head psychiatrist, he was used to assessing people at a glance. He hung his jacket behind the desk, mentally checking out Minho's exhausted state. Minho looked up, barely managing a coherent murmur in response.
"Coffee?" Chan asked. He checked his jeans pockets for items he had already verified five minutes ago, clearly exhausted by his own endless shift. Minho lifted his cup and exchanged a conspiratorial glance, earning a tired laugh from the head psychiatrist.
The coffee tasted awful every day, due to lack of funds or perhaps the proprietor has an acquired taste for burnt batteries, nonetheless Minho drank it anyway. The routine was comforting, everything happened at the same time every day because predictability meant safety. Safety was highly prioritized in a place like this.
Minho dragged his feet out of the staff office, guiding the heavy, metallic medication cart through the doorway. He had just finished the meticulous task of collecting and double-checking everyone's pills, his eyes burning from exhaustion as the small plastic cups rattled against the metal trays.
At seven sharp, the first set of doors unlocked, gradually patients began filtering from their bedrooms one by one. Some waiting impatiently by the medication hatch before the nurses had even finished preparing it.
Just as he aligned the cart to roll it out toward the impatient crowd gathering by the hatch, the heavy ward doors buzzed open.
"Morning, Minho!" Hyunjin announced, practically sweeping into the dayroom like he was walking onto a Broadway stage instead of a secure psych ward. His hair was sticking up in three impossible directions and one of his fuzzy socks was clearly inside out, which was universal proof that he had just slept like a dead man. Hyunjin waking up with this much theatrical energy at 6:45 AM was usually a threat to the staff's sanity, and a direct threat to Minho's sanity.
Minho didn't even look up. He just rubbed his temples, his eyes glued to the medication trolley as he violently unlocked the first drawer with a sharp clack. "That was a little too loud, Jinnie. Tone it down three notches."
"Well, sorry for trying to inject some literal joy into this depressing establishment," Hyunjin fired back, throwing his hands up dramatically. He spun on his heel to face the table, his bare heel clicking against the linoleum as he bounced on the balls of his feet, practically vibrating. "Someone has to make up for the complete lack of enthusiasm around here."
Minho deadpanned, finally cutting his eyes over to Hyunjin with the most exhausted look humanly possible. "Don't get too excited, Hyunjin. Jisung isn't laughing with you- he’s just laughing at how incredibly annoying you are."
"Hey! Uncalled for!" Hyunjin huffed, crossing his arms and pouting like a giant toddler. Jisung wiped a stray tear from his eye, his shoulders still shaking as he finally caught his breath. "I mean, Minho's right, Jinnie. You really are a lot to deal with before breakfast."
"Take your meds please," Minho sighed heavily. He threw his hands up in mock defeat, though the faint twinkle in his eye completely betrayed his stern expression.
"See? Acts of service," Hyunjin beamed, turning triumphantly back to Jisung. "He's practically affectionate."
Minho couldn't help the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The two of them had become something like brothers during their time on the ward—loud, chaotic, endlessly irritating, yet somehow capable of dragging everyone else into their orbit. Even the quiet patients occasionally smiled when the pair inevitably got caught attempting something ridiculous.
"Keep dreaming, Hyunjin," Minho muttered, though he didn't pull back his smile as he locked the medication drawer shut. "The only thing I'm affectionate toward right now is my upcoming clock-out time."
Jisung let out a loud snicker, kicking his legs over the edge of the couch. "Don't lie, Minho. We know you'd miss us if they finally let us out of here."
Both Hyunjin and Jisung swallowed their medication under Minho’s watchful eye. Minho stepped closer to Hyunjin, gesturing with two fingers. "Open up, Jinnie. Let me check."
Hyunjin rolled his eyes dramatically but complied, opening his mouth wide and lifting his tongue so Minho could verify that his mood stabilizers had actually been swallowed—unlike the few times last week where he’d successfully cheeked and spit them out later. Minho gave a brief, satisfied nod before locking the plastic tray with a sharp click.
"Alright, that's two of you," Minho muttered, glancing down the quiet corridor hoping to catch them in the corner of his eye. "Where are Seungmin and Jeongin? They're the only ones missing."
"Still completely dead to the world in their rooms," Jisung offered, leaning his shoulder against the wall. "I walked past their doors on my way over here. Not a peep."
"Yikes. Waking up Jeongin before seven is practically a suicide mission," Hyunjin added with a sympathetic grin, earning a warning glance from Minho back while flashing him a look that clearly said don’t test me today, Hyunjin. The two of them loved to lightly mock Minho, but they always complied with his routine in the end. They knew he had a demanding, exhausting job to do, even if he looked like a walking corpse running on zero sleep right now.
Minho sighed heavily, resting his hands on the handlebar of the heavy metal trolley. "Right. Let's go drag them out of bed before Chan comes out here and docks my pay for being slow."
He rolled the heavy metal cart down the quiet hallway, stopping first outside Jeongin's door. Taking a deep breath to prepare himself, Minho knocked loudly before pushing the door open into the dim room. Jeongin was tangled in a complete nest of blankets, totally buried except for a single tuft of messy hair.
When Minho approached and attempted to give his body a light shake, Jeongin let out an aggressive, muffled groan from beneath the fabric, violently pulling the duvet completely over his head to block out the light.
Minho stared at the stubborn lump of blankets and decided to pick his battles. Waking a hostile, sleep-deprived Jeongin would take far too long, and breakfast was scheduled for a strict, unyielding time slot. If they missed it, they missed it, (and he’d be hearing about it all day.)
Deciding to handle Seungmin first, an absolute angel compared to Jeongin when it came to mornings. Minho turned the cart around and stepped back into the hallway. Noticing the silence in the hallway and realizing he was entirely on his own now because Jisung and Hyunjin had already left to head down toward the cafeteria.
Making his way down to Seungmins room, he knocked softly and pushed open the door to find Seungmin already up and just finishing getting dressed. He was drowning in a pair of lazy, oversized grey joggers and a massive red hoodie, looking comfortable but surprisingly alert. "Mmorning," Seungmin said slurring his words but actually sounding like he was in a good mood as he padded over to the doorway and to Minho.
He didn't give Minho any trouble at all, taking his morning medications from the tray and impressively swallowing them dry without a single complaint. Minho raised his eyebrow at that but let out a silent breath of relief, deeply grateful for at least one easy patient on his rounds.
"Breakfast is starting soon," Minho reminded him, offering a faint, tired smile. "Hyunjin and Jisung are at cafeteria, I’ll go wake up Jeongin.”
Seungmin flashed a small, sympathetic grin at the dark bags under Minho’s eyes. He dragged himself out of his room giving Minho a supportive pat on the shoulder before wandering down the hallway toward the cafeteria, rubbing his eye all while nearly slamming into a wall on his way, still a bit uncoordinated.
Minho stood alone in the quiet corridor, staring back at Jeongin’s open bedroom door. The clock on the wall was ticking closer to the strict breakfast cutoff time. Surely there was a better way to wake up such a safety hazard and someone was hiding it from him. Purely out of spite to make it harder he thought.
With a heavy sigh, a sign of trying to compose himself he wheeled the medication trolley back to the doorway, stepped inside the dim room, and walked straight over to the bed. He didn't bother being that gentle as the first time. He grabbed the edge of the thick duvet and yanked it downward, exposing Jeongin's face to the cool morning air of the ward.
"Up, Jeongin," Minho said, his voice flat but firm. "Cafeteria doors close in fifteen minutes. If you miss breakfast, you’re stuck waiting until lunch, and I'm not dealing with a grumpy, starving patient all morning."
Jeongin hissed at the sudden rush of air, instantly curling into a tight, defensive ball and burying his face into his pillow with another aggressive groan. "Go 'way," he muttered, his voice thick with sleep. "m' not hungry.."
"You have to take your meds, which means you need food in your stomach," Minho countered, reaching down to nudge Jeongin’s shoulder with a light tap. "Come on, move it."
Jeongin finally caved with a dramatic, drawn-out groan, he dragged his limp body out of the tangled nest of blankets. He was still half-asleep and clearly couldn't be bothered to properly change out of his clothes. Instead of searching through his limited wardrobe, he just dragged a random, wrinkled black hoodie off the floor, shook it out once, and threw it on right over his plaid pajama pants. He shuffled unsteadily to his feet, swaying slightly on the spot as his brain desperately tried to boot up for the day.
He didn't even bother looking for a fresh drink; he just grabbed a lukewarm, half-empty cup of water that had been sitting on his bedside table since yesterday afternoon, and chugged the medication down in one violent, practiced gulp. He slammed the plastic cup back down onto the wood with a loud thud, glaring at Minho through a thick, tangled curtain of messy, unbrushed bangs. It was honestly a bit hard for Minho to take the kid's death-glare seriously when his hair looked like a literal bird's nest. It looked like a localized whirlpool had come over his bed in the middle of the night and twisted the strands in three impossible directions at once. But alas, Minho knew the poor boy couldn't help his legendary bedhead and wisely refrained from commenting if he wanted to leave the room alive.
"Happy?" Jeongin mumbled, his voice gravelly. Minho just gave a tired, victorious nod, locking up the medication trolley. "Thrilled actually, now move it, the cafeteria is waiting."
He tried to inject a bit of fake enthusiasm into his words, but it was a losing battle. In reality, the cafeteria food on this unit was always ingested with a severe, universal lack of enthusiasm. The hospital kitchen only ever really served soggy, flavorless, rubber-like kind of food. Everything smelled faintly of wet cardboard and old steam, usually arriving tightly reheated in thick plastic trays that made the eggs sweat and the toast go completely limp.
Jeongin shuffled out of the room ahead of him, his feet dragging loudly against the flooring as he made his solitary way toward the cafeteria. Minho stood in the empty hallway for a brief second, enjoying the sudden, blissful silence of the corridor. With a heavy sigh of relief, he turned the heavy metal medication trolley around and wheeled it back toward the staff section. His morning rounds were finally done.
He pushed the heavy office door open, the familiar, comforting scent of stale desk coffee immediately welcoming him back into safety. Chan was still exactly where he had left him, sitting behind his desk and typing away furiously on his computer, the screen reflecting in his glasses. Minho carefully maneuvered the medication cart into its designated slot against the wall, dropping the heavy ring of keys onto the desk with a sharp, echoey clink before sinking heavily into his squeaky office chair, feeling every single hour of his shift catching up to him at once.
Minho finally picked up his coffee cup, taking a long, blissful sip of the lukewarm liquid in absolute peace. The quiet hum of the office computer was a comforting contrast to the chaotic energy of the ward outside. Setting the mug down, he pulled his chair closer to the desk and logged into the clinic's patient database. His fingers tapped a familiar, rhythmic pattern across the keyboard as he opened the morning log. One by one, he checked off the names.
He carefully input the dosage confirmations, timestamped the entries at 07:15 AM, and added a brief note about compliance. With a final click, he saved the updates to the system, officially wrapping up the morning medication round.
The rest of the day slipped by with the comfortable predictability the ward had grown accustomed to.
Breakfast gave way to community meeting, where Chan patiently guided everyone through the plan for the day while Jisung repeatedly attempted to nominate Monopoly as an official therapeutic activity. Seungmin pointed out for what had to be the hundredth time that Monopoly had, in fact, started three separate arguments that month alone.
aka the reason why it had been Indefinitely banned.
But Jisung would never let the love of his life (Monopoly) go, not without a fight at least.
By late morning, the common room had transformed into an impromptu art studio. Sheets of newspaper covered the tables, pots of paint appeared from the occupational therapy cupboard, and the patients scattered themselves around the room with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Art therapy was everyone's favorite; at the very least everyone had some sense of taste. It didn't include forced talking, or rules.
Hyunjin liked art therapy.
Since changbin led art therapy, and hyunjin really liked changbin.
Changbin didn't patrol the room like Chan or Minho did. Instead, he sat at the main table with his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his hands already stained with streaks of cobalt blue and charcoal. He didn't hand out rigid prompts or lecture anyone on color theory. He just handed over the materials with a quiet, grounding smile that made the heavy atmosphere of the ward instantly feel lighter.
Hyunjin chose a seat a few chairs away, claiming a blank canvas and a tray of acrylics. He liked the parallel play of it all. The quiet scraping of palette knives, the rhythmic sloshing of paintbrushes in plastic cups, and the fact that he could look at Changbin without needing an excuse and weren't constantly trying to find a reason for all of his behaviour when sometimes there wasn't one needed. Here, staring was just looking around for creative inspiration.
He just nodded, silently approving whatever mess Hyunjin was making on the canvas.
At the other side of the room, Seungmin was busying himself with painting enormous abstract swirls across his canvas, insisting (babbling) about some like they represented "the emotional consequences of hospital mashed potatoes?" or something.
"I think they just look like circles," Hyunjin observed without looking up from the careful landscape he was sketching with detail. He wasn't actually really listening to what he was babbling about in the background, just knew from one glance he was totaly fucking up his canvas. Seungmin just rolled his eyes and snarled "Well not everyone's as talented as you dickhead."
"Keep it civil, you two," Changbin called out. He didn't sound angry at all. Hisvoice was just lazy and amused.
Hyunjin felt a stupid, involuntary smile hit his own face. He kept his eyes glued down to his landscape, carefully shading a tree line just to give his hands something to do while his chest warmed up. Seungmin let out a dramatic, suffering sigh and aggressively stabbed his brush back into a jar of murky water, sending a few stray drops flying onto the newspaper.
Across the table, Jeongin had somehow accumulated three paintbrushes despite only using one at the start of the hour, while Jisung abandoned painting entirely after ten minutes in favour of attempting to convince Changbin that finger-painting counted as "mixed media."
It did not.
After the chaotic hour ended, Changbin confiscated the paint before anyone had the grand idea to redecorate the walls. Lunch came and went with the usual chorus of complaints about hospital food, followed by afternoon quiet time that lasted exactly seven minutes before Hyunjin decided the corridor needed background music. Minho threatened to confiscate his portable speaker for the remainder of the week.
Somehow, the afternoon disappeared beneath medication rounds, individual therapy sessions, endless cups of burnt coffee and enough paperwork to fill another filing cabinet. It was, by psychiatric ward standards, an unusually peaceful day.
There had been no big incidents (except Jisung's finger getting stuck between a door, a choir of pained screams following) no restraints either, no emergency medication.
By eight o'clock, the evening routine had already begun. The patients drifted lazily between the common room and their bedrooms, the television murmured quietly in the background, and the fluorescent lights had been dimmed to their softer nighttime setting.
Minho was halfway through helping Changbin reorganise the medication cupboard after discovering once again that someone had somehow managed to put three different strengths of paracetamol in the same drawer. "I swear this cupboard reorganises itself just to annoy me," Changbin muttered, holding up two identical-looking boxes with an expression of betrayal.
"I've stopped questioning it," Minho replied, scanning expiry dates. "It's either haunted or everyone on day shift is secretly trying to make our lives difficult." Before Changbin could answer, the office phone rang, a sharp trill echoed through the nurses' station.
Minho stood up with a grunt and went to reach for it automatically before the ring could fade. A familiar voice answered, Chan's.
His tone was calm, though there was the faint urgency that usually meant plans had just changed "Minho? I need you down at reception." Minho straightened immediately "Everything alright?"
"We've got an admission." He answered, making a big silence fall for a near second. Admissions to the closed ward were rare enough that the words seemed to hang in the air for a moment "He's just arrived."
Minho exchanged a glance with Changbin, who had clearly guessed the conversation from his expression alone. Changbin set the medication boxes back on the shelf, brain trying to accumilate how he was supossed to do this alone now.
Minho hung up the phone and grabbed the admission clipboard from the desk "Looks no one's getting a quiet evening," he said with a smirk. Alone, he stepped through the heavy security doors and disappeared into the brightly lit corridor leading toward the hospital's main reception.
Neither of them knew that by the end of the night, the rhythm of the ward they'd spent months carefully building was about to change completely.
The wheels of Felix’s suitcase groaned under the weight of his entire life packed into a single bag. Dragging the suitcase should not have been this difficult. It was just a standard, scuffed carry-on he’d used for countless away competitions and summer intensives. But today, the gravity of the entire universe seemed to have settled directly inside its zipped compartments.
It wasn't even - particularly large.
Every tiny bump in the pavement caught one of the plastic wheels, forcing Felix to jerk it free before it rolled another few painful feet. By the time they reached the concrete plaza leading up to the hospital entrance, his forearm had begun to ache from the constant, radiating strain. A cold, shaky sweat was already pooling at the small of his back.
He subtly switched hands, transferring the handle to his left, but the relief lasted all of ten seconds before that arm started protesting just as loudly, the tendons tight and straining beneath his pale skin.
Dragging it up the wide entrance steps was nothing short of an embarrassing struggle. He simply didn't have the upper body strength anymore. Ever since the restriction took over his life, his upper body had completely wasted away; the muscle groups he used to rely on for fluid partner lifts and strong extensions had evaporated, leaving his arms looking like fragile, translucent twigs where his elbows looked entirely too large for his frame.
His legs, however, were a different story. A proud one, a story he could tell with a sense of pride, burying the pain and dread under his white-milky skin.
Twelve years of intense, relentless ballet since he was a kid at the ripe age of twelve had certainly done him some good. It had left him with solid, stubborn muscle in his calves and thighs, the kind of deeply ingrained hypertonicity that didn't just disappear overnight. He still had the perfect, hyper-extended posture of a premier danseur, but only if you squinted. Only if you intentionally ignored the terrifying fact that he visibly shook with every single turn, his core struggling just to hold his spine upright against the weight of his own clothes.
Felix hurried after him, his breath hitching as the suitcase rattled noisily and unevenly over the stone pavers behind them. "I'm trying," he breathed out, his voice practically a whisper.
"I've seen you carry heavy stage equipment and iron backdrop rods twice this size without a single complaint," Mr. Seo muttered, not even bothering to look back at him. "What's happened, hm? Where did all that discipline go?"
Felix kept his eyes locked on the back of his instructor’s polished dress shoes. He knew what had happened. He knew his body was eating itself alive, but admitting it meant admitting failure.
"You were much smaller then," Mr. Seo added, letting out a sharp scoff that made it sound like Felix’s physical deterioration was a personal, offensive insult to his teaching legacy. He rubbed a tense hand across his sharp jaw, looking every bit as exhausted and bitter as Felix felt.
The instructor stopped just before the heavy glass doors, the cold hospital air rushing out to greet them. He looked down at the boy, his gaze traveling over the oversized fabric hiding the damage. "When you were twelve," Mr. Seo said quietly, his voice dropping into a rare, chillingly nostalgic tone, "you used to cry in the dressing room because rehearsals were only six hours instead of eight. You begged me for more hours on the floor."
Felix blinked, a sudden, sharp ache blooming behind his ribs. He remembered the fierce, burning passion of that twelve-year-old boy, a kid who would dance until his toes bled just to hear a single word of approval. He remembered the absolute obsession with perfection that had slowly, quietly morphed into the monster currently starving him to death.
"You couldn't even finish your standard warm-up barre without begging for another center combination," Mr. Seo muttered, and for a fraction of a second, the ghost of a faint, nostalgic smile threatened to appear on his strict face before vanishing just as quickly into his usual cold scowl. "You were relentless back then. It was like you lived for the floor, you breathed it."
Then, Mr. Seo’s expression hardened completely, the brief warmth evaporating into nothingness. "And somewhere along the way..." He stopped walking, gesturing vaguely and critically toward Felix’s swallowed-up silhouette under his layers, "...this happened."
Felix stared fixedly down at his scuffed sneakers, a burning wave of shame tracing the prominent, knobby ridges of his spine where the bones pressed painfully hard against his skin.
The boy didn't answer; there wasn't much point in arguing. He couldn't defend himself because deep down, he knew his instructor was entirely right. He had been a much lower weight a couple of years ago, but as his skeleton naturally kept growing, he had embarrassingly put on a few pounds. It was a completely normal biological fact, but in the elite, toxic world of their academy, he had been subjected to brutal diet regimens specifically designed to stunt his growth and keep him looking like a tiny, weightless child for as long as humanly possible. To Mr. Seo, hitting a normal growth spurt was equivalent to a lack of discipline.
Right beside him, Mr. Seo started moving again, walking with rigid, furious strides that Felix's burning lungs could barely keep up with. His instructor's voice dropped into a sharp, venomous hiss right in his ear, still relentlessly ranting about the hospital's sudden ultimatum. In his eyes, sending Felix to a mandatory, locked psychiatric facility instead of letting him return to the studio to finish blocking out the upcoming choreography was a complete, offensive joke.
"They told me you were too weak to continue at the academy, that you needed absolute, monitored bed rest and the emergency room couldn't legally keep you anymore," Mr. Seo muttered, the heels of his expensive dress shoes clicking aggressively and loudly against the concrete pavement.
"Utter ridiculousness. None of my other senior dancers are this fragile," he continued, throwing his hands up in a brief gesture of pure disgust. "When Moka collapsed from exhaustion right before the winter showcase last year, they only kept her under observation for seventy-two hours before clearing her back to the studio. Seventy-two hours! And here you are, getting slapped with a mandatory section."
Felix kept his head down, teeth gritted as he focused entirely on the agonizing, burning pull in his shoulders and the heavy, cold sloshing of the water loading in his stomach. He didn't speak up. He couldn't. He didn't have the breath or the courage to argue.
"I really thought I stamped this pathetic, fragile weakness out of you years ago, Felix," Mr. Seo hissed, pushing through the heavy glass doors of the facility without looking back to see if Felix was even following.
His mind was too busy flashing back to the sterile, terrifying atmosphere of the emergency room just days ago, remembering how his Maître and the ER physician had debated his fate right over his bed. The harsh, blinking glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights had made his head throb, the constant beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor tracking his dangerously shallow, slow pulse.
“We really don’t offer the long-term services he needs here,” the ER doctor had sighed, clicking his pen with a sharp, annoying rhythm. “The emergency room can only stabilize him. His toxic screens are clear of intentional overdose, but given his abysmal weight, low heart rate, and the sheer volume of pills, I legally need to mandate a transfer to a specialized psychiatric treatment option.”
“Well, I need him back in rehearsals,” Mr. Seo had snapped instantly, crossing his arms and towering over the small hospital cot. “We have a major showcase coming up in exactly one month, and a brand new ballet to block out in two weeks. He cannot miss it for a simple, careless accident.”
The doctor and the instructor had just kept speaking right over his head, treating him like a ghost that wasn't really there at all, a broken-down instrument that was simply holding up traffic. At the time, it hadn’t even registered to Felix to be offended or hurt. He was too exhausted to care, his body entirely spent from having his stomach pumped and being hooked up to endless IV bags. Besides, he knew this was just how Mr. Seo showed he cared. The instructor didn't have time for weakness; he needed Felix to be perfect after all.
It was all due to his own stupid, careless mistake. Felix hadn't even been trying to end his life. He had just been desperate, so incredibly desperate, to numb the roaring, agonizing cramps in his stomach from days of restriction before a major evaluation. In a blind panic to sleep through the hunger, he had recklessly shaken too many sleeping pills out of the bottle, losing count in the dark. He had swallowed them down with a gulp of diet soda, purely wanting the noise in his brain to stop. But because his body was already running on empty, his system couldn't handle the dose. He had collapsed right on the dressing room floor the next morning. The hospital board, looking at his skeletal frame and the toxic intake, had immediately ruled it as a suicide attempt, a psychiatric emergency.
“Fine,” the doctor had muttered, looking over Felix’s abysmal vitals chart one last time. “Given his specific circumstances, his history at the academy, and your scheduling constraints, I know a high-end private facility. They focus heavily on rehabilitation and might be able to clear him for a return to dance much more quickly than a chaotic state hospital.”
And that was how he ended up here, in this place. Felix had spent the entire agonizing car ride bracing himself for a literal horror movie setting—grim concrete walls, rusted window bars, and the suffocating clinical stench of cheap bleach. He was terrified of what the doctors would force him to say. He didn't like interacting, and he absolutely didn't like talking about his feelings, his mind, or his health.
That habit had been specifically, brutally knocked out of his brain since the ripe age of twelve when he first moved into the academy's dorms. At the academy, crying was a fineable offense, complaining about pain meant you were stripped of your lead role, and expressing your feelings was seen as a pathetic waste of energy. You didn't talk. You didn't feel. You just taped up your bloody toes, wiped the sweat from your face, and hit the center floor for another eight-hour block.
But when the heavy front doors were pushed open, the sight that met him made him freeze completely in his tracks.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting behind those doors; perhaps a horror movie, but it wasn't this.
He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting behind those doors. During the grueling, silent car ride from the hospital, his mind had run rampant with worst-case scenarios lifted straight out of a horror movie. He had prepared himself for a fortress of grim concrete walls, rusted window bars, the piercing hum of fluorescent lights, and that suffocating, clinical stench of cheap bleach. He expected a place built to break whatever spirit he had left.
Instead of a prison, he felt like he had just stepped into a beautiful, historic manor. Rich, polished hardwood floors stretched out beneath his sneakers, complemented by soft, calming blue walls and tall, sloping windows that let in the fading afternoon light. Overhead, elegant chandeliers cast a warm, golden glow across thick, plush rugs and elaborate gold-framed paintings hanging on the walls. The space was clearly designed to function as an upscale reception lounge. A few high-end couches were clustered around a mahogany coffee table scattered with glossy magazines, and a sleek check-in desk sat toward the back.
The space was clearly designed to function as an upscale, high-end reception lounge, a deliberate tactic to lower the defenses of terrified patients. A few velvet couches were clustered around a dark mahogany coffee table scattered with glossy magazines, and a sleek, modern check-in desk sat quietly toward the back. It looked like an elite boarding school or a private estate, the kind of place Felix’s parents might have sent him to if they actually spent money on his comfort rather than his tuition.
A man rose smoothly from behind the desk, a genuine, unhurried smile breaking across his face as they walked in. "Lee Yongbok?" he asked softly.
The man wore a crisp, white doctor’s coat over a neat button-down shirt and tailored slacks. His expression was incredibly warm and welcoming, a far cry from the cold, clinical nightmare doctors Felix had spent the last week agonizing over in his head.
Felix froze, his head jerking upward as the soft-spoken name caught him completely off guard, sending a jarring shockwave straight down his spine. He was so conditioned to answering to Felix that his Korean name sounded foreign, almost taboo. He hadn't heard it spoken aloud in years.
At the academy, his instructors absolutely loathed his Korean name. When he moved into the dorms at twelve, terrified and missing his family, Mr. Seo had flatly told him that Yongbok lacked the elegance, fluidity, and marketability required for international stages. They treated his birth name like a clumsy, unpolished, provincial defect that needed to be aggressively erased from his identity.
In the studio, he was just a body to be pushed to its absolute physical limits. Felix didn't complain when his shins splintered. Felix didn't break down when his calorie cap was slashed in half. Felix kept dancing until his white satin pointe shoes bled through the tips. Felix was the perfect, unbreakable instrument Mr. Seo had spent years carving, molding, and breaking down. Yongbok, on the other hand, was the fragile, starved reality that had finally collapsed under the weight of it all on the dressing room floor. Hearing it spoken aloud by this strange doctor felt like a sudden, violent tear in his armor, exposing the raw, ugly truth he had desperately tried to hide from the world.
A heavy, crushing wave of nausea hit Felix so hard his vision swam with black spots, a bitter taste of stomach acid and pure water rising in his throat that made him feel physically sick. He forced himself to swallow it down, his knuckles turning stark white as he gripped the handle of his heavy suitcase just to stay upright. If he fainted here, the deception would end before it even began.
Through the loud, rhythmic ringing in his ears, he heard the doctor introduce himself as Chan. The man immediately launched into a smooth, practiced explanation directed at Mr. Seo, detailing the ward's philosophy, the routine, and their high success rates. Felix tuned it out completely, the words blurring into a low, meaningless hum as he stared fixedly at the polished floorboards. He didn't care about their therapy, he cert didn't care about healing. He just wanted to lie down.
Lying down is a sign of weakness, a cold, ingrained voice whispered in the back of his mind. It was Mr. Seo's voice, a ghost from a hundred grueling rehearsals where sitting down meant you were lazy, and resting meant you didn't want it enough.
"—but you’ve read the consent forms, correct, Felix?" Chan’s voice suddenly sliced through his internal fog, pulling him sharply back to reality.
His head snapped up, his massive, dark doe eyes wide with a practiced, innocent look. Felix automatically offered a weak, hollow nod. He hadn't actually read a single page of the thick, intimidating legal packet they had shoved in front of him at the emergency room, but it didn't matter. He just wanted the talking to stop. He had learned early on at the academy that staying completely quiet, nodding along, and looking compliant was the fastest way to make authority figures shut up and leave you alone.
"—but it’s policy that we search belongings for anything that could be a harm to yourself or others," Chan continued, his tone remaining incredibly gentle as he gestured to the suitcase.
Felix wasn’t stupid.
He knew that privacy and independence did not go hand in hand with psychiatric facilities. Still, a sharp ache of vulnerability bloomed in his chest when his suitcase was firmly but gently pried from his weak grip.
To be fair, privacy was already a completely foreign concept to him. At the elite dance academy, survival meant being stripped of any personal boundaries. The instructors conducted brutal, unannounced body checks in the middle of the studio, forcing the students to line up in thin leotards while their ribs and waistlines were visibly measured. Their dorm rooms were tossed nearly daily by the house wardens, who ripped open mattresses and turned drawers upside down to search for hidden crackers, prohibited diet pills, or contraband laxatives. He was entirely used to being handled like public property, an instrument belonging solely to the academy. But watching a total stranger take his things in this grand, unfamiliar manor still made him feel entirely naked.
His instructor leaned down, his breath cold against Felix’s ear, smelling faintly of black coffee and mints. "This is your own fault," he whispered, a sharp, venomous hiss meant for Felix alone. "You brought this on yourself with your carelessness, deal with it and don't embarrass the academy any further."
Without another word of comfort, the instructor turned toward the desk. He quickly scrambled his signature across the intake papers, the aggressive scratching of the pen echoing loudly in the quiet lobby. As soon as the clipboard was clicked shut, he Seo spun on his heel and walked straight out the heavy front doors without a single backward glance. He had rehearsals to get back to, he didn't have time to waste on a dancer who had let himself break.
Felix was left standing entirely alone, forced to fend for himself in the immediate wake of the abandonment.
"Hey, it's going to be okay, Yongbok. We're going to take really good care of you here," Chan murmured softly, stepping out from behind the desk to offer a comforting look. He'd already casually pressed the buzzer to call Minho down to the lobby, knowing he'd be needing the extra medical hands for the intake process.
The kindness didn't help comfort Felix at all. It didn't even register in his brain. He barely heard the words, his entire being vibrating with a single, desperate, hyper-focused thought.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
Felix followed Chan out of the grand entrance hall, his legs moving on pure, robotic muscle memory as they turned down a beautifully decorated corridor. Gold-trimmed mirrors and elegant sconces lined the walls, reflecting his pale, ghostly silhouette, but Felix kept his eyes locked firmly on the floorboards, tracking the steady, calm stride of Chan’s polished shoes.
They stopped at a heavy, secure door that opened into a small, clinical room lined with silver metal lockers and a single examination table. It wasn't nearly as nice or luxurious as the hallway he'd just walked through, but a clinic stays a clinic, he supposed. No amount of historic architecture could completely mask the underlying smell of antiseptic and rubber gloves.
Chan stepped over to a tall cabinet, pulling out a folded stack of clothes.
Felix already felt a quiet, suffocating panic rising in his stomach, his dancer's intuition sensible enough to know he'd never get away with wearing that with the way he currently looked.
"Here are your clothes for the first few days," Chan said, handing them over with a reassuring nod. "Go ahead and change in the restroom cubicle right there. We’ll do a quick physical exam when you’re done."
Felix took the stack of fabric from Chan, but the moment he unfolded the short-sleeved top, a cold, sharp dread locked his joints in place. He didn't move toward the restroom cubicle. He couldn't.
For someone who spent every single hour of the day hiding under thick, oversized layers and heavy knit sweaters to conceal his deteriorating body from the world, these clothes felt like an absolute death sentence. The fabric was thin, unforgiving, and loose, offering no protection. If he put that shirt on, his secret would be stripped bare right here on the tile floor. They would see the terrifying reality of his anorexic body; the way his ribs cut through his chest like a hollow cage, the sharp, jagged line of his hip bones, and his collarbones protruding so severely they looked sharp enough to slice through paper. They would see his arms, reduced to nothing but thin, brittle sticks wrapped in translucent, pale skin where the blue map of his veins ran stark and exposed.
His body was a structural ruin, a casualty of his absolute obsession with ballet, and he had to hide it at all costs. At the academy, showing this kind of skeletal fragility outside of an official weigh-in was social suicide. It invited pity, and pity meant being benched from the upcoming showcase.
"I'm not putting this on," Felix said, his voice instantly dropping into a tone of raw, desperate defiance.
Not in a million years, not in your fucking dreams, he thought to himself, his jaw locking tight.
Chan blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift. "Yongbok, it's just the standard ward uniform. You need to change so we can do the quick physical—"
"No, no I'm not wearing it. Not without a hoodie," Felix interrupted, his words tumbling out fast and frantic as he clutched the flimsy scrubs to his chest like a heavy shield. He knew his chances of winning an argument with a psychiatric doctor were slim, but if there was even a slight one, he'd leap towards it without thinking twice. "Please? anything else- A jacket, a blanket, a sweater, a hoodie just give me something with long sleeves."
"Yongbok, listen to me," Chan said.
The name sounded sour to Felix's ears. It felt far too personal, cutting straight past the protective wall he had built around his stage identity.
Chan stepped forward with his hands raised in a calming gesture. "The policy for new admissions is very strict about outside clothing for safety reasons. We need to do the baseline assessment."
"I don't care about the policy!" Felix's voice cracked, a quiet panic completely hijacking his breathing and making his ribs ache against his lungs. He was practically begging now, his knuckles turning white against the fabric. "I'll wear the pants, I'll wear whatever you want, but I need a sweater. Just check my suitcase. There has to be something in there."
Right in the middle of the escalating argument, the heavy security door clicked and swung open.
Minho stepped into the small examination room, the admission clipboard tucked securely under his arm. He stopped short, his sharp eyes instantly darting between Chan’s exasperated expression and the pale, trembling boy who looked ready to bolt or burst into tears.
"What's the holdup?" Minho asked, trying to grasp the sense of the situation.
His gaze swept over Felix, but because Felix was still tightly holding the scrub top and bundling it against his chest, the true extent of his fragile, skeletal frame remained completely hidden. The baggy lines of his street clothes masked the hollow concavity of his stomach. To Minho and Chan, this didn't look like an acute medical crisis yet; it looked like a classic textbook power struggle. They assumed it was a standard control issue, a stubborn new patient testing the boundaries of the ward on day one. They were completely blind to the fact that for Felix, control over what covered his skin was a matter of survival.
Felix turned his desperate, pleading eyes toward the newcomer. "I have an oversized hoodie right at the top, It doesn't have any strings, I cut them out months ago- It passes the policy, I promise."
Minho exchanged a brief, calculating glance with Chan. Seeing that Felix was genuinely spiraling and refusing to cooperate with the intake until this single demand was met, Minho sighed and set his clipboard down on the examination table. They didn't want him to have a mental breakdown. They knew the boy had already had a terribly exhausting day, and neither of them wanted to add onto that stress on his very first night.
"Fine," Minho said, his tone firm but yielding. "If it doesn't have strings or hardware, it's fine. I'll go check your luggage."
Minho stepped out, returning a minute later with the thick, black oversized hoodie. He inspected the collar quickly, no strings, and handed it over. Felix practically snatched it, retreating into the restroom cubicle before they could change their minds.
Safely behind the locked door, he pulled on the baggy track pants, followed by the hoodie. The moment the heavy fabric settled over his aching shoulders, a wave of familiar comfort washed over him. The staff had checked the garment strictly for safety hazards, but they hadn't felt the thick, double-layered hem closely enough to notice the flat, lead drapery weights Felix had meticulously sewn into the seams months ago.
It was an old, desperate trick he had perfected to survive the academy’s unyielding weekly weigh-ins. At the elite dance academy, weight wasn't just a health metric but it was a literal license to dance. The artistic board enforced a strict, archaic chart matching height to maximum weight allowances, and slipping even a single pound over the limit meant being immediately stripped of your lead roles and benched from the upcoming showcases. The instructors openly taught them that fat was a sign of a lazy mind. To stay on the floor, the dancers passed down dark rituals in whispers inside the changing rooms, shaving down calluses, using extreme dehydration, and sewing flat metal washers, heavy coins, or lead tailoring weights into the double linings of their heavy training gear to artificially manipulate the scale when the pressure became too much to bear.
Combined with the nearly two liters of water he had desperately chugged back at the ER which was currently sloshing painfully in his empty stomach and making him feel intensely, physically sick he already had a few extra pounds working in his favor on the metal platform. Still, his chest tightened with a sudden stab of fear. He wasn't entirely sure if he would even land at a healthy-looking weight on the psychiatric charts, even with these extra benefits. He was so thoroughly hollowed out from months of severe restriction that his baseline numbers were terrifyingly low, leaving his margins for error dangerously thin.
When he stepped back out, no one mentioned anything. Chan simply guided him toward the old-school, mechanical balance-beam scale. "Alright, Yongbok. Just step up here for a quick weight check so we can get your baseline."
Felix swallowed down a violent surge of nausea, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird as his bare feet touched the cold metal platform. He kept his posture perfectly straight, mimicking the line of a proud principal dancer, but as Chan began sliding the heavy metal counterweights across the balance beam, Felix subtly activated his ballet training.
Using the masterful, absolute control he had over his micro-muscles, he imperceptibly shifted his center of gravity. By exerting a fraction of downward pressure through the outer edges of his toes and leaning a hair's breadth forward—just enough to alter how his mass hit the scale's mechanical sensors without visibly moving a single muscle, he manipulated the balance.
Between the hidden lead weights in his hem, the heavy, freezing slosh of water in his belly, and his flawless postural trick, the metal beam finally hovered perfectly in the center.
Chan clicked his pen, noting down the number. He didn't gasp, and he didn't look alarmed. The calculated number fell just barely into the bottom tier of a "safe" medical range for his height.
Internally, Felix’s brain immediately kicked into hyper-drive, a cold spike of pure panic seizing his chest. He desperately tried to slant his gaze downward, his large doe eyes straining to read the exact sequence of digits Chan was casually looping onto the paper. He needed to see that number. If he didn't know what Chan wrote down, he couldn't maintain control. At the academy, knowing your exact chart numbers down to the single decimal place was the difference between keeping your solo or being sent back to the dorms in disgrace.
His mind raced through the frantic, exhausting mental math, trying to strip away the elaborate deception to calculate his actual weight.
Two liters of water chugged right after the ER discharge... that’s exactly two kilograms. Two kilograms is roughly 4.4 pounds.
His thoughts fractured, counting the next layer of lies.
The lead drapery weights. Twelve flat strips sewn into the double-lining of the hem. Each one weighs exactly fifty grams. Twelve times fifty is six hundred grams. That’s another 1.3 pounds of dead weight.
And then there was the stance. By pressing down through the outer edges of his toes and leaning his center of gravity a fraction of a millimeter forward against the scale's mechanical sensor, he estimated he had shaved off or shifted another half-pound of tension.
So, combine them. Two point six kilograms total. Nearly six full pounds of completely fake, manufactured mass.
If he subtracted that six-pound safety net from whatever number Chan was currently staring at, what was the real number left behind? How hollowed out was he, really? The sheer math of it made his head spin with a dizzying wave of validation and terror. If Chan actually knew the baseline number hiding underneath the lead and water, Felix would be pinned to an IV pole in a medical ICU within the hour.
Felix stepped off the scale, his chest heaving with a quiet, triumphant relief as Chan smoothly flipped the clipboard page. His secret was safe for now. The staff still just thought he was a stubborn, control-seeking kid in a baggy hoodie, completely blind to the reality of the sickness hiding right in front of them.
"Let’s just get a quick blood draw and some standard admission questions out of the way, and then we can get you to your room," Chan said, gesturing toward the examination chair.
Minho stepped forward, pulling a tray of sterile vials and a tourniquet from the counter. While Chan handled the psychological side of things, Minho was the one trained in the hands-on medical procedures, moving with the efficient, practiced, ease of a nurse. He tied the thick rubber band around Felix's upper arm, but because of the heavy, dense sleeve of the oversized hoodie, he had to aggressively roll the fabric up just past the crook of the elbow.
Felix’s breath hitched into a tight, sharp knot, but he forced his arm to stay dead weight in the chair. He desperately tried to pull the remaining fabric down to cover his forearm, his mind screaming in panic. Rolling that sleeve up was a massive risk. If Minho looked too closely, he’d see the terrifying lack of tissue on his upper arm, the way his bicep had completely melted away from severe restriction, leaving nothing but bone and pale, thin skin. At the academy, you learned to become a ghost, hiding the rapid deterioration under layered warm-ups until you couldn't breathe.
Minho’s fingers tapped firmly along the inside of his elbow, searching for a viable vein. Because of the sheer level of chronic dehydration and the fact that his blood volume was running dangerously low from the heavy water-loading earlier, his veins were completely flat and collapsed. It took a long, agonizing moment of careful, localized feeling, but Minho finally located a small, usable vein and smoothly guided the needle in with a steady hand.
While the dark red blood began to slowly fill the first plastic vial, Chan pulled his rolling stool a fraction closer, pen poised over a fresh psychiatric assessment sheet. They were clearly trying to map him out, to pry beneath the surface and analyze what kind of personality and defense mechanisms they were dealing with on night one.
"So, Yongbok," Chan began, his voice dropping into that soft, probing therapist tone. "The report from the hospital mentioned you collapsed right during a center floor rehearsal. How long have you been a ballet dancer?"
Felix didn't answer, he didn't even blink. He used a strict dissociation trick he had perfected during Maître Seo's brutal, hours-long critique sessions back at the academy. Locking his eyes onto a single fixed crack in the wall and completely checking out of his own physical body. If you cried, flinched, or dared to look away when an instructor called your lines 'sloppy' or your frame 'fat,' you were instantly kicked out of the studio. Silence was his only bulletproof shield.
"Do you feel a lot of intense pressure from your academy, or does that perfectionist drive come mostly from inside yourself?" Chan pressed gently, his eyes watching for any telltale twitch of the hands or sudden shift in posture. "It's okay to feel completely overwhelmed. A lot of people come through those heavy doors feeling like they’ve lost total control."
Felix kept his lips pressed firmly together into a thin, bloodless line. He didn't give them a single scrap of psychological information to write down on that chart. Instead, he just stared blankly ahead, his gaze locking onto the wall behind Chan's head. He wide-opened his massive, deep brown doe eyes—eyes that looked strikingly like a deer caught in a pair of looming headlights, entirely vacant yet devastatingly expressive. It was a flawless mask of compliance without actual cooperation.
Minho swapped out the first filled vial for a second one, his eyes darting up to study Felix's face. He looked at those massive, unblinking deer eyes, then down at the thick black hoodie pooling around the boy's frame. As a trained nurse, Minho noticed the slight, microscopic tremor in Felix's fingers and the dry, cracked skin on his lips, classic signs of an electrolyte nightmare but he kept his observation to himself for now, not wanting to make the boy bolt.
"All done," Minho murmured, pressing a piece of sterile gauze over the prick in Felix's arm and securing it with tape. He rolled the heavy black sleeve back down with a swift, careful motion, completely hiding the fragile, twig-like arm once more.
“Any substances in your system that are going to pop up in your labs?” Chan asked, his voice steady but entirely non-judgmental as he looked up from the clipboard.
Felix’s throat tightened, the sheer weight of the question forcing him to break his silent stare. He knew better than to lie about the chemistry part. If they found something unexpected in his bloodwork, they might give him a medication that would mess with his heart rate or cause unprompted weight fluctuations—things his hyper-calculating mind absolutely could not risk.
“Caffeine,” Felix muttered, his voice raspy, deep, and thin from hours of disuse. He swallowed hard, keeping his hands hidden deep inside the cuffs of his oversized hoodie. “And laxatives. High doses. I took them yesterday.” He took a slow breath, forcing himself to admit the final, heaviest truth of his hospital admission. "And the sleeping pills from the accident, the ones they pumped out of my stomach at the ER... there might still be traces of that in my system."
Chan didn't flinch, his pen moving smoothly across the paper as he logged the answer, though his brow twitched slightly at the mention of the overdose traces. To him, the cocktail of stimulants, laxatives, and sedatives just looked like another piece of the stubborn adolescent control puzzle. “Alright. Good to know. What about any other medications, or anything else for sleep?”
Felix shook his head slowly, his massive, dark doe eyes tracking the motion of Chan's hand. “No, just energy drinks."
“How many energy drinks a day, Yongbok?” Minho chimed in quietly from the side, discarding the used plastic syringe wrapper into the hazardous waste bin. His tone wasn't accusatory, just observant.
Felix looked down at his lap, feeling a sudden, intense wave of vulnerability under their combined gaze. “Three or four. Sometimes more if we have a double rehearsal. I need the stamina.” He didn't mention that the sugar-free energy drinks were the only thing keeping his blood pressure high enough to prevent him from blacking out during an eight-hour studio block.
Chan nodded, finishing up his notes with a soft click of his pen. He offered a small, reassuring smile that made Felix want to crawl right out of his skin. “Thank you for being honest with us, Yongbok. We’ll monitor your vitals closely tonight to make sure your heart handles the detox safely.”
“Well, that concludes our evaluation in here,” Chan said, offering a small, decisive nod as he closed the intake file and stood up from his rolling stool. He smoothed down the front of his white coat, turning his attention to the neatly folded pile of Felix’s original street clothes resting on the counter. “I’ll just take these to your assigned locker, and-”
“When do I get my own clothes back?” Felix whispered, his voice cracking slightly under the sudden, crushing weight of panic. His own clothes were his ultimate armor. his oversized vintage sweaters and heavy denim jackets were meticulously chosen to hide how thin he actually was from the rest of the world, and losing them felt like losing his entire identity.
Chan paused, turning back with an expression that softened into pure empathy. He smiled, but the look was so heavily laced with a gentle, agonizing pity that Felix almost wished the doctor would just frown, yell, or snap at him like Maître Seo did. Anger was easy to handle; it was a familiar currency. At the academy, anger meant you were still worth critiquing. If Mr. Seo screamed at you until his veins popped, it meant you still had a chance at the center spot. But pity? Pity made him feel entirely pathetic, fragile, and utterly broken.
“Soon enough, you’ll be able to earn your personal wardrobe privileges back,” Chan explained, his tone infuriatingly soothing. “But for your first few days on the unit, we keep it uniform. Honestly, most of the guys say the standard scrubs just feel like wearing a comfy pair of pajamas.”
He offered a casual wave of his hand toward the loose, flimsy track pants and the heavy, borrowed black hoodie Felix was currently clutching tightly around his frame.
Whoever the fuck told you that was a lying piece of shit, Felix thought, his jaw clenching as he kept his eyes glued to the floorboards.
To a healthy person, an oversized hoodie and loose pants might have felt like a cozy night in. To Felix, they were a glaring neon sign pointing out his complete lack of autonomy, a forced costume that stripped away his identity as a dancer and replaced it with a label he was desperate to reject. The academy had already taken his name, his childhood, and his bodily control, forcing him to track every ounce of flesh to ensure his lines stayed perfectly weightless for partner lifts and high leaps. Now, this place was taking his armor. It didn't feel like pajamas but instead it felt like a prison uniform designed to keep him compliant while they dissected his mind and forced weight onto his carefully carved bones.
Minho picked up the laundry bag containing Felix’s discarded clothes, the heavy fabric rustling loudly in the quiet room. "Let's head out," he said, stepping toward the heavy security door at the back of the office. He pulled a keycard from his pocket, tapping it against the electronic wall scanner.
The lock released with a loud, echoey click, and the heavy door slowly swung inward, revealing the bright, long corridor of the closed psychiatric ward. The corridor stretched out ahead of them, long and exceptionally quiet.
Felix walked with a stiff, rigid posture, his now clad feet with grippy socks padding softly against the polished linoleum floor as he followed Chan. His arms were tucked tightly inside the cavernous sleeves of his oversized black hoodie, his fingers digging into his own palms to keep his hands from shaking. The texture of the rubber grips on the bottom of the hospital socks felt disgusting against his soles—a harsh reminder that he wasn't wearing his smooth, familiar ballet flats.
As they walked, Chan fell into step beside him, his voice low and rhythmic as he began outlining the daily operations of the unit.
"We have a pretty structured routine here to help everyone get grounded," Chan explained, gesturing toward a large whiteboard mounted on the wall farther down the hall. "Breakfast is at eight sharp, followed by morning community meeting. Then we have various group therapy sessions throughout the day, and one-on-one therapy sessions. Bedtime is strictly at ten, and we do room checks periodically throughout the night just to ensure everyone is safe."
Felix nodded blankly, keeping his large, dark doe eyes locked straight ahead. He didn't care about the meetings or about the groups or whatever the hell Chan was talking about. His brain was too busy screaming at him, a hyper-fixated loop of panic running through his mind. Eight sharp meant forced food. Group meant eyes on him. Checks meant they would watch him sleep. The internal voice of his anorexia was already calculating the risks, charting out how he was going to survive the mandatory structure without letting them ruin the fragile, starved perfection he had nearly died to achieve.
He was entirely focused on the heavy, uncomfortable sloshing in his stomach, the massive volume of water he had chugged earlier now mixing unpleasantly with the residual ache of yesterday's laxatives. Every step felt heavy, a brutal reminder of the physical deception he had just pulled off.
"Since you arrived right at the tail end of the evening schedule, you missed the main dinner service in the dining hall," Chan spoke. "But we can easily have the kitchen heat up a tray for you. Or I can grab you some sandwiches and fruit from the staff fridge. You need to get something in your system before the lab work processes."
A cold spike of panic flared in Felix's chest, but he forced his expression to remain completely neutral, widening his eyes into that vacant, innocent stare.
"I already ate," Felix lied smoothly, his voice dropping into a soft, convincing murmur. "Mr- my coach stopped at a diner on the way here from the clinic. He made sure I had a full meal before the intake. I'm really, really full. My stomach actually hurts a bit from it."
It was a practiced, effortless deception, delivered with the absolute certainty of someone who had spent the last two years lying to doctors, teachers, and mirrors alike. He really couldn't deal with eating anyways right now, everything was already problematic enough. His mind twisted the offer into a threat: they want to make you fat, they want to take away your control, they want to destroy your lines. He knew with terrifying clarity that he'd surely be gaining weight here, regardless of how much he managed to purge or avoid, and the mere thought made him feel physically sick.
Chan looked down at him, a flicker of professional doubt crossing his features, but given the exhausting nature of Felix's day and his apparent compliance so far, he didn't push the issue. "Alright, Yongbok. If you're sure. We won't force a heavy meal on you tonight, but we will have some nutritional shakes available if you change your mind later."
They turned a final corner, stopping in front of a heavy wooden door near the very end of the hallway. Minho stepped forward, using his keycard to unlock it before pushing the door open to reveal Felix's temporary room.
Felix stepped inside, and his heart sank as the door clicked shut behind him.
The space was small, stark, and entirely devoid of comfort. It was a holding room, clearly designed for transition and high-observation safety. There was a single, low platform bed bolted to the floor, topped with a thin, plastic-wrapped mattress and a crisp sheet. A built-in laminate desk with no drawers sat in the corner, paired with a heavy, unmovable chair. The walls were a sterile, bare off-white, and the single window was made of thick, reinforced safety glass that didn't open, looking out into a darkened courtyard. There were no decorations, no personal touches, and absolutely nowhere to hide.
It was a blank slate, a small, empty box that made Felix feel smaller and more isolated than he ever had in his life. At the academy, his dorm room had been strictly regulated, but it at least had his dance bags, his spare ribbons, and the comforting scent of rosin. Here, there was nothing. Just empty space designed to expose him.
For the past years, he had shared a cramped, mirrored dorm room with three other senior dancers who were just as hyper-fixated and deeply unwell as him. They lived in a toxic, competitive silence, constantly eyeing each other's laundry baskets to see who was using water pills, or tracking how many minutes someone spent sweating in the sauna after midnight. Their lives were measured in grueling eight hour studio blocks, freezing showers to numb shin splints, and the communal secrecy of hiding laxative boxes under loose floorboards. Even under that suffocating surveillance, Felix had his own corner, his sewing kit for his pointe shoes, his lucky leg warmers, and his private stash of zero calorie flavoring drops.
But this room stripped all of that away. There were no mirrors to obsess over his form, no roommates to compete against, and no comforting clutter of his craft. It was just a cold, sterile cell that forced him to face the reality of his own mind without the distraction of anything.
"You actually just made it in time, Yongbok," Chan said gently. "We're about to start the evening group therapy session."
Felix stared at him, a cold knot of dread tightening in his stomach. Oh, fucking awesome, he thought, his flawless facade threatening to crack under the sudden surge of anxiety. Exactly what I need right now.
"Follow me," Chan said, gesturing back toward the hallway.
Felix swallowed hard, pulling the sleeves of his newly acquired, oversized black hoodie completely over his hands. He stepped out of the small room, trailing anxiously behind Chan and Minho as they walked down to the dayroom.
When the heavy doors to the common area buzzed open, the atmosphere shifted instantly.
Sitting around the tables were Hyunjin, Jisung, Seungmin, and Jeongin. The moment Felix stepped through the doorway, all four heads snapped up in unison. The tabletop napkin game they had been messing with was instantly forgotten. The established bubble of the ward's tiny, tight knit ecosystem was suddenly breached by a complete outsider.
It was awkward as fuck.
Felix swallowed hard, pulling the sleeves of his newly acquired, oversized ward sweatshirt completely over his hands, and followed Chan and Minho down to the dayroom.
Hyunjin’s eyes widened, his gaze instantly scanning the new person (guy, he soon realized and corrected himself) from head to toe with intense, burning curiosity. Even underneath the heavy, washed out fluorescent lighting of the ward, the new guy looked almost surreal. There was no hiding the fact that he was genuinely, strikingly beautiful. His light blond hair, clearly bleached, but perfectly cut somehow made the harsh hospital glare look soft. His features had a delicate, angelic symmetry to them, anchored by massive, deep brown doe eyes that felt entirely too heavy and expressive for his fragile frame.
To Hyunjin, who spent his days sketching abstract lines to process his own manic thoughts, the new boy looked like a masterpiece trapped in a nightmare. Jisung leaned forward so fast his chair screeched, his naturally protective but hyperactive brain immediately trying to read the newcomer's vibe. Seungmin, sitting with his usual sharp, analytical posture, narrowed his eyes slightly, calculating the stark contrast between the boy's immaculate, high-end appearance and the heavy secure ward environment. Even Jeongin, the youngest but easily the most perceptive, let out a slow, quiet hum, his calculating stare fixing onto the tight, defensive way the blond boy held his shoulders, a dead giveaway of someone trying desperately to hide and riddled with obvious anxiety.
Felix stood frozen next to Chan under the heavy, suffocating weight of their intense stares, wishing the sterile linoleum floor would open up and swallow him whole. He stared back, silently cringing at the fact the fluorescent lights made everyone look washed out. He really hoped he didn't look god-awfully terrible right now.
The four boys continued to stare, their curiosity practically vibrating in the air. But a pretty face didn't earn instant trust here. To the rest of the group, Felix was still a random stranger bursting into their carefully constructed bubble. His rigid, icy exterior made him look guarded and completely unapproachable, putting everyone slightly on edge. After all, they were a tight-knit, hyper-observant little family. They had spent months learning each other's triggers, trading terrible hospital snacks like currency, and developing an unspoken pact to make the staff's lives hilariously complicated. A new face meant a shift in their entire ecosystem.
Felix didn't say a single word. Keeping his head down, he shuffled over to the absolute furthest corner of the seating circle, awkwardly sitting down on the very edge of a plastic chair as if he could vanish if he remained still enough. He pulled the sleeves of his oversized ward hoodie completely over his hands, burying his chin into the collar.
"Because we have a new admission, we’re ditching the standard circle session for tonight," Chan shared, hauling out a rattling old box. "We can analyze your brains tomorrow. Tonight, it's Jenga, sound good hm?"
A collective groan echoed from Jisung and Hyunjin, though their attention instantly shifted back to the game. Chan set the wooden blocks in the center of the table, quickly stacking them into a neat tower.
"Standard rules," Minho added, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe as he watched the group with his usual tired expression. "You pull a block, you answer the question written on it. If you cause a collapse, you have to do the lunch tray setup tomorrow."
"I'm first," Hyunjin declared immediately. He slid out of his chair and approached the table with dramatic focus, his mismatched socks sliding against the linoleum. With two fingers, he carefully tapped a block from the middle row. It slipped out easily. He turned it over to read the sharpie text. "'What is your current hyper-fixation?' Easy, designing a clothing line made entirely of blankets so I don't have to leave my bed."
"That's just called a Snuggie, Hyunjin," Seungmin deadpanned, not even looking up as he waited for his turn.
"It's fashion, Seungmin, you wouldn't understand," Hyunjin huffed, placing the block perfectly on the top of the tower.
As the game progressed, the room filled with the familiar, chaotic banter of the ward. Jisung nearly knocked the tower over on his turn by aggressively trying to yank a piece with his teeth on a dare, earning a loud, ear-splitting screech from Hyunjin, who claimed the vibration ruined his artistic alignment. Meanwhile, Jeongin calculated his moves with silent, terrifying precision, purposely picking blocks that left the structure completely unstable for the next person, shooting Seungmin an evil, dimpled smirk every time the wood groaned.
The entire time, Felix remained completely mute. He didn't laugh, he didn't lean in, and he didn't look anyone in the eye. Whenever the tower wobbled, his posture grew a fraction tighter, his eyes tracking the movement with that sharp precision before he caught himself and looked back down at his lap. Felix didn't want to be here.
Felix didn't want to be here.
He didn't want to play their stupid game.
He just wanted to wake up from what he was still fiercely convincing himself was a massive, terrible misunderstanding.
As the game progressed, the room filled with the familiar, chaotic banter of the ward. Jisung nearly knocked the tower over on his turn, earning a loud screech from Hyunjin, while Jeongin calculated his moves with silent, terrifying precision, purposely picking blocks that left the structure completely unstable for the next person. Seungmin casually flicked his fingers against the table, intentionally sliding the empty wooden Jenga box straight across the polished surface until it tapped against the edge of Felix’s plastic chair. The sudden friction made a sharp, scraping sound on the linoleum, instantly drawing the room's attention back to the corner.
"Your turn, new guy," Seungmin said, leaning back with a neutral, expectant expression.
The tower was leaning dangerously to the left now, courtesy of Jeongin's last malicious pull. It was a clear trap, designed to force Felix out of his shell. Felix stared at the wooden box resting against his chair, the silence in the room suddenly feeling heavy and suffocating. Every eye was locked onto him, waiting for a breakdown, a flat refusal, or a stuttering excuse.
Instead, Felix let out a quiet, almost imperceptible breath. He slid his hands out from the safety of his cavernous sleeves, exposing his pale wrists for the first time. He rose from the edge of the plastic chair with a seamless, fluid grace that felt entirely out of place among the clunky, heavy-footed energy of the dayroom.
He approached the table with slow, deliberate steps, his posture perfectly centered. The tower was a structural nightmare, leaning precariously to the left, a single millimeter away from a complete collapse.
Without a trace of hesitation, Felix leaned over the table. He didn't hover or tremble. Using the absolute, masterfully trained control of his muscles, the exact same steady precision he used to hold a flawless balance en pointe. He extended two fingers. He tapped a block near the very bottom, a piece that looked entirely load bearing.
With a single, smooth, effortless flick, the block slid cleanly out of the structure. The tower wobbled violently, leaning further into the empty space, but against all laws of physics, it held (maybe for his sake, so he didn't collapse either.)
A collective, stunned silence hit the table. Jisung’s jaw practically dropped to the linoleum, and even Jeongin’s calculating smirk flickered in genuine surprise. Hyunjin just stared, completely captivated by the effortless precision of the movement, his early early morning theatrical brain immediately labeling the blond boy as an absolute mystery.
Felix didn't acknowledge any of them. He slowly turned the wooden block over in his hand, his eyes scanning the faded Sharpie text written across the wood.
"What is one thing you miss the most right now?"
Felix opened his mouth to speak, and the moment the first syllable left his lips, a visible shockwave went through the entire room.
His voice didn't match his appearance at all. Looking at his delicate, angelic features, his immaculate blond hair, and those massive, fragile doe eyes, everyone had instinctively expected something soft, high, or youthful. Instead, what came out was a shockingly deep, resonant bass. It was a low, heavy rumble that seemed to vibrate straight out of the chest of someone twice his size, dark and incredibly rich.
Jisung actually flinched back into his couch cushions, his eyes wide as if he were convinced the new guy was secretly lip-syncing a voice track. Seungmin’s eyebrows shot clean past his forehead, his analytical mask briefly shattering, while Hyunjin felt a sudden, ridiculous shiver skip down his spine. The sheer absurdity of an angelic, fragile blond boy possessing the voice of a deep-sea foghorn to amuse them all.
Felix, however, seemed entirely oblivious to the whiplash he had just given them. Instead, he was swallowing down the sudden, bitter lump of emotion, his voice cracking out flat, cold, and entirely devoid of life.
"My routine," Felix murmured.
Before anyone could analyze his answer or ask a follow-up question, Felix set the block perfectly on the very top of the leaning tower, balancing it with a final, delicate touch. He turned on his heel, walked straight back to his isolated corner, and sank onto the edge of his plastic chair. He pulled the thick sleeves of his oversized hoodie completely back over his hands and buried his chin deep into the collar, vanishing back into his icy, unreachable shell.
Across the room, Hyunjin’s jaw was still slightly slack. His theatrical brain was practically short-circuiting. The contrast between Felix’s ethereal, almost fragile appearance and that ridiculously deep, rich bass voice was the most captivating thing Hyunjin had ever witnessed in this depressing place. He couldn't take his eyes off the new guy. Usually, Hyunjin was the one taking up all the space in the room with his dramatic entrances, but this boy had managed to completely command the entire dayroom’s attention without even trying. He wanted to sketch him the sharp, angelic slope of his jawline, the contrast of the bleached hair under the ugly ward lights but more than that, he just wanted to figure out what was hiding behind those massive, unblinking doe eyes.
The game didn't stop there, much to Felix's displeasure.
Instead of letting him slide back into the shadows, Jisung aggressively rubbed the back of his neck, trying to break the heavy tension Felix had left behind.
"Alright, my turn before this monstrosity falls," Jisung muttered, stepping up and hastily yanking a block from the opposite side to balance the weight. He read his question, cracked a loud joke about missing his favorite video game console, and threw the block on top.
But the rotation moved fast, and because no one wanted to touch the left side of the tower, the remaining safe options were running out. When it circled back around, Jeongin gave the structure a wicked, testing look. He pulled a corner piece with terrifying ease, tapping the table light enough to slide the box right back to Felix’s feet.
"Double or nothing, new guy," Jeongin challenged, his voice quiet but sharp with curiosity.
Felix’s chest tightened. He already had a serious problem with this kid—Jeongin? Whatever his name was.
He didn't want to move again. The heavy volume of water in his stomach was starting to feel ice-cold and heavy, sending a dull, threatening ache through his abdomen. But the intense stares of the room were pinning him down. Hyunjin was leaning forward on his elbows, staring with an expression that was less of a judgmental evaluation and more like total, unadulterated fascination. It made Felix feel entirely too perceived.
Silently, Felix stood up a second time. He didn't look at any of them. He approached the leaning tower, which was now practically defying gravity. His pale fingers moved with that same robotic, flawless ballet precision, pulling a block from the dead center of the stack. The wood scraped lightly, but the tower stayed upright.
He flipped it over. The black Sharpie text read: “What is a secret habit no one else knows about?”
A cold sweat broke out across the back of Felix's neck. A secret habit? Where could he even start? The way he counted the calories in his ice water? The way he checked the width of his wrists every morning before getting out of bed? The flat lead weights currently sewn into the very hem of the hoodie he was wearing?
He couldn't say any of that. He couldn't let them suspect anything. He forced his massive, dark doe eyes to look completely blank, staring right through the wooden block.
"I sleep with my ankles crossed," Felix lied flatly, his voice a low, empty whisper. "Like a habit from rehearsals. My legs don't feel right if they're completely straight."
It was a half-truth—dancers did often have strange sleeping postures, but it was entirely safe. Plus, it earned a hum from Chan, who was still looking over them. It gave them absolutely nothing real to analyze.
He only hoped he wouldn't have to actually sleep with his ankles crossed in his time here to escape his dumb lie.
Hyunjin tracked him all the way back to his corner, a tiny, intrigued smile tugging at his lips. A dancer, Hyunjin thought, the pieces of the puzzle starting to click together in his head. The insane precision, the posture, the voice, the habit. He felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to cross his own ankles under the table just to see how it felt.
The game progressed quickly after that, the tension around the table rising with every block pulled. The tower was leaning at an impossible angle now, swaying slightly every time someone breathed too heavily.
"Don't look at it, you're going to knock it down with your eyes," Jisung hissed at Hyunjin, his hand trembling as he reached for a loose piece near the bottom.
"That makes zero scientific sense, sungie," Seungmin replied calmly, crossing his arms.
Jisung took a deep breath, pinched the block, and gave it a sharp pull. The entire structure wobbled violently. A loud gasp erupted from Hyunjin, but miraculously, the tower stayed upright. Jisung let out a dramatic yell of triumph, slamming his block onto the top row. "Ha! Read it and weep, boys! I am the king of—"
Clack.
Jeongin didn't even let Jisung finish his victory speech. With a completely blank, mischievous expression, the youngest stepped up and casually flicked a block from the very center of the leaning tower.
For a fraction of a second, time froze. Then, the entire wooden structure collapsed into a chaotic heap, blocks scattering across the heavy table.
"Jeongin!" Jisung shrieked, throwing his hands in the air. "You didn't even try!"
"I did try," Jeongin said, a slow, evil smirk spreading across his face as he looked at Jisung. "I tried to make it collapse. And I succeeded. Looks like you're helping with the lunch trays tomorrow, hyung."
"What?! You're the one who knocked it over!" He said, throwing his hands up in defense.
"Yeah, but it was structurally unstable because of your last move," Jeongin countered smoothly, already stepping back toward the couch. "Chan said whoever causes the collapse. Your bad placement caused it."
"Chan! Tell him he's cheating!" Jisung pleaded, turning to the head psychiatrist.
Chan just laughed, shaking his head as he began gathering the scattered blocks back into the box. "Nice try guys, both of you are on duty tomorrow."
While the dayroom dissolved into its usual loud bickering, Felix remained entirely still in his corner. He hadn't flinched when the tower crashed, nor had he smiled at the antics. Hyunjin watched him through the chaos, noting how the blond boy seemed entirely separated from reality, like he was physically in the room but mentally a million miles away. Minho stepped away from the doorframe, checking his watch before catching Chan's eye. Chan gave a small nod. It was time to wind things down for the night.
When the clock finally struck ten o'clock—Felix's savior, his mind gasped.
"Alright, guys, that's group for tonight," Chan announced, rising from his chair. "Curfew is in effect. Everyone head down to your rooms for lockup."
Felix didn't wait to be told twice. The moment the words left Chan's mouth, he slid off the edge of his plastic chair. He would've bolted for the exit if he wasn't about to faint right now from the dizzying wave of nausea hitting him.
Hyunjin opened his mouth to say something, maybe a proper goodnight, or a joke to try and coax another deep syllable out of him, but Felix was already gone, moving like a phantom. Hyunjin sighed, running a hand through his messy hair, his mind completely preoccupied with the beautiful new admission as he slowly stood up to head to his own room.
Felix practically flew down the corridor, his bare feet making no sound against the floor. He ducked into his small, temporary room and let out a shaky breath as the heavy wooden door clicked shut behind him, locked from the outside by the staff for the night.
The space was pitch-black, save for the weak, pale moonlight bleeding through the reinforced safety glass of the window. Felix didn't bother turning on the lights. He didn't want to see the stark, sterile off-white walls or the empty desk.
He just needed to hide from all of this
He climbed onto the low platform bed, the thin, plastic-wrapped mattress crinkling loudly under his shifting weight. He pulled his knees tightly against his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs and burying his face into the collar of his heavy, oversized hoodie.
Now that he was completely alone in the dark, the quiet panic he had been suppressing all evening finally broke through his defenses. His stomach gave a sudden, sharp twist. The two liters of water he had aggressively chugged earlier were sitting like an iceberg in his empty system, and the residual, dull ache of yesterday's high-dose laxatives was beginning to pulse dangerously in his lower abdomen. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
He lay perfectly still, listening to the distant, rhythmic footsteps of Minho doing his first round of night checks down the hall, desperately hoping his body wouldn't betray him before the ward fell completely asleep.
Felix shifted restlessly beneath the heavy blankets, fighting a losing battle against the cold, heavy ache in his chest until he finally drifted into a light, fitful sleep.
Meanwhile, as Felix was falling asleep, the rest of the staff was just wrapping up the day's paperwork. Letting out a long, heavy breath, Minho turned away from Room Four. His own body was screaming for sleep, the endless hours of his shift weighing heavily on his eyelids, but his job wasn't quite finished yet. He had to ensure the rest of the ward's delicate ecosystem was settled.
He padded quietly down the linoleum hallway, checking the remaining rooms one by one.
He peeked through the glass of Room One. Inside, Hyunjin was sprawled out diagonally across his bed, one arm hanging off the side, his chaotic hair messy against the pillow. He was completely out cold, a stark contrast to his dramatic energy from earlier. Hyunjin's drawing pad was dropped face down on the floor next to his slippers, the top page featuring a frantic, unfinished sketch.
In Room Two, Jisung was buried under a fortress of blankets, only the top of his head visible, snoring softly. Minho moved to Room Three. Seungmin was sitting up in bed, reading a book under the dim glow of his reading light. When he noticed Minho’s shadow at the window, Seungmin looked up, offered a lazy wave, and clicked the light off, signaling he was settling down.
Minho walked back to the nurses' station, dropping his clipboard onto the desk with a satisfying clatter. He sank into his office chair, rubbing his burning eyes. The ward was asleep, the new arrival was secure, and for the first time all day, the exhaustion completely took over.
He rubbed his burning eyes before pulling the keyboard toward himself. The bright glare of the computer monitor made him flinch, casting a harsh blue light over his tired features as he logged into the clinic's secure database. His fingers tapped a slow, mechanical rhythm across the keys as he opened the night log. One by one, he brought up the files for the section's residents. He checked off the compliance boxes for the evening wind-down and logged the final medication confirmations.
For Hyunjin, he typed: Patient exhibited high energy and impulsivity post-breakfast, settled well after evening group activity.
For Jisung: Cooperative during evening routine, minor pushback during recreational activity.
For Seungmin and Jeongin, he noted a stable evening with no behavioral disruptions.
Finally, he clicked on the newly generated file at the bottom of the screen: Lee Felix. Admission status: Closed Ward, High-Observation.
INITIAL ADMISSION SUMMARY
CLOSED PSYCHIATRIC UNIT • 20:45 • NIGHT SHIFT
With a final click, Minho saved the updates to the system, officially wrapping up the daily logs. He leaned back in his chair, letting out a long breath as the computer screen dimmed into sleep mode, leaving the office in peaceful darkness. He had to do his last night rounds at midnight, and then he'd finally be done.