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Park Jihoon wakes up to silence, the light shining in his eyes too bright to discern the shadowed shapes. He hears the breathy words of “it worked, it’s alive” and vaguely thinks to himself that he is a he and not an it. The doctors (because they had to be, from the surgical garb they wore) laugh and he realises that he’d said it aloud.
“It’s good to see you again, Jihoon-ssi.”
He nods tiredly, and promptly falls back asleep.
When he wakes up again, his head is clearer and he can actually see what was in front of him, or rather, who. One of them was pretty obvious, a man with a calm smile and a soft drawling voice that rumbled low. He wore a white uniform. A nurse then. The other he couldn’t quite tell, the man stuffed awkwardly into a plastic visitor’s chair, long legs sticking out. A hospital blanket was draped over him. He was handsome, Jihoon mused, even when his hair was dishevelled and plastered against his forehead. He looked tired.
“Ah, Jihoon, you’re awake!” the nurse exclaimed, beaming in a way that Jihoon couldn't help but mirror albeit more hesitantly. “Minhyun would be so happy.” Jihoon doesn’t recognise the name.
Apparently it shows because the nurse’s expression melts into worry. It comes fast to the man. “You don’t remember.” It wasn’t a question but Jihoon nods guiltily. The nurse, Jonghyun, pressed his lips into a grim frown. Nodding to himself, he smiles at Jihoon, though it looked a lot less genuine than the smile before. “Don’t worry Jihoon-ssi, I’m sure the doctor would like to talk to you. How about you rest first?” Before Jihoon can react, Jonghyun leant down to tap the sleeping male’s back. The man stirred, and Jonghyun whispered something to him. The man startled up, looking at Jihoon with such wide eyes of hope that something aches in Jihoon, and he forces his eyes back down onto the blanket. He clutched the cloth, trying not to feel the burning sorrow that the other man casts onto him. Jonghyun must have pressed him, because there was the scatter of the chair against the floor. Jihoon looks up.
The man’s last gaze before he leaves haunts Jihoon.
Apparently Jihoon had died. Well, rather he was “brain dead”. Jihoon had been involved in a car accident, Doctor Kwak had said. “There was nearly no chance that you could have woken up and recovered.”
“Which was why you went through with the project.”
The doctor nodded. “It was experimental, but it was our best chance.”
Against the wall, Minhyun, the stranger in his room a few hours ago, laughed drily. “You always were a fighter.” Jihoon’s chest twisted. He had been told the basics about his life, including how Hwang Minhyun was his boyfriend, had been for the past 4 years.
Doctor Kwak nodded, “on our books the experiment was a success, since it had essentially revived you and kickstarted the recovery of your ribcage and other injuries, but since you’re the first, we can’t tell whether the memory loss is a side effect of the treatment. It’s possible that it’s just the shock from the accident. The MRIs show no other after effects, so there should be no effects on your memory making skills.” The doctor looked at him, but Jihoon knew that his attention wasn’t on him when he says, carefully, that, “you’re essentially starting your new life with a clean slate.”
The doctor flipped through his papers. “We’re going to need you to come back monthly for reexaminations and check ups, especially due to the newness of the treatment. For the next few months, we’re also going to need you to wear the bracelet,” he gestured to the metallic wristband across Jihoon’s pulse point (how long has that been there?) “which would help us keep track of your vitals. Other than that, I see no reason for you to stay here longer. Minhyun can just sign your release forms and you can go home to rest.”
Jihoon nodded slowly, trying to keep his face clear. He mumbles a quick “thank you Doctor Kwak.”. The doctor smiled. It’s intimate in a way that has Jihoon think that maybe the two of them were close before. Jihoon doesn’t remember though, he doesn’t remember much.
“It’s okay, Jihoon-ah. Just call me Aaron-hyung. How about you go and pack up your things in the room, and Minhyun will sign your forms? Jonghyun will show you the way back.”
He nodded again, passing Minhyun a glance. The man’s eyes looked dark, but he looked back at Jihoon and smiled warmly. Jihoon worried his upper lip, before following Jonghyun out.
“Is...Minhyun-ssi going to be okay?” is what he asks the nurse. Jonghyun looks back at him and makes an attempt at being stoic.
“Ha…” His lips quirked up but his eyes are sad, equal parts amused and nostalgic. “You called him -ssi... I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call him anything but hyung since you got together.
Jihoon looked away, kind of feeling tired of how everyone seemed to be acting around him. He was uncomfortable, knowing that he should feel something but ultimately feeling nothing. He felt bad, he didn’t want to hurt anyone. He was barely even the Jihoon they remember. He wasn’t the Jihoon they wanted.
“Anyway,” Jonghyun said, quickly changing the subject, “Minhyun would be fine. Aaron-hyung probably wanted to talk to him.”
Jihoon nodded slowly.
The time seemed to tick slowly from there. Jonghyun led him to the room to wait, before he had to move off to somewhere else. Jihoon found himself tapping his leg against the floor, eyes wandering through the whole room. It hit him that this probably wasn’t just a simple hospital room, rather it seemed different. He felt watched from the obscene number of cameras and shifted himself. So it was true, he wasn’t just another patient.
The wristband suddenly felt too tight around his wrist, and he pulled at it awkwardly before sighing.
He didn’t want to think about the weight of his own existence. He just wanted to be alive.
He jolted when the door slid open, sounding too loud in the silence of the hospital room. Minhyun stuck his head through, and Jihoon tries not to flinch at the relief in his eyes. He feels scrutinised, too vulnerable in his surroundings and his head.
Minhyun seemed to catch it quickly. “Ah, sorry…” he looked away, “I was just, overwhelmed… by seeing you sitting up and not…” Comatose. Brain dead. Sick. Unconscious. All the synonyms came and went unsaid.
Jihoon didn’t want to live like this forever. He smiled, the action feeling awkward on his face, “It’s okay.”
Minhyun nodded, still not looking at Jihoon. “We should go. Home.”
Jihoon made an action to grab his bag, but Minhyun swooped down to take it from him, lugging the strap over his shoulder. The action brings the faint smell of peach to him, and he forced his head down at the proximity.
Minhyun leads him through the winding hallways with the ease of someone’s who had been there for a long time. The nurses sometimes stop to look at the both of them, and Jihoon shifts.
“Turn this way,” Minhyun said, moving to stand behind him. “The car’s there.”
It’s standing together that has Jihoon realise how tall the man is, and it makes his chest tighten at the same time as it makes his shoulders relax. He shakes it away.
The ride is quiet, calm, Minhyun doesn’t try to probe. But he does put on some music which Jihoon finds that he enjoys. (He wonders if it was what past-Jihoon had liked, if it was what he sang to.
“He was more of a rapper actually.”
Jihoon really needed to stop thinking out loud. Minhyun laughed, the giggle forcing his eyes into crescent shapes and his mouth into a wide smile. Jihoon flushed, he was probably paying too much attention.
“You… don’t have to try to be like you were before, by the way.” Minhyun’s voice was soft. “You don’t need to be anxious about it...I’m just happy that you’re alive.”
They drove through a tunnel, the alternating lights casting shadows on Jihoon’s hands where they stayed clutched against his pants.
“You don’t need to force yourself to be like you were before.”
You don't have to pretend you love me the way you did before.
Jihoon nodded, and even when Minhyun wasn’t looking at him, he somehow could tell that Minhyun saw.
The days after that were a blur of routine. Minhyun woke him up, he read his notes for university, tried to catch up, tried to settle into his daily life. Minhyun would go for work. The days lead into nights, with some variance such as checkups and reexaminations but all in all was the same. Minhyun and him barely talked. Jihoon told himself it was because he had to study, no other reason.
Minhyun broke that one day, tapping his back on a Saturday morning. “I want to introduce you to someone.”
That someone was apparently Park Woojin, the same age as him but already running his own dance and rap studio. “He was your best friend since you both started school.” Minhyun added. “I told him about what happened, but I think meeting him would be better for the both of you.”
“What?”
“You haven’t talked to anyone besides me and the doctors.”
“...and?”
“Jihoon…”
Jihoon frowned.
“Stop pouting.”
Woojin turned out to be slightly insane, someone who drew out Jihoon’s laugh so easily that it showed just how long they’d been friends. By the time that Woojin had to rush off to facilitate a class, Jihoon was nearly exhausted by the energy he spent just laughing. He didn’t realise how uptight he’d been the whole time until he laughed it out.
“Minhyun-hyung?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you.”
“No problem, Jihoonie.”
The days start to let up when Jihoon finally gets the hang of his life. Woojin comes over to pester him sometimes, he’s starting to understand his university work, and the tension between him and Minhyun actually starts to ease. Jihoon starts to learn the little things about Minhyun. Like the way his smile starts at the edges, stretches to his cheeks. Or the way he’s fiercely protective of the roomba they keep in their guest bedroom because more often than not Minhyun cleans faster and cleaner than it but he’s too attached to get rid of it. Sometimes, Jihoon sees Minhyun looking at a photograph, and it’s something so soft and private that Jihoon looks away, something stirring in his chest.
Jihoon wakes up one morning on the sofa instead of the bed, head resting in the crook on Minhyun’s neck, Minhyun’s arm thrown protectively over Jihoon’s shoulder, the loading screen of the movie they put on still startlingly bright against Jihoon’s sleep blurred vision. He panicked, carefully crawling out of the hold and stumbling quickly to the toilet. He stared at the mirror, at the red heat on his cheeks, at the way he was still thinking about how Minhyun was warm, how his scent seemed to linger in his mind and oh god.
What is this feeling?
He slid down the door onto the floor and covered his face with his hands. He wondered if the doctors monitoring him were wondering just why his heart was going so fast.
When he tells Woojin, the man almost laughs so hard he falls off the chair of the cafe they were at. He also calls Jihoon stupid (which, ouch? ) and wipes a tear off dramatically, “Gosh I feel like I’m having deja vu. You were like this when we were 18 and you realised how ridiculous the notion of you being ‘just friends’ with Minhyun-hyung was.”
“Yeah yeah, I wouldn’t know.”
Woojin scoffs at him, pulling his tongue out which Jihoon mirrors with an appallingly similar amount of childishness.
“Anyway, how did it go, your talk with him?”
“It went fine. He understands.”
Jihoon walks out of the toilet wiping his face, still feeling the burn of tears behind his eyes. He barely has time to realise that Minhyun had woken up before the older man pulls his hands from his face. He’s worried, Jihoon realises, panicked in a way that Jihoon hadn’t really seen from him, different from the placid face he usually wore.
“You were crying?” Minhyun’s voice was breathy, rushed out and clumsy. It's ridiculous, how even when Minhyun's hair was flattened on one side and his clothes were rumpled by sleep, Jihoon still found him stupidly attractive.
Jihoon shook his head, trying to walk away from the man before his heart ripped out of him with how fast it battered against his chest. “I’m fine, really.”
Minhyun looked at him, before he let go of Jihoon’s hands and cast his eyes down. He took a breath, and nodded.
“Okay.”
But as Minhyun walked away, something in Jihoon tugged at him. “Wait,” he found himself saying, reaching out to grab Minhyun’s arm. “I-”
I like you.
He wonders if it was said aloud, if he could think so loud it would leave his mouth without him realising, if Minhyun could hear him.
I love you.
“What is it, Jihoonie?” Minhyun’s voice was low, gentle.
But I'm not ready.
Jihoon looked up at him, and it hurts to see the way Minhyun forces himself to stay stoic.
“I...I don’t want to be together yet. I...I'm scared that I'd hurt you again. I feel like I know you enough to love you, but at the same time… I’m not ready.”
It was quiet.
Then Minhyun put his palm over Jihoon’s, interlocking their hands, and almost immediately Jihoon’s hands stopped shaking, a peace falling over him.
“Okay.” He says. “I understand. It’s okay.” He pressed his lips to Jihoon’s head.
“I just want to be sure.”
Minhyun nodded. “Don’t worry, Jihoonie. Take your time.”
He took a breath.
“I’ll wait for you to come to your decision.”
Woojin raised an eyebrow and smirked, watching Jihoon smile when his phone lit up with a notification.
“Minhyun-hyung?”
Jihoon flushed, “yeah.” He leaned back against his seat, smiling as he quickly typed a response.
Woojin almost laughs.
Even after starting again, they’re still so whipped for each other.