Chapter Text
Mingyu watched silently as Soonyoung demonstrated the next move to their new dance, blinking rapidly to try and clear his vision. For whatever reason, it seemed as though his right contact lens didn’t want to cooperate with him on that particular day and it was starting to hurt. He rubbed at his eye absently, losing track of what was happening with the rest of the group.
“Yah! Gyu, pay attention!” Mingyu tried to look at what Soonyoung was doing in the mirror, but nothing seemed to be making his vision clear.
“I’m sorry, hyung… can I take a break? I think I need to take my contacts out…” Mingyu couldn’t see the frustrated looks from his members in the mirror, but he felt the tension in the room. It wasn’t the first time that week they’d had to stop mid-rehearsal because of an issue with his ability to see what was going on, and Mingyu knew that it was annoying to have to stop for something that seemed so minor when it wasn’t your issue.
“Again?” Mingyu was thankful that Soonyoung’s question was laced with an obvious concern about what was going on, rather than the annoyance that he was sure most of the group was feeling in that moment. “Go ahead… but hurry, yeah? Everyone else, take five and get some water. We’ll run it from the beginning after the break.” Mingyu hurried out to his bag, grabbing his contact lens case and his glasses before hurrying to the nearest bathroom to change them out as quickly as possible.
Removing the lens didn’t do much to relieve the pain in Mingyu’s eye, nor did it help at all with the strange blurriness that seemed to be significantly worse than his usual near-sightedness. He was quick to use the eye drops that he kept with his lenses, hoping that his eye had just gotten dry and that it would all resolve in a few minutes. Even getting his glasses on didn’t seem to help, which concerned Mingyu. But he didn’t really have time to think about it, because they had a new dance to learn and he needed to get back to the studio before the rest of the group finished their break.
Mingyu tried to slip into the room quietly, but his clumsiness betrayed him and he ended up tripping over his own feet and dropping everything in his hands as he crossed the threshold, bumping his elbow on the door frame in the process. Thankfully, Mingyu managed to catch himself before he could fall completely, but it was still embarrassing. Despite the fact that everyone knew he was a klutz, Mingyu still hated proving it in front of his members on an almost daily basis.
Mingyu couldn’t help noticing that his arm felt numb as he began to pick up his things, which was weird. But the thought was pushed out of his head as Wonwoo came over to help him gather everything back up. “Are you okay, Gyu-ah? You seem off…”
“My eye is really hurting,” Mingyu replied, shaking his head. “I can deal with it until the end of choreography, and then I’ll talk to a manager about going to get it checked out…”
“Hurts like there’s something in there, or something else?” Wonwoo asked, reaching up and taking Mingyu’s glasses off so that he could get a closer look at Mingyu’s eyes. “Neither one is red or anything… which eye is bothering you?”
“What’s going on?” Soonyoung asked, as he and Seungcheol walked over to investigate what was going on between the two rappers.
“It’s nothing…” Mingyu began.
“He said that his eye is really bothering him, even without the lens,” Wonwoo replied, completely ignoring the fact that Mingyu was trying to avoid this conversation.
“Which eye?” Soonyoung asked, repeating Wonwoo’s previous question as Jihoon joined them as well.
“Hyungs…”
“Which eye?” Mingyu knew that it was a lost cause trying to get the leaders to leave him alone once Jihoon inserted himself into the conversation as well. Mingyu’s roommate wasn’t the most physically affectionate person, but he was fiercely protective and Mingyu knew that the smaller man wasn’t going to let it go now that he knew there was something going on.
“Right,” Mingyu replied, sighing. “Everything is really blurry on that side, too…”
“Soonyoung-ah, go get a manager to take Mingyu-ah to the hospital. He’s probably scratched his cornea, and we don’t want it to develop into an infection,” Seungcheol instructed, putting a hand on Mingyu’s shoulder and starting to guide him over to the wall where all of their stuff was. “Go ahead and get your stuff, okay? We’ll catch you up later, once we know that you aren’t at risk of some kind of infection…”
“I can wait…” Mingyu began.
“No way. If your eye gets infected, that’s going to have you out of commission a lot longer than just a choreography session and some vocal lessons,” Seungcheol commented, referencing what they had left on the day’s schedule. It was a surprisingly light day for being in the midst of comeback preparations, which Mingyu supposed was better than having all of this happen on a day that they were booked solid for hours on end.
Mingyu nodded, sighing and starting to pack away his contacts and glasses case in his bag with a bit of help from Wonwoo, who was still holding onto the small bottle of contact lens solution that had magically stayed closed when it had gone flying out of his hands. “I have painkillers in my bag, if you need them…” Wonwoo began softly, as Mingyu zipped his bag closed.
“I’ll be okay, hyung,” Mingyu replied, shaking his head. “It isn’t that bad… I think that Seungcheol-hyung is overreacting a little about all of this. It’s probably just a little scratch…”
“You were having issues the other day, too,” Wonwoo replied. “How long has your eye been bothering you, really?”
Mingyu shrugged. “A few days, I guess? It wasn’t really that bad until today,” he replied.
“Aish… Gyu, you can’t hide stuff like this. You’ve seen how bad injuries can get when they get ignored…” Wonwoo began.
“This isn’t an injury, hyung. It’s just a little scratch,” Mingyu replied, standing up and moving his bag onto his shoulder. “I’m fine, okay? Don’t worry so much, hyung.” Mingyu held out his hand for his glasses, thankful when the older man chose to just hand them over as Soonyoung came back with a manager in tow.
“Your eye is bothering you, Mingyu-ah?” the manager asked walking over and motioning for Mingyu to lean down slightly so that he could inspect Mingyu’s eye more closely. “What’s going on? I don’t see anything…”
“It just hurts. And everything’s kind of blurry on the right side,” Mingyu relied, feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the way that everyone’s attention was on him. “I don’t have to go to the doctor right now, hyung… it’s not so bad that I can’t finish choreography.”
“It sounds like he might have scratched his cornea,” Seungcheol interrupted, before Mingyu could say anything else.
“I agree… I know you don’t want to leave, Gyu-ah, but I think it’s for the better if we take you in and get it checked out sooner, rather than later,” the manager replied. “Let’s go. Hopefully you’ll get cleared to come back tomorrow, and this will just be a little hiccup in the current plan.”
The ride to the hospital was mostly silent and decidedly boring; the manager seemed to realize that Mingyu wasn’t really in the mood to talk, and with his eye bothering him so much he didn’t want to do anything involving his phone for fear of making it worse. It wasn’t until they were parked in the hospital’s parking area that the manager said anything. “Do you have a mask or anything? I should have asked before we left the company building…”
“I might have a hat in my bag, but I don’t think that’s going to do any good,” Mingyu replied, shaking his head as he put his glasses back on before rummaging through his bag to find an old black beanie that he could use to at least try and hide his current hair color. He hadn’t gotten it dyed since the promotion period for their last release had ended, and the new growth at his roots was looking particularly bad that day. He was quick to pull it down over his hair, tucking as much as he could underneath the knit fabric.
“Right… let’s get this sorted out, and then we can get you home to rest.”