Archive of Our Own

Thunk.

“Owwwww!” Jongdae howls and clutches his fist to his chest, leaning away from Minseok and consequently squashing Sehun into the corner of the back row of the minivan. Sehun shoves him back upright while Minseok snickers. The pair of them have been playing “knuckles” next to Sehun for what seems like at least an hour, and Sehun is getting rather tired of being half-deafened by Jongdae’s screeches of pain every time he loses—which seems like at least 80% of the time.

“You suck at this game,” he tells Jongdae, rubbing his ear. “Can’t you play something else?”

“I have to get back at Minseok first.” Jongdae is still cradling his hand. “It’s not fair if I’m the only one who ends up bruised.” He examines his hand and his eyes widen. “Hyung, you drew blood!”

Sehun eyes Jongdae’s hand. His knuckles are dotted with blue bruises from the repetitive hits from Minseok’s knuckles, and yes, he sees that one of them has scraped a little, and a miniscule speck of blood is forming on the skin.

“Oh no.” Minseok is still laughing. “You need to stop losing!”

“It’s not like I’m trying to lose,” Jongdae whines. “Why are you so good at this game? It’s not fair!”

“You should give him a handicap,” Chanyeol tosses the words over his shoulder from the middle row, “or he won’t be able to use his hand by the time we get to Jirisan.”

“He has another hand, what’s the problem?” Minseok says heartlessly, earning himself a punch to the upper arm from Jongdae. Sehun rolls his eyes and resumes staring out of the window. His right leg jiggles as he watches the scenery flash by. He’s bored, tired and restless, and the combination isn’t putting him in the best mood for the antics of his eight hyungs. He loves them all, but sometimes they can be a bit overwhelming—especially when all nine of them are cooped up in an overcrowded minivan for over three hours. There are small cameras stuck to the inside of most of the windows and the roof, capturing footage for the holiday special they’re filming on this trip. Sehun isn’t convinced that this trip counts as a vacation at all if there are cameras on them, but it’s not like he has any say in the matter. Or like any of them do. Regardless of the fact that everyone else in Korea gets to spend the autumn celebration of Chuseok with their families, EXO will be spending it together, cementing the image of their group being their family. Sehun loves all his members, he really does, but he can’t help wishing he could have at least a day or two to spend with his parents, his grandparents and his brother.

“Are we nearly there yet?” Baekhyun whines from the middle, and gets a chorus of groans and “shut up”s in response; it’s at least the tenth time he’s asked this. Sehun isn’t sure whether he’s playing around for the camera or really wants to know. Maybe it’s both. Sehun wouldn’t mind knowing the answer too. The van is too stuffy and too full of young men. He’s ready to be out of it.

“Only fifteen minutes now,” Junmyeon calls back from the passenger seat. Kyungsoo is driving, and hasn’t said a word for over an hour. His focus is almost unnerving, but Sehun is glad for it, because they’re going up a winding mountain road now, and the sheer drop he can see out of his window just keeps on getting bigger.

“Can we pull over?” Yixing’s voice is quietly desperate, and everyone looks at him.

“I can’t,” Kyungsoo breaks his hour-long silence to say, “not on this road, there’s no verge.”

“Xing’s gonna hurl—”

“Someone get the sick bag quick—”

Sehun shuts his eyes and puts his hands over his ears. He feels sorry for Yixing, but he hates it so much when people throw up, it makes him want to throw up too. Someone rolls down the windows and a cold breeze rips through the van. The three in the back feel like they’re sitting in the middle of a tornado, their hair whipping into their eyes, but Sehun doesn’t mind. He keeps his eyes closed and his hands over his ears and retreats into his own private world until the van takes a turn off the highway and they swing into a bumpy gravel side road and pull up.

“All clear.” Jongdae taps his shoulder and grins at him when he opens his eyes. “You can stop hiding now.”

Sehun sighs with relief and scrambles out after Jongdae and Minseok, the last one to leave the van. They’ve pulled up in front of a large house nestled high in the forest of Jirisan National Park, where they’ll be spending the three days of the Chuseok holiday, having their so-called vacation, and filming various games and cultural outings to the local shrines and Buddhist temple ceremonies. The mountains stretch out across the valley before him, layers and layers of diminishing, cool blue peaks in multiple shades. It’s so vast, and so quiet. Sehun has lived in Seoul all his life and it’s weird not to hear the sound of the city around him.

“That’s Jirisan, I think.” Jongin is beside him. He points up to one of the peaks rising up behind the house, and Sehun turns to look. Jirisan is the highest mountain on the mainland, and he’s never visited it before. He’s heard there are lots of great hiking trails here, and his mind goes to his new trail running shoes he packed in his sports bag. Running will help get some of this irritating restless-tiredness out of him, and he feels the strong desire to be alone for a while. He needs to recharge and prepare himself for three days of madness.

“You reckon I have time for a run?”

Jongin grins at him. “Dude, you are getting obsessed with running. Ask Junmyeon if we have to film anything this afternoon.”

Sehun finds Junmyeon and gets permission, as everyone is going to rest after the long drive. It's about quarter to three, and Junmyeon tells him to be back by five to start the afternoon and evening filming.

“Take your phone, and make sure you stick to the trails and don't go too far,” he instructs. Sehun barely manages to bite back a snappish response. He may be the youngest of the group, but he is not a child and he is perfectly capable of taking care of himself—but he knows this is just Junmyeon’s way, he looks out for everyone. The fact that he feels irritated by this today only reinforces to Sehun that he needs to be alone for a bit and work his crankiness out of his system.

He changes into a singlet and shorts, then steps outside and takes a moment to look at a map on his phone. About three hundred meters further up the main road is a trailhead, where six or seven different trails lead into the mountain range. He doesn’t have a pocket, so he holds his phone in his hand as he jogs the few meters down the gravel driveway and onto the main road. He sticks as close to the edge of the road as he can—it’s narrow, and the cars won’t be expecting a runner on it. Luckily the road is quiet and he gets to the trailhead without mishap.

The trailhead is bigger than he expected. There’s a large car park, some groomed grassy slopes with swoopy granite sculptures on them, and an information centre and a souvenir store. There’s a large bronze statue on one of the grassy slopes, and as he jogs up to it, Sehun slows down and stops to look. It shows a tangle of people fighting. He sees soldiers with rifles, and someone planting a large flag.

“It’s the Samcheong-Hamyang massacre memorial,” a quavering voice to his left says. Sehun looks around and down to see an elderly, white-haired man gazing up at the bronze statue. The top of his head barely reaches Sehun's shoulder. “More than seven hundred people were killed in this area in 1951. They said they were subduing guerilla warfare, but that was just a pretext. They’re all buried here, the innocents; here and on the mountain.”

“That’s terrible,” Sehun murmurs. He looks at the statue again, at the tortured expressions of the fighters. His heart gives a twist, the way it sometimes does when he thinks of his country’s tragic history. He’s not sure why this happens to him. It’s not like he remembers any of it; it was all over by the time he was born, but somehow it hurts him, as if he was there. He’s not even sure what the emotion is, that makes this twisting inside him. Anger, or injustice, or a deep, deep sadness on behalf of his people. Maybe it’s all three.

“They’re still here, you know,” the elder continues. “The ghosts of the dead. They wander the mountain. Their deaths were unjust, and so they cannot rest.” He turns from the statue for the first time to look up at Sehun. “Many people say they’ve seen the restless dead, or heard their cries. Be careful up there, young man. Be respectful. They do not like their places invaded.”

Sehun feels a shiver crawl all the way up and down his body. The elder’s gaze is so deep in his wrinkled old face. It’s like he’s seeing into another world. Sehun wonders how old he is, and if he remembers the massacre.

“I’ll be respectful,” he promises, though he’s not really sure how one goes about being respectful to the dead buried on a mountain he just wants to go trail running on.

He bows politely to the elder and starts jogging again. There’s a stretch of sealed road before he meets the start of the trails, and he glances at his phone to check the time. Three fifteen. He has just under two hours. He decides to turn around when he’s been running for one hour and five minutes. He should be able to get back within two hours if he does that, since he'll be going uphill on the way out and coming down will be faster.

The first trail he reaches drops below the mountain road and winds along a rocky mountain river. It’s a well-graded trail with lots of little bridges to cross the feeder streams, and Sehun flies up it, the gentle incline nothing to his strong legs and conditioned lungs. He finds his rhythm quickly and settles into a loping gait that eats up the ground without getting him too much out of breath. The crisp air flows over his bare arms and the fresh smell of the trees and mountains seems to enliven his lungs. It’s so much more enjoyable than running in the city, and he finds himself smiling as he runs. He pours the stress of the last few weeks of intense promotions into his muscles and works it out of his body with his sweat. This is why he loves running. Running makes everything better.

He passes a few groups of hikers coming down. At first he automatically avoids their eyes, but then he realises that most of them are middle-aged or elderly and are unlikely to recognize an idol, especially not in the middle of the Jirisan mountains. He’s pretty safe here, and he relaxes even more. It’s so nice to be able to smile and call a greeting in return to those he gets from the hikers without having to worry about being recognised and having to switch into Sehun-the-idol mode.

The riverside trail only takes ten minutes to get up. It comes out on a small mountain road from which several more trails start, and he stops to take a quick glance at the signboard. Some of these trails are multi-day hikes, but he finds one that is only seven kilometres one-way, and leads up the side of the mountain to a lookout. That will do, he decides. Fourteen k out-and-back; he can do that in two hours, minus ten or so for the trail he's just run up and the couple of hundred metres back to the house.

The trail he’s picked has a closed gate at the start of it. Sehun glances the sign hanging on it. DO NOT START TRAIL LATER THAN 2 PM, it reads, and then elaborates by explaining that hikers starting any later risk getting caught on the mountain in the dark. Sehun hesitates for a moment, looking at his phone. It’s already 3:15, but he’s running; he’ll be way faster than the hiking time. He’s been running a lot lately and he’s confident in his fitness and speed. There’s no way it’ll take him longer than an hour and forty-five minutes to do 14 k. He’s done that distance in an hour back in Seoul.

He opens the gate and starts running up the trail.

It’s a great trail. Sehun blasts up it, reveling in the feeling of his legs working and his blood pumping harder as the trail gets steeper. He passes a few more groups of hikers, all of them on their way down, and then after a while there are no more people. The hikers have all obeyed the sign and started early. That’s fine with him; he enjoys having the trail to himself.

It starts to get rockier and steeper as it goes on. There are several more bridges crossing a rushing mountain stream, and then a few places where he actually has to climb. Ropes and chains have been attached to places where the cliff was just too steep to make a trail. Sehun hauls himself up the obstacles easily. He’s having a blast. No wonder people love trail running. This just cannot compare to city running.

There are trail markers every kilometre, and when he gets to kilometre six, the trail changes again. It’s just one kilometre to the top, but Sehun now stands at the bottom of an extremely steep slope that is made of huge boulders. There’s no real trail any more, just markers leading up the side of the boulders. He glances at his phone and is startled to find that he’s been running for a full hour. It's taken longer than he expected to get this far. The steepness of the trail and the places he had to climb must have slowed him down. It makes sense, he realises. When he runs in Seoul, he can go flat-out without ever slowing at all.

He looks longingly up at the steep path ahead of him. He was going to turn back after an hour and five minutes, that’s only four minutes away, but how can he get just one k from the top of the trail and turn back? It feels like quitting, and he wants to see the lookout.

He can’t possibly give up here. He’ll just take it faster on the way down. He can make up the extra minutes if he really gives it his all.

He starts to bound up the slope of boulders. It takes all his concentration; the boulders are huge, but he’s fit, and he’s strong; it’s like playing to him, and he loves the burning in his lungs, loves the sweat dripping down his face. He loves the way his mind empties and his whole being is encompassed in the effort. Everything flies away when he works like this. All the worries, all the stress, all the pressure and the knowledge of everyone watching him, always watching him; the whole world watching him. Here, alone, running up this mountain trail, he doesn’t have to be EXO’s Sehun. He doesn’t have to be an image, doesn't have to be perfect. He can just—be.

He reaches the top of the boulder slope and rests for a couple of seconds, hands on knees, panting to regain his breath. Then he’s flying along the last twisting stretches of trail through the trees, until finally it all opens out.

He’s not at the top of the mountain, but on a rocky spur, and he looks out as the vastness of the landscape spreads before him.

He never knew there were so many shades of blue; each row of mountains has a different shade. They fade into the late afternoon sky, dimmer and hazier the more distant they get. Sehun feels that twist in his chest again, but this time it isn’t anger or sadness; this time it feels different. It’s almost like nostalgia, though what for, he isn’t quite sure. It’s strange; he’s a city boy born and bred, but here, standing on top of this rocky spur surrounded by nothing but mountains and trees and empty, velvety air, he feels more belonging than he’s ever felt in his life.

It’s all too soon when he has to turn away. He could stay here for hours, but he has to get back. The others are expecting him back at five, they’ll be mad at him if he holds up filming by staying out too long, and he already overstretched his time by running that last kilometre. He checks his phone again and sees that it’s already 4:20.

Whoa. Where did the time go? How long did he just spend staring at the mountains?

He has forty minutes to get back. That’s going to be a serious push, but he can do it. He can do seven k plus a bit downhill in forty minutes, right?

He kind of has to, if he doesn’t want to be seriously scolded. He takes off back down the first flattish stretch of path. He’s feeling the fatigue in his legs now. It was hard work climbing when he’s mostly used to running on the flat, but he can do it. He’s pushed through fatigue worse than this during rehearsals and concerts. He’ll get his second wind soon enough.

He reaches the top of the boulder slope and starts swiftly bounding his way down. Springing from rock to rock, so fast, so focused—

Afterwards, Sehun always thought it felt like being shoved. Shoved from behind by a hand planted in the middle of his back. The shove puts him off balance and his right ankle slips off the side of the boulder. He slams hard into the rocks on his left side and hears a sound like crack-crack! Pain explodes in his right ankle and rushes up his body like a dark tsunami, and for a moment, everything goes black.

When he blinks his eyes open, he’s lying tangled on the very edge of the trail, where he’s fallen off the large slope of boulders. Everything is very still and very quiet. He was only out for a second, if at all, he thinks—he hasn’t hit his head, it was the shock of the fall stunning him.

He sits up, remembering the noise he heard. Crack-crack! He looks at his right ankle, where the sound came from. Where the pain is coming from.

He looks at it for several seconds before what he’s seeing actually makes sense to him. His ankle is swelling. He moves his other foot beside it to compare. There's already a visible difference. He bites his lip, closing his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, he's sure it's already bigger. He's never seen an injury swell so fast.

Hell, he thinks. That can’t be good.

“Fuck,” he says aloud. It hurts. It hurts a fucking lot. He wriggles his injured foot and swears again as pain bolts through him, making his body feel weirdly limp. He can’t bear to look at the mess that was, just moments ago, a perfectly good ankle. He can’t sit up anymore. He feels sick. He lies back down and shuts his eyes, his mind going strangely empty as he waits to feel better again.

After a minute or two of lying there and not thinking about much at all, he remembers he was carrying his phone. He opens his eyes and looks around for it, and sees it lying just within reach. He grabs it and finds that the screen has a huge dent in the middle, surrounded by a cobweb of cracks. He knows it won’t turn on even as he tries the button. It probably saved his hand, he realises. He must have come down on it and the phone screen took the worst of the blow. But it also means that he has no way of calling for help.

Sehun doesn’t panic. It’s clear to him that he has two choices. One, he can stay lying on this trail all night until hikers find him in the morning. Two, he can get up and go back down the mountain.

With an ankle that went crack-crack?

It isn’t broken. It just can’t be. He needs to get back by five or he’s going to mess up the filming schedule and be in big trouble. He can’t stay out overnight because the others will go crazy with worry. And they need him to dance on stage again after the Chuseok celebrations are over, which he can’t do with a broken ankle. To Sehun, these reasons are more important than the fact that if he’s broken his ankle and cannot walk, he’s probably going to die of exposure up here tonight. Or maybe that fact is just too powerful to really cope with at all. So he doesn’t cope with it.

I haven’t broken my ankle, he tells himself firmly.

What about the crack? the voice he calls sensible-Sehun pipes up to ask him. You heard it. Crack-crack. What was that, if it wasn’t your ankle breaking?

The voice of stupid-Sehun thinks frantically for a second before desperately latching onto an answer. It was just the joint popping when I rolled over it. Joints do make that sound sometimes. I’ve sprained my ankle—sprained it pretty badly, yes—but not broken it. Bones are strong, damn it. It takes a lot to break them.

Sensible-Sehun is pretty scared right now, so he’s happy to believe stupid-Sehun. Relieved that he hasn’t broken his ankle, Sehun pushes himself up into sitting again and gives his ankle a wary glance.

Even in the few minutes he's been lying there, it's turned into the size and shape of a tennis ball above his shoe. He looks away hurriedly, and shivers. The temperature is already dropping as the afternoon dwindles, and he’s only in a singlet and running shorts.

Okay. Sprained ankle. He’s sprained his ankle before, and what he remembers about that is that there was a kind of grace period when he could still walk on it if he forced himself to push through the initial pain, before it stiffened up entirely and became too painful to even move. It must be something like what happens when you work out extra hard, but don’t feel the soreness till later. He needs to keep this ankle warm, keep it moving, before it stiffens up and he can’t walk at all.

Because he needs to walk. He’s seven kilometres up a mountain trail, and there’s nobody else coming up it, because he passed everyone else coming down and the trail closed at 2 pm. Heck, he doesn’t just need to walk. Fuck walking, he needs to run. It was way past four when he turned around. It'll get dark and he won't be able to see the trail. And he’ll be so late.

With some difficulty, he gets himself upright without touching his right ankle to the ground. He balances on one leg for a moment. He doesn’t want to put his foot down, but he has to.

Gently, he puts it down. He grimaces as pain bolts up his leg, right into his knee, but forces himself to keep adding weight. The pain reaches an almost dizzying peak, then starts to become almost bearable. It’s okay. He’s still in the grace period. He can still keep it warm enough to use it. He starts to jump up and down. Numb it, he’s thinking as pain explodes through him. Numb it. Keep whacking it and it’ll go numb.

It doesn’t exactly go numb, but it does get a little more bearable. He’s jumping, most of his weight on his left leg, yes, but some on his right, and his right foot is kind of working, sort of. He couldn’t do this if he’d broken it, right? It’s not broken. It’s just a sprain.

He starts down the trail. He’s limping heavily, unable to bear putting much weight on his right foot, but he’s moving, at least. The main problem is the trail itself; these boulders are huge and difficult to balance on even with two good legs. He limps and hobbles and climbs over the boulders, often more hopping on one leg than using both. But he’s keeping the ankle warm, keeping it moving. It can’t stiffen up, or he’ll be screwed.

It takes much longer than he’d like, but he makes it to the proper trail again. He stands on both feet, pretending he’s balancing his weight evenly. Fuck, it hurts, and he has six k to go. Well, he’s not getting anywhere just standing here being pathetic about it. He starts to limp on. After a few paces, he makes himself break into an awkward run. He has to run. He’s almost crying with pain as his foot hits the ground, but he has to, has to run. It’s run or die up here. He thinks of Junmyeon, how he warned him not to get lost, to take his phone. He’ll be so scared if Sehun vanishes. He'll be worried even if he's a little late, he's like that. Sehun can’t do that to him. He has to get back as fast as possible.

He’s not running anywhere near his normal pace, but it’s better than walking. He discovers that it’s a tiny bit easier to run if he locks his right knee. It makes his gait really weird, but there’s nobody here to see him, so it hardly matters. He gets about a kilometer down the trail this way before his injured foot comes down slightly on the edge of a small rock. In normal circumstances he wouldn’t even notice, but the slight sideward movement of his ankle is so agonizing that he collapses to the ground with a cry of pain.

His fingers grind at the dirt of the trail as he gasps and swears. He’d never be so vocal usually, he’d keep his mouth shut and internalize the pain, but there’s nobody to hear him up here, and it takes his mind from the pain. He shouts a string of curses at the empty forest.

He’s up again before long—can’t just lie here like a wimp, Sehun, gotta keep that ankle warm, gotta get down before it stiffens. He keeps on hobbling down. It’s the most painful thing he’s ever done in his life, but he has to do it.

He falls twice more in the next few kilometers. The first time he shouts curses again; the second time, he starts to cry. It hurts too much. Nothing has ever hurt this much in his entire life, he doesn't know how to handle it. He doesn't want to do this anymore. He doesn't want to be alone up here, in the cold with the sun already set and the sky growing dark and an ankle more fucked-up than it's ever been before. He needs someone to look after him.

“I can’t do it,” he sobs. “I can’t, I can’t...”

But he has to. He must. Nobody is coming to save him. He has to save himself.

He rubs the tears away angrily. “Stop being such a wimp!” he yells. “Get up! Run!”

He gets up. He runs.

Four kilometers down. Three to go. The forest is getting darker around him. He has to squint to see the flattened ground where the trail is. If it gets much darker, he's scared he'll lose it. He has no idea what the time is, but he knows he’s late. He’s screwed up the filming schedule for sure, screwed it up big time. The others are going to be so mad. He’s going to be in such big trouble.

He forces himself on. Three kilometers never felt so long. He’s never done anything so painful, but so long as he stiffens his knee and makes sure his foot plants down exactly flat and doesn’t wobble to the side at all, he can stay upright. He can’t let himself fall again. He isn’t sure he’ll be able to get back up if he falls again.

When he finally reaches the massacre memorial, it’s completely dark, and the place is lit by floodlights shining up from the grassy slopes. Sehun has never been so glad to see civilization—or at least, as much of it as a memorial, an information center and a souvenir shop. He hobbles to a painful stop, all his weight on his good leg—which is now also sore from the extra effort of compensating—and considers going into the shop. He could ask to use a phone so that he can call one of the others and get them to pick him up, saving him the last three hundred meters back to the house. But he doesn’t know anyone’s number off by heart. He only knows his mom and dad’s numbers, and that’s not helpful. No matter how much he wants to hear his mom’s voice right now, if he calls his mom he’ll cry, he knows he’ll cry, and it’s not like she can help him. She’s in Seoul.

You’ve already done seven k on this stupid sprained ankle, he tells himself angrily, biting back the tears that want to rise into his eyes. You can do another three hundred meters.

But as it turns out, he doesn’t have to. Headlights pull in from the main road, and Sehun recognizes the minivan. A wave of relief surges through him. It’s mixed with not a little dread, because he’s screwed up and he’s going to be in such big trouble, but mainly he’s just so relieved that he doesn’t have to run on his stupid ankle anymore. He waves at the van, and it pulls up beside him. The driver’s door opens and Junmyeon jumps out, followed by Kyungsoo from the passenger side.

“Sehun!” Junmyeon yells his name, rushes up to grab his shoulders. “Do you know what time it is?”

Sehun hangs his head. “I’m sorry,” he says as Kyungsoo comes up at a more sedate pace. “I—”

“I told you to be back in two hours! You’ve messed up the whole afternoon’s filming,” Junmyeon says. “We had to do the room placement games and cooking without you. The production director is furious.”

Sehun’s head droops even lower. Guilt surges through him. Why’d he have to be such a stupid idiot and fall?

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He was intending to tell Junmyeon he hurt his ankle, but suddenly that feels like an excuse. A stupid excuse from a stupid person who was selfish enough to go for a run instead of safely resting like the others and then fall over like a dumb kid. And besides, he’s not even really injured. Nobody runs seven km down a mountain trail on a serious injury. He’s just being pathetic, like the pathetic baby he is. Tears well up in his eyes, but thankfully it’s too dark for the others to see them.

“What happened?” Kyungsoo’s voice is much calmer than Junmyeon’s. “Did you get lost?”

“I…” Sehun wills his voice not to shake. “I overestimated how long the trail would take. I really tried to get back in time. I’m sorry, hyung,” he says for the third time. He hates it when they’re mad at him. It feels so awful.

“Okay, well, you’re here now and there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s get back.” Junmyeon turns to get back in the car. Kyungsoo hesitates a moment. He takes Sehun’s arm and says quietly, “Don’t take it to heart. He’s not really mad. It was his idea to come look for you. He was so worried about you he was nearly in tears.”

This makes Sehun feel like the world’s worst person.

He slinks into the back of the van. It’s such a relief to get his weight off his ankle. He’s not really sure what he’s going to do about it now. He’s aware he’s going to have to admit to it at some point, but it’s like the words have gotten all tied up inside him. It’s like the denial he forced into himself to get himself off the mountain has become so powerful he actually believes it. He’s not really injured, and they’ll just think he’s making up excuses to get himself out of trouble. He needs to grow up; needs to take this like a man.

They’re pulling into the driveway of the house. The windows are all lit up and glowing out into the night.

“We left the others cooking dinner. Get changed, you look like a mess, and then come and join us,” Junmyeon orders before getting out. Kyungsoo gives him a sympathetic glance before following. Sehun waits until they’re well ahead of him before edging out of the van. He tries to put his injured foot down and whimpers, clinging to the door to support his weight. Even in the few minutes he’s been sitting down, it’s completely stiffened up. He knew this would happen. Thank goodness he was smart enough to keep moving on it up on the trail and not let it rest. He can’t even bear to let it touch the ground now.

He hops across the driveway. The other two have disappeared deeper into the house already, so he hops through the open door and into the hall. There he sees all the shoes of the others. A couple are neatly paired and lined up—Minseok's, no doubt—and the rest are scattered around haphazardly. Sehun hops through them awkwardly. There’s a low bench along the wall of the hallway, and he carefully lowers himself onto it. He’s going to have to look at his foot again soon, and he doesn’t want to. He’s afraid of what he’s going to see.

He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, absorbing his surroundings. The air inside the house is wonderfully warm and smells like something delicious cooking. He can hear the noise of the others from further inside the house; shouts, laughter, chatter. It’s all so normal. It almost hurts how normal it is. Now that he’s safe, the adrenaline that kept him going through his ordeal is fading, leaving him tearful and trembling. But he can’t let the tears of pain and fear he’s been holding back come out. He’ll ruin the mood.

It’s so tempting to just withdraw from it all, just close his eyes and zone out and put off dealing with it, but he can't. He needs to obey Junmyeon and get changed and come help the others cook—

“Sehun?” Jongin’s voice. Sehun opens his eyes and glances up at his friend, and Jongin immediately sees there’s something wrong. He comes over and sits down next to him on the bench, his forehead creasing. “What’s up? Did they scold you?”

Well, that’s true. Sehun nods, and hangs his head in acute embarrassment as two hot tears fall unexpectedly from his eyes. Jongin makes a wordless noise of dismay and flings his arms around him.

“Don’t cry,” he murmurs, while Sehun bites his lip hard and trembles with the effort of holding back his tears. “They’re not really mad. They were just worried, we all were.”

Sehun nods against Jongin’s shoulder. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, and Jongin’s hug feels so comforting; he was so alone up there, and he thought he was going to die. Silent tears leak from his eyes and soak into Jongin’s shoulder.

“Please don’t cry, Sehun,” Jongin is rubbing his back, sounding a little upset himself. He's always been a sympathetic crier. “Were they really harsh? They must have been horrible.”

Sehun shakes his head against Jongin's shoulder. He doesn’t want to put false blame on Junmyeon and Kyungsoo, but if he speaks he’ll probably end up ugly-crying, snot, sobs and all, and that, surely, is going too far. It must be shock, he thinks, these tears. He needs to get a grip now, or he’ll hold everything up even more. He pulls back from Jongin and lifts his hand to rub his eyes.

Jongin gasps. “What happened to your arm?”

Sehun looks at him, confused. Jongin is staring at his left arm, and Sehun follows his gaze. He finds it’s all torn up and grazed, dried blood decorating the raw skin from shoulder to wrist. He hadn’t even realized he’d grazed his arm. It must have been completely eclipsed by the pain of his ankle.

“Did you fall?” Jongin asks.

“Yeah.” Sehun wipes his eyes again and takes a shaky breath.

“Did you get hurt anywhere else?” Jongin’s eyes flick down Sehun’s body, and his eyes go wide in horror. “My God, Sehun, your ankle!”

Sehun’s eyes go to his right ankle too, and what he sees almost makes him dizzy. What he remembers as simply a puffy tennis ball over his shoe has almost doubled in size and gone a deep purple-blue. The bruise has spread up the outside of his leg, reaching almost halfway to his knee.

“I think I sprained it,” he says in a low voice.

“You think?!” Jongin slips off the bench and kneels beside him to look closer. “I’ve never even seen an ankle look like that. Is that why you were late?”

Sehun nods. Jongin looks up at him, forehead creased with worry. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I smashed my phone when I fell.”

“We have to get your shoe off quick. It’s compressing the swelling too much.” Jongin starts to carefully unlace his shoe, and Sehun grits his teeth. Even the slight movement of his ankle from Jongin unlacing the shoe sends lightning-bolts of pain right up his leg.

Once the laces are undone and he's loosened the tongue, Jongin looks up at Sehun again. “Do you want to take it off?”

Sehun shakes his head. “You do it. I don’t think I can.”

“Okay...” Jongin looks a nervous as he carefully takes hold of Sehun’s foot. Even this makes Sehun gasp.

“Please,” he manages. “Do it carefully. It hurts like fuck-all.”

Jongin nods. He adjusts his hands and carefully draws the shoe off Sehun’s foot.

A wave of agony paints the world black. He feels himself go limp. He can’t control his fall. He hears Jongin’s terrified cry from very far away. “Sehun!” he hears, then “Hyungs! Hyungs, help!” and then there’s only blackness...

...

He hears voices.

“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?”

“No, he’s only fainted—”

“Sehun?”

“He’ll come around soon, I think it was just from the pain—”

“Sehun, wake up—”

“From the pain? Fuck, how much does it hurt to make him faint from pain—”

“Sehun, please…”

Sehun groans and opens his eyes. He’s lying on the floor, and his head is in someone’s lap. Someone is stroking his hair and calling his name. Jongin.

“He’s coming around—”

“Sehun?”

More faces. They’re blurred. Sehun blinks. “Why’m I on the floor?” he mumbles.

“You fainted when I took your shoe off.” Jongin sounds like he’s about to cry. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Sehun closes his eyes again. He fainted? Great. Just what he needed to make himself look even more of an idiot.

“Hey, hey, stay with us.” He hears Junmyeon’s voice now, and his hand is taken and held. Junmyeon’s voice is shaking, and Sehun opens his eyes again.

“I’m with you,” he says. “Sorry. What an idiot, right?”

There’s a chorus of denial over this statement, but Sehun knows they’re lying. It doesn’t get much more idiotic than this.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Junmyeon tells him. He’s obviously upset, and Sehun hates it; hates that he made him upset. “I yelled at you instead of checking you were okay. Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

Sehun wants to close his eyes again. He’s not dizzy anymore, but he just wants to get away from all this. For a start, he feels completely stupid lying in Jongin’s lap like this, with everyone staring at him. “Can I sit up?”

Jongin helps him sit up, and he gasps as his ankle shifts slightly. He glances at it, then looks away hurriedly. It’s distorted, kind of dented where his shoe had prevented it from swelling, and it’s so dark blue it’s nearly black.

“We’re trying to figure out where the nearest hospital is,” Junmyeon tells him, “but it’s going to be a while away. We’re in the middle of the mountains here.”

Sehun shakes his head. “No, I don’t need to go to hospital. It’s just a sprain. They’ll only tell me to rest and ice it, and I can do that here.”

“Sehun.” Junmyeon looks at him seriously. “It hurt you so much you fainted. That’s serious. We need to get it seen. It could be badly damaged—broken or maybe even dislocated, it looks so distorted.”

“It’s not,” Sehun argues. “Really, it’s just a sprain. I did it right at the top of the trail, that’s over seven k from here, that’s why it took me so long to get back. If it was broken or dislocated, I couldn’t have run seven k on it, right?”

This logical reasoning doesn’t have the effect Sehun was intending. They’re all staring at him. They look horrified.

“You ran seven kilometers on that?” Jongin whispers. “Oh, Sehun…”

“I had to,” Sehun tries to explain. He can feel tears building up again. Why are they all looking at him like that? “My phone broke and I was the last up the trail. I didn’t have a choice. I had to get down or I’d have been up there overnight.” His voice is starting to tremble despite his best efforts to hold it steady, and Jongin’s arms go around him again, pulling his head to his shoulder. Jongdae reappears from somewhere with an ice pack and kneels to carefully hold it against his ankle.

“Looks like the nearest hospital is in Hamyang. It’s about an hour away.” Kyungsoo has been mapping options on his phone.

An hour! It will ruin the entire evening’s filming getting him there and back, not to mention the time spent in the hospital itself. “It’s too far,” Sehun says. “It’s not so bad so long as I don’t move it. I’ll ice it and I’m sure it’ll be fine tomorrow.”

He’s completely ignored. Junmyeon starts organizing the chaos, telling Baekhyun to find Sehun’s bag and get him some warmer clothes, Yixing to pack some food and water for the ones who’ll go with him, Chanyeol to find some pillows they can prop Sehun’s foot up on in the van, Minseok to get a towel for the ice pack, and Kyungsoo to get ready to drive. There’s a short but intense argument about who gets to go to the hospital with Sehun, which the manager interrupts by announcing they’ll film the hospital visit.

“You want to film it? He’s hurt, you can’t film it,” Junmyeon protests angrily, but the manager just shakes his head.

“We need to. We have nothing of Sehun in the afternoon and we have to explain it somehow, or he’ll get negative feedback for being absent. The production director says the hospital visit will make good footage. Are you okay with it, Sehun?”

Sehun stifles a groan. Now his idiocy is going to be broadcast to millions, but he can hardly protest. He’s already stuffed up the filming schedule enough. The least he can do is give them some extra footage to work with.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles. At least they don’t have anything of him fainting like an idiot.

Right?

He glances around the hallway, suddenly worried. There are usually cameras set up in every corner in the houses they film in. And yes, his fears are confirmed. There’s a green LED staring at him from further down the hallway. Maybe they won’t broadcast that, he thinks with little hope. Maybe if he bribes the editors with chocolate? Chocolate and aegyo?

Baekhyun returns with his hoodie, a beanie, and a blanket for in the van. Jongin helps him back up onto the hallway bench so he can put the clothes on. Then Yixing, Chanyeol and Minseok return with their various supplies, trailed by a cameraman. Kyungsoo will drive, and Sehun gets to pick one other member for company.

“Who do you want?” the manager asks him, and Sehun immediately glances at Jongin. The others are made to stay behind to play games and make evening footage, despite their clamouring protests.

“I’ll be fine,” Sehun tells them. “The hospital will be super boring, and they’re just going to tell me to ice it anyway. I’ll be back soon.”

He hops out to the van with an arm over Jongin’s and Kyungsoo’s shoulders. It's not the easiest thing he’s ever done due to the height discrepancy, but they manage. In the van they arrange pillows so he can sit across three seats with his ankle up, put the ice pack on it, and wave goodbye to the rest of EXO standing mournfully on the veranda. Kyungsoo pulls out onto the road, and Sehun sighs and closes his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Jongin asks.

“Yeah. I feel like the world’s biggest idiot, but yeah.”

“You scared me to death. I never saw you faint before.”

“I never have fainted before,” Sehun admits. “Getting that shoe off—wow." He shudders. “Not fun.”

“What happened, anyway?”

The camera is on them as Sehun tells his story, but they ignore it, they’re used to it. When Sehun tells Jongin how the fall felt like someone planting a hand into his back, Jongin pales.

“Was it a ghost?”

Sehun thinks about the old man who told him about the memorial statue. A cold chill goes down his spine. Be careful, young man. Be respectful, the elder’s words echo. They do not like their places invaded. “Maybe,” he says. “Apparently there was a massacre on this mountain back in 1951. An elder I met told me they still haunt the mountain, because they died unfairly.” He shivers. “I’m really glad I didn’t end up spending the night up there.”

They talk for awhile about other things to take up the rest of the long, dark drive through the mountain night roads. When they arrive, Kyungsoo parks and then disappears into the hospital to bring out a wheelchair. Sehun has never felt more humiliated than being wheeled across the hospital car park in a wheelchair, but his protests of “I can walk—I mean, hop!” go ignored.

In the examination room, the doctor takes one look at his foot and says, “Fracture.”

Sehun shakes his head. “No, it’s just a sprain,” he says, and gives his (to him, perfectly reasonable) explanation of how he ran seven kilometres on it, so it can’t possibly be a fracture. The doctor just gives him a dubious look and orders an X-ray. When they’re back in the exam room, he puts the film up on the wall lightbox and taps a pointer to the bones in Sehun’s foot.

“What we have here,” he says, “is a fractured ankle. See the break here?” He draws a circle, and Sehun sees how the bone has an obvious dark line through it. His heart sinks. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. There goes the next few weeks of schedules. He hangs his head in defeat, but the doctor isn’t done. “There are also three breaks to the fifth metatarsal bone.”

What? Sehun’s head shoots up again. The doctor shows them how the end of one of the long bones in his foot has shattered into three pieces. “The bone has also started to splinter lengthwise, going up the bone. We usually only see this in high velocity traffic accidents. In your case, this was probably caused by running on the break. The repetitive impact would have forced the fracture further up the bone.”

Sehun can hardly take this in. Jongin looks sick, and even Kyungsoo is looking concerned, which almost alarms Sehun more than anything else. If Kyungsoo looks worried, things must be bad.

“Does this mean I have to wear a cast?” he asks.

“I’ll give you a temporary half-cast for now. When you get back to Seoul, you’ll need to see an orthopaedic surgeon, because the metatarsal is most likely going to need surgical pinning.”

The doctor leaves to arrange some nurses to come and give him a temporary cast, and Sehun drops his face into his hands and groans. Jongin and Kyungsoo put an arm around him on each side and try to comfort him, but there’s not much they can do. Foot surgery is going to take him out for weeks. The agency is going to be furious. He’s really messed up this time.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jongin is saying. “It was an accident, and you didn’t have a choice. You had to get down. You couldn’t have stayed on the mountain overnight.”

Kyungsoo’s quiet voice is in his ear. “You’re so tough, Sehun. I can’t believe you made it down on a foot fractured in four places. How on earth did you do it?”

“I did it by convincing myself it was a sprain,” Sehun says hollowly. “I had to.” He shivers at the memory. “I heard it crack, you know? It went crack-crack. But I couldn’t let myself believe it, or I would have been stuck up there. I would have died.”

“That’s some pretty powerful denial you’ve got there,” Kyungsoo says, sounding rather awed.

“It must have hurt so much.” Jongin hugs him tighter. “You’re so brave. No wonder you passed out when I took your shoe off.”

“I hate this,” Sehun whispers. “I hate screwing up.”

“You didn’t screw up,” Kyungsoo says. “Not at all. I’m so proud of you, Sehun. Everyone will be so proud of you once they know. You were in a terrible situation and you handled it. You got through the pain and you saved yourself. It would have been so much worse if you didn’t do what you did.” He pauses, and a smile comes into his voice. “You’re our precious maknae, Sehun. How could we have borne it if anything happened to you?”

Sehun looks at him. Kyungsoo’s not a demonstrative person. He doesn’t say things like that unless he really means them.

“Hyung is right,” Jongin says. “I’m so glad you made it back, Sehun.”

Sehun finds a small smile coming onto his lips. He’s exhausted, definitely in trouble with the agency, and his foot hurts like crazy, but he has such good friends that for a moment none of that seems to matter. “I’m glad I made it back too,” he tells them. “Even if it was the worst seven k I ever ran in my life.”

“By the way,” Jongin tells him with a slight grin as a couple of nurses appear to give him a painkiller shot and maneuver his leg into a half-cast. “Next time you come home with your ankle looking like it’s been run over by a truck, don’t waste your energy trying to convince us it’s a sprain.”

“Especially not if you heard it crack, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, Sehun,” Kyungsoo adds, and despite everything, Sehun can’t help but laugh.