Chapter Text
The adrenaline spiked just as he was about to start the race, as usual. This is his most favourite moment from the race, the high he would get from the speed, the anticipation, the waiting and finally the winning. Oh, he always wins, not to brag about it or anything, but he was born to win. He had the nickname God’s Child because everything he touches, turns gold.
He revved his monster of a machine and got ready to start the race.
He took his turns and corners easily as he had practiced before, but before he turned on the last corner, he felt someone bumped his tail, making him swerved wildly, and the last thing he remembered was the blue sky and white clouds, dancing before his eyes.
He woke up, dazed, in what seemed to be a hospital room.
He blinked, once, twice, looked around, before he felt someone tugging his feet. He looked at the bottom of his bed and found a kid, no more than 5 years old, giggling at him and pulling the corner of his pants.
“Gege, gege, let’s play, you’ve been sleeping long enough, now it’s time to play…”, the boy continued to tug at his pants, not letting him go while convincing him to play with him.
Although he never cared much about kids, strangely enough kids seemed to be very attached to him in almost every instance that he went to. Whether it's relatives or some kid actor or even kids he didn't know on the street.
“Not now, little boy, where’s your parents? Why did they let you go alone? This is a hospital, right?”, he asked while looking from left to right, maybe someone will come looking and fetch this child. He didn't feel good enough to pay any extra attention to a stranger's kid.
The boy suddenly went silent, and his eyes were full of tears.
“Mommy is not here, daddy too, they’ve left a long time ago…Now I’m alone, no one wants to play with me.” He looked sad, forlorn even, and Yibo’s heart clenched, there was a sudden feeling of uneasiness for this little boy.
“Come here little boy, let gege hug you…”, he gestured for the boy to come close to him but the boy made no move to come closer, so Yibo threw his blanket out and tried to touch the boy, only to find air.
“What the…”
He looked at the boy, now seemingly rather transparent, and his heart was beating so fast, he could feel it almost jumped out of his ribcage. But before he could do anything about it, a pretty young nurse went in and scolded him for getting out of his bed, since apparently, he was in a coma for 3 days.
“You’re not supposed to go up yet! What if something happened with your pretty head? Go back to sleep while I will call the doctor to check on you.”, she said while checking the IV and his vital statistics.
He looked at her, confusion written on his face,and asked her the question.
“Did you see a little boy here just now?”
She looked at him strangely. “Of course I did. He was a patient here and he liked to go around the hospital, greeting new people.”, she answered with a smile in her pretty face
Yibo lets out a long sigh. So, he wasn't crazy..
He went back to sleep because although he felt good enough, apparently his body thought otherwise. He quickly fell into a deep sleep.
He woke up again in about an hour when someone, who looked like a doctor, pointed his mini flashlight to his eyes.
“Ow?! No 'excuse me' or dinner first before you poked into my body?”, he asked grumpily as he settled to sit down in the bed, leaning on the headrest.
The doctor gasped and literally jumped from where he stood.
“He’s awake!!” he exclaimed then hurriedly pushed a button near the bed to alert the other personnels.
“What do you mean I’m awake? I was awake when one of your nurses checked on me, about an hour ago?” he frowned at the incompetence of this doctor, he would surely ask for another one as soon as he could see his manager.
“What nurse? Nobody told us about any change of your condition since yesterday.” He looked at him strangely.
“Really? Petite, pretty young nurse, with long black hair and a mole underneath her left eye?”, he asked, one eyebrow raised up as he described the nurse.
The doctor went pale. He scrambled to hold on to anything he could lay his hand on, and it was an unfortunate IV pole, attached to Yibo's arm. Thankfully it didn't move too far to do some real damage. He then cleared his throat and struggled to find his voice before finally he could speak in a hoarse tone.
“Are you sure, Mr. Wang? I mean about the nurse?”, he asked again, just to make sure he heard it clearly.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure. She stood right where you are right now and I’m not the one to easily forget a pretty face.”, he frowned now and anxious by the way the doctor looked at him.
“We did have a nurse like that. Her name was MeiLin. But she was dead in a shooting accident right here in this hospital, 3 years ago today.”
Yibo gaped at the doctor’s words.
What?
“Uhm, then, what about a patient here, a young boy, yay high , about 5 years old?”, he asked again, his mind is now racing back to the time he's been chatting with the boy.
“I think I know who you’re talking about, but then again, he passed away last week. How do you know all that, Mr. Wang?”, the doctor replied and is also now partly scared and curious at the same time. Yibo could see it from the doctor's trembling hands that gripped the IV pole.
But he could not hear anything else since his soul seems to be flying out from his body right now. It was like an ethereal, out-of-his-body experience.
“I… I…forget it, I think I just had a strange dream just now.”, he answered, dismissing his thought and just brushed it off with a forced smile.
The doctor looked at him strangely and noted something on his chart.
“I’m going to order an MRI and full body scan, Mr. Wang, given the injuries that you’ve got from your accident.”, the doctor then informed him, not wanting to expand the discussion of the hospital's patients as well. He looked at Wang Yibo then gave him a gentle smile. "If possible, I would like you to talk to a psychiatrist as well."
“Yes to the MRI,let me think about the… shrink, thanks.”, he nodded and he went back to lay on his bed, his mind wandering off to the seemingly deceased people he talked to.
Had he gone basketcase?
-----
The MRI came back clean, as expected. The shrink? He didn't want to admit it yet. But he kept the name card on him. Just in case.
His mom and manager were there too, to take care of the administration and everything else. Yibo himself, after escaping from his suffocating duo, wandered around the hospital until he found the cafeteria. He felt his stomach grumble, and he walked inside to find some decent food other than the porridge they gave him during his stay at this hospital.
He found a row of vending machines with cold/hot drinks, and a few snacks he likes. He rummaged his pants to search for coins, when suddenly a feminine, porcelaine-like hand, hands him a bunch of coins.
"You can use mine, I have no use of it anymore."
Yibo looked up to the owner of the hand, and found a beautiful woman, with long dark hair at the back and shorter in front, and a doll-like feature. Just like a Japanese doll comes to life. He was speechless for a while, because this woman wore a full set of red kimono with phoenix embroidery, complete with the geisha-look makeup, but before he could say anything, the woman walked away, leaving him alone, clutching coins that he had no intention of using anymore.
And before he could do anything else, he heard a light giggling voice from behind, making him froze.
"Don't worry about Asuka, she loves to give people coins, she had a lot of those, you know..."
He turned around to find a young woman, a girl really, sat on one of the hospital benches in front of the vending machines.
"Oh, my..." she gasped dramatically, and stood up to get closer to Yibo. "Gege, you are really handsome!!"
Suddenly her face is now only mere inches from Yibo's, making him take a few steps backward. "Wow, I never seen anyone as handsome as you, ge, what's your name? My name is Yaoyao, I'm 18...well, I would be, anyway, not important, do you want something from the vending machine? I can get it for you if you want, I personally liked the sour cream and onion chips, or maybe the seaweed one, don't buy the chilli pepper one, it will burn your throat so bad...." but Yibo did not hear the rest of her one-sided conversation because he already ran away from the place when he saw the girl's hand just went through the glass front of the vending machine while picking the flavor.
It took every ounce of his self control not to scream like a girl right there and then.
What in the damnation hell happened?