Work Text:
Jungwon was stressed. He was so completely and utterly stressed he had no idea what to do about it. They were planning for their second tour as a group, and their first world tour simultaneously. They were going to fifteen cities in total, not even their fans knew that though. Their company announced their Seoul date, Japan dates, and US dates. But their company found out they had even more fans in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Australia. So, what did their company do? Of course, they prepared dates in those places so all of Enhypen’s fans would be satisfied. Not that the boys were complaining, in fact, most of them we’re very excited for their first world tour, specifically Jake, since he was going back home for the first time in years.
Jungwon already thought it was hard enough to go on a US tour, but the thought of going on a whole world tour? Jungwon was pressured, to say the least. Don’t get him wrong, he was definitely excited to see their fans again, but he had to keep a level head throughout this whole process. If he just daydreamed about their world tour through this whole process, no work would ever get done. As their leader, he had a lot more responsibilities when preparing for their tour, much more than his regular schedule. After almost three years of doing this, you think he’d be used to it. Well, actually, Jungwon would say he’s accustomed to it at this point, except the only factor that’s different this time is the fact that they have more tour dates than usual. Jungwon knew how exhausting tours could be for all of them, their US tour was hard enough with some members getting sick, or even just plain exhausted with the multiple flights throughout the states. But fifteen cities? In a month and a half? They certainly were pushing their youthful vigor to the limits.
He sat in on many different meetings with their management and protocol team during the month they prepared for their tour, taking notes and suggesting ideas that would best benefit the team. In between the endless dance and vocal practices, Jungwon barely had any time to take care of himself. He quickly became physically drained, barely having time to eat and a lot less time to sleep when he was responsible for their schedule in each city they dropped by. He could tell the others were starting to get tired as well, in their early morning schedules they all just piled into their manager’s van quietly, far too tired to engage in conversation. As they were all tired, they were mostly sensitive around each other. It was easy to get annoyed and mad at each other when they were sensitive like this, so they didn’t speak much to each other for fear of fighting. In their whole two and a half years of being together, the group had yet to have a major fight with each other. Jungwon was secretly grateful for the fact, especially since he hated fighting with his members, but that also meant they were susceptible to always fight one day. Jungwon didn’t think fighting was exactly bad, he could even argue it was therapeutic. It meant they weren’t afraid to hurt each other, it meant they loved each other to argue about something that was important to them.
Of course, they had a lot of minor fights, things they really didn’t care about and were just arguing for fun. Maybe Jungwon was overthinking, as he always did. Maybe their first major fight wouldn’t be as bad as he thought it would be. Or, it could be worse than he ever expected.
Jungwon sat on the floor of their practice room, sweat dripping down his face as he drank from his water bottle. He was having more difficulty than usual with one of their new choreographies, disappointed as he had never had difficulty with it before. If he was being completely honest with himself, it was like his body was on autopilot. He was running on less than three hours of sleep and frankly just wanted to pass out. He could sense the tense atmosphere in the room, the hushed whispers of his members flooding his ears.
“Jungwon-ah, can we talk?” Heeseung said from behind the younger, crossing his arms over his chest.
Jungwon looked at Heeseung innocently, hoping his hyung was going to help him with the choreography. He nodded and stood up, slightly smiling.
“What is it, hyung?”
“Why don’t you get this? The moves are so easy. It’s literally like this, this, and then this.” Heeseung went through the moves of the choreography one at a time.
Jungwon’s lips curled down in confusion. What? Was he really criticizing Jungwon right now?
“Hyung, I––”
“Why are you acting so spoiled? You should’ve gotten this ages ago.”
Jungwon’s eyes widened silently as he thought, is this really happening?
Heeseung continued to look at Jungwon seriously. Jungwon held his head silently, defensiveness rising in his body.
“I’m trying my best, hyung.” He mumbled, but still loud enough so Heeseung could hear.
“And it looks like your best isn’t enough. You’re not trying hard enough, Jungwon-ah.”
“What do you know about trying hard, hyung? You’re automatically perfect at everything you do! I’m sorry that I’m not perfect at every dance I do like you or Ni-ki! But do you know how tired and stressed I am? I have so many things to plan and so many things to do for this tour, meanwhile you’re just singing and dancing for a couple of hours every day! I’ve only gotten 3 hours of sleep today. So don’t you dare talk to me about not working hard enough. All I’m doing is working hard so you guys can have fun on this tour. But if you yell at me like this, you guys can plan everything. You can sit in on the endless meetings, make itineraries, check up on each other, practice singing, practice dancing, and continuously talk to our management about the tour. I’m sick of this.”
Jungwon’s voice trembled with his words, tears pooling in his eyes. He was just so tired at this point.
“Jungwon! Is that any way to speak to your hyung?” Heeseung said incredulously, not believing what he was hearing.
Jungwon looked around the room, questioning why no one was speaking up. They all had nervous expressions on their face, showing they were hesitant to speak. Jungwon felt his heart break into pieces. If his members weren’t going to speak up for him, who would? That’s it. Jungwon felt betrayed.
“I quit. You guys figure out this tour by yourselves.” A tear flowed out of Jungwon’s eye as he walked closer to the door of their practice room. Before anyone could reply, Jungwon was out the door with his fists clenched at the side.
🖤
Jungwon ran out of the building, tears pouring down his face. He dried them as he walked down the streets of Seoul, trying to conceal his face to people passing by. It was around lunchtime, meaning the lunch rush was happening and the streets of Seoul were pretty flooded with people. Jungwon sighed, pulling the hood on his hoodie up and staring at the ground. He pulled out his phone and continued to walk closer to the sidewalk. Without thinking, he scrolled through Weverse and started walking into the crosswalk, thinking it was safe to cross. He heard a car horn honk and looked up from his phone and too the side. His eyes widened as he tried running away, but it was too late. The car roughly crashed into him, Jungwon fell unconscious upon contact.
Red covered Jungwon’s vision as he tried getting a bearing of his surroundings. He heard faint shouts come from the side of him, but everything was muffled. Was this it? Was Jungwon going to die like this? Jungwon wanted to see his members again. Apologize for yelling at Heeseung. Say goodbye to them, one last time.
I’m sorry everyone. I love you.
He fully drifted into unconsciousness once more.
🖤
The team stood around their practice room silently, awkwardly standing around as they looked at each other. They knew they screwed up. Jungwon hated raising his voice at the other, much less fighting. They all flinched when they saw Jungwon’s teary eyes as he argued with Heeseung. By not speaking up for him, they dug their own graves with the younger boy. They all looked around guiltily, some members with tears in their eyes.
“Guys…what are we even doing anymore?” Jay questioned to all of them, worried expression on his face.
They all clenched their fists silently. Jay was right. What were they doing? Heeseung huffed silently.
“Well, it’s Jungwon’s fault! He was slowing us down! I tried to help him but he just yelled at me!” He said defensively, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Heeseung-hyung, did you even hear anything Jungwon just said? He’s barely gotten any sleep today. No wonder he’s having trouble with the choreography. He was really upset, I think we should go look for him.” Sunoo said sadly, fiddling with his fingers nervously.
“Why are you guys disagreeing with me? Don’t you agree? This is Jungwon’s fault.” Heeseung said, fully believing he was in the right in this situation.
“No, he’s not, Heeseung-hyung. You were at fault this time. Come on guys, let’s go look for him. Heeseung-hyung, Sunghoon, and Jake, you look in the building. Sunoo and Ni-ki, look at our dorms. I’ll go with our manager and see if he’s somewhere else.”
Jay spurred all of them into action, they all nodded, Heeseung somewhat hesitatingly. They all grabbed their phones and walked out of their practice room, Jay grabbing their manager.
💙
Jay and their manager were searching through the streets of Seoul when their manager got a call on his cell phone. It was an unknown number, so they looked at each other before their manager picked it up.
“Hello, is this Kim Euisoo, manager of Yang Jungwon?”
“Yes? Who might I be speaking to?”
“This is a nurse from Seoul General Hospital. Yang Jungwon was admitted as a patient about ten minutes ago from a car accident. You were the first emergency contact on his file, so I took the liberty of calling you.”
“J––Jungwon was what? Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Jungwon was admitted to your hospital?”
“Yes, it appears he was involved in a car accident about fifteen minutes ago. He’s currently in surgery. Can you let me know when you’ll be here so I can record his basic information down?”
“Uh, yes. We’ll drive over right now.”
Their manager started ushering Jay back to their company, deciding to gather the others before driving to the hospital. After a while, the six boys were piling into their manager’s van, rushing to get to the hospital to see Jungwon.
Once they arrived, all of them clambered out of the van and went to the front desk. Their manager asked about Jungwon’s condition, and she got a nurse responsible for Jungwon’s care.
“He’s out of surgery now. We moved him to the ICU so he’d have around the clock care. I’ll take you to his room and get his doctor to explain his condition to you.”
They all nodded as they followed her to Jungwon’s private room, nervousness rising in all of them. Finally, the moment came, and they all stood in front of Jungwon’s room nervously. They all silently walked in, nervousness steadily flowing through all of their bodies. The sight they were met with broke their hearts. Bandages were tightly wrapped around Jungwon’s head, making his fluffy hair stick out in random places. A tube was connected to the inside of his mouth, which led to an oxygen machine. Besides that, he had multiple wires connected to his arms, leading to an IV and multiple bags of fluids.
The boys stood incredulously around the room, clinging to each other or crying sadly. How could this happen?
“Hello, my name is Dr. Choi. I’m the leading doctor for Jungwon’s case. I’ll go over a brief overview of his symptoms. Firstly, he lost a lot of blood upon contact with the truck, so he had to get a blood transplant during surgery. Unfortunately, the transplant didn’t go as we planned so we had to put him in a medically-induced coma, however, he should be waking up from it soon. It also appeared his lung was punctured by a couple of broken ribs, so we put him on an oxygen tank for that. Once he wakes up, we’ll take the tube out and replace it with an oxygen mask instead. We also noticed he’s showing the beginning signs of malnutrition, so we put him on some vitamins and an IV. Apart from that, his condition looks well enough to be discharged next week. If one of you will come with me, I’ll go over his treatment plan and the time he can be discharged.”
Their manager volunteered and followed the doctor out of the room, leaving the seven boys by themselves. Heeseung silently approached Jungwon’s bedside, making Jay tense. If he was going to get mad at Jungwon for literally getting hit by a truck, Jay was going to run away. He went to go behind the boy, just to make sure he didn’t upset Jungwon, but was stopped by Sunghoon silently, who was gazing at the pair.
Heeseung looked down at the comatose boy silently, tears welling up in his eyes. When they all split up to look for Jungwon, Jake and Sunghoon talked to their hyung about why he was wrong, and that’s when Heeseung understood what went wrong. He was just trying to portray his worry for the younger boy with his words, but it quickly became a battle of defensiveness between the two. Heeseung never wanted it to look like he was attacking the younger boy, just helping him out. Now look where that got them. For the first time in their two and a half years together, a member was in the hospital for a prolonged period of time. Of course, each member had traveled to the hospital at least once after their debut, whether it be for a checkup, or passing out from exhaustion. But they had never stayed there long, two, maybe three days at most. Heeseung felt so bad. The thought that he was the one that caused this whole incident to happen was eating him alive.
Heeseung’s lips trembled like a child without a coat in winter, unrestricted and free flowing. Tears flowed out of his eyes steadily as he continued to look at the boy, falling on his cheeks when the boys eyes twitched, starting to open up. Heeseung’s eyes widened as he loomed closer to the boy’s bedside, nerves rising in his body. Jungwon’s eyes fully opened up, and the boy felt lethargic as he felt something invading his throat. He groaned as he grabbed the tube in his mouth trying to pull it out as tears flowed out of his eyes. Heeseung immediately noticed the younger boy’s panic and pressed the call nurse button so they could replace the tube down his throat with an oxygen mask.
“Don’t take it out yet, Jungwon-ah. Just sit tight, they’re almost here.” Heeseung said emotionally, tears still glossing his eyes.
Jungwon looked to the side as he realized his Heeseung-hyung was beside him. He looked wide-eyed at the older man as tears welled up in his eyes. They poured down the sides of his face gently as sobs built up in Jungwon’s chest. He tried speaking, but the invading tube in his throat made it hard to do so. He silently laid there, crying as he looked at his Heeseung-hyung. Heeseung cried beside him as well, heart weeping for the boy in the hospital bed.
“I––I’m so sorry, Jungwon-ah. I was just worried. I never wanted you to think that you aren’t working hard enough. I––I have no words. I’m so sorry, Jungwon-ah. I––I know it’ll take a while for you to forgive me…but I’ll do whatever it takes to show it. I love you, Jungwon-ah. And I always will.” Heeseung said shakily, voice cracking with every other word as he hiccuped between every sentence. He only hiccuped when he was emotional, which showed how much this situation affected him.
Jungwon squeaked, trying to speak once more but to no avail. Where are those nurses? Jungwon needed to talk to his Heeseung-hyung as soon as possible. Instead of patiently waiting, Jungwon shook his head silently before pulling out his phone. He pulled up the Kakaotalk app so he could talk with Heeseung privately.
Jungwonie the cat ^^
I’m sorry too, hyung. I was too emotional as well. I just…was so tired I really didn’t care anymore.
Heeseung looked up from his phone emotionally, eyes tearing up again.
“No, Jungwon-ah. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry for pressuring you. I…I can’t say I won’t do it again in the future, but I’ll work hard to stop. I promise. I really love you, Jungwon-ah. You know that, right?”
A single tear flowed down Jungwon’s cheek as he nodded once more, opening his aching arms so he could hug his Heeseung-hyung. Heeseung gladly accepted the invitation, melting into the younger’s frame as he smiled silently.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was only a few minutes in reality, the nurses came and changed Jungwon’s tube to an oxygen mask. The boy greatly relieved, before looking at his group with guilty faces. He tilted his head silently as he looked at them, questioning why they had guilty expressions. They all looked around at each other before Jay walked up to Jungwon’s bed.
“Jungwon-ah…we’re sorry we didn’t say anything earlier in the practice room. That wasn’t right. We should’ve been more mindful of your condition. We just assumed Heeseung was right and you were being lazy. That wasn’t right of us, though. We’re sorry, Jungwon-ah.”
Jungwon’s eyes widened before he smiled under his oxygen mask. He pulled out his phone and wrote a message in their group chat so they would all see.
Jungwonie the cat-like leader ^^
Thank you for apologizing guys. I know it’s been rough for you guys too, I’m sorry that I said your guys’ schedule was nothing compared to mine. Were all busy as we prepare for this tour.
They all simultaneously smiled at the message before looking at Jungwon in his hospital bed. They all smiled as they crowded around the hospital bed, going to hug their leader lightly, so as not to upset his injuries too much. Jungwon smiled as he felt warmed by his members, heart full and body relaxed. They would all be okay, no matter what. As long as they had each other.
Fin