Chapter Text
Minho wasn’t the type to be curious, at least not anymore.
He had seen the grief, the guilt and the anger. Watched families scream in despair, listened to the sharp clatter of wedding rings hitting sterile white floors as people crumbled beneath the weight of something they couldn’t carry or understand. Hope had a way of vanishing from people’s eyes, with time, you learn not to look too closely.
But today, the man in front of Room 24 made him pause.
It was near the end of visit hours, 6:37p.m. to be precise. The hallway hummed faintly with muffled voices, we could hear the squeak of the nurses shoes, the shuffle of papers note, and the bip from the coffee machine. But in the middle of it all, a young man sat curled on the floor like something had folded him in half.
He wasn’t just crying, he was unraveling.
One hand clawed at his dark hair, the strands curling messily between his fingers, looking like he was trying to hold himself together while pulling the pain out of his skull. His other hand was pressed to the cold tile, anchoring him there, feeling like the moment he would let go, everything would fall apart. His shoulders were trembling with breathless restraint. It wasn't loud, not wailing. It felt more like he was trying to be as small as possible.
Minho felt like the man was burying his face in hope of not being seen, even as he was falling apart out in the open.
He couldn't see his face properly until he looked up towards the ceiling, hands brushing his cheeks trying to make it look like he wasn't scrambling apart. Minho find him beautiful, soft, breathtaking. His hair were slightly long, tousled and wave. He had expressive eyes, big and brown but shaken. His shirt was wrinkled, clinging to his back with the sheen of stress-sweat. There was something achingly tender about him, as if emotions didn’t merely pass through, but gently enveloped him whole.
Minho’s steps slowed.
He didn’t know who was in Room 24. A new patient for sure, admitted during the day he would spent with his mother.
She hadn’t remembered his name once again. But she remembered the azalea he brought, she always did. It was the only thing that still connected her to him, however faintly.
“Pretty,” she’d said, her voice light, far away.
She held it gently, like it might break, just like Minho’s heart did every time he visited.
He sat with her for an hour and a half. Like usually she would talked to the window, sometimes she would look at him. She would laughed suddenly and then she would cried without warning. When he left, she had called him by someone else’s name.
It didn’t break him anymore, not the way it used to but it still clung to him, the soft ache behind his ribs that he never quite managed to shake.
Maybe that’s why this boy struck him harder than it should have.
Minho looked away and resumed his steps.
He walked, because stopping wouldn’t help, because the ache in his chest wasn’t useful, because the quiet between people like him and people like that boy, was the only thing that let the job get done.
He didn’t walk away because he didn’t care.
He walked away, because for him, not caring was an act of discipline.
And right now, Minho had other patients to tend to.
In Room 18, Mrs. Kang was growing agitated again, convinced the ceiling tiles were watching her. Mr. Baek in Room 12 hadn’t spoken in three days but had started scribbling numbers on his arms and in Room 19, little Yujin had torn apart her therapy bear and was now silently staring out the window, waiting for a father that, unfortunately, would never come back.
There were people waiting for him, people who didn’t just need medications but needed anchor points. And in a place like this, sometimes holding yourself together was the only way to keep someone else from breaking further.
So he walked on.
He would read the chart later. He would learn the patient name, his mental state and his background because he always did.
But not yet.