Chapter Text
"Where are you?"
His ex's voice was strict, even harsh at some point. Hyuntak gulped, thinking how long it’s been since he received a call from him. Seongje didn't hear it through his phone, but it was probably because of the panic eating his head more than the gulp not being loud enough.
"Home. Packing my stuff."
Seongje sighed.
"Don't go anywhere, I'm coming."
Panic rushed into Hyuntak's head.
"No, you don't." He stopped packing and sat on his bed as he felt the conversation was getting serious. "I didn't text you that for it."
But it was too late, Seongje was already out of his mind.
"We'll talk about it all, face to face."
"I said you can't," Gotak protested. His mom and Baku were in the living room, Baku was staying that night.
He himself didn't feel like talking about that anyway.
He could feel Seongje breathing loudly on the other side of the phone. He himself sighed too.
He felt guilty for ever sending that message.
"Go Hyuntak..." Seongje's voice was calm, even kind of tired. "You don't get to tell me you—"
He couldn't finish the sentence. Maybe he thought it would hurt Hyuntak more. Or maybe it would hurt him more to say it out loud, so he just shut his mouth and waited a few seconds, taking deep breaths before he continued.
"You don't get to tell me that and act like it has to change nothing in my life."
Hyuntak let out a shaky breath.
"It doesn't have to," he murmured under his breath, not too loud, knowing that the sentence itself would be enough to make Seongje mad and he didn’t intend to make it worse. But it was just the honest truth that needed to be said.
Their harsh reality for the last two years.
Seongje knew it too.
He just made a weird noise with his mouth. Some noise Hyuntak found familiar, something Seongje does when he is annoyed but trying to keep his mind together.
He could imagine the look on his ex lover's face. It felt like something was squeezing his chest, making it harder to breathe.
"I'm on my way. Don't leave home yet."
And Seongje ended the call like that, leaving Gotak all desperate, too tired to even fight back.
Maybe part of him also wanted to see Seongje. Wanted his warmth. Wanted him to look at him with any other emotion than coldness or hurt after 2 years of breakup.
So he just sat there and waited.
Waited, only for his mom and Baku to get in and tell him it was time to leave now.
He said he was tired and asked them to sleep a bit before they leave and could wait for an hour longer, but it had already been 4 hours since their phone call.
So when his one hour of fake sleep came to an end, he grabbed his bags and returned to the living room.
And it was time to leave now.
"Nice to see you , Hyuntak. How are you doing today? Is there anything bothering you? Anything we can fix about the room?"
Gotak shook his head in a negative way and smiled at the familiar face of the doctor.
"Everything's fine. It's not like it's my first time here."
The doctor nodded with a little bit of bittersweetness before he bent down in front of Gotak's knee and started to examine it briefly with his hands.
"How is it, how often does it pain you?"
"It's fine," Hyuntak half-lied. "It just hurts in the night if I go too hard during basketball that day."
"I see." The doctor seemed calm. "Just to be safe, I want you to walk a bit around the hospital so that we can see how much it reacts to a little bit of exercise. You know we really have to make sure it's okay and take care of it before..." The guy was hesitant to end the sentence, Gotak could only force a warm smile while turning to him.
"I get it. It'd be good to walk around, actually. I'd like to inhale some freshly poured sanitizer."
The doctor chuckled a bit.
"You are still as witty as I remember." He patted Hyuntak's shoulder gently as he stood up. "Walk for 20 to 30 minutes. I'll be back by then," he said before he left the room.
It didn’t take Hyuntak so long to leave the room as well. The air in there was suffocating him. Without Baku and his mom there, it felt too empty unlike his other times.
When he chose a random floor to walk around, he realized he was walking the orthopedics and traumatology ward. The ward he spent almost 2 months in. He saw some familiar nurses who used to be so nice to him and greeted them kindly.
He was happy to see them again, but he was afraid of making the conversation longer right now. He wasn't ready for the questions yet, so he just said hi to them and moved fast as if he was in a rush.
He was still walking when his phone buzzed. He reached out to it excitedly only to be disappointed when he saw the message was from his mother.
He hated himself when he realized whose message he was waiting for. His hand unconsciously found his contact number in the phone. His thumb rested right at the side of the call button for a while.
He wanted to call him.
But he couldn't.
What was he even gonna tell him?
Was he gonna ask him why he didn't show up or why did he make him wait after yelling at him saying he shouldn't come and saying that he won't wait?
It felt ridiculous. But he still hit the button. Only for the answer machine to say the number couldn't be reached.
Something felt heavy in his chest. He knew Seongje wasn't the type to always answer his phone calls, but something still didn't feel right to Hyuntak. His breath hitched a bit. He then fixed his head to shake this weird feeling off.
He was probably just overthinking. Or overfeeling. Nothing he wasn't used to. So he just kept walking.
But when he almost reached the end of the ward, someone on the stretcher and was being moved to the room caught his eyes.
Perfectly structured face even with long cuts on it. Pointed jaw, the messy hair he enjoyed touching back in the days.
His heart dropped.
His lungs felt too little to supply him enough oxygen.
That person was no other than his ex-boyfriend.
"Geum Seongje?"
He could only stutter his name under his breath when his dilated eyes couldn't leave him for a second.