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Pi-o almost doesn't feel it at first.
His hands are on fire, his pinky burning as it paints the piano red, and he feels shaky and out of breath and exhausted.
It almost gets lost in the middle of all of that; Jeong-yo's pain blending in with his own for a moment.
Then he notices it.
His forehead and elbow, hurting with a sudden impact.
Pi-o feels the first drop of tear slipping down his cheek.
It's nothing. Jeong-yo is on his way here. It's probably just a bump in the road making him hit his head on the car seat.
Then he feels Jeong-yo's knees blossoming with pain, sharp and instant and gone in a second. And his palms, feeling like little rocks and pebbles are digging into his skin.
It's nothing; Pi-o keeps repeating to himself as he plays, as he hits the piano again and again and lets himself go with the music.
His face feels more wet then before when it happens.
This one isn't like the others. This pain takes Pi-o's breath away, the same way it does to Jeong-yo, and it lasts.
It becomes worse. It becomes unbearable in just a blink of an eye, and Pi-o is screaming, the way he doesn't remember ever doing before, the sound ripping itself from his chest, raw and painful and loud.
Everything stops for just a second.
And then sounds explode all around him.
The music stops, but everything is so loud, dizzying, deafening. Painful.
"Pi-o!" He recognizes his mom's scream between his own agonizing sounds.
Jeong-yo's shoulder is on fire, and Pi-o's along with him. It feels like something sharp hit him, hit through him, and Jeong-yo stops breathing for a moment.
And then he feels like he's choking, like he's drowning, like he's falling.
Pi-o falls along with him.
He can tell, distantly, in the way you can tell it's raining in the middle of the night during autumn when you're sleeping peacefully in your mom's lap, only five years old and terrified of thunder, held carefully in her gentle arms; that he is on the floor.
That he is being held.
That he is screaming and a feminine, familiar voice is screaming right next to him.
"Pi-o! Pi-o! What's wrong? What's wrong with you? Talk to me! Talk to mom!" It rings in his ears.
And his throat is burning, his nose, his chest, his eyes.
Everything is on fire, and his chest is filled with water.
He claws at his throat, nails scratching at his airways, heaving and desperate for air that he is being denied.
That Jeong-yo is being denied.
Pi-o is fine. Physically.
But he is sharing Jeong-yo's every second of pain and agony with him. The same way he did merely a few nights ago, when they were yelling at each other under the pouring rain, knee deep in water as Pi-o's fist connected with Jeong-yo's jaw.
The same way he felt it when Seok Hwan hit Jeong-yo in the head with a chair, and when he watched Jeong-yo being dragged in an alley and punched, and when he felt him hitting a trash can as he walked away from Pi-o, and when he felt the way his knuckles hurt when he punched Pi-o in the face.
He feels Jeong-yo's pain now, and shares it with him, like he's done for all of his life. For all of their lives.
And it hurts like nothing has ever hurt before.
Jeong-yo gets hurt a lot, he gets hurt constantly, since they were little kids and still, he gets hurt much more than Pi-o does.
But this is unlike anytime before.
Pi-o loses sense of everything else as he shares his soulmate's agony with him, time stretching and passing him by without touching Pi-o, people hovering around him, voices talking to him.
It is much later, when Jeong-yo isn't choking on lungs full of water that he feels like he comes back to his own body.
And even then, his shoulder is still on fire.
"Jeong-yo," he whispers, desperate, fingers clutching around whatever he can reach. "Jeong-yo is hurt."
Jeong-yo is missing; they tell him when he's not on the floor and madly shaking anymore.
"What?" He looks up at the police officers standing in front of him, feeling like he's been punched in the stomach.
"His vehicle never arrived here," one officer tells him, watching Pi-o closely.
Pi-o has been helped on a chair backstage by his mom and Director Yoon, his mom hovering next to him anxiously as Pi-o holds himself in a tight embrace.
They tried to give him soulmate bond blockers a few moments ago, and Pi-o remembers refusing them violently.
He can't leave Jeong-yo alone with this.
He doesn't want to.
The police ask him a lot of questions about what he's feeling from Jeong-yo, they ask if he's sure all the pain is from Jeong-yo at all, and Pi-o looks up through fluttering lashes to find everyone staring at him.
Right. He never told his family.
They never really told anyone at all.
Pi-o isn't sure why. It seems unimportant and insignificant now. He should've told his mom at least. He's not sure if that would have made things easier or not.
It doesn't really matter now.
The police ask if he can give them anything useful to help find Jeong-yo.
Mom tries to stop them, making a fuss about how they're overwhelming Pi-o.
"Ma'am, a person has gone missing, and at the moment the only lead we him on finding him is your son," one of the officers tells her sternly.
Pi-o can tell from the angry line of her mouth, that mom is about to keep arguing with them.
He speaks up before she can.
"I felt his forehead and elbow hurting at first," he says slowly, feeling like every word is coming out of his throat like crushed glass, "like he hit his head on something. I assumed it was just a bump in road, making him hit the car seat in front of him."
They starts writing down what he's saying, and Pi-o notices his family and Jae-in's mom hovering around the room, all looking stressed out and anxious.
Even his grandfather looks stressed.
"And then his knees and hands hurt, like he fell on the ground, pebbles digging in the palm of his hands. And then..." He mentions at his chest, holding a hand in front of himself, trying to properly convey what he means. "His chest burning, like he was out of breath, like he was running."
He points at his shoulder then.
His chest is bare.
They had stripped him of most of his clothes to find out what was making him scream like that a while back, and the mark of Jeong-yo's gunshot wound looks red and raw and angry on his skin.
Pi-o stares down at his palms. They look angry too, Jeong-yo's injuries glaring back at him.
"And then I felt his shoulder..." he trails off slowly, his eyes stinging.
He can't make himself stop the upcoming tears, and mom moves closer to him when he starts crying, wrapping gentle arms around his shoulders as he shakes in her hold.
"It felt like his shoulder was on fire," he cries, talking through his sobs as he clings to his mom. "It hurt so much. He was in so much pain. It felt like it was everywhere."
"It's okay, Pi-o-ya," mom murmurs to him, patting his back softly. "It's going to be okay."
Is it?
It doesn't feel like that to Pi-o.
"And then he... he... he was..." he heaves between words, like he's there again, like Jeong-yo is there again and Pi-o is there with him and they're drowning. "He couldn't breathe, he was drowning, his lungs felt full of water."
"He's not drowning anymore?" An officer asks him.
Pi-o shakes his head wordlessly, still sobbing as he looks up at them through watery eyes.
"You'll find him, right?" He asks, begs, pleads.
Please find him.
"He's still out there, he's not dead!" He hiccups. "You'll find him? You have to find him."
He pushes his mom away so he can point at the angry wound on his shoulder, not real the way it probably looks on Jeong-yo's shoulder right now, but almost like a painting, sitting on Pi-o's skin.
It's the ugliest painting in existence.
It's proof that Jeong-yo is still alive.
"Look, look," he says, almost hurried in his worry and Jeong-yo's non-stop pain. "This means he's still alive! This wouldn't be on me if he was dead! Soulmate marks don't stay after death! He's still alive! You have to find him!"
He almost topples over his chair as he leans forward to look at the officers more closely, nearly falling on his knees as he begs. "Please, you have to find him! Please find him!"
"Pi-o!" Mom grabs him before he can fall, holding him up as he struggles to stand up.
"Please, please find my soulmate," Pi-o begs, uncaring of how ungraceful he must look right now, of what his mom is saying, of how people are looking at him.
It's fine. It'll all be fine. Pi-o doesn't care about any of it.
Pi-o never should have cared about any of it. None of it matters. Nothing else matters.
Jeong-yo is the only thing that matters to him, Jeong-yo should have been the only thing that ever mattered to him.
It'll be fine. As long as they find Jeong-yo, everything will be fine.
They take Pi-o to the hospital after that.
His hand is still bleeding and they have to bandage it, and the doctor tells his mom that he's severely dehydrated and sleep deprived.
"He also seems like he hasn't been eating very well."
Pi-o listens absent mindedly as they talk to his mom, laid on a hospital bed with a nurse taking care of him.
He's still refusing bond blockers. He's never liked the way those tiny little pills make him feel.
How empty he is with them and without Jeong-yo.
He'll bear Jeong-yo's pain forever if he has to instead of letting himself feel dull and empty and soulless like that, comfortable and easy on bond blockers while Jeong-yo is suffering.
Hours later, Director Yoon and Ms Han come to the hospital, quietly entering Pi-o's room in the late hours of the night.
Pi-o sits up straight at the sight of them.
"So? What happened at the police station? Did they find him?" He asks immediately.
Ms Han stays back, looking frustrated and tired, and Director Yoon steps forward towards his bed, gently taking the seat there as she watches Pi-o.
"They're still looking," she tells him after a moment.
Pi-o lays back down with a sigh. He resists outright cursing anyone out.
Useless cops. How hard can it be to find one Korean teenager in this country?
Apparently, it's hard.
Three days pass, Pi-o is discharged from the hospital, against his mom, and the doctor's wishes, and he goes back to where he was staying with his mom before he moved to the chapel. His grandfather, Director Yoon and Ms Han come along with them too.
His stuff are all there. So are Jeong-yo's. Their bags brought here after they left the chapel.
Pi-o finds himself sliding down on the floor right there, next to Jeong-yo's bag. He stares at it like it's sacred.
He's not sure why Jeong-yo's stuff are here, or why his grandfather and Director Yoon and Ms Han moved here from their own hotel that they stayed at with Jeong-yo.
He doesn't really care.
Everything has been passing by him like wind these last few days, his mind feeling like it's stuck in a fog, refusing to register anything unrelated to Jeong-yo.
Jeong-yo. Jeong-yo. Jeong-yo.
Pi-o slowly pulls his bag towards himself, opening it and looking at the soft clothes inside, the sheet music, Jeong-yo's pens, his phone.
Jeong-yo doesn't own expensive things, he doesn't own brand new stuff that look their cost and feel cold against your fingertips.
His stuff are used, they looked well worn and well loved. The end of his pens have teeth marks from when he's stressed and chews on them, his shirt sleeves have rips from how much he pulls them down to hide his fingers from the cold, his phone screen is cracked.
Jeong-yo exists in everything he owns, in everything he touches.
He's in every room he's ever walked in, the sound of his voice left there with the walls and the furniture, his overflowing emotions left behind, lighting up every space he's ever occupied.
Pi-o doesn't want to be just another space lit up with what's left of Jeong-yo.
Pi-o wants his real Jeong-yo back.
He wants to hear Jeong-yo's actual voice and not the echos of his laughter from a memory.
He wants to feel those real, chapped but warm lips and not the shape of his smile pressed into Pi-o's skin in soft kisses that haunt his sleep.
He wants to hold the real Jeong-yo again, kiss him, feel him, love him.
He hasn't gotten to do that in what feels like years. And it's funny, isn't it, that he hasn't even knows Choi Jeong-yo for years.
They've only gotten a mere few months together.
Pi-o is greedy, has always been greedy; he wants more. He wants a lot more. He wants everything Jeong-yo has and more.
When they were together, laid down under warm blankets on Jeong-yo's small dorm bed, legs tangled in the dark of the night and Jeong-yo's skin pressed tightly against his own as his breathing evened out and Pi-o stayed awake for hours more to just stare at him and take him and all that he was in; Pi-o knew he wanted more.
He wanted every minute, every smile, every beautiful sound Jeong-yo made with his incredible fingers, every sunrise and every sunset and all the good mornings and good nights that came after that.
And Pi-o has nothing now.
Jeong-yo isn't here. No one knows where Jeong-yo is.
It's just Pi-o and this bag and the pain that has turned dull in the past few days.
He carefully pulls one of Jeong-yo's hoodies out of the bag, a gray one that he knows Jeong-yo likes to sleep in because the sleeves are long enough that they reach past his fingertips without him having to pull on them.
He sets the bag down, and brings the hoodie close to his face.
It smells like him.
Pi-o aches at the scent of him, and he hugs it close to his chest as he lays down right there, his sight turning watery as he curls around what little he has left of his Jeong-yo.
Mom finds him like that a few hours later.
She looks disapproving, her mouth a thin, sharp line.
Pi-o finds that like with everything else these days, he doesn't care about this either.
She can disapprove.
It doesn't really change anything.
Not now at least. Maybe it would've, at first, when Pi-o found out Jeong-yo was his soulmate months ago, before Jeong-yo became half of his heart.
"You should eat at least, if you're not gonna do anything else." She crouches down to frown at him.
Pi-o turns away from her.
"Pi-o," she calls him, and then when he doesn't answer, a little louder, "Kang Pi-o!"
She grabs his arm and forcefully turns him back around to face her. "Are you going to just let yourself waste away like this? You wanna be like this from now on? Just a shell?"
Pi-o stares at her through tired eyes.
Yeah, honestly. That sounds fine to him.
He doesn't want to do anything without Jeong-yo.
Mom clearly disagrees.
She stomps away after a frustrated groan at him, click clicking out the door on her high heels, and then comes back a few minutes after, a plate of food and a glass of water in hand.
She drags him into a sitting position by force, and grabs his cheeks and makes him look her in the eyes.
"If you won't eat willingly, I will shove this down your throat myself."
Pi-o throws up every single bite after an hour.
His stomach hasn't accepted a single meal in the last three days.
Mom helps him kneel in the bathroom as he throws up, rubbing his back and pushing his hair out of his face. She cries as Pi-o gags, as he shakes and shivers and involuntary sobs as his stomach turns into a tight, painful knot.
They've both been crying a lot these days.
She helps him back to his feet, helps him clean his face, and then holds him up as he takes slow, shaky steps to his bed.
She's placing a blanket over his shivering body when Ms Han runs inside the room, phone in hand and eyes wide.
"They've found an unknown person in the hospital matching the injuries you described to the police!"
Pi-o fights his mom for ten minutes over going to see the person they've found. She wants him to rest and let the adults go check it out, but Pi-o won't have it.
"He's my soulmate!" He snaps as he grabs his jacket and trails Ms Han out the door.
Ms Han drives them back to the hospital Pi-o left yesterday.
There's a pale, bruised and sleeping body there, waiting for him.
Pi-o pushes the doctor out of his way and runs into the room, falling on his knees next to the bed as he grabs a hand, wrapped in bandages and limp, and brings it to his forehead and presses it into his skin.
"Jeong-yo-ya," he whispers, feeling so broken and yet the most whole he's felt in days.
Jeong-yo looks peaceful in his sleep, like he wasn't shot three days ago, like he's just taking a nap in his dorm room as Pi-o lays next to him and tries his very best to annoy him into waking up because he's bored.
He's the best thing Pi-o has ever seen.
Pi-o refuses to leave his hospital room for even a second after that. He wants to be here when Jeong-yo wakes up, he wants to see those beautiful brown eyes again, he wants to hear his voice, and he wants to tell him he's so very sorry for being such a horrible soulmate.
Jeong-yo's doctor tells them Pi-o can't stay the night, which is a shame, for the hospital, because Pi-o is willing to destroy this entire building if it's what it takes to stay right in this room.
But it seems he doesn't have to because Director Yoon asks to move Jeong-yo to a private room so Pi-o can stay with him.
"When will he wake up?" He asks one of the nurses as he walks along Jeong-yo's unconscious form, walking to his new room with him.
"He's woken up a few times already, but he goes back to sleep almost immediately everytime. His body needs rest to heal properly. So he will probably wake up in a few hours, but won't be able to stay up for long."
In other words; let him rest and don't try to annoy him into waking up.
Pi-o wasn't planning on doing that.
He wasn't.
He sits next to the bed when they're done moving Jeong-yo, grabbing onto his hand again.
"Jeong-yo-ya, I'll be here whenever you're ready to wake up, okay?" He leans close to whisper, the words meant only for the other boy.
He presses a soft kiss on Jeong-yo's forehead, and then pulls back to settle down in his chair and wait.
Just as the nurse said, Jeong-yo wakes up a few times, blinking blurry eyes open and looking around him as if he's seeing everything through a fog. His pain spikes everytime he wakes up, and Pi-o continues to demand pain medication on his behalf since Jeong-yo can't do it himself.
He doesn't really seem to notice much of the world around him, just whimpering in pain, his eyes darting about, a few tears slipping down the sides of his face, and then he goes back to sleep again after they give him more pain medication.
Pi-o wipes his face carefully, wiping his tears away with a tissue, and then his sweaty neck and forehead.
Jeong-yo unconsciously leans into the touch.
He sighs Pi-o's name, once, while he's moaning from pain and struggling with his blanket like it's suffocating him, his eyes fluttering in his sleep.
Pi-o can't do much but keep holding his hand and whisper reassuring words to him.
"I'm here, Jeong-yo." He squeezes the hand in his own. "I know it hurts, baby. I'm sorry, they can't give you any more medication."
"Pi-o," Jeong-yo whines, and Pi-o holds his hand tighter.
"Yeah, I'm here, I'm here. You're gonna be okay, I promise."
Jeong-yo's eyes flutter again, once, and then he blinks, opening his eyes. They slide over and land on Pi-o.
He's still pale, still looks bruised and sickly; but for the first time in days, he opens his eyes and he looks at Pi-o and he seems to actually see him.
"Hi," Pi-o greets him quietly, feeling breathless under the weight of those eyes.
Jeong-yo stares at him.
"Call me baby again," he says, his voice a soft, weak and shaky whisper.
Pi-o can't help the wet, teary laugh that comes out of him from that, and he's been crying so much these days that he barely even notices the tears dropping down his face.
He leans forward and presses his forehead to Jeong-yo's, as close as he can get with all the hospital stuff stuck to Jeong-yo's body and surrounding his bed.
He cradles his face gently, brushing his thumb over Jeong-yo's cheek. "Hi, baby. I missed you so much."