Chapter Text
The monitor screamed a long, flat note that felt like it was tearing the room in half. The nurses didn't stop. The doctor’s face was a mask of sweat and focus.
"Clear!"
Zap.
Chan’s body jumped in a violent jerk. The line stayed flat.
Zap.
Again.
The silence in the hallway was so thick it felt like no one would ever breathe again.
Seungcheol’s forehead was pressed against the cold glass of the window, his eyes wide, his breathing hollow , watching the life flicker out of his youngest brother. His Chan .
Then, a sound. A tiny, rhythmic blip.
It was weak. It was slow. But it was there.
"We have a rhythm," the doctor panted, his voice barely a whisper. "He’s back. Barely. Get the ventilator hooked up. Now."
Inside the room, Chan didn't feel the electricity. He didn't feel the cold or the needles or his own heartbeat fading away
He was standing in a field of tall, golden grass. The sun was warm. the kind of warm that feels like a hug you never want to leave. There was no mansion here, just the grass and the sky painted bright shade of blue ,as far as you could look.
"Chan-ah! Faster! You’re going to be late . Mingyu hyung had made a cake for us !"
He turned to the voice.
He was small , seven years old . His legs were short, and his backpack felt heavy, but he was laughing. Running ahead of him were two figures. Vernon and Seungkwan, their faces bright and unburdened by the weight of the world.
"Wait for me!" Chan shouted. His voice sounded different—clear, high, and full of a joy he had forgotten he ever possessed.
He tried to run as fast as he could , almost tripping himself in the process, but a hand caught him just in time . A big secure hand .
He looked up and saw Seungcheol. His oldest brother looked young, his eyes crinkling with a genuine smile that he hadn't seen in years. He wasn't looking at his watch. He wasn't looking past Chan. He was looking at him.
"Don't run too fast, Channie ," Seungchol laughed, reaching down to grab Chan’s hand. "I've got you."
" Everyone will wait for you even if you're late ."
" But what if they forget me here " he whined in his tiny voice.
Seungchol laughed, it was warm , a genuine kind.
" No one can ever forget Channie , they all will wait for you " he said looking at the kid beside him .
" Let's race to the gate!" Vernon shouted, his younger self laughing as he kicked up dust.
Chan started to run, his heart light, his lungs full of air that didn't rattle. He was almost there. He could see Joshua standing by the gate, leaning against the wood, waiting for the boys .
But then, the sky curdled.
The bright blue turned into a bruised, sickly purple. The golden grass beneath Chan’s feet began to turn into cold, grey slush. He looked down and saw his small shoes were gone . The weight on his back wasn't a backpack anymore; it was the crushing pressure of something heavy, something almost real .
"Hyung?" Chan called out.
Seungcheol didn't move. He didn't look up. He slowly turned , his eyes hollowing out until they were red . The kind of red that came after hours of crying.
"Wait!" Chan screamed, but his voice was caught in his throat like a mouthful of dry ash.
The field began to dissolve into a scene he had spent years trying to forget , years trying to run away from .
The smell of lavender was choked out by the thick, oily scent of gasoline and burning rubber. He heard the scream of metal—the sound of the car frame folding in on itself.
He was back in the car. He was eight years old again, trapped in the backseat, the smoke filling his lungs. He looked to his left, and his mother was there, her eyes closed, her hand just inches from his.
" Eomma ". He choked out .
He reached for her, but as he touched her skin, she turned into fire .
It started out red , then orange and blue .
The fire didn't just burn; it roared with the voice of a hungry. It became a living thing that swallowed his mother’s silhouette until there was nothing left but the smell of scorched velvet and the sound of cracking glass.
Chan reached out, his small fingers blistering in the heat, but as he tried to scream for her, the world warped in something something dark .
the soft, velvet- dark of a backyard. The grass was cool beneath him. The scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted by.
"Are your hyungs coming back?"
The voice was like a knife to his ribs. Chan turned his head slowly. His father was sitting there, looking up at the sky. The stars that night were tiny, covering almost the whole sky .
"It's your birthday tomorrow, Chan... You should call them home." His father's said .
Chan flinched, his fingers twisting in the grass. He remembered the feeling of the phone in his hand earlier that day—the way he had dialed each of their numbers, only to be met with voicemails or short, clipped sentences about exams and busy schedules.
Twelve brothers, all busy .
"I didn't call," Chan whispered , his voice trembling with the weight of the lie.
"They’re... they are busy. They have lives now, Appa."
"Chan..." His father’s voice was tired. It carried a weight. He didn't look at Chan; he kept his eyes on the sky ahead of him.
"They don't hate you."
"I don't know," Chan choked out, the tears finally starting to burn.
"They are angry, at me. Maybe that’s why they left. One by one... Seungcheol hyung, Jeonghan hyung... they could have stayed for university here. But they left. They didn't even said goodbye to me "
"They... They are just sad," his father murmured, his hand twitching as if he wanted to reach out, but the distance between them felt like miles.
"People seem to be angry when they are sad. They’ll come back for you."
Then,
The velvet died into a sickly, flickering yellow.
He was standing in the doorway of his father’s study.
The air here was thick , not with smoke. Not this time .
But it was thick with the metallic, heavy scent of copper. It was so strong he could taste it on the back of his tongue.
He looked down. A dark, viscous river was creeping across the hardwood floor, soaking into the hem of his white socks. Red. It was a red so deep it looked black under the dim desk lamp.
Chan’s knees hit the floor. The sound of his bones striking the wood was loud in the silence of the house.
He couldn't move. He couldn't even blink. He watched the blood drip from the edge of the mahogany desk.
The air was sucked out of his lungs. He clawed at his throat, his chest heaving in a desperate, silent battle for oxygen, but the room was empty of air.
He looked up at the lifeless body slumped over the desk—the man who had promised him they would come back, the man who had looked him in the eye and told him he wasn't hated.
"You lied," Chan gasped, the words tearing out of his throat like jagged glass. "All this time... you lied ."
He crawled forward, his hands slipping in the wet red, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at his father’s pale, unmoving hand.
"So you hated me too, Appa?" he sobbed, his head dropping onto his blood-stained arms.
"Is that why you did this a day before my birthday? To make sure I’d never forget that I'm alone? To make sure I knew you wanted to leave me too?"
The darkness of the study began to cave in. The red was everywhere now ; rising like a tide, filling his mouth, his ears, his lungs. He was drowning in it . In the sea of the Red.
He was drifting in a void where there was no up or down, only the echoes of words that had carved his life into pieces.
"People seem to be angry when they are sad..."
The voice of his father looped over and over, but it was being distorted by another sound. A familiar one .
Vernon’s voice .
"You’re the reason they’re gone. You think we want to look at you?"
" You're just a mistake !"
Chan tried to cover his ears, but he didn't feel his hands. He couldn't move . He was trapped in it . In his own mind . And to Chan it was no better than hell.
The hiss of the ICU doors was the only sound in the hallway. The doctor stepped out, peeling his surgical gloves off with a slow, tired precision.
He looked at the twelve men gathered there,
They stood up as one, a collective surge of desperate, terrified hope. Seungcheol took a half-step forward, his mouth open but no words coming out.
The doctor didn’t smile. He didn’t offer a comforting pat on the shoulder. He looked at the clipboard, then back at them, his gaze lingering on Seungcheol, the legal guardian.
"He's safe. For now," the doctor said. The words should have been a relief, but his tone was heavy. "His heart had stopped for nearly three minutes. In medical terms, it’s a miracle we got a rhythm back at all. We’ve stabilized him physically, but..."
He paused, looking at the floor for a second before meeting Seungcheol’s eyes.
"But he hasn't regained consciousness. His body has entered a deep protective state. If he doesn't wake up soon, his systems will begin to shut down again, one by one. We’ve done the work of the machines... the rest is up to him."
"What does that mean?" Seungkwan whispered, his voice trembling. "What do you mean it's up to him?"
The doctor sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion. "I don't say this often, because it’s not something we can measure on a chart. But in his case... it feels like he doesn’t want to wake up. His brain is retreating. It’s as if he has found a place where he can hide and he basyd decided to stay there."
The hallway went deathly silent. The brothers looked at each other into a cold, sharp realization. They were the pain he was running from.
"You can see him," the doctor continued, his voice dropping into a warning. "But listen to me carefully. Do not crowd him. No more than two or three at a time. Even in this state, his nervous system is incredibly fragile. If he registers a crowd, if he senses the agitation or the noise of all of you at once, the stress could trigger another cardiac event. It is too risky to have a crowd around him."
"Right now," the doctor added, "too many of you in that room is a threat to his life. Decide who goes in , and be quiet."
The doctor turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing until they faded, leaving the twelve of them standing in the wake of his words.
They weren't a family right now. They were a threat.
Seungcheol stood frozen, looking at the heavy door to Room . He thought of the boy who , he had spent years ignoring, so they could protect themselves from the pain. From the grief of all they had lost .
And now, even to save his life, they were being told that they couldn't all be there for him.
Yeonjun didn't say a word. He didn't move from his spot against the wall. He just watched them with those cold, knowing eyes. He watched as they start to look at each other, the agonizing silent question hanging in the air:
Who gets to go in? And who is the one who will hurt him just by being there?
The silence following was more violent than the screaming monitors had been.
Seungcheol didn't look at the others.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking. He was the oldest. He should go first. But he was also the first one who had packed his bags and left for university without looking back.
"I can't," Seungcheol whispered, the words sounding like breaking glass. "I... if I go in there, and he hears me... what if my voice is the one that makes him hide more ?"
One by one, the brothers looked away. Vernon was staring at his shoes, his face a ghostly white. Seungkwan was choking on silent sobs. They were all terrified that their presence was the "agitation" the doctor warned about.
Suddenly, a movement broke the paralysis.
Yeonjun pushed off the wall. He didn't ask for permission. He didn't look at them. He just walked towards the heavy door of Room 4. The room where his friend was asleep. Hiding in his own mind .
"You can't go in there," Mingyu started, a reflexive protectiveness rising up. "The doctor said family—"
Yeonjun stopped with his hand on the heavy stainless steel handle. He turned his head just enough to look at them over his shoulder.
"You’re right. He said family," Yeonjun’s voice was low, dangerous.
"But he also said the people in that room shouldn't be a threat. And right now? I’m the only one here who hasn't spent years making him wish his heart would stop."
The brothers flinched as if he’d slapped them.
Yeonjun pushed the door open. The sound of the ventilator flooded the hallway for a brief second before he stepped inside.
He didn't close the door all the way.
Through the narrow crack, the twelve brothers watched as Yeonjun approached the bed.
They watched him reach out and take Chan’s pale, limp hand—the hand Seungcheol had been too afraid to touch.