Painkiller|ws

Chapter 4

Wonwoo was bored, as a gamer, as a fucking gaming legend, it was so hard for Wonwoo to be separated from his gaming console for more than 24 hours, and it had been 24 hours and more already. Dr Choi would have to understand why he's breaking the no electronics rule. He just has to.

"I can't believe you're making me do this" Changkyun glared as he dropped a stack of books on the table. "No 'I missed you, Wonwoo' or 'let's hospital break together, I can't live without you, Wonwoo'? That's the first thing you're going to say to me?" Wonwoo stared at the stack of books the staff took away to put in Wonwoo's room.

"Inside 'Pride and Prejudice'" Changkyun said, and Wonwoo put the effort to lean over the table and take Changkyun's face in his hands before squishing his cheeks. "You're the best. I would suck your dick to express my gratitude" Changkyun cringed as he got up to leave.

"No thanks, I actually am not obsessed with you, believe it or not" Wonwoo didn't want Changkyun to leave so fast, but he knew they were only allowed 5 minutes. He wanted to have a word with whoever came up with that. "I don't believe it. Keep coming like this when I call you" Changkyun rolled his eyes and got up to leave. "Get your ass out of this place. I miss you" Wonwoo wasn't sure if he heard the last part right but chose to believe he did and waved his friend goodbye, watching as he walked out the door.

"I'm alone again" the comment didn't even sit in the air for a few seconds before Jihoon was taking him back to the common room. "Can't I just sit in my room?" Of course, the answer was no to that, the patients had to interact, and it was all a part of rehabilitation.

Wonwoo was contemplating going to the art room to find Minghao and maybe bother him a bit, but he left the thought when he felt someone tug at his shirt. "Yes?" Wonwoo didn't know what else to say as he watched a boy he wasn't yet familiar with trying to get his attention.

He pointed at Jun on the other side of the room, sitting with hoshi, who was calling out to him. "What? Jun is calling me?" The boy nodded again, still silent. "You can't speak?" Wonwoo asked, and the boy stared at him for a few seconds before running to another part of the room.

Wonwoo would say that interaction felt like it was right out of a horror movie, but he decided on going over to Jun and Hoshi instead of freaking himself out more. "That's Chan, selective mutism. He can speak, but he just doesn't do it. His best friend was murdered in a home invasion, and he was the one who found her. He hasn't talked since then, but I can't blame the boy. How do you recover from that?" Now Wonwoo wanted to hug the boy. He can't even imagine the trauma.

"I'm Soonyoung. We hadn't met yet" Wonwoo was going to say they had but stopped when he remembered no, he hadn't met Soonyoung yet. "I'm Wonwoo. It's nice to meet you" Wonwoo listened as Soonyoung talked, very different from his tiger persona. This version of his was funny and happy. Listening to him talk about things he enjoyed like dancing, was endearing.

Even Jun, who acted like he hated being there, was secretly enjoying it. "Hansol, come here. I want you to meet someone" Soonyoung called out to a boy who was busy talking to Seungkwan. "Hansol, this is Wonwoo" Hansol came over with a tight-lipped smile.

"He's not here for anything that depressing" Jun added before the question was brought up. "I get desensitization therapy. I have thalassophobia" Wonwoo had read about it somewhere but is it really that bad of a phobia? "It's fear of deep waters, right? Is it that bad? Isn't it something that can be easily avoided, don't go into the ocean, my friend. Go live your life on land" Wonwoo said like he knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Wonwoo should've been a doctor. He's doing a better job than Dr Choi" Jun rested his head on his hand as he spoke. "You're not a medical student, are you Wonwoo?" Wonwoo shook his head, but he was debating changing majors after such great advice.

"I'm a saturation diver. That's my job. I need to get over this fear, it wasn't always there, but I had an incident where the oxygen cylinder almost ran out and then I couldn't go in the ocean again. Going into the water was heaven for me once, now it's hell" Wonwoo should've known there was a catch.

"What do you even do in deep waters?" Soonyoung asked, suddenly curious to hear more about Hansol's job. "It's mainly oil well interventions, installation and decommissioning" all three of the boys nodded before admitting they had no idea what Hansol just said.

"But that isn't even when I had the incident. I was just helping out in normal deep water diving as an instructor. It was completely unexpected, and it was too hard for me to do my job afterwards" Wonwoo always wanted to dive in the ocean and swim with the sharks, all of that but no way is he going to do that anymore.

"Everyone, lunch" Jeonghan called out from the entrance of the room with Mingyu beside him. So that's where he was. Wonwoo would definitely ask him what he went missing for, but right now, before lunch, he needed to make a quick stop at his room.

There sitting in all his glory, were the books. He moved each of the books to the side before finding 'Pride and Prejudice' right in the middle of the stack. "Changkyun, it better be here" and here it was, Wonwoo's game boy. He can't believe he actually got Changkyun to smuggle in his game boy, but there it was, just staring back at him.

All the 'Narcos' episodes they watched finally paid off. The way Changkyun cut in the middle of the special edition book to put the console in was something he got from the show. Wonwoo kept it back in the book before closing it, putting it in between the other books, hiding it in plain sight yet again, and walking out as if he did nothing wrong to join the others in the cafeteria.

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