jangmi (장미) ● taejoon

s e v e n t y s e v e n .

   Namjoon glanced at the name cards as he passed by each room, stopping at the specific one before quietly opening the door. He could hear the heart monitor thump peacefully with the sound of the oxygen running through the room. He dragged his IV beside him and shut the door, walking over to open the curtains to let the light in. Taking a deep breath and looking back at the slumbering patient.

"... Dear god, look at you Jjang," Namjoon sighed softly. "Are they even feeding you here properly?"

Namjoon said on the window sill and sighed, crossing his arms. "Please forgive me for not visiting you," he says, allowing the heart monitor's beeps to be his replies from Hoseok. "I've just been so busy lately, and I almost died so... We both been through some stuff, haven't we?"

"... I mean you were shot under my hand," Namjoon looked down at the floor and shook his head, "... You're in a coma under my hand. I-I was absent from being a leader, everything is chaos."

"I promised I'd take care of Seokjin and god knows what he's doing," he continued, feeling his eyes begin to water so he looks up at the ceiling to keep them from brimming. He stares at the boring white paint that seems to chip. "I make so many promises, yet... Yet I always seem to break them."

Namjoon laughed softly to hide the tear that slipped his eye, wiping it quickly with the back of his hand. "Don't cry, don't cry," he murmur to himself. "I don't deserve tears."

Namjoon blinked back the feeling before sniffling and letting a hiccup leave his lips before covering his mouth. "I promised to give better lives," he says, biting his lip before it trembles. "Yet here you are, about to lose yours. Here I am, with dead men and weeping families who want justice. Here I am, with a lost soon to be daughter and crying to a man in a coma."

Namjoon laughed before shaking his head once more. "You know, my father always knew I was gonna be a failure," he says with a slouch or shoulders, "He always made me feel like he sensed the day I was born. Like the first time I opened my eyes being born, he saw the piece of shit I was going to be already and maybe he was right. Just sending me to rehabilitation for therapy I didn't even need was his type of a insane asylum for me. Lock me up when I'm young, you know? Turn everybody's back on me, you know? My mother, my sister, myself."

"But in a way, I'm happy he did," Namjoon says, "... It helped me bring the mortala to others. I can't imagine living normally with loving parents because, I guess , I just wasn't picked to have one. I enjoy seeing my men being able to spend time with their families and kids, seeing how much love without a care in the world despite being known as the world's scum."

"I want to give the chance my father never did with me," He smiles softly, looking down at his hands. "... God this is making me miss the mortala and my students so much."

"... I hope you wake up soon, Jjang," Namjoon hums, "... You know how to fight and fight well, so keep at it. Okay?"

The hospital door opened quietly, colliding footsteps entering the room with the hospital lights emitting the door frame. "... He's here."

"... Let's go home, Namjoon."

[unedited]