Internal Noise | Haechan

f o r t y t h r e e

A/N: thank you for 9k <3

━━━━ ☔︎ ━━━━
Ｉｎｔｅｒｎａｌ Ｎｏｉｓｅ
━━ ☔︎ ━━

One week.

How can someone sleep for a whole week?

The doctors didn't know what to tell us. Things like these varied from person to person, but he was fine. He was stable. So why wasn't he waking up?

At the beginning everyone was there. Jeno, Jaemin, Renjun... Mark. Even Taeyong came by. Each and everyone saying the same thing.

"He's gonna be fine. He'll wake up soon."

But soon was taking it's time. My heart breaking by the second the more I waited in vain. I don't know... maybe this was normal. Maybe there was nothing wrong, and I was just overthinking everything.

"Donghyuck," I turned at the sudden voice. An older man stood at the door. I got up, wiping my tear-stained cheeks with the back of my hand.

The old man's eyes were filled with sadness as he looked over Hyuck's figure. "What in the world happened to you?"

"I'm sorry, but," I said, grabbing his attention, "who are you?" I spoke softly, not wanting my question to come off as rude. I had never met anyone that called him by his real name before.

"I'm his grandfather," the old man said, "and you must be Nari."

— ☔︎ —

We sat down on a small couch right outside the room.

"How did you know? I... I didn't know how to reach you... or anyone. His phone broke after the accident-"

"A friend called me. Mark, I think it was."

Mark called him?

"I live in a fishing village in Jeju. He must've gone through some trouble to find me." There was a short pause. He looked at Hyuck through the window and sighed. His eyes were down, pained, regretful. "This must be hard for you," he spoke, turning to me, "he causes a lot of trouble, doesn't he?"

I didn't know what to say.

Hard?

Yeah. It was hard. I felt responsible for putting him there. If only I hadn't turned that wheel. If only I hadn't picked a fight. If only I had done things differently, we wouldn't be here. He wouldn't be laying on that cold bed. Alone. Not waking.

He placed a hand my shoulder, bringing me out of my trance. I looked up at him. His figure blurry behind beads of water. I was crying and didn't even realize.

"It's gonna be okay."

Again with those words. Why was everyone so sure of that? How could they so calmly hope for the best?! Was I the only one who worried? Who wasn't ready to face whatever would happen after he opened his eyes... or didn't?

"What if it's not?" My tears grew uncontrollable. I covered my face, trying to calm down, not wanting everyone to see how scared of losing him I was.