A Belief in Vision and Other Parts [✳️]

The Empty Chasm of Light - Part 1

It falls on deaf ears. Dead and alone in the room, she knows logically that no one can hear her. But when Taemin twitches just a bit, Soojung thinks that he must have heard her.

He must have, she knows because she believes it.

"I'm sorry I was such a brat, Taemin..." Soojung tells him so sadly, her knees give underneath her and she collapses to sit on the edge of the bed. She closes her eyes and tries to recall what it was they were fighting about before all of this happened. She doesn't remember much but she knows, knows that it must be important because it just has to be if I'm dead like this and you're hurting.

"Why do we always fight?" She asks, more to herself than to him. And as she watches his chest lift and drop, Soojung is comforted that at least he is breathing the way she wishes she did too. No matter how many times they disagreed on things, death is never something she wished on him. Or anyone for that matter, but especially him. She doesn't know if she could have taken it... to find him dead and not find him elsewhere, like her, after.

She doesn't want to hurt herself and him that way. She has to believe that he doesn't want that too.

But the question is out before she even thinks it completely through.

"Why do we hurt each other?"

Her mind supplies her an answer in rapid succession—Because he's sick of you and your childish ways, your jealousy for his focus on his studies, how little he values the things you values, the dates you set, the promises you want him to make—but none of them feel right. Soojung isn't stupid. She knows that Taemin, despite his best intentions, do not care for her the way she wishes he did. But he does, do, care.

Soojung knows because she believes it.

* * * *

He wakes up hours later, coughing and gagging as the medical personnel removes the tube from his throat before helping him to breathe on his own.

It's horrible to watch him come back to the world, kicking and screaming as the pain from his injuries sets in. The pain stifling his very breath as he chokes, heaving oxygen in and out as though it is everything but is not ever enough. Soojung finds herself wanting to push and hit the people around him to do something quickly. Save him! Help him! But her fists meet only empty reactions and the ache hurts even more knowing that nothing she does now will mean anything in the real world.

It's practically hours later after when he calms and only the doctor explaining to him what had happend is left in the room that he finally speaks his first word since—"Soojung?"

Soojung has heard him say her name a thousand ways before, all of which are catalogued in her head. This is the first time she's ever heard it being said in such a detached, defeated tone. The syllables fall so heartbreakingly sad from his mouth that she feels... empty.

The doctor pauses and when Taemin turns his head, fists clenched and eyes still bandaged from the light, Soojung knows what he does too.

* * * *

(( Taemin is zonked out on morphine when another doctor comes in. This one is female, slender and tall—beautiful by all accounts, even as she looks like she'd been through hell warmed over. Soojung understands why. It'd been a long night for her as well. The seconds ticked by in the same span of normal hour. Everyone that had come in and out of Taemin's room were bone-tired and it would make sense that this new doctor would look no different.

But still, Soojung feels on guard as she steps into the room in half-a-dozen long, uneasy steps, hair tied in a low ponytail though you could see that it was clumped in knots. The embroidered name on her coat reads Im Yoona, MD – General Surgery and is achingly familiar. Her eyes puffy and red as though she'd been crying for hours...