Station 11

quarante cinq

Two weeks after Chan's parents surprised him at his birthday, my mum also visited me in the hospital. It was not a surprise, she asked me a week before at the phone if I would like to see her again.  Of course I wanted to and according to that we made a plan.

I missed her a lot and was also really nervous, because she was also going to meet Junhui and the other people here for the first time. It was my first time ever in my life to have met such great people and I couldn't wait for my mum to meet them, too. When she met Minah for the first time, it was more like an accident. Mum was too busy with work and I couldn't find the time to tell her that I was dating someone for the first time in my life. So she actually came into my room, when Minah and I had our first kiss. It was really embarrassing for a sixteen year old back then, but at least, I didn't hat to explain too much to her. 

But with Junhui it was going to be different. He was boy, he was sick and their meeting was planned. So I was sitting on his bed in his room for 20 minutes, waiting for her to arrive, holding Junhui's hand tight and was slightly bouncing up and down on my bed. It was funny how Junhui told me all the time to just stay calm, but he himself was even more nervous, as he was squeezing my hand every 30 seconds or so. 

Junhui told me that he never had anything like this. Meeting the parents of his partner. He never had such a serious relationship before that he needed to do that. He just had affaires and just played around with people to get his satisfaction and to forget his problems. But I made sure to tell both people that the person they were going to meet, was incredibly nice. 

Junhui squeezed my hand a little too tight, when somebody knocked on my door. Soonyoung entered the room, followed by my mum. I jumped off the bed and ran into her arms. She kissed my head and hugged me back. She said that she missed me so much and could only reply the same.  She then noticed Junhui, who was also standing now and bowed politely. He greeted her and mum smiled at him. 

She decided to sit on a chair next to Junhui's bed and our conversation began. We told her how we met and how rude Junhui used to be to me. Junhui always interrupted me to tell my mum that this isn't the case anymore and that he treats me really well now. Mum laughed and I agreed to that with a wide smile. We talked about our first actual date, when we were watching the sunset and my mom told the story about our dinner with Minah's family and how she roasted them and Junhui couldn't stop laughing about the comments my mum and me made that evening. 

Everything went so well. I could feel the calm and happy atmosphere around me and I could see at mum's face how much she liked Junhui. He was an open minded guy, who made good (and maybe even too many) jokes and who always made sure I was fine and feeling comfortable. Seeing her reaction made me proud to have Junhui on my side. With her reaction, I adored and loved Junhui even more. 

The atmosphere changed, when mum decided to ask about Junhui's family. She didn't know anything about that. I never told her, it was still Junhui's private life. His smile faded and he squinted his eyes. I decided to answer for him. It was still too traumatizing for him to talk about that with strangers, no matter how nice the strangers were to him. 

"His family is also from China", I told her and could hear Junhui breathing out heavily out of relief. It was enough to know about and it was not a lie.  Mum nodded and was even happier that Junhui was also Chinese. She decided to continue our conversation in Chinese since it was easier for the three of us. I could see that she knew that we were hiding something from her. But she respected the privacy and changed the topic quickly. After a while Chan joined us and introduced himself to my mum. He was surprisingly shy and decided to sit next to Soonyoung. We told her about our dance team and explained her why we decided to call ourselves Seventeen. We also mentioned Mingyu, Wonwoo and Jihoon.

She was happy that I started to do breakdancing again and that I had the power to hold my body under control and not nearly pass out from moving too much. I stopped six months after I stopped eating, because it seemed to exhausting to make these moves for one to two hours three times a week. I didn't tell mum for another six months, until she once wanted to pick me up after training and I didn't leave the building were we used to train at. 

Instead I was at home trying to find out, which berries had the least calories and if a handful of them was already too much for dinner. 

Junhui told her that I tried eating pudding again and that it was also me who wanted to try it after such a long time. Mum's face seemed incredibly proud and she hugged me. Before mum could take out her phone to show Junhui my baby photos from home that she photographed, a nurse thankfully interrupted us and told my mum that she had to talk with Dr.Nam and her visiting time was now over. We were all pretty sad and wanted to see each other some more. Mum promised Junhui to show the pictures, when we would get out of here and he would come and visit us at home. 

After the nurse mentioned Dr. Nam I remembered what she told me at our last session. I was not allowed to dance for a while, because of my weight problem. I could feel the heaviness of my weight gain and saw dancing as the opportunity to forget about that, but Dr. Nam decided to take that away from me. She knew that I was trying too hard to at least lose weight like that. 

I had to tell Soonyoung and the rest and I knew how mad they would be. I was there since the very beginning, I couldn't just stop. I was the one who made Junhui join us. And Soonyoung with his ADHD could not always understand such reasons and got mad easily. But since all four of us were gathered together already, I thought it was the right and maybe even only good timing to tell them. 

"Guys, Dr. Nam told me that I am not allowed to dance for a while now, because it could affect my weight too much. She wants me to get better first. I am sorry", I blurted out and made the three boys quiet. Junhui sighed, he seemed to understand my sadness, but my eyes landed on Soonyoung. He pouted and shook his head, followed by this sentence. 

"So you want to leave Seventeen just like that?"

Welcome back PPO's. Hope you enjoyed this chapter a lot. I say this all the freaking time, but I will really try to upload this story more often and then will proceed to my Junhoon short story and finish that, before I publish my Verkwan story. Thanks for taking some minutes of your day off to read this chapter and I hope you enjoyed it. 

See you soon, 

Mel