Dark Matter | JJK

40. False Hope

"You shouldn't experience pain in the region, but expect mild discomfort or swelling in the first three days," the dentist said, removing her surgical mask and gloves. She was smiling a million-watt smile that Jungkook wished he could switch off, courtesy his mouth that felt like it was stuffed with sponge. "For a quicker recovery, it would be good if you use an icepack to curb the swelling, gently open and close your mouth to excercise your jaw, and make sure you eat soft foods like rice or soup." 

Jungkook nodded and bowed in gratitude, eager to escape the haunted dentist's room as soon as humanly possible. The corridor outside was buslting with doctors and nurses like on any other day of the ongoing apocalypse. Jungkook spotted Hoseok speaking to a couple outside an operating theatre with a solemn expression written across his face, remembering to smile at them when he bid them goodbye. Jungkook thought against going over and disturbing the exhausted surgeon's break, only tossing a wave in his direction to which Hoseok replied with another light wave and fatigue-laced grin. 

Jungkook whipped out his phone out of his pocket and dialled a number, waiting till the line was picked up before the third ring. 

"Hello?" 

"It doesn't take you long to forget about me, does it?" he whined in mock anger, strolling down the hall, careful to sidestep a nurse running with a supplies trolley in his direction. "All I wanted was for you to come over from the university and pick me up so we could go home together. Do you know how long I've been waiting for you?" 

"Uh..." Petra mused amid sounds of tinkling lab equipment. "Three minutes?" 

Jungkook held the phone away from his ear and looked at the time to see that it had been, in fact, exactly three minutes since he walked out of his scheduled forty-five minute appointment with the dentist. "Wait, how did you —"

"I have my sources," she said nonchalantly. "Okay, fine, Hobi told me. I have my eyes on you everywhere you go, Jeon, so you better not mess around behind my back."  

Jungkook chuckled, a cheekly smile threatening to split his face in two. "I'm allowed to mess around with you, though?" 

The line went quiet for a few seconds, and even as he heard her sneakers speedily tapping against the granite tiles of the university corridors, he knew he had caught her off guard. "Wouldn't you like to know," she muttered, voice barely reaching his ear. "Stay put, I'm coming to get you in ten." 

"Always waiting for you, P." 

Jungkook pocketed his phone and thought to roam the corridor a bit, because his back muscles were a little more than stiff after reclining in the dentist's chair. He circled a bend in the hallway and reached a part of the hospital he'd never seen before — a room large enough to fit two operation theatres, its walls made of glass allowing onlookers a clear view of the activities going on inside. IV stands attached to beds were placed at about one meter's distance from each other in rows across the room. Patients lay on the mattresses, but by the leather straps confining their limbs to the beds, it was evident these were no ordinary patients. 

They were Aenigmi restored to their human selves, those who were lucky enough to not die in the encounters during attacks and were instead detained in forensic study rooms. Doctors and nurses moved from one patient to the next, administering medicines and making conversation. Apart from being seemingly able to retrieve their memories almost as easily as they could before they were injected with Aenigmium, their skin colour had returned to normal and the red veins on their foreheads barely there. The way their mouths moved to form coherent words was such a horrifying contrast to how Jungkook remembered these marauders once bared their teeth and unleashed chaos on the streets, that he had to swat away his momentary digust and remind himself that they were just as human as he was. Good, innocent people to whom unimanigable things had happened.