BTS HYYH Notes (Book 1, 2, BUS Game) // COMPLETE [Part 2]

2022, May 11 - Jimin (Hospital Daily Life)

They called me a good kid in the psychiatric ward. I sometimes had seizures, but mostly I was obedient. I smiled and went on lying without anyone being the wiser. And I knew my limit.

The hallway of the psychiatric ward could be covered in 24 even strides. When I was first hospitalized, I was 8. I cried and demanded to go home with eommeoni, holding onto the iron door at the end of that hallway. I frantically tried to open the door until the nurses came running and gave me an injection. For a while, the nurses tensed up whenever I stepped into the hall. (A/N: April 6 Year 11)

Now, no one paid attention to me even if I ran down the hall and reached the door. I already knew that the door was locked anyways. I just kept running down to the door and coming back. I'd no longer begged them to open the door or wept. But the world is full of people more idiotic than me. They held and shook the door endlessly. They were suppressed by the staff, given injections, and tied to their beds. If they had behaved just a bit more acceptably, their lives could've become much more comfortable. They didn't know any better.

I wasn't like this in the beginning. I was also dropped senseless by the sedatives forcefully injected by the nurses and got caught trying to escape from the hospital in early days. I called eommeoni, crying violently enough to go hoarse several times.

"I'm not sick. I'm okay now. Please come and take me home."

I stayed up all night for several days but eommeoni didn't come.

When I was taken to the hospital after they found me unconscious at the Grass Flower Arboretum, my parents didn’t ask any questions. They ignored the fact that I had blacked out there. It was the same when I developed seizures. They hospitalized me, discharged me after some time, and transferred me to another school. Family reputation was important to them. A son with mental illness was unacceptable. I didn't become a good kid overnight. There was no dramatic event or memorable incident. I just continued to give up on myself bit by bit, just as a fingernail grows. I stopped crying and longing to go outside at some point. I stopped dashing towards the door down the hallway.

I attended school in between hospital stays, but I knew I'd be sent back eventually. It felt refreshing to look up into the sky and enjoy the fragrance of each season. But I tried not to hold them in my memory. They'd soon be kept from me anyway. Friends, too. A history of mental illness was not helpful in making friends. There was one exception. I met a group of people who felt like true friends. It was almost two years ago. I tried not to remember them, but I couldn't help recalling those days. I had to part with them after I had a seizure at the bus stop after school.

(A/N: Refer to September 15 Year 20 when Hoseok and Jimin were together going home.)

The last scene I remembered was the window of the Grass Flower Arboretum shuttle bus opening. That's when I blacked out. When I opened my eyes, I was at a hospital. Eommeoni was in the corner talking on her phone. My mind whirled for a while. I didn't know where I was or how I got there. I gazed around and discovered windows with metal bars. Then, it all came back to me. The blue sky I saw on my way home, the silly games we played at the bus stop, the arboretum shuttle bus coming closer, and the glares through the bus windows. I shut my eyes. But it was too late.

The front gate of the arboretum appeared before my eyes. It was school picnic day in first grade. I was running through heavy rain with my backpack over my head. A warehouse came into sight. The door was left open. I stepped inside. The sticky, musty smell, the sound of my heavy breathing, and screechy, metallic sound.

I sat up in my bed and screamed. "No! I don't remember! I forgot!"

Eommeoni came running, calling out to someone. I shook my head violently. I swung my arms in every direction to get rid of that smell, touch, sound, and sight. But the memories came flooding in. The dam that had held them back the past ten years collapsed and every detail of that day surged through my mind, eyes, cells, and nails as if it was happening again.

I had a seizure and was given an injection. The drug flowed through my blood vessels, and I quickly dozed off. I closed my eyes and wished that this was all a dream and that when I awoke again, I wouldn't be able to recall anything.

That wish was just a wish. Instead, a cycle of seizures, injections, and injection-induced sleep that felt like falling off a cliff continued. After I awoke from sleep, my whole body felt like it was covered with mud. Mud that looked like blood. No matter how hard I tried to wash it off, that warehouse smell lingered. I scrubbed until I bled, but it still felt dirty.

When the doctor asked me about it in a concerned tone, I trembled and apologized at first. I repeatedly said that I was sorry. "It was all my fault. Please let me forget all about it." Then, I tried to pretend nothing had happened.

I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't remember anything. So I gazed at the doctor and smiled. "I don't remember anything."

Did the doctor actually believe me? I wasn't sure. But what was important was that I became a good kid.

My life at the hospital was peaceful. It was an ideal place to idle my time away. I didn't long for anything and didn't feel constrained, scared, or lonely. That was, until last night. Before I met Hoseok hyung again.

I was transferred to the surgery ward because I fought with the idiot who kept trying to get to the door at the end of the hallway despite the nurses' constraint. Both of us were injured and were put into two different rooms on the fifth floor of the surgery ward. I was put in a six-person room. My bed was in the middle, and patients on either side changed frequently.

I woke up in the middle of the night. The patient next to me seemed to be having a nightmare and continued to groan. The groaning sound came from the bed on my left. I pulled the blanket over my head. I was sick and tired of nightmares. I didn't need to hear this. I tried to put up with it for a while, but his nightmare went on and on. Finally, I got up and stepped over to his bed. I tapped his shoulder and tried to help. "It's okay. It's just a dream."

I found out this morning that the patient was Hoseok hyung. I drew the curtains for my breakfast, and hyung was sitting on the bed next to mine. He seemed glad to see me again. Was I glad, too? Probably, in one corner of my mind.

He had hung out with me and taken care of me, a transfer student who was a complete stranger at school. He also took the long way home with me after school. I still recall the days when we used to walk home with popsicles in our hands. But he was also the one who saw my seizure at the bus stop before I came here. He was the one who brought me to this hospital. He must've run into eommeoni.

I didn't want to explain my situation to him. I got out of the room with my meal left untouched. Hyung seemed to follow me, but I knew every corner of this hospital. He couldn't catch up with me. I roamed around the hospital all day long.

From the stairs, I saw the others, even Jungkook, when they came to see Hoseok hyung. They hadn't changed much. All that afternoon, I climbed up and down the stairs and hung around on the other floors. I leaned against the window at the end of the hallway and counted the passing cars. I grew upset. I had skipped all my meals, and there wasn't anywhere to sit and relax comfortably. It was annoying to hear the peals of laughter coming from my room. I got angrier because I couldn't figure out why I was so angry.

I came back to my bed late at night.

"Where have you been?" Hoseok hyung asked me casually. Then, he handed me a piece of bread.

It must've been because I was starving. The bread was warm and delicious. I couldn't help confessing to him. That I'd long been confined in the psychiatric ward. That I was briefly transferred to the surgery ward but would be sent back soon. That I wouldn't be discharged in the near future. That, as he witnessed, I was a person who had seizures on the street. That I was a patient who might be dangerous. I didn't want to add the last part.

But I thought it'd stop him from criticizing me. He paused for a minute. Then, he took away my bread. "Jimin-ah, don't exaggerate. Don't you know that I have narcolepsy? I can blackout anytime or anywhere. Am I dangerous, too?" He took a bite of my bread. I just froze, not knowing what to say. Then, he said, "What? You want this back?" He bit into the bread again and returned it to me. I took it back right away. He asked me again. "Are seizures infectious? Narcolepsy isn't. Don't worry."

He hadn't changed a bit.