north star (knj)

chapter seventeen

You can find him sittin' on your doorstep
Waiting for a surprise
And he will feel like he's been there for hours
And you can tell that he'll be there for life

Daydreamer - Adele

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For a moment, I felt myself shift between the deep folds between sleep and consciousness. Words played on my lips - questions and sentences to fill the heavy and strange silence of my mind - but when I tried to speak, my tongue felt heavy.

In fact, everything felt wrong. My legs and arms ached, and the base of my skull thudded with every heartbeat. When I tried to sit up, my limbs moved sluggishly, as if they were wading through thick pools of honey.

What happened to me?

Why did I feel a soft mattress beneath me and not hardpacked snow?

Eventually, I managed to open my eyes. My hotel room in Kyoto materialized before me, illuminated by a soft glow to my right. My suitcases were stacked neatly by the window and my skincare products and makeup still sat on the countertop outside of the bathroom. Everything was exactly where I had left it before leaving for the music video shoot.

Well, everything but Namjoon.

He curled up in the plush armchair besides my bed, resting his chin on his fist. His other hand balanced his newest poetry book on his knee. Absently, he bit on the end of a pen as he scrunched his nose and read.

I watched him for a few moments. Aside from when he slept, Namjoon never looked as peaceful than when he read. It softened his features, making him appear younger. I wanted to reach forward and brush the curve of his cheeks with my fingertips, commit the feeling of his skin to memory.

Namjoon breathed deeply, his gaze flickering over to me. It was so brief - one second he was looking a the page, the next at me, then back to the book - that I figured he had been periodically checking on me for some time now.

He did a double take. "Lyra!"

"Hi." I began to sit up, but my neck and arm groaned in protest at the movement.

"No, no, stay there." Namjoon placed his book on the bedside table, sticking his pen between the pages to mark his spot. Then, he climbed onto the bed beside me. "I wasn't expecting you to be up for a bit."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Jungkook dropped you on your head."

That I remembered. It was hard not to when a dull wave of pave throbbed in my skull every other second.

"What happened after that?" I asked. "I remember seeing the blood on my arm, and then everything turned on its side, and after that...well, it went black."

"You passed out right after telling me you hate blood," Namjoon said. "We got you to a hospital, and Jimin yelled at Jungkook the whole way there. I think he's still yelling at him now, to be honest. You started to wake up again at the hospital, but then you saw the blood again, and passed out. The doctors stitched you up and now we're here."

I glanced down at my left forearm. A jagged scratch ran along half of its length, knit together by a collection of dark stitches. It was probably for the best I couldn't remember the hospital visit - hospitals made me think of the aftermath of my father's accident.

"We think you cut your arm on a rock," Namjoon explained. "The interns were supposed to move all of the rocks, but they must've missed one..."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't blame the interns."