#yukheirk

the thought of even going to the nova building didn’t dare cross her mind for the first three days of august. meiqi found temporary purchase in a hospital chair by her cousin’s side, and only when he woke from the coma did she bother to remember that she’s a trainee with responsibilities, and she had disregarded them all without as much as a notice. so, after promising yukhei that she would visit with every chance she had, meiqi took off towards the nova building before any of the staff members noticed (she figured they already had, but were being lenient due to her recent model behaviour).

the lecture she got upon arrival had grated on her nerves. rather than punish her for her sudden disappearance, they wanted to reprimand meiqi for posting a god damn song. there was no “hello, meiqi, how have you been?” or “gee, you look like shit. did something happen?” at that point, she would have preferred to get yelled at for acting rashly so that she could unleash all of the emotions about her cousin that weighed on her shoulders. she hadn’t talked to anyone about it except her aunt, so a few sobs might have gotten her off the hook.

but no. nova didn’t care about anything except the possible profits they could lose off of a mere upload onto soundcloud. despite the staff member being semi-kind, meiqi couldn’t control how… insignificant she felt, and so of course, she had to make it worse.

“i’m not sorry for it.”

she had ranted about it to yukhei that evening, without knowing what else was to come. in a desperate attempt to get her to stop complaining, her cousin offered to help her choose her song for the evaluation (she ended up picking another, but she didn’t tell him that).

in the morning, meiqi had dashed around the seocho complex to find groups to join. initially, she had wanted only one other performance so that she could work on it quickly and then return to the hospital before visiting hours were over. somewhere along the way, after images of yukhei wrapped in bandages kept appearing behind her eyelids every time she blinked, meiqi had joined three other groups so that her mind could constantly be occupied; if she gave it no free time, then maybe she wouldn’t have to think about the fact that she almost lost her cousin the same way she lost her father.

and then those assholes had to make everything worsen, tenfold.

was hyun bin really stooping so low? meiqi couldn’t help but wonder if katie lee would treat her trainees in a similar way, or if she’d be much warmer. she liked to believe the latter, and for once since joining nova, she wished it had been another company.

for the next week, she had to deal with being monitored at a two-to-one ratio from lunch to dinner. the instructors were not kind, but maybe that was because meiqi refused to abide by their rules for the first two days. by day three, she decided to just grit her teeth and smile contemptuously. they had learned that running laps was no hindrance to meiqi, but push ups were; there was no way she was going to get down on that filthy floor, nor was she going to deal with the ache in her arms that followed.

though her afternoons were ruined, meiqi still tried to put her all into practicing each and every performance. rather than going to the hospital as soon as training ended, like she had promised, meiqi stayed until the early hours of the morning. whether it was to practice with other trainees, or to go through the motions of choreography herself, or memorize lines, almost every night consisted of only 3 hours of sleep at most, with the floor as her bed and her jacket as a pillow.

when august 11th came around, it got easier. she didn’t have to worry about the snobbish ladies whose sole job was to torture meiqi. from the texts her aunt sent her, yukhei was also doing much better and would be discharged soon. two of her biggest stressors were gone, and that was the first night meiqi returned back to her apartment and slept in her own bed, for a good 6 hours (she slept like a baby in chungha’s arms). the experience had her feeling refreshed, bringing back her positive attitude so that she could collaborate with her teams to the best of her abilities.

by the time evaluations rolled around, the colour had returned to meiqi’s face and the dark circles under her eyes had almost completely faded away. though her frame looked thinner from the intense weeks prior, most of her energy had returned, and her body was tingling in excitement to finally perform as a center.

she introduces her team and the song she will be performing: runaway by pentagon, and eagerly urges everyone to get in their places.

when the music starts, meiqi steps out into the front. she had practiced her facial expressions in front of a mirror whenever she visited the restroom, and had cycled through many before settling on the perfect one for the opening beats. she found that the best faces were the most natural-seeming ones, especially when it came to being sultry. being in a group of all boys, she had shown them each of her flirtatious expressions to find the best one to showcase; she does so, effortlessly, and hopes that when everyone rewatches these performances in september, they’ll collectively cheer in acknowledgement.

she delivers her first lines easily, what with the lack of movement so far, and they come out loud and smooth as if they were pre-recorded. meiqi comes to the front of the stage, her hand trailing across her neck as she sings: “just leave me alone. you can’t stop me” and then, along with jihoon and another trainee, she drops to her knees.

meiqi’s glad her performance is only the second out of all the groups she’s a part of. she’s not harbouring much prior fatigue from having already taken the stage one too many times, and she doesn’t have to worry as much about carefully pacing herself, since at this point, she has lots to give. the only performance she has done so far is kangjoon’s and it served as more of a warmup-slash-rehearsal for hers.

when meiqi takes center again, this time for the killing part in the chorus, her movements are fluid and concise. she doesn’t hesitate to bite her lower lip at the slow part, before replacing her alluring gaze with an intensely focused one as the choreography gets harder.

while watching the choreography of the song at the beginning of the month, meiqi was most eager to do the part where she could have the spotlight solely on her, to showcase her skills without anyone else moving. it just so happened that, following that split second, meiqi had to get close with one of the trainees.

“i’m being colored gray more and more with a frustrated heart, i close my eyes again oh yeah”

she doesn’t mind physical contact at all. jihoon was another case, but they had practiced enough for her to not dwell on the what-if’s regarding his failure, and just do it. meiqi trusts the boy, and she knows that he’s worked hard to improve and not let his timidity get in the way. when his hand passes down her arm confidently, meiqi has to suppress the proud smile that threatens to ruin her performance. instead, once he grabs her hand, she gives it a quick squeeze, as if to say “good job, you did great” before spinning around and crouching to the floor.

her cousin viian had asked, during one of their routine skype calls, why meiqi had chosen a boy group song instead of a girl group because it would have been easier to balance dancing, expressions, and singing live. meiqi had snorted at the idea. she wanted to display how much she’s improved in the 8 months between her audition and now, but also, why would she ever take the easy way out? meiqi loves the difficult choreography and the sort of elegant vibe that “runaway” has. no girl group song out there right now could take runaway’s place, or even had a chance at doing so.

“take me out, please hold me”

following meiqi’s last line, she can finally throw caution to the wind regarding breath control. she can give her all, knowing that she’s done incredible. in some twisted way, she wants to thank those trainers that pushed her for that first week, because the amount of extra exercise she had done, had done wonders for her stamina. meiqi, despite dancing like she’s never danced before, feels like she could do it a million times more (perhaps that’s good, considering she has two more non-center performances coming up).

the final chorus has meiqi placed in the center, and it feels like she belongs there. ever since she was a kid, she had a feeling that she was born to be in the spotlight, but this performance just solidified the thought. it feels like she’s actually an idol, performing on a music show stage, with cameras capturing her every smirk. she loves it. she wants to feel it again soon.

 Sicheng has had a pleasant enough day. He’s nervous, of course, to be leader, to have the responsibility of the group’s victory on his shoulders, but there’s also a bizarre sense of excitement that courses through his veins and grows more exhilarating and more strange with each week he makes the cut. 

 He’d stayed quite late, poked around the area a bit after leaving; Seoul never sleeps, and he had been too filled with energy to go home and go to bed, or to walk into the apartment he shared with Mark and have to bear the heaviness that had settled in its halls since Mark had been eliminated. 

 He’s making his way into the subway station when his phone vibrates in his rear pocket. He ignores it for the time being, getting his ticket, only bothering to check it once he’s on the train and on his way home.

 As he unlocks his phone he wonders why on Earth Lucas’s mother is texting him at nearly one in the morning, and then he sees the message.

ᴛᴇxᴛ ʀᴇᴄᴇɪᴠᴇᴅ: ᴋᴏʜ

ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴇᴠᴇɴɪɴɢ ʟᴜᴄᴀꜱ ᴡᴀꜱ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴄᴀʀ ᴀᴄᴄɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ɪꜱ ᴠᴇʀʏ ʙᴀᴅʟʏ ɪɴᴊᴜʀᴇᴅ. ʜᴇ'ꜱ ɪɴ ꜱᴜʀɢᴇʀʏ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴀꜱ ʜɪꜱ ᴄʟᴏꜱᴇꜱᴛ ꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅꜱ ɪ ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ɪ ꜱʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ʟᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʟ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʙᴇꜰᴏʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ɪᴛ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴇʟꜱᴇ. ɪ'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴀᴄᴛɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʟ ꜱᴏᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ʟᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ ᴠɪꜱɪᴛ, ᴀꜱ ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʜᴇ'ʟʟ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ꜱᴇᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʟ, ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜ ʜᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴘᴜᴛ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀ ᴄᴏᴍᴀ ꜰᴏʀ ᴀ ꜰᴇᴡ ᴅᴀʏꜱ, ꜱᴏ ᴡᴏɴ'ᴛ ʙᴇ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴄɪᴏᴜꜱ ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ. ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ᴘʀᴀʏ ꜰᴏʀ ᴍʏ xᴜxɪ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʟ ꜰᴏʀ ᴄᴀʀɪɴɢ ꜰᴏʀ ʜɪᴍ.

 A nitrogen chill shoots through him as he tries over and over to reread it, to read it word by word to find the bit he’d misinterpreted, but the words blur together into Cyrillic, into lines and circles, a few of them growing bigger and bigger, their Helvetica towering over him, pressing on him like lead weights. 

CAR ACCIDENT. BADLY INJURED. BADLY INJURED. SURGERY. COMA. PLEASE PRAY FOR MY XUXI. PLEASE PRAY FOR MY XUXI. PLEASE PRAY FOR MY XUXI.

 The terror is slow-growing, blooming in him like rafflesia. It holds him in place, frozen, his thoughts oblivion, until he reaches his stop, and he stands up from his seat, his legs wobbly, a gulp heavy in his throat. 

 Images of car accidents stack in his head as though he’s sorting through old photographs, maimed bodies, missing limbs, lines of cars slowing to a lull so their passengers might catch a glimpse of the carnage beyond the shattered glass that glitters like confetti on the asphalt, death tolls, the voice of the girl in wheelchair who’d come to his fifth grade class to warn them about drunk driving, recounting the death of one of her best friends.

 Lucas was in surgery, Sicheng tries to tell himself, he’s alive, his head can’t be split open like a cross-section model on a clinic waiting room table, or smeared across the pavement if they’re operating on him, but he can’t think that deeply in the moment; the logical conclusions scurry away from him like field mice.

 He loses his breath in the station; there’s no real crowd this late, but there’s still too many voices, and footsteps, too much noise. It echoes off the walls, and he’s dizzy, right? He thinks he’s dizzy. It’s the blue-white of the lights, he thinks. He hates the lights. 

 He tries not to die on his way above-ground, on his way home, but he’s going to die, he’s going to die. He can’t breathe. 

 He has to convince himself he can. He has to logic his suffocation away. 

 He can feel his diaphragm expanding and contracting, his lungs are inflating with air. Breaths are being taken, even if he can’t feel them, even if he feels on the brink of collapse. He is breathing. He’s breathing. He talks himself into believing it as he drifts zombie-like from the station to his apartment.

 The living room lights are on when he enters the apartment, bright in the ceiling, and he hates them. Mark probably left them on so he wouldn’t walk into a pitch black house, but Sicheng wants that right now, he wants to be shut in a shoebox, contained, because right now everything feels too big, too loud, the lights are too bright. He can can barely linger there long enough to close and lock the door, so he hastily brings his bags to his room, which is dark and cool, and drops them unceremoniously on the floor in his haste, tripping on them almost immediately with a whimper. 

 He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know where to go, but he wants to move, he wants to leave, he wants to squeeze his eyes shut and shrink into a single pixel, he wants to squeeze his head until it pops like a bubble, and he doesn’t have to think about how he is never going to be able to fucking breathe again.

 Even his room, in its blackness, is too big, the forms of its furnishings eventually emerging in a deep gray as his eyes adjust to the lowlight, and he can’t do it right now. He’s afraid if he does it much longer that he’ll fly off the face of the Earth into deepspace and disappear with a twinkle like this is a cartoon. 

 It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s real. 

 He eventually finds his way into his closet, and closes the door, sliding down the wall to pull his legs in, like he might fold himself out of existence, and only then do the tears come. 

 They’re silent tears at first, but soon he hears his sobs, quiet and whiny and pathetic, and it takes him a second to register that they’re even his own, for a brief moment terrified that he wasn’t alone.

 The outpouring seems to wash away some of the panic, and he’s able to inhale again, and exhale, and inhale, and he almost falls asleep curled up inside the tight, dark space. 

 His phone vibrates, the screen flickering back to life to display a low battery notification, and through the slats of his closet door he can see his room glow pale with its light, and he pulls himself up, making his way to his bed and handling his phone, and once again he unlocks it, and reads over the message he’d received, word by word. 

 It doesn’t make him feel much better, but all he can do is lie there in the dark, the salt streaks on his cheek uncomfortably taut. 

 He isn’t dead.

 He repeats it a few times in his head like a mantra. He’s not dead. Lucas is alive. The coma was induced. He’s not brain dead. He’s alive. And it comes to him through this meditation he comes to know what that the heavy feeling he gets in his chest at the thought of the boy, the strange cross between the pressure of an umbrella opening in his rib cage and a heavy sadness, really is, and that losing Lucas would be the worst thing in the world.

 The boy he’d been trying to quietly distance himself from, tiptoeing away from him like he might past a sleeping parent, ignoring his texts once or twice, making up excuses for why they couldn’t hang out. He’d done it so nonchalantly, too, and now he’s wracked by a sense of guilt. 

 Lucas could have died, and their last interaction would have been Sicheng lying to him to avoid seeing him, because it hurt to see him sometimes, to see his smile, and hear his laugh, and feel the awkwardness that had cropped up between them recently like they’d went down a level in knowing one another; Sicheng wasn’t as much of a masochist as he’d once thought, and the pain, however bittersweet, was too much, and he didn’t want to endlessly wallow in it, he wanted its end, but it was a pain of his own making, really. The other boy had never asked for Sicheng to fall in love with him, he’d only treated him with the same kindness, the same friendliness that he did every one, it was Sicheng who had gone and let this weed take root in his chest.

 Because he’s the worst. 

 These realisations all work their way through his brain with sluggish pace as he toes the line of sleep, like molasses from a jar. It’s all the thing can handle right now, in between producing intrusive mental images of IV drips and bloodstained scalpels and Lucas maimed. 

 There’s no way he can go to Lucas, as much as he aches to, because he doesn’t know where he’s at, he doesn’t want to intrude upon his mother’s heartache and make it about himself, he wants to know that he’s okay, but he can’t know.

 He’s exhausted, physically and emotionally and mentally, and he has been for a very long time, but this has blown a hole through him like nothing had ever quite done before, and the sleep he falls into is heavy as a result, like a fairytale curse. 

 In a strangely merciful twist of fate, his sleep is without dreaming. Only black. 

“hello?” her voice is raspy, perhaps slightly annoyed, and her eyes haven’t opened even to check the caller id.

on the other end of the call, she can’t make out much of what’s being said. the voice is familiar, however, belonging to one of her aunts—yukhei’s mother. in her groggy state, meiqi can only hear snippets of cantonese amidst heavy breathing. alarm bells blare in her head at the sound of broken sobs, and meiqi immediately sits up (chungha’s arm falls from around her waist but meiqi doesn’t think to respect her roommate’s slumber in this moment).

all signs of sleep have disappeared as she listens to aunt kohsoom explain the gravity of the situation: yukhei was in a crash, a drunk driver hit him, he sustained too many serious injuries, the doctors have put him into a medically-induced coma.

she tries her best to comfort the older woman, but meiqi’s own mind is spinning. yukhei’s mother told her that he should recover well, and yet, all she can picture is her precious younger cousin battered and bruised and covered in his own shade of crimson. the fact that he could have died haunts her throughout the night, even once she bids her aunt farewell and reminds her to get some sleep. a lingering image of yukhei smiling brightly while wearing her red lipstick is tarnished by the horrors of an accident.

unable to find slumber hours later, meiqi lifts herself out of bed and towards the closet. haphazardly, she tosses a few clothes into a bag, pads out to the bathroom to pack a few toiletries, and slips into her sneakers before locking the door to her’s and chungha’s shared apartment behind her. 

meiqi shows up to the hospital still in her pyjamas, hair tied into a mess of a ponytail and shoes scuffing against the floor. her aunt texts her the floor number and meiqi takes the stairs instead of the elevator to get to her. when their eyes meet, in the middle of the hallway, meiqi drops her bag on one of the waiting chairs and wraps her arms around the older woman.

she’s not allowed to see her cousin until the 1st of august, but she stays by her aunt’s side until she can. meiqi doesn’t tell anyone where she is, nor does she think to inform the company; she turns off her phone and finds herself living at the hospital for the next few days. she becomes a ghost to the outside world, and even begins to look like one with the lack of sleep and the dark bags below her eyes.

meiqi’s one of the first people, aside from his mother, to be able to see yukhei. though she’s spent hours upon hours giving herself pep talks, she’s still not prepared to see him unconscious, surrounded by walls of white and a constant beep that reflects his heart rate. at least he’s alive, she tries to remind herself. it could be worse.

on the first day of august, meiqi pulls a stool up to the side of yukhei’s bed, taking one of his hands in hers. she recalls from movies and television shows, that people usually talk to a patient in a comatose state. apparently, they can hear everything that’s said and it gives them strength. she doesn’t know if that applies to medically induced comas too or just the natural ones, but she opens her mouth to let words spill out into the quiet air around them anyways.

“lucas, it’s me, meiqi.” her throat feels dry all of a sudden. “can you hear me?”

meiqi proceeds to talk about any topic that pops into her head. she starts with how scared she was when she first heard of the incident, how this must have been how people reacted to her father’s own death, how she’s going to be there for him until he’s all better, no matter what. she doesn’t even realize she’s crying until her aunt is dabbing away her tears with a tissue and guiding meiqi down to the cafeteria. (she doesn’t eat anything that day no matter how much aunt kohsoom begs, or the following days that yukhei is unconscious).

other people come and go, but meiqi parks herself in a chair outside of the room whenever someone is visiting him, only to return to his side when the room is void of other bodies. sometimes, she sings songs that she’s composed to him, and other times, she simply lays her head beside his arm and closes her eyes, listening to his heartbeat through the monitor.

when he’s finally awake on the 3rd day of the august, meiqi exits the hospital for the first time in days to buy him a present. she returns soon after, arms piled with stuffed animals and character stickers, and greets her cousin with teary eyes. she decorates his casts with stickers of gold stars, hearts, and cartoon animals with deceivingly happy faces.

by the end of the weekend, meiqi returns to nova. she spends the day at the company facilities, goes home for a shower and then rushes immediately back to her cousin. meiqi stays overnight at the hospital whenever she can, until yukhei’s discharge. even when training has her exhausted and half asleep by the time she arrives back, she never forgets to kiss yukhei’s forehead before saying goodnight.