"Min-woo," Jae-min repeated, careful to keep his voice even.
Jihan looked at him properly now, chopsticks still forgotten in his hand. "You know him?"
"...Yeah." Jae-min busied himself with his own container, buying half a second to arrange his face into something believable. "He is my roommate. We're in the same year." A pause, just long enough to sound natural. "I didn't know he was working for your family, though."
Jihan's brow furrowed slightly, thoughtful rather than suspicious. "He does look familiar, now that you mention it. I think I've seen him at the school gates once or twice. Can't believe he is your roommate." He shook his head faintly, as if that small detail had only just clicked into place. "Small world."
"...Yeah," Jae-min said again, because it seemed safer than saying anything else. "Small world."
He set his chopsticks down. "What actually happened to him?"
"I don't know the details," Jihan admitted. "High fever. He'd apparently been out in last night's storm before staying over, so it might have been that." He rubbed briefly at the back of his neck. "He's stable now, from what the hospital told my brother. I'm heading over to bring Tae-hyun some food and try to talk him into coming home for a few hours. He won't leave the room."
Jae-min's pulse ticked up.
"Can I come?"
Jihan glanced at him, something faintly curious crossing his expression. "You want to visit him?"
"He's my friend." The word came out easier than Jae-min expected, and it wasn't even entirely a lie anymore, not really—not after everything the past few weeks had quietly built between them, underneath all the scheming. "I'd feel bad not checking on him."
"Alright." Jihan stood, gathering the empty containers. "We can head over once you're ready."
---
The hospital smelled the way hospitals always did—antiseptic and stale coffee, fluorescent lights humming faintly overhead. Jae-min followed Jihan down the corridor toward the room number Tae-hyun had texted, his stomach tightening with every step.
They found Tae-hyun exactly where Jihan had described—slumped in a plastic chair beside the bed, hair a mess, dark circles pooling under his eyes, still wearing the same wrinkled clothes from that morning. He hadn't showered. He probably hadn't eaten either, judging by the untouched cup of vending machine coffee going cold on the small table beside him.
Min-woo lay still in the bed, an IV line taped to the back of one hand, chest rising and falling slow and even.
"I brought you something," Jihan said, setting a bag of ramen noodles down near the coffee. "Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten all day."
"I'm fine."
"Tae-hyun."
"I said I'm fine." His voice cracked slightly on the last word, eyes never leaving Min-woo's face, and something in the flatness of it made both Jihan and Jae-min go quiet for a moment.
Jae-min stepped closer, crouching slightly so he was more level with Tae-hyun's line of sight. "Hey. You should go home for a bit. Shower, eat something real, get some actual sleep."
"I'm not leaving him."
"I'll stay," Jae-min offered. "Right here. The whole time you're gone. I promise I won't leave his side."
Tae-hyun's gaze flicked toward him, wary, exhausted, clearly weighing whether that was actually enough reassurance to loosen his grip on the chair he'd been sitting in for hours.
"You'll call if anything changes?"
"The second anything changes."
Tae-hyun looked back at Min-woo one more time, something raw and unguarded crossing his face before he could smooth it away. Then, slowly, he nodded and pushed himself up out of the chair, joints stiff from sitting too long.
"An hour," he said. "That's it."
"Take your time," Jihan said quietly, resting a hand briefly on his brother's shoulder as they left the room together.
The door clicked shut behind them, and the room settled into a soft, steady quiet—just the beep of the monitor, the faint hiss of the drip, and Jae-min alone in the chair Tae-hyun had abandoned.
He watched Min-woo's face for a long moment, some of the panic from earlier finally starting to loosen in his own chest now that he could actually see him breathing, steady and real, instead of just imagining every terrible possibility through unanswered texts.
"You scared me," he muttered, mostly to himself. "You know that?"
Min-woo, of course, didn't answer.
Jae-min sat back, exhaling, and let himself finally relax into the chair.
It wasn't long before something shifted.
A soft groan, barely audible, and then Min-woo's eyes fluttered, squinting against the light before finally cracking open properly.
"...Jae?"
"Hey." Jae-min was up out of the chair immediately, leaning over the bed. "Hey, don't move too fast. I'm calling the doctor."
He pressed the call button before Min-woo could argue, and a nurse appeared a few minutes later, checking vitals, adjusting the drip, asking a handful of questions Min-woo answered in a thin, groggy voice. The doctor came shortly after, confirming the fever had broken but insisting he'd need more rest before being cleared to leave.
Once they'd gone, Jae-min pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat back down.
"So," he said. "What happened? You just—vanished. No texts, nothing. I was losing my mind."
Min-woo blinked slowly, still visibly foggy. "I don't really remember much. Got caught in the rain waiting outside. Tae-hyun let me stay over." He paused, brow furrowing like the memory was slippery, hard to hold onto properly. "I remember falling asleep. And then..."
He trailed off.
"Then what?"
"...A nightmare, I think." Min-woo's frown deepened, eyes drifting toward the ceiling like the answer might be written there. "It's mostly gone now. There was—" He hesitated, searching for something that clearly wasn't fully there anymore. "A man's face. I don't know who. And some kind of building. Big. I don't know why, but it felt—" He shook his head faintly against the pillow, giving up on the sentence entirely. "I don't remember. It's just gone."
Jae-min studied him for a moment, something in Min-woo's expression—too careful, too deliberately vague—making him wonder if there was more sitting underneath that "I don't remember" than Min-woo was willing to actually dig for right now.
But he let it go.
"Forget it, then," Jae-min said instead. "You're okay. That's what matters. Whatever it was, it's not important right now."
Min-woo gave a small, tired nod, some of the tension easing out of his face at the permission to just not think about it.
Jae-min pulled out his phone.
*He's awake,* he texted Jihan. *Doctor says the fever broke. Should be fine.*
The reply came quickly. *Good. Thank you for staying with him. We'll head back shortly.*
Jae-min set the phone down and looked back at Min-woo, who was watching him now with slightly clearer eyes, some of the grogginess starting to fade.
And that was when it clicked—Tae-hyun's face in the doorway hours ago, hollow-eyed and refusing to leave. The way he'd said *I'm not leaving him* like it wasn't even a decision, just a fact. The exhaustion, the panic, the way he'd looked at Min-woo in that bed like something in his chest had been physically hurting the whole time.
Jae-min's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Min-woo."
"Mm?"
"What exactly is going on between you and Tae-hyun?"